The Perfect Match (10 page)

She could hardly write off those episodes as
pure
friendship, could she?

She should. Ellie knew she had no business dreaming about anything more with this man or with any other. She had a job, a focus, a purpose in life. Seth’s sacrifice demanded that much.

But as she overlooked Deep Haven, barreling down the Gunflint Trail, Dan’s friendship felt easy and on the sweet edge of enthralling.

Her workload felt easy also. She’d endured her first couple of weeks working in the house with the fire captains and rescue workers on staff and had even appointed a deputy chief to back her up on days when she went . . . oh, say . . . biking with Dan.

She shook her head free of her thoughts and cast a look back at Dan. He pedaled just a whisker behind her, wearing a look of sheer determination, his face into the wind, his hair blowing against his bike helmet, his
biceps defined as he gripped the handlebars. He flashed her a grin. “Right on your tail, Flash.”

She laughed, then bent over the bars and guided her bike like a pro as they sailed into Deep Haven city limits. Turning on Fourth Street, she deliberately led them past the Simmons house.

Dan pedaled easily beside her. “They’re going to tear the place down in a few days.”

“I still haven’t received the forensic report,” she said, slowing to look at the desolate site. “But the medical examiner’s report detailed cause of death as carbon monoxide poisoning. Toxic smoke from the flashover.”

Dan flinched, and his expression reminded her that Leo had been his friend. “We’ll figure it out, Dan. If it’s arson, I’ll get to the bottom of it.”

He nodded, but something deep in his eyes told her he wasn’t listening. She’d come to call it his “pastor moments,” when thoughts of his congregation filled his mind. His face took on a texture of worry, even pain, and she hadn’t quite figured out how to respond. It reminded her of Seth, and she couldn’t deny the ever-so-subtle fear that nipped at her.

Such looks could drive men to do dangerous things.

“Let’s head down to the Footstep,” she suggested, trying to pull Dan out of the grip of his job. “I want to talk to Liza.”

He nodded and kicked off without a word.

The Footstep of Heaven Bookstore and Coffee Shop had been decorated in a harvest theme. Pumpkins, gourds, and pinecones lined the front porch, and sprays of drying chrysanthemums arrayed in baskets centerpieced the maroon tablecloths on the porch tables.
Someone had affixed a scarecrow to the door, dressed appropriately in a flannel shirt, bandanna, and cutoff shorts. He looked like a straw version of Joe.

Ellie leaned her bike against the porch and followed Dan into the store. While Dan veered to the right into the bookstore, Ellie hesitated, then headed into Liza’s section. A college-age girl, with long red hair and dressed in bell-bottom jeans and a tie-dyed shirt, sat at Liza’s painted metal table. “Hello. Can I help you?”

Ellie stood, mesmerized for a moment by the artistry of a designer who had combined Scripture into a stunning landscape appliquéd quilt hanging on the wall. “Uh, yeah. I’m looking for the owner.”

“Oh, Liza’s out back. Working.” The girl folded her hands and smiled.

“This is beautiful,” Ellie said, touching the quilt. The verse on it read “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

“Thank you,” the girl said. “I made it.”

“What verse is it?”

The young lady walked over to the quilt and ran her fingers over it. “John 8:32. I love this verse. I don’t think people really understand it.”

Ellie picked up a mug, ran her finger over the etched handle. “Oh?”

“Yeah. I think if people really had an understanding of the truth—the depth of God’s love, the freedom He gives from sin and despair—it would radically change their lives. They’d live in true freedom. In true joy.” The young woman had a smile tipping her lips, and her eyes were rich and green and shining. “Are you a believer?”

Ellie nodded, but her heart twisted. Obviously she
was missing something, because the truth had never felt freeing to her. Not joyous, but confining.

Her face must have betrayed the bitter truth because the crafter smiled warmly. “It’s a hard concept. That’s why I surrounded the quilt with sunshine and light. As if it were God’s light pouring through believers when they truly embrace the concept.” She pointed to a dove near the edge. “This is the Christian, soaring in the embrace of all that glory.”

“It’s incredible. I never thought about it that way.”

“My name is Katie.” She held out her hand, and Ellie found herself drawn into the circle of Katie’s smile. “I work here part-time when Liza’s creating. Are you new in town?”

“Sorta.” Ellie put the mug back on the shelf. “I’m filling in for the fire chief.”

