Flash of Fire

by M. L. Buchman

  Robin no longer questioned that’s what they were doing. Making love. Not that she ever said it, but it was definitely what they did. Making love didn’t necessarily mean in love anyway.

  She couldn’t afford that.

  No promises.

  That line remained clear between them, but it was the only one that remained.

  It had been June when she’d been hired and they left Oregon. Now it was August. Her contract would be done by October and she certainly wasn’t going to sign on to hang out back at the base camp as a waitress for Betsy the cook.

  But they were living in the present, so Robin would take in all she could of this moment in time. This would always be the best summer of her life, just as no one would ever replace Mickey as the best lover.

  It was a warm summer’s day when they finally returned to the Mount Hood Aviation base camp in the Oregon foothills near Mount Hood. The sky was a beautiful blue, and once again all of the helicopters and jump planes were neatly lined up along the far side of the grass-strip runway.

  She was done in. The other heli-pilots were in no better shape. The smokies were stumbling about like sodden drunkards.

  “Two days dark,” Mark announced once they had all the gear unloaded and cleaned up. “I don’t care if it’s our own damned camp that’s on fire, MHA is offline for this afternoon and two more days. You folks earned it. Now go sleep.”

  Robin sagged with relief.

  The crew, which had been dead on their feet moments ago, lit up like they’d just mainlined super-caffeine. Shouts of “Doghouse!” echoed from all quarters.

  Mickey was shouting right along with the rest of them.

  “Doghouse?” Robin asked him as everyone began racing for their vehicles.

  He gave her a shove toward her quarters that forced her to run or face-plant. She managed to save herself with a shambling trot.

  “Don’t ask. Grab a warm jacket and sunglasses. Meet me over there.” He waved vaguely toward the mayhem of the parking area and raced away.

  Robin had been on the ground here for an interview six weeks ago. She couldn’t equate who she’d been so long ago. It actually took her a couple of minutes to even locate the bunk where she’d lain awake, awaiting her first fire call. The sheet and blanket were smooth; her National Guard training had made sure they were before she’d headed out to the line.

  Was Mickey neat or a slob? She didn’t even know that about him. Was he… She didn’t even know what questions to ask. Mickey was…Mickey.

  Feeling a little frivolous, Robin shed her work shirt. She didn’t dig out the bit of black lace that she wore sometimes as a treat for a guy who was being especially nice to her. Instead, she dug around among the few clothes she’d left in the small room. She pulled on the robin’s-egg-blue—labeled as sky blue by some clueless marketer—silk that always felt so good against her skin and really made her eyes look good. Her one good silk blouse that would feel just as good when Mickey took it off her later as it did when she pulled it on now.

  Over that, she shrugged into a brown leather WWII bomber jacket. Grandma Phoebe had given it to her in a fit of sentimentality on the day she joined the AANG. If it had a story, Grandma was keeping it to herself, but there was no question about its authenticity. A line of sixteen Luftwaffe crosses had been inked down the inside of the jacket. Most of the dates were blurred out, but there was no doubting that this had been an ace’s jacket, however her grandmother had come by it. Maybe her grandfather?

  The parking lot had quieted by the time she returned. About half the vehicles were gone. Some had apparently looked at their bunks and seen no farther. Others had hit the showers.

  In the bright August sunshine, Mickey stood in a sleek, black leather jacket and black jeans. In his hands he held a pair of motorcycle helmets.

  And parked close behind the smiling goofball was…

  “No way, Mickey! No self-respecting girl would ever ride on such a thing.” The Gold Wing motorcycle was painted in the MHA motif, black with flames. And he looked so damn good standing in front of it that her knees threatened to go weak.

  She took a deep breath. Robin Harrow went weak in the knees for no man, especially not one whose ride was a Honda Gold Wing.

  All he did was give her one of those big smiles that always stopped her in her tracks. Then he walked up, kissed her like he really meant it, and used that as a distraction to pull a helmet down over her head and buckle it in place.

