Where There's Smoke: inspirational romantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 1) (17 page)

More stupid tears, but she knuckled them away. “I was pretty scared, and I...” She couldn’t look at him. “Shoot, Jed. Why does it matter? I’m fine now, and I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Another thing we’re not going to talk about?” He slammed the clipboard down on the table next to her. “I’m sorry, Kate, but yes, we
are
going to talk about this. Because apparently something happened and if it’s going to affect the team—”

She launched to her feet. “It’s not going to affect the team. I’m fine. And I will be fine forevermore. I’m not going to take any risks, and I’m not going to get anyone hurt.”

Hurt, or maybe anger flickered in his eyes. “What
happened
?” he asked, his voice so low it rumbled under her skin, unseating her.

Kate stood there, staring up at him, his eyes now so dark she hadn’t a clue what he might be thinking. “Fine. I...I had a nervous breakdown. A full-out meltdown. They had to hospitalize me.”

She got a reaction then. His eyes widened, his mouth opened. Closed. He swallowed. “Oh, Kate—”

She held up her hands, backed away. “This is why I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want you to think that I was—”

“Broken? Scared? Alone? Sheesh—” He tunneled a hand through his hair—it stood on end. “You should have called me—
why
didn’t you call me
?”

“Why didn’t I...are you kidding me? I couldn’t call you—you’re the last person I wanted to know how I’d failed.”

“Failed? How you
failed
? You didn’t
fail
, Kate. You lived through another terrifying entrapment, and the thought of you going through that alone—” He turned away, breathing hard now. She thought she heard a muffled curse word. Then another, this time more creative. He turned back to her, his face just a little whitened. “I should have been there for you. I should have been the
first
person you called. No one understands better than me—I’m so sorry, Kate.”

She simply blinked at him, nonplussed. “You’re sorry?”

“Of course I’m sorry! I’ve been sorry every single day since I told you to stay away from me in Alaska. I figured it out about two point three seconds after you took off that I was an idiot, and if I hadn’t been strapped to my bed with IVs hanging off me, my hands bandaged, my leg in a cast, I would have chased you down the hall and all the way to Boise, begging your forgiveness. Or wanted to—if I wasn’t such a prideful jerk. I know you didn’t deserve any of what I gave you, but I was so...” He clenched his jaw, shaking his head, and in his eyes ranged the same clutter she’d seen before—frustration, pain, horror, fear—and something else. Maybe something stronger, worth waiting around for.

“I was so scared,” he said finally, quietly, looking away. “I didn’t want you to leave, but I knew that if you stuck around, if I
let
you stick around, then I’d keep making stupid decisions trying to protect you.”

“I don’t need protecting—”

He held up his hand. “I get that. I know that, but it’s in my blood, Kate. I can’t
not
protect you. I can’t not look at you every time you jump and hope—and pray hard, I guess—that your chute opens. And if it doesn’t, that your reserve shows up. And that you don’t get impaled by a tree, and that once we’re on the ground you don’t get hit by a snag or some falling rock or, God forbid, chased by a wall of fire. I dream about it—more often than I’d like to admit—you standing there, frozen, the fire roaring up behind us, your beautiful eyes filled with terror. And I wake up shaking, in a cold sweat. My greatest fear is that you’ll freeze again.”

“No. I heard your voice in my head.
Deploy your shelter
. You were there, Jed. At least in the beginning.”

His Adam’s apple moved in his throat. He blew out another breath as he walked to the edge of the deck. Held onto the rail.

She watched his rumpled skin turn white against the railing.

Oh, Jed. She walked up, put her hand on his back. He drew in a quick breath as if her touch wounded him.

“I didn’t tell you, either, because I didn’t want to scare you.”

“I’m already scared, pretty much all the time, Kate.” He looked down at her. “Every time you go up I feel a little sick.” He sighed. “But I know that’s the way it is. I can’t keep you from jumping—well, I can...”

She dropped her hand, frowned.

