Where There's Smoke: inspirational romantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 1)

by Susan May Warren

  “That’s not the faith I’m talking about. That’s faith in yourself—and that kind of faith is always going to let you down. No matter how hard you try, eventually you’re going to fail yourself. You can’t get it right all the time.”

  Yes, yes he could.

  But Conner apparently wasn’t stopping. “And that’s the point. We’re always going to be overwhelmed, disheartened by our own stupidity, even afraid. Faith, however, says, don’t panic. God—the One who loves you—has your back. He already knows what you need and wants to provide it.”

  Jed didn’t know exactly how to refute Conner—the words settled on him, hot on his skin. “You sound like Jock, always preaching. But look where faith got him. Listen, I’m not against God, it’s just that I’ve got this. I’ll figure it out.”

  Conner nodded, not really a smile, but no condescension either. “I’m sure you will, bro.”

  The moaning intensified and, even as Jed turned, lifted into a shriek.

  Conner started toward the tent, but Jed grabbed his arm. “I got this.”

  Because deep in his gut, he knew the source of that scream; had heard it before. He crossed the camp in seconds, then landed on his knees at the edge of her tent.

  Kate shook in her sleeping bag, crying out. “No!”

  For a second, he couldn’t move.

  He had no idea that—well, that she hadn’t really escaped the flames that day, either.

  Then he climbed into the tent, found her arms, and pulled her up to himself. “Kate! Shh—it’s me. It’s Jed. It’s just a dream—”

  She drew in a long breath, recoiling. Her eyes opened, fixing on him. Not really, however, seeing him. Then her mouth opened, as if in another scream. Short of letting her wake up the entire camp, he didn’t know what else to do.

  So he kissed her. Just wrapped his hand around her neck and brought his mouth down on hers, hard. The shock of it had her stiffening in his arms.

  “Shh,” he said against her lips, then kissed her again.

  His first kiss was hard, a reflex more than tenderness.

  The second contained emotion, a spur of need, or desperation.

  What started as a reflex slowly morphed into a release of everything churning inside him for the past week when she showed up beautiful and frustrating and the flesh-and-bone realization of everything he couldn’t dare hope for.

  A needy, thirsty, devouring kiss.

  She still hadn’t exactly kissed him back, despite her mouth softening to receive his, but she seemed to relax, her hands reaching up to curl around his arms, as if holding on.

  Then, slowly, the desperation turned to something deeper.

  Better. He softened his kiss, moving his hands to cradle her face, his thumbs caressing her cheeks.

  He trembled, the smell of her—smoky, sweet—enveloping him. She let out a sigh, and he became aware—too aware—of every inch of her as she slid her arms around his waist and pulled him closer.

  Oh—he could nearly taste his heart in his throat, the urge to step too far over the line, the heat of desire quickening inside him.

  He put his hands on her shoulders, intending to draw back when, suddenly, she tightened her grip on him and started kissing him back.

  It began with the softest, sweet sound of surrender in the back of her throat, then emerged in something urgent, alive, her mouth opening to him, an offering that just about unraveled him when he tasted her tongue, the coffee on it, and behind it, her own latent yearnings.

  And everything he’d banked since dragging her out of Grizzly’s those many years ago fanned to flame.

  Kate.

  He wrapped his arms around her, feeling the soft skin at the waist of her shirt, aware somewhere in the back of his brain of a sound, the warnings blaring. The sleeping bag had fallen to her waist, she wore just a T-shirt, and it raked to life the inferno growing inside him. The kind that, if he didn’t take a breath, would make him press her back into the soft folds of the sleeping bag, stretch out alongside her, and finally dive into all the feelings he’d been running from for seven torturous years.

  Her hands had smoothed against his back, lighting a fire under her touch.

  I’m trusting her to you, Jed.

  And shoot, apparently the spirit of Jock still hovered between them.

  “Stop.” He pulled away from her, breathing hard, swallowing, his heart lodged in his ribs. “Please—”

  He took a breath, raised his head.

