Slow Burn (Smoke Jumpers) (5 page)

Today’s fire call, however, was the real deal. He had to set
his
fires in accessible spots, so he could get in and out quickly, but this new blaze was way out in the wildlands. Probably a summer lightning hit that had started a sleeper fire in some deadwood. Left alone long enough, that little spark had eventually lit up the side of the mountain. Now the jump team was headed up to check it out.

The DC-3 rumbled, making its taxi down the runway. There was a cheer from the men on the ground when she cleared the tarmac and got air beneath her. Jump team was en route, off to save the day. God, he wanted to be up there, one of the team headed out to the jump site.

Instead, he was here, parked on the fifty-five-gallon drums of fuel lined up beside the hangar. Nothing fancy here, no underground tanks or bulk fuel storage. When Spotted Dick bellowed orders, everyone lent a hand to roll those heavy motherfuckers out to the plane. Being hand crew and therefore a temporary firefighter meant he had a ringside seat for the start of the party—but no invite to what came next.

“You think we’ll get called out?” The firefighter next to Hollis didn’t even bother looking over when he shoved off the drum he’d perched on. Small and wiry, the guy couldn’t have been a day over twenty. He was too wet behind the ears to recognize that Hollis, already on his third fire season, had the edge on him.

Hollis kicked his way back over to the camp kitchen, trying to figure out how come he was always on the ground when what he wanted was to fly. Twenty-three, and he’d put in his time, right? He deserved a chance. He was always first on the truck, too. He pulled his weight.

It wasn’t the money he was after, either, although the money was good. Real good. He liked knowing he had cash in the bank, waiting for him when the season let up some. More fires meant more hours worked. Still, he’d started out pretty small on the other crews he’d worked, careful not to set too many fires. He’d let himself have one, maybe two, each season.

Now, after three seasons fighting fire, he had himself a break. The fire camp in Strong was his ticket to the big leagues. If he worked hard enough, the Donovan brothers would have to notice him. He’d finally get his chance to join the jump crew.

Fighting fire was the first job he’d had where the work
mattered
. He got to be a goddamn hero. Not often enough, but sometimes. Even his father had had to admit that, maybe, Hollis was on to something important. Thirty years selling a laundry list of cheap-ass products no one really wanted or needed, and his dad still hit the road every week. He had quotas to make, he’d say, and that meant there wasn’t time to sit home and chat it up with family. Out there, on the road, he had business to take care of, and take care of it he would.

His dad understood quotas and checks from the companies who hired him to shill and then paid out a miserly commission for each sale his dad had wrung from the folks he met and solicited on the road. His father hadn’t been able to sell the program to his mother for long, because Mommy Dearest had up and left when Hollis was a baby. After that, he had been raised by an uncle. Uncle Roy had done his best, but kids weren’t his strong point.

None of them ever figured Hollis would amount to much of anything.

He’d learned what a high firefighting was when he was still a kid. The old lady down the street had been inside her trailer when the place went up. Hollis had kicked in her door, thrown her over his shoulder, and gotten her out of there, exactly like it was a movie or something. The people watching him had shouted and cheered. For the first time, he’d
been
someone, someone good, someone who mattered. He wasn’t Roy’s screw-up nephew or the son his father couldn’t be bothered to call.

No
. He didn’t need his father’s voice trumpeting in his head and he damned sure didn’t want those memories. Fighting fires mattered. He had made something of himself, so the old bastard could take his dire predictions and shove them right where the sun didn’t shine. Maybe Hollis hadn’t finished college, and maybe he didn’t sit a desk job, but he got out there every fire season with the best of them, and he made a difference. The rest of the year, after the crews shut down, he got by with part-time gigs or unemployment.

He was smart, or so the test-your-brain exams the teachers had passed out claimed, but he still couldn’t seem to get the hang of bookwork. Taking tests, turning in papers—those things didn’t go so well for him. But that was okay. He was out here now, where the only grade that mattered was how fast and far you dug your line.

Spotted Dick’s plane was only a silhouette now, disappearing over the horizon as it winged its way toward the dark plume of smoke punching up into the sky. God, he wanted to be on that plane. One of the team.

He’d get there, too. Whatever it took, he’d make them see he was good enough. He might be a loaner from a volunteer fire department two towns over, but he could
belong
here in Strong. He knew it.

All he needed was the chance.

He hit the kitchen, and the camp cook looked up. It was so damned quiet up here that Hollis figured his stopping by had to be a highlight of the guy’s day. “You don’t get bored?” He lit the tip of his new cigarette from the smoldering end of his last one. “It’s real quiet here.”

