Wildfire at Dawn (8 page)

“You’ve practiced this line, haven’t you?” Laura realized that she was sitting back and rather enjoying herself. The food was good, the deer was amusing as it finished its first lap around the garden fence and found little to pillage except for a few dahlias that had foolishly stuck their heads out through the wire, and the man was as charming as he was handsome.

“Does it show?” He made an elaborate pout at being caught.

“Storytelling father is sure showing.”

“Wait until you meet Mom,” then he blanched. He looked right at her, then his eyes slid aside; not down, as in to her chest. Aside.“Sorry, that was way too forward. Don’t know what I was thinking. But she’d like you. And not just because you’re a knockout.”

“Not dreaming of some pretty Indian girl for you?” Some part of him, even if it shocked Akbar himself, had imagined taking her home on approval. That was totally absurd on a first date, and they both knew it. But it had been there and she couldn’t ignore that compliment either.

“Mom will be happy if I ever settle down. But you two would get along big time. She also loves to laugh.”

Laura had never seen herself that way. She lived alone. Saw her parents a couple times a week, and most of her closest friends were horses. Not a lot of laughing opportunity.

Then Akbar rose slowly to his feet and came to stand in front of her. Keeping his eyes on hers as he held out a hand actually sent a shiver rippling over the rest of her skin.

He ended up being the one who led her into the bedroom.

# # #

“Oh God! Don’t stop!” Laura’s moan was driving Akbar wild. His pulse had anchored between his legs; he could feel it pounding there.

But she’d been so awkward and stiff when she lay down on the bed, that he’d rolled her onto her stomach and started a massage. He’d begun at her scalp, scrubbing his fingers through the thick masses of chestnut hair so soft he’d leaned down and rubbed his face in it. Then he worked her neck and shoulders and along her spine. Only copping a feel of the ever-so-soft skin on the sides of her breasts a few times.

She had about the nicest behind he’d ever gotten his hands on. Between the running, the horseback riding, and the hiking, it was quite amazing. He dug into and loosened up the gluts, driving her pelvis down into the mattress as he did so which was eliciting her current moans of pleasure.

He shifted down to her feet and traveled up each of those long legs, feeling each muscle group let go in turn, working the blood back up toward her heart. When he ran his teeth over her insole, she actually cried out. He’d been with women who responded, and others who not so much. But he’d never been with one who lost all semblance of control and didn’t seem to care about it.

Laura rolled onto her back and gasped out, “Don’t you dare stop.”

It had almost killed him to sit outdoors with her not wearing a stitch of clothing. But he’d had to do it. Had to see her out in nature. The naked Amazonian woman with the trees soaring behind her, completely in her element. Every inch of that long, lean frame of hers dappled by the sunlight. She was mesmerizing.

He did as he’d dreamed of doing as she sat so at ease in her chair, that perfectly upright horsewoman posture of hers absolutely slaying him as she asked him about his childhood for crying out loud. That there was enough blood in his brain for him to speak at all was amazing. He’d thought of nothing but starting at the tips of her unpainted toes and discovering every glorious inch of her.

Now fingers stroked, hair brushed on skin to tease, mouth tasted. She opened to him as he progressed upward, digging her fingers into his hair to hold him in place between her legs as she lit like a fire until she was burning so brightly it blinded his senses.

Except for a few times on the fire line, he’d never seen a woman face danger the way she had that morning. Definitely not a civilian. Laura may have been on ice and snow rather than char and flame, but she’d fought for her life and that of those around her and she’d won. He did everything he could think to show her how magnificent she truly was.

She dug protection out of the bedside table and flapped it at him. Unable to stand it any longer, he sheathed himself and drove into her. Her heat scorched. Her fists beat against his chest even as her mouth pulled his down to lie upon her.

The fire that burned in him roared out of control, burned, flared, and was ultimately doused. But still it did not abate. It was merely, finally, at long last quenched—for the moment. With Laura Jenson, the fire of his need for her felt endless.

# # #

Laura cracked one eye open. The cabin was lit by only the faintest hint of dawn in the sky. In the Pacific Northwest, summer dawns were a lazy, drawn out affair, casually strolling across the sky, stopping here and there to smell the flowers.