  Awake now, she met his gaze, her own eyes wide, her hair disheveled, her lips moist, half open, as if in shock.

  They breathed together, just staring.

  “You started it,” she said quietly.

  “You were...crying out in your sleep.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him. “Was I?”

  He nodded, possibly too briskly, his heartbeat still betraying him. “So I—”

  “Kissed me.”

  “Woke you up.”

  “Oh.” She ran her tongue over her lips, as if remembering. “Is this how you wake up Pete or Rube when they’re dreaming?”

  He gave her a look. “Yeah. Especially when they’re having a nightmare.” He scooted himself back, still trembling, and noticed that she let him, folding her arms over her chest. “Sorry. You were screaming, or starting to, and I didn’t know what else to do.”

  And wow, that sounded lame, but he couldn’t—wouldn’t let her know just how much she undid him, left his world spinning.

  He was, frankly, still trying to catch his breath.

  At his words, her mouth pinched, and she gave a short, quick nod. Then she looked away, wiped her cheek. As if she might be...crying?

  And now he was a jerk.

  “I’m sorry, Kate. Let me get you a drink.”

  “Don’t baby me!” Her eyes flashed. “Get out—”

  “No—okay, yeah, I will but—Kate, listen. Maybe—were you dreaming about the, you know...the fire? I mean, do you want to talk about it?”

  “I don’t.” Her face hardened. “I’m fine. Just...tired.”

  “We all are.”

  That stopped her. She ran her gaze over him, from his wet bandanna to his grimy, whiskered face, to the sodden clothes. Her voice dipped and she sighed, the anger flushing from her voice. “I never thanked you...for today.”

  He blinked at her, not expecting—

  “But it was unnecessary, Jed. I was fine.”

  Of course she was. “It was three thousand pounds of slurry—you would have been knocked flat, maybe seriously hurt.”

  “I was knocked flat,” she said, and raised an eyebrow, her mouth tweaking up.

  In that moment he glimpsed the girl he’d known before, the one who didn’t have her dukes up quite so far.

  Then she vanished. “But out here, I’m just one of the guys. You can’t protect me—”

  “Watch me!”

  He didn’t mean to shout. He pursed his lips, looked away, fighting his breath. “I have to, Kate...especially now,” he said finally, revealing too much. He should just get up and crawl out the door.

  Silence. He dared a glance at her. He expected ire, or maybe just contempt.

  But she wore such sadness, it engulfed him, swept away words.

  “Jed, you’re not responsible for me anymore. Dad is gone.”

  Crazy, unfair heat burned his throat. “I know that.” Except with Kate in his arms, it seemed that Jock had shown up, given what Jed had had on his mind.

  “But this isn’t really about Jock.” And then, because he didn’t know what else to say but the truth, “It has to do with the fact that I can’t take the idea of you getting hurt.” Shoot, but he was already there, saying the words he vowed to keep to himself. “I can’t watch you die.”

  She frowned. Bit her lip. Sighed. “Jed. Every time you tackle me or try and protect me, you take your eyes off your job. And when you take your eyes off your job, you miss something. And then someone else—not me—gets hurt. And I don’t want that.”
<
br />   He knew that too well, because that was exactly his reasoning for not wanting her around. At least on the fire line.

  “So, if we’re going to work together, you have to consider me one of the guys.”

  His gaze raked down her, deliberately taking in her curves under that milky white T-shirt. “I don’t think there is a guy alive, here or anywhere, who could do that.”

  Her mouth tightened in a pinched bud of something—frustration, maybe. She reached over and pulled on her grimy yellow shirt. “Better?”

  No. “Yes.”

  She fumbled for something in the dark and came up with her water bottle. Uncapped it and drank. Then, wiping a knuckle across the moisture on her upper lip, “Did I ever tell you about the summer my mother left us?”

  He watched her cap the bottle. “No. You just told me she left when you were twelve.”

