Slow Burn (Smoke Jumpers) (16 page)

He didn’t seem to mind, either. He simply shot her a glance she couldn’t interpret and turned on the water in the shower with a deft flick of his wrist. All that hot water soon had steam filling up the small space. Apparently, he still wanted heat even after his night in the forest.

“You might want to look away.” His hands tugged the T-shirt over his head. “Or not. Lady’s choice.”

“You take that shower, and
you’ll
look better.” She could feel the little smile tugging at her mouth, but she pulled a bottle of shampoo from his bathroom cupboard, placed it on the side of the tub, and then went down the hall to fetch him clean clothes. Ben’s bedroom was as neat and masculine as the man himself. Big California-king bed with a silky brown coverlet. Two large pillows, but no decorative throws. There wasn’t too much in the picture department, either. Just the silver-framed wedding photo of him and the wife he’d lost to cancer ten years ago.

When she made the return trip, he’d stripped off, dropping the dirty clothes on the floor, and disappeared inside the shower. She picked them up, folding them carefully before flipping the lid down on the toilet seat—what
was
it about men?—and parking herself on the fuzzy seat cover.

“I’ve got your clean stuff here.” She figured she should announce herself, in case he hadn’t noticed the blast of cooler air when she’d opened and closed the bathroom door.

“You sticking around, after all?”

Maybe he’d thought she’d left. She touched the dirty clothes gently. One go-around with Tide wasn’t going to be enough. He didn’t sound disappointed that she’d come back, so she’d stay a little bit longer. She didn’t want to go home. Not yet.

“Sure am,” she said, then asked what she’d been dying to know. “Tell me about it. Tell me all about the fire.”

She’d always loved Ben’s openness. He wouldn’t fill her in publicly, where there were others who could hear, but once she got him alone, he’d tell her about the fire calls he’d gone out on. What he knew, she knew. Tonight, he gave her the lowdown on the fire, sharing all the details he had. She didn’t like to think about her family out there facing down such an inferno, but it was harder when she didn’t know the facts. This way, she only feared the stuff that needed fearing.

Sure enough, he gave her all the details. It took two rinse cycles, too, as he got busy with the soap. The fire was big and hungry, but, so far, more or less contained. They’d lost two lines—her boys were going to be pissed about that, because they prided themselves on holding their line no matter what the fire dished up—but the third one was holding, and the tankers were making new drops right now. In the next eight hours, he hoped things would be finally under control. Right now, though, the Strong contingent was taking its mandatory break, so if she was lucky, that fire would be out before her boys had to head back into the field.

“That one was Mother Nature all over.” His hand reached around the shower curtain, feeling for the shampoo bottle, and she hooked him up. “Probably a lightning strike that simmered for a while.”

“How many acres?”

There was a pause on the other side of the curtain and then the sound of a washcloth getting busy. “We won’t know for certain for a few more days. Nine hundred so far. We’ve still got multiple teams working the firelines up there, and it’s looking good. Real good. Unless the wind shifts on us tonight or we have sleeper fires, we might have this under control.”

“Good.” She wanted to say something else, but some things were hard to put into words. “The hotshot who stopped you on the way home tonight—”

“That was obnoxious, wasn’t it?” She could hear him moving around in the shower behind that curtain as he answered her. What would he do if she reached out and nudged the curtain a little to one side?

“Maybe he’s ambitious,” she offered.

“And stupid,” Ben snorted. “You don’t pitch yourself for a job five minutes after you learn someone’s been injured.”

“So he’s not Mr. Sensitive,” she agreed. “That’s not a crime. Still, what kind of person does that, Ben?”

“He’s hungry, all right. And his timing certainly sucks.” He killed the water. “I’m coming out.”

She had the towel waiting for him when he slid the curtain back. Sure, she kept her eyes on his face—mostly—because she was being a lady tonight. Just until she’d made up her mind about where she wanted this thing with Ben to go. Maybe he hadn’t noticed her peeking. Much. He didn’t say anything, though, so it had to be okay.

She went out into the living room, and Ben followed, pulling on the clean clothes she’d left folded up on the toilet seat.

“Actually, I’ve been watching Anderson for a while,” he said grimly, picking up their conversation where they’d left off. “He’s been ready to go out on far too many calls. And he’s always hanging around the jump team. He’s punched overtime every week.”

