Pure Heat (21 page)

“Can't get enough of the stuff.” He did manage a quick kiss before she scooted back.

Jeannie was looking at the black-and-orange hat on Carly's head. Steve couldn't stop the smile. Double whammy on Jeannie's low-life Dodgers. Steve's girl was wearing his team's hat. “His girl.” He liked the sound of that a whole lot. Even if she wouldn't touch him at the moment.

Jeannie aimed a cocky grin at Carly. “Damn, girl. You snatched up a good one before I even saw him.” She made an elaborate pout before moving to inspect her helicopter.

Beale was already there.

Steve could see that the rear rotor had its blades snapped off and the lower fin of the tail section had crumpled up at a strange angle. Something had hit it good and hard from the bottom up. Not a missile. Still it was a miracle she'd landed the thing at all.

Beale and Jeannie settled in and started talking. Henderson delivered Tessa to Emily, and the three—four, counting the sleeping child—stood there bonding over their helicopters.

Steve turned for the pizza, but Carly waved him off.

“Shower truck is over that way, Mercer. I'll get you some clean clothes from your kit.”

“Gonna scrub my back?”

“In your dreams, Mercer. In your dreams. And definitely not your butt.”

He watched Carly head toward the barn where they'd all tossed their gear. A quick glance back at Jeannie, competent, confident, sexy enough to light a room on fire. Jeannie would definitely have been his type just a short while ago.

But his eyes returned to Carly. Quiet, forthright, and driven as all hell. And Steve knew one thing for sure.

Henderson was right. There was no way he was going to let Carly get away.

Steve didn't manage to entice Carly into the shower. Which was actually just a nozzle on a water truck backed up against the woods. The water hadn't warmed up in the least since they'd pumped it from some subglacial stream, so he was done the instant that he stopped flowing red.

“You missed a spot.”

He spun to see Carly leaning against a tree a half-dozen paces off. “What are you doing there?”

“These.” She waved a handful of clean clothes at him. “And admiring the view. You missed a spot here.” She slapped her right backside.

“Come on over and clean it for me.”

She smiled at the tease, but not much. So Steve turned the freezing hose back on, palmed some soap, and scrubbed the last of the retardant off.

He took a towel from the top of the stack on the truck's bumper, not big enough to cover anything, but at least he wouldn't soak his clothes when he pulled them on. When he was as dry as the little piece of cloth was going to get him, he moseyed over to Carly. Considered pinning her against the tree and seeing just what they could do, but she was holding out his underwear. The look on her face was quiet and a little distant.

He took his clean underwear.

***

Carly was definitely feeling short of breath as Steve pulled on his clothes.

His naked body did things to her blood pressure that Linc's had never prepared her for. It wasn't just the fine muscle tone, nor the innate maleness of everything Steve did, every move, every gesture. Even in the little time she'd known him, looking at his body filled her mind with a thousand images.

The goofy expression as he, all unsuspecting, stepped off into the deep hole in the Rogue River to free her line. Or the look of desperate need when she thought she'd be dunked deep into the waters of the Payette and had instead landed deep in one of the best kisses of her life.

Steve casually dropped chaos into her neatly ordered routines. From spewed gravel to sex in the sunlight. She'd bent or broken every relationship rule she'd created to protect herself. Steve was a wild card and everything about him was fast. Mercury “Merks” Mercer, indeed. It did fit him.

He made a show of taking his clothes from her hands one piece at a time, demonstrating reluctance as he stepped into a clean pair of jeans. Flopping his shirt over one shoulder, rather than pulling it on, so that she could see the little remaining drops of water that outlined his chest and arm muscles.

She met his eyes, dark with the shadows.

And he had said he loved her.

Carly had seen how he looked at Jeannie, but something inside her didn't turn that into doubt, despite the woman's undeniable sex appeal. How could she doubt the way Steve looked at her, the way he made her feel? Even now, he was so in tune with her mood that he stood unmoving. So close she could feel the heat from his bare chest, but far enough away that she could easily step clear if she wanted.

