Burns So Bad (Smoke Jumpers) (2 page)

Rio’s brother made those two words
sound like a gold star and a Purple Heart.

She grinned at him. “My pleasure.”

###

Not
dead
. Rio took a moment to appreciate that glorious fact. Sure, he’d
slammed his shoulder into the ground when he’d tucked and rolled, and Gia’s
boot had clipped his shoulder as the chute dragged her further up the field,
but the landing could—should—have been so, so much worse. He
inhaled sharply.
Control it
.

His back on the ground, his ass
planted hard, he stared up at the blue sky. If he didn’t inhale—which was
almost an impossibility at the moment anyhow, as his lungs strained to get back
up and working—he couldn’t even tell there was a twenty acre wildfire to
his right demanding quick attention.

Good thing he loved his job.

He could feel the steel-toes headed
his way—he’d bet the entire jump team was either high-fiving Gia or
headed his way to ask
What the fuck?
—so
he did a quick inventory. He’d be sore tomorrow—nothing new
there—but a quick twitch said both arms and legs worked. Which was
nothing short of a miracle. Of course, Gia was probably the most stubborn
person he’d ever met, which was another miracle given the ability of his two
brothers to hang on and not let go, and she’d made it damned clear that she
wasn’t letting him fall.

Gia.

Letting go of Gia was the hardest
damn thing Rio had done lately—and not because he’d been afraid of dying,
but because she smelled like lemons and outdoors. He had no idea if she knew
that, or if the scent was just Gia, but he got a contact high immediately when
he was around her and those seconds wrapped in her arms were pretty
unforgettable.

For many reasons.

He pushed himself into a sitting position,
waved off the incoming team members and eyeballed the clearing. The last two
jumpers were down, pulling in their chutes and pointing their boots towards the
flames, ready to get to work.

Usually, he did the rescuing. Being
on the receiving end was a new sensation, but hardly one he could refuse when
the only other option was dying. He wasn’t fatally stupid. He definitely owed Gia. So what did it
say about him that he’d noticed how her breasts felt pushed up against his arm
when he was in the middle of
dying
?
He was fairly certain he’d remember her accidental touch for pretty much
forever, which gave a whole new meaning to memories to last a lifetime.

He’d nearly died.

Shake it off, he reminded himself.
Although the fire came first, some things needed to be said. She’d had his
back. And his front. He was fairly certain though that
Gia hadn’t been thinking about getting his rocks off while she’d steered them
both to the ground. That had been his problem. He wanted to believe the
insta-chemistry was an adrenaline-fueled response to almost dying, but he
suspected it was more than that. He’d felt something for Gia from the moment
she’d joined their team.

Once again… shake it off.

Halfway across the LZ, Gia popped
her helmet off and clipped it to her belt. Despite the distance, it felt like
some magic string connected him to her. She took a few questions from the rest
of the team as she yanked off her helmet, but then she strode off, clearly
ready to get down to the business of fighting fire. While he sat here on the
ground like a dumbass, dazed and confused. ;What the hell was wrong with him?

He picked himself up with a grunt,
unbuckling his jacked harness. When he got back to base camp, he’d go over the
entire pack. Misfires happened, but he didn’t like it. He’d packed that chute
himself and Jack had checked it. Every inch of that line had been neatly and
precisely folded. Just like always.

As if he’d heard Rio mentally call
his name, Jack strode over. He’d got his chute off and his game face on. “What
the hell happened up there?”

He slapped Rio on the back, his
hand lingering a moment longer than usual. Apparently, Jack had done the math
too and realized just how close to dying Rio had actually come.

“Malfunction.”
Christ
. He relived the moment when he pulled the rip cord and
nothing happened.

Jack looked like he was
entertaining the same thought. He jerked his head towards Gia, who was rolling
up her chute. “She bailed your ass out.”

“Sure did.”

Jack frowned. “We’ll go over your
chute when we’re back at base.”