  “For another man. A small, quiet man who didn’t fight fire. He lived in Ember for two years, which included two summers when my dad was out on the fire line. I’ll never forget the day she told Dad she was leaving—she simply came home and packed our bags. Mine and hers. We were living in town then, in one of the fire cabins, and she had me halfway out to the car, me kicking and screaming, when Dad pulled up in his pickup, fresh off the line. He was black from head to foot, his eyes bloodshot, his voice raspy with smoke, and told her that she could leave, but she wasn’t taking me. She told him that this was no life for a little girl.”

  Jed could almost picture Kate, knobby knees, wiry thin, her red hair in braids, in cutoffs and a T-shirt, tears streaming down her face.

  “They made me choose. Dad stood there, telling her that she could take me during the summer, yeah, but that he wanted me the rest of the year, and Mom said something to the effect of over my dead body—she didn’t want me growing up around fire. She said there was too much danger, death—and the last thing she wanted was for me to turn out like him. She said she couldn’t love a man who loved fire more than her.”

  She was running her finger around the rim of the bottle, and he so longed to push the hair back from her face, to see her beautiful eyes.

  “And my dad just stood there and looked at me and I knew... I was already like him. Not only did I spend every summer riding my bike down to the fire camp, helping him pack food bags and listening to him talk fire behavior, but there was something about the life of a firefighter that I longed for. I couldn’t leave. So...I chose my dad.”

  And that revelation nearly took him out. Because even as she looked up at him, her mouth tipping in the saddest of grins, he wanted to reach out and pull her to himself.

  To wrap her in his arms and tell her how sorry he was that she’d never gotten to say good-bye.

  “You meant the world to him, Kate,” he said gently. “You should know that every summer he tracked you down everywhere you went. When the teams would come in from a booster callout to join the Boise or McCall team, or when he flew down to Missoula, he always quizzed them about you.”

  She looked up at that, nodded. “I did the same thing. Once we were on the same fire in Idaho, and I thought...I’ll just go up to him and say hi. Just like that. Maybe he’d look at me and see that I was safe, that I could do this job, that he—and you—had trained me well. But when I went to look for him, I found out he’d flown out the morning I arrived.”

  She put the bottle down. “That summer Mom left he moved us to the camper. I think it was so the people at camp could keep an eye on me even when he wasn’t there. And I spent every waking minute at fire camp, cooking, helping organize the equipment, running errands, looking over the shoulders of guys like Otis and Big Jim Renner as they plotted fire attacks. I learned fire, and the minute I turned eighteen, I joined a crew.”

  “I remember. Jock couldn’t stop you, since he didn’t run the Shots, but he didn’t take that well.”

  “About as well as you did.” Again, the smile, sweet, and it took no imagination at all for him to understand why he’d let her pass jump school. Or that he would again.

  Shoot, she got in his head, tangled his brains.

  “These guys are my brothers, my family. You understand that, I know you do.”

  He nodded.

  “You’re my brother, too, Jed.”

  She touched his arm, traced her fingers down to his hand, the flesh still rippled there. He held his breath at the way her touch could light him up.

  Maybe it had the same effect on her, because she took a breath, lowered her voice, moved her hand away. “Okay, perhaps we were a bit more than that. Or wanted to be.”

  He could just reach out, grab her hand back—

  “But not anymore. Let me do my job. You do yours. We’ll survive this summer and maybe even become friends.”

  Friends. The word should be a balm, something soothing, but it only reached into his chest, made a fist. “Yeah,” he said, his voice only a little strangled.

  “Which means you have to stop tackling me.”

  “Kate—”

  “And especially sneaking into my tent and kissing me.”

  His mouth closed, tightened into a grim line.

  She gave a soft, rueful laugh. “Don’t worry. It’ll be our secret. Because I’m terribly aware that you weren’t the only one doing the kissing.”

  And was it his imagination, but did she look away, as if embarrassed?

  “But I’m going to blame that on stress, and not a little fatigue, and the fact that you’ve always been an excellent kisser. And, please, let’s just forget it happened.”