How many women had he swept off their feet with that perfectly balanced sensitivity to mood? That ability to hold what she knew must be raging desire, as she felt it herself, in such perfect control?

She was in terrible danger here and couldn't move a single muscle.

Steve reached out to brush his hand down her cheek, and she knew she'd be in his arms a single heartbeat later. If only she knew whether that was the smartest or the dumbest thing she'd—

“Unless you two want an audience, you need to move deeper into the woods.” Kee stood by the hose, most of her camouflage gear stripped off. Now she wore just panties and a tight tank top, both army green, that hid absolutely nothing. Her face, neck, and hands were still green-and-black painted. She had a piece of half-eaten pizza in one hand and a bag of fresh clothes in the other.

“'Course”—she turned her back on them and peeled off her tank top—“I never cared much one way or the other who was watching. Makes my husband, Archie, a little crazy, but he's loosening up.”

Carly dragged Steve away before Kee got her underwear off. Sure, he'd followed her instead of Jeannie, but there was no point in needlessly tempting the man.

The dinner conversation around the picnic table stayed focused on the fire. As sunset progressed, a Coleman lantern was fired up at either end of the table. The plastic-coated map from the afternoon now sported many more notations, an expanded fire except on either flank of the northern leg, and several pizza-grease spots.

That north front was worrying. Their chances of stopping it from crossing and closing Highway 6 were decreasing hourly. At this point, it would be only two miles wide when it crossed rather than the original five-mile swath it had threatened to cut. But it wouldn't be good either way.

Steve had tried a couple of times to ask Kee what she'd seen, but after she ignored him the first time and Henderson cut him off the second, he shut up.

Damn it! It had been his drone they shot down. He had a right to know what she'd found. It took him a while to overcome his grumpy mood. Once he finally did, he began to see what was happening.

Kee faded into the background, settling into one of the small lawn chairs at the edge of the light. Her interest in firefighting tactics was clearly somewhere below cleaning the last of the camo paint from under her fingernails. That she used the tip of an alarmingly long knife to do so made him give her all the space she might want.

Rick doodled down one edge of the map while offering thoughts aloud that Carly and the two ICs pushed back or modified. Finally, TJ made a dozen radio calls back and forth with Akbar the Great and a couple of the hotshot crews. They shifted some of the attacks a bit. But, until the winds hit tomorrow, they were mostly guessing.

Evans showed up with a report of how many gallons of retardant they'd dumped from both the helispot across from Elk Creek campground and the air tankers out of Hillsboro. Any normal fire would be showing some sign of forgiveness for all this work, but the New Tillamook Burn, as this fire had been inevitably dubbed, showed no signs of abating.

Steve had landed the gray-box drone, given it a full systems check, refueled it, and gotten it back aloft before the night closed in. He wished he could change out the bird, but the other gray-box drone was scattered in a thousand little pieces over the northern Tillamook Forest and the black-box one didn't have the endurance to fly through the night. SkyHi promised a replacement delivery by tomorrow.

Kee still hadn't drifted away, despite the strategizing, and now sat in total darkness. She remained just slightly faded into the background, exactly as she'd been two hours earlier. Except with cleaner fingernails.

Still waiting. Motionless.

Steve looked around the table. Most people had drifted off, some hoping for sleep. Rick said his good-byes and dragged TJ back to Hillsboro Airport. He was still limping, but no cane. Henderson had his daughter asleep in his arms.

Steve hadn't ever thought about having kids, but the idea of a little Carly curled up in his own arms wasn't as repellent as it would have been just a year ago, hell, just a week ago.

He'd said he loved her. He'd actually said the word, not one he'd used for anyone other than his mom.

