Ignite (Firefighters of Montana Book 3) (2 page)

Ace held himself
very still. There’d been a few times in the past few years someone had been looking for Dean, and he’d managed to throw them off the scent. It helped that most of the people who looked for him had a picture from when he’d been sixteen. Tall and wiry, a sneering, angry, gangly thing.

He hadn’t been Dean Clark in ten years and he didn’t plan on going back now. Ace Clark was charming, fun-loving, and an integral part of his smokejumping crew, even if he could read the suspicion in his new captain’s eyes. The rest of the guys liked him, trusted him. Mostly.

He’d embraced the life he’d made up. Even rented a place in Kalispell and stayed year-round. He’d given up Dean, and he hadn’t looked back.

Damn McArthurs, always sticking their noses where they didn’t belong. How had he run into one
here?
And a doctor to boot. A doctor telling him he couldn’t work for a week? The season was just starting.

He wasn’t going to sit around twiddling his thumbs if there was a fire. It had taken him twenty years to find a purpose, the past seven to work his way up to jumper.

A
McArthur,
of all people, wouldn’t muck up his plans. “I don’t know a Dean, lady.” It wasn’t as easy to lie to this woman as the people who’d come before. Who the hell knew why? Maybe because the McArthur name had thrown him for a loop, a painful reminder of the sister who he’d had to leave to save, or maybe it was because this woman’s dark blue eyes were sharp and intelligent.

He didn’t know what kind of relationship she had with his sister, but considering the McArthurs had taken Jess in once he’d finally smartened up and hightailed it out of Marietta, he figured this woman knew his sister well enough.

Which meant he had to get away from her ASAP. Jess couldn’t know he was here. He might have gotten his life together, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t always two steps away from blowing it all to hell again.

Jess deserved better. That was why he’d left her. So she’d stop hurting herself over the likes of him.

“Yes, you do,” she said, her voice steady and sure.

He needed to make her scramble again, so he forced himself to smile, to admire the shape of her because it made her cheeks turn pink and the otherwise solid, capable doctor demeanor fade into someone shifty and nervous.

He had no idea why the nerves were attractive on her. Usually, he liked a woman with a little more experience and a lot more overt interest in him. Easy women who knew what they were getting into. Temporary fun.

She was none of those things.
And she’s a McArthur. Keep your head together.
“I got a…second cousin or something named Dean, I think.” He shrugged, offering his mastered empty-headed smile. “Wouldn’t know him if I saw him though. It’s been ages.”

She frowned at that and he didn’t think she believed it without reservation, but it hopefully put enough doubt in her head she wouldn’t go spouting his whereabouts to her family.

Please, fate, be on my side for once
. “Now, can I go?”

“I’ll have to print out your release papers, and the patient tech will come in and have you sign a few things.” She watched him with a brow furrowed, an intense, considering expression on her face. It did nothing to quell his interest in the sharp-mouthed doctor.

The name McArthur should.

Yeah, it should.

“A second cousin named Dean?”

“Yes. Somewhere in Montana, though I don’t know if it’s anywhere around here. My parents weren’t particularly close with his. I grew up in Oregon.” The lies were always easy, if only because, as a kid, he’d pictured a life as someone else.
Anyone
else. Ace Clark, smokejumper and not a total life failure, worked for him.

It damn well wasn’t going to come to an end because of a McArthur. Even if she was too attractive for his own good.

He and Jess had been with a foster home outside of Marietta when Jess had started dating one of the McArthur kids. Dean had only ever met one of the McArthurs, and only once. He’d broken his wrist trying to sneak out of the foster house, and the formidable Dr. McArthur had treated him, asking if he knew Jess.

Dean had lied, because Dr. McArthur had made it abundantly clear he would view Jess’s relation to him as a mark against her.

So, Dean had done his level best to get kicked out of another foster home, get his ass on the road, and leave Jess to a life that gave her a chance at something more than they’d ever had. More than he ever thought he’d be able to have.

He didn’t know much about
this
McArthur woman except she was one of them, and a doctor.

And hopefully at least a tiny bit gullible.

She studied him for the longest time and he pretended like he was the man he’d invented. Carefree, life-of-the-party Ace Clark. Lazy smiles, relaxed demeanor. None of the go-to-hell tenseness that had made up his life for the first twenty-some years.

He locked away all the irritation, the disgust at being in room with a McArthur—especially a pretty one—forced away any softening memories of his sister who’d been the only one in his life who’d ever tried to do right by him.

Much like fighting a fire, he couldn’t worry about more than the moment. More than the challenge in front of him. First, the jump. Then the landing. So, right now, all he could focus on was being unaffected.

“Well, print those papers, doc. I’ve got work to get back to.”

Her considering look sharpened into disgust. “If you care about the health of your brain, you won’t jump or do anything with high impact for a week, Mr. Clark.”

He grinned, couldn’t help it, and she must have read at least a portion of his thoughts because she blushed. Damn if he didn’t want to stick around and make her blush a few more times.

Not in the cards.
Right. “I’ll see what I can manage.”

She rolled her eyes, but she clicked something on her computer than pushed the whole cart to the door. She looked back once, giving him a once-over that wasn’t nearly as interested as he’d like it to be. No, it was dissection. It was
could you be Dean Clark?

“Why’d you say McArthur like it meant something to you?” she finally asked.

“You ever heard of Colin McArthur?”

Her eyebrows furrowed. “No.”

“He was a famous college football player who became a smokejumper. He’s a legend—big story in some big magazine years ago. There was a documentary about him. Thought you might be related.” He’d always thought quickly on his feet, thanks to dear, old dad’s equally quick fists and threats.

She didn’t say anything after that, simply wheeled out of the room. Ace allowed the easy smile to leave his face, to acknowledge some of that riotous fury inside of him, the tense fear she might say something to Jess. That this might be over.