  Oh. Well—but she lay down, rolled over, her back to him, pulling her sleeping bag back up. “We have work to do tomorrow. Get some shut-eye.”

  He hesitated, probably too long, because she added softly, “Not here, Boss.”

  It was the “boss” that sent him sheepishly out of her tent, zipping it up behind him.

  Chapter 6

  Kate blamed Jed that the nightmare had found her. If he hadn’t tackled her, hadn’t held her in his arms, the demons would have stayed safely locked away.

  She stirred the last of the coals of the campfire, now swimming with river water, the charred wood soggy and impotent. The dawn rippled pink just above the horizon, bleeding into the pewter gray of the night.

  Behind her, the guys packed up the last of the tents, the sleeping bags, their gear. Nearby, Jed stalked through their camp, the radio to his mouth, calling in their status.

  The redolence of ash, smoke, and the dying cinders of the fire haunted the air, but a febrile peace had settled upon the charred, whitened forest, resetting the forests back to seedling. An occasional burn did a forest good—especially one littered with logging slash, dark and seedless. A cluttered forest rotted, grew up, and ached for a cleansing fire, a restart.

  Exactly like she’d had with Jed, last night. She couldn’t believe she’d awakened, thrashing, sweating, crying, out of the dream of being cooked alive to the rush of being locked in Jed’s arms. She’d clung to him, desperate, losing herself into something greater, the longing that still flamed inside.

  Almost as if the dream had continued, turning from nightmare into her wildest, forbidden fantasy.

  “Conner, radio in when you get to the head, tell me what you see.” Jed, over the radio, on his way into the day. She glanced at him in his grimy clothes, a layer of whiskers on his chin, looking dangerously heroic, devastatingly competent.

  The urge to trust him stirred inside her.

  Almost absently she touched her lips, tasting his mouth on hers, feeling his hand around her neck, the urgency as he kissed her, his touch molten.

  So she’d kissed him back, forgetting herself, the fire line, and even the fact that she’d vowed to never—ever—kiss Jed Ransom again.

  His skin had been cool and fresh, his hair wet, and she’d wrapped her hands around those amazing arms, holding on.

  Until, of course, he came to his senses. And she reluctantly took a grip on hers.

  She’d stared at him in the
flicker of firelight, fighting to still her racing heart, hating how she longed to reach for him again. Safe. Solid. Strong.

  What she’d so needed two years ago, when everything turned to ash in her life.

  She knew, when he’d tackled her, protecting her, that the smart, independent Kate should push him away. But the Kate that still apparently lurked inside had reached out, surrendering to the memory of just how amazing it felt to be in the arms of Jed Ransom.

  That scared her most of all. Because in her nightmares, she’d returned—not to the Porcupine River fire but to the one that had truly sidelined her, turned her into a mess of frayed nerves, stolen her wings, and grounded her.

  And the minute Jed stepped into her tent and woke her up, catching her in his arms, the shaking, the roiling in her gut, the sense that at any minute she might come unglued—it all vanished.

  Jed Ransom, once again, holding her together. Which meant that no matter how far she ran, how many times she jumped, how long she tried to deny it, she still needed him.

  He was bending down, packing his bag now, his strong, wide shoulders pulling at his shirt. Do you want to talk about it?

  His words lodged in her heart, rooting around all night.

  It. Their fire.

  The two hours of hell, huddled together, holding down the fire shelter. Him trembling with the pain of his hands, finally surrendering to whimpers and then gritted screams as the blaze scorched his skin.

  Her, reaching for the edges of the shelter to relieve him, his skin peeling off against the searing fabric of the tent.

  She’d hadn’t yet escaped the dichotomy of being roasted alive set against the calming presence of Jed’s embrace, his moist breath on her neck, his low voice telling her to hold on, that they would live.

  Across the campsite, Jed clipped his walkie onto his belt and pulled his gloves over those wrinkled hands. When he looked over at her, she glanced away.