Slow Burn (Smoke Jumpers)

by Anne Marsh

  His eyes moved over her face. She didn’t know what he was looking for, but he was going to pony up more words. “Spill, Evan.” She gestured with her fingers, and that little smile tugged at the corner of his mouth again.

  God, that smile could melt a woman.

  “I’m speculating,” he said, his voice slow and deliberate. “I wouldn’t want this to get out.”

  “Between you and me, Evan. That’s where this stays. Just tell me why this matters so much to you. You owe me that much, right?”

  “I think someone set that brush fire.” Jaw tight, his gaze slid away from hers, assessing a battlefield she couldn’t see. This was a dangerous man to rile up. And he was definitely riled up. Seething. He saw this fire as personal.

  “Arson? But the only person I saw up there was a firefighter putting the blaze out. Are you saying it was an inside job?”

  “That question is precisely the problem.” Evan didn’t sound mean, but there was a tone to his words. Despite the smooth rumble of his voice, that tone said he wouldn’t appreciate her messing with him. Not now. “You came here. You saw whoever it was. You tell me you’re not putting that into your article.”

  “I’m a photojournalist,” she said, because she couldn’t let this go. That article was a shot at something bigger than catalog work and a second chance she couldn’t afford to ignore. All joking aside, living in the Corvette wasn’t practical. “Of course I’m putting it into my piece.”

  This was magazine gold. She was on to something in Strong. Her photo documentary about the jump team’s efforts to bring a new firehouse to Strong wasn’t just local color anymore. This could be huge. Syndicated huge. Plus, she didn’t want the arsonist to walk, either.

  “Whatever you put in the article now would be guessing,” he said. “We don’t know the truth—not yet.”

  “Obviously, you believe the arsonist is a member of your firefighting team. How is that guessing?” she demanded, slapping a hand against his chest.

  “I think,” he growled. Having this big bear of a man staring down at her should have been alarming. She should have been in the car. And yet . . . his face was impassive, but those eyes were hot, hot, hot. “I don’t know. Not yet. You don’t go public with this until we both know the truth.”

  “That’s not fair,” she protested.

  “I’m asking you to wait,” he countered. “Wouldn’t you want to smoke out an arsonist, Faye? Do you know what kind of damage fire can do? That fire you drove through was a baby. Imagine one larger, stronger, and faster. The kind no one runs from, not even in a Corvette.”

  “Yeah.” She fidgeted with the keys, getting the driver-side door open. He couldn’t force her to stay. They both knew that. “I know what can happen. My ex was a firefighter.”

  She’d seen firsthand the damage fire could do. Mike had come home more than once with burns. The stories had been worse, though, and she’d never known how much—or how little—he’d exaggerated. Fire was dangerous. That was the simple truth.

  “Wait,” he coaxed, and that deep, smoky rumble was pure trouble. That voice made her want to listen. Made her imagine things she had no business imagining. “I want you to wait a little, Faye. File the piece once I’m sure. That’s all I’m asking, because there’s too much at stake here. Do you know what the clearance rate is here in California? There’s a really low percentage of arsons that actually result in an arrest and charge. If I can’t prove arson, I don’t have an arrest. It’s that simple.”

  “And you think you can prove your case?”

  “This isn’t the first fire.”

  “You have fires every day of the week out here?”

  “We’ve had more than our fair share. And way too many small ones. Grass fires. Fires like the one you drove through.”

  “And you’ve checked them all out?”

  “I look at all the fires, large and small. That’s my job, darlin’. Once I’ve got a pattern like this one, I have to look at the firehouse. That part is what I need time for. You can’t turn a man into a chart and tick off what he is and isn’t in a series of columns and boxes, so I won’t flush someone’s firefighting career without being sure, Faye. Because that’s what could happen if I started making assumptions or accusations.”

  “You want time.”

  “Yes. All the time you can give me.”