The camp cook eyed Hollis’s Marlboros, but Hollis wasn’t wasting a perfectly good cigarette by stubbing that bad boy out before it was done. Fifteen bucks an hour didn’t go
that
far. No way the Marlboro Man would have backed down on the issue, either. He liked the image of the Marlboro Man riding all over the range. That man was one tough son of a bitch. He’d probably have made a good smoke jumper if he’d been given the chance.

“Give me a hand here.” The other man was stacking up used plastic plates as if he was running a five-star restaurant.

Hollis finished up the cigarette and stubbed it out. He wasn’t shoveling plates for the remainder of the summer. No way. Sure, fifteen bucks an hour wasn’t bad money for a guy like him, and the overtime helped some, but what he was jonesing for was a place on the jump team. He could pull his weight there. He knew it.

He grabbed the stack of plates. All he needed was one chance.

He’d show them how helpful he could be.

Out there. On the fire line.

Hollis’s hoarse bark of laughter had the camp cook looking around, but fuck him. He gave the matchbox in his pocket a quick rub. Plenty of opportunities waited for him here in Strong.

I
t took twenty minutes of bouncing around in the back of the plane, a clear shot down, and then four hours on the ground before the jump team had packed out. Thank God for quick jumps. The way Evan saw it, the day had been just a little same-old, same-old. Which was good. He didn’t need different right now. Didn’t need a shake-up. A summer lightning strike that smoldered for weeks until the dry log housing it finally gave in and combusted? That made sense.

Fires, he could do.

The woman undoubtedly steaming in his cabin back at the jump camp? Yeah. She wasn’t making anywhere near as much sense. Or maybe what didn’t make sense was his half-assed plan of parking her there to wait for him. He’d bet that plan hadn’t gone down well.

Whatever. Just thinking about Faye Duncan made him antsy. The need to be doing something was an itch he had to scratch.

So he really didn’t need Rio’s 411 when the jump plane touched down to know that palming Faye Duncan’s keys hadn’t been his best move. He’d had a come-to-Jesus call waiting for him on his cell from Nonna, too, which meant word had definitely gotten around about his pickup at the bar last night. Christ, no matter how he looked at it now, it had been a fairly dumb move on his part.

So he’d screwed up.

Again. He’d made more than his share of mistakes in his younger days, so he recognized regret when it bit him on the ass. He left the hangar as quickly as he could, tossing his gear into the back of his Ford. Swinging himself into the cab, he hit the road.

He did
not
look left when he took the fork back to Strong. If Faye Duncan was sitting on his porch gunning for him, she’d have plenty of time to bend his ear later. Somehow, though, he didn’t take her for a stay-at-home kind of woman. Not a woman who drove a red Corvette and who had gotten an entire barful of tired firefighters onto its feet with a song.

Not a woman who kissed like that.

Christ.
He hated to admit that he hadn’t been able to shake that kiss all day. Faye Duncan knew how to kiss a man as if he was the center of her universe. If that call hadn’t come in, he’d have done something even more regrettable.

He’d have stayed in that bed.

Stayed in Faye’s arms and sunk himself deep inside her. The attraction had hit him hard and fast, but he wasn’t a fool. Rushing straight into sex wasn’t the right thing to do. She wasn’t a one-night stand, wasn’t the kind of woman a man brought home from the bar—even though that was exactly what he’d done, with the best of intentions. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to think about why she’d left Mike. Whatever the reasons had been, they were hers. Still, he’d put coming clean about Mike’s request at the top of his to-do list.

He might not be any kind of expert on women, but even he knew that much. Secrets sank you faster than bailing without a parachute.

His phone buzzed when he pulled into Strong, and he guided the truck into an empty spot next to the Corvette. A quick glance at the screen warned him that Mike was calling again. Yeah, he probably owed the man a check-in.

“You find Faye?” the other man asked as soon as Evan barked out a hello.

“Sure did.” Drunk and in a bar, but those weren’t details the other man needed.

He got out of the truck and gave the Corvette a once-over while Mike clearly searched for some way to break the awkward pause. Probably Evan should have volunteered a few sentences, but the way he saw it, it wasn’t his job to do the talking here. That was all on Mike.

“She seem okay to you?” Mike asked finally.

Fair enough
. “Fine.” He paused, the memories of her cheerful singing coming back to him. Maybe he could coax her into singing without the cocktail warm-up. “She seemed fine, like she was having a good time.”

