Understanding flooded through him, and in its wake came every emotion he'd ever experienced. Is that what Claire had meant, he wondered, when she'd said love wasn't enough? Love was enough for beginning, but sustaining took every feeling a human being was capable of. Our home, she had said. And with the two words Brooke had cemented everything.
He drew her away. The tears were streaming, her breath was labored. Her eyes were rimmed with red but steady. He knew he had never felt more for another, and never would. And suddenly he knew that questions and answers weren't necessary for him to know the whole woman. Without speaking, he let her go and picked up the hose himself. Brooke stayed where she was while he turned the water onto the house. With the back of her wrist, she wiped the stinging tears from her face.
'Parks…'
He turned, smiling the grim gladiator smile. 'It's worth fighting for.' Brooke let out a shuddering sigh as she closed her hand over his. 'We'll need towels to breathe through, a couple of blankets. Get them while I hose down the rest of the house.'
It seemed like hours passed while they worked together, soaking the wood and each other, the dog, again and again while the smoke grew thicker. The wind screamed, threatening to rip the blanket Parks had tossed over her out of her hands. The heat, Brooke thought. She wouldn't be able to bear the heat. But the flames still held off. There were moments she almost believed the fire would veer away, then she would be choking on the smoke and taking her turn with the hose until she couldn't think at all. There was only one goal-to save the house she'd shared with Parks-the symbol of everything she had ever needed. Home, family, love.
With the towels pressed to their faces, they worked their way around and around the house, soaking the roof, the sides, all the surfaces the heat seemed to dry again so quickly. They no longer spoke, but worked systematically. Two pairs of arms, two sets of legs, working with one mind-to protect what was theirs. Parks saw the flames first, and was almost too awed to move. It wasn't a furnace, he thought, or an oven. It was hell. And it was racing toward them. Great, greedy towers of fire belched out of the main body like spears. And in the midst of unbearable heat, he felt the icy sweat of human fear.
'No more.' In a quick move, he grabbed Brooke's arm and scooped up the puppy.
'What are you doing? We can't leave now,' Stumbling and choking, Brooke fought to free herself.
'If we don't leave now, we could be dead.' He pushed Brooke into his car and shoved the puppy into her arms. 'Damn it, Brooke, we've done all we can.' His hands were slick with sweat as he turned the key. 'Nothing you can buy is worth dying for.'
'You don't understand!' With the back of her hand she smeared grime and tears together on her face. 'Everything-everything I have is back there. I can't let the fire take it all-everything that means anything to me.'
'Everything,' he repeated in a murmur. Parks stopped the car to stare at her with red-rimmed, stinging eyes. 'All right, if that's how you feel, I'll go back and do what I can.' His voice.was curiously flat and emotionless, 'but, by God, you stay here. I won't risk you.'
Before she could take in what he'd said or what he was doing, he was gone. For a moment, the hysteria had complete control. She trembled with it, unable to move or think. The fire was going to take her home, all her possessions. She'd be left with nothing, just as she had been so many times before. How could sheface it again after all the years of struggling, of work, of wanting?
The puppy squirmed in her arms and whimpered. Blankly, Brooke stared down at him. What was she doing sitting there when her house was in danger? She had to go back, go back and save…Parks.
Fear froze her, then had her springing from the car and racing through the smoke. She'd sent him back he'd gone back for her. For what? she thought desperately. What was she trying to save? Wood and glass-that's what he'd called it. It was nothing more. He was her home, the real home she'd searched for all her life. She shouted for him, sobbing as the smoke blocked everything from view.
She could hear the fire-or the wind. Brooke was no longer certain one was separate from the other. All that was clear now was that if she lost him now, she truly lost everything. So she shouted his name again and again, fighting her way through the smoke to get to him.
For an instant she could no longer breathe, no longer be certain where she was or where to run. An image flashed through her mind, one of herself as a young girl approaching a small two-story house where she would spend a year of her life. She couldn't remember the names of the people who would be her parents for those twelve months, only that sense of disorientation and loneliness. She'd always felt as lonely going in as she had coming out. She'd always been separate, always an outsider, until she'd met Parks.
She saw him racing back to her, misted through the curtain of smoke. Before she could separate one image from another, she was in his arms.
'What happened?' he demanded. 'I heard you shouting, I thought-'' He buried his face against her neck a moment as the fear ebbed. 'Damn it, Brooke, I told you to stay in the car.'
'Not without you. Please, let's go.' She was dragging on his arm, pulling him back down the road toward the car.
'The house-'
'Means nothing,' she said fiercely. 'Nothing does without you.' Before he could react, Brooke was climbing into the driver's seat herself. The moment Parks was beside her, she started down the twisting road.
After nearly a mile, the smoke thinned. It was then Brooke felt the reaction set in with shudders and fresh tears. Pulling off the road, she laid her head on the steering wheel and wept.
'Brooke.' Gently, he brushed a hand over her wet, tangled hair. 'I'm sorry. I know the house was important to you. We don't know yet that it's gone or beyond repair. We can-'
'Damn the house!' Lifting her head, she looked at him with eyes that were both angry and desolate. 'I must've been crazy to act that way. To send you back there when…' Trailing off, she swore and slammed out of the car. Slowly, Parks got out and followed her.
'Brooke.'
'You're the most important thing in my life.' She turned to him then, taking deep breaths to keep the tears back. 'I don't expect you to believe that after the way I behaved, but it's true. I couldn't let go of the house, the things, because I'd waited so long to have them. I needed the identity they gave me.' Because the words were painful, she swallowed. 'For so long everything I had was only mine on loan. All I could think of was that if I didn't keep that house, those things, I'd be lost again. I don't expect you to understand-''
'I will understand.' He took her face in his hands. 'If you'll let me.'
She let out a long, shuddering breath. ''I never belonged anywhere, to anyone. Ever. It makes you afraid to trust. I always told myself that there'd be a day when I'd have my own things, my own place-I wouldn't have to share them, I wouldn't have to ask. It was something I promised myself because I couldn't have survived without that one hope. I forgot to let go of that when I didn't need it anymore.'
'Maybe.' He stroked a thumb over her cheek. 'Or maybe you had without realizing it. Back there, you called it our home.'
'Parks.' She reached up to place her hands on him. 'I don't care if the house is gone, if everything in it's gone. I have everything I need, everything I love, right here in my hands.'
They were wet, filthy, exhausted. Alive. Parks looked at her blackened face and matted hair, the red rimmed eyes. She'd never looked more beautiful to him. Throats raw from smoke, eyes stinging, he reached for her. Together, they fell to the grass. Brooke was laughing and weeping as he kissed her. Her face was streaked with soot and tears, but his lips raced wildly over it. Passion met passion. Bruises were unfelt as they touched each other while a need, as volatile as the fire they had challenged, raged through them. When the tatters of her robe were gone, his sodden clothes joined it, they lay tangled, naked on the grass. Again and again, their mouths clung, drawing the strength and victory of die moment from each other, climbing beyond the smoke and stench of the fire left behind to a clean, bright world.
She knew she had never been so aware, so stunningly alive. Her body seemed to hum from a thousand pulses that grew more erratic as he touched her.
With her arms tight around him, his body pressed against hers, she felt the sensation of absolute trust.
He would protect, she would defend, against any outside forces that threatened. During the fire, they had ceased to be a man and a woman. They had become a unit. Somewhere beneath the swirling passion, Brooke felt peace. She had found her own.