  “Hey! I mean it.”

  “Robin of the Hood. You cannot possibly look as good in that jacket as you do and think that you belong in a twenty-year-old Toyota.”

  The fact that her Toyota sedan was parked behind a truck stop in Tucson seemed to make that statement a little irrelevant.

  By the simple expedient of scooping her paralyzed-in-dismay form into his arms as if she was weightless, he dropped her into the pillion seat. It was cushy. It had a comfortable backrest and a very handsome man slid in front of her.

  “Okay, but just this once.”

  He nodded that happy, it-ain’t-nothing-but-a-Class-83-Tea Cup nod of his.

  She jab-punched him in the kidney, lightly, and then wrapped her arms around him and held on tight.

  “I haven’t even started the engine yet.”

  “You just feel that good, Blue Eyes.”

  He rested his hand where her arms crossed over his chest and pressed them more tightly against him.

  Then he fired off the engine that awoke with a soft throb rather than a mighty roar, and they were rolling out of the gravel parking lot. A Ninja would have ripped gravel, spewed a rooster tail cloud of dry earth, and shot off down the road. Mickey driving a Gold Wing was like riding on the back of a limousine. The comfort was whole levels above the seat in her Firehawk, the view of the surrounding countryside from the raised pillion was spectacular, and she could feel that the man between her knees and in her arms was strong and sure in every action.

  They swept down out of the high camp, descended through forested foothills, and rolled along country roads thick with apple orchards and vast blueberry fields.

  There was something going on inside her that she had trouble identifying. For the length of the half-hour ride, it remained as elusive as that key water drop that would finally break the back of a fire and put it on notice that its end was near.

  Robin finally let it go with a shrug and let herself simply enjoy the ride as they flew into the small town of Hood River, perched on the edge of the Columbia Gorge.

  Mickey rolled up to a ramshackle bar on the edge of town. The sign said Doghouse Inn, so it must be the place, but Robin couldn’t understand why it was so popular. The building looked like it shouldn’t even still be upright.

  But the street and a nearby parking lot were thick with the trademark vehicles of firefighters: hot cars and battered pickup trucks. Plenty of bragging bumper stickers to make sure everyone knew just how cool they were. Wildland Firefighter! Smokejumpers like it HOT!

  An immaculate quad-cab Ford pickup pulled up as Mickey was locking their helmets away in the bike’s side carriers.

  Robin hustled over as soon as she saw who it was and held the door for Emily.

  “Oh my God. You’re huge!”

  “Why thank you, Robin.”

  “And you look fantastic,” Mickey said, walking up.

  “Good choice,” Mark said protectively as he came up beside his wife and scooped an arm around her waist like she was an invalid.

  Emily rolled her eyes at her oblivious husband.

  “Shoo!” Robin unwrapped his arm and gave him a little shove. “She’s mine. Go away.” And she slipped her own arm around Emily’s waist. “Go fetch Tessa or something.”

  “Our daughter is visiting her grandmother in Montana for a week,” Mark protested but finally gave way.

  “Because her mothe
r really needed a break.” Emily sighed. “The Terrible Twos, they certainly were not kidding.”

  They walked side by side toward the Doghouse.

  “Mickey’s right, by the way,” Robin whispered to her. “You really do look fantastic.”

  “Month eight. I forgot about month eight. I’d never have let him touch me again if I’d remembered month eight. Terrible Twos and Month Eight. Don’t give in, Robin. Men will implore and you’ll regret it forever.”

  “Sure, like I believe that.” They shared a smile. There was something else Robin had to say, but she wasn’t sure how to do it.

  “What?” Of course Emily would see right through her.

  “I get it now.”

  “What?”

  Could Robin be more obtuse? How was she supposed to speak to someone she respected so much?

  Just do it!

  “I get why you left the military. I didn’t understand how a soldier like you could do that. Before MHA, I spent a lot of time thinking it was a major mistake on my part…because I’m sure a crappy waitress. But I understand now.”