“Doing what?” There was some throat clearing on the other end of the line.

He wasn’t a private eye. If Faye Duncan wanted to have a few drinks and do a little sing-along, that was her call. “She came up here to do that magazine piece, right? On firefighting.” He outlined the situation for the other man. “So she was meeting some of the boys, getting to know them.”

And then, of course, he’d taken her home with him. He figured he’d leave that part out, too.

“Yeah.”

More silence on the other end, and then, right when Evan was ready to hang up, Mike started talking again. “Yeah. That’s good. You totally positive she doesn’t need anything?”

“Her car overheated, but I’m taking care of it.”

“Piece-of-shit Honda she drives isn’t made for mountain roads,” the other man agreed. “Getting that car out of L.A. was a miracle.”

“No problem there,” Evan volunteered. “She traded up. Corvette.”

“She doesn’t have a Corvette. Hell,
I
don’t have a Corvette. Is it a rental?”

“She said it wasn’t. Real nice car,” Evan added helpfully. “Vintage with a Rally Red paint job. Can’t possibly miss it.”

Mike cursed. “She doesn’t have the money for that kind of car.”

“Guess she did.”

“This isn’t like her. She doesn’t up and buy Corvettes.”

But she had. Maybe Mike hadn’t known his wife as well as he’d thought he did. Or maybe Faye had decided to turn over a new leaf. In a sixty-thousand-dollar car. That was one more thought he’d be keeping to himself.

“Okay,” Mike continued. “Well. Fuck. Keep me posted, and tell me if she needs something, okay?”

What did he say to that? He wasn’t some kind of babysitter or social worker. “She’ll be fine,” he said finally, because he needed to end this call. Last time he’d checked, divorce meant things were over. Wherever Mike’s head was at, he apparently hadn’t gotten that memo. That, or he was packing a whole lot of guilt.

Either way, Evan was done playing therapist.

A handful of good-byes later, he was a free man. Tossing the cell onto the front seat, he slammed the door shut and grabbed his toolbox from the back.

Strong’s main street was as sleepy and unchanged as ever. Ma’s hadn’t opened yet, and there was a singular lack of cars. Town looked like it had every other midafternoon this week and the week before that. He liked that predictability. Sometimes it was good when things didn’t change.

Going over to Faye’s red Corvette, he unlocked the driver-side door and popped the hood. The car was as sleek and pretty as its owner. Corvettes didn’t care much for heat, however, and Faye had taken the car through a brush fire. He might as well take a look, see what he could do.

A car was infinitely fixable.

 

An hour later, he had the Corvette jacked up and the antifreeze swapped out for new. A quick check of the hoses, and Faye would be back in business. The growl of a motorcycle approaching warned him he’d finished up just in time. Sure enough, the driver killed the engine and coasted to a stop beside the Corvette.

Even underneath the car, he had a clear shot of the two women riding the bike. Faye Duncan had dug up some spare clothes somewhere, because she’d changed out of his T-shirt. The new tank top and shorts didn’t cover much more, although he appreciated the view. She sat there on the back of the cycle, hugging Mimi’s waist, her legs pressed against Mimi’s. Yeah. He shouldn’t go there, but damned if those two women paired up like that wasn’t the sexiest thing he’d seen in a long time. Although waking up next to Faye was pretty damned memorable, too.

He’d wait, he decided, for Faye to say something first. There was no point in jumping headfirst into trouble here. Instead, he slid out from underneath the Corvette and got busy beneath the hood again, since the undercarriage had checked out fine. She didn’t make him wait long.

She swung one leg over the side of the cycle and kept on coming, her flip-flops biting her bare heels in a sharp snap of sound. “I should kick your ass,” she said.

That was perfectly clear. Still, because needling her was fun, he asked, “You should—or you’re going to?” While he tested the hoses, he shot her a sidelong look. Only her legs were visible beneath the Corvette’s hood. The motorcycle helmet she clutched in her left hand tapped against her thigh as she considered his question.

“You took my keys. That wasn’t cool.”

“You want help with that ass-kicking, holler.” Mimi’s voice carried over the sound of the motorcycle tires crunching gravel as she rolled the bike closer. Evan didn’t need to look to know that Mimi was watching him, a playful smirk on her face, while she waited for him to dig himself a hole he couldn’t crawl out of. Mimi liked to look tough. From the cowboy boots to the leather pants she sported despite the bone-soaking heat, she screamed don’t-mess-with-me. He’d seen that look on more than one face growing up, and he wouldn’t call her on it. He liked Mimi.

“You overheated.”

