Slow Burn (Smoke Jumpers) (21 page)

T
he plane ran down the end of the runway and popped up into blue sky. Ten minutes later, the jump team was a black smudge on the horizon, gunning for a fire Faye couldn’t see. Faye turned away, because she didn’t need to underscore how pathetic she was. Evan was gone. That was his job. She had no business standing there like a war widow waiting for her man to come back home.

Instead, she concentrated on unzipping her camera case and popping the cap on her lens. She couldn’t bear to scroll through the pictures she’d taken so far. Too many of them were of Evan.

Still, she had a job to do. She grabbed the camera.
Click
. A pair of empty racks by the hangar doors from which the jump team had grabbed their gear and gone.
Click
. The duty roster pinned to the bulletin board in the corner that the Donovans used as an on-site ops room, a pair of Xs and Os scrawled in a masculine hand beneath the last name on the list. Joey hunched over the radio, headphones tight to his ears.

“You sticking around?” Joey looked up at her as he asked his question. That young-old face of his said he understood all too well about being left behind. He’d pulled desk duty while the others went out and up.

The words shot out of her mouth. “No. It’s time for me to go.”

“That right?” He fiddled with a mechanical pencil, and a long piece of lead shot out of its tip. As soon as he put the pencil to paper, though, the point snapped off. “Well, shit,” he said, looking down.

“It’s time to move on.” There. She’d said it.

He nodded. “Right. Job’s done here?”

Yeah
. There was the kicker. “Yes. No. I have to send something to my editor tomorrow, and that’s the thing. What do I send?”

“You got a nickel? ’Cause the doctor’s in, and we’ve got us all evening to work this out.”

He kicked back in the chair, propping his booted feet on the desk. His note got crushed beneath the black soles, but he didn’t seem to care. She gestured toward the carnage. “Doesn’t matter.” He gave her a crooked smile. “Mack likes to play the lottery. I get the numbers for him when he’s up. Thinks he’s lucky. I take it you’re not feeling lucky about this assignment of yours?”

“Not in the slightest.” She gave him a brief recap, running through her options. Turn in a sensational photo-story about an in-house arsonist that could win accolades—but make the Donovans’ firehouse renovation project take a backseat. Or turn in something more mundane and sit on a story that deserved to see the light of day.

“Huh.” Folding his arms on the desk, Joey leaned forward. “Evan ask you to keep this story under wraps?”

“Temporarily. He wants to be sure before he accuses anyone.”

“That sounds like Evan, all right. He likes things definite. Black-and-white. But he wouldn’t ask you to scuttle your story.” Joey sounded confident. “Evan’s a straight-up guy.”

“I need to go,” she repeated.

He poured her a cup of coffee from the pot, throwing her a packet of fossilized powdered creamer. “Put the camera down for a moment, and drink that.”

Why not? She took the cup, the heat soaking into her through the Styrofoam sides. “Magic fix?”

He winked. “Not really. But it’s going to take you at least ten minutes to choke that down and then another ten while you contemplate chucking it back up. That gives me time to come up with something insightful.”

It was worth a shot. She tore open the packet and emptied the contents into the cup. Powder floated to the top of coffee in jagged chunks. The creamer iceberg had her checking the expiration date on the packet.
Too late
. Joey’s ten-minute estimate seemed highly optimistic.

The radio crackled, and Joey tapped industriously away at the keyboard.

“Bad fire?”

“No such thing.” He hit
ENTER
, and someone, somewhere, got his update. “A challenge, sure. Our guys are playing backup on this one. Fire’s mostly contained, but they want more eyes looking for any hot spots the ground crew missed. A quick flyover may be enough. If the team sees something, they’ll jump in for a closer look. See what they can fix out there.”

She took a cautious sip.
God
. Joey’s coffee
was
bad.

He gave her a told-you-so smile. “You really thinking of leaving?”

“Yeah.” Bad coffee and good company wouldn’t fix her situation. “It’s best for everyone. I go. I get a little distance.”

“You talking about heading back into Strong—or a little farther?”

“As far as I can get.”

The Corvette flew along the highway, taking the mountain curves like a dream. Faye had the windows down, and that fresh air pushed all the summer heat outside. No strange noises today. No sudden need to pull off the road. Since Evan had been under the hood, the car handled beautifully. It figured.

When the mountainside showed black, she pulled off. The site of that original brush fire was nothing more than boot prints and tire tracks now. Two minutes later, she was sitting on the hood of her car, soaking in the sunshine. The place was all peaceful and quiet, full of summer sounds and nothing else.

