by MJ Fredrick
But that wouldn’t happen. The two of them were stuck in a life-and-death situation. It was simple. And once they got back to camp she’d head home and remind herself why she was writing these articles.
“How come it only took a little while to get to the Girl Scout camp and it’s taking so long to get back?”
“We sort of circled around behind the fire camp, adding a few miles to the return trip.” He squinted at the sky. “It’ll be hot today, since we’re hiking across the burned-out section with no shade, so we’ll have to pace ourselves.”
They headed down the hill, slipping and sliding on the brittle grass, every step stirring up black ash. Gabe crabbed sideways ahead of her, one arm raised toward her to catch her. She tried not to depend on him, but a touch of their gloved fingers now and then helped her keep her balance. At least physically.
She should have known better than to volunteer for this trip. She recognized Gabe Cooper for the dangerous man he was, not only in the work he did, but in his appeal to her. She’d thought he reminded her of Dan, but it was Gabe himself, his confidence, his strength.
Okay, his handsomeness. The virility that had her still feeling the heat from his body.
No, no, no, Peyton. He’s no good for you.
But he made her feel good about herself, in a way all the stories she’d written hadn’t, despite her best efforts.
She’d be damned if she gave a man that kind of power. Especially a man who could leave her alone again.
She’d suffered the loss of two people she loved more than anything. She wasn’t strong enough to go through that again.
The day warmed up quickly and their earlier progress slowed. More soot coated their already filthy skin, clung there, glued with sweat. Peyton licked her chapped lips, grimaced at the taste. She took out her water, sipped enough to clean off her lips.
“You hanging in?” he asked, his eyes dark with concern.
“Thirsty.”
“You can have some of my water.” He reached for his pack.
Her heart did a little trip at his generosity, but she couldn’t let him make the sacrifice. She shook her head. “I’ll deal.”
“Peyton,” he began, his tone chiding.
“If I need it, I’ll get it, all right?”
Gabe slowed, held a hand back to stop her.
She skidded behind him, scanned past him, pulse racing in anticipation. “What? What is it?”
“The wind is coming up.”
She felt it now, saw the blackened earth skittering along the ground toward them. A chill that had nothing to do with the breeze ran over her skin.
“What does that mean?” she asked through chapped lips, but already had a good idea.
“Any embers left behind could flare up, or the fire could start heading back this way.” “There’s nothing for it to burn.” The shrill note of panic in her voice made her cringe.
“You saw yesterday how it can find something to feed on.” His face was set in a grim line, but he didn’t slow down.
“So what do we do?” He’d gotten them safely this far. She waited to hear his plan.
“We keep going till we can’t go anymore.”
Some plan. “That’s it?”
He grinned over at her, the defiant face-the-devil smile she’d seen the day before at the Girl Scout camp. “That’s it.”
“And then?”
“Then we’ll see.”
The plan did not sound promising. She had to distract herself. Her thoughts wandered back to last night, but that proved to be the wrong kind of distraction as she remembered the way his arm had tightened around her in sleep, the way his hips pressed against her bottom. The way his body had reacted to their proximity.
She shook the thought away. She’d get information from him for her story. “So do you work for the Forest Service all year?”
“This isn’t an interview, is it?”
“You don’t give interviews,” she replied tartly. “Do you talk?”
“Am I talking to you, or a reporter?”
“Does there have to be a difference?”
“That’s a question,” he pointed out.
“You know?” She lifted her hand in exasperation, let it fall against her thigh with a slap. “I knew that. I can’t believe you won’t answer any questions. Why?”
“Another question.” But a smile quirked the corner of his mouth.
She picked up her pace till she was in front of him and could look back up at him. He swerved to go around her, but if he thought that would deter her, he had another think coming. “Come on, Cooper, what you do is amazing. People are fascinated by it.”
“I thought your story was about the job.”
“The job, and the people who do it.” She skidded, bumped her butt against the side of the mountain, but was on her feet again before he could turn to help her. “Will you just tell me if you’re a full-time Forest Service employee?”
“You’ll just keep asking questions.”
“That’s my job.” But she fought back a smile. How she had missed this since Dan died, the quick-witted exchanges, the low sexual hum beneath. She’d just have to watch out that she kept Gabe in focus and didn’t overlap Dan’s face over his in her article.
He took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders. “Nah. I don’t work for the Forest Service year round.”
“No?” There was a surprise, part that he answered, and part at the answer. “What do you do?”
“I’m an EMT.”
That only surprised her a little. Another high-risk, intense job. While she couldn’t imagine him sitting behind a desk during the winter, or flipping burgers, she couldn’t imagine him working in a one-on-one situation with real live people. He kept so much to himself. “That’s convenient to have those skills on this job. Where?”
“Albuquerque.”
A country apart from her home in Chicago. Not that it mattered. “So why don’t you work for the Forest Service all year? You’ve been a Hot Shot for a lot of years, right?”
He continued forward, eyes ahead. “Yeah. I’m not much for the indoors and I hate the Park Ranger hats, so I go home to Albuquerque.”
