Burnin' For You: inspirational romantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 3)

by Susan May Warren

  If she hadn’t figured that out before, she sensed it last night when he’d taken her in his arms, stared down at her with a gaze that could reach right through her, steady her.

  And when they’d fallen, he’d secured his strong arms around her.

  It could happen to anyone—getting their feet tangled. She’d fallen plenty of times on the dance floor. And it wasn’t his fault that he had resurrected her demons.

  But now, as she stood at the entrance to the team locker room watching him suit up, it occurred to her that Reuben might be the kind of man who could, well, keep those demons from haunting her.

  Strong enough to chase them away, if she let him.

  She turned away, but not before she took in his wide shoulders, muscled arms, a sculpted chest that tapered down to a trim waist, strong legs. He wore a deep coffee-brown beard, his hair tousled and behind his ears, now tied back with a dark red bandanna.

  When he suited up, Reuben appeared raw, rough edged.

  The kind of guy to look at fire and not flinch.

  The kind of guy who couldn’t help but stand up for the people he cared about.

  Yeah, she’d definitely been too defensive.

  Don’t let your fears—or your failures—tell you who you are or who you can’t be. Or who you can’t be with. Juliet in her head.

  Oh, she was reading way too much into how he’d toed up to Miles on her behalf. After all, who else knew about his airsickness? Maybe he really wouldn’t get into a plane without her at the controls.

  Her gaze fell on Kate now pulling on her Kevlar jump pants and jacket. She turned up the collar, then checked for her 150-foot rappelling letdown rope in the leg of her pants, padded by motocross-style shin guards. She’d drastically cut down on her jumps this summer, but with the teams fresh off a fire, maybe she’d volunteered.

  Kate also fitted a small tent and sleeping bag in her suit, something Jed had taught her years ago, during her training in Alaska.

  Her helmet with the mesh grid sat on the bench beside her. She laced up her boots—heavy duty with the thick sole for trekking through ash and cinder.

  In her hundred-pound personal gear bag, she’d have water, her fire shelter, a GPS, her radio, an extra pair of socks, toothbrush and paste, a first aid kit, headlamp, a few energy bars, tent stakes, bear spray, and her favorite spoon.

  Another tip from Jed.

  And all these hints Kate had passed onto Gilly. Right before Gilly went to jump camp, hoping she could someday join Kate on the fire line.

  Kate looked up and gave her a wry smile. Gilly returned it.

  If she couldn’t be an official smokejumper, she could at least get the team to their drop zone safely.

  The other female smokejumper, Hannah, closed her locker, gathered her dark hair into a pony tail and waddled toward the briefing room carrying her gear. Brave and tough, despite her short, curvy frame, Hannah had surprised them all with her grit. She’d spent an hour under her fire shelter earlier this summer—earning a few burns that had landed her in the hospital. Gilly and the entire team would have understood if she’d decided to hang it up.

  But so few women made it as smokejumpers. Hannah had a tight fist on her accomplishment and wasn’t going to let a few burns keep her from being among the elite.

  Gilly tried not to envy her. Or taste the old bite of failure, acrid and thick in her throat.

  She hated how her fears kept her from—well, the life she wanted. Smokejumping. Even, maybe, Reuben—or more accurately, romance. A man in her life. Not necessarily Reuben. She had no doubt he wouldn’t ask her to dance again, anyway.

  Frankly, she wasn’t sure how she felt about dating a guy she’d have to climb onto a chair to kiss.

  Her face heated at the thought, and the one behind it that had his arms curled around her, her own over those magnificent shoulders, her fingers twined in his unruly hair.

  Feeling all that strength and power channeled, focused, on her.

  She shook herself out of the image, almost trembling.

  No, no, that couldn’t happen. Ever.

  Because despite her sister’s teasing, there was no room for anything between teammates but getting the job done. Sure, Jed and Kate had something special—but that had started years ago.

  She should probably just erase last night from her brain. Poor Reuben probably wanted to forget it, too.

