Pure Heat (8 page)

“Party for Rick at the Doghouse Inn!” The call sounded over the camp's loudspeakers. “Tonight is predicted clear and calm. No thunderstorms expected, so tomorrow should be quiet in the fire front. We all know how well that works. So, two-drink limit tonight if you're on the active list, one if you're driving. Someone please make sure TJ has a designated driver.”

Carly laughed with those near her. A beat late, but she laughed. TJ never drank past a second beer, not even when he'd had the excuse of previous injuries. And with his leg bunged up, he couldn't drive at all.

She really needed to get off base. A burger and a brew down at the Doghouse sounded like it was exactly what the doctor ordered. Some way to unstring the tension that had left her perched on a high-wire since the moment she'd heard TJ curse on the radio.

She opened the cupboard that served as her closet. Jeans and a T-shirt? No. She was going to rub Steve “Mercury” Mercer's face in it a bit. She went for open sandals, a pair of tight capris, a blue silk blouse that matched her eyes, and a light leather vest of chocolate brown.

She considered a pink ribbon or a blue scrunchie to hold her hair, but opted for his hat instead. She'd caught him eyeing it. Four signatures on the brim in silvery indelible marker that showed nicely on the black. No idea whose they were, but she'd bet he wanted it back.

Well, he'd have to ask.

And she'd have to be in the mood.

Right at the moment, she wasn't. She didn't like being kissed in front of others. And she sure as hell didn't like being kissed without permission.

But for that stunned moment of surprise, his lips strong on hers… Well, she always told the truth to the girl in the mirror, even if it was tarnished and not much bigger than her face.

So, truth be told, for that one stunned moment, she'd lost herself in the sensation of it. The warmth and connection rooting her to the soil. It was the first time that had happened in far too long, and it was absolutely the last time it was going to happen with Steve Mercer.

She pulled on the black hat with the orange SF. Maybe she wouldn't give it back, even if he did find the nerve to ask. SF? Some San Francisco team.

She'd bet he'd go nuts if she asked him which one.

***

“What are you grinning at, gorgeous?”

Carly wanted to tuck a hand in her uncle's arm as they walked side by side to the helibase parking lot, but the swing of his crutches would make that an ankle-buster of a choice.

“It's a beautiful evening and nothing is burning.”

“That we know about,” he corrected just as her father always had.

“That we know about,” she conceded with a soft smile at the shared ritual.

They arrived at her Jeep. Her seats and floor were covered with… gravel. A quick look around showed the long slide marks ending at the tires of an absolutely cherry classic black Trans Am parked beside hers. A seriously gorgeous muscle car with a bright red-and-orange Firebird rampant on the hood.

And not just a little gravel. It was as if whatever jerk drove the Firebird had thrown up whole shovelfuls. She could feel the heat rising.

Carly scooped up a fistful of the gravel off the driver's seat. It was hot from the sun beating down on her black seat. She was just about to sling it at the Trans Am when a shout stopped her.

“Hey, whoa. No hurting my precious baby.”

Steven “Merks” Mercer. Of course he drove a muscle car.

He moved to stand between her and his car.

“What about my ‘precious baby'?” She waved her clenched handful of gravel toward her Jeep.

“That old thing. You couldn't hurt it if you set it…” He clamped his jaw shut, clearly realizing the mistake he'd just made. Too late.

She could hear TJ laughing quietly as he cleared off his seat and climbed in on the passenger side. Carly ignored his laugh and continued to glare at Mercer.

“You couldn't hurt my Jeep if you set it… what?” she prompted him.

He hemmed and hawed, but didn't answer.

“Set it…” She leaned in close, as close as they'd been the moment before he kissed her over the top of the drone. “On fire, perhaps?”

He grimaced, then nodded.

“Yeah, sorry. Wasn't thinking.”

“You know what I'm thinking?” She made her voice breathy as she leaned even closer, their noses almost brushing.

“Uh, no.”

“I'm thinking.” She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue and saw his eyes widen. “That you're right. It wasn't your car's fault. I shouldn't hurt it.”

“Uh, thanks.”

“No worries.” Then, keeping her gaze matched up with his, she grabbed his belt, hooking his underwear as she did so, pulled it toward her, and dumped in her fistful of hot, sharp gravel. She let the waistband go with an elastic snap.