“And come back to the mountains every summer.” “Yep.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m good at it.”
A slice of familiar envy went through her, but she battled it. “Are you good at being an EMT?”
“Yep.”
Like he was going to shock her by being modest. “Is there anything you aren’t good at?”
He looked at her then. “Conversation.”
She laughed as he passed her on his way down the mountain.
*****
Gabe had always depended on his instincts. They’d never failed him. A good thing in his line of work but a bad thing now. He was leading Peyton into danger and he wasn’t sure how to avoid it.
They’d left the black a few miles back, in favor of easier terrain, gently sloping, grassy, with young trees. The barren black challenged them, without shade, with so much ash in the air and no water to wash it from their throats. He’d fooled himself into complacency with the knowledge that the fire burned past them last night, but now he regretted his decision.
Behind him, she was uneasy and the distraction made him irritable. Okay, he’d be honest and admit it wasn’t her uneasiness distracting him. It wasn’t that she was a reporter.
It was that she was a woman.
He’d gotten through the previous day by thinking of her as just another one of his crew, like Mike or Howard. That had mostly worked.
But in the tent last night, he’d been glad as hell she wasn’t one of the men. She’d been so soft against him once she relaxed, so female. And when he’d awakened to find his mouth pressed against the skin of her throat and her bottom cradled against his erection, well, any thoughts of her as one of the guys was gone for good.
The last time he’d let thoughts of a woman distract him on the fire line, he’d ended up
in the hospital for three days. He didn’t want to land there again.
So he had to remind himself what he didn’t like about her and quit wondering what she looked like under all those clothes. Especially when he’d woken up with a hard-on pressed against her gorgeous butt.
He wasn’t lying; he stank at conversation, which was why he lived alone. But he wanted to keep Peyton’s mind off the lack of water and the long hike back.
“Jen says you’re a big-time reporter.”
His voice must have startled her, because she misstepped and skidded down the hill past him, her arms extended like a surfer’s. He grabbed the back of her shirt and jerked her upright. She stumbled, but found her feet beneath her.
“You okay?”
“Sure, great.” She rubbed the front of her throat where the collar had caught her.
“Trip?” he asked.
She scowled at him and snuffled back a giggle. “Yeah.”
“Want to sit down?”
The anxiety in his eyes calmed her down. “No, I’m okay. Can I take off my fire shirt now?” She lifted her ponytail off her face, having long since hooked her helmet to her pack.
He gauged the wind, the distance. He didn’t smell fire, but he didn’t depend on that abused sense anymore. “Yeah, I guess. Keep it ready, though. Don’t pack it away.”
He watched as she unbuttoned the shirt, waiting for a glimpse of the T-shirt she’d worn the other day.
Today’s T-shirt was pale green, and cut lower than the white one had been. Thinner fabric too, her lacy bra more pronounced, her nipples pressing against the fabric.
So the whole reporter conversation hadn’t helped dim his desire much.
She tied the shirt around her waist and glanced at him. Busted. He turned abruptly and headed downhill.
Once they found surer footing as the ground flattened out, he repeated his question. “So, are you? A big-time reporter?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I write for one of the bigger news magazines, but I’m nowhere near the caliber of some of those writers. I’m certainly not the best. But I have a talent.”
He looked sideways at her. “You’re big enough that you can survive on your income for however long it takes to do this story.”
His reasoning must have surprised her, because she raised her eyebrows at him. “I do all right.”
When she didn’t elaborate, he asked the question plaguing him since she’d walked into the strategy tent, shiny haired and clean nailed. “So how did you end up going through training and getting on a crew?”
“How can you understand something from watching it?” She swung her hand about to indicate the forest as her voice grew stronger, no longer out of breath. “I wanted to get on the inside, to see how it felt to be up against the fire, to know it could turn on you at any time.”
The passion in her voice made him wonder what it would be like for her to channel her passion in other areas. “So now you know.”
“Now I know.” Footing grew tricky, leaving her a bit breathless. “Is this the worst thing that’s ever happened to you?”
Uh-uh, he wasn’t falling for that. She was trying to turn the conversation back to him again. Not going to happen.
“Being saddled with a reporter? Probably.”
“Har-dee-har-har.” She tossed her head, freeing her ponytail from the collar of her shirt, baring the graceful line of her throat. The dirt smudging it only reminded him of how she didn’t belong here. “I mean being stranded, unable to get back to camp, running low on water.”
“We’re not stranded, we will get back to camp today. And no, this isn’t the worst I’ve faced.”
“What is?”
He shook his head. He didn’t talk about it. But this was nowhere near as bad.
“So what would you do if you couldn’t be a Hot Shot anymore?” she asked blithely.
“I don’t think about it.” He spoke more sharply than he intended. He was superstitious about damn little, but this was something he believed without question.
“What? You aren’t serious.”
“I don’t think about it,” he repeated. “It’s bad luck.”
“But surely—you aren’t a kid. You can’t think of doing this forever,” she said, her tone disbelieving.
