Summer of Fire (42 page)

Steve awakened in darkness with his arm around Clare, her body against him so that they fit together like a puzzle ring. Those intricately woven bands were a lot easier to take apart than they were to put together.

Yet, how complete he felt. The neon glow coming in around the drapes made him give thanks that it was not morning. Nights alone sometimes seemed interminable, but he wanted this one to last.

He remembered telling Clare, not once, but several times, of the glories of winter in Yellowstone. He’d shared the splendor of the Lower Falls, frozen into a three hundred foot cone of ice, Norris Geyser Basin steaming like a small city, and the sight of a mother moose breaking a path through March snow for her newborn calf. He’d not realized himself what he was doing, but with Clare warm and firm beside him, he admitted that he wanted more than this night.

She stirred and murmured his name. He loved the way it sounded, as though he were rediscovering value long forgotten. Today, she’d saved his life by turning on those sprinklers, and when he reached the parking lot . . . and her, he’d felt like a player rounding home base. How stupid he’d been to get hung up on Deering when she had been waiting for him.

Clare turned into his arms, her mouth finding his unerringly in the firelike glow from the windows. Impossible, but he wanted her again. Would keep wanting her if the way he felt tonight was any indication.

They moved together, less frantically than the first time. He was not as desperate for touch long missed. The memory of Susan, the luxury of their time together, was pushed aside by the sweet ache that strove and climaxed with his and Clare’s mingled cries.

When they lay together, hearts pounding, he knew he’d been right to open that door. Like the spring crocus from the soil, reborn in a single night, he said hoarsely, “You make me feel alive, like I haven’t been for years.”

Steve’s words made Clare realize she’d had her life on autopilot since Jay had left.

Sure, there was plenty of Brownian motion like molecules vibrating in a science lab. She’d become a firefighter and helped others, gotten Devon through high school, but what had she done for herself?

“When you knocked I had my hand on the doorknob,” she confessed.

He chuckled, their bodies still joined. “After how childishly I acted about Deering, you were ready to do that for me?”

“For you . . . and for me.”

With his weight pressing her into the mattress, it was hard to remember her reservations. She reveled in sensation until he caught his breath and rolled off her.

Then she came back to earth. He’d had a Coke this evening while she and Garrett sipped at beers, but could he stay on the wagon?

It went deeper than that. Being in bed with him was no guarantee he was getting over Susan. Men and women thrown together during fire season met, coupled, and parted by the hundreds.

Neon light from the window was joined by the faintest graying of sky. “Oh, God,” Clare said. “Morning and still nothing from Devon.”

“I’ll help you,” Steve’s hand gripped hers. “Whatever happens, you don’t have to face it alone.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

September 8

Georgia Deering came out of the bathroom, wiping her face with a damp washrag. Feeling better after throwing up, she was almost hungry for bacon or sausage instead of her usual cereal and fruit.

“How long have you known?” her sister-in-law Anna asked from her place at the kitchen table. Her blue eyes were bright with what looked like merriment.

“Known what?”

Anna laughed and sipped the coffee she’d made, taking over Georgia’s kitchen the way she ruled the roost in her own house. “Aren’t you the one who’s wanted to get pregnant for years?”

Georgia lowered the rag to her side and stared at Anna. She felt a quietness inside as though the world had paused and she with it.

Then . . .
of course.

Last night, she had awakened alone as she had since July. Outside the bedroom window, cottonwoods etched charcoal against the slate sky. In a few weeks, the shadowed moon would grow round. So many times she and Deering had lain and watched the trees transform from blackened lace to silver filigree. Moon by moon, they’d marked the years.

Now, with each passing moon she was no longer alone.

“How far along are you?” Anna persisted.

Georgia considered. With Deering gone, she had not even consulted her calendar. The last time he had been home was the second weekend in July. “Nearly two months. I’ve lost weight, not gained.”

“Of course you have,” Anna agreed. “I used to do that when I had morning sickness.”

Georgia groped for a kitchen chair and sat. “He called me yesterday, said he was coming home last night.” Speaking of it brought back the ache she’d felt, straining for a sound in the darkness. Waking and hoping she had missed the chopper’s landing and that any moment, his key would turn the latch.

“Where is he then?” Anna asked.

“I don’t know.” Her cheeks flushed. “I’m afraid I wasn’t very nice when he called.”

“You two are beginning to make me lose patience.”

Georgia tried to ignore Anna’s steely glare. It wasn’t as though Deering was innocent. “He admitted to chasing that woman. Clare, the paper said her name was.”

Anna did not relent. “Does he love her?

“He said he loves me.” The kind of tears that stung filled her eyes. “I want our lives back together.”

“Well then . . .” Anna prompted.

Georgia put a palm on her still-flat stomach and tried to imagine a baby in there. What would Deering say when he found out? Lately, they had given up even talking about it.

Anna went on. “It’s past time you came to your senses. Deering’s going to fly no matter what you say. And if you love him . . .”

“I do.” Flashes hit her of a whirlwind courtship that had enticed her to forget he was a pilot. Of wedding white and the sweetness of her first married kiss. Of a man who’d worn his military uniform to marry before heading back to Vietnam.

“If you love him, you need to realize that that boy,” Anna nodded toward Georgia’s midsection, “is gonna want to fly with his daddy more than anything.”

Georgia had always thought if she had a child, it would be a girl. Someone small, pink and sweet smelling. Kendra would be a champion quilter and biscuit maker, winning ribbons all the way to the Idaho State Fair.

For the first time, she considered the possibility of a boy. Georgia had never known the rough and tumble of a brother, but she’d watched John and Anna raise their raucous brood. If she and Deering had a boy . . . or a girl . . .

