Slow Burn (Smoke Jumpers) (6 page)

“Adopted,” he said quietly. “In case you’re asking yourself right now how come Nonna and I don’t look anything alike.”

“You think alike,” she groused. “That’s got to count for something.” He looked interested. How long had it been since a guy who looked like this had also looked interested in her? Last night’s drunken audience didn’t count, she decided. And only partially because the later part of the evening was an embarrassing blank.

“Tell me about it.” He tested the hood again, the well-washed cotton of his shirt pulling tight over his back. She’d bet he looked spectacular naked—too bad he’d pretty much hauled ass out of bed this morning. Since last night was already going down in the annals of most spectacularly embarrassing evening ever, she should have gotten some benefit from it. Like a really good, really long, hot look at his bare chest. Not that five-second peek she’d had.

He was staring at her now, and she was mumbling to herself.
Crap.

“She’s a rare one. Not too many of these made,” he said, nodding at the Vette and kneeling to work the jack with expert hands. A couple of quick pumps and it sure looked as if her Corvette was back in business. His eyes found hers, and that matter-of-fact glance had heat exploding in her. God, she couldn’t look away, and that was one more problem she could add to her growing oh-shit list. He had beautiful eyes, dark, with unexpectedly long lashes. Those were the best kind of bedroom eyes watching her.

His gaze dropped down her body briefly—then snapped to her eyes and stayed there, like he hadn’t meant to go there and was appalled that he had. While she, on the other hand, was unrepentantly imagining undressing him. Imagining exactly how she’d unbutton those jeans and push up that cotton T-shirt. She wasn’t going to apologize for it, either. Evan Donovan was one fine-looking man.

“No,” she answered, doing a little more looking of her own. “Chevrolet made sure these beauties were specials. Fewer than four thousand came off the line in 1965.”

“She’s a beauty, all right.” He stepped back, all business once again. “You were a witness to that brush fire yesterday.” He shrugged casually. “Fire chief—Ben Cortez—he’ll still want a statement from you. We need to get that done.”

When had she become half of a
we
? “I didn’t see much of anything. I told you that.”

He shrugged again, carefully stowing his tools in the box at his feet. “Maybe. Maybe not. Sometimes people don’t realize what they saw. Plus, you’ve got your photos. He’ll want to see those, too. Ask you some questions.”

“You think I know something and don’t know that I do?”

“It’s possible.” An unexpectedly hard look in his eyes chased away the sleepy indolence. “I want to rule it out.”

“Why is this brush fire so important?”

He ran a hand over his head, clearly considering what to tell her. She sensed what he wasn’t saying. This was firefighter business—not
her
business. That sentiment was too familiar, so she pushed him. At the very least, she’d make him
say
it.

“You gave me maybe six words this morning, Evan. In the larger scheme of things, one brush fire doesn’t compare to the kind of blaze you were called out to today. Mine merited one guy and a pickup—yours earned a plane and an entire crew of smoke jumpers. And yet you’re worried about that little brush fire.”

His eyes moved over her face. She didn’t know what he was looking for, but he was going to pony up more words. “Spill, Evan.” She gestured with her fingers, and that little smile tugged at the corner of his mouth again.

God, that smile could melt a woman.

“I’m speculating,” he said, his voice slow and deliberate. “I wouldn’t want this to get out.”

“Between you and me, Evan. That’s where this stays. Just tell me why this matters so much to you. You owe me that much, right?”

“I think someone set that brush fire.” Jaw tight, his gaze slid away from hers, assessing a battlefield she couldn’t see. This was a dangerous man to rile up. And he was definitely riled up. Seething. He saw this fire as
personal
.

“Arson? But the only person I saw up there was a firefighter putting the blaze out. Are you saying it was an inside job?”

“
That
question is precisely the problem.” Evan didn’t sound mean, but there was a
tone
to his words. Despite the smooth rumble of his voice, that tone said he wouldn’t appreciate her messing with him. Not now. “You came here. You saw whoever it was. You tell me you’re not putting that into your article.”