  “Oh.” Emily’s tone was carefully neutral, but her smile gave her away.

  “Because you didn’t, not really.”

  Emily’s smile was radiant. “Head of the class, Harrow. MHA was a way for me to raise a family and keep a hand in.”

  Robin decided she had a new goal. She was either going to rejoin the Army and track down Lola Maloney, or she was going to stick until MHA decided they had to hire her long-term.

  Two handsome men jostled to hold the door open so that she and Emily could enter the Doghouse together.

  Robin had worked both the restaurant and the bar at the truck stop back home. And she’d definitely been to her fair share of others. Nothing had prepared her for this.

  The seedy outdoors disappeared at the threshold. Warm light washed in through big windows tinted just enough to make them look dark from the outside. The walls and ceiling were covered in a mixture of cedar and white pine. A long bar of bright oak occupied one side of the room. No hard liquor, but enough draft beer taps to keep the most itinerant drinker content—and she didn’t recognize any of the names; they must all be from microbreweries and craft beers.

  The main area of the room was packed with tables. Robin knew the spacing; it was for socialization of the customers between tables, not for the ease of the waitresses or the maximum packing for profit. It was the same table spacing Grandma insisted on at the truck stop. It gave the crowded mayhem a friendly, homey feel.

  And then there were the walls.

  Every inch of the walls and much of the ceiling were covered in photos of dogs in their doghouses. Miniature dachshunds in a child-painted shoe box, a Saint Bernard in the classic white-clapboard-and-red-roof home complete with a pussycat weather vane atop a tiny cupola, a miniature pink poodle in ribbons curled up on the plush mattress of an equally miniature four-poster bed complete with heat lamps.

  They went on forever, thousands of them.

  Looking for somewhere to focus, her gaze finally landed on the far wall. A giant Snoopy had been painted directly on the wall. He sat atop his doghouse in full WWI flying ace regalia ready to battle the Red Baron.

  The smells of rich bar food were not lost among the low roar of happy people.

  “A little overwhelming at first, isn’t it?” Emily was the one guiding her rather than the other way around as they headed for an open table. At a big table in the center, pilots and smokejumpers had gathered and were already being loud over platters of nachos and pints of beer. There were other tables packed with Columbia Gorge windsurfers—and the smokies were clearly evaluating the fresh targets as they scanned the women among them. Akbar was right in the middle of it but with his hand clasping that of an elegant brunette wearing a wedding band—the trail guide spouse he talked about every time he had the chance.

  Robin rested her hand on Jeannie’s shoulder to get her to scoot in closer to her husband, so that Emily could get by. Denise leaned over and whispered something to Vern.

  In moments, their end of the room had been reorganized so that an empty table was pulled up with the other pilots. Robin ended up between Denise and Mickey, across from Emily and Mark.

  “Oh. My. God,” she finally managed.

  Emily laughed.

  “I’m moving in.” She turned to Mickey, though she wasn’t quite sure why. “I mean it. Right here. This table. I’m never going to leave. It’s almost as good as…well, you know.”

  And his smile agreed. The meadow by the lake on Larch Creek would always be their special spot.

  “That was great, but this is where I’m living from now on.” She needed to shake off the amazing memories so that she could even breathe. The best moments of her life had been along that wandering river with Mickey, and the worst, but they seemed to be over that now. “I’m never leaving this place,” Robin insisted to bury the last of that bad feeling.

  “Good, that’s settled.” Mark turned to the redheaded waitress who came up. “Hi, Amy, looks like you’re hopping. We’ll start with potato skins and buffalo chicken wings. Em is after ice tea, decaf, or the baby will kick the crap out of her, and I’ll have a Black Butte.”

  “He gives restaurant orders the same way he gives fire orders,” Robin couldn’t help observing.

  Emily laughed and nodded. Then she kissed Mark on the cheek when he looked chagrined. “That’s my man.”

  “What do you like?” Mickey had to ask her twice before Robin realized the question was for her.