A shadow passed before the window. On this side of the glass. She didn’t need to think to remember. Every blazing second of their lovemaking was crystalline clear. As he had mounted her, later she had mounted him. Not just once either. She could feel herself blushing in the dark. They’d done things she’d never done before. Most men did what they wanted, and that’s the way it went. With Akbar, even the slightest hint or gentlest pressure had him navigating whole new vistas that were the ones
she’d
wanted explored.

Calling him “The Great” sounded too remote, too foolish.

“Johnny?” It looked as if he was pulling on a shirt.

“I didn’t want to wake you.”

She felt the breath catch in her throat. Well, what did she expect, bedding the man on their first date together. She’d known what he was when she’d seen him in the restaurant. It had been a long and wild day—and night…and now he was sneaking out. She was torn between saying something sharp and biting or something pitiful like, “Thank you.”

When he moved to sit on the edge of the bed beside her, she still couldn’t speak. His hip brushed against her arm and she could tell that a shirt was all he’d found of his clothes so far.

“I’m on call today. I have to check on my team, make sure they’re okay and that the plane is all set in case there’s another fire. I need to be on base by dawn, otherwise no way would I be leaving your bed.”

Okay, she was glad she hadn’t said the biting thing. Or the pitiful one.

“I’d love a rematch, Space Ace. Because I’ve certainly never been with a woman like you.”

“Been with a lot of women have you?” she managed a tease in the tone.

“Too many. But none like you.”

“And how many times have you said that before?”

She could make out the outline of his shrug. “Might have said it a few times. Never meant it before. I seem to this time though.”

Laura liked that he didn’t hide who he was. Again, that comfort in his own skin thing. They’d definitely need to talk about that some more.

“How long until dawn?” She knew perfectly well.

She could see his head turn to inspect the uncurtained window.

“Long enough,” he declared and fell on her.

Laura welcomed him with open arms and held onto him for every second she could.

# # #

Two-Tall tried razzing Akbar for not being in his bunk last night. For leaving the morning before without rousting Tim from his rack.

When neither worked, Tim looked at him strangely. “Is Victoria back in town?”

“Not that I know of.” They’d had a couple of good nights together before the New Tillamook Burn had set in. He’d jumped into the fire and she’d caught her flight back to a Boston banker’s job. Couple of nice texts back and forth, but that was long since done.

“You didn’t go back and get my little blond, did you?” Two-Tall’s little blond had been taller than Akbar, though not as tall as Laura.

“Nope!” This was getting fun. Clearly Tim had blocked out the woman at the Doghouse that Akbar had declared a “washout.” Well, if that was a washout, bring it on.

He kept Tim going for almost an hour. At first it was impressive just how many different women he came up with from Akbar’s past. Then it started to get a little depressing. He sounded even more shallow than, well, he was.

Then Jeannie came by and asked if he’d passed on her hello to his new girlfriend. It was enough to trigger some synapse in Tim’s brain.

“No! It can’t be. The hot brunette?”

“Thanks a lot,” he mouthed at Jeannie.

She tugged on the bill of her LA Dodgers hat as if tipping it to say he was welcome, and headed off whistling
Take Me Out to the Ball Game.

“You tagged a local?”

“She’s not a damned tree marked to cut,” Akbar snarled at him and headed over to the radio room atop the control tower to get away.

Damn! He had to get his head together. That line was milder than most things he and Tim teased back and forth about the women they bedded. He’d never reacted like that. Of course, the women he’d “tagged” before hadn’t been like Laura.

He climbed the tower stairs slowly. By every definition of his life so far, he’d “tagged” Laura. But he hadn’t. Not merely “had sex” either. They’d made love. No two ways about it. How had he gotten to a place where that was the exception rather than the rule?

That stopped him cold halfway up the tower stairs.

He wanted to blame it on Two-Tall, but he feared that finger pointed the other way around. Akbar had been the bad influence. Back in high school, he’d pretty much been a loner. The ultimate nerdy geek—he’d taken every AP class and even been in Chess Club for crying out loud. He’d had so many credits, he could have earned a BA in two years, but never got around to it once he’d jumped fire.

He shuddered at that memory of his former self and continued up the stairs. Then he landed the job as a seasonal on an MHA fire-crew when he was hard up for cash and it was the only work he could find. He hadn’t thought it beneath him for long. He loved the work. He’d bulked up, filled out with muscle from the hard labor.