“I’m a photojournalist,” she said, because she couldn’t let this go. That article was a shot at something bigger than catalog work and a second chance she couldn’t afford to ignore. All joking aside, living in the Corvette wasn’t practical. “Of course I’m putting it into my piece.”

This was magazine gold. She was on to something in Strong. Her photo documentary about the jump team’s efforts to bring a new firehouse to Strong wasn’t just local color anymore. This could be huge. Syndicated huge. Plus, she didn’t want the arsonist to walk, either.

“Whatever you put in the article now would be guessing,” he said. “We don’t know the truth—not yet.”

“Obviously, you believe the arsonist is a member of your firefighting team. How is that guessing?” she demanded, slapping a hand against his chest.

“I
think,
” he growled. Having this big bear of a man staring down at her should have been alarming. She should have been in the car. And yet . . . his face was impassive, but those eyes were hot, hot, hot. “I don’t
know
. Not yet. You don’t go public with this until we both know the truth.”

“That’s not fair,” she protested.

“I’m asking you to wait,” he countered. “Wouldn’t you want to smoke out an arsonist, Faye? Do you know what kind of damage fire can do? That fire you drove through was a baby. Imagine one larger, stronger, and faster. The kind no one runs from, not even in a Corvette.”

“Yeah.” She fidgeted with the keys, getting the driver-side door open. He couldn’t force her to stay. They both knew that. “I know what can happen. My ex was a firefighter.”

She’d seen firsthand the damage fire could do. Mike had come home more than once with burns. The stories had been worse, though, and she’d never known how much—or how little—he’d exaggerated. Fire was dangerous. That was the simple truth.

“Wait,” he coaxed, and that deep, smoky rumble was pure trouble. That voice made her want to listen. Made her imagine things she had no business imagining. “I want you to wait a little, Faye. File the piece once I’m sure. That’s all I’m asking, because there’s too much at stake here. Do you know what the clearance rate is here in California? There’s a really low percentage of arsons that actually result in an arrest and charge. If I can’t prove arson, I don’t have an arrest. It’s that simple.”

“And you think you can prove your case?”

“This isn’t the first fire.”

“You have fires every day of the week out here?”

“We’ve had more than our fair share. And way too many small ones. Grass fires. Fires like the one you drove through.”

“And you’ve checked them all out?”

“I look at
all
the fires, large and small. That’s my job, darlin’. Once I’ve got a pattern like this one, I have to look at the firehouse. That part is what I need time for. You can’t turn a man into a chart and tick off what he is and isn’t in a series of columns and boxes, so I
won’t
flush someone’s firefighting career without being sure, Faye. Because that’s what could happen if I started making assumptions or accusations.”

“You want time.”

“Yes. All the time you can give me.”

 

The way Evan saw it, Faye still had the bulk of her photos to shoot, but that bought him one, maybe two, days. He needed more time, because he wasn’t accusing any man of arson without a hell of a lot of proof. No matter what suspicions he had, he needed more time to figure it all out. What would it take to get her to stay put?

“Stay in Strong,” he said. “Tell me what it will take to convince you.” Propping his hip against the driver-side door, he waited for her to process his request. She didn’t look ready to open that door and fall into his arms, but she hadn’t put the key into the ignition and hit the gas, either.

Her wicked smile should have warned him. “You really want to know?” she asked.

“Yeah.” He leaned toward her. “Cut the crap, and tell me.”

“Wow.” She nodded to herself, as if he’d settled some internal debate she was having. “You’re not much for conversation, are you?” When he shrugged but didn’t fall for the bait, she continued. “I have two weeks, four hundred dollars, and the Corvette. Since I had this magazine gig, I started here. But when I turn in those pictures, I’ll have seed money. I can
go
places.
Do
things. That’s a hundred percent improvement over sitting around L.A. doing catalog work.”

“Got it.” He had money enough for two, but somehow he didn’t think that was the offer she was angling for. “Adventure with a side of cash.”