His oldest brother approached
safety with the kind of focus usually reserved for national security matters.
Maybe that was because of the way they’d grown up. They’d been three young boys
who’d met up on the streets of Sacramento and then stuck together. Given their
youth, life had been hand-to-mouth, carving out an existence for themselves
where they could. It had been Jack’s idea to take the last name Donovan. One more
thing they could all share, he’d pointed out, and Rio and Evan had agreed. Even
when the fine state of California had eventually tried placing them in separate
foster homes, the Donovan brothers had stuck together. Always. After one too
many runaway attempts, the three boys had been sent as a package deal to Strong. They and Nonna had been a family ever
since.

The concern written all over Jack’s
face wasn’t a surprise, but Rio preferred to ignore it. It wasn’t as if he
didn’t care about safety—after this last little free fall he
absolutely
cared—but he’d never
gotten quite so worked up about it. He preferred to move forward. Dwelling on
the past never helped.

Jack lent him a hand sliding the
harness off. Rio didn’t need the assist—the chute lines were the issue,
not the buckles—but Jack clearly needed to do something.

His brother paused, gear slung from
his hands. “Are you hurt?”

No and that was another mark in the
miracle column. “Not so much as a scratch. If you tell Nonna, I’ll kill you.”

Their adoptive mother didn’t need
to know she’d almost lost one of them today. She understood the risks of what
they did. Smoke jumping wasn’t for the faint of heart and, sometimes, good men
got hurt. He was just damn fortunate he hadn’t joined their number today.

Because Gia Jackson hadn’t let go
of him.

“We’re starting in five,” Jack
said. He didn’t ask again if Rio was okay. They needed all hands on deck to
knock down this fire and Rio had no intention of sitting this one out to
commune with his inner self.

“Got it.” He turned around,
scanning the clearing. Gia was on the side nearest the fire. Of course.

“She’s good,” Jack said quietly.

She was. She was also the first
woman they’d brought on board. It wasn’t that the Donovans preferred to keep
the team all-male—although it certainly made certain logistics like
suiting up simpler—but there just weren’t that many women interested in
jumping out of planes into the very center of a forest fire. And then hauling a
hundred-plus pounds of gear around with them while they shoveled dirt onto
twelve-foot flames. Maybe women were simply smarter than men. He grinned.
Jack’s fiancée, Lily Cortez, would have agreed with that statement.

He strolled over to Gia, not sure
what to say. The DC-3 pilot had dropped a crate of supplies for them and she
was checking out a chainsaw. She’d tugged off her gloves, one caught between
her teeth, her fingers flying over the tool. Gia definitely knew her stuff.

“Hey,” he said, squatting beside
her.

She set the chainsaw down on the
ground and rocked back on her heels. “You ready to roll?”

“Always.”

“Good.” She nodded and reached for
her glove lying on the ground.

When his hand shot out and grabbed
it first, she looked up and glared at him. “Are we playing keep away now,
Donovan? Because that’s real mature of you.”

“Thanks,” he said roughly.

“You’re welcome.” She made a
give-it-up gesture with her bare hand. “Return the glove.”

He winced. “You saved my life.”

Some things had to be said.

She huffed out an impatient breath. “Does this mean we share some kind
of psychic bond now, or you’re going to pull a Robin Hood and stick by my side
until you’ve returned the favor?”

He shook his head. “Not in my plans
for today, no.”

“Good.” She smiled, a lazy, happy
stretch of her lips that warmed him up inside. This was why he generally opted
for pissing her off rather than pleasing her, because he felt the effect of her
smile straight to his toes. With a really, really long detour in certain parts
in the middle. “Can we go back to fighting the fire?”

He held the glove open for her. She
stared at him for a moment and then slowly slid her hand inside.

“Would it kill you,” he asked, “to
say
You
’re welcome, Donovan
?”

She thought for a moment. He kept
his fingers loose around hers because, hell, they were practically holding
hands out here in the forest and he was pathetic. In the month since she’d
joined the jump team, he’d yanked her up and down a dozen hills when everyone
was scrambling with the gear. A helping hand was also standard practice getting
in and out of the DC-3. But this was different somehow.

She shrugged. “Okay then. You’re
welcome. Now can we go fight the fire?”

“You bet.” He stood, pulling her
with him.

When they were both on their feet,
she looked at him and then down at their joined hands. “You can let go now,
Donovan.”

