But a rocking motion came from somewhere inside, like the motion of the living trees in a breeze.
How long they stood, how long she cried, he didn’t know. Had no measure. She soaked his shoulder with her tears long before she quieted. At long last, she turned her cheek and rested her head there.
“I…” Her voice cracked. “I made you all wet and snotty.”
“It’s okay. I’m sure that sooner or later someone will throw me in a river to wash up.”
It earned him a sound between a laugh and hiccup.
Again he simply rocked and held her, not that he knew what else to do. Some stupid part of him started picking out the stars of the two bears where they peered at them from over the treetops.
“His name was Linc Hanson. We were engaged.”
Steve did his best not to react. Jealousy? Or anger that someone had hurt her this badly?
“Last summer, at the Pedro Creek Fire, he made a mistake. A series of them.” Now she’d gone so quiet he almost feared she’d fainted. He held her a little tighter to let her know he was listening.
“He wasn’t—” Her voice caught hard. “He wasn’t a very good firefighter.”
He tried shushing her. “Tell me later. It’s okay.”
She pushed away. Took a step, perhaps two into the dark, the gravel shifting and crunching beneath her step the only indicator of which direction she’d gone. Her light hair barely a suggestion of reflected starlight.
“No. I’ve got to get it out. I don’t know if I’ll be brave enough to face this a second time.”
“Okay.” He tried to imagine a braver woman, someone who had done more than face the fire after it had taken both her father and her fiancé. He couldn’t.
“Linc, ah, got caught with no escape route. Then he snarled his Pulaski in his foil fire shelter and tore the hell out of it in his panic. We found the shreds when we found his body. The fire turned and he wasn’t ready. He burned alive screaming for mercy into the radio.”
“Did he—” No, Steve couldn’t ask the question. It would be too awful to imagine.
“He only fought fire to try and fill the void my father’s death left in my life.” Her voice broke with each word. “And I let him.”
Total self-disgust dripped from her thickened voice.
“He died begging for me to help him as I watched from six thousand feet in a fixed-wing spotter, the closest retardant a lifetime too far. He burned alive screaming my name. It’s why I fly helitack instead of a fixed-wing spotter. So that there’s a chance if ever… So I could… In case…”
Steve stepped to the shadow swaying before him.
This time, when he slid his arms around her waist, she didn’t fight him. She simply lay back against him, exhausted, and let him hold her.
As if that could ever be enough.
Chapter 24
The dawn light had filled the sky but hadn’t reached down to the deeply forested river except for moments here and there when it filtered through the branches, bringing the water to radiant life.
The smoky scent of last night’s campfire was gone, fully suppressed as only a wildland firefighter could do. In its place, the air was rich and thick with a morning mist that lay low to the water, and the taste of pine and dreams.
Carly thought she was first up until she reached the river’s edge.
A hundred feet upriver, knee-deep in the flowing water, ICA Henderson had his pole out, tip pointed upstream as he nursed his line along with tiny tugs to make it look like a bug dancing on the surface.
What fly would he be using? She chose the Adams. It had always served her well with trout, the only fish up here above the William L. Jess Dam. No fish ladders, so no salmon.
Carly considered shifting downstream around the great rock bend to fish from the downstream beach. There’d be privacy there, but there was a certain social order to fishing. There was companionable separation, and there was downright avoidance. It would be rude to wander so far, unless the other person occupied the only good fishing hole.
She scanned the banks and the stream. There wasn’t just one good hole here; there were about a thousand. Carly hadn’t really inspected it last night during their sunset arrival, but Betsy had picked an amazing spot. The problem wasn’t finding a place to fish, but rather which one to start with. Which would the fish be napping in, dreaming about a morning meal?
After the fly was tied on, she waded out into the cool water. It made her feel fresh and clean, washing away last night. The current cleared away so many things.
She and Steve had been through too much that day for sex. Too many emotional twists and turns. Instead, they had simply lain together and held each other for the longest time. He was good at that. He didn’t just follow wherever his libido led. There’d been no question of his body’s response, nor her own for that matter, but instead they’d chosen mutual comfort, lying for hours and watching the stars turn. Only deep in the night, after all others slept, did they sate their mutual needs.
Eyeing the river for obstructions, Carly shifted her stance on the rocks and began her cast. Slowly, weaving the pole back and forth, she bled out line until it made a great swirling double arc over her head, just as her father had taught her. Moving the fly through light and shadow, flash and sparkle. Not finding sunlight at this early hour, but finding deeper and lesser shadow, the fly shimmered back and forth above the water.
Were the fish under the surface watching yet? Sensing some motion impossibly out of their reach, but paying attention?
Twice more she flicked the pole, settling the fly closer and closer to an eddy she’d spotted below a big, dry-topped rock that lay nearly midstream. With a last twist, she slid her cast over the rock and dropped the fly at the very edge of the current. It slipped in and washed right into the little curl of quiet water, the place a fish might pause to rest from the constant current.
Perfect! Now that was a good start to a morning. If someone were to bring her a cup of coffee, she’d really be set.