  The way Evan saw it, Faye still had the bulk of her photos to shoot, but that bought him one, maybe two, days. He needed more time, because he wasn’t accusing any man of arson without a hell of a lot of proof. No matter what suspicions he had, he needed more time to figure it all out. What would it take to get her to stay put?

  “Stay in Strong,” he said. “Tell me what it will take to convince you.” Propping his hip against the driver-side door, he waited for her to process his request. She didn’t look ready to open that door and fall into his arms, but she hadn’t put the key into the ignition and hit the gas, either.

  Her wicked smile should have warned him. “You really want to know?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” He leaned toward her. “Cut the crap, and tell me.”

  “Wow.” She nodded to herself, as if he’d settled some internal debate she was having. “You’re not much for conversation, are you?” When he shrugged but didn’t fall for the bait, she continued. “I have two weeks, four hundred dollars, and the Corvette. Since I had this magazine gig, I started here. But when I turn in those pictures, I’ll have seed money. I can go places. Do things. That’s a hundred percent improvement over sitting around L.A. doing catalog work.”

  “Got it.” He had money enough for two, but somehow he didn’t think that was the offer she was angling for. “Adventure with a side of cash.”

  “I don’t care about the money. Much.” She grinned up at him. “Which is a good thing, given how much I spent on this car and what the magazine is paying me for this gig. Still, eating is always a good thing.”

  “No one wants you going hungry,” he agreed. “And there’s always an open door up at the fire camp. Plenty for one more.”

  She laughed, and he didn’t know if that was a good thing or bad. “When I run out of cash, I’ll go back to L.A.,” she said. “Right now, I want to live a little.”

  “You want an adventure.”

  “Lots of them.” She smiled. “Everything on my bucket list and more. That can’t happen if I stay put here in Strong.”

  He shook his head. “There’s plenty of adventure right here. You don’t need to worry about being bored.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’ll show you around.”

  “The grand tour?” Faye looked up and down the street, but there wasn’t that much to see. Strong was all main street and not much else. “That’s going to kill a half hour, maybe an hour. You might want weeks.”

  “Two,” he said, and damned if he didn’t sound sincere.

  Maybe his services as a tour guide were some kind of local secret—and maybe she was reading more into his offer than he meant. He wasn’t promising two weeks of indulging her every sensual fantasy, so she needed to swallow that disappointment and move on. Even if it wasn’t fair, he sounded so sexy when he was being so damned sincere.

  “Two weeks,” he repeated. “And I’ll make sure you have an adventure every day.”

  “Give me some examples.” She knew she sounded suspicious, but this was her new life they were haggling over. She wasn’t settling for some cheesy pickup line.

  “You ever jumped out of a plane?”

  He crossed his arms, watching her. She bet he did that a lot—watched. “No,” she admitted.

  “Then there’s your first adventure. I’ll take you up.”

  She’d be lucky if he didn’t throw her out. “And in exchange?”

  “You stay here in Strong. You take your photos—I’m not standing in the way of the truth coming out—but you give me two weeks to take care of some investigative business. I get to make sure that we’ve really got ourselves a firefi
ghter arsonist before you trumpet it to the world.”

  “You want to be sure. Very altruistic of you.”

  His look said that altruism had nothing to do with this. God. He did big and scary really well. Unfortunately for him, when you’d woken up next to him, wearing his T-shirt, and then he’d kissed you senseless, it was hard to go back to the shaking-in-your-boots part.

  “You know what happens when a fireman’s accused of setting his own fires? Accusations like that destroy the man and rip a team apart. When this team hears that I think one of them has been setting fires, fingers are going to point, and it’s going to get ugly. Men accusing other men. Suspecting guys they’ve been friends with for years. Some feel betrayed. Others? They go after the accuser with their fists flying. Either way, my team gets put through the wringer. So I say nothing until I’m as damned certain as I can be that there’s a real need.”

  “You need to know.”

  “We all need to know.”

