Scorch (7 page)

“I know you’re not allowed to eat like this all the time.” The men had to watch their calories, not just to prove they were in shape for the season, but for weight restrictions on the aircrafts. “But I wanted to thank you for looking after Muttley and picking me up. Figuratively and literally,” she added wryly.
Friends. We’re just friends
.

“Thanks.” He accepted the coffee she handed him and shook his head at cream or sugar. “But quit thinking you owe me anything. You and Russ were both really good to me when I first got here and again after Tori and I broke up.”

Jacqui sat down across from him with her own plate, her portion considerably smaller, and said, “Don’t wait.
Eat
.” As she picked at hers, she confided, “I was glad we got you in the divorce.”

He glanced up, amusement pulling one corner of his mouth. “I didn’t realize there was a custody battle. The children are always the last to know.”

She grinned. “You know what I mean. It’s always tough after a divorce, when couple friends have to decide which side of the divide they fall on. And I sympathize with Tori, I really do. Being the wife of a firefighter is a widow’s existence in itself sometimes. But she works at The Drop Zone. She should have been more prepared for the sucky side of your job.”

“She wanted to marry a smoke eater,” he said with a shrug. “We’re always happy when we’re at the bar so I can see why she thought we were more fun than we really are. She thought the money would be better, too, not putting together that the money comes from overtime, which means
working
overtime. Lots of women forget that when they come onto us.”

“The fireflies? It’s a legit job hazard, isn’t it?” She’d seen the constant attention with her own eyes.

Vin’s gaze came up swift and straight. “Russ never encouraged anyone. Don’t think that.”

“I don’t.”

Russ had had his failings, but one of the reasons she had been so blindly in love with him had been his streak of loyalty. Everybody had loved Russ because he’d been decent and supportive and had always tried to do the right thing.

“But I know the wedding ring didn’t stop the big game trophy hunters. It must be so hard for you guys,” she said with mock pity. “Should we start an online awareness campaign, do you think?”

He buried his smirk in his coffee mug. “We’re spry and have good instincts for self-preservation. We can take care of ourselves.”

“Yeah? What happened to yours with Tori?” It was banter. She meant it as teasing, but he fell silent.

“Sorry,” she murmured.

“No.” His gaze came up, mouth curling with self-disgust. “Truth? You and Russ made it look easy. Tori chased me for a while. Seemed determined. I’d seen that act.” He nodded at how obvious Jacqui’s adoration of Russ had been.

She blushed. He wasn’t being unkind. His gaze was reflective and dimmed like he had fallen short in his own estimation.

“It led me to believe I might get what you two had. Which sounds really sad so let’s shut that down right now.” He scooped egg into his mouth.

“It’s not sad.” The expression of self-contempt on his face bothered her, but she was kind of torn up about the statement as a whole. “That’s a really nice thing to say, Vin. It is. Thank you. But Russ and I had our problems, same as any couple.”

She frowned, thinking about that empty chamber in her heart that she had hoped a baby would fill, since her husband had left it as unfinished as their house.

“We looked really good from the outside because we worked hard to give that impression, not because it was true.”

His brows went up, surprise turning to a penetrating frown. “What do you mean?”

She opened her mouth. It was her turn to wish they could shut down this conversation, but she had started it. Maybe she was dying to get it off her chest.

“Everyone knew I was in love with him from day one. They egged him on to ask me out, watched us date, and even his proposal was a public event.”

At the time, it had seemed fun and romantic to have one of those proposals that was shared online, firefighters line dancing below while she stood in the jump tower, Vin by her side, filming it with the camera they used to give feedback to the rookies.

Now she looked back on it, she wondered if Russ hadn’t been more enamored with having a reason to spend time goofing around with his crew, preparing to perform the spectacle, than he had been with actually marrying her.

“We were this epic romance that played out like a soap opera. Everyone was highly entertained by the way I lit up at the sight of him. They called him out if he dated other women, razzed him because I was so obviously in love with him. I was in high school the first few years. He genuinely wasn’t interested. Then I turned twenty and I honestly think it was peer pressure that made him ask me out for my birthday dinner. We couldn’t make a move after that without someone noticing. You saw what it was like when we got married, heard the remarks after the honeymoon.”

She still blushed with indignation at the off-color ribbing.
Did you two set the bed on fire? It’s not the size of the hose, but how you use it.

“That
was
bad,” Vin agreed, scratching his jaw. “For what it’s worth, I tried to cut it short when I could.”

“I know,” she murmured. “And it was good-natured. I know they didn’t mean anything, but it was one more way that our marriage was never just ours. And we also worked together so we got really good at all the things we needed to do to present a united front. I couldn’t contradict him in front of you guys. You needed to believe he was on task and in control, not spatting with his wife over which side of the living room to put the new sofa.”

Vin gave her a blank look. “That wasn’t a real fight, was it? The sofa goes where it is.”

“Oh, my God,
right
? Why do you think you had to put in the console? He wouldn’t do it until I agreed to the other side. When you asked me which side of the room I preferred and
agreed
with me…? I seriously got off the tablet and yelled, ‘
See
?’ at the ceiling. Dad came in ’cause he heard me and wondered who I was yelling at.”

Vin’s mouth twitched.

“As for real arguments… Russ was so much older than me, and my boss to boot. He had a confident personality, which he needed. I know that. But it meant that I deferred to him everyday on almost everything, at work and at home, never really feeling like I had a say.”

