Wild Fire

by M. L. Buchman

  Not this time.

  Gordon’s entry was like a completeness finally come true; one she’d never even suspected existed.

  She clenched her legs tightly, convulsively about his hips. She didn’t need him deeper, he’d already done that. She needed him to never go away. Her peak slammed into her harder than any prior experience. Her first solo flight in a helicopter, her first carrier landing, her first firefight…all paled.

  Tears would come later, she knew. For now all she could do was cling and experience. But Gordon wasn’t done, far from it. He had one hand planted firmly on the bed and the other arm tight about her, holding her aloft so that her only connection was with him. She floated in some impossible free fall space, pinned by her arms and her legs, yes, but the power of his hold on her dominated her thoughts.

  No one had ever held her so.

  When Gordon arched into his final release, his tight grasp seemed to carry her aloft. And there, ever so safe in his arms, for the first time in her life, a second release slammed through her. She arched into it not caring if it would kill her or maim her for life, for it was so powerful she didn’t doubt that it could. The waves rippled through them both for a glorious, timeless forever.

  He didn’t collapse down upon her, a weight she would have gladly welcomed. Instead Gordon rocked back onto his heels so that he knelt on the mattress. She was still wrapped around him, still not touching anything other than his body. Floating.

  Ripley clung there, not wanting to return to Earth. She finally received the kiss she’d asked for, long, slow, deep…jarred but not interrupted by occasional aftershocks making it only all the sweeter.

  When she lay her head on his shoulder, the tears began to flow.

  “Hey, lover,” Gordon’s voice was a whisper. “Are you okay?”

  She could only nod. Her voice was still somewhere far away. She nodded again. It wasn’t just the release that she was crying for, though it had been more than amazing enough for her to do so. It was something deeper, but she didn’t want to think about it.

  Instead she just let herself hold and be held. The tears would take care of themselves.

  Chapter Eleven

  A phone rang incessantly somewhere in the distance. Gordon flailed out a hand and elicited a grunt from Ripley when his elbow found her shoulder.

  “Sorry,” he grabbed the phone and grunted into it.

  “Lunch, thirty minutes,” Mark spoke in pre-fire briefing tone. “Two blocks south and one west. The Top Pub.”

  Gordon managed to find a clock. It was straight up noon…at least he assumed it wasn’t midnight by the sunshine still leaking around the curtain’s edges.

  “You hear me?”

  “No.”

  “No you don’t hear me?” Mark was doing his amused-with-the-world thing that always pissed off Gordon.

  “No, as in I’ve had less than three hours sleep and I need more.”

  “Yes,” Mark replied, “as in you need to get up and stay up until at least eight p.m. if you’re going to make the time zone switch. Be there in twenty-nine minutes.” Then he paused for a long moment. “I remember dropping you at your door five hours ago. You must have gotten five hours sleep…or you owe me another fifty bucks. And that’s US, not this Australian crap.”

  Once again Mark Henderson was riding his ass. “Yeah, sure, whatever.” He hung up on Mark before Henderson could do the same to him.

  He rolled back over, careful not to clip Ripley again. “Gotta go,” he shook her lightly.

  “Have fun,” she pulled the covers more tightly over her head, her back to him.

  “No. We gotta go.”

  “Give me one good reason,” might have been her response. Through the covers it was hard to tell.

  He didn’t have one, not until his hand found her hip. Then he thought of several reasons not to go. He started by slipping his hand around her waist and cupping a soft warm breast.

  “Oh no you don’t,” she pulled away. “You’re not going to entice me back awake with sex.”

  Gordon slid closer and stroked his hand over her again. “God damn but you feel glorious as you look, woman.”

  “Well, I am wonderful, at least you said so,” she scooted to the very edge of the bed. “And it’s only skin.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  She glared at him over her shoulder.

  “It’s—” but he didn’t know where to go with it.

  “Is that why you’re with me? Never bedded a black woman and wanted to give it a try?”

