He turns his head as I catch up, and his face has changed. The hard, focused expression from earlier replaced by something fierce and tender.
"Ivy," he whispers, leaning down toward the gap. "Ivy, your Mum and Dad sent me out here to help look for you. They're really worried."
A sniffle comes from deep inside that cracks my heart wide open. It’s her. She’s really in there.
Sitting back on his haunches, he extends his hand toward the gap she must have crawled through. "It's a bit cold out here, isn't it? And you must be hungry. What do you say I bring you to them, and you can go home?"
Sliding down the bank, trying not to make too much noise, I crouch beside him and shine my headlamp toward the entrance, not directly into the dark interior so I don’t blind her with the harsh light, but at least enough to see by.
Curled up in the far corner, wedged between the collapsed wall and an old timber beam, is the little girl. She's filthy and shivering. Her arms are wrapped around her knees, and her eyes are wide, terrified with the sudden appearance of two complete strangers.
"Hey." Beau's voice drops, low and impossibly gentle. "You're okay. We've got you."
But she doesn't move, frozen by either fear, the cold, or both. He reaches in oh so carefully, mindful of the unstable structure, and her eyes dart to mine. When I give her a small smile and a nod, she leans toward him, giving him permission to help her.
Carefully, he lifts her out, cradling the scared child to his chest like she’s his own. "Let's get you out of here, eh?"
With a desperate sound, she latches onto him immediately, her tiny arms locking around his neck, face burying into his shoulder as she cries big, wet sobs of relief.
"You're safe now," he whispers as one massive hand covers her entire back while he holds her steady against his chest, rubbing slow circles through her filthy clothes before wrapping the small blanket that I hand him from my pack around her shoulders. "I won’t let you go."
Stepping away, blinking hard to fight back tears, my voice cracks as I radio in our coordinates to Taylor.
"We’ve got her. Send paramedics to the east ridge, about half a mile past the old hunting trail. She's cold and probably dehydrated, but she otherwise seems unhurt."
The response is immediate, voices overlapping on the channel, and I can hear cheering in the background as the news ripples through the search teams. I fight back my own sob as I imagine her frightened parents getting the good news.
We start the walk back toward the trailhead together, Ivy’s tiny body gradually relaxing against Beau’s, soaking up his warmth, as the shivering subsides. I walk beside them, close enough to monitor her, and the silence between Beau and me is different now. There's no tension, just quiet relief that we got a miraculous happy ending and the soft sound of him murmuring reassurances to the child every time she sniffs.
"How did you know?" I ask eventually, keeping my voice low so I don't disturb her. "When you took off like that?"
He doesn't answer for a few steps, and when he does, he keeps his eyes forward. "Lennox land isn’t far from here. I know these woods."
“A real mountain man,” I say, and he nods. Except we both know he lied. He didn’t know that the shed was there, or the cabin.
I bite my lip. Now isn't the time for questions, even my addled, sleep-deprived brain knows that.
"Thank you for coming. For finding her."
He wasn’t even asked. Just showed up to help, to do the right thing.
Beau regards me, and I feel it again, that pull, a yearning deep in my core, this strange gravity that exists between us.
Mountain men, my granny used to say, real Mountain men like the bloodline we come from, move through the world differently. I used to roll my eyes at her stories about the Black River forests, the magic there, tales about the families who still possess it, but now, I'm not so certain.
Seeing what he just did was humbling, that's for sure, and I know the Lennox's have been in Black River so long that they're practically part of the local folklore.
"Thanks for staying out here with me. Even if it was a bad idea," he grumbles.
Instead of getting defensive this time, I smile and ignore the rebuke, knowing he doesn’t really mean it. "You're welcome."
Ivy has fallen asleep against his chest now, one small fist curled into the collar of his shirt, and he adjusts his hold on her without breaking stride, cradling her head against his shoulder so it doesn't bounce as he walks.
This is how he'll be with his own children. Strong but gentle, and fiercely protective. Going to the ends of the earth to keep them safe.
The thought arrives uninvited and settles low in my belly, then that yearning inside me goes from a gentle pull to an irresistible tug on both my heart and my ovaries. There's something unfairly sexy about a handsome man who's good with kids. It's every thirty-year-old woman's kryptonite.
And you ruined it,my brain unhelpfully reminds me. Suddenly, the need to tell him how wrong I was about him rises inside me, so strong, I have to get it out.