Suddenly the girls were paying attention to him. Man, but the lonely outsider had eaten that up, hadn’t he? The ultimate ego stroke. Drop the “wildland firefighter” line and watch ‘em fall. A few years later when he added “smokejumper” to that, they’d fallen on their backs ready to go. Johnny Jepps had been lost in a world of willing women.

He gave them the best thanks he could, but he never gave for long.

Akbar the Great fought fire and mowed down the girls to ease something inside. Some lack he couldn’t put his finger on. He stopped with his hand on the radio room doorknob. Whatever the lack was, whatever he’d been hunting for, some part of him had found it and really, really liked the way it felt.

He couldn’t wait to see Laura again and let whatever that was suddenly make sense once more.

Chapter 5

Laura marveled at their
routine. A month had gone by and they were borderline domestic. Another aspect of that surprised the living daylights out of her about Johnny. She’d liked using his first name since their very first night together. It somehow fit him better, as if it made him more who he really was rather than Mister “The Great” Smokejumper.

On that second night she’d returned from the Lodge late because of the paperwork around the accident. As Johnny had predicted, Grayson Masterson had inexplicably left a large tip, a very large one—it was amazing how well he knew people. She was already past half way to owning her brood mare.

She’d arrived at her cabin at dusk, debating during the entire drive from the Lodge if she should call him, or if that was too forward. When she arrived, there he’d been, sitting in that same chair. Clothed this time. Quiet. Waiting.

“From an hour before sunset until dawn,” he’d said when she’d come to stand in front of him, “they can’t call us out because we can’t jump at night. I hope it’s okay that I’m here.”

Laura hadn’t said a word. There were none in her. Instead, she’d taken his hand and led him to her bed. Not a single other word had passed between them until the dawn light once again took him from her arms.

Now they had a routine. If he was called to a blaze, he’d send her a text with the name of the fire so that she could follow the news. If it was a long fire, he’d send a simple
Sleep
on his return. That way she knew he was safe, though he always slept off a blaze at the MHA base camp. She’d offered to pick him up so that he wouldn’t have to drive but he’d refused, pointing out that half the time they got called to another fire directly from their bunks. It was a hot and dry season and there were more fires than people to fight them.

On her own side, she’d text him news of the day: what outing she was leading, a good joke someone had told, a snapshot of a black squirrel no bigger than her palm that had insisted on sharing her lunch.

The one time she’d gone out on a three-day trail ride and forgotten to tell him, she’d returned to find he’d almost launched a full Search-and-Rescue effort before Bess had talked him down. After that Laura made sure that he knew when she wouldn’t make it back to the cabin at night.

She constantly reminded herself not to expect too much, but it was hard to remember when he made it so clear how much he enjoyed being with her.

Laura was slowly adapting to the constant surprise of a willing and attentive lover. It had its up moments and its down ones, which only made the relationship feel all the more real. Though there were fewer of the down moments than any relationship she’d ever had before.

But now she sat in her truck, halfway up her narrow driveway through the woods to her cabin. It was as far as she could get. The afternoon sun shone on vehicles of every shape and size cluttered along her one-lane track. There were a good dozen vehicles, most of them one form or another of pickup, though a rusty clunker Chevy Cavalier and a sparkling red Corvette were in the collection.

What the hell was going on? This was her hideaway from the world. Not her parents, not… Johnny. Johnny Akbar Jepps was about to get his ass kicked but hard. This was not some goddamn party pad. He was welcome in her bed, in her home, but this was too much.

Her immediate progress was blocked by a massive Dodge Ram pickup with rear dualies that looked even more hard-used than her own Ford 150.

She parked and locked her truck. Whoever they were, none of them could leave until she decided to let them out. It had been a long and harrowing morning. She’d led her first group since Grayson Masterson up onto the ice and snow. Everything had gone as perfectly as it had in the fifty jaunts she’d led before, but her nerves were a wreck. She needed a glass of beer and some quiet time on the porch. She did
not
need a god damn smokie convention.

She had hoped that Johnny might be around, maybe he’d be willing to cook because she was tapped out. And no one delivered take-out a half hour drive out of town.

Now she was hoping he was around so that she could kill him, slowly and painfully in front of all his friends.