“I don’t care about the money. Much.” She grinned up at him. “Which is a good thing, given how much I spent on this car and what the magazine is paying me for this gig. Still, eating is always a good thing.”

“No one wants you going hungry,” he agreed. “And there’s always an open door up at the fire camp. Plenty for one more.”

She laughed, and he didn’t know if that was a good thing or bad. “When I run out of cash, I’ll go back to L.A.,” she said. “Right now, I want to live a little.”

“You want an adventure.”

“Lots of them.” She smiled. “Everything on my bucket list and more. That can’t happen if I stay put here in Strong.”

He shook his head. “There’s plenty of adventure right here. You don’t need to worry about being bored.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’ll show you around.”

 

“The grand tour?” Faye looked up and down the street, but there wasn’t that much to see. Strong was all main street and not much else. “That’s going to kill a half hour, maybe an hour. You might want weeks.”

“Two,” he said, and damned if he didn’t sound sincere.

Maybe his services as a tour guide were some kind of local secret—and maybe she was reading more into his offer than he meant. He wasn’t promising two weeks of indulging her every sensual fantasy, so she needed to swallow that disappointment and move on. Even if it wasn’t fair, he sounded so sexy when he was being so damned sincere.

“Two weeks,” he repeated. “And I’ll make sure you have an adventure every day.”

“Give me some examples.” She knew she sounded suspicious, but this was her new life they were haggling over. She
wasn’t
settling for some cheesy pickup line.

“You ever jumped out of a plane?”

He crossed his arms, watching her. She bet he did that a lot—watched. “No,” she admitted.

“Then there’s your first adventure. I’ll take you up.”

She’d be lucky if he didn’t throw her out. “And in exchange?”

“You stay here in Strong. You take your photos—I’m not standing in the way of the truth coming out—but you give me two weeks to take care of some investigative business. I get to make sure that we’ve really got ourselves a firefighter arsonist before you trumpet it to the world.”

“You want to be sure. Very altruistic of you.”

His look said that altruism had nothing to do with this.
God.
He did big and scary really well. Unfortunately for him, when you’d woken up next to him, wearing his T-shirt, and then he’d kissed you senseless, it was hard to go back to the shaking-in-your-boots part.

“You know what happens when a fireman’s accused of setting his own fires? Accusations like that destroy the man and rip a team apart. When this team hears that I think one of them has been setting fires, fingers are going to point, and it’s going to get ugly. Men accusing other men. Suspecting guys they’ve been friends with for years. Some feel betrayed. Others? They go after the accuser with their fists flying. Either way, my team gets put through the wringer. So I say nothing until I’m as damned certain as I can be that there’s a real need.”

“You need to know.”

“We all need to know.”

She put a hand on his arm simply because she wanted the contact. His skin was warm and firm. Strong hands, with a small puckered burn mark on his forearm. “Okay,” she said. “I get why this matters. I really do.”

“Two weeks,” he interrupted. “Fourteen days of adventure. Whenever I’m not out on a call, I’ll make sure you see plenty of action. Think about it, Faye.”

She didn’t like his assumption that she wouldn’t do the right thing without a bribe. Of course, she hated the idea of ending her big find-herself-and-start-over adventure before it had even really started, but she knew how to do the right thing. Plus, it wasn’t as if she wasn’t used to waiting around for a firefighter to finish doing his job and make time for her.

Waiting around summed up her marriage with Mike. Two years and more nights alone than she cared to count. In comparison, fourteen days with whatever time Evan Donovan could spare her would be a treat. Giving in too quickly, though, meant giving up her leverage—and she suspected she’d need all the leverage she could get with a man who’d walk off with her car keys to ensure her compliance.

“You win,” she said. “I’ll think about it.”

“Good.” He opened the driver-side door for her. “Do that thinking on your way out to the fire camp.”