“But I won’t. Not anymore. Because I think...I
hope
you finally get it.” He turned to her, took her hands. “You were a little crazy today with Hannah.” His thumbs moved over her hands, sending tingles, heat up her arms.

“She nearly died, Jed. Of course I freaked out. She’s my protégé. And maybe like a kid sister to me and—”

“And you care about her.”

“A lot.”

“Exactly.” He stepped closer to her, touched her cheek. “Except you’re not in love with Hannah.”

Then he bent down and ever so softly kissed her. Sweetly, lingering, not even testing, but as if he’d been waiting, banking the fire to a slow burn until this perfect, singular moment.

He tasted of the sweet lemonade, still cool on his lips, and she didn’t quite know how to react, except—

Yes.

She’d been dying to kiss this man—
really
kiss him—since that day seven years ago at Grizzly’s when she’d taken him in her arms. The panicked kiss in the tent didn’t count, wrought from adrenaline, filled with regret.

This kiss she meant.

She’d never stopped loving Jed Ransom, from the day he appeared on her doorstep all the way to the night after they’d nearly perished in their fire shelter, when she’d held him again, this time trembling in her arms.

Jed.
She pressed her hands to his amazing, muscled chest. He made the slightest moan, deep in the back of his throat, moving his hands around her, pulling her in close. Then he angled his head to deepen the kiss, nudging her mouth open, diving in as if kissing her might be the way he stopped time and delivered them both into a pocket of reality where fire and loss and fear couldn’t find them. Where, for a delicious, blessed moment, they clung to each other, safe.

They’d had it once, briefly, and he brought them to it again with the smell, the sense of him, strong, capable.
We’re going to live through this, Kate
.

The past seven years fell away, puddled around her as she sank into him, wrapping her arms around his neck, losing herself in the breadth and height of surrender.

He backed her up, and she felt the table against the back of her legs. Then, his hands were on her waist and he lifted her to sit on the table. She leaned back, and he caught her chin in his hand, lifted her gaze to his.

His smoky blue eyes glistened as his eyes roamed her face, his expression so tender it lodged her heart in her throat. He caught her wet hair, twining it between his strong fingers before he nestled it behind her ear, trailing his hand down her neck, back to cradle her face. “Oh boy, am I in trouble.”

She frowned but added a smile. “Why?”

“I can feel Jock staring down at me, and I’m just bracing myself for the lightning.”

She looked up, over his shoulder. “Sky looks clear.”

“Yeah, but he’s in my head, screaming.”

She laughed. “Yeah, well, Dad was always a little overprotective.”

Jed’s expression turned solemn. “I promise to not hurt you again, Kate.”

“You can’t promise that,” she said, smoothing her hands down his sculpted chest. Wow, she remembered this too, being pressed against his body as he shielded her from the heat of the fire.

His thumb drew down in a caress. “Then I’ll try. I won’t freak out every time you jump out of a plane, and I’ll do my best to trust you.” He touched his forehead to hers. “And if I can help it, you’ll never have to go through a fire alone again.” She reached up, touched her fingers to his dark whiskers. “That’ll probably take a little faith on your part.”

He drew in a breath. “A little.” Then he leaned down and kissed her again.

Jed didn’t need a parachute to fly.

He sat at his desk, amidst the weather reports, requisitions for food, supplies, and equipment, and a briefing from the new hotshot crew boss, Axel Calhoun, and fire couldn’t touch him.

His brain zeroed in on one thing—the fact that Kate sat in the loft, repairing parachutes. He had a vision of himself sneaking in, wrapping her up in one of the silken clouds, disappearing with her in his arms.

He wasn’t sure how he’d gone from standing at the edge of her world to an all-out dive into what he’d been quietly longing for his entire life, but he wasn’t going to look up, see a possible tear in his canopy.

Jed leaned back in his desk chair, balancing it on two legs as he peered out into the main area where Weather and Dispatch monitored lightning strikes and callouts from other stations. The squawk box buzzed out updates now and again, but nothing to make him worry.