  She put a hand on his arm simply because she wanted the contact. His skin was warm and firm. Strong hands, with a small puckered burn mark on his forearm. “Okay,” she said. “I get why this matters. I really do.”

  “Two weeks,” he interrupted. “Fourteen days of adventure. Whenever I’m not out on a call, I’ll make sure you see plenty of action. Think about it, Faye.”

  She didn’t like his assumption that she wouldn’t do the right thing without a bribe. Of course, she hated the idea of ending her big find-herself-and-start-over adventure before it had even really started, but she knew how to do the right thing. Plus, it wasn’t as if she wasn’t used to waiting around for a firefighter to finish doing his job and make time for her.

  Waiting around summed up her marriage with Mike. Two years and more nights alone than she cared to count. In comparison, fourteen days with whatever time Evan Donovan could spare her would be a treat. Giving in too quickly, though, meant giving up her leverage—and she suspected she’d need all the leverage she could get with a man who’d walk off with her car keys to ensure her compliance.

  “You win,” she said. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Good.” He opened the driver-side door for her. “Do that thinking on your way out to the fire camp.”

  Chapter Five

  The fire camp was doing a brisk business in barbecue. Firefighters lined up wielding plastic plates instead of hoses, peppering their teammates manning the grills with good-natured teasing. All those hard bodies relaxing at the handful of picnic tables or sprawled out on the logs someone had rolled around a fire pit looked equally delicious. And familiar. Faye recognized that low rumble of male voices retelling war stories, while their owners enjoyed the food and the summer evening. God, how long had it been since she’d gone with Mike to a department thing? She’d sworn them off at the end, tired of watching from the sidelines. She’d been the firefighter’s wife. Not one of them.

  Faye admired what they did, day in and day out, putting their necks on the line to extinguish the fires that always kept coming. Los Angeles needed men like that. So did Strong. She believed with all her heart that firefighters were heroes, and she had nothing but respect for them and what they brought to the table.

  She just wanted to be more than someone who watched while others did.

  Using their barbecue as an impromptu and covert lineup wasn’t what she’d had in mind, though. Earlier, Evan had handed her off to his brother, Jack, who’d made the rounds and the introductions with her. She’d met man after man, shaking hands and trading names with the full intent of outing someone if she could.

  Since Strong’s fire chief, Ben Cortez, also needed a statement from her, her visit was a two-for-one. She got a good look at the fire camp and a chance to meet Evan’s boys and his brothers. The camp was exactly as she’d imagined, the planes and the Harleys and the maleness of it all almost overwhelming, the whole place one big adventure.

  Evan dropped onto the ground at her feet. He smelled like smoke and barbecue and something fundamentally, irresistibly male. She couldn’t stop herself from looking at him. “No one looks familiar.” Except that they were all firefighters. She was caught in a déjà vu that wouldn’t quit.

  “All right.” She couldn’t tell, looking at his face, if her failure made him happy or if he’d wanted to get this thing wrapped up ASAP. “You said yourself that the encounter was a quick one. You’d just driven through a brush fire. If you can’t pick out the guy, that’s okay.”

  He handed her a plate, and she took it automatically. Maybe he’d taken that whole liking-to-eat thing literally, because he’d given her enough chicken and corn to feed half a jump team.

  “Sorry,” she said, and meant it. This would have been so much easier if she’d walked in here, looked his team over, and pointed.

  “Not a problem.”

  She actually thought he might mean the words. In any case, he passed her a napkin and a fistful of plastic silverware, gesturing for her to get started on the week’s worth of groceries he’d heaped onto her plate.

  “You know all these men?” she asked, taking her first bite. God, the food here wasn’t bad at all.

  Evan shrugged. “Many of them. Not all of them. Fire season usually runs June through October, whatever dates the government agencies forecasting the weather and the possibility of fires come up with. You start with sun with a side of dry and pray like hell the autumn rains come early. Because Mother Nature here is cramming most of our work into a four month window, we hire seasonals. The local firehouses send up guys as well, whoever they can spare who wants to make a buck and be where all the action is.”