T
he fire camp was doing a brisk business in barbecue. Firefighters lined up wielding plastic plates instead of hoses, peppering their teammates manning the grills with good-natured teasing. All those hard bodies relaxing at the handful of picnic tables or sprawled out on the logs someone had rolled around a fire pit looked equally delicious. And familiar. Faye recognized that low rumble of male voices retelling war stories, while their owners enjoyed the food and the summer evening. God, how long had it been since she’d gone with Mike to a department thing? She’d sworn them off at the end, tired of watching from the sidelines. She’d been the firefighter’s wife. Not one of them.

Faye admired what they did, day in and day out, putting their necks on the line to extinguish the fires that always kept coming. Los Angeles needed men like that. So did Strong. She believed with all her heart that firefighters were heroes, and she had nothing but respect for them and what they brought to the table.

She just wanted to be more than someone who watched while others
did
.

Using their barbecue as an impromptu and covert lineup wasn’t what she’d had in mind, though. Earlier, Evan had handed her off to his brother, Jack, who’d made the rounds and the introductions with her. She’d met man after man, shaking hands and trading names with the full intent of outing someone if she could.

Since Strong’s fire chief, Ben Cortez, also needed a statement from her, her visit was a two-for-one. She got a good look at the fire camp and a chance to meet Evan’s boys and his brothers. The camp was exactly as she’d imagined, the planes and the Harleys and the maleness of it all almost overwhelming, the whole place one big adventure.

Evan dropped onto the ground at her feet. He smelled like smoke and barbecue and something fundamentally, irresistibly male. She couldn’t stop herself from looking at him. “No one looks familiar.” Except that they were all firefighters. She was caught in a déjà vu that wouldn’t quit.

“All right.” She couldn’t tell, looking at his face, if her failure made him happy or if he’d wanted to get this thing wrapped up ASAP. “You said yourself that the encounter was a quick one. You’d just driven through a brush fire. If you can’t pick out the guy, that’s okay.”

He handed her a plate, and she took it automatically. Maybe he’d taken that whole liking-to-eat thing literally, because he’d given her enough chicken and corn to feed half a jump team.

“Sorry,” she said, and meant it. This would have been so much easier if she’d walked in here, looked his team over, and pointed.

“Not a problem.”

She actually thought he might mean the words. In any case, he passed her a napkin and a fistful of plastic silverware, gesturing for her to get started on the week’s worth of groceries he’d heaped onto her plate.

“You know all these men?” she asked, taking her first bite. God, the food here wasn’t bad at all.

Evan shrugged. “Many of them. Not all of them. Fire season usually runs June through October, whatever dates the government agencies forecasting the weather and the possibility of fires come up with. You start with sun with a side of dry and pray like hell the autumn rains come early. Because Mother Nature here is cramming most of our work into a four month window, we hire seasonals. The local firehouses send up guys as well, whoever they can spare who wants to make a buck and be where all the action is.”

“Which ones are on the jump team?” The L.A. department had been all hook-and-ladder trucks and ground crew, only because there was no way you used planes and jumpers in the city. Jumping straight into the heart of the fire the way these guys did took danger to a whole new level.

Evan’s eyes crinkled around the edges. “You think we’re going to look different?”

“Maybe. You, for example.” She took her eyes off the plate and eyed him. “You don’t look like the jump-out-of-a-plane type.”

“Why not?” He popped the top on a Coke and passed her the cold can. He didn’t start on his own plate until she’d downed the first forkful.

“Too big,” she said around a mouthful of food. God, these men knew how to cook. How unfair was that? “I’d expect you to sink like a rock.”

“I float like a feather,” he promised. “Or, to put it another way, I haven’t hit the ground too hard. Yet. You’ve met my brothers, Jack and Rio. They jump, too.” He waved his own soda toward a couple of men in the barbecue line. “That’s Mack and, over there, Zay. Joey.” His finger moved down the line. “The next four are ours, as well.”

“That’s a pretty small team.”

“We’ve got ten jumpers in Strong right now. Eight to go up, two off, plus we’ve got ourselves a dedicated pilot, although half of us can fly the plane if there’s a need.”

“I’ve heard about this thing called ‘equal opportunity,’ ” she said lightly. “Some places even hire women these days.”