A glance upstream revealed that she’d been observed. Henderson sent her a cheeky two-fingered salute. He already wore the silver Ray-Bans, despite the just-breaking dawn.
She responded with a nod and went back to teasing her line with little midge-like twitches.
Henderson’s salute rankled. It was a that’s-okay-for-an-amateur salute. Well, she’d show him. Her father had taught her well.
“Don’t fret, Carly.” Only she could hear her father’s voice in the burble of the stream. “Don’t even think. The fish will hear you think and they’ll swim away, my girl. They can feel you thinking right down that line.”
She’d always imagined fishing line like a little fiber-optic cable transmitting her brain waves to the fish.
She could be quiet.
Just her and the stream and the quiet of dawn.
A late bat flitted by, heading into the trees. Too early for even the earliest robin.
And especially too early for Steve Mercer.
Damn the man.
She’d done everything she could think of to drive him away, to not want him. She’d been rude, sprayed him with gravel, proved beyond a doubt that she was indeed the greatest and most complete emotional wreck on the planet.
Still he wouldn’t go away.
Her line drifted downstream, the current finally pulling it loose from the eddy.
She reeled it in, barely clearing a snag where a partly fallen tree had draped its branches far out in the stream. Even now, the stream continued to patiently undercut the roots clinging to the far bank’s edge.
Again Carly set up her cast. Back and forth. Back and forth. Building momentum. Building arc.
“Until you make a drawing across the sky.”
Her cast went wide as she thought of lying on Steve’s shoulder and listening to his stories of the stars. Last night the tall forest on the riverbanks had revealed only a narrow slice of the crystalline heavens.
This time he’d told her of Cygnus,
the impossibly ugly human who played a harp so beautifully that even the gods had wept. When he’d died, they’d turned him into a beautiful swan and placed his beloved harp nearby as the constellation Lyra.
Again, Steve had played her body ever so gently. Had made soft love to her until all of the pain had simply melted away and flowed downstream, never to be seen again.
At least she hoped not.
How was it possible for a man so strong to touch her that way? As if his hands were made of a brush of silk or a wisp of smoke. He had slowly stoked the heat back into her body, fighting back the chilly darkness.
Even the memory of it heated her all over again, despite the cool water wrapping around her legs.
Unlike any man she’d ever been with, not even Linc, Steve hadn’t taken. He’d only given.
He’d brought her such pleasure that her body ached to be once more in his arms. Her body wanted simply to give herself to him.
The chill of the stream ran up her legs then, quenched any fire.
“No,” she whispered to the stream.
She couldn’t afford to let someone in. Not that far.
Sex, sure, that would be safe enough. Even with Steve. She’d let it be about sex and only sex. After all, it was incredible.
It would hurt to lock up her heart. She could feel the tightness even as she had the thought. But Carly had learned how to survive, how to protect herself.
Close down, pull back, be safe.
It was a familiar feeling, a place she’d lived since her father’s death, except for a brief glimmer Linc had offered in the unending night.
But she was having trouble finding that hard place inside her. As if it had gone, scorched away by her tears and Steve’s gentleness.
If her place of inner safety was gone, where did that leave her?
She tugged on her line, but it didn’t give. Nor was a fish pulling back against her.
Downstream. Her inattentiveness had let the fly drift. It was now hopelessly snarled in the downstream snag.
She tugged once more in vain hope.
No luck.
All tangled up.
Chapter 25
Steve had felt Carly rise and couldn’t go back to sleep. Warm, snug between their sleeping bags on the air mattress they’d set out beneath the stars. More sleep had eluded him.
It wasn’t the thought of amazing sex that filled his mind, though even thinking that definitely elicited a strong reaction from his body.
He simply wanted to be around her. He considered whether he should be all worried about getting too attached. He always played clean. But Carly was more than a one-inning gal. For now, he’d enter the on-deck circle and just see what happened in the next at bat.
So, he crawled out of the warm cocoon of their sleeping bags into the dawn light and wandered over to the fire pit. There he snagged a mug of coffee that Betsy was brewing on the morning flames. They traded smiles, both pretty damn self-satisfied, if the truth be told. How long had she been waiting for Chutes to notice her? However long, clearly last night had been a good one.
He couldn’t miss Carly, a glowing beacon standing in dark water. A tiny stray beam of sunlight had found its way through the trees and lit her hair like that of a fire goddess.
He sat on the rocky bank watching his angel fishing. He watched those fine, long muscles control the pole so perfectly, painting a miracle across the dawn sky. He’d never dreamed of such beauty in such a setting. The world waited breathless for each cast.
The fly soared forever, then drifted on the current. A dozen tiny adjustments. Way more than just tossing a hook in the river, which was all he’d ever done. Her pole was impossibly long and thin; no way it could pull a fish to shore without snapping.
Yet she moved it with the same confidence she fought fire, a step ahead of everything. A focus so total that she made a bubble in the world about her. He could be a thousand miles away, for all he mattered in this moment.
Right now, it was just Carly and the flowing river and her pole.
The tip bent sharply.
He looked downstream to see the fish jump. They always jumped in the movies.
Instead, a tree branch that had fallen in the water wobbled around a bit.