  Gilly walked past the lounge and into the ready room, equipped with four long parachute-folding tables and older, heavy-duty Singer sewing machines. Near the front, chairs were set in a semicircle to face a whiteboard with the roster list and call-out activity sheet hanging next to a large map of the entire Kootenai range—their main territory.

  She knew the national forest from memory, every peak, ridge, canyon,ASAP and river—from the air.

  “Gilly,” Jed had come up behind her. “Did you get a flight map from air control?”

  “Yep. We’re all set. I finished up my preflight, plotted our route, and now I’m headed out for my preflight check. Wheels up in fifteen.”

  She sat in the back, however, as Jed briefed them on the fire. Just a little flicker, probably not big enough to cause a problem, but the area around Yaak was as dry as Egypt, and with the little camp town only a few miles away and populated by summer and hunting cabins, they needed to get in and snuff it out before it grew into something the fire service couldn’t extinguish.

  “It’s just west of Davis Creek, in the canyon, between Black Top and Mushroom Peak in the Cabinet Mountains. There’s an old hunting road that we can use to flank it. We’ll do a burnout along the edge, contain it on this side of the ridge. If it jumps the ridge, we’ll have to call in the tankers. The NIFC would like to get it under control ASAP, see if we can keep costs down on this fire.”

  From Jed’s calm explanation, it sounded like something they could do in their sleep.

  “We’ll get on the ground, and if we need to call for reinforcements, Gilly will bring them in. Pete, I know you’re on the jump list, but I want you to stay back with the second crew.”

  She liked hearing her name in the game plan. See, she was a vital part of the team.

  Gilly got up, noticed Reuben didn’t even glance her direction, and headed outside to her beautiful Twin Otter, just back from a one-hundred-hour inspection.

  She ran her hand along the smooth white surface and along the red stripe. She stood back, gave the plane a once-over, checking the tire pressure and wings before diving into her checklist.

  Then she ducked into the cockpit, grabbing the ARROW documents—airworthiness certificate, registration, radio station license, operating limitation documents, and weight and balance information—all attached to the plastic pouch on the cockpit wall.

  She opened the aircraft log and noted the signer on the inspection. Patrick Browning. She hoped he’d checked the transponder—it had been replaced in the winter and had its own inspection schedule.

  Yes. He’d made a notation in the margins. Patrick was thorough, if not an old hand at the game of patching up aircraft.

  Gilly did her cockpit check, making sure all the valves and switches worked, leaving them in the correct position. She turned on the battery switch and noted the fuel quantities for later recollection, then made sure the magnetos were off.

  She grabbed the de Havilland checklist and did the manufacture preflight check, looking for “smoking”—or loose—rivets, checking all the nuts and bolts.

  The first jump team exited the building and headed toward the plane, geared up like soldiers going to battle. Jed, Kate, CJ, Hannah, and Reuben.

  Gilly bent down to check the tires, moved the plane forward, then back, looking for oil in the oleo struts. Then she moved the flight controls, making sure the yoke worked in tandem.

  She looked over and saw Reuben helping load the gear into the back of the plane. He didn’t look at her, and the swill of regret lined her throat.

  He’d just been watching her back. Why did she have to be so d
efensive?

  Well, he didn’t know what it felt like to always feel like you didn’t measure up. That if you let down your guard, life would sneak up on you, devour you.

  She checked the prop, making sure she didn’t move it—yes, the magneto was off, but you never knew. And she’d seen a pilot nearly killed when he’d started the plane by accidentally moving his prop.

  No dripping oil and the fuel looked good. She checked the level with a dipstick, just to confirm, then checked the vents.

  Finally, she grabbed ammonia and a rag and climbed up on the outside of the plane to clean the windshield.

  Leave the problems on the ground. Advice from her teacher, the one who’d told her she didn’t have to jump from planes to be a part of the team. Dwayne would be delighted to see her today, not only a jumper pilot but also flying tankers.

  Well, formerly flying tankers. But at least contributing.

  Not letting her failures completely derail her.