“Sure.” He leaned back on his elbows. “I’ve got no problem with having a woman on the team. She needs to jump, though, and she needs to haul her own shit. Jumping’s not the problem for most women. It’s the ground work.”

“Women can’t hack it?”

He grunted. “I’m not touching that one, Faye. All I’ll say is that when the fire’s cresting and you’re digging line for all you’re worth and humping your ass over rough ground, there’s an advantage to being big. Because that’s where you’re going with this, aren’t you?”

Possibly
. She looked away, focusing her attention on her plate.

“I support equal opportunity as much as anyone,” he continued. “But out there, on ground zero, you have to keep up. You pull your weight, and you hold your own, or the fire eats you alive, Faye.”

They chewed in silence. She couldn’t tell if the lack of talking was awkward or companionable, but at least the food was good. Toward the end of the meal, when someone dragged out a cooler filled with ice and beer, the guys on the duty list came in for plenty of teasing. On-duty meant the beers were off-limits—and meant more beer for the rest of the crew, who popped the caps enthusiastically.

Rio Donovan dropped down onto the log on the other side of her, trading her a beer for the empty Coke can. She wrapped her fingers around the cold bottle that was the perfect antidote to the summer heat

Rio certainly didn’t waste any time. He cut right to the chase. “You staying in town?”

Her keys burned a hole in her pocket. “Evan told you about what I saw yesterday on my way into town?” Had Evan told his brother about the deal he’d proposed?

“Yeah.” Rio watched her. He had to be, she decided, one of the most beautiful men she’d ever seen. Too bad he didn’t do it for her, because he seemed like the playful type, like a big golden cat you wanted to stroke. “My brother said he asked you to stick around some while we figure this thing out.”

“You don’t look alike,” she said, avoiding his statement.

“We don’t,” he agreed. “We adopted each other. We share a lot of things but not a gene pool. Too bad for Evan.”

Evan raised his soda can in mock salute at the light tease in his brother’s voice.

“Jack, too?” This was none of her business. But she wanted to know.

“The three of us,” Rio confirmed. He took a lazy sip of his beer. “God, that’s good. Too bad you’re on call tonight, Evan. You’re missing out here. Jack, Evan, and I met up when we were kids. We stuck together, and eventually we ended up out here in Strong with Nonna. She made things formal. Adopted us. And we all lived happily ever after.”

Three brothers. All adopted. There was more story here. Plenty more. Evan didn’t look particularly interested in filling in those blanks, however. He just sat there silently next to her, playing big and gruff.

She was out of conversation and about to plunge in where she had no business going when Jack Donovan showed up, handing around a stack of photos. Her photos. Sometime in the last couple of hours he’d managed to have them printed up. For a few minutes, everyone got busy trying to pick out identifying details.

“No one’s admitted to being on scene before Evan.” Jack turned his photo over in his hand, as if maybe there was a secret code on the back. “You saw just the one guy, right?”

They’d been over this before. More than once. She raised her bottle in silent agreement.

“Maybe five foot ten with those boots on.” Rio tossed that nugget out there.

Evan nodded, like his brother was reading from his Pulitzer-prize-winning essay. “One-fifty. Possibly one-sixty. Nicely built, but on the wiry side. White guy, from what I see of him.”

“Yeah. He was into covering up, wasn’t he?” Despite the fire’s heat and the sweat-inducing summer temps, the firefighter in her pictures was dressed head to toe. Between the jeans and the long-sleeved work shirt, the bandana and the cap, he’d bared only his forearms. Tanned and fit, he hefted the shovel easily, his head turned away from her lens.

“Hell.” Jack ran a hand over his head. “There isn’t that much to work with here. He could be almost anyone.”

“We can rule out Evan,” Rio pointed out, swapping his photo for Jack’s. “This guy’s not that damned big. Congrats,” he said, turning to Evan. “You’re the only one in the clear here. The rest of us fall within the margin of error.”

“You able to match him up to anyone here?” Evan asked.

