Damp air swirled around them, stirring up the water from puddles and drenching everyone with the chilly spray. Macy shivered.
The sheriff, still in crouch position, moved away toward the helicopter as it settled onto the open space that Alex had cleared.
“As soon as we get these two priorities attended to, I’d like to try to move this operation to the clinic,” Macy said to no one in particular. Then she was too busy to worry about what the sheriff or Alex were doing.
“WELCOME HOME, Block,” Air Force Senior Master Sergeant Alex Blocker muttered to himself as he watched the chopper lift off with the most badly injured of Macy Jackson’s patients.
He’d dreaded coming home to Lyndonville, and so far, his homecoming hadn’t been all that great. That was an understatement! He’d barely gotten settled into the spare room at Gramma’s house when the tornado sirens had gone off. He’d hustled Gramma Willadean into her storm cellar, and they’d waited for the all-clear signal. As soon as he’d heard it, he’d taken off to see where he could help.
He was combining leave with an official trip to interview for a recruiting position in Florence, South Carolina. While he was here, he would attend Willadean Blocker’s seventy-fifth birthday celebration. He had mixed emotions about returning to Lyndonville, the town he’d seen as a dead end and had left as soon as he was old enough. But now it looked as if life were throwing him a curve. If he took that job in Florence, he’d be almost next door to Lyndonville.
Though the docs had patched up the knee he’d torn while saving the life of one of his teammates—Ski Warsinski’s parachute had malfunctioned at three thousand feet over Hurlburt Field, Florida—it was no longer sound enough for him to land on in a parachute jump. Jumping had been a big part of his job as a member of Silver team, one of the elite special operations branches of his combat control squadron. He’d worked hard to be the best of the best, and now that was over. He could take the recruiting position long enough to retire with a pension, or he could leave the air force now and blow everything he’d worked for.
If you asked him, it wasn’t much of a choice.
Still, he had more important things to think about now. There was a helluva mess to clean up here in Lyndonville. He glanced over to where Macy was herding some of her patients to her car. Just looking at her had stirred up old emotions and passions, and he was glad that it was dark and he was alone at the moment.
He pushed a memory of twisted sheets and hot sweaty bodies out of his mind and turned back to the business of cleaning up the storm damage.
Macy turned, the car door open, and directed a tentative wave toward him. Block mustered a tired smile that was probably more of a grimace, and waved back. Then Macy got into the car and drove away.
IT SEEMED as if days had passed, but it had only been hours of grueling labor. Block was glad for the work. With a borrowed chainsaw, he had cleared a forest of fallen tree limbs from roads, and now cars and trucks had begun to pass by slowly.
Block stopped for a break. As warm as he had been while he was working, the chilly autumn breeze from the encroaching cold front cooled his heated bare skin and caused it to break out in gooseflesh. He gulped down a soda and then helped himself to hot coffee that had miraculously appeared as neighbor after neighbor had come out of their homes or shelters and had set about making the world right again.
Or as close as it could get, considering.
He leaned against his rented SUV parked in front of a drugstore in a little strip mall and looked around, wondering where he could help next. There was still too much devastation and it was too long until dawn for him to think about going back to Gramma’s. And there was still lots of work remaining.
Now that he’d slowed down, Block realized that he was dead tired. He’d spent enough sleepless nights as a combat controller to be used to them, but he figured some of the volunteers, people like Macy, weren’t.
He wondered briefly how Macy was doing in her clinic and how many patients she must be seeing, but tried to push her out of his thoughts. For now, there was plenty for him to do—even if his bum leg was starting to hurt like hell.
He guessed he’d have plenty of time to baby his sore knee soon enough: either as an unemployed civilian or as a recruiter. Didn’t much matter which. Wasn’t much occasion for either one of those to be called out in the middle of the night and work for days on end without sleep. Maybe getting medicaled out of combat control wasn’t such a bad deal after all.
No, it was a terrible deal. Everything he’d strived to achieve was tied up in being a combat controller. He’d worked his tail off to be one of the best. Even though he’d managed to earn a degree in aviation management, he was too damned old to have to start back at the bottom at some other job. And there wasn’t an airport here, anyway.
“Hey, is that your SUV?”
He looked up, startled that he’d been so deep in his thoughts that he hadn’t noticed the man come up to him. “Yeah. It’s mine.”
“Do you know where Doc Jackson’s clinic is?”
Block shook his head. “But I could find it.”
“Doc Jackson needs some supplies over there, and I don’t have a way to get to her.” The man nodded toward a car half-buried under the branches of a fallen tree and shrugged.
“I can get the stuff to Dr. Jackson,” Block allowed.
The man grinned wider than a jack-o’-lantern. “Oh man, you are a lifesaver. You know where old Doc Cranston’s office was?”
Block nodded. They’d never been able to afford to go to Dr. Cranston, but everybody in Lyndonville knew where his office was.
“Let me get a dry shirt out of my car, and I’ll be glad to ferry your supplies over.”
While Block wiped himself off with the wet shirt, the man scurried inside. Soon he returned with several boxes full of supplies.
Block opened the back hatch and pulled out a dry air force sweatshirt and pulled it over his head. Then he turned to the man.
Taking the boxes, Block said, “I’m sure Dr. Jackson will appreciate this stuff.”
And he’d appreciate another chance to see Macy.
RUEING THE FACT that she’d sent her nurse home to be with her own family during a break in the action, Macy leaned back in the swivel chair behind the reception counter. She was so tired she could barely see straight. Every time she thought she had seen the end of the stream of injured coming into the clinic, another surge of patients would find its way to her. For the moment, the waiting room was empty and Macy took advantage of the calm. She closed her eyes, propped her feet up on a stool and tried to will herself another ration of energy.
Apparently, sheer will wasn’t enough.
The door creaked open, but Macy was too fatigued to jump up. “I’ll be with you in a minute,” she murmured wearily as she rubbed her tired eyes.
Warm strong hands massaged her shoulders, and as startled as she was to find them there, Macy couldn’t resist the respite from her aches and pains. She arched her back closer to the reviving action of the unknown hands. “I don’t know who you are, but if you’re single, will you marry me?” she murmured as she melted beneath the man’s strong fingers.
“Well, that’s the best offer I’ve had all night.”
Macy jerked away from the wonderful strong hands. “Alex?” she squeaked. “What are you doing here?”
“A guy from the drugstore over near Faron’s Trailer Park sent me with a load of supplies.”
“So you volunteered?” she asked dryly as she tried to compose herself. She poked several strands of runaway hair back behind her ears and smoothed the front of her white lab coat. Alex was here in beautiful,