“Wow. That’s . . .”

“Dangerous?”

Katie laughed. “No. Daring. Bold. Different. Welcome to Deep Haven.” She glanced over Ellie’s shoulder. “Hi, Dan.”

“Hey, Katie.” Dan walked into the room, and Ellie watched as he gave Katie a one-armed hug. They exchanged an insider look that suddenly had Ellie’s stomach tightening. “When did you get back?”

“A couple days ago. Are you coming down to the wedding?” Katie asked him.

“Are you kidding? I’ve been waiting for this day for over a year.” Dan didn’t let the woman go, and for some reason this only irritated Ellie. In fact, his bright smile and warmth toward Katie told Ellie only one thing.

Dan treated all the ladies in his congregation with the
same kindness that he’d been showing her all week. She wasn’t anyone special in his life. Just another sinner with a need to be enfolded into the congregation of Deep Haven. Just friends, nothing more.

She felt raw and hollow, and the air in the room turned thick and muggy. “I’m going to go find Liza,” she said in a small voice. Dan didn’t seem to notice the way she nearly fled from the room.

She felt like a teenage idiot. Obviously Dan had read her correctly that first day.
Just friends.

She was the one who hadn’t been obeying.

S
he wasn’t in the congregation. Dan stood at the pulpit preaching a sermon and scanning each face for Ellie Karlson.

If he’d done something to offend her, he didn’t know what and he felt sick about it. After their bicycle ride yesterday, she’d disappeared into Liza’s studio behind the house. When he finally realized she’d left without him, he’d raced to the station, only to find her Jeep gone, along with her dog.

It wasn’t parked outside the hotel either. With a heavy heart, he’d pedaled home, changed clothes, and driven up to his building site to pound out his frustration on sixteen-penny framing nails. The slick of sweat, a layer of sawdust, and the fatigue that embedded his muscles had felt like a sufficient barrier between his wounded heart and reality.

Ellie had gotten under his skin. Her laughter, her go-to-the-goal attitude, her belief in his sincerity combined into a potent mix he couldn’t ignore. She made him feel
as if anything he touched turned to gold. The fact that she’d cracked open her steel exterior to let him glimpse her passion, laughter, tease, and grit made him feel like superman.

And then, just like that, the walls went up, the door to their friendship slammed shut, locked.

She hadn’t returned one of his calls to her cell phone.

And now, as he preached on John 15, he wondered if indeed he’d been cut off, like the vine that bears no fruit.

“‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch that doesn’t produce fruit, and He prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. You have already been pruned for greater fruitfulness by the message I have given you.’”

Dan set down his Bible, then braced his hands on the pulpit. “This passage is difficult at best, but for now I want to skip over the pruning and start with verse five of John 15: ‘Those who remain in Me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from Me you can do nothing.’

“Some of us may feel cut off by God. As if He’s severed that relationship, cast us into a blaze. But I think Christ is not talking here about the potential to be severed from our salvation but rather our usefulness in the kingdom of heaven. It is clear that all of us have times when we are on fire for God. When whatever we do or say is filled with riches and truth, when we know without a doubt that God is channeling His love through us.”

Dan smiled. “At least I hope that it’s true. But even if it isn’t, and for those who are going through a dark time—a time when you wonder if your Christian faith, your efforts for the kingdom matter—take heart; you
may be being pruned.” He reread verses one and two. “Pruning is the cutting back, the refining, the reshaping. By what? The message. When we are experiencing a time of dryness, our answer isn’t to try and sprout on our own but to dig deep and let God’s love, God’s truth heal those wounds and help us become stronger. How? Through God’s Word.”

He lifted his Bible. “Invest in this book. Saturate your roots with Scripture. Psalms is a great place to start. Remind yourself of God’s love, His power, His righteousness. Move on to Matthew and take a fresh look at Jesus and how He reaches out to us in creative and thorough ways. This is the ‘remaining’ that Jesus commands in verse five. Jesus wants us to cling to Him during those dark, fruitless times.” Dan’s gaze found Mona and Joe, sitting in the third row, their hands clasped.

His throat burned as he continued. “Hold tight to Christ during your dry, infertile times, whether it be a pruning or pure tragedy. And through your connection to the Vine, God will fertilize your faith and bring you to fruitfulness.” Dan willed his words to resonate in his own barren heart, where the parched ground needed the touch of living water.

