Rescued (Navy SEALS Romance Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

left in the morning, she'd had no intention of needing to read one, no intention of being separated from her people, and no intention of needing to know anything past the path she was supposed to be on.
    "Fucking path."
    That almost felt good. She said it again, then laughed, sounding definitely hysterical, but laughed because Monster barked at her, like he was scolding her.
    The laughter ended instantly. The sound was almost on top of them. The trees were bending from what she guessed was the fire wind. The willows were almost flat.
    She gritted her teeth, wrapped her arms around her dog, held on for dear life. The water in the creek splashed up at them as if trying to flow backwards.
    Taylor cried and hung on.

Chapter Five
    T anner crested the edge of the mountain, coming in from the east. He'd headed east the entire trip and circled round once he was there, trying to see the lay of the land. He'd been in contact with the rangers, who now knew they had a missing hiker in the midst of a fire that was spreading fast, feeding on dry autumn underbrush. The ranger he'd talked to had said "Oh, holy fuck," before even thinking about radio protocol, if they worried about such things, and Tanner didn't blame him. What was down there was a cluster fuck waiting to happen. Duncan and his friends were probably still down there, probably still separated, but Tanner hadn't been able to get through to them. If Duncan had listened, and he probably had, he'd gotten his people down and was evacuating to the ranger stations, cutting between the flames. Bad news would be if they were trapped in their vehicles. Better news would be if they were moving and had just gotten turned around from not knowing the area and driving in the smoke or trying to avoid flames.
    He didn't have time to think about them. He crabbed the helicopter into the wind, following the rise of the land, fighting fire wind and the currents that flow against mountainsides. He brought the chopper up sharply over the top of the mountain, then stared a sweep down the side where lay the path the hikers had followed. First sweep he didn't see anything except the flames at the base of the mountain, right where someone trying to get down and get out would run into them. He banked, turned, started back up, watching as the turbulence from the rotors flattened the trees and bushes, opening up the view in some instances and closing it down in others.
    About halfway up, he spotted her. She was tiny, blond, ponytail, the right hiker, and that was good news, it wouldn't have been that unusual to find another stranded hiker or two and everything would slow him down. She was crouched in the creek bed – good girl! – her arms around a big black Labrador. That cinched it. This was Taylor Adams. Now he just needed her to look up at him.
    Because right now, she had no idea he was there and the way she crouched, hanging on to her dog, her face buried in his wet, muddy fur, looked like she'd just given up.

Chapter Six
    W hen the wind around her picked up and the sound crescendo'd, Taylor raised her head. Whatever was going on, if it was fire winds, they were different than what she'd expected. If it was a firestorm moving up at her, she wanted to know about it. She had no intention of going out with her head buried in her dog's ruff; she thought better of herself than that. In the split second between the sound reaching the screaming point and Taylor looking up, she thought of everything left undone in her life – a battle with her sister that had never been resolved, friends forgotten along the way to getting through college, her father divorced from her mother and Taylor taking sides, which she shouldn't have, the guys who had dumped her, and not being the one to come back strong from it after Zach left her, her longing to be loved, the five pounds she'd never lost, the –
    Overdue library books, damn, girl, this is the best you can come up with when your life flashes in front of your