As he started to jump and hop about, she climbed up into her Jeep. TJ had cleared off her seat as well.

She fired up the engine and shifted into reverse.

Steve was trying to shake the burning hot gravel away from his precious self. He'd loosened his belt and shoved a hand in his underwear to scoop out what he could. He was definitely dancing now, his boots crunching on the gravel as he shook first one leg, then the other.

“You do move pretty quick when you need to, don't you… Merks?” she shouted at him over the sound of her revving engine.

She let out a whoop, then popped the clutch, spraying him with a long stream of gravel and dirt that sent him stumbling back. She slammed into first and roared out of the lot.

Steve was late arriving at the Doghouse in downtown Hood River. A shower and clean shirt had been necessary. Keeping the same underwear and dusty pants and boots was a symbolic thumbing of his nose at Carly. Not that she'd be paying him any mind.

The camp had been empty by the time he was ready, and there'd been no one to ask where the place was. He'd had to circle up and down the streets to find the bar. Thankfully, the pretty center of the tourist part of town was only about four by six blocks and the Doghouse Inn had a good sign.

As he'd been circling, he'd also spotted Carly's battered, dark blue Jeep. Gravel littered the paved street on either side of the front seats where she'd obviously cleared out the floor. It was nose-in parking and no one on her driver side.

Excellent!

He pulled in so tight she'd either have to climb through his car or her own. He hesitated for a moment, then checked that the street was dry. It was. So if she did climb through his car, at least the boot prints wouldn't be muddy. The joke was worth the risk of dusty prints across his black leather.

Steve surveyed the crowd from the bar's door. He was glad to see that the name of the Doghouse was ironic. As a matter of fact, this was exactly the sort of place he liked, even if he was in the proverbial doghouse himself.

Rather than being low, dark, and smelling vaguely of wet fur, it had a warm and cozy feel. Soft lighting revealed a long wooden bar that ran down one side of the room, ending in a small, open kitchen. The bar sported a collection of stools and spaces to stand. It was a bar you could walk up to and lean on while ordering a beer without having to shove and reach between a pair of hipsters with their carefully torn T-shirts, designer beer, and just-released-generation smartphones.

Wooden tables were scattered about, just a little too closely. The kind of spacing that might be tougher on a waitress but made it easy for a conversation to start at one table and flow to the next. Friendly.

The wall art was doghouses. Hundreds, maybe thousands of pictures and drawings. Some black-and-white newsprint, some drawn right on the dark wood, and a ton of photos.

The place had clearly been around long enough that visitors had sent back pictures. And they'd been doing it for a while. The wall was covered with photos and posters of all shapes and sizes. They were layered and overlapping in many places. There were regular doghouses, some with the mutt, some without. Bright pink princess ones, dark and brooding ones for your friendly neighborhood mastiff, a massive Bavarian one of dark woodwork over white sporting a little gray schnauzer napping across the threshold.

The grand centerpiece was a large painting, right on the dark wooden wall, of Snoopy in full World War I flying ace gear. He leaned forward in attack mode, hands fisted around an imaginary wheel, the wind in his scarf, and a line of bullet holes down the side of his doghouse, courtesy of his archrival, the Red Baron. The painting dominated the room.

Steve could spend hours just looking at all the pictures that literally went from floor to ceiling and covered posts and doors, but he got less than ten seconds. Chutes waved him over to the crowded bar.

“What's your poison, Merks?”

“Guinness.”

“Traitor.”

Steve looked down the long row of taps and didn't recognize any of them.

“Northwest microbrews are all you get at the Doghouse. Now get with the program.” Chutes cuffed him on the shoulder with a bonhomie that had gone out of style while Chutes was probably still in diapers.

“Okay, how about a stout?”

Chutes turned to the bartender, a cute redhead in her early twenties. “Need a stout here, Amy. Give him a pint of the Walking Man. You'll like this.” Chutes's last comment sounded more like an order than a prediction.

Steve shrugged and dug into the plate of nachos sitting on the bar. Order was big enough to gag a horse, maybe even a firefighter. Big portions. Meant he'd definitely be trying a burger tonight. He bet they'd never even heard of a wimpy quarter-pound patty here.

“So, Chutes, what the hell is your real name?”