That’ll probably take a little faith on your part.

Kate’s words. And, while he’d shrugged them away before, now they found him, burrowed in, sat there, itching.

Maybe not. Because something had shifted in Kate when she watched Hannah plummet from the sky—a realization, finally, of exactly how it felt to watch someone you’ve trained die—or nearly—on your watch.

She understood. And when she told him about how she’d deployed her shelter, although it could tear him asunder to think of her alone and terrified again, fighting the heat and terror—the fact that she
had
deployed, that she hadn’t frozen...a guy could almost breathe again.

She knew the costs and how to take care of herself, and besides, he planned on being with her every single jump this summer.

Which was why, perhaps, he’d let himself lean in, take her in his arms. Why today he wasn’t slamming his head against a wall, the panic welling up to choke him. And why he couldn’t get his mind off heading down to the parachute loft. Sure, if Miles found out, he might decide to put the kibosh on their new status. But this wasn’t just a flashover summer romance.

This was Blazin’ Kate Burns, the woman he’d never been able to extinguish from his heart.

In the main area, a half-eaten tuna fish sandwich lay in its open wrapper on the counter next to a large map that covered one wall, push-pins indicating fires both current and past around the nation. The hotshot team, including the veteran smokejumpers who had attached to it, had returned late last night. He’d risen to Pete and Reuben’s gear piled in the family room, the husky scent of smoke rising from the pile of grimy clothing.

Miles returned in a moment, picking up the sandwich, chewing as he studied the board, a printout in his hand. Jed got up, wandered out to him. “What do you see?”

“There’s a flare-up south of here, in the Bob Wilderness, but the Missoula jumpers are on it. And the West Yellowstone team is on a fire down in the Wind River Range. The McCall team went in to boost the Grangeville group down in the Seven Devils in Idaho.” He took another bite of his lunch. “And we’re just sitting around, reading magazines.”

“The team needs a little R&R after this past week,” Jed said. “And tonight is the graduation for the smokejumpers, so there’s a party brewing.”

Miles washed the last of his meal down with a Coke. “How many finished?”

“We have ten for sure, two more on the line.” A line over which he didn’t know if he should push them. In fact— “Is Kate still in the loft?” He kept his voice cool, and it must have worked because Miles shrugged, crushed his can, and tossed it into the trash in a practiced basketball shot.

“Think so,” he said, and leaned over their weather tech, eyes on the high and low pressure fronts dotting their way across the screen.

Jed left him there and, casually, his hands in his pockets, walked down the hall then into the ready room. At one of the long tables, their master rigger, Ruck Cameron, was folding a chute, the lines laid out, the canopy smoothed.

“Jed,” he said in greeting. “I’ve pulled out every chute, and Kate’s checking them over. The woman is driven.”

“She watched one of her rookies take a swan dive, nearly hit the dirt. Yeah, I’d say she’s driven,” Jed said, clamping him on the back. Twenty years Ruck had invested in the packing game. Jed found it hard to believe he’d missed a rip in a canopy. Ruck apparently did too, because he shook his head.

“Some of these canopies are old, but I go through every one after a fire, make sure it’s still sound. Can’t figure how three of them ended up with tears.”

“Three?”

“I know. Terrifying,” he said, and nodded toward the tower, where parachutes hung from the ceiling like jellyfish. On the other side of the room, he could hear the whir of a Singer. “Kate is doing a little extra reinforcement.”

A little? Jed turned and spotted Kate, a canopy laid out, two more wadded on the workbench. The rest of the chutes lay folded on the tables. He stood watching her as she bent over the machine, her hair plaited in two braids, held back with a blue bandana tied behind her head. She wore a yellow team T-shirt and her regulation canvas pants, a pair of Keens, and had caught her lip on her bottom teeth in concentration.

He could stand here all day waiting for the brilliant smile that could stop his world cold, restart it with a flush of heat and desire.