He spun on her. “Cut it out, Peyton. The minute a Hot Shot starts thinking about getting out, he gets hurt. So we don’t think about it. Period.”
“You’re kidding.” She tucked her thumbs in the straps of her pack and tilted her head, like she was studying some animal in a zoo. “You don’t seem the superstitious type.”
He couldn’t waste his energy on the anger swelling in his throat, so he cut it off like a burning snag. Not an easy job, but necessary. “I’m not. But why take the chance?”
“What are you scared of?” she pressed.
He snorted. “Not a damned thing.”
“Right. You can’t tell me you weren’t scared yesterday.”
“I can tell you all I want.” He headed down the mountain again.
“It just wouldn’t be honest.” She skidded after him. “Come on. I told you about my claustrophobia.”
He chuckled. “Like I hadn’t already figured it out.”
“Why do you love it so much? I mean, you come back year after year, right, so you have to love it.”
As long as he kept her talking, she wouldn’t think about being hot or tired or thirsty. And if he was going to be featured in a national magazine, a good sound bite wouldn’t hurt. Yeah, he was proud. Shoot him. “I like facing the dragon and kicking its ass.”
“The adrenaline,” she said with an ah-ha tone in her voice. “The ultimate man against nature.”
“Yeah, I guess. You walk right up to the fire and think, this is where we stand. Right here.” He held his hands out in front of him like a photographer framing his shot. “You aren’t going any farther because I’m going to stop you. You can’t walk up to a hurricane and say, screw you, you aren’t going to reach the coast. Or a tornado. But a fire, yeah, I can stop it. I know how and I’m good at it.” Suddenly embarrassed at revealing so much, he dropped his hands to his sides and moved on. “You aren’t writing this down.”
“I think I can remember,” she said. “Providing we get off this mountain.”
“Just think of this as an adventure.”
“Let’s hope the adventure part is over.”
He wouldn’t count on that.
Apparently she sensed his discomfort at his revelation because she took over the conversation. As they hiked on, she told him of her various experiences before she became a reporter. He couldn’t picture the woman beside him working as a bartender, a zookeeper. She’d even gone to EMT school. Now her decision to come fight fires made sense. She blew wherever the wind took her. It would carry her off again.
He envied her, in a way. While he’d stayed in one job and gained experience, she’d flitted from place to place and gained experiences. But she’d never be good at one thing. And Gabe liked being the best. He wouldn’t settle for less.
“So why all the different jobs?”
Surprisingly, she shrugged. “I haven’t found anything I was good at. Or liked enough to become good at.”
“You know, you learn how to be good at something by sticking to it.”
“That’s what I’ve heard,” she said lightly. “Nothing ever seemed worth it to me.”
Now that, he didn’t get. Why try something new if you didn’t want to learn from it? And why learn from it if you didn’t want to be good at it? “So when the going got tough—”
“I got going.” Her flip tone was gone, and she moved farther away from him.
“It’s not like you settled on an easy job. How long have you been a reporter?”
And a little farther away. “Almost three years.”
He arched a brow. “Not long to be a journalist before getting on at a national magazine.”
She tossed her hair back. “Some of my stuff got noticed ear
ly in my career. I was lucky.”
No such thing as luck. You were good, or you weren’t. Still. “Maybe if you had to work harder to get where you were, you’d appreciate it more.”
She stared, wide eyed, open mouthed. Not the argumentative Peyton he expected. She was speechless. Well, look at that. Never thought he’d see the day.
Then he heard it. He stopped and threw up a hand. She nearly collided with him, caught his shoulders to balance herself.
“What? What is it?”
“Shut up!” he growled.
Peyton snapped her head up at his sharp words, dragging her mind back from the path he’d set her on, the revelation that success took commitment—no, she understood that. It was the other thing, the other way around that surprised her. Commitment creates success.
She heard it then, a sound like the rumble of far-off planes. “What is it?”
“Fire.”
A thrill of fear raced through her at the single word and she released his shirt to come even with him. She’d nearly forgotten the reason they were on the run, had let thoughts of the fire slip from her mind. Big mistake. Gabe wisely hadn’t made the same one.
“Maybe it’s west of us,” she said hopefully.
He shook his head. “No, it’s in front of us.” He gestured to the thickening trees ahead of them and glanced over his shoulder at her. “Put your fire shirt back on.”
She untied it from around her waist, shrugged her pack to the ground to do as he instructed. She resented the warmth of the garment but couldn’t risk going without. “Can we go around?”
“I hope so, but it’s impossible to tell from where we are,” he said grimly, his eyes not leaving their path, as if concentrating hard enough would reveal the fire’s location. “I don’t know how the fire has changed in our absence.”
“What about the cell phone?” She picked up her pack again, fastened it over her breasts. They didn’t have to depend on instincts, not when they had modern conveniences, right? “Can you call the base camp and get the latest?”
He gave her a look of grudging admiration and fished the phone out of his breast pocket. He dialed for information to patch him through and started shouting in the device, pressing his hand to his other ear, walking away from Peyton as if trying to find a stronger signal.