Chutes laughed and dug out some beans and guacamole with his chip. “Damned if I remember. Ham, Carly's pop, tagged me with that about a lifetime ago. Ham named me Chutes the first day we joined. I mispacked my parachute the first time I ever did one. Ham was like that, but it was a mistake I never made again. Haven't had a failed load in thirty years. That was even before my wife came along. She always called me Chutes, too.”

Did everything here lead back to Carly and her dad?

“Called?”

Chutes nodded, “Lost her last year. She died easy, went out pretty fast. Tumor one day, gone a month later.”

Steve nodded before eating more of Chutes's nachos in sympathy. He could hear the hurt, but also the softening of the pain.

“Didn't realize it had been a whole year.”

Chutes was clearly remarking to himself, so Steve looked back at the pictures to give the man his space.

The mirror behind the bar was tilted enough to offer a view of the restaurant tables behind them though the surface had been mostly covered with doghouse photos taped on the glass.

Between a picture of a miniature dachshund puppy sleeping in a tipped-over beer mug and one of a massive Great Pyrenees sleeping in a wine barrel with the end knocked off, he caught a reflected flash of bright-blond hair in a bit of exposed mirror.

Carly sat across the room, directly behind him. Leaning forward to talk to someone blocked by a picture of a husky, this one looking out of an igloo, a cheap plastic one underneath a palm tree. Still sporting that husky smile despite the lolling tongue.

Shit. How was he supposed to know it was her Jeep when he'd slid in? Just another way to screw up on his first day with the Goonies. Now he at least had a chance to ask about the second way he'd screwed up.

“What happened to her dad? He leave or something?” He accepted the stout and handed over a five, waved for the cute bartender to keep the change. Kind of place you wanted to end up on their good side. She slapped a quarter on the bar with disdain. Whoops. He set a couple of ones on top of the quarter and pushed them back. She took the ones with a smile that didn't quite offer to rip his throat out before moving down the bar.

She left the quarter on the scarred wood to glare at him after she'd moved on.

Then he spotted the tip jar by the register, well down the bar. He took the quarter and flicked it. It backboarded off a surprised-looking Chihuahua peering out of a fur-lined milk crate and went in the jar with a bright “Plink!”

The bar girl eyed the jar and then traced the flight back to him. He offered a smile. She repaid him with a negligent shrug and turned back, but not in time to hide her grin.

He took a swallow to clear the last of the parking-lot dust from his throat.

Chutes didn't even give him a “nice shot.” Instead, he was clearly still considering Steve's question about Carly's dad bugging out.

“Or something.” Chutes was studying his beer.

Steve sniffed the pint. Took another taste. Swirled it around in his mouth for a bit. He held the mug up to the glass of the front door, the only bright light in the whole place as the setting sun drove straight in. Deep red tint in the mug.

“Cherry stout. I could get used to this.”

Chutes had gone all quiet, which snagged Steve's attention because he'd gone too quiet for such a noisy, happy bar. A quick glance at the mirror showed Carly smiling at someone, but still practically shimmering with that focused energy she seemed to bring to everything.

“What ‘something'?”

Chutes fooled around with his napkin for a bit on the bar top. Someone had dumped some coins in an old jukebox in the corner. The Flatt and Scruggs version of “Salty Dog” joined the general noise of the bar.

“You know Carly's third-generation firefighter.” Chutes leaned in so that he could keep his voice down.

“I'm new here. I don't know shit. I just stepped in some of it yesterday and know I didn't come out smelling very clean.” He looked down and raised his foot as if checking the soles.

“Not like now. Now you smell all purty.”

“It's just soap, Chutes. Gimme a break.”

“Okay.” Chutes nodded to himself. “Okay. Ham Thomas, TJ, and me, we were the first smokies to sign up with Mount Hood. Two young bucks fresh outta high school and I was fresh out of college.”

“Bet you cut a swath.” Chutes had gone from handsome to rugged, but you could see that the handsome had been there.

Chutes smiled. “We all did. None like old Hamilton, though. Maureen Bukowski. She was amazing. Carly looks just like her, but with her dad's eyes.” Then the light went out of Chute's eyes. “She was dead and buried before Carly was five. So, Ham brought his kid onto the firebases and she never left.”

“What happened to him?” Steve wished he hadn't asked. Hadn't started the conversation. He didn't look at Chutes, just watched the little square of mirror and the head of shining hair. He swallowed some beer but didn't taste it.

