Rain of Fire (41 page)

The red light on the camera winked out. Bright light ceased to drill Kyle’s eyes.

The aide stood in front of the desk doing a deer-in-headlights impression. “No Yellowstone?”

The look of panic on his face made Kyle wonder if she’d gone too far … but just like Brock Hobart, she believed every word she had said.

Hollis shoved back his chair. “Jesus Christ!”

As she stripped off her mike and earpiece, the aide put the TV monitor back on. A cruise line commercial ended and Gene told Mitzi, “Powerful warnings from Yellowstone.” He looked thoughtful. “My brother-in-law lives in Cody …”

Hollis soldiered on, “Are you out of your mind?”

Still sweating, but feeling cold, Kyle gathered her black coat and started for the exit.

Hollis called after her, “Don’t even think of touching the van and equipment.”

She turned back, hot words ready, but Wyatt was there. His steady eyes warned her not to rise to the bait. With careful control, she said, “Those items belong to the Institute.”

“Fine,” Hollis gasped. “Then you don’t belong. You’re fired.”

After all that she’d been through this morning, Kyle shouldn’t have any adrenaline left. Yet, its sharp sting ran down her arms. “You don’t have the balls.”

“Watch me. Stanton and Colin aren’t around and Radford will be on my side when he hears what you’ve done to frighten people.”

Wyatt tugged her arm. “Come on.”

The studio help began to gather. She fought the urge to tell Hollis off.

Wyatt’s grip tightened. “Kyle.”

A local TV reporter from the morning drive time show walked toward them.

Kyle bit her tongue and allowed Wyatt to draw her away.

Hollis’s stridency carried. “Don’t try going to the Institute. Security won’t let you in.”

On the way out of the building, Wyatt offered her the keys to her Mercedes.

“I’m too mad to drive.” Her voice shook. “He fired me. He fucking fired me.”

Wyatt’s gaunt face looked infuriated, but his features softened as he met her eyes.

“So help me, Wyatt, if you say you’re sorry …”

The corners of his mouth twitched. “I won’t. You’re tough enough to take on ten SOBs his size.”

“Can he fire me?”

Wyatt sobered. “Colin and Radford put him in charge, so I suppose he can. At least until all this sorts itself out.”

“I’m afraid we haven’t got that kind of time.”

M
orning sun shone full when Kyle and Wyatt entered her townhouse. She stood in the hall, ran her hands up and destroyed the knot her hair was in. “I feel awful.” She threw her coat onto the sofa.

Wyatt raised his arms and stretched his long back. He shrugged out of his uniform jacket and tossed it beside hers. “I was sweating like a pig during the broadcast.”

“Ditto.”

He glanced toward the stairs. “I checked out of the hotel, but I could use a run through the rain locker.”

“Gentlemen first,” she offered briskly. “There’s soap and shampoo. Clean towels under the sink.” He got his bag from the car and took the stairs two at a time.

Kyle moved to the dining room table where the replacement laptop beckoned. God only knew what was happening in the park by now. She booted up and went online. It seemed to take forever for the Institute site to come up. After clicking through the public areas to the entry for the Yellowstone Network, she keyed in, “Max.” Kyle had never had another pet.

A little hourglass appeared. It stayed too long for the usual login.

Kyle’s fingers curled. “Come on, come on.”

Upstairs, her shower went on.

A dialog box declared, “Your password is either invalid or has expired.”

“Son of a bitch.” It had to be Hollis. He’d had time to get from the TV studio back to the Institute and cut off her access.

On instinct, she reached for her cell phone.

It was in the bottom of the canyon on Nez Perce.

She looked toward the wall instrument in the kitchen and pushed halfway to her feet. With gritted teeth, she imagined railing at Hollis, “Stanton and I built the Institute while you were in elementary school. Now put my goddamned password back.”

Even as she raged, experience told her it would do no good. He’d probably go into a full-blown asthma attack. And until he calmed down, probably in a matter of days rather than hours, she stood no chance of reasoning with him.