“No.” She tossed her trash onto the burn pile. “Jack here marched me up and down past the food line twice, and I can safely say I’m running blind here. He really could be anyone. Between the baseball cap and the way the light was hitting him, you’re lucky I’m sure he’s a
he
.”

“That’s real helpful,” Jack said dryly. “Seeing as how right now there are precisely zero women working on this fire crew.”

“Happy to help.” She grinned at him, taking a sip from her bottle. The beer was cold and perfect. Her sister would never believe her: here she was, parked in the middle of fire camp, with a cold one and three of the hottest men she’d ever met. None of whom were hers, but she’d leave that detail out of the story. Lazily, she set down the bottle and reached for her camera, getting off a few shots.
Firefighters after the fight.

Ben Cortez, who headed up the department, ambled over to them. “Here you go,” he said as he handed her her official-looking, typed-up statement to sign. “Sign in triplicate, and we’re done for the night.” As she flipped through the pages, dutifully initialing, he dropped onto the log across from her, leaning forward to monitor her progress, arms on his knees. He’d had a go at the pictures on her camera, as well, with equally disappointing results. The tightness at the corners of his mouth said he was taking this hard. He might be a teddy bear of a man, but there was nothing benevolent about his eyes right now. He was riled up.

“She have a chance to review this?” That was Evan’s voice, all calm and measured. Was he looking out for her?

“She did. Faye?” Ben prompted.

She had. Ben had gone over the need for a documented statement from her. She was an eyewitness, even if she hadn’t seen crap. Now that crap was official record. “It’s okay, Evan.”

Hitting the bottom of Ben’s clipboard, she gave the documents a final once-over and scrawled her signature at the bottom of the last page. There were no surprises in there. Ben had been efficient but thorough, going over what she’d seen and from where. He’d wanted to nail down her point of view exactly. They’d walk the scene tomorrow, he’d promised.

“Why go to all this trouble when I can’t actually identify anyone?”

“Because if that fire was the beginning of something bigger,” Evan growled, “I need to know. Rio needs to know. That’s why your information goes into a database. We do info-sharing with local and state agencies, and Ben here does his own investigation, as well.”

Rio raised his beer in mock salute, and she itched to grab her camera again. Rio was trouble, six-plus feet of pure, sweet mischief sprawled on the ground. His shoulders strained beneath a faded cotton T-shirt that sported the logo of Ma’s bar. Like Evan, he was tall and well-built, but there the similarities ended. Where Evan was all hard angles and just plain big, Rio had the kind of face women liked to look at. A lot. Too bad he didn’t get her toes tingling the way Evan did. Sleeping with Rio would have been simpler. A little hot summer fun and then adios when August rolled into the autumn months and fire season ended.

Instead, she settled for giving him an are-you-kidding look. “That’s a lot of number crunching for what was probably just a brush fire.”

Evan cracked another can of soda and passed it to her, taking her empty beer bottle. “
Probably
doesn’t mean
definitely
.”

“And you want to know for certain.”

“It’s not a question of
want
. It’s a question of
need
. I told you that already.” His expression was concerned. “I’ve got a job to do here, Faye. People to keep safe. I don’t do that job by closing my eyes to the possibility that one of the guys on our team has decided to light it up on his off-hours. Small fires don’t always stay small.”

It was like a quest, she thought. An adventure, but also something more. Something that really
mattered
. These men were clearly a unit, their team more like family than most families were. All that laughing and teasing camouflaged close-knit bonds. They knew who they were, and they had each other’s backs. Except that, possibly, one of them wasn’t all that he seemed to be. One of those firefighters might be lying.

That kind of betrayal cut right to the core.

She knew all about firemen who lied, didn’t she? She was a first-class expert on the kind of secretive asshole who got off on riding out on fire calls. Mike had taught her all about that.

She’d never taken Mike’s last name, and, looking back, that had been a sign. She’d never answered to Mrs. Thomas, never even hooked his name together with hers and a hyphen. Because strong, independent women kept their own names and identities, thank you very much.