Flipping open her cell, she thumbed through her address book and selected the familiar name. He was still in there. Why hadn’t she deleted him? Maybe for the same reason he’d called Evan. Familiarity made it hard to let go. It was easier to go with the same-old, same-old.

“Hey,” she said, when Mike picked up.

“What’s up?” She listened hard, but, for once, there was silence on Mike’s end. Maybe she’d caught him at a good time.

“You called Evan Donovan.” She cut right to the chase. “You asked him to check up on me.”

“Faye . . .” Yeah, there was a defensive note in his voice. He’d crossed a line, and he knew it. “I was worried, okay? I wanted to make sure you were doing okay.”

“We’re not married anymore, Mike,” she said quietly. “That part of your life—the
our
part—is over.”

“I know.” The tense note in his voice made his frustration clear. Before, she’d loved listening to that voice of his, to that low, rich rumble of sound. He could have made a fortune doing voiceover work in L.A., but he’d chosen firefighting instead. “I’ve seen the lawyers’ bills. I get that.”

“Do you?” She felt sad. Older. It was easy to imagine Mike slouched in his favorite armchair down at the firehouse, his feet propped up while he took five. She sat for a moment herself, feeling the sun-warmed metal beneath her bare legs and knowing she was finally in a good place.

“Evan said you bought a new car. A Corvette.” Humor replaced frustration in Mike’s voice. “I’ll bet that was one hell of a drive up from L.A.”

“It was.” The drive had been a blur of speed, pit-stopping only for gas. Then there had been the stop after the plunge through the flames. Strong. And Evan, who’d pocketed her keys and fixed her car. She wanted to cry, and damned if she knew why. “You shouldn’t have asked him to check up me.”

“I need to know you’re safe.” His use of the present tense had her gritting her teeth.

“I’m not your wife.” She said the words out loud to him. “You’re not my husband. Maybe we’ll be friends again someday, but that someday isn’t happening for a long time yet. I’m not a responsibility you share with the guys in the firehouse.”

“I was trying to do the right thing,” he said stubbornly.

“And you’d do it again. I get that. Really, I do.” She leaned back, staring up at the sky. All blue today. No smoke, no clouds. It shouldn’t be possible for any sky to be that blue outside of a Crayola box, but this one was. “You want to hear something I realized about the firehouse?” She didn’t wait for him to answer, just kept on talking. “When a guy goes down in the line of duty, all the rest of you band together and look out for his family. His wife, his kids—whoever needed him, you all step in. A firehouse widow, she isn’t ever going to be alone. She’ll always have guys ready and willing to lend a hand, to do whatever it takes to keep her going. That’s a nice thing.”

“You going somewhere with this?” Maybe he was expecting a call, or maybe all this heart-to-heart had him itching. It was a relief not to care. He could take his pick of reasons. Either, neither, she was a free woman.

“Yeah, I am. I’m not a widow. I don’t need you to give the order to circle the wagons and make sure everything goes smoothly for me. If it does, great. If it doesn’t, well, that’s life, too, Mike. It’s not your business anymore. Stand or fall, good or bad, this doesn’t have anything to do with you now, and you need to let me go. And I need to let you go. We both get to start over. Tell me you’re on board with that, okay?”

There was a pregnant pause. She could practically hear him hosting an internal debate down there in L.A. Argue. Don’t argue. Either way, he was off in his own world. Overhead, a squirrel complained noisily on its branch, demanding she move along now because this spot was taken.

That was good advice, even if it did come from something with four legs and fleas.

“Good-bye, Mike,” she said and punched END. To make it official, she deleted his number, pocketed the phone, and slid off the hood.

The grass was already coming through the burn, a layer of green slowly preparing to swallow up the black. Lifting the camera, she took a shot. In two, three more weeks, there would be no sign of the fire at all. Just Mother Nature doing her thing.

A week made one hell of a difference.

O
ne truck already on the scene. One run-of-the-mill, dust-covered truck, sporting a decal from a nearby fire department on the driver-side door. One truck that shouldn’t have been there yet, because Rio had dispatched a single engine, and Ben was riding it.

Another firehouse had loaned this guy to Strong when the call had gone out for more summer help. He’d lived in the area all his life, and his fire chief praised him as a nice kid.

Hollis Anderson.

When Hollis had made his pitch to join the jump team right on the heels of Jack’s near-miss with death, Ben had reserved judgment; he hadn’t wanted to ruin the kid’s career just because Hollis had been an insensitive asshole. Now he knew that he had been right to be suspicious.

Worse, the boy had split. Hollis might not be the brightest bulb in the box—Ben Cortez had no respect for the intellect of anyone who set fires for kicks—but he’d still been smart enough to scram. When the engine had pulled up, and Hollis had gotten an eyeful of the anger on Ben’s face, Hollis had leaped into his pickup and run.

