A Love Beyond Words Read online

“Your daughter, ma’am?”

  “No, no, she’s my neighbor.” She gestured toward a severely damaged house. As Ricky and Tom headed in that direction, she trailed along behind. “She’s a wonderful young woman and she’s already been through so much. This house was her pride and joy. She just bought it a few months ago, and she’s been spending every spare minute fixing it up, putting in flowers all around.”

  Her eyes shone with tears. “None of that matters, of course. Houses can be rebuilt. Flowers can be replanted.”

  “You say her name is Allie?” Ricky asked.

  “Allison, actually. Allison Matthews.”

  As Tom went to get the equipment they’d need, Ricky surveyed the collapsed structure in the early dawn light. He opened his mouth to shout, but the woman’s frail hand on his arm stopped him.

  “Calling out won’t help,” she said urgently. “She won’t be able to hear you. Allie’s deaf.”

  As if the situation weren’t complicated enough, he thought, then reminded himself to treat it as he might a rescue in a foreign country where he didn’t know the language. It wouldn’t matter that he couldn’t communicate with this Allie in the usual way. He just had to find her.

  He circled the twisted pile of debris, looking for any sign of the woman, any hint of where rooms might have been. Would she have been in an upstairs bedroom or downstairs?

  Shadow, the highly trained dog at his side, moved gingerly through the rubble, sniffing. Rick stood where he was, waiting, letting Shadow do his part. This was always the hardest part of a rescue, hanging back, leaving it to the German shepherd to pinpoint signs of life.

  Finally Shadow stilled, whimpered, then barked.

  “So, you found her, did you, boy? Good dog.”

  Shadow yipped excitedly, but didn’t move, as if he sensed that one tiny shift could be fatal.

  “Let’s get her out of there, boy,” Ricky said. He paused long enough to give a reassuring smile to the neighbor. “Looks like we’ve located your friend. We’ll have her out of there in no time.”

  “Thank God,” she said. “Allie’s one of those special people put on this earth to show others the meaning of goodness. She’s an angel, sure as anything.”

  Ricky didn’t know a lot of women who could live up to such high praise. He tended to gravitate toward women who could best be described as free and easy with their affections, the kind who placed no demands on him, who knew that his job came first. Definitely not the sort of women to take home to meet his mother, who bemoaned his failure to marry on an almost daily basis. The only time she let up was when he brought Tom home for a meal of her famed pork roast, black beans and rice. Then she served up marital advice along with the food. Tom enjoyed her cooking too much to complain.

  Of course, right now it didn’t much matter whether Allie was a saint or a sinner. She was someone who needed his help, and that was all that mattered.

  He intently studied the collapsed home again, looking for the best possible access, using Shadow’s watchful stance as a guidepost to Allie’s location.

  “Shouldn’t you hurry?” the elderly neighbor asked, wringing her hands anxiously.

  “Better to do it right than rush and cause more injuries than whatever she’s suffered so far.” Thinking of his grandmother and how she would feel under these circumstances, he took a moment to cup the woman’s icy hands. “It’s going to be okay.”

  No sooner were the words spoken than he heard a feeble cry for help from deep within the rubble. The sound tore at his heart. Knowing that there was nothing he could say, that words of reassurance would quite literally fall on deaf ears, he settled for reassuring her friend instead.

  “See, there? She’s alive. We’ll have her out of there in no time,” he said optimistically. “In the meantime, why don’t you go over to the first aid station that’s been set up and let somebody take a look at that cut on your forehead. Looks as if you might have a sprained ankle, too.”

  “At my age, hobbling’s normal. As for the cut, it’s nothing,” she said, facing him stubbornly. “I want to be right here when you bring Allie out. She must be terrified. She’ll need to see a familiar face.”

  Ricky recognized the determined set of her jaw and gave up arguing. Like his abuela, this woman knew her own mind.

  He looked around until he caught sight of Tom, who had assembled the necessary rescue equipment and was ready to get started.