“He can’t be the only one.” She was all too familiar with boys who had the fire bug and who wanted desperately to be firefighters. “Maybe he thinks this is how you get what you want, how you make the team. If he shows a little initiative, then—
boom
—he’s in.”

“Sure,” Ben said, as he sank onto the couch. “But I’m watching all the firefighters in Strong, looking for a possible arsonist. I got ten names left on that list of mine, and I’m keeping my eye on every single one of them. He shot to the top of the short list tonight. God, sitting down feels good. I’m too old for this all-nighter crap. Come over here and join me.” He closed his eyes and held out a hand. She debated the pros and cons of his offer far too briefly before she went to him. That was where she wanted to be, anyhow, and he’d asked. Just a little friendly comfort. “Maybe,” he continued, “the boy likes fire. God knows, I do. Jack and Evan and Rio—they’re the same way. Maybe that’s Hollis, too, but if so, he picked a damn poor time to make his case.”

The couch swallowed her up, and his arms closed around her.
Mmm.
She laid her head on his chest, listening to the steady
thump-thump
of his heart while he held her.

Better
. This was definitely better.

H
ollis slammed out of the hangar and made for the row of pickups and beat-to-shit Hondas hanging out on the far side of the bay doors. Fuck Ben Cortez. Hollis had asked real nice, too, and he’d still been shot down cold. He’d shown initiative, and Ben had acted as if Hollis were kicking puppies or spitting in the communal guacamole. He wanted that empty spot on the jump team, and no matter what Ben said, any idiot could see that Jack Donovan was going to be taking some R & R. The Donovan brothers had limits, too, even if the entire town acted like they were fucking superheroes. Jack had a busted up foot and arm. He was going onto the medical list. That was a fact.

What
wasn’t
a fact was who’d take Jack’s place.

Hollis needed them to look at
him
. To
see
him. He could do this job. He tossed his gear bag into the back of his truck and, two minutes later, had the gears slamming into place as he peeled out of camp. He wasn’t in the mood right now to hang out with the boys and discuss today’s fire. He took the dirt road away from the hangar too fast, gravel spitting up and chewing at his paint job. He could see the DC-3 parked out there on the runway, as if the plane was also waiting for him to say the right words, do the right thing.

He’d earned his spot, and he was getting it.

He didn’t have to be stupid about this, though.

It felt good to open the truck up when he hit the highway. It wasn’t the same as flying, not even close, but it was definitely as close as he’d get today.

Goddamn Ben Cortez and his
not now
s. The way Hollis saw it, he’d been sung that same-old, same-old tune for too many weeks and months now. His local department had fed him the same line.
Wait. Put more time in
. And, oh, yeah,
we’ll call you.

He was done waiting. No one was going to hand him an opportunity, so he’d make it. He’d show them—over and over—if he had to. He could put out the same fires they did. He could do it fast, and he’d never been afraid of hard work.

He wanted his chance, that was all.

It was too damn bad, when you thought about it, really, that he had to go set stuff on fire to get some attention. Maybe the fire camp’s higher-ups should have been more awake. That was how he saw it, anyhow. The first fires had been all about fun. He’d made himself a chance to get out of the fire camp and into the field.

These last fires? Not so much. These were serious practice. Kind of like having a business card. He liked that mental picture. A little flick-flick and his boys had themselves another fire, and he had himself another shot. With Jack Donovan down for the count, even if it was a temporary seat on the sidelines, Hollis had a real chance at going up. If enough fires lit up these mountains, the jump team wouldn’t be so laid back about filling up the holes in that roster.

Thirty minutes later, he pulled the truck over. This time, he’d hike in a mile or so. If he set this one right, he’d be back in the truck and halfway to base camp before the smoke cleared the treetops.

He got out, did a quick look around, because he didn’t need any more photographers popping out of the woodwork, thank you very much, and grabbed his bag of supplies. He had plenty of matches and newsprint with a side of gasoline.

Time to get to work here.

 

The ringtone sang its wake-up call, and Evan flipped open his cell and snapped out a hi-how-are-ya. He recognized the number. It was about time Mike Thomas called. If Evan hadn’t been out in the field for most of yesterday and the day before, he would have had the other man on speed dial.

Last time, Mike had been way too fucking cheerful. This time the man sounded cautious. Which was good. Evan wasn’t happy about how this particular favor was playing out.

He angled himself out onto the cabin’s front porch. “About time you called.” He’d cut right to the chase. “I thought I was going to have to head down to L.A. for some answers.”

