by MJ Fredrick
“Just how much do you hate me?”
Jen returned his gaze unblinkingly, long past being intimidated by him. Hell, why should he intimidate her now? She’d left him without a backwards glance, and here she was, incident commander, his boss on this fire. She’d hold that over him till he got out on the line.
She folded her arms over the maps in front of her and tilted her head back to meet his eyes. “I don’t hate you at all. What are you talking about?”
“The reporter,” he ground out.
“Ah.” She sat back, looking a hell of a lot more relaxed than he felt. “Ms. Michaels wanted the best and I’m giving her to you.”
Her choice of words gave him a moment’s pause, but only a moment. She didn’t hate him, but he’d spent the better part of a year hating her before shutting off all feelings completely. That they’d return now in full force had him reeling. He pulled himself back to the fight at hand.
“She’s a rookie.”
“You’ve taken on rookies before.”
“Not by choice.”
The way she regarded him carried him right back to the last days of their marriage, cold and condescending. “What makes you think you have a choice now?”
“You’re putting my entire crew in jeopardy to get even with me.”
She blew out a breath and leaned forward again, not releasing his gaze, unwilling to give him that victory. “This has nothing to do with you. With us, anyway. It’s about which crew would benefit her the most.”
“To hell with fighting a fire.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Careful, Gabe. You’re sounding misogynistic. Peyton can do the job. And it won’t be the whole season, just for this fire. Her story’s on wildland firefighters. Once it’s done, she’s gone.”
“Great. As long as she’s invested in the job,” he said contemptuously.
“She’s trying to experience the job. It’s no big deal. There’s nothing scandalous coming out of this.”
He voiced his opinion of that in a few succinct words.
“Jesus, Gabe.”
“One shift, and then you find another crew for her.”
Jen inclined her head. “We can discuss it.” She turned back to her maps. “Is that all?”
Was it? What else could he say to the woman he hadn’t seen in three years? He couldn’t let her go without a parting shot. “Give Doug my best.”
The shocked expression on her face gave him a millisecond of pleasure before he shut that down as well. “You mean it?” Her voice was breathless with hope.
He wished he could be the type of man who would mean it, but he was a bastard. “No. He already got it.”
He pivoted and strode out of the tent.
Fire season was usually hell, but damn, what had he done to deserve this? Maybe this was God’s way of telling him it was time to get out of the Forest Service. Sure, great, but after punching line for twenty years there wasn’t another job he knew as well.
He swore he wouldn’t live in a city again, so being an EMT full time was out. The only way he could bear his time in Albuquerque now was knowing that once spring arrived he’d be back in the mountains. He’d be damned if he’d sit behind some desk in the Bureau of Land Management and send kids into situations out of his control. He was a Hot Shot till the end. Nothing would take him off the line.
So God could just keep on sending those messages. Gabe Cooper was sticking it out.
Peyton Michaels—what kind of name was Peyton, anyway?—sat smugly on a picnic table, waiting for him, her pack still over one shoulder, her ponytail over the other.
He jabbed a finger at her. “If I agree to this, it’s for one shift and one shift only. You do your job without question, understood?”
Those chocolaty eyes went wide. “Yes, sir.”
“I mean it, Michaels. My crew is the best for a reason, and I’d like to keep them in one piece. The way we work is they do what I tell them to do. Got it? And you call me ‘sir’ again, the issue is off the table.” He slashed his hand through the air for emphasis.
“Of course. Gabe.” She even said his name with a smile in her voice.
He lifted his eyebrow. She had guts. Hell, how could she have anything less, walking into a fire camp and asking to go on the line with the best crew? But as a reporter for Up to the Minute weekly news magazine, she knew something about being the best too.
“I meant the part about questions. I don’t give interviews.”
She angled her head in a way that made him feel like an idiot for saying it. “I wasn’t going to ask for one. This is a look-see assignment.”
He grunted. “You have gear?”
She nodded and he could practically feel the energy, the excitement rolling off her. Her body all but quivered with anticipation but her expression remained cool.
“Let’s go,” he said through his teeth, and ignored the little skip of triumph as she followed him to gather his own gear before they met his crew at the edge of the camp.
Peyton joined the middle of the disciplined single-file group. They headed out of camp on the dusty path curving up the mountain between rocks and shrubs. They’d be walking to a remote site. While the energy pulsed through her now, she hoped to maintain her strength up on the line.
As they got farther up the mountain, the unit shifted into bunches of three and four, and made their own path through the high grass and scrub, their excitement growing as they drew closer to the fire. Other crews had been this direction; someone had pounded down the grass before them.
Peyton turned her attention to the man who held such respect from the firefighting community, his crew, yet kept himself apart, plunging through the knee-deep brush alone.
His matter-of-fact, unapologetic manner reminded her of Dan. The recognition had hit her like a blow to her chest, bruising her heart and making breathing difficult. In her mind she saw her husband standing before the brass at his last debriefing, so handsome in his dress blues, so confident as he justified his SWAT team’s decision to invade that warehouse without a search warrant to stop the drug deal. If only he’d been reprimanded, had suffered some kind of consequence, maybe he’d still be alive. Instead, he’d been applauded, rewarded, and had returned to the job that killed him a year later.