  “All set?” his partner asked.

  Adrenaline kicked in as it always did when the hard work was about to begin. Ricky nodded.

  “Let’s do it,” he said with an eagerness that always struck him as vaguely inappropriate. Yet it was that very anticipation that had driven him to take on such highly dangerous work in the first place. True, what he did sometimes saved lives, which was incredibly rewarding, but it also tested his skill and ingenuity at outwitting the forces of nature and near-certain death in the aftermath. A part of him craved that element of risk.

  Often he was halfway across the world. Today, however, he was in his own backyard, so to speak. Somehow that raised the stakes.

  He thought of the elderly woman’s assessment of Allie and grinned. He had to admit that his anticipation was heightened ever so slightly by the promise than when this particular rescue was over, for the first time he might be face-to-face with an angel.

  Chapter Two

  Allie fell in and out of consciousness. Or maybe she only slept. She just knew that every once in a while her eyes seemed to drift shut and her pain faded away. When she awoke, there was always the throbbing, more intense than ever.

  “Help!” she cried out again. Surely by now there were rescuers in the area. If they could hear her, they could find her. Gasping at the pain, she steadied herself, then shouted again, “Help!”

  When her shouts were met with nothing but more of the same silence, she felt as if she were calling into some huge void. As her cries continued to go unanswered, she began to lose hope. What if they never found her? How long could she stay alive in this unrelenting heat without water? Despair began to overwhelm her.

  Then, suddenly, just when she was about to give up, she thought she caught sight of a faint movement far above her. Was it possible? In the pitch-blackness, she couldn’t be sure. Had there been a glimmer of light?

  “Here,” she called on the chance that it hadn’t been her imagination playing cruel tricks on her. “I’m down here.”

  A chunk of what once had been her roof—or maybe a wall, considering how topsy-turvy everything was—was eased away, allowing her a first glimpse of sky. Ironically, given the storm that had raged so recently, the sky was now a brilliant blue, too beautiful by far for anyone to imagine that such destruction had been wreaked by the heavens only hours before.

  Relieved that she still had her sight, she wanted to simply stare and stare at the sunshine, but she was forced to close her eyes against the brilliance of it. Still, she could feel the blazing heat on her cheeks and vowed she would never again complain about Miami’s steamy climate. It felt wonderful.

  When she finally dared to open her eyes again, there was a face peering back at her, the most handsome face she had ever set eyes on. Of course, at this point, she would have been entranced by a man with whiskers down to his knees and hair the consistency of straw if he’d come to save her. This man was a definite improvement on that image.

  Even with his hard hat, she could see that he had black hair, worn a little too long. He had dark, dark eyes and a complexion that suggested Hispanic heritage and dimples that could make a woman weep. It was all Allie could do not to swoon and murmur, “Oh, my.”

  He was too far away for her to read his lips with any accuracy, but she could see his mouth slowly curve once again into that reassuring, devastating smile. She clung to the sight of that smile. It was a reminder that life could definitely be worth living. No man had smiled at her like that in a very long time, if ever.

  Or maybe she just hadn’t noticed, she admitted can
didly. From the moment she’d lost her hearing, her life had taken on a single focus. Everything had been about learning to adjust, learning to cope, opening that new door…and forgetting about the social life that had once consumed her. She discovered that not many men were interested in a woman who couldn’t hang on their every word, anyway.

  For fifteen years now she had had male colleagues, even a few men she counted as friends, but not a single one of them had made her blood sizzle the way this one had just by showing up. She figured it had to be a reaction to the circumstances. After all, this hardly seemed to be an appropriate time for her hormones to wake up after more than a decade in exile.

  As time slid by, she kept her gaze locked on that incredible face. She sensed from the way the debris was slowly shifting above her that there was a scramble to free her, but that one man stayed right where she could see him, easing closer, inch by treacherous inch.

  “Hi, Allie,” he said.

