Pure Heat (12 page)

They washed in the river. Giggling like children. Carly hadn't laughed that high, girly laugh since… ever. Her girly laugh had probably died with her mother when she was still in kindergarten. Carly Thomas had been the only child in her class in Hood River Elementary who didn't have a mother, no matter who the other kid's moms might actually be shacked up with. Her friends had a lot of odd family arrangements, some three families deep on both sides, but at least they all had mothers.

But she also hadn't had a man ever help her out of soaking wet jeans on a grassy bank by a soft-flowing river. Coax her until she knelt over him, his hands cupping her behind, the both of them naked in the silver light of the crescent moon.

Having no protection, he had pulled her up his body and taken her with his mouth until her body burned and flared. Until the very last bit of fire in her was wholly quenched and she lay sprawled atop him, exhausted, spent.

Steve wrapped the blankets about her before pulling on wet clothes, now cold with river water and the cooling night.

She slapped his ass as he set off toward camp to get them dry clothes. Yet another first.

Sated, alone, Carly watched the night sky, trying to find the story Steve had told her last night. The vain queen and the sad king she could find. But the beautiful daughter lost upon the rocks and the noble hero evaded her.

Steve returned so quietly, she barely heard him set fresh clothes down beside her. A mere shadow against the stars as he undressed and slid between the blankets with her.

“Anyone see you?”

He pulled her tight until she lay as much on him as on the blanket.

“No one's awake. TJ is asleep in his chair, the radio to ground control beside him. I wrapped a blanket around him.”

She kissed his cheek.

“You're a good man, Steve Mercer. How did that happen?”

“Damned if I know. It's certainly not what I set out to be.” He gazed up at the stars with one hand tucked behind his head, the other wrapped around her shoulders.

“What did you set out to be?”

“A mad letch. A defiler of beautiful women near and far.” He slid a hand suggestively over her breast, but he kissed her so gently on the eyes that she could barely feel the pressure of his lips. As soft as the night.

“No, really.”

“My friends wanted to fly—rockets, Air Force jets, jumbo airliners. I just wanted to be a firefighter. Ever since…” His voice drifted away.

“Ever since?”

“Another story. Another time.” She could see his silhouette against the stars.

“Steve,” she warned him.

“Not tonight, please. You don't want me blubbering all over you a second time.” But he didn't look toward her, simply remained staring up at the heavens. Maybe that's where he found comfort, looking up at the stories in the sky.

She stroked his cheek, granting him permission.

In response he kissed her so slowly, so deeply that she had no answer but to lose herself in the rhythm of their lovemaking.

While getting their clothes, he'd also scared up some protection. She wasn't going to ask where.

This time when she straddled him and took him deep inside, her world turned and didn't stop. Dizzy with the powerful rush, she worked him deeper and deeper until he filled her soul.

She couldn't be feeling this.

Couldn't allow it.

But there was no way she was going to stop it either.

Just before they both came, she heard him whisper, “An angel in the stars.”

“Quiet morning.”

Carly blinked her eyes open to see Emily standing above her in the predawn light. The woman stood casually, a few feet to the side, and looking out over the river. There was an odd smile on her lips. Almost sad. No. But perhaps nostalgic. As if her words belonged in another place, another time.

The man Carly lay curled against remained sound asleep, a self-satisfied smile revealed in the soft glow of a new day. No traces of last night's pain creased his face.

“Men always look so innocent when they're asleep.” Emily's smile was soft, shared. “Don't be too long waking him up. Mark will want the drone on-site soon.”

Emily turned to walk back toward the camp as Carly did her best not to blush. “Once Mark wakes up and gets that same smile off his face, that is.”

And she was gone.

Carly wanted to linger over Steve's body. Trace light fingers through his dark hair. Follow the outlines of his workout-strong chest. Maybe see that bad leg he was so ashamed of. To think about how he'd made her feel.

But time was wasting.

With a few strokes, she aroused Steve's body before he completely awoke. She sheathed him and drove herself down upon him.

His eyes snapped open with a single “Whoosh!” of air bursting out of his lungs. It didn't take him but a moment to get with the program. He might be a deep sleeper, but he woke up plenty quickly with the right motivation.