Her “In the Line of Duty” articles had quickly gained recognition and popularity. She’d gone from Coast Guard rescue cruisers to EMT crews stationed in bad neighborhoods to this mountain. But still, nothing she’d written so far had shed any light on what the job fulfilled in Dan that life hadn’t.
The story on Cooper was a departure. Her other articles focused more on the jobs than on the men and women who performed them. She’d probably lost a lot of depth taking that route, but had needed the emotional distance as she grieved for Dan. Could she afford to give it up now?
While she worked up the nerve to invade Cooper’s space—she couldn’t very well write his story from this distance—she zeroed in on a conversation between two of the men who walked with chainsaws slung over their shoulders. Her own pack was heavy with her tools, weighted with bottled water, and these guys carried the machines like they were made of Styrofoam. Sheesh. Their ability so impressed her that it took her a minute to tune in to their conversation.
“You’ve been with him long enough to know how he feels about reporters.”
They were gossiping like old women about Gabe. Calling him an old man. Please. Still, intrigued, she moved closer.
“Why would she bust his balls after, what’s it been, three years? Hell, she married someone else.”
Who? Who? Who? Peyton willed them to give her a name.
“Women are like elephants, man. They don’t forget anything.”
Peyton wanted to take exception, but it was rude to interrupt an eavesdropped conversation.
“I hear she dumped him.”
“She had to have a reason.”
“I thought the smokejumper was the reason.”
Peyton eased back. Who had dumped
Gabe for a smokejumper? What was his punishment?
Her?
But gossip wasn’t her purpose here. If she wanted a real story, she needed Gabe. He was her purpose.
*****
Gabe’s mind cleared on the way to the line. He threw back his shoulders and sucked in a deep breath. Up on the mountain, the smoke wasn’t as bad as it had been at the camp. It skimmed over their heads to settle in the valley like a rumpled blanket.
The incline grew steeper, the dust-dry brush thicker, slowing their progress. From this altitude he could see the orange glow of the sun that had been obliterated in the valley. Above them floated the wisps of cirrus clouds preceding a front.
He swung around to inspect his unit strung along the trail, the loose gaits, the flashing grins, and suddenly felt very old. The next oldest in his crew was a decade younger. He turned to walk a little faster. He’d be damned if these kids could out-hike him.
Peyton trudged along with the others. She had to be in excellent shape in order to get her fire card, but endurance didn’t concern him. Training was nothing compared to facing the dragon up close.
She saw him looking at her and trekked on over, leaving the group in order to angle up the mountain toward him. She had guts, he had to give her that. If she’d been on more fires, she’d know better than to try to talk to him. Even Kim, who had been with him more summers than anyone else, didn’t talk to him on a hike. Beyond Michaels, his team watched with interest, waiting for him to shred the new girl.
But his heart wasn’t in it. Maybe it was curiosity about this woman. That was all it could be.
“I agreed to this for one shift only,” he said. “After this fire is contained, you’re out. You do your job without question, just like the rest of my crew. Got it?”
Her chin had tightened stubbornly as he spoke and he prepared for an argument, but she merely nodded. Okay. Something was not quite right with her not saying anything. After all, she’d come over here. So why was he the one wanting to ask questions?
He settled on, “You drinking plenty of water?”
“I’m fine.” She stumbled, belying her words, and he resisted the urge to reach out to assist her. She wanted to see what the job entailed, she better stay on her feet.
“You’ll be more comfortable on the trail.”
“I’ll be all right.”
Damn, she was hard-headed. Determination, he understood. Stubbornness just to prove she could do it was something else. “This is the easy part. We have a thirty-degree incline ahead of us.”
She grimaced. “And when we get there?” she asked, a little out of breath.
He showed no mercy, couldn’t afford to. Besides, if he kept up this pace, maybe she’d go back to the others. How long could he keep up the curiosity excuse?
“You know the drill. We cut line, cut down trees, stop the fire and go home.”
“As simple as that?”
This time he stumbled. “Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t.”
She snatched her hand back from where she’d reached out to steady him. “You really love this, don’t you? The whole ‘my crew can do what no other crew can do’ mindset.”
He cast her an incredulous glance. “Are you giving me attitude, rookie?”
“I wasn’t aware you needed any.”
Now she was giving him mouth. No one in fire camp—outside Jen—had ever spoken to him like that. He kind of liked the awe with which most of the firefighters regarded him.
He kind of liked the attitude too.
He slowed to get a look at her. She already appeared exhausted. She’d removed her fire shirt and wore a white T-shirt so fitted it couldn’t be cool. Her lacy bra was visible through the thin knit. She’d pulled back her hair and locks of it fell toward her face, brushing the skin of her cheek, her throat. He thought, just for a second, to push her hair back into place but tamped down the urge, instead thinking her exposed skin was going to blister all to hell.
He gave his attention back to the trail where it belonged. “So why are you doing this? There are easier ways to get the story.”
“Do I seem the type to take the easy way?” She sidestepped an outcropping of rock with an agility he hadn’t expected.