  By now, he was close enough that she could read his lips. And she guessed from the way he’d spoken, being so careful to face her, that he knew she was deaf.

  “Hi.” She breathed the word with a catch in her voice, even as relief flooded through her. It was going to be okay. As long as he was there, she knew it.

  “Can you read my lips?”

  Eyes glued to his face, she nodded.

  “Good.” He reached out his hand. “Can you take my hand?”

  She tried to move her arm, but it felt as if it, too, were weighted down, just like her pinned leg. She almost wept in frustration.

  “That’s okay,” he said. “Hang in there a little longer. You’re being incredibly brave, and if you give us just a little more time, I’ll be able to reach you and this nightmare will be over.”

  She nodded.

  “Anything hurt?”

  “Everything,” she said.

  He grinned. “Yeah, dumb question, huh?”

  He turned his head away. She could see a change of expression on his face and guessed he was speaking to someone out of sight.

  More debris shifted and bits of plaster rained down on her. She yelped, drawing his immediate attention.

  “Everything okay?” he asked, his expression filled with concern.

  She nodded, her gaze locked with his worried brown eyes.

  “Good. Then here’s the deal, Allie. I imagine you want to know what we’re up to out here, right?”

  “Yes.” She wanted to know everything, even if she didn’t like it. She’d learned a long time ago that she could cope with just about anything as long as she knew what she was up against.

  “Okay, then. I’m going to disappear for just a minute. We’re not happy with this approach, so we’re going to come in a different way. It’ll take a little longer, but there’s less risk. Are you all right with that?”

  She wanted to protest the delay, but he was the one who knew what he was doing. She had to trust him. Gazing into his eyes, she found that she did. And even though she didn’t want him to move, didn’t want to lose sight of him, she nodded again. “Okay.”

  She turned her head away to hide the tears that threatened. Suddenly she felt what seemed to be a deliberate dusting of powder sprinkle down on her face. She glanced up to find him watching her anxiously.

  “Sorry,” he apologized. “I needed to get your attention. I promise you’ll see me again in no time. I never leave a pretty woman in distress.”

  She almost laughed at that. Even when she wasn’t under a ton of debris, no one in recent years ever said she was pretty. Now she imagined she must look a fright. She had been dressed for bed when disaster struck, wearing a faded Florida Marlins T-shirt and nothing else. At the end of the day, her hair was always a riot of mousy-brown curls, thanks to Miami’s never-ending humidity. She imagined she looked pretty much like a dusty, bloody mop about now.

  “Go,” she told him. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

  He chuckled. “That’s my girl.”

  And then he was gone, leaving Allie to wonder if it was possible that angels ever came with dancing eyes…and looking like sin.

  Ricky was still chuckling as he eased his way off the mound of debris. Allie Matthews was something, all right. Scared to death but doing her level best not to show it. He’d caught the occasional glimpse of panic in her amazing blue eyes, but not once had she complained. She had to be in pain, as well, but beyond her one joking admission, she’d never mentioned it again.

  “You find something funny about this?” Tom asked, regarding him with curiosity as he leaped to the ground beside him.

  “You probably had to be there,” Ricky admitted.

  “How’s she doing?”

  “Her sense of humor’s intact, but she can’t move. No way to tell if that’s because she’s pinned down or because of an injury. Bravest woman I ever saw, though. She’s not hysterical, but those eyes of her are killers, blue as the ocean and shimmering with tears, though she’s fighting them like crazy.”

  Tom shook his head. “Leave it to you to go all poetic about a woman’s eyes in the middle of a rescue.”

  “I was hoping to motivate you,” Ricky claimed, though the thought of Tom getting ideas about Allie bothered him more than he cared to admit. It was crazy to be jealous over a woman to whom he hadn’t even been introduced.

  He gazed at the rubble with frustration. “Any idea how we can get in there without bringing this mess tumbling down around her?”