  “There are guys who actually do that?” Gordon could think of some jerks who needed a quick punch to the nuts.

  Ripley studied him a moment, “Okay, so you’re not one of those.”

  He shook his head.

  “Then what?”

  “It goes deeper than that. Like a vibrant strength that shines from somewhere deep inside.” Waxing eloquent had never been his style, but she made him want to.

  “Meaning what, Gordon? I’m just a girl from Oklahoma.”

  He could hear her rising irritation.

  “You’re just so goddamn beautiful, Ripley.”

  “Says the man who slept with Vanessa.”

  “She’s awfully pretty, I grant you.” Gordon was amused by her tone. That anyone could ever be jealous of anything he’d ever done was funny. “Also so shy that I never actually saw her unclothed with the lights on.”

  He was about to turn it into a tease, but Ripley’s deepening frown warned him off.

  “But you’re in a whole other league, Ripley. Even discounting your skin color,” he ran a hand from the curve of her breast down the wonderful lines to her hip, “you are a complete and total knockout.”

  She looked down at his hand resting on her hip. “Whereas I look at you and I wonder to myself, how did I end up in bed with a pasty-skinned white guy?” Her smile gave her away.

  “Just luck I guess,” he slid against her hoping to ease her back into bed with him. “I also think that you’re soft, warm, luscious—”

  She slipped off the edge of the bed and dodged his grab for her. He tumbled to the floor in his attempt. The terra cotta tile was neither soft, warm, nor luscious.

  Ripley was stumbling by the time they reached the restaurant. They threaded their way beneath towering palm and banana trees. Massive pots of orchids bloomed wildly on porches like they hung fuchsia baskets in Oregon. Every building had deep verandahs for hot sunny days like today…like most days in Far North Queensland.

  It wasn’t the heat or the humidity, which were both high but not obscenely so, that had her stumbling over herself. It was Gordon. There had been men who pleased her. And there’d certainly been plenty who had disappointed her. Her skin color had often been an issue with both.

  Yet Gordon seemed fascinated solely by the “contrasting color values of their complexions” (his phrase not hers, yet it had sounded stupidly charming to her…still did). To make his point, he had stood her in front of the mirror—never a comfortable place to be for any woman. Then he’d moved behind her and slid his arms around her, one up between her breasts to hold the opposite shoulder, the other around her waist. Of their own volition her hands had slid to cover his. His bigger arms had made it look as if hers were outlined in white against her own skin. It was an intimate image rather than one in which she was left to judge her breast and hip size. When he had planted a kiss upon her neck, she had watched their reflection in fascination. His eyes closing as he planted the kiss. The happy smile as he bent forward enough to rest his cheek against hers.

  She’d never been so aware of her own color before, and yet less self-conscious of it. Gordon was her lover because he wanted to be, but he wasn’t thinking of her as anything other than who she was.

  I see you as you are and I see beauty.

  It wasn’t Shakespeare, but it was one of the nicest things ever said to her.

  She wanted to protest that there was ugliness inside her…but there really wasn’t. Over her y
ears in the Navy she’d bunked with them all: tough babes, nasty bitches, weak women and strong. The only dark place she knew of was actually one of light, of her constant hope for achieving the unattainable.

  So she’d looked at the two of them in the mirror and felt a strange inner fear for the first time. There was a hint—just a hint, no more than that she promised herself—that she’d somehow found even a small piece of the wonderful relationship shared by her parents. Their example had always humbled her. That was why she saw no future like that for herself; how could she ever achieve what her parents had?

  Now she was walking down the streets of Cooktown holding hands with Gordon “Tweety Bird” Finchley. And she felt as if she was floating.

  The Top Pub also bore a big sign declaring it had been The Cooktown Hotel as well as several other names in the years since founding in 1873. It was a grand two-story building with a wraparound verandah on both floors. It looked like what it was, a local institution.

  As they wandered through, they were greeted cheerily by any number of locals.