“No, it isn’t over.” He’d finally built himself a life. He wasn’t going to upend this one—not because of anyone else.

Surely, since she’d left, she’d let it go, and if she didn’t… Well, he’d figured out how to deal. He’d roll with the punches. He always had.

He waited around for the interminable time it took the patient tech to go over the insurance and billing paperwork. Finally, they released him and he was allowed to walk down the corridor and out into the waiting room.

*

That’s the last
time I set foot in the Kalispell Hospital
. He’d find a way to make sure if anything happened on a jump again, they’d take him somewhere else once they got him out.
Anywhere
else.

“Hey, Ace, what’s the verdict?”

Ace stopped short, not realizing Sam had stayed. It had been hours now, and as much as it had surprised him the new captain he didn’t particularly care for had driven him here, he was downright shocked Sam had stayed. “You didn’t have to stay, captain.”

Sam shrugged. “You were out cold for a good minute. Wasn’t sure they’d let you drive out of here.”

“She didn’t say anything about driving.” He scowled at his discharge papers. He could refuse to give them to Sam, he could lie, it wouldn’t be the first or last time, but he found he kind of
did
care about the health of his brain. “But I can’t jump for the next week.”

“Sucks, man.” Sam commiserated, walking out of the hospital next to him. “We’ll keep you busy.”

Ace eyed Sam. It was hard to trust people, always had been, and losing Russ last year… Well, Russ was the first person who had trusted Ace with something. Who’d believed in him. It had been a blow and Ace had been unfair to his replacement in the interim. Maybe not consciously, but this kind gesture meant he saw it pretty glaringly now.

Maybe he should rethink that strategy. Sam had changed things up, but he was a good guy. Someone to trust. “Thanks. For staying.”

“Anytime.” They climbed into Sam’s truck, but he didn’t start the engine right away. “I mean that seriously, Clark. Anytime.”

Ace wanted to laugh. Sure, bury the hatchet with the new boss when a woman who threatened his real identity had just called him on it.

But he’d come too far, built too much. He had a place to belong, so he just had to come up with a plan. A plan no big-nosed McArthur could ruin, no matter what she told Jess.

Ace didn’t allow himself to think of his sister. Not as anything other than a problem to avoid. He watched the highway pass and focused on his lies instead.

L
ina sat in
the passenger seat of her friend’s car and tried to breathe normally. The plan she’d hatched in an effort to get to the bottom of Ace—potentially Dean—Clark was…insane. And she wasn’t normally one for insane plans.

But that was kind of the point of her job away from Marietta, the point of leaving the McArthur name
mostly
behind. Doing things she’d never done, figuring out who she wanted to be, besides her father’s perfect daughter and her hometown’s untouchable ice queen.

Crazy plans to help her friends—apparently this was the Lina she wanted to be. Now, she had to figure out how to charm a guy into giving her the truth. She could do that. She always did what she put her mind to.

Because she had to know. She had to know without a shadow of a doubt that Ace Clark knew nothing about Dean Clark—or that they weren’t the same person. And she had to figure it out without tipping off her best friend who would be crushed if it turned out
not
to be him.

The last thing she wanted was to get Jess’s hopes up again. Even if Jess was currently sickeningly in love with Lina’s brother, Cole, Lina wouldn’t be the one to disappoint her friend on this front.

She had to make certain and then she had to make a case. If that meant a few lies, well, she was a McArthur. Wasn’t that the family way?

Of course, her courage deserted her the minute she stepped out of the car with Cherrie who was a little
too
excited about going into The Drop Zone—a bar that catered most specifically to the forest service employees around Kalispell.

“This was a mistake,” Lina said, unable to uncurl her grip from the door’s handle. She couldn’t go into a
bar
and she most certainly couldn’t pretend she was here because she had an
interest
in Ace. She couldn’t flirt to get information.

She’d never flirted a day in her life. Unless setting the curve and making everyone in her college classes hate her counted, and she knew very well it did not.

She wasn’t likable. She’d never…had to be, and by the time she’d figured out her name had gotten her as far as her brains, she’d built a sort of prickly outer shell she didn’t know how to saw off.

She was her father’s daughter, and no matter how often that proved to be a rather terrible person to be, she couldn’t escape it.

But Cherrie either didn’t hear her or didn’t listen—it could go either way with the one close friend she’d made since moving here. Because Cherrie was pulling her hand off the car door and propelling her toward the entrance, even as Lina resisted.

“Girl, you are going in there. You are going to
flirt
, and if you want—you are going to get laid.”

“No! I don’t want
that
!” Lina shrieked with too much fervor. At Cherrie’s raised-eyebrow look, Lina tried to get a hold of herself. “I just mean…I don’t know him. I mean, he’s hot. Flirting…etcetera.” A better excuse than ‘stalking to see if he was really who he said he was’. “But…sex. No.”

Cherrie shrugged, but her hands clapped on Lina’s shoulders. “Suit yourself.” Despite the agreeable words, Cherrie was steering her inside the bar.

“I don’t even know if he’ll be here.”

“My cousin’s friend’s sister said all the forest fire guys hang out here when they aren’t on call. Besides, if that particular guy isn’t here, then choose some other firefighting hottie. If you’re not interested in sex, flirt with anything that moves. Hone the skill. Think of it like…homework. You’re practicing.”

Lina blinked. Well, practice she could do. Homework—she’d always excelled at that. But when they crossed the threshold into The Drop Zone, the only thing that kept her running right back out was Cherrie behind her.

“You’re cute, funny, and smart, Lina. And I don’t think you have a clue. Well, lucky you, you found a pushy friend in me. Now, let’s go order a drink.”