  They stood surveying the crazy haystack of debris. It was far from the worst they’d ever seen. There had been whole apartment complexes to dig through in earthquake disasters. But Ricky had never felt a greater sense of urgency. Something about Allie’s spirit and bravery had caught his attention in a way that few women did. In just a few minutes he had felt some of that strength and resilience that her neighbor had bragged about.

  For the next few hours Ricky, Tom and the others worked with tedious patience to reach Allie. When they finally had a clear view of her through a tunnel that seemed safe enough, Ricky was the one who inched forward on his belly, clearing more debris bit by bit until he could reach out and touch her hand. Again those huge, luminous blue eyes latched on to him and held him captive.

  He passed a water bottle to her, but she couldn’t seem to negotiate it to her mouth. She stared at her immobile hand with evident frustration.

  “It’s okay,” he soothed. “I’ll get it to you. Hang in there.”

  He eased forward an inch at a time, waiting between movements to make sure that the precarious arrangement of debris wouldn’t shift. Finally he was close enough to touch the plastic straw to her lips. She drank greedily, her gaze never leaving his face.

  “Is Jane okay?” she asked the minute she’d satisfied her thirst.

  “Jane?”

  “Next door. Mrs. Baker.”

  He thought of the woman who’d guided them to Allie. “About seventy-five? Five-two? Feisty?”

  “Yes, yes, that’s her. She’s okay, isn’t she?”

  “A cut on her forehead and possibly a sprained ankle, but you’re the only thing that seems to concern her,” he said. “She hasn’t budged since we started trying to reach you. She found a lawn chair down the block and planted it right out front so she can keep an eye on us.”

  Allie grinned. “That sounds just like her. And the rest of the neighbors? How are they?”

  “We’re checking on all of them now,” he said, unwilling to mention that so far there was one dead and several unaccounted for. Fortunately, she seemed to take his response at face value.

  “How long have I been down here?” she asked.

  “Not so long. A few hours. We got the call shortly before six a.m. It’s just about noon now,” he told her. “Must seem like an eternity to you, though.”

  She nodded.

  “Well, it’s almost over. You stay perfectly still, querida. I’ll have you free in no time,” he promised.

  “Couldn’t move if I wanted to,” she said as a
tear slipped down her cheek. “I—” her voice faltered “—I think I might be paralyzed.”

  “Now, don’t go getting any crazy ideas. Looks to me as if it’s just because of the way you’re wedged in here,” he reassured her. “No need to panic. Once you’re out, I’ll take you dancing.”

  The teasing drew a watery smile. “You’ll regret it. Even before this I had two left feet. On top of that I can’t exactly hear the music.”

  “I’ll take you someplace where it only matters if you can swivel your hips.”

  “Ah, salsa,” she said knowingly.

  “With a little tango mixed in,” he said. “You’ll just have to hang on and follow my lead.”

  She gave a decisive little nod. “I can do that.”

  “Then it’s a date.”

  All the while he talked, chattering nonsense mostly just to keep her attention focused on his face, he cleared debris from on and around her. When he saw the bloody gashes in a long shapely leg, he had to fight to keep his expression neutral.

  That was the worst of it, though. If he could free her leg, he thought he could get her to safety. He just had to keep his mind on what he was doing and off the fact that she was all but naked. The T-shirt she’d presumably worn to bed was shredded indecently. She apparently hadn’t noticed that yet or else she was more brazen than he’d imagined.

  “Make sure there’s a blanket ready and waiting when we come out,” he murmured into the radio tucked in his pocket, his head turned so she couldn’t read his lips. She tapped his shoulder, her expression frustrated. He smiled. “Sorry. I was talking to my partner. I just wanted to be sure he’d be ready for us when we blow this cozy little cave under here.”

  It took another hour of careful excavation around her leg before he felt confident enough to move her.

  “You ready?”

  “Oh, yes,” she breathed softly.

  “I’m not guaranteeing there won’t be some pain.”

  “What else is new?” she said bravely.

  “You want something for it?”

  “Just get me out,” she pleaded.