  “You Yanks must be the pilots. Others said you were coming along. Imagine Cooktown with an Aircrane visiting here. Hoo’s flyin’ her?”

  And then Gordon pointed at her with his free hand.

  “The Sheila?” “Nah!” “Really?” “Good on ya!” The last delivered more like one word than three, “G’don’ya.”

  “We on fire?” At that last call from the crowd that the whole group of them twisted to see if the main street was on fire right outside the door.

  Gordon assured them it was all clear.

  They turned to her as if they needed her to translate. She’d forgotten that Gordon hadn’t ever been Down Under.

  “No worries, mates,” she called out and the crowd’s sudden anxiety instantly dissipated. She only wished her own would as well.

  By the time they’d run the gauntlet of the pool table (“Only table in town! Free on Sundays!”), the bar (almost invisible against the kaleidoscopic swirl of beer stickers and signs stuck on every available surface), the dining area (over half full of locals, which was a good sign), and out the back door to where they found the others in the beer garden, Ripley had entirely forgotten how to walk. She’d have embarrassed herself completely if Gordon hadn’t pulled out a chair for her to collapse into.

  Janet must have arrived close behind them because she slapped Ripley on the arm, “The Sheila pilot! Whoot!”

  Brad and Janet did a little Michael Jackson Smooth Criminal dance that they’d been working on. It earned them a round of applause and everyone squeezed together to make more room for them.

  Beer and pizza were soon rolling out. Ripley’s attempt to warn Gordon off Cooper’s Extra Stout was in vain. She’d tried it…once. It was so dark that even holding it up to the sun, no light passed through the glass. For some reason she’d assumed he was a pale ale sort of person, but he declared he’d found a new love in his life as he tasted it.

  There was the briefest pause after he said it, and he covered it with a laugh.

  But Ripley heard it go by. Felt it in their still-clasped hands.

  He was not thinking that.

  There wasn’t a chance in hell that he was thinking that!

  She must have misread him.

  No one else at the table was looking at him. Not a single one of her hyper-sensitive new friends were looking at him strangely or in alarm…except Vanessa. She was studying Gordon as if she didn’t recognize him at all. When Vanessa’s gaze slid to Ripley’s face, Ripley gave an infinitesimal head shake. Vanessa tipped her head uncertainly and then let Vern distract her with some question.

  That’s it. Ripley was overthinking everything. It was alarming enough to be feeling new things. If love was somehow a possibility here, she’d catch the next Antonov back to the States.

  Then Gordon leaned over and kissed her on the temple.

  Which was charming.

  “Sorry about that,” he whispered softly into her hair before leaning back to sip more of his beer.

  Which ruined the charm and kicked her right back toward panic. She was absolutely not, under no circumstances, falling for a schizoid guy who couldn’t decide if he was the sweetheart everyone had declared him to be or the rampant alpha male she kept finding in her arms.

  The buzz and chatter eased somewhere deep in the second slice of pizza. She didn’t remember eating more than the one in her hand, but she could see a crust on her plate. Then Gordon snagged the crust and muttered something about leaving the best part behind. She felt full enough that maybe this was her third piece. She put it down carefully and sipped at her XXXX Pale Ale. Its high-alcohol content was no less of a mule-kick than any other Aussie beer, but at least she could see through it.

  “Tomorrow we go dry,” Mark announced. The first words he said instantly silenced the table. Even in the shaded beer garden he wore his mirrored glasses.

  She pulled down her own to match him, but couldn’t see a thing because they were smeared with fingerprints she hadn’t cleaned off. Ripley shoved them back up onto her forehead in disgust.

  “Dry?” Janet asked, making a joke of it. “New firefighting technology with no water?”

  Mark smiled tolerantly, then tapped his beer glass against one of the pitchers on the table. “Twenty-four hours bottle to throttle from here on out.”

  “Twenty-four?” Gordon sounded puzzled.