She stalked up the driveway, kicked his Jeep’s tire for good measure when she passed it. Then she registered the sounds which were echoing through
her
forest. Chainsaws, plural. And the biting roar of a wood chipper.

She broke into a run. This was her land. No one was supposed to be logging here, ever. They—

The spectacle at the end of the drive brought her to a stumbling standstill. Twenty feet of chip truck was parked at the head of her driveway. It was painted glossy black with brilliant red-orange flames climbing the sides. It was the Mount Hood Aviation paint job. Behind it, an equally well-maintained and brightly-painted chipper was shooting a steady arc into the back of the truck.

Three people in hardhats and wearing heavy gloves were feeding in dead branches. She turned to the trees to see a half-dozen of them had people up them. Those trees, actually all of the trees for three-quarters of the way around her property no longer had any of their lower dead branches. The people in them were working so fast that the branches appeared to be falling in a continuous cascade.

“Pretty great, huh?”

“Shit!” Laura about jumped out of her skin when Johnny put his hand on her waist from behind. He wore a hardhat, climbing harness around his waist, and had a chainsaw slung over his shoulder as if it was the most normal thing on the planet.

“What the hell, Johnny?” She waved a hand helplessly at the trees and fended off his attempt to kiss her. He was covered in sawdust.

“Your place is a fire trap, Space Ace. Been making me crazy since the first time I came out here. In a fire all that dead wood cooks off,” he snapped his gloved fingers. Then he pulled off the glove and tried again with better results. “Massive amounts of fuel just begging for a fire to rip right through it. We had a promised dark day today, so I invited the crew out to do a little fire mitigation in exchange for pizza.”

“Did you think about asking first?”

His brow furrowed for a moment, then he shrugged off the idea. “Can’t say that I did. Doesn’t matter. I wanted you to be safer. This was something I could take care of for you.”

She turned back to inspect what was happening. There were six sawyers in the trees. Another six or eight were dragging branches over to the chipper—swampers he’d called them when explaining how a crew fought fire.

This was his specialty. There probably weren’t all that many people who knew more about protecting residences from fire than Johnny.

“We okay with this?” he sounded a little worried. Clearly he was starting to rethink his initiative.

She kept her back to him to hide her smile. It was hard not to feel charmed that he’d recruited all of his smokejumper friends on their day off to help protect his girlfriend.

“Space Ace?”

Laura let him suffer a little longer, but could barely keep the smile out of her voice as she let him off the hook. “You said something about pizza?”

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him pointing upward.

Masked by the sound of the chainsaws, a small black helicopter—with the inevitable red-flame-on-black paint job—was slowing to a stop overhead and then began descending toward the center of the presently unoccupied corral—the only space big enough for a chopper to land.

The man was having pizza delivered by helicopter? She could get very used to this, but didn’t want to let it show quite how much he was sweeping her feet out from under her.

“Did you get Hawaiian?” she took the quarter step back to slip her arm around his shoulders despite the dirt and sawdust that coated him. The chopper touched down and began cycling down its engines.

“Got an extra one. Knew it was your favorite.”

Laura couldn’t help herself. She turned to kiss him. A cheer and a round of applause from around the clearing accompanied the heat of Johnny’s hand holding her ever so tightly against him.

# # #

Laura felt as if she’d come out of the closet. For a month, Johnny Akbar Jepps had been all hers. Suddenly she was surrounded by his friends and teammates. And every single one had to check out and approve of their boss’ choice in women.

The chopper pilot, a woman name Jeannie, sat down next to Laura on the cabin’s porch very early on. She didn’t say much, just sat there in the chair Johnny usually occupied.

Laura remembered the red streak in her hair from that first meeting at the Doghouse Inn. And when Grayson had gone into the snow, this same helicopter that had delivered the pizza had appeared to save his sorry life. She was obviously a fixture in Johnny’s life, and Laura tried to prepare herself for the upcoming catfight. Laura really needed this day to be over soon.

Johnny had drifted off with some of the others, holding court around her picnic table suddenly buried in pizza boxes, and a big cooler of sodas nearby.

At first she was ticked at Johnny for abandoning her. Was he being unthinking? No. Johnny was never unthinking, but he often thought differently than she did. So he was…being a second center of attention so that everyone wasn’t crowded about her at once. She wished he’d found a way to call Jeannie aside, but the woman showed no signs of moving off.