He wrapped his hands around her hips and stopped her for a moment. An agonizingly long, wide-eyed moment. She could feel the heat on her skin follow his gaze as he inspected her from her face, down over her chest, and right down to where their bodies were connected in a tangle of curling hair, his dark, hers so light.

“Now that's an amazing sight.” Then he pulled her down and kissed her. Kissed her right through any fears of what it might be like to wake up together the morning after.

The flight back to Hood River left Carly feeling disjointed. Uncertain.

The Hoodies had beaten this one and, other than some minor cuts and burns, come out clean. Exhausted but clean.

It had taken most of the third day, but they'd finally been able to turn the fire over to a Type II Incident Management Team. There would still be flare-ups and spot fires, but the winds had held steady. The heart of the fire, cornered by retardant drops, had died for sheer lack of fuel against the triple fire breaks cut by the smokies and hotshots.

Carly and Steve had found a few moments during the day when it was just the two of them—while flying the drone over the scene before it was time to retrieve the smokies, after retrieving the drone, and collapsing the trailer in preparation for the flight back to Hood River helibase.

Steve had remained quiet. Reticent.

Not a word about the sex.

She didn't expect a profession of love, but she hadn't expected him to avoid holding hands in public. She'd always liked holding hands, that feeling of connectedness. Carly had missed that.

With Steve, there was not even a gentle brush of fingertips on shoulder in passing. Nothing. He barely met her eyes.

He'd avoided her questions, no matter how gently she started them, about why he'd been so upset last night. Even the question about why he'd always wanted to be a firefighter went by the wayside.

She watched the landscape rolling by beneath the Firehawk. The twisting river valleys looked as snarled up as her innards felt. The flats from Boise, the dry brown hills and clustered trees of the Umatilla National Forest, the dry gullies and patchwork fields in eastern Oregon, and finally the familiar, heavy green of Mount Hood.

For the entire flight the intercom had been silent. She could feel Beale looking over at her a few times, but she refused to turn and meet the woman's questioning gaze.

How could so much connection, so much sharing as she and Steve had done last night be gone like a single match doused with a full load of retardant?

She didn't help him land the trailer or unload his equipment. Instead, she rode the helicopter to its pad once he cleared the lift harness.

She clambered into her Jeep, and seeing that Aunt Margaret had driven up to meet Uncle TJ, Carly left fast and drove to Hood River. Down to the small house that was listed in no phone book. Up a small dirt road that had no name. The cabin she and Linc had built together in the woods back when he'd still been alive to share a dream.

Off call for at least forty-eight hours, Carly shoved her phone in the charger, crawled under the covers, and tried not to cry herself to sleep.

***

Steve got the drone trailer back up. Fifty-fifty chance that the next inning of the fire season would be in their range, and he'd rather be ready.

He missed Carly's help. She made things easy. Alone, he couldn't get the pieces to mate, only realizing after twenty minutes' struggle that he had the middle of the mast flipped backward, by which time, he'd cross-threaded a bolt that had to be sheared off. Barked a knuckle bloody in the process.

He'd been… Damn! He didn't even know what.

He'd been through a couple too many innings in that last twenty-four hours, that's what had happened. He'd been such a train wreck last night. Steve Mercer, an emotional train wreck. That was a changeup pitch, if there ever was one.

So what if he had dark moments now and then? He'd made it through with no drugs. No antidepressants. No painkillers after they took him off the heavy, post-surgery stuff. Toughing it out had been brutal, but he'd pulled it off.

Dark moments still blindsided him, like this morning when they'd been getting dressed. He'd still been naively dazzled by an angel's beauty as she slid impossibly long legs into the off-the-rack jeans of someone who worked for a living. They'd looked fantastic on her, made her more real than some tailored, slim-leg, designer crap.

He was naively dazzled until he saw where she was looking.

His left leg.

He'd looked down, somehow expecting it to be whole each time he did. Each time it was a surprise that his leg would never be normal again. And he'd worked the right leg hard to compensate for being a cripple, which only increased the contrast.

A third of the muscle from lower calf to upper thigh was simply not there. A long scar ran up the side of his leg from ankle to hip, still a broad weal despite the six months since the last surgery. He'd have that scar for life.