Did that mean that the word “marriage” wasn't far behind? It hadn't worked for his mom, but it was clearly working for Henderson and Beale. They sat hip to hip on the bench. Jeannie was parked close beside Beale. It was like she, too, was in love. When he focused on their conversation, he could hear them going back and forth about angles of attack, velocity-based dispersion rates, and cyclic back pressures. He was wrong. Jeannie didn't love Beale, though there might be some worship there. It was that they both loved flying helicopters.

When Evans wandered off to make sure he had enough retardant inbound for the next day, Steve understood that he, Carly, and Jeannie were the outsiders here. Henderson, Beale, and Kee weren't going to talk until the three of them were alone.

As much as he hated not being in the know, he started to rise. He tried to pull Carly along, but she resisted. She too clearly felt the need to know what Kee had found in the north woods, if anything.

Henderson waved them back to sitting. Steve started to feel relieved, right until Henderson shifted into that serious mode of his.

He pointed at the three of them one by one—Jeannie, then Carly, then Steve. He felt as if he'd been stabbed in the chest when Henderson's attention reached him.

“You three are civilians. Do I need to lecture you about what's going on here?”

Steve started to shake his head but decided he'd better just listen for once.

Carly slipped a hand onto his thigh and held on as she leaned forward. “I don't think so, but why don't you give us the short version anyway?”

Steve noticed that Kee was moving back to the table. He scooted down so that there was space beyond Carly. Carly kept her hand on his thigh as she moved with him, and he covered her slender fingers with his own hand.

Now there were just the six of them, some empty pizza boxes, and a lot of half-empty bottles of water.

“Okay. You know that Mount Hood Aviation flies under two contracts. We contract with the U.S. Forest Service in a firefighting capacity and have done so for almost fifty years. You were also told, when hired, that another arm of MHA flies transport flights for the CIA, an operational holdover from the purchase of the Air America assets after the Vietnam War. This is all public knowledge. Or close enough. Right?”

Steve found himself nodding with the others. But he knew there was another shoe to drop. Carly's fingers tightening on his thigh, only confirmed the conclusion.

Kee made a point of poking through the pizza boxes until she found one with several slices of Hawaiian. She took one casually and then turned to set the empties on the lawn chair she'd previously vacated. It was only as she turned back that Steve caught what she was doing, surveillance of the immediate area to make sure they weren't being overheard. When done, she nodded to the Major who just barely acknowledged the gesture.

“Everyone welcomes firefighters. U.S. wildland firefighting forces have served in well over fifty countries. Our big air tankers have entered almost a hundred countries to fight wildfires.”

“We know all this,” Carly cut in. Of course she would. She'd been around MHA since she'd been born, so she knew all these nuances that Steve was just discovering. The paperwork he'd signed had been about security clearances, not about mission profiles. Transport for the CIA. He'd heard the rumors but never really credited them.

“There's a third contract. One under which Emily and I were brought aboard.”

That stopped Carly. Something she didn't know about MHA. Steve paid closer attention.

“There are conditions,” Henderson resumed when he was sure of everyone's absolute attention. “Conditions where insertion of operational assets into a political environment can be very difficult. We, however, can arrive under the firefighting umbrella and, ah, pursue another agenda as needed.”

“But that's…” Carly started but went silent.

Steve knew what she was going to say. Crazy. Crazy and dangerous.

“Up there”—Henderson pointed to the northwest—“someone is sitting on U.S. soil with a Russian-made missile. While this wasn't anticipated, this is well within the purview of MHA's new third contract. So…” He reached down the table and snagged a piece of pizza without disturbing the baby asleep in his arms.

“The question is, are you ready to cross over?”

“Cross over to what?” Steve still didn't get it.

Carly saw it but didn't know if she liked it. She'd trained to fight fires. It's what she did. She didn't want to get wrapped up in politics or any other nonsense.

“Slow on the uptake there, Giants boy.” Jeannie answered Steve's question. “I knew the Giants sucked, but I didn't know their fans were as stupid as their teams.”

“Like you LA freaks could hit a ball if we slow-pitched it to you.”

“Talk, Giants boy. Nothing but talk.”