As time passed and one group of smokies drifted off only to inevitably be replaced by a few fresh recruits, Laura began to see what Jeannie was doing.

Somehow, by simply sitting beside Laura, she was placing her stamp of approval or at least easing the start of each successive conversation. The crew drifted by in twos and threes, some chatting with Jeannie for a moment as an excuse to not make it look like the tag-team interrogation that it actually was. Everyone wanted to hear from her own lips who she was, what her background was, her political views and…

It took her a while to figure out that mentioning she was a wilderness guide saved her a lot of well-intended nosiness. It also told her that Johnny hadn’t been bragging about her all around camp. Despite the mayhem he’d unleashed on her today, he apparently respected some aspects of her privacy.

That simple “wilderness guide” title was a ticket of first-class boarding priority in the smokie world. She’d thought it was just Johnny who felt the way she did about the wilderness. Laura soon figured out that each and every person here loved living and working in the wilderness. Jumping out of a plane to fight a forest-killing inferno up close and personal was a job most of them would pay to be allowed to do.

Johnny had held off the tall guy until nearly the last. He shot her a slightly worried expression as the man sauntered up to greet Jeannie.

So, this one was important to him. Of course, they’d arrived at the bar together; apparently Johnny’s wingman both on and off the fire line.

“Two-Tall, that’s t-w-o, Tim, that’s D-a-v-e,” he offered a genuine enough smile to accompany his joke, and a handshake that wholly enveloped her own hand. “Damn! I can’t believe you brushed me off for Akbar the Great. He is short, you know.”

“I admit I noticed,” Laura’s throat was dry despite sipping at her soda. Even sitting on the edge of the porch he loomed, his back casually against one of the posts. All he needed was a cowboy hat and a six-gun slung around his fire gear to look totally, well, out of place.

“But he is great,” his teasing expression suddenly shifted to a serious one. “Best crew boss I ever walked fire with. Even better than TJ, but don’t you dare tell him I said that.”

She crossed her heart.

He chatted a bit more without saying much. But she had the impression that she was being more thoroughly examined by him than any of the others.

After he moved off, Laura observed quietly to herself, “Well, he’s a deep one.”

Jeannie beside her nodded, “Two-Tall is an ogre.”

Laura looked over, but figured it out before she had to ask. Like Shrek the ogre comparing himself to an onion, Tim had layers upon layers despite the carefree womanizer he presented to the world.

Like Johnny Akbar Jepps.

Her lover constantly revealed new aspects to himself. His knowledge of fires was his main focus, but he would often lead her off into head-spinning explanations of the science behind combustion or how the historical impact of the burning of Ancient Rome upon literature of all crazy things. It was as if his lack of a college education and his voracious reading habits had combined to create an intensely out of the box thinker.

Soon the smokies began shifting back to finish the trees. In a matter of minutes, they were back in the woods, chainsaws at the roar. Then they fired up the big chipper and the clearing once again reverberated with the clean-up operation.

She felt she should go help, but knew she’d be in their way. They had it down to a science. Johnny and Tim were switching off on successive trees, taking turns cutting and swamping the cut branches. They covered half again the ground of any other team.

“They’re something, aren’t they?” Jeannie still sat in the chair Johnny usually occupied. She’d been so quiet that Laura had almost forgotten she was there.

“They make it look like a ballet.”

Jeannie nodded amiably, “They’re the very best in the business. It would help if they didn’t know it, but they do. And only Carly can read a fire better than Akbar; she’s scary good. Kind of on the level of our lead pilot Emily.”

Laura could hear the worshipful tone in Jeannie’s voice. She knew from following the articles this last month that MHA’s reputation was the gold standard of wildland firefighting. If Johnny was the gold standard of that… The breath whooshed out of her a bit. What in the world had she hooked herself up to?

“You want another piece?” Jeannie clambered to her feet.

Laura nodded.

Jeannie returned with a paper plate bearing a couple slices of Hawaiian without even asking and another plate with a couple combos, but she didn’t sit back down after handing Laura’s over.

“Been watching you.”

Oh great. She’d been right the first time. Jeannie had a thing for Johnny and he’d been too blind to see it. Now she was going to really catch it.