“Excuse me?” She fidgeted, and the flip-flops started their irritated back-and-forth snap against her soles again. He grinned, knowing she couldn’t see his face.

“That’s a common problem with these vintage Corvettes. Come on over here and take a look.” He waited patiently for her to make up her mind and lean under the hood with him.

Having her this close was a sweet reward for his patience. Being tucked under the hood with her was pure heaven, the air all grease and rubber and Faye in the cozy space.

“You’re a mechanic, too?”

“When I need to be, sure.”

On the other side of the hood, Mimi called a cheerful warning and farewell. The bang of the bar door opening and closing told him there was now one less woman he had to worry about. Faye, though, was nervous and trying to hide it. Not sure where to set her hands, she finally leaned over the engine, giving him a clear view down the tank top she was wearing.

“Right here.” He pointed with the screwdriver at an older hose. “You run the air on your way up the mountain?”

“Yeah.” She braced her hands on the edge of the engine compartment, leaning in for a closer look. Not touching him. No problem. He shifted, brushing her bare thigh with his jean-clad one. “Yeah, I did. It’s summer. No one drives up from L.A. with only the windows rolled down. You trying to tell me a sixty-thousand-dollar car can’t handle running the AC?”

He shrugged. “Facts are facts. Feel that hose—it’s all soft, and that’s no good.”

She huffed disbelievingly, her hair dancing around her jaw. If he moved, he could smooth it behind her ear. “This is a vintage Corvette. In pristine condition.”

“That’s your problem right there. Some things you need to change.”

She eyed him sidelong. “Fixing my car doesn’t mean you get out of jail free.”

“Nope.” He kept his head down, busying himself with swapping out the offending hose. The new hose meant Faye wouldn’t be making any involuntary roadside stops anytime soon. The car was a good one; it just had a few kinks. “Wouldn’t expect that.”

“So.” Faye backed away, and he found himself unexpectedly missing that connection. She smelled good. She paced as he finished his tightening and gave the setup a last once-over. Yeah, it would hold. “Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“Fixing your car?”

“Yes.” She stopped moving. Maybe he was supposed to know the answer to that one. “You’re not a mechanic. I’m not paying you.” She eyed him suspiciously. “So why do I come back here and find you under the hood of my car?”

“Seemed like the right thing to do.” He straightened up, closing the Corvette’s hood. “The car needed fixing. I know how to fix things. Simple.”

“No.” Her lips were slick and shiny. Peaches. She smelled like peach lip gloss as she stood there, fighting him. He wanted to lick the corner of her mouth, lick his way right inside. “It’s not that simple.”

“Sure it is.” He tested the latch of the Corvette’s hood. When he was sure it was secure, he turned and tossed her the keys. “If something’s broken, you fix it.”

“So now I can go?” The look on her face definitely said he’d gotten it all wrong. “This morning,” she challenged, “you said I wasn’t going anywhere.”

 

“Why do you want me here, in Strong?” Her fingers closed around the keys. She could be in the driver’s seat in two steps.

Too bad playing with Evan Donovan had a certain undeniable appeal.

When she’d spotted him working on her car, part of her—a very primitive, feminine part—had been intrigued. If a girl wanted to, she could have all kinds of adventures with a man like that. Sure, Evan’s high-handed arrogance had the rest of her seeing red, but part of her . . . part of her wanted to pull him into her arms and give him some pointers on what else needed taking care of.

Her view of his ass in those jeans wasn’t dissuading those errant thoughts, either.

Keys
. She needed to use the keys.

“You should stick around,” he said finally, right when she’d given up on getting an answer out of him.

“Is that an invitation?”

“Sure,” he said again. “You want one, there you go.”

“I don’t know.” She deliberately ran her gaze over him. “You kidnap women. That’s not a point in your favor.”

“You fell asleep on me,” he countered. “I think that might count as bodily assault in some states. What was I supposed to do? Step away and let you land on the floor?”

“There is,” she pointed out, since he was being difficult, “a difference between making sure someone doesn’t do a face-plant on the floor and carting said someone off to your cabin and taking her to bed.”

“True.” He shrugged. “But what are you going to do about it now?”

Time to bring out the big guns. “I’m betting,” she said, “that Nonna might do something about it for me. If I asked her.”

His hands tensed on the hood. “You met my mother.”

“Uh-huh.” And reconciling the woman she’d met briefly with this great big taciturn bear of a man was unexpectedly difficult, although they shared the same sly, quiet humor in addition to an uncannily similar I-can-fix-this attitude.