The doctors had argued that there wasn't enough muscle tissue left for the leg to be saved, and he'd fought them every inch of the way. No metal or plastic prosthetics for him. He'd refused to sign the form allowing them to cut it off, even if they thought they had to while he was under.

Cripples didn't fight forest fires, no matter how many times the hospital's physical therapist had insisted on always using the word “challenged.” If one more person told him he'd be walking-challenged or activity-challenged or…

“Looking sour, Merks.”

Steve sat down on the rear bumper of the truck as Henderson came up to him.

“The damn antenna didn't want to go together.”

Henderson didn't even bother to look up at where it now shifted gently back and forth in the morning breeze. He simply parked himself on the bumper beside Steve.

“That would make you pissed, but you've been eating lemons.”

Steve grunted in response. Yeah. Probably.

They sat together in silence for a while. Henderson all relaxed, looking up at the blue sky as if it were a marvel.

Crap. He was allowed to be in a goddamn foul mood if he felt like it. Wasn't he?

“We've got a couple days' dark, supposedly. Rest and recoup and all that. What are you going to do?”

Damned if he knew. He'd been here less than a week and spent most of that time on fires. He sucked on the still bleeding knuckle. He really needed a Band-Aid, but that would require climbing back into the truck again, which would only remind him about his knee and… screw it. It had almost stopped bleeding now anyway. Almost.

Henderson looked at him for a long moment. “C'mon.”

“What?”

Henderson stood and headed for the parking lot. “Just lock the damned truck and come on.”

The Doghouse was packed.

Cars on the street had windsurf boards on roof racks. Kids from all over had come to take on the Gorge, which offered some of the best winds in America. Yet another reminder of what Steve couldn't do.

It would help if more of them were kids. But there were a lot of guys and gals who either were out to prove something or maybe, just maybe, were actually good. Plenty of them older than Steve.

Like a cluster of misfits almost lost in the hipster windsurf crowd, a group of the Hoodies huddled around a six-top table near the Snoopy doghouse. They shoved a couple chairs together at one end as he and Henderson squeezed in.

Chutes was sitting across from them, next to Evans, the “mud” geek in charge of the retardant supply and the bucket rigs for the choppers. Mickey, who flew one of the 212s; his mechanic, Jackson; and Betsy, who ran the base kitchen. A couple of guys Steve didn't know yet, including the current ground leader and his assistant.

“Akbar the Great.” Chutes introduced the small Indian man with the call sign of Ground Two.

When Steve had met him in the chopper, he hadn't realized the man's size or his skin coloring. Between the heavy gear and all the smoke stain, neither had been visible, nor relevant. Over the preceding three days it had become clear that while TJ was missed, MHA put top men on the ground.

“And Two-Tall Tim, 'cause he's as tall as any two of us strung together and three of Akbar.” One of the most interesting-looking men Steve had ever seen. Even sitting, the slender Eurasian towered over the rest of them, at least six-six, maybe more. Steve decided that the man looked both exotic and almost alarmingly handsome. Paired with Akbar the Great, whose head didn't even reach Tim's shoulder while they were seated, they were clearly different species or from different planets.

Handshakes all around, careful not to place an elbow in someone's beer.

The waitress dropped off a couple more glasses and a fresh pitcher of beer. Steve poured. A nice, hoppy wheat beer. That brightened his outlook on the day.

The conversation drifted back and forth over the Scott Mountain Fire for a bit. Every time a group of windsurfers got a little too loud at a nearby table, the Hoodies raised their voices just enough so that they couldn't be ignored. Then they set to talking about parachutes and helitack and “jumping fire” and the story of the burning tree, the one that almost got Akbar as well as TJ, got bigger and closer every time.

You could see some of the windsurfer girls and their awesomely fit bodies leaning closer and closer to the Hoodies' table. Evans, Akbar the Great, Mickey, and Two-Tall Tim were dishing it out and the girls were eating it up. These guys could clear the room of women if they wanted to.

Steve knew the ploy well. He actually found himself not joining in, which surprised him as much as anything in this long, dreadful day.

Henderson was happily married, apparently happily enough that he didn't even flirt on the side.