  “Which ones are on the jump team?” The L.A. department had been all hook-and-ladder trucks and ground crew, only because there was no way you used planes and jumpers in the city. Jumping straight into the heart of the fire the way these guys did took danger to a whole new level.

  Evan’s eyes crinkled around the edges. “You think we’re going to look different?”

  “Maybe. You, for example.” She took her eyes off the plate and eyed him. “You don’t look like the jump-out-of-a-plane type.”

  “Why not?” He popped the top on a Coke and passed her the cold can. He didn’t start on his own plate until she’d downed the first forkful.

  “Too big,” she said around a mouthful of food. God, these men knew how to cook. How unfair was that? “I’d expect you to sink like a rock.”

  “I float like a feather,” he promised. “Or, to put it another way, I haven’t hit the ground too hard. Yet. You’ve met my brothers, Jack and Rio. They jump, too.” He waved his own soda toward a couple of men in the barbecue line. “That’s Mack and, over there, Zay. Joey.” His finger moved down the line. “The next four are ours, as well.”

  “That’s a pretty small team.”

  “We’ve got ten jumpers in Strong right now. Eight to go up, two off, plus we’ve got ourselves a dedicated pilot, although half of us can fly the plane if there’s a need.”

  “I’ve heard about this thing called ‘equal opportunity,’ ” she said lightly. “Some places even hire women these days.”

  “Sure.” He leaned back on his elbows. “I’ve got no problem with having a woman on the team. She needs to jump, though, and she needs to haul her own shit. Jumping’s not the problem for most women. It’s the ground work.”

  “Women can’t hack it?”

  He grunted. “I’m not touching that one, Faye. All I’ll say is that when the fire’s cresting and you’re digging line for all you’re worth and humping your ass over rough ground, there’s an advantage to being big. Because that’s where you’re going with this, aren’t you?”

  Possibly. She looked away, focusing her attention on her plate.

  “I support equal opportunity as much as anyone,” he continued. “But out there, on ground zero, you have to keep up. You pull your weight, and you hold your own, or the fire eats you alive, Faye.”

  They chewed in silence. She couldn’t tell if the lack
of talking was awkward or companionable, but at least the food was good. Toward the end of the meal, when someone dragged out a cooler filled with ice and beer, the guys on the duty list came in for plenty of teasing. On-duty meant the beers were off-limits—and meant more beer for the rest of the crew, who popped the caps enthusiastically.

  Rio Donovan dropped down onto the log on the other side of her, trading her a beer for the empty Coke can. She wrapped her fingers around the cold bottle that was the perfect antidote to the summer heat

  Rio certainly didn’t waste any time. He cut right to the chase. “You staying in town?”

  Her keys burned a hole in her pocket. “Evan told you about what I saw yesterday on my way into town?” Had Evan told his brother about the deal he’d proposed?

  “Yeah.” Rio watched her. He had to be, she decided, one of the most beautiful men she’d ever seen. Too bad he didn’t do it for her, because he seemed like the playful type, like a big golden cat you wanted to stroke. “My brother said he asked you to stick around some while we figure this thing out.”

  “You don’t look alike,” she said, avoiding his statement.

  “We don’t,” he agreed. “We adopted each other. We share a lot of things but not a gene pool. Too bad for Evan.”

  Evan raised his soda can in mock salute at the light tease in his brother’s voice.

  “Jack, too?” This was none of her business. But she wanted to know.

  “The three of us,” Rio confirmed. He took a lazy sip of his beer. “God, that’s good. Too bad you’re on call tonight, Evan. You’re missing out here. Jack, Evan, and I met up when we were kids. We stuck together, and eventually we ended up out here in Strong with Nonna. She made things formal. Adopted us. And we all lived happily ever after.”

  Three brothers. All adopted. There was more story here. Plenty more. Evan didn’t look particularly interested in filling in those blanks, however. He just sat there silently next to her, playing big and gruff.