Subsiding back into her chair, she tried logging on a few more times in case there had been a mistake. Then, with rapid keyboard and mouse adjustments, she exited the site she’d helped develop. Closing the laptop lid, she listened as the hard drive wound down along with her pulse rate.

The silence brought a sting to her eyes. She remembered the dismal storage basement of thirty years ago, that Stanton had transformed into one of the premiere seismic research facilities in the world. She heard the laughter of so many students, of her and Wyatt bent together over a monitor while they planned a seminar that was both educational and entertaining. For Stanton’s sake, for Wyatt, for Xi and all the others, she could not let Hollis get away with this.

It might take a little while, until Colin was back in the country, but she vowed she would have her job back… and see Hollis in Siberia.

The shower noise ceased. With a glance at the ceiling, she considered her nearly bare larder. Frozen concentrated orange juice, maple flavored bacon she could microwave; maybe stir up some eggs with them in the same dish. At least she had some espresso grind Jamaican Blue Mountain that would brew up with fortitude.

As she was spooning the aromatic coffee into the filter basket, Wyatt’s footsteps sounded on the stairs.

“Make mine strong enough to walk.”

She turned and felt a little shock at seeing him in gray sweats and a T-shirt rather than his uniform. Comb trails marked his damp hair and he smelled clean. A flash of image in her brain … of simply stepping forward into his arms, but she thought she’d better get her own shower.

“Hollis cut off my password,” she said.

Instead of swearing as she expected, Wyatt’s smile remained in place.

“This is serious.” She pointed a spatula at him. “What are you grinning about?”

He leaned against the counter and crossed one bare ankle over the other. “Just wondering if Hollis is suicidal enough to turn off website access from Yellowstone National Park.”

Her spirits lifted. “Your office! Of course Hollis won’t dare shut you down. He knows Janet Bolido would have his head.”

Wyatt took the spatula from her and brandished it toward the refrigerator. “I’m ready for bacon and eggs … and,” he looked at the black outfit she’d worn on the show, “you are overdressed.”

With the now familiar flutter in her stomach at the timbre in his voice, Kyle hurried up the stairs. She turned the taps and thought that he’d been considerate, showering quickly and leaving plenty of hot water.

With a smile, she rummaged beneath the sink for a bottle of shower gel that had been a gift from Leila a few years ago. When she released the cap, the aroma of forest evergreen rose on the steam. The soap smelled so luxurious that she washed her hair with it as well as her body. Scrubbing with the slippery suds, she recalled the night she’d compared her lean frame to Alicia’s bounty. Now, as surely as she knew her own name, she knew Wyatt wanted her and not Alicia.

Stepping out of her steamy bathroom, she smelled bacon. A smile curled her lips at the image of Wyatt overseeing her frying pan. But why not? Nick was the useless one in the kitchen.

Her closet offered an array of khakis, jeans, her few good dresses like she’d worn to the studio, and her thick, ankle length fleece robe. There were also the black long john style pants and pullovers she’d worn at the Nez Perce patrol cabin.

She reached for her usual jeans and hesitated. Though she knew she looked damned fine in denim, she decided that this morning was a time for breaking out of the mold. As rapidly as things were changing in Yellowstone, her life was also driving forward at breakneck speed.

Might as well enjoy the ride.

Going to a drawer, she chose a pair of dance pants with a little flair. A cropped top that left a few inches of bare skin showing at the waist went on without a bra. Smoothing her hair with a brush while warm air flowed from her dryer, Kyle noted that those few threads of gray hardly showed.

Though she’d washed off the studio makeup, she opened the medicine chest and came up with a cake of blush her neighbor Christine had given her for her birthday. As she smoothed some onto her cheeks, she watched her face in the mirror soften.

That little ache inside her, the one she’d felt when she saw Alicia and Wyatt together at the Lake Hotel, had been for him after all. Knowing he was downstairs cooking their breakfast made her reflection smile.