“This is our hope in Christ. That whatever befalls us, if we remain in Him, He will bear fruit in us. Nothing is without purpose, without hope, with God as the gardener.”

Dan blew out a breath and forced a smile. “Next week we’ll be talking about verse eight, bringing God glory and why our fruitfulness matters to Him—and to us—eternally.”

He bowed his head in prayer, then led the congregation in the benediction. When they stood, he saw someone rise
in the back. Why he hadn’t seen her before—maybe because she’d been hiding behind Bruce Schultz—seemed outrageous. Ellie looked stunning today in a simple black skirt and white peasant blouse, her hair up, revealing her slender neck.

She’d attract the attention of every man in town. He tried not to let that fact bother him as he marched up the aisle toward the vestibule to greet his departing congregation.

Nor the fact that she ducked out of the last row without a word to him.

The call interrupted a tuna-fish-on-rye sandwich and jolted Ellie from page thirty-two of a riveting story about a paramedic running from the death of his sister. Nonreader Liza had passed her the book after snatching it off Mona’s inspirational fiction section. For the first time in years, turning pages didn’t seem like a chore. Perhaps she should spend more time trying to dig up good books rather than reading
Firehouse Magazine.

At the sound of the alarm, she tossed her sandwich onto the paper plate, turned the book facedown, and ran for her gear. Craig Boberg and Bruce Schultz appeared from their corner of the house, and in less than a minute Ellie had manned the rescue truck, Craig at the helm of the pumper truck.

She keyed up the two-way radio mike. “Deep Haven Station responding. We’re 10-17. Please repeat address.”

Judy repeated the call. Structure fire four miles north up the Gunflint Trail at a lodge called the Garden. Ellie
turned on the siren. Lunchtime on Tuesday wasn’t a great time to peel through traffic, even in sleepy Deep Haven. Maneuvering the engine, she instructed Judy to page all the squads and to send the water tanker. A fire doubled every five minutes, and a structure fire, especially that far away, could be an inferno by the time they arrived. Unless they were near a lake, they’d be short on water until they found a way to pump it in.

Ellie had memorized every street, logging road, and state service road within her territory, and with the new GPS that she’d installed into the unit, she found the address without a problem. When she exited the highway, churned up dust on a dirt road, then passed under a wooden archway with a hanging decorative sign, she deduced, her heart sinking deep in her chest, that the place was some sort of resort. No telling how many vacationers were in their rooms lounging, or worse, asleep. She spied three two-story log buildings tucked between snap-brittle pine and parched birch—kindling to the blaze burning deep inside the main structure. As Ellie turned into the circle drive, she made out trace amounts of smoke puffing from behind the roof.

Before the dust settled behind the pumper, Dan and Joe showed up out of nowhere and seized the extra turnouts, boots, and SCBA gear. Ellie gave the guys silent kudos for their response time—quicker even than the station’s. They must have been hanging out together, a fact that gave her heart a small pinch.

Joe’s face was white, as if stark with panic. He ran past her and grabbed a bystander, a tall woman with graying hair and a terrified expression on her face. “Ruby, are they all out?”

She looked pale and rattled. “I don’t know. I think so. But what about the caterers?”

Ellie barely had time to register the group of vacationers—no, not vacationers, or maybe yes, vacationers, but definitely a select group of people clumped at the far edge of the round driveway, their almond eyes wide, some of them hugging each other. Standing farther away was a group of equally horrified ladies dressed for an afternoon social. She frowned as she turned back, surveyed the house, and took a quick inventory of the weather, type of structure, the color and thickness of the smoke puffing out the back of the house. “How did the fire start?”

“I’m not sure,” the woman answered. “It’s in the back near the kitchen. The sprinkler system should have kicked on, so I don’t understand why it’s still burning.”

Accelerant. If the fire had fuel, even the sprinkler system might not be able to pour enough wet on the red to extinguish it. Ellie inspected her crew—Joe, Dan, Craig, Bruce. Doug Miller’s truck streaked up the road, Mitch and Ernie crammed beside him in the cab. The pumper carried enough water for an initial attack, and she spotted the hydrant for the facility in the center of the driveway—obviously, they’d paid homage to code when they built this place. A fact that just might save their building.