  She saw their spotter for today’s run, Cliff O’Dell, come out of HQ. An older man and former jumper out of Missoula, he knew exactly where to send the jumpers to make sure they didn’t land in the middle of a fire.

  By the time she finished cleaning the windshield, the team had already climbed in, strapped themselves into the seats positioned along the walls. The gear boxes were strapped down in the middle.

  Cliff climbed in beside her in the copilot seat.

  “Last run of the season,” he said and picked up the pre-takeoff checklist.

  “Hopefully. Parking brake.”

  “Set.”

  “Fire T-handles.”

  “In.”

  “Emergency fuel switches.”

  “Off.”

  She tuned out the chatter in the back as she read through the list.

  Finally, “Everyone buckled up?”

  She glanced back for a second. Kate shot her a thumbs-up. Nodded at her.

  No, she might not be a smokejumper, but she kept them safe and alive, at least until they left her plane.

  Gilly turned the beacon light on, tested the brakes, glanced at the circuit breakers, and confirmed the transponder was on. Then she turned the mixture on rich, moved the carb heat to cold, flicked on the master switch, pumped the primer, locked it, and inserted the key.

  “Clear prop!” She touched the brakes, put her hand on the throttle, and turned the engine over. It fired to life, and she taxied out to the strip.

  “We have a blue-skied day, with few clouds and a bump-free ride to the jump site,” she said over the intercom. “Strap in and enjoy the ride.”

  She trimmed the tabs for takeoff, set the flaps up, the carburetor heater back to the full position, then checked her heading.

  She confirmed with the tower, waited for the go-ahead, and then throttled back to about 2000 rpm. She checked the directional gyro against the runway heading, then released the brake.

  “Let’s go.”

  The plane lurched ahead.

  Gilly knew it seemed an anomaly to her parents—that she felt so comfortable at the yoke of a plane. Maybe it was simply the power of the airplane, the dichotomy of her smallness inside the powerful bird.

  Or maybe she simply liked to think her fears hadn’t completely won.

  Regardless, she loved the power of a plane as it hurtled down the runway. Her airspeed indicator registered fifty-five knots, and she eased back on the yoke, urging the plane into the air, pushing the plane up to seventy-five knots for the climb.

  The plane tried to shimmy and she held it steady, her arms vibrating with the shudder of the crosswind.

  Gilly kept the horizon even with the cowling until she reached a thousand feet, then turned into their heading, finishing the climb to five thousand.

  Below, the Kootenai Mountains spread out in a glorious, rumpled, jagged array of gray rocky peaks, pine-green valleys, pockets of late-season snow, and falls that cascaded down to turquoise-blue glacial lakes. Rivers cut through canyons, over ledge rock, sometimes white-frothed, other times lazy.

  And she soared above it all.

  They cut northwest on a heading of three-three-eight, and she called it in to the tower.

  Static, then their response. “Delta-Four-Three, please recycle your responder.”

  She glanced at Cliff. “Check the transponder is set to Alt.”

  “Roger.”

  She toggled the radio. “Delta-Four-Three to ATC. Do you have my primary target?”

  “That’s a negative, Delta-Four-Three.”

  She glanced at Cliff. “Do you see me at all? Do you have a Mode C Readout?”

  “Again, negative, Delta-Four-Three.”

  “Recycling.” She retyped in her 1200 Squawk digits, then reached over, turned her Mode C to Standby, then back to ALT.

  “I checked the antenna,” she said, mostly to herself.

  “We’re over Yaak,” Cliff said. “Population two hundred forty-eight. Best fishing and hunting in the northwest.” He pointed to a peak maybe twenty miles away, and she could just make out a fire tower. “That’s the Garver Mountain Fire Tower.”

  She buzzed by it to her right and caught sight of a thin trickle of smoke past the far ridge, a wispy column of gray that indicated the fire—which her team would neatly extinguish—was still fighting for life.

  She’d find a nice flat, open area, drop them down below the flames.

  “Delta-Four-Three, recycle your responder.”

  “They still can’t see us,” Cliff said.

  “Call in our position,” Gilly said as she angled over the ridge, toward the fire.