Steve grabbed the bill of the hat that Carly was still wearing and pulled it down, dragging her head forward in the process. She could feel him tapping the silvery signatures on the brim.

“See here.”

“Sure, looks like a bird pooped there.” Jeannie was laughing at him.

“World Series 2012. Zito, Bumgarner, Vogelsong, and Casilla. Winning pitchers in four straight. They'd have whupped your sorry asses, but, wait, you weren't there. So we had to whup on Detroit instead.” Steve was practically crowing, and Jeannie was looking bummed.

Carly liked her. She flaunted but didn't play the field more than any other cute girl. She'd hooked up with Evans for much of last season, been flying solo for most of this one, which had depressed Evans no end.

That gave her an idea. Carly pulled the hat free from Steve's grip, letting her sit up straight again, and slid it off her head to study the signatures.

She winked quickly at Jeannie, then asked Steve, “So, I got from the SF that this is San Francisco. But is this is a baseball team… Or maybe basketball?”

Steve and Henderson both groaned in pain as Jeannie crowed with triumph.

“I'd been meaning to ask,” Carly added, driving another nail in Steve's coffin. She'd thought to hand the hat back to him, holding it like a dead mouse, but he looked so distressed that she pulled it back on and dragged her ponytail through the back hole.

Then she hooked a hand behind his neck and kissed him solidly on the mouth. She could feel his smile returning before she pulled back.

The kiss won them a little round of applause, and a smile and wink from Jeannie. But Kee had remained dead silent. Unmoving beside Carly. She could feel the woman's stillness.

“Okay.” She cleared her throat. “Okay. So if we ‘cross over' as you say, what does that mean?”

“See the people at this table?”

“Duh,” Jeannie said, saving Carly from making a similar observation.

“Around this table is the circle of knowledge. If you cross over, you can never talk about it with anyone who isn't sitting here. In SOAR we call it black-in-black. Some fire marshal shows up with questions, you know nothing. An Army general tries breathing down your neck, no dice. Someone appears with a photo of you at the scene, you swear under oath in a court of law that it was Photoshopped. Want to impress a new boyfriend? You better not be talking about any third-contract action. Or even the existence of a third contract.”

Henderson inspected each of them again. “This is your moment. Walk away and take some of this damn pizza with you, or stay and cross over.”

Carly stared not at Henderson's steel-gray eyes, but at the brilliant blues of Major Emily Beale, retired. A woman who had clearly loved what she did and left it to bear her daughter. This was a woman who flew into danger because someone had to and she was qualified to do so, perhaps one of the most qualified on the planet.

And Carly was being asked to choose whether she wanted to fly with someone who was the very best.

Beale didn't respond. She didn't offer any answer, neither encouragement or “go away, little girl.” She met Carly's inspection with an absolutely neutral expression.

Steve squeezed her hand where it rested on his thigh. He'd made his decision. He was in if she was, out if she wasn't. She didn't want to be responsible for both of them. It wasn't her decision to affect two lives rather than just her own. Yet who would she want to fight fire with more than Steve Mercer? He'd faced down his own injuries to return to the fire. He hadn't hesitated in saving TJ's life. He'd been out of the chopper before she'd even thought about the idea, breaking the first firefighter's rule of safety to save another.

Carly looked at Jeannie.

“Oh.” Jeannie waved a negligent hand. “I'm so there.” Dragged her fingers across closed lips, tossed aside the key, made a crisscross over heart, spit in her palm, and held it up for someone to high-five. No one took her up on her offer as she actually had spit. It glistened in the light of the camping lanterns.

Carly turned back to Emily Beale. This was the woman she wanted to fly with, wherever it led. She understood why Kee had saluted Emily differently, why she'd been in such awe of receiving the compliment this morning.

Carly's slight nod of agreement was returned by just as small a gesture.

She felt as if she'd just stepped off a very high cliff.

And as if she'd never earned such high approval before in her life.