  “So you guys actually do that?” Ripley asked. FAA rules were eight hours from your last drink to sitting in the pilot’s seat. Most of the military followed the same rule. But rumor said that Mark’s old outfit, the Night Stalkers, lived to a different standard…which shouldn’t be surprising.

  Mark simply aimed his mirrored gaze at her in response.

  To hell with being able to see. She pulled down her own dark shades. Next pair she’d buy them mirrored too.

  Again that infinitesimal smile before he continued.

  “FNQ, that’s Far North Queensland, which we’re sitting in the middle of, is like Oregon in reverse, only much more severe. Ocean to the east,” he tipped his beer toward the waterfront that had been visible from their hotel room window. “Steep front range escarpment less than a dozen kilometers to the west. Hot and dry interior. I want to work on some new tactics. Let’s see what we can do to fully integrate the Aircrane into the company.”

  Ripley opened her mouth, but closed it again. She sensed that even though Mark was turning as if facing them all, it was her he was watching from behind those mirrored lenses. She’d thought that they’d integrated the Diana Prince smoothly over the first two fires. But Major Mark Henderson (retired) of the 160th SOAR had lived to a different standard. Rumor had said that Emily was a better pilot, but Mark had been her unit commander. So, Ripley would shut up and see what she could learn.

  Mark handed around credit cards, “Good for up to a thousand Australian each. If you lost more than that in the base fire, we’ll have to file a claim. Your personal vehicles are already listed and you’ll be getting replacement vouchers. Denise, your Fiat Spyder, don’t know if we can replace that. We can do a used one plus an upgrade allowance, but making it as cherry as your old one…” Mark just shrugged.

  “That’s okay. With the kid on the way, I need a four-seater anyway,” Denise turned to Vern. “How do you feel about a 1964 first-year classic Porsche 911, honey?” She batted her eyelashes and Ripley could see that Vern was a goner.

  Would she have that kind of power over Gordon someday? Or he over her? And why in the world was she thinking about such things?

  She tried to hand back the card that came to her, as did Brad and Janet. “All I lost was a sneaker.” Her copilot and mechanic hadn’t even lost that much.

  Mark waved them off. “Gift from the owner, then.”

  Nobody gave out thousand-dollar gifts to people they’d hired forty-eight hours earlier. Forty-eight hours and a continent ago. What the hell had she landed in the middle of? If anything was proof that she was in
way over her head, it was the little piece of plastic in her hand.

  Gordon leaned in and asked if she was done.

  “Uh, sure.” Done in… Done for… What was he talking about?

  He snagged the half-finished slice of pizza off her plate and began eating it.

  It was a week later and Gordon didn’t know what was happening to him.

  It had started in Cairns when Mark had dragged him across the airfield within minutes of landing. They’d strolled through the cool dawn to a remote hanger a half-mile walk from the Antonovs—which were so damn big that they didn’t seem to shrink with distance. A Beech King Air had been waiting for them: an older version of the twin-engine spotter aircraft that Mark flew in Oregon.

  “You have your fixed-wing ticket?” Fixed-wing airplane rather than rotorcraft.

  Gordon had picked it up a couple of seasons ago. It was before he’d landed the job with Mount Hood Aviation and wanted to have his options open. “I got my instrument rating and have everything I need for my commercial, except air time.”

  “Multi-engine rating?”

  Gordon could only shake his head. Did Henderson think he was made out of money? Multi-engine training time cost a lot per hour. The same reason he didn’t have his commercial ticket yet…two hundred and fifty hours of flight time for that was a big chunk of change.

  Mark took the operations manual out of the seat pocket as they prepped the plane and dropped it in his lap. “Learn it.”

  Gordon had sat in the cockpit and read as Mark prepped the plane. He’d barely noticed when the helicopters had taken off—wouldn’t have if the Antonovs hadn’t bugged out first, each with their four massive D-18T Progress turbofans at full roar.

  Once Mark was ready, they’d flown the King Air up to Cooktown, with Gordon nearly crapping his pants at the controls and Mark only telling him what to do.

  “We need to get you some more airtime in this.”