Free Healing the Boss's Heart by Valerie Hansen

river,” he said as he cautiously scooped the child up in his arms, unmindful of the mud.
    Maya stayed right beside him, cooing to the toddler and speaking as if she were her mother. “It’s okay, sweetheart. We’re here. You’ll be fine. Don’t cry.”
    He proceeded as far as the top edge of the slippery riverbank, then gently placed the young child on the grass and stripped down to his white T-shirt. “I’ll go get my shirt wet and we can use it to wash her off a little before we carry her back to town. I don’t want to move her any farther if she’s actually badly injured.”
    Concerned, Maya was crouching over the curly-haired blond toddler. “I don’t think she’s hurt much at all. She’s moving her arms and legs and rubbing her eyes. The mud seems to be what’s bothering her the most.”
    In seconds, he’d returned with the dripping dress shirt and began to bathe the child’s face, starting with her eyes. When she finally opened them and looked at Maya, she immediately puckered up and began to wail.
    “Guess she knows I’m not her mother,” Maya said. “I wish I were. She’s beautiful, even under all that dirt.”
    “There’s a cut on her forehead and her knee’s a little scraped but I think she’s okay otherwise. I could leave you here with her and go fetch paramedics from town but that could take a lot longer, especially since we don’t know if there’s a unit available. I think the best thing to do is carry her in before it gets dark and we’re all stuck out here.”
    “I agree. If we can’t find anybody to treat her at the church, we can clean her up there and take her on over to E.R. ourselves if we need to.”
    He tenderly, cautiously, lifted the child again and cradled her in spite of her kicking and sobbing. “Keep squeezing water and rinsing her eyes so they don’t get scratched any worse than they already are,” he said.
    “Are you going to be able to manage her?”
    That made him laugh. “I trained on Tommy. After that, I think I could carry a wildcat.”
    “Uh-oh. Tommy. I totally forgot to keep looking for his dog.”
    “If it had been nearby when all this squalling started I imagine it would have come on the run.”
    “You’re probably right. I just wish we’d found Charlie, too.”
    “One marvel at a time, okay?” he said. “In case you haven’t thought of it, the only reason we stumbled across this poor baby is because we were out here looking for that dog.”
    “I know,” Maya said soberly.
    “It has been quite an afternoon, hasn’t it?”
    She nodded. “And the day’s not over. Work is going to continue all night, I’m sure.”
    “Probably. Last I heard, all the gas station pumps were down due to a lack of electricity and the authorities were trying to figure out how to apportion fuel for the rescue equipment, let alone the nonessentials.”
    “If it’s not one thing, it’s another,” Maya observed. She smiled at the child in his arms. It had quieted some and was now mostly sniffling with an occasional catch like a muted sob.
    “Well, this is one fortunate kid and that’s a fact,” he said, picking up the pace as they approached the church grounds.
    Maya was blinking back tears of relief and joy as she looked up at the white bell tower with the cross atop it and whispered a heartfelt, soul-deep “Amen. Thank You, Jesus.”
     
    “There’s a triage area set up in a tent on the east lawn,” Michael told Greg as soon as he saw what he was carrying. “Where did you find her?”
    “Out by the old Waters cottages. I thought nobody was using them.”
    “They’re not supposed to be,” the pastor answered, falling into step beside the others. “I guess there could have been squatters out there. Those cabins are far enough from town that trespassersprobably wouldn’t have been noticed for quite a while.”
    “That was my first thought but I doubt it,” Greg said. “Maya and I were hollering for Tommy’s dog and we’d checked out the whole