He did. She was right. They had a
fire to knock down. Part of him wished she’d call him Rio. Not Donovan and not
partner, but by his name. He wasn’t interchangeable with his brothers.

“Thank you,” he said again,
starting for the fire. “For catching my ass. That was above and beyond. I owe
you one.”

“I’m not expecting a fruit basket.”
She sounded irritated. “Or joint accounting.” She waved an arm impatiently
toward the rest of the guys. “That’s our team right there. We jump together. We
fight together. We
stick
together. If
you’re dumb enough to fall out of a plane, I catch your ass. You’d do the same
for me because that’s how it works. I’m one of your boys.”

One
of his boys?
Like hell she was.

She shoved past him and stalked off
toward the fire.

Christ. She was good. And her speech
showed true management potential. He’d have to talk to Jack about giving her
more responsibilities on the jump team. Unfortunately, though, he still had a
problem, because there was no way he saw Gia as just one of his boys. He had a feeling he wouldn’t be able to
help himself. He’d held Gia and he wouldn’t be forgetting the feel of her
anytime soon. Hell. Lusting after a team member was every kind of wrong and he
damned certain didn’t look at Mack or Zay or Joey that way. So he had no business
looking at Gia like he wanted to strip her jumpsuit down those long, long legs
and follow his hands with his mouth.

Gia Jackson was off-limits.

Ten hours later, it was dark and
past time to take a breather. Although the twenty-acre wildfire was mostly
contained, knocked back behind the lines the team had dug, the surrounding area
was red and black, lit up like a parking lot. The jump team sprawled on the
ground, debating the relative merits—or lack thereof—of dinner. The
MREs they’d packed provided calories, but not much in the taste department. Gia
was no cook, but this stuff sucked.

Her body had aches and pains in
places she hadn’t known she possessed. A long soak in a Jacuzzi followed by an
hour with a massage therapist sounded ideal, but definitely wasn’t an option
for tonight. Instead, she wriggled her ass around the small hollow she’d
excavated in the ground and stretched her boots out in front of her. Hell, just
getting off her feet was bliss.

Rummaging in his pack, Evan Donovan
produced a bag of marshmallows and someone else grabbed a handful of sticks.
Evan had a sweet tooth—and a team of hungry jumpers. Five minutes later,
everyone had a piece of sweet gooey goodness speared and toasting. Five minutes
after that and the stories started coming.

For a while, Gia was content to sit
back and listen. Since she preferred her marshmallows burnt black on the
outside and heated to volcanic temps on the inside, her turn over the fire had lasted
just long enough to catch her goodies on fire.

Joey swung his stick wildly to
illustrate a point in his story, narrowly missing her head. Par
for the course for him, since the team’s youngest jumper didn’t do anything by
half measures, whether it was jumping, fighting or simply talking.

“Hey,” she protested. “Until
there’s a bottle of shampoo in my future, keep that thing away from me.”

Going with the short hair had been
a smart move. She’d chopped the mane off five summers ago because hair got in
the way during a jump. She hadn’t mourned the length even if she routinely woke
up with a raging case of bedhead. Wash and go was practical out in the field,
and she didn’t have time to mess with ponytail elastics. Plus, she already had
to work twice as hard to pull her weight on the team because her biology put
her at a disadvantage. God hadn’t equipped her with the balls—or the
muscle—to cut line the way Rio did.

When fire season ended, however,
she went back to U.C. Davis and her graduate degree in meteorology. That fun
fact had amused the shit out of the Strong jumpers. Joey in particular was
convinced he’d wake up one morning and spot her face on his television. TV
didn’t interest her anywhere near as much as weather patterns did, but there
was no persuading Joey of that.

He shrugged, his marshmallow making
a return pass. “Worried about your good looks, Jackson?”

Mack leaned in and handed over another
marshmallow. “You gonna read us the weather?”

She’d weathered—har
har—endless jokes about being the weatherman. She didn’t have the classic
good looks or the polish the job required. And she didn’t have the interest.
She wanted to do more than talk about the weather and spit out tidy sound bites
for tired commuters and families planning weekend getaways to the beach. She
wanted to analyze weather conditions behind the scenes, be the person issuing
the forecasts and alerts.