“Were you in by 2004?”

No need to ask “in” where, in the wildland firefight. “Summer jobs. Didn't start hotshotting until '06.”

“College boy. She'll like that.”

Steve glanced over at Chutes.

“Not blind, Merks. She likes you.”

Steve rubbed his throat. It still hurt a little. “She likes me fine as long as I'm far away.”

“Let you kiss her. That's more than most get without a black eye.” Chutes squinted his eyes and inspected Steve's face. “You're not wearing makeup, are you?”

“Oh, for crying out loud…”

Chutes laughed, then made a point of clearing his throat overdramatically as if it really hurt. Steve was fairly sure neither Chutes nor anyone else had been there for that. Clearly, like all helibases, Hoodie One was not a place to keep a secret.

“Anyway, you know about Tanker 130?”

Every wildland firefighter did. A massive Hercules C-130 tanker, old and tired with decades of service, had started a retardant drop and then its wings had simply folded up and fallen off. Metal fatigue. The crew never stood a chance as the plane augered in. The loss of that and a PB4Y barely a month later had caused the Forestry Service to retire almost all of the large tanker planes in 2004. Officially, the firefighting capacity was to be backfilled by heavy helicopters. But the heavies, like the Firehawk version of the Black Hawk helicopter, were only just now coming into play a decade later.

“He got caught in the gap?”

Chutes nodded.

The gap in air power had pushed the burden of the firefight even more than usual onto the smokejumpers for a couple of very hard years. That gap had just begun to ease off when Steve first signed on in 2006, but it was a long way from closed. New planes and choppers were damned expensive.

“I don't know quite how Carly is holding it together. TJ's, uh, accident… we'll just call it that. His accident was almost a replay of her father's death except no choppers were on site that time. Another smokie died trying to get to Ham, and two were injured bad enough to never come back. And they'd have had to cut off his leg rather than the tree limb; he caught the whole trunk. No way to get a shelter on him even if they could have reached him.”

Steve glanced back at that tiny space of mirror. Carly was looking right at him. Their gazes held for a long moment. He could see the truth across her features. The fear and terror she somehow held at bay. Could see just how strong a woman she really was. He'd probably be curled up in a corner with a bottle if he'd had to sit helpless in the sky and watch it all unfold.

As the music switched over to Aerosmith wailing out “Sick As a Dog,” he raised his mug shoulder high in a toast to her sitting behind his back.

She raised hers in return, met his gaze a moment longer, then turned away.

***

Carly didn't know if she wanted to be close to or far away from Steve Mercer. The whole evening at the Doghouse, she'd been hanging at the table with TJ and Aunt Margaret. Everyone seemed to have dropped by the table at some point, with the other three chairs a constant rotation of smokies, base folks, and pilots. Chutes had wandered over for a while, but he'd been uncharacteristically quiet. By the way he kept looking at her sidelong, he was clearly thinking about her father's death as much as she was.

Emily Beale came by with her baby. Carly got to hold Tessa. The sleeping infant, only four months old, made a tiny, comfortable bundle. Carly had held a lot of babies over the years, but Tessa did something to her, made her smile even more than normal. Her tiny face was a mirror of her beautiful mother.

“He did good.” Emily was leaning back, sipping her iced tea, and watching Carly, her voice just carrying over “Gonna Buy Me a Dog” by The Monkees.

Carly wished she needed to ask who the pilot was referring to, but she didn't.

Steve had been maintaining a low profile all evening. He'd left the bar after a while, doing his best not to limp when he was waved over to Henderson's table. She could imagine the chopper pilots seated there grilling him about flying the drone. He'd looked good, at ease. Every now and then she caught him looking at her. And a couple of times he'd caught her looking at him.

“He did.” With barely a hesitation, he'd rappelled right into the heart of an inferno to rescue someone he'd never met. Sure, it's what firefighters did. But she hadn't known that about him yet, which only made it all the more dramatic.

“I'd thought he was some jerk hooking a free helicopter ride. Then, poof, he's a fire-jumping superman.” Carly glanced at TJ, who sat to her other side, but he, Aunt Margaret, and Chutes were laughing over some old story.

“So, what's the holdup?”

Carly laughed. “You mean other than him only being on base for less than twenty-four hours so far?”