  “Dark” was all she managed. It was one of those questions she should know the answer to about Mickey but didn’t. There wasn’t a whole lot of drinking when you spent every waking minute on the fire line.

  “Walking Man Cherry and a Walking Stick Stout,” he ordered. “I’ll take whichever you don’t want,” he told Robin, then turned back to the waitress with that amazing smile he’d used on Robin any number of times. “Thanks, Amy. You’re the best.”

  “She’s cute,” Robin said as soon as she was gone. Jealous that Mickey would share that smile with another pretty woman? Maybe jealous that he’d been with her in the past? Maybe losing her mind because she had no hold on Mickey, no ownership invested in him. No promises, she’d insisted.

  “She is,” Mickey agreed amiably. “She also owns the place and is married to the cook.”

  “Shutting up now,” Robin informed him, and this time his radiant smile was aimed at her. Which was equally disorienting.

  “She didn’t get it,” Emily said to Mark but was looking at her.

  “I didn’t get what?” There was a whole lot that Robin wasn’t getting at the moment.

  Mark was wearing that half smile that always made her want to take a poke at him.

  “How do you live with him?” she asked Emily.

  “He knows better than to use that look on me. Besides, I’m the mother of his children and the man is secretly a total mush.”

  “Not so secret.” Robin gave it her best sneer.

  Mickey and Emily laughed while Mark did his best to make an unhappy face. He totally failed.

  “So, Emily”—Robin emphasized who she was talking to hard enough to keep Mark quiet—“what did I miss?”

  “You agreeing to sign on long-term with Mount Hood Aviation.”

  Robin checked Emily’s face, then Mark’s, then Mickey’s. Mickey was as surprised as she was, so she squinted her eyes and turned back to the other two.

  Then she happened to glance at Denise on her other side.

  Denise’s nod was in such an emphatic agreement that she momentarily disappeared behind a shield of hair.

  “When did I…” When she’d said she was moving in right here and was never going to leave.

  And…what had Mark said? Good, that’s settled.

  “Okay, I gue
ss I did.”

  “You did?” Mickey asked her. “She is?” he asked Mark. “Really?” he asked the table in general. His voice rising.

  “Yeah, I did. Why?”

  Mark’s eyes crossed at her apparent non-reaction.

  Emily just smiled and left Robin to play her game.

  Denise nudged her shoulder against Robin’s. Of course she hadn’t missed a word of anything that happened around her.

  Robin casually leaned back and wrapped an arm around Denise’s shoulders in a comfortable embrace. That her new friend would now be an ongoing part of her life was a huge bonus.

  “Why?” Mickey’s voice practically broke with excitement. “Because for weeks I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell Mark that I was going to quit this job so that I could follow wherever you needed to go at the end of the season.”

  All of the teasing evaporated in that moment, washed away by Mickey’s offer.

  “You wouldn’t,” she managed on a croak.

  “To be with you? Of course I would.”

  This time it was Emily who looked flabbergasted and Mark who was looking pleased.

  “What?” Robin snapped at Mark.

  He just pointed at Mickey. “His set of problems, not mine.”

  “What?” Robin tried again but didn’t know where to aim the question.

  Mark pointed again, forcing her to turn back to Mickey.

  “You wouldn’t dare quit MHA.” Robin saw that he would. “You were born to do this. You love doing this.” She wound down to a whisper against that look of perfect surety. He’d leave everything he loved in a heartbeat because he loved her more. “Holy sh… I don’t know what to say.”

  “You say—” Denise started to whisper in her ear.

  “Shush, Denise,” Emily told her. “Let her find it on her own.”

  You say… Denise was right and so was Emily.

  Robin had kept a small part of herself shut away, locked off in a corner because she knew that she couldn’t stay. Because she knew that Harrow women had men, not husbands.

  But the question that a Harrow woman never seemed to ask was what if she met the right man. The man that she could never imagine being apart from. The man who would be such an incredible father to their children.