Lightning
RAVEN
"You have to be kidding me."
It was raining cats and dogs. I was supervising a flour delivery in the back of my shop.
And lightning had literally struck the roof of my bakery. The bakery was supposed to open tomorrow.
Until flames started consuming the roof. My purse was in there. My life was in there. When I started to go through the back door, though, the delivery guy caught my arm. I tried to shake him off, but his hand gripped me even more tightly.
"It's not safe to go in there, miss."
"You don't understand," I said as I struggled to get away from his firm grip. "My whole life is going up in flames."
"I'm sorry, but I can't let you go in there." I could see the regret and resolve in his face.
I watched as the rain poured down and completely failed to diminish the rate at which the fire was spreading. Did you know that flour was flammable? Under pressure, it exploded like a bomb. I could hear the noises from outside. I didn't know if my face was wet with tears or rain. Probably a mixture of both.
I'd worked so hard for this bakery. And now everything was gone.
In a minute, a fire truck came wailing in, the lights flashing. Four firemen ran out with gear strapped to their backs to fight the blaze. I watched as they connected to a nearby fire hydrant.
Minutes passed as they fought the blaze. I knew that even if they stopped it from spreading outwards, my bakery was toast. Burnt toast.
And the rain kept falling. I don't know what kept me standing there, staring at my bakery. Maybe it was the morbid curiosity that people had when they stared at car wrecks on the highway. A healthier option would be walking away, going home, calling the fire department tomorrow for some kind of report, and then sending in an insurance claim for the dream that would never be mine.
Instead, I got soaked to the skin even when the delivery truck drove away. I didn't have a jacket. I didn't have an umbrella. I'd only gone outside for a few minutes.
It was probably less than an hour, but standing there in the rain, it felt like an eternity before the firefighters came out to talk to me.
"Hello," one of them said. He had a close-cropped beard with a little bit of salt and pepper in it. "Are you the owner?"
"Yes," I said.
"You're shivering," he told me. "Let me get you a blanket."
I hadn't even noticed that I was cold. I was drenched and it was late in the day, just past sunset on this spring day. He pulled a big blanket out of the truck and put it around me.
"It'll do for now. Ma'am, you need to get inside and get warm. You need to go home."
"Please tell me what's going on." I clutched the blanket a little tighter.
"It looks like a lightning strike. That's what the dispatcher said."
"I didn't call it in. Someone else who watched it happen must have."
"We'll have a report for you tomorrow. Do you have a way to get home?"
"I don't." My purse was in there. My keys were inside. All of them, including my car and house keys. I tried not to think of my shop keys on my keyring.
"I can drive you home," he said, his voice softening. My face must've said something. I obviously was a second away from breaking down completely. "I know it's hard."
"My purse is in there...can I go back in?"
He was shaking his head. "You can't. There could be significant structural damage. It started at the roof, but it spread everywhere. It's not safe for you to go inside. We'll have someone come out tomorrow to see if the building can stand or if we have to ask for it to be demolished for safety's sake."
I was shaking inside of the blanket. Misery consumed me from head to toe. I just wanted to take a warm bath and maybe get a time machine that could turn back the clock and somehow make lightning not literally strike.
"Are you okay, miss? I think we'll stop for coffee on the way home."
I laughed, surprising both me and him. "A coffee date? I don't even know your name."
I didn't mean it in a flirtatious way, but he winked at me anyway. "My name is Orion Wolfe. And it doesn't have to be awkward. We'll have a third person with us, my buddy Quinton." He turned away from me. "Q!" he shouted. "Move your lazy butt and help me take this young lady home."
Young lady. I sounded as if I were 12 again. "I'm in my twenties,” I protested. "I'm not that young."
"I'm thirty-eight," he replied. "You're young to me."
I lapsed into silence, unable to come up with some witty reply. It was late. I was wet and cold. My dreams had disappeared in smoke.
Another guy came out. "You called? I was checking some of the debris to make sure we got everything."
"We're taking the owner home. Well, not straight home. She needs coffee to warm her up."
Quinton looked at me. I knew I looked like an absolute mess. My hair wasn't the most manageable thing in the world, and I knew that I looked like a drowned rat. My makeup had to be running, too, mascara dripping down my face.
"I could use some coffee," he said.
And that was it. Quinton helped me climb into the fire truck. Orion turned the heater on full blast. It didn't dry my clothing, but it did help me feel a little better.
"Where do you live?"
I told him my address and the closest intersection.
"There's a café that I like about a block away from there. We can head there first." Orion adjusted the mirrors and then we were on our way.
I'd never ridden in a fire truck before. On another day, I might have been excited about it. But I just couldn't appreciate being so high up and surrounded by two hunky men. Okay, I appreciated being sandwiched in between two hot firefighters, but probably not as much as I would have on another day in dry clothes with my business intact.
I was still bundled into the blanket. I knew it looked weird, but I didn't want to let it go. When I was little, I hadn't sucked my thumb. I used to suck on my blanket. The blanket around me wasn't Bibby, but it gave me strength as a grown woman. I kept it around me even when I slid out of the high cabin of the fire truck.
"Q, help her sit down over there. I'm going to get us all some strong, hot coffee. Make sure that her lips don't turn blue."
Q put a big arm around my shoulders and drew me towards a couch.
"I'm all wet," I protested.
"They don't care. Water dries. And you're in a blanket, anyway."
The blanket was wet, too, but I didn't have the strength to protest anymore. I sat down on the couch. He drew me closer.
"I don't want you to get hypothermia."
It was a little late for that. I definitely had at least some mild hypothermia, but he held me close. His body heat reached through the blanket and my wet clothes to begin thawing me. My eyes slid shut as I felt his warmth wash through me.
"Open your eyes, sweetheart. It's not good to fall asleep when you've been cold. You might not wake up."
If I'd been awake, I might have argued with him about being an alarmist. But I half-cracked my eyes open. "It's been a hell of a day."
"We'll get you home, soon, sugar."
Our faces were very close together. I could smell the sweet scent of his breath.
"You smell like peppermint," I murmured.
"Addicted to it," he admitted. "I eat Altoids like other people smoke cigarettes."
"Smells nice," I said, fighting my heavy eyelids.
"Don't fall asleep," he warned.
Orion walked back with three to-go coffee cups in a carrier.
"Here or home?" he asked Q.
"Could you take me home?" I asked. "I'm dead on my feet." It wasn't that late in the day, but I was totally beat. Just thinking about the stuff I'd have to do tomorrow made me feel like I was in the basecamp of Mount Everest.
"Sure thing."