You’ll want to fly with your daddy.
She smoothed her stomach.

The telephone rang and her heart started to pound. She answered, “Hon?”

“Mrs. Deering.” The deep voice was made soft by a Southern inflection. “This is Garrett Anderson with the West Yellowstone Fire Command.”

She wished she could turn back the clock, crawl into bed and go to sleep. Maybe she would dream that Deering had his arm snug around her. “He’s not here,” she managed.

“Yes, ma’am, I know. I’m calling to tell you that he flew out yesterday afternoon and we haven’t heard from him.”

Georgia dropped the phone from nerveless fingers and heard it clatter and ding. She was vaguely aware of Anna picking it up and talking to the man on the other end. Last time Deering had been AWOL she’d seen him come back . . . with that Clare.

But he’d sworn that was done. Yesterday, he’d promised to come home and if she’d mistaken the love and remorse in his voice, she was never going to trust her instinct again.

Anna put down the phone and the look on her face said it all. This time they didn’t think he was held up at some spike camp by the wind. They never would have called unless they thought he’d gone down.

Clare struggled from her dreams and picked up the telephone in mid-ring. The clock beside her bed at the Stagecoach said it was nearly nine.

“Yeah,” she managed in a sleep-ravaged husk. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Steve stretched out beside her with the sheet draped over his bare hip. His mussed hair spoke of midnight pleasure and his eyes said he’d not had enough.

“It’s Garrett,” said the distinctive voice on the phone.

“Yeah.” Clare ran a nervous hand through her newly shorter hair.

“Some good news. Those hikers were sighted down in the Lamar Valley by Johnny Arvela when he was flying in around sunset. I just got word.” His somber tone said there was more and it wasn’t pretty.

“That is good.” She twisted the phone cord and noted a patch of beard burn on her left breast. A surreal feeling split her into two women, one who wanted to hang up and crawl back into a cocoon with Steve, and a mother screaming inside for news of her child.

Garrett went on. “The rangers at Old Faithful questioned the firefighters after the North Fork passed. When Deering’s chopper took off, a number of persons said they counted two passengers.”

A shudder went through her. Steve touched her arm. If Deering was down somewhere in the mountains . . . “Who would be with him?”

“I’m afraid that this morning your buddy from Houston, Javier Fuentes, heard about the search. He called in to say he saw a blonde with curly hair beside a helicopter, talking to the pilot.”

“Oh, God.”

Steve’s hand tightened.

“Fuentes thought it might be Devon. This was during the height of the firestorm.”

Clare opened her mouth to say that there were a lot of blondes, but Javier knew Devon. A pit of cold fear opened in her chest.

“The smoke is pretty thick this morning,” Garrett said. “They’ll be starting the air search as soon as they can.”

Demetrios Karrabotsos led Clare and Steve across the tarmac at West Yellowstone Airport. Tankers and helicopters were lined up at the ready, their crews standing in groups killing time with fire gossip. Karrabotsos scanned the gray sky. “This temperature inversion should clear in another half hour.”

He sipped from a Styrofoam cup, grimaced, and tossed the last inch of coffee onto a wild rosebush edging the airport ramp. “Fresh caffeine, my treat.” He headed toward the crowded catering tent.

Ever since Garrett had suggested Devon was with Deering, Clare had been dwelling on what he’d said last night. Deering had been called to the scene of a fire, where people were supposed to have been trapped. Why had hikers even been permitted into the backcountry?

The orange juice she selected, in a plastic cup with foil top, tasted sour.

She tried to focus on Steve and Karrabotsos’s small talk, but her mind spun scenarios.

Deering and Devon had crashed in a fireball of aviation fuel. They’d lost power and come down in the burning forest. They had landed, thinking they saw the hikers, and been overtaken by fire on the ground like Steve and his fellow scientists had nearly been.

How she wished Devon had left the park on one of those buses and was somewhere in Montana.

Karrabotsos evidently knew the dangers of fire. Those scars on his face bore the slick look of burns. Realizing she’d been caught looking at them, she averted her eyes.

“Vietnam,” he said. “Chopper crash.”

“And you still fly.”

Black eyes fixed her with a look of disbelief. “You can’t let something like that scare you off.”

Thinking of her own experience in losing faith, she was fiercely glad she’d fought the firestorm at Old Faithful. Having done that, she still wasn’t sure she could return to the station in Houston. Being out there in the parking lot was far different from fighting fire in close quarters. What if someone who trusted her to watch his or her back ended up in a tight spot? Could she be sure she’d act without thinking to save them?

Karrabotsos cast another look at the brightening sky. “May as well start my preflight.”

Clare imagined the Huey disappearing into the haze. She’d sit around the airport with Steve and drink endless cups of black bitter coffee, wondering what was happening to Deering and Devon.

She set her jaw. “I’m going with you.”

Steve swallowed and looked across the ramp at the helicopter Karrabotsos planned to take. Another Huey like the one Deering had flown. Just the sight of it started a griping in his gut.

He admired how the tough part of Clare continued to assert itself even as she warred within over her friend Frank and the young soldier Billy Jakes. She could handle this while he stayed behind.

The way she spoke to Karrabotsos and did not even turn to him said she couldn’t imagine him willingly getting aboard the helicopter. Competent pilots would accomplish the search and Steve couldn’t bring anything to the party.

Competent? Clare thought Deering was a good pilot and he’d crashed twice. Craggy veteran Karrabotsos must believe the same for he’d hired him. Hell, the older man had been burned in a crash, yet he was one of the most respected in the air charter business. Even after going down, he thought the idea of being deterred by it preposterous.