Over the rolling sound of the water he couldn’t hear the curse, but he could certainly see it in her stance as she tugged again, wiggling the distant branch.
He rose and waded out to her.
She startled as he came up beside her.
“Oh, hi.”
“‘Hi’? That’s what I get this morning?” Even teasing her was fun. She actually blushed.
“Uh, sorry.” She leaned in and kissed him lightly on the mouth, then turned back to face downstream. “I snagged a damned branch.”
Well, he clearly wasn’t going to receive any further attention until the matter was rectified.
“Here.” He handed her his coffee mug and turned downstream. In the first few steps, he went from calf-deep to knee-deep. By how smoothly the water ahead was flowing, he’d guess it grew deeper toward the snag.
He turned enough to call over his shoulder.
“What is it with you and cold rivers?”
She laughed and sipped from his coffee mug. Clearly it would be empty by the time he got her line unsnarled.
He took another step, except there wasn’t one. Unprepared, he plunged into a hole over his head.
He surfaced sputtering as the water drifted him right into the snag. Only quick thinking let him grab a branch that didn’t include an insanely sharp fishhook.
A glance upstream showed Carly waving merrily. Beyond her, he could see Henderson almost doubled over with laughter.
Great.
Using one hand to hold himself in place against the current, he found the line with his other hand. It took about a minute to clear it, Carly taking up slack as he freed it.
The nasty-looking little fly, both fluffy and prickly, finally surfaced. Then he spotted the hook and was damn glad he hadn’t grabbed that. The little sucker looked nasty. Undoing the last twist, he tossed it clear and Carly reeled it back in. He let go and struck out for shore, finding bottom in another few feet.
Of course she’d snarled the line right over a hole, probably the only one in the entire bend of the river.
Betsy made “Oo-la-la!” noises as he stripped off his freezing, wet clothes.
He made a point of mooning her as he pulled on fresh shorts.
Shorts.
He looked down at himself in surprise. He hadn’t worn shorts since the day they’d cut off the cast. The shorts were long, ending just above his knee, but you could still see his bad leg as plain as day, a white stickpin next to his tanned good one. There was so little meat there that the outline of his bones practically showed against the skin.
No way in hell a woman was going to find that attractive.
But he’d only brought the one pair of jeans, now a sloshy, blue puddle at his feet.
A hand smacked into his ass, causing him to jump forward onto the jeans with a chilly squish that had water running up between his toes.
Betsy leered at him over her shoulder as she headed for the river with her pole. “The cute little blond throws you over, be sure to give me a call.” Then with a sashay of her bikini-clad hips and a wave to Carly, she headed downstream. He knew she had twenty years on Carly, but Betsy’s body was still incredible. Chutes was a very lucky man.
Defeated, Steve did the only thing he could think of. He wrung out the jeans and laid them on a rock to dry, then retreated to the fire.
Chapter 26
TJ was the next one up, followed to the campfire a couple of minutes later by a very groggy Chutes. Clearly he hadn’t had much sleep last night. Akbar the Great and Tori were still nowhere to be seen.
Steve handed around coffee and started setting up to make bacon and eggs.
“Don’t like fish?” TJ sat in a little lawn chair, his foot propped up on a handy log, an Ace bandage still in evid
ence, though no sign of any swelling.
“What, them?” Steve waved his hand toward the stream.
“Ignore him.” Chutes slit open a package of bacon and handed it over. Found a bowl somewhere to crack eggs into, handing it over to Steve. Even dug out a spatula. When he handed that over, Steve got the feeling he was being set up. Chutes was being too damn helpful. This wasn’t Steve’s first season or even his second.
Steve checked his face, but Chutes was looking over at TJ. “You gonna fish today, old man?”
They both carefully avoided Steve’s eye. Steve put the eggs back in the carton.
“Maggie said if I was in the water when she woke up, she would be cutting me off.”
“Cutting you off where? Another foot?” Steve looked up in time to see TJ’s smug smile. It seemed everyone in camp had arrived with one thing on their minds. And had all hit runs.
He glanced toward the stream as Carly’s pole lashed downward. He watched a moment to see if she’d caught the snag again. If she had, she could swim after her own damn line.
The pole bent twice as far, impossibly remaining in one piece. She teased the line out, pulled it back in, edged toward the shore, then hurried back into the water. Nursing the line, coaxing it.
Then he saw the fish leap, way better than in the movies. A magnificent splash of sunlight speckled silver and gold, and longer than his forearm. A monster of a trout.
“You’re gonna burn your bacon, boy.” Chutes’s voice pulled Steve’s attention back to the fire.
“What?” He hadn’t even put the bacon in the pan yet. “What you talking about, Chutes?”
“Me?” Chutes looked dead at him. “Didn’t say a thing. Did I, TJ?”
“Didn’t hear a word.” TJ stretched out his good leg and sipped his coffee.
Again Steve checked the cold pan to see what the hell they were talking about before returning his attention to the stream and the woman fighting the fish.
Someone put a net in his hand.
“Go!” Emily Beale ordered him none too gently. “Take that to her.”
Pure Heat Page 15