The ICA noticed Steve's attention. “She'd kill me if I even looked. You have no idea how lethal the woman is.” Then he smiled like the happiest man on earth.

Chutes wasn't playing either. At first Steve thought it was age, but then he noticed how close Chutes was sitting to Betsy. Maybe after a year alone, he was finally open to other opportunities. Steve wondered if Betsy noticed or if she just thought it was old friends sharing a meal.

The waitress broke it up when she came to get orders. Steve opted for the fish and chips.

Then Henderson leaned in.

“We've got a problem here.”

Steve could feel the whole mood of the table shift. Suddenly the ICA was sitting there, or maybe it was the military Major. He'd shifted the mood and taken command of the whole table with five words. How the hell did Henderson do that?

“The problem is, you've got a couple of Hood River newbies here.” He nodded to include Steve. “And a bit of clear time. What the hell can we do?”

Everyone relaxed, having thought for a moment they were suddenly going to be ordered back to base to repack all the chutes.

“Hiking.” “Surf the gorge.” “Killer waterfalls.” “Portland's just an hour away. Best bookstore on—”

“No. No. No. And no.” Henderson cut them off. “I can see that I'm going to have to talk to Rick when he flies back in. You guys are thinking way too small. Who here fishes?”

Chutes, Akbar, and Betsy.

“Fishing?” Steve's soft aside echoed the others around the table.

Henderson just winked at him as he replied to the group, “Now we're talking. The sport of kings.”

“Thought that was horse racing.” “No polo.” “Golf.” “Golf isn't a sport.” “Might be for a king.” “Bowling,” someone tossed out. “That's not a sport. In Canada it's hockey, but they don't have any kings.” “Commonwealth country, they have a queen, or at least they borrow her now and again.”

“It's fishing, folks.” Henderson spoke over the others, once again with that command voice of his. “Trust me on that. And what do we have a bunch of, just lying around when we're not fighting fires?”

“Parachutes.” “Fire hoses.” “Smokies.” That got a laugh. “TJ.” That got a bigger laugh.

“Helicopters,” Steve said.

Henderson slapped him hard on the shoulder, clamping him in place with a hand that could crush a full-grown ox.

“Helicopters,” Henderson smiled. “Now, who knows where we're going?”

“Oh,” Betsy said in her throaty voice. “I definitely know the spot.” She elbowed Chutes in the ribs.

She'd definitely noticed who was paying attention to her.

***

Steve considered begging off after the meal. He and Henderson were heading over to the big pickup that the ICA drove.

Steve didn't want to go guy camping and prove that he had no earthly idea how to fish.

He wanted…

Now that was interesting. He wasn't sure what he wanted. He didn't want to go fooling around with the drones. He didn't want to just “hang out with the guys.” He'd passed on going trolling for girls when he decided to leave the table.

Tim, Akbar, and Mickey had already enticed two brunettes and a trio of blonds over to their table with renewed stories of firefighting and flying helicopters.

What Steve wanted was…

It finally clicked. What he wanted was to see Carly. He'd been oversensitive about his damned leg. Knew he'd pissed her off. She'd been in his arms last night and felt so good, so right. That's what he wanted. He'd have to apologize, which was against his normal practices, but she deserved that much.

“You know…” He considered how to break it to the ICA. He didn't want to tick off Henderson, not after he'd been so decent these last few days.

“We'll need poles, waders, tents, and a couple Pulaskis for chopping firewood.” Henderson spoke over Steve's next thought as if he were merely continuing the conversation at the table.

“I was thinking…” Steve tried again with no better luck.

“Ice coolers, too. Do you know if TJ fishes? Bet he does. Strikes me as a sensible sort of man. Let's go see if we can roust the guy, or at least boost his gear.”

“Uh…” Maybe Steve would be better off if he just went with the flow.

“Besides…” Henderson waited to finish his sentence until they'd both climbed into the front seats of his pickup's crew cab. He waited a long moment in silence.

“Besides, I know his niece loves to fish.”

Henderson started the pickup with the roar and rattle of its big diesel engine.

As far as Steve knew, TJ only had the one niece.

“Count me in.”

Henderson merely smiled as he headed them toward TJ's.

“Knew I could.”