But not before every man riding the engine had also gotten a good look at Hollis and his truck.

As soon as the brush fire was out, Ben went down to the police station and filed a report. He wanted to track Hollis down and force the guy to man up, but there was a procedure that needed to be followed here, and that included police reports and letting the law do its thing.

Yeah. Time had run out for Hollis, which was fortunate. If the boy didn’t stop lighting up his job sites, sooner or later somebody would get hurt.

Ben put the truck into park—in front of Mary Ellen’s house. Jack was doing okay, but that last fire had been a wake-up call to Ben. Or a swift kick in the ass. Either way, Ben had gotten the message. No man had unlimited time. It had been too long since he’d lost his wife. She’d been a good woman, a woman he’d loved with all his heart. No way he’d have been here, knocking on Nonna’s door, if Elizabeth had still been alive. But she wasn’t, and there was room in his heart for one more, if she was Mary Ellen.

He’d take this chance.

He knocked on the door.

“May I come in?” he asked when Mary Ellen answered.

“You okay?” She stood back from the door, making room for him. The way she always did. Her living room was an oasis of serenity, with plenty of throw pillows scattered on the furniture and pictures on the walls. The place looked like a catalog, with a spark of Mary Ellen. She’d picked out everything in the room and decided where to put what. Looking at that room always made him feel as if he had a little in on who she was. At the very least, he knew she liked blue.

He did, too. Blue was good. Mary Ellen had blue eyes.

She disappeared briefly into the kitchen, and, when she came back, she had two longnecks in her hand. Silently handing one over, she sank into an armchair and cracked her beer. Maybe she’d picked that spot on purpose. There was room for just one right there. Or, maybe he was overthinking this because he hadn’t dated seriously in decades. Could be that chair was the closest. Hell. He didn’t know.

Since he was going all in tonight, he got the ball onto the tee and lined up the club. “I want to see you. I told you that the other night.”

The beer bottle paused on its trip to her mouth. “You did.”

She was buying time, but it was too late to stop him.

“And I asked you to think it over. You had time to do that, Mary Ellen?”

Her bottle hit the table with a little thump. “You really want to get naked with me?” Her eyes laughed at him. “I promise you, I don’t look like I did at twenty.”

“I don’t want you to look twenty. I want you to look like you.”

Hell
. He wasn’t perfect. Hadn’t been when he was twenty, either, but no point in beating that horse right now.

“If I do this,” she warned lightly, “I’m doing this all the way, Ben.”

“What’s happening here,” he said thickly, because he agreed with her, “isn’t just a
this
. I want us to be together.”

“Second chances.” Her hands smoothed the arms of the chair, and he wanted her fingers touching him like that.

“No. A first chance at us.” He willed her to see what he did when he looked at her. This thing they had was special, and he didn’t think he could let go of it. Let go of her.

“You want to kiss me?” There was laughter in her voice again—and something else. Something that sounded more like wonder. With a side order of doubt.

“I’d be happy to do a little show-and-tell.” God, would he. He pulled her up and put his hands on her shoulders, cupping them. She was warm and feminine and wearing some kind of silky shirt that slid beneath his fingers. “Tell me that’s okay with you.”

She looked up at him. She’d fit right into the crook of his shoulder, and he liked that, too. God, he liked everything about her. She had him tied in knots, and now he was thinking she had no idea how intensely she made him feel.

“You want me to do that, Mary Ellen?” he drawled, and his voice came out all rough and hoarse because his body was telegraphing desperate messages to his brain. He wasn’t going to make a move until she gave him the go-ahead. She smiled up at him, a smile full of mischief, and all his good intentions flew right out the window. She got to him. She did. He drew her toward him slowly, closing the small gap still between them, and she came.

She came all the way into his arms, her hands resting easily on his chest. No way she didn’t feel the hard
thump-thump
of his heart, the beat that said he’d been waiting for this.

And he kissed her. He had to have that much of her. He lowered his head and put his mouth on hers. His lips brushed her lips, and they parted. Opened up to let him in. Sweet. She was so very sweet. He’d kissed and been kissed before, but this was
their
first kiss, and, Christ, it was everything he’d been waiting for. He got one arm around her waist, holding her close, because he wanted to feel her touching him, and the other threaded through that glorious hair of hers. Each breath he took filled him up with more of his Mary Ellen.

She kissed him and kissed him, and nothing was ever going to be the same again. He licked deep inside her mouth, pushing his tongue against hers, and she pushed right back. And he knew right then that there was no question about it.

She’d stolen his heart.