There was a pause on the other end, and then Mike jumped right in. He had plenty to say, all right—but not anything Evan wanted to hear. “Yeah. So, sorry,” Mike finished up some long-ass story about being on call, and wasn’t that a bitch of a fire that ate up a block of office buildings, and had Evan seen the coverage on the news? “You found Faye, right? So what’s the problem there?”

“The problem,” Evan gritted out, “is that she still doesn’t know you asked me to look in on her, okay?”

“She needs to know that?” Mike’s bewilderment might help explain why his marriage had ended. “You did me a favor, and I asked you to keep it on the down low because I didn’t want to upset her. Any more than she already was,” he added hastily when Evan muttered a curse.

“She needs to know,” he said firmly.

“Why?” The noise from the other end said he might not have Mike’s undivided attention. Evan could hear men’s voices and truck doors slamming. It sounded as if Mike had placed his call in the middle of the firehouse bay.

“She just does.” He could imagine Nonna’s face if this came out. She’d be disappointed. Hell, he wasn’t happy with himself. He hadn’t been straight with Faye at all.

“I don’t think it matters,” Mike objected.

Which is why you’re divorced, asshole
.

“So you don’t mind if I tell her.”
There
. That was clear. Keeping this kind of secret from Faye was wrong. But, sure, he was torn: he’d agreed to help Mike for the right reasons. He hadn’t known then how he’d feel about Faye.

“Well . . .” Mike hesitated, clearly reaching. “I still think this would all be much easier if you don’t. I only wanted to know that she was going to be okay.”

“You want to know that, you ask her. She’ll tell you.”

“Okay.” Another pause, as if Mike wasn’t ready to let him go yet. “But you think she’s doing okay?”

Evan didn’t want to talk to Mike Thomas about Faye. Hell, Mike was the last person he wanted to go heart-to-heart with. What could he say? He could hardly explain how badly he wanted Mike’s ex-wife. That wouldn’t go over well. And sharing his opinions on Mike’s marital and communication skills? Equally bad idea.

Mike wasn’t done complaining, though. No, he kept right on trucking. “She said I wasn’t there for her. Said she was all alone, and she was tired of it. She knew what the firehouse was like. It shouldn’t have been a surprise.”

Faye definitely knew far too much about how a firehouse worked. Maybe she’d see smoke jumping differently, but Evan didn’t think so. She’d sounded pretty down on the whole lot of them when she’d been trading chitchat with Nonna and Lily back there in the hangar the other day.

“She said,” Mike continued, “that there was no way we could still be friends. So I figured it was easier to get you to check up on her. Make sure that things really were okay.”

“She’s okay,” he repeated. He sounded like a damn broken record, and he had no idea if it was the truth, anyhow. Was Faye okay? Was she secretly missing Mike, fantasizing about going back to him?

Somewhere in the background a siren started up, wailing insistently. “Truck’s going out,” Mike said, and then the noise nearly swallowed his voice. “Tell her. Don’t tell her. It’s your call.”

 

The old firehouse was a man-fest, firefighters swarming the porch and the truck bay, and Faye watched them climbing ladders and wielding paintbrushes. The guys laughed, tossing jokes back and forth, trading cans of paint and hammers and nails. They were working together, and it was clear that, sooner or later, the firehouse would be everything it had been before and more. The building was going to look spectacular.

Perfect for the magazine’s cover.

She took a step back, bringing the camera up so she could snap off another shot.

Since it was midafternoon, there was no escaping the summer heat. Shirts had come off, and garden hoses had come out. Rio had stripped off his top first, and the rest of the jump team had gotten on board with the plan. That meant a whole lot of hard, muscled bodies on display. The smoke jumpers were clearly comfortable in their own skin.

Joey hit Mack with a hose, and the other man brought him down with a playful nelson right before Rio turned his own hose on them. Someone dragged Mimi in, and then there were hoses pointing everywhere and way too much water running down the street.

The whole town—what there was of it—had turned out for the fun. A bunch of folks had brought barbecue grills, and Mimi had opened up the bar, passing out sodas and bottled water. Some of the guys slung arms around women, taking a break and chugging down water. There was a casual intimacy that was hard to miss, along with a few heated glances shared between couples. Donovan Brothers might be a temporary addition to Strong while the summer fire season raged, but there was clearly a make-hay-while-you-can thing happening here. No one was going lonely.

Except her.