“I don’t know,” he drawled. “I haven’t seen enough of you to know.”
He bit back a chuckle when she blushed. Had he stumbled onto some guilt over their sexual attraction?
“Put your fire shirt on, Michaels, and go back with the crew.” He kicked at the smoke hanging low on the ground. The smoke could hide the fire; they could come up on it without warning. The sheer challenge of the lethal hide and seek thrilled him. “It won’t be long now.”
The dragon was close.
Chapter Two
The heat slammed into Gabe the moment he stepped into the forest of towering lodgepole pine. Through the smoke burning his eyes and nose he saw it, creeping along the carpet, gobbling leaves but leaving the undergrowth alone.
The fire that had blackened the face of the mountain above him hadn’t moved in such a benign manner. Gabe looked up into the branches. No flames there. The fire could be dying out, but experience told him that was unlikely.
A few feet deeper into the trees his suspicions were confirmed. This was a spot fire, just a small area, but it could grow to encompass the trees and grass where his crew waited. The head fire roared up behind and would reach the edge of the trees in a matter of hours. Once it left the trees it would hit two acres of the drought-dry grass they’d just hiked through, and would burn faster than a man could run. As the winds grew stronger in the afternoon, bringing the cold front, the more apt that scenario became.
He had to stop this flank here and now.
Peyton watched the Hot Shot crew moving sure-footedly among the flames, assessing the situation. She couldn’t muster the confidence it took to move through fire like that. Just watching them had a lump of fear closing her throat. When she was training for her red card, the instructors had advised caution. These people treated the fire so matter-of-factly. They got to work without Gabe reiterating the plan he’d relayed to them in camp, a sign they were what Gabe said they were, the best. They found a rhythm working together, hacking grass away from the earth. The camaraderie and courage sparked envy in her. Other than reporting, she’d never been at a job more than a year, had never formed those bonds of friendship. Had never longed for it before now.
Her previous subjects, the Coast Guard search and rescue, the EMTs, the hurricane hunters, had been at their jobs for years, had risen through the ranks, had dedicated their lives to being the job. She couldn’t fathom it for herself, had a hard time understanding it in others. There had to be a common denominator in people who could do that.
Gabe came into sight again and she didn’t care to analyze her sense of relief. She approached him, skirting the fire. “What should I do?”
He all but rolled his eyes and pointed to a spot fire. “Put it out.”
Okay, a test. She squared her shoulders and walked over to the flames that took up an area no bigger than a campfire. She unstrapped her shovel from her pack and threw dirt on the flames, making sure it was completely out before turning to Gabe triumphantly.
He gave her only a slight nod and turned away. Her smile of accomplishment faded. Why did she expect more? She was merely doing what she’d been trained to do. And he’d said he didn’t take on rookies, so her accomplishment meant nothing to him. She glanced about, then joined the line of firefighters pulling grass away from the earth to create a fuel-free barricade for the fire.
When she stepped back from the line for a water break, the sun was directly overhead, peeking through the skimming smoke. Her arms ached from swinging the Pulaski, the part-hoe, part-ax tool the Hot Shots carried. And this long-sleeved shirt was hot. Still, the Bear Claws didn’t slow down, so neither would she. She had something to prove, not to Gabe Cooper, but to herself. Dan had been so brave, had challenged her to do the same. Did she have the same courag
e?
Every muscle in her body tensed as the roar of the fire grew louder than the growl of the chainsaws, the thud of the axes. The fire crept up the trees to feed on leaves and branches. A ball of flame floated from a tree to a patch of grass not ten feet from her. She shouted as it caught in the high dry grass, but one of the crews was alert. They surrounded the fire without speaking, shoveled dirt on it till it was out.
So elemental. They saw what had to be done and they did it. No talking, no suggestions, no analysis. They just accomplished the job in a matter of minutes. What a feeling of gratification. How many fires had these guys fought together before they could read each other so easily?
She’d imagine such bonds were more important on a job like this. God knew Dan loved his teammates on the SWAT team. She’d never had a connection like that, had always been an in- between person, an observer.
Which was why she thought reporting might be the right job for her.
“Peyton!”
She jolted guiltily and turned. Gabe pointed to a section of the line he wanted her to take.
She nodded an acknowledgement, moved toward it, and dropped her pack beside her. Gripping the handle of her Pulaski made her want to cry. Beneath her thick gloves, the skin of her palms felt tight and inflexible. She hadn’t had blisters the last time she removed her gloves, but now they wanted to burst free at all the points of friction.
Pain shot down her back, turning her shoulder muscles to fire when she lifted the Pulaski over her head. She didn’t have the strength to do more than let it fall, letting gravity do the work. She was lucky to retain her grip on it. A lot of good she was to the crew.
“What’s the problem?” the little redhead, Kim, asked, gaining her attention by touching her sleeve.
Unwilling to admit a weakness to the younger woman, she shook her head. She would not fail so soon. “I’m fine.” A fit of coughing doubled her over, making her words a lie.
Kim regarded her with disgust and blew out a breath through her nose before glancing around, hands on her hips. “All right, I’m taking you off the line. You can be a lookout.”