Wyatt heard the whisper of Kyle’s bare feet on the tile. When he turned, he couldn’t believe what he saw. Her hair, falling softly over her shoulders, invited him to touch. A cropped top outlined her breasts, with a hint of smooth skin at its base. So slender, she looked younger than she was, younger than he was. Her eyes were blue-green tourmaline as deep as the sea.

“I feel better.” She raised her hands, stretched, and lifted her hair. The bottom edge of her top rose, exposing a few more inches of waist.

He wasn’t feeling bad himself, as he imagined bending over and teasing her belly button with his tongue. The image instantly had him wondering what he’d been thinking to put on his soft sweat pants without any underwear.

Trying not to make a prize idiot of himself, he turned and faced the counter as she edged past.

Though there was plenty of room in the small kitchen for Kyle to move around him without touching, her hip grazed his on the way by. From the corner of his eye, he caught a smile on her lips.

Before he could make a grab for her, the smile turned to a frown, her nose wrinkling as she lifted the skillet from the stove. Only then did Wyatt smell that he was burning the last strips of bacon.

“Think we can salvage this?” She glanced over her shoulder and he wondered if she meant to sound seductive.

Through his glasses, the blackened strips looked hopeless.

She studied the already heaping platter of bacon he was proud of and added the burnt pieces at the side. “You never know, we might get hungry.”

“I’m already starving.” Wrestling his libido, he reached for the carton of eggs instead of Kyle.

“I’m starving, too.” Yet, she reached to turn off the stove burner.

He looked into her shining eyes. Deeply embedded was a flash of something he’d seen before … over a beer in a cozy booth, outside her townhouse the night he’d nearly taken her in his arms, when they had broken apart after embracing in his office.

If she had been any other woman, he’d swear she was coming on to him.

Well, two could play. “I’m trying to prepare a culinary delight, here.” His tone was teasing. “If you don’t let me cook…”

Her hand touched his; her thumb made a slow circle on the back.

Wyatt swallowed.

Self-control had its merits, but when her fingers moved to trace the lines of his palm, his physical reaction was immediate. This time he could not bring himself to turn away.

Kyle raised her eyes from his hand to his face and the unmistakable passion in her gaze was no longer intermittent. “You said last night that you were afraid of this.”

Yeah, and how stupid had he been to say that? Here was the woman he’d been in love with for years, yeah, Alicia had said ‘love,’ not ‘want’ as he’d misquoted last night.

Wishing for Nick’s gift of gab, Wyatt raised Kyle’s hand and placed it on his chest. “My heart’s pounding like a hammer, but it’s not because I’m scared.”

“I’m not either.” She moved her fingers in a slow circle over his T-shirt, making him want to strip it off.

“Last chance, lady.” He pressed her palm against him. “To stop me doing something you don’t want.”

“I want,” she said. Her other hand took off his glasses and set them beside the sink.

“Kyle.” He sank to his knees, his hands on her hips, turning her into him.

She gasped, spread her arms, and gripped the edge of the counter. But she did not push him away.

He pressed his mouth to her stomach, not teasing the way he’d imagined, but fervently.

She didn’t move, either to welcome or reject him. He turned his head and pressed his cheek against her smooth skin, praying she wouldn’t change her mind.

Then he felt her hand in his hair. She cradled his head, pulling him closer.

Wyatt managed to get to his feet and look down into her eyes. Without his glasses, her features appeared soft.

He slid his hands up her arms, under the loose sleeves. Skimming his lips over the hollow of her throat, he murmured, “God, don’t let me louse this up.”

They bumped noses. It made him feel seventeen. When their lips came together, he felt the curve of her smile. It stilled as they explored each other, gently at first. Her firm spare flesh matched his, as though they’d been poured from the same mold.

She broke the kiss and pulled back. Her lips were parted and deeply pink.