She filed through her list of size-up questions—assessing the type of fire, the water, her crew, ability to terminate the fire. She mentally calculated the wind and the dry index for the day. The house sat well away from the woods that ringed it, but if the fire turned into an inferno, she’d easily have a woodland incident on her hands. They needed to contain the fire, then douse it—and fast.

The time she’d taken assigning her squads into posi
tions of responsibility paid off now. Craig’s extra training with the pump operation showed as he hooked up the hoses, first to the truck, then spiraled them out to the water source in the center parking lot.

“Please, this is our home,” the woman said in a tight voice.

“Stay back, ma’am,” Ellie said. “Joe,” she barked into her radio, taking off around the house, “you and Miller get in there and tell me what you see. Work your way to the heat, but be careful. I don’t want any kamikaze firefighting. Stay safe. Open the windows as you go and get this place vented. Bruce, set up the hoses. Ladder crew, Dan and Mitch, get on that roof and open some vertical ventilation. Ernie, cut the gas and power to the house. I’m going around back.”

The back of the house hinted at an ugly future. No windows blown out, no visible fire, but the second-story window directly above the kitchen exhaled yellow-black puffs of smoke. The panes rattled as the blaze fought for air. “We’ve got potential for a backdraft here, men. We need venting on that roof—now!”

Ellie knew that whatever had ignited the fire had eaten all the available oxygen in the room, starving it until it flamed out, leaving only a thick smoke of unburned particles. But the heat in the room, rising to flash point, only needed a fresh breath of oxygen to explode and engulf the place in flames. Releasing smoke through the roof would lower the temperature, maybe allow them to save the house. “Joe, Doug, what do you see?”

Joe’s voice crackled over the radio. “The fire seems to be in the back bathroom, but the smoke is thick and hot on the first floor. It’s going to roll over soon.”

Ellie pictured the toxic fumes that hugged the ceilings in the other rooms igniting and sending a ball of flame rolling through the house. “Stay low, Joe,” she instructed. “Wait for the hose team to cool it down, then head upstairs. Any bodies yet?”

Joe replied in the negative, and Ellie debated pulling him out. The first rule of firefighting was to protect her resources—her men. She didn’t want to risk Joe’s life for a maybe. But with the fire still below flash point, perhaps they could buy some time.

“Craig, how are you doing on that water?”

When Craig’s affirmative came back, she ordered in her hose team, Bruce and Guthrie, who seemed to materialize from nowhere. “Get in and cool down those ceilings. Work your way to the heat. I need a second team on Joe and Miller, protecting that staircase. Is the second crew here yet?”

Craig gave a negative reply and Ellie cringed. The last thing she wanted was trapped firefighters. She’d give Joe and Doug another three minutes before she would pull them out.

She stepped back, watching Dan and Mitch attack the roof. Like lumberjacks, they took chain saws to the shingles, and the sickly smoke billowed out. She wanted to yell at them to be careful, to watch for the sudden burst of flames as the oxygen supply fed the fire, to beware of collapse. But the screams from the crowd and the urge to obey her own rules about not showing emotions at an incident kept her mouth clamped.

Still, the thought of Dan going through the roof nearly ripped her breath from her vise-tight chest.

She swallowed back her panic, forced her voice
steady. “We need water fog as you go toward the back room,” she ordered the hose team. “Bring that heat down.” Instead of a solid stream on a fire, a fog of water would saturate the entire room, as Bruce and Guthrie worked their way to the hottest part of the blaze, protecting the other rooms. She hoped they remembered their masks, their SCBA gear. The memory of Dan tackling the Simmons house without his equipment flashed through her mind. The only safe way to fight fire was with smarts and caution, and she hoped she’d pounded that into their heads. The toxic smoke and searing steam could kill an unprotected firefighter.

She ran back to the front of the house. Craig was monitoring the pressure of the water as it fed into the hoses, ready on the relief valve should the pressure escalate above standards. Simon had arrived and was laying out a second hose, waiting for John. She prayed the guy showed up soon. They worked in teams of two, the front man working the nozzle, the other helping hold the snake of water that, once filled, felt like lifting a steel pipe. Steam hissed out of the roof, the open doors, the windows. Ellie felt a twinge of remorse for the destruction of the house. The carpets and furniture would be melted into a pile, everything covered with greasy, black soot.