  Flames spit up in a fifty-acre area—the call in must have come in just after the lightning strike or whatever caused the fire.

  “I’ll go in back and start looking for a jump spot,” Cliff said. He took his map with him as he climbed into the back.

  Gilly banked then came back to circle the area.

  A good jump spot had to be within walking distance of the fire but not so close as to allow the wind to blow them into the turmoil.

  She felt movement and looked over to see Reuben land in the seat next to her.

  He looked green.

  She hid a smile. Poor guy. It had to be cosmically unfair to get airsick every time you went to work. He glanced at her, gave her a wan smile.

  See, maybe they had a chance of being friends. Someday.

  She heard Cliff in her headset. “We need another pass. It’s pretty dense down there.”

  She banked the plane again, and the left wing fuel indicator light flashed on. Reuben noticed it, tapped it. She frowned. The fuel pump must have malfunctioned.

  She flicked it off, transferring all the fuel to the right wing. Then she glanced at Reuben. “Don’t worry. The plane can fly on one engine.”

  It seemed she’d had a similar conversation before—too recently.

  Still, “We’re down an engine here, Cliff. We either dump these guys off ASAP, or we need to turn around and head back.” She’d done the fuel math before she left—she could get home on the remaining gas in the right tank.

  But just barely.

  “I’m not seeing a good jump spot, Gilly,” Cliff said.

  Reuben was looking at her, shaking his head.

  “What?” She pulled away one ear of her headset.

  “I don’t have a good feeling about this!”

  She shook her head, put the headset back on. “Anything, Cliff?”

  “I see something down canyon, south of the fire. If you climb over the ridge, we can come around and approach from the south.”

  She affirmed and banked, climbing toward the ridge.

  Admittedly, the plane felt sluggish, the left prop spinning wildly, useless in the wind. But like she said, she could fly on one—

  The right wing fuel indicator light flickered on.

  She glanced at Reuben, who had straightened in his seat.

  “I see it.”

  Just a warning—and it had to be faulty. She’d checked
the fuel compartment manually, dipped a stick in, and it’d come back full.

  But if the indicator was correct, they’d soon be gliding. Over jagged mountains, spires of lodgepole pine, and on their way into the dense forests of the Kootenai range.

  Gilly kept her voice steady. “Forget the drop, Cliff. We have another indicator light on. I’m headed back to Yaak or even that service road we saw west off Black Top. If we have to, we can put down—”

  The right engine sputtered out.

  The sudden rush of silence whooshed through the cabin, alerting everyone to the fact they were falling from the sky.

  Gilly drew in a long breath, her heart banging in her chest. Don’t. Panic. She’d landed dead stick dozens of times. Well, in practice.

  A twin-engine plane could glide for—at this altitude—at least ten miles.

  Except, a glance at the altimeter said they were dropping fast.

  They wouldn’t make Yaak.

  Reuben pressed his hand on his gut, looking white.

  Gilly whipped off her headset, her heart thundering. She turned to him, to all of them. “We’ll have to glide it down.”

  To a person, they stared at her as if they didn’t comprehend.

  “We’ve lost both engines—”

  “So we jump.” Reuben unstrapped from his chair. Got up.

  What? No—

  Cliff wrestled with the door, opened it. The cool air of the slipstream thundered into the plane, and she had to grab the yoke to keep it from unseating, sending them all out in a tumble.

  “Close the door! We’re too low! We’re only at twelve hundred. You won’t have time to deploy.”

  She turned to look at them again—Jed peering out to the ground, as if to confirm.

  She was right, and they knew it. “Sit down—strap in. I’ll get us down, I promise.”

  Reuben flopped into the copilot seat. “What can I do?” His voice was calm, albeit dark.

  She turned to him. “Have you ever flown before?”

  “Yeah. We had a Cessna on the ranch.”

  “We need to get to that road.” She pointed toward a forest service road, a trail through the arching, dark pine.

  Reuben shook his head. “We’re not going to make that.”

  “We are—”

  “Do the math, Gilly!”