While Russ had consistently filled their evenings and weekends with other people so she hadn’t had many moments alone with him to voice any disagreement she might have had. Vin wasn’t the only rookie or out-of-towner or fellow firefighter that Russ had given a bed. Jacqui hadn’t minded in the big scheme of things, but she would have liked more privacy. She would have preferred to be consulted.

She would have loved for her husband to act, just once, like he had wanted to spend time with
her
.

She sighed, thinking of all the things about her marriage that had been the furthest thing from easy. There’d been lots that had been downright difficult.

“Man, you never know what’s really behind the curtain, do you? Growing up in foster care, I thought nuclear families were perfect and nothing bad ever happened to the people in them. All you needed was a real mom and a real dad and life was roses. You’ve disillusioned me, Jac. No one lives the dream, do they?”

“No, there is no Santa Claus.”

His shoulders slacked and he gave her a mock-angry frown. “Now why did you have to say something like that?”

She grinned, but it didn’t stick. “I’m probably not the person you should be talking to about happily ever after. I’m kinda disillusioned myself these days. Russ and I
were
happy,” she said sincerely, ignoring that there were times when she had wondered if that was true. Had “they” been happy? Or just her? Had there been enough love on her side to sustain them for the long haul? “All I’m saying is, no relationship is as perfect as you want it to be. They’re all going to require work—Oh, good grief.
That
sounds sad. I’m going to quit while I’m ahead.”

He shook his head, cleaning his plate of his final bite. “It sounds real. But it kind of makes me wonder if I should have tried harder to make it work with Tori. At the same time…” His brow furrowed. “That takes two, you know? And she had already quit. I could tell.”

Vin’s eyes were a really dark blue. For a second, they were an endless, despondent blue. The kind that pierced into her heart and made her think a yearning, anguished, “
Yeah. I know exactly what you mean.”

She held his gaze and they were trapped in a moment of poignant accord, both sad, but not alone in it. Her throat ached and the backs of her eyes stung.

He looked away, dark brows pulled low, and rose abruptly to take his plate to the sink. The noise of the cutlery was jarring as he gave the plate a rinse and a scrape, then put everything into the dishwasher.

Her heart tremored in a kind of panic, like she’d bashed it into something and had to catch her breath while she waited for the pain to subside.

“Dishes into the dishwasher?” she managed to say, and bit back an ironic,
Will you marry me?
“This is definitely the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

His glance was sardonic. “Until we sign papers, I’m your guest. I’ll try to be a considerate one.”

He didn’t want to believe her about the house. She didn’t blame him, but she was serious about it. She understood in her heart that she had to move on.

It was time.

*

The base was
big. Even the actual station house was a spacious seven thousand square feet. There were plenty of places to get lost in, including the loft, the ready room with its speed racks full of gear, locker rooms, toilets and showers and barracks. There was the work out room, a training area, and even a library full of manuals on first aid and fire suppression techniques.

Vin had come in the fast exit off the ready room and was in the men’s locker room, far from where Jacqui had reclaimed her desk. He couldn’t even see or hear her, but he knew she was there.

This was the time of year he had to keep busy or go nuts. Fire season wouldn’t heat up for another few weeks, but they were predicting an active one right out of the gate, so he ought to be grateful for the calm before the storm.

He had cabin fever from winter, though. The seasonal full and part-timers were starting to gather like rams on a mountainside, helping prep gear and cargo boxes, getting ready for the season. Rookie selection was in full swing and training camp would begin shortly. Without that to keep everyone hopping, they’d all be bashing each other’s heads in.

Given how things were up in the air with Jacqui’s house, Vin was even more antsy than usual. He was training as much as possible, heading out on hikes with Dodson and whoever else wanted company. He took a weekend refresher to renew one of his certifications and even volunteered time to clear trails and fall dangerous trees at a kids’ summer camp.

Yesterday, he’d climbed trees to harvest pinecones for some federal biologist. Tomorrow, he and a few others were assigned to a prescribed burn in a stand of trees killed by the beetles that were decimating forests across the Western side of the continent.

It all kept him occupied during the day and, if not out of the house overnight, tired enough not to do anything stupid between dinner and bedtime at Jacqui’s.

She was a hell of a cook. He kept offering to share that chore, but since it was still pre-season, she was working regular office hours and invariably arrived home first. He was pretty sick of eating his own cooking so he was grateful she’d taken on the duty and he usually washed up.

She brought work home, stacks of filing that she sorted into accordion files and piles of receipts that she spent the evening coding while watching TV. She was hooked on one of those singing shows and a law drama, but was happy enough to watch sports or whatever he chose if her programs weren’t on. Now that the snow was gone, he stayed outside until dark, cleaning up the yard, raking needles and ensuring the gutters were clear. After dark, he finished up some indoor chores like baseboards in the basement and oiled the squeak in the garage door.

No, the evenings weren’t the issue.

Mornings were. He’d taken to rising well before she stirred, to run or head for a workout and be long gone before she was up. The sight of her high, firm breasts under a light layer of cotton as she moved around the kitchen, making him breakfast, was spending way too much time decorating the filthiest corners of his mind.

He got hard every time he pictured her nipples spiked against her T-shirt the way they had been that first morning.

It would happen now, as he stripped his gear, if he wasn’t careful. He’d be tenting his jeans while peeling off his muddy socks.

Which was why he started guiltily when Greg Winters, one of the part-timers who’d been here last year, said, “Did I see Jacqui at the front desk? Is she back to work?”

“She is.” He tried to act casual as he threw his sweat-soaked T-shirt onto the pile that would go straight into the washer when he got home. Jacqui’s home.