She stood there, watching. Jack folded Lily into his arms, tucked her head underneath his chin, and pulled her back against his chest. The two of them were facing the world together, watching and laughing and holding on to each other. They looked good together. No, more than that, they looked
right,
like two pieces of a puzzle that you knew matched up. No question about it. No rough edges, just an easy, seamless fit.

She took a quick step backward, the camera in her hands suddenly blurring. She wasn’t going to cry about this.

Jack and Lily looked so happy.

Months and months ago, before it had become painfully clear that she and Mike weren’t going to fix the cracks in their relationship, she’d liked to look at their wedding pictures. They’d had a quickie ceremony on the Vegas Strip in a pretty little wedding chapel. Outside the door, were acres of slot machines and people, but inside the chapel, at first there had been just the two of them and the flowers. The place had gone all out on the flowers. Huge white lilies that had smelled divine. The florist had done something clever to keep the scent and lose the pollen, because when she’d brushed her fingers across a stamen, the pollen hadn’t stained her skin. The flowers were all prettiness, no mess.

Then the officiant had come in, two hotel-provided witnesses in tow, and she and Mike had said their vows to each other, and they’d gone back out into the noise and the din to start that new life together they’d promised each other.

Jack’s fingers smoothed the hair away from the side of Lily’s face. She said something, and Faye didn’t have to hear those words to understand the slow smile heating up his face. The white-hot sexual tension between the two of them had Faye betting those two would slip off together before the day got much older.

Jack really
saw
Lily when he looked at her, and he clearly loved what he saw.

Had Mike ever looked at her like that? The wedding picture she’d kept in a silver frame her sister had sent—with their names and date engraved on the curlicue edges—said maybe he had. He’d loved her enough to marry her, but he hadn’t loved her enough to pick her over the boys at the firehouse. Or that other woman. Yeah, that was the real kicker. It wasn’t just that he’d left her alone—he’d been trying out replacements.

He’d married her, and they’d honeymooned in Vegas, and then they’d come back to L.A., and he’d made it perfectly clear that he had a job that was important. She hadn’t argued. She’d agreed: fighting fires was essential, and someone had to do it, even if she wasn’t sure why he had to do it practically every single night. Why the beeper had to come into their bedroom and pluck him away at least four nights out of seven because he’d agreed to cover for other firefighters. When she’d complained, he’d offered to sleep the night shifts at the firehouse.

Yeah. As if that was what she was angling for—for her new husband to be gone more than he was present. She’d wanted him at
home
. In bed and close enough to touch, even if they were only sleeping. It didn’t have to be all about sex.

She’d been patient and supportive. She’d rolled out of bed to see him off and made him coffee to go and heated up dinners when he came back at all hours of the night. Then she’d grown tired of never sleeping through the night and of lying there worrying about what could happen to him even though it never did, and she’d stopped fighting when he suggested that he sleep at the firehouse.

So he wouldn’t disturb her.

He’d been so fucking considerate. She’d wanted to fight, to yell, and he’d stood there calmly, saying that he could see she was tired and wouldn’t it be easier on her if he only came back on his days off? Right then, their marriage had become a weekend thing, a hobby he indulged in when he had a few spare hours. He’d claimed he didn’t even have time for counseling to see if they could get over his landing in bed with another woman. He’d put every spare minute into fighting fires and a shot at driving the truck and making lieutenant.

The day Mike had made lieutenant, he’d gone out celebrating with the guys from the station house. He’d sent her a goddamned text, and she’d sent him divorce papers. She was surprised he’d even noticed.

Her fingers tightened on the camera.
Click
. Rio aiming a hose at Evan.
Click
. All that water glistening on rock-hard abs. It was a full-blown erotic fantasy, and she wanted to cry. What was wrong with her? She got the camera up again, the lens between her and the firehouse. That was better.
Breathe in. Then out
.

Why did she have to fall apart like this? She had a ringside seat, watching Strong’s jump team go all DIY on their firehouse, and that was no reason to feel so alone. She didn’t want to cry. Goddamn it, she was done crying. She’d left all the tears—and, yes, the loneliness—behind her in L.A. That was the whole point of having a really fast, really amazing car, right? She’d driven too fast up the freeway, but she’d been free, free, free, flying over the pavement with the music blasting. She wasn’t really going
Thelma and Louise,
but she’d always loved that last scene and how that car had hung there in the air, flying for one long, glorious, fuck-you of a moment.