Where There's Smoke: inspirational romantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 1) (14 page)

He couldn’t work with someone who couldn’t be trusted not to come apart at the first hint of flashover.

She turned, wary—

“I need your help.”

“Huh?”

He stood, his Pulaski over his shoulder, met her questioning look with one of his own.

“You saw what happened at the Hotline Saloon. I’m losing recruits—and morale. I’ve been thinking about it all day, watching you work. No one knows this job better than you. What would you say if I asked you to help me train the rookies?”

She stood, nonplussed, just blinking.

“Listen, I get it. And I can admit that I don’t...well, that I don’t approve of the way you take too many risks. But you’re fire smart, Kate, and you’re an expert jumper, and...” He shifted, brought the Pulaski down, dug at the dirt. “As much as I hate to admit it, the cubbies could benefit from hanging out with you.”

Despite his cool tone, the way he kept his distance, offering the job almost offhandedly, she had a feeling what it cost him to say that.

But work with Jed every day? After last night’s kiss? Yes, it settled there right at the top of her mind, especially when he stepped up to her, smelling of smoke and fire and danger and looking so painfully handsome despite the sweat that trickled down from his temple into his rough thatch of whiskers. No, this could be a bad, very bad idea.

Talk about getting burned—her fragile, still-healing heart couldn’t take another go-around with frustrating, let-me-save-you Jed Ransom.

Maybe he saw her hesitate—more out of shock than apprehension—but he must have thought he needed more oomph to his request because he stepped closer, lowered his voice. “Isn’t that what you want? To train the best, just like your father?”

He knew how to find her tender flesh, push a thumb into it.

She nodded. And apparently she had no control over herself when Jed stood this close, lowered that deep baritone, because she added, “Is that what
you
want?”

She didn’t know what kind of answer she expected, dreadfully aware of the one she suddenly, desperately wanted.

In her wildest dreams, they fought fire side by side and heated up the nights in each other’s arms for as long as they both should live.

And how crazy was that—because she’d always told herself she wasn’t the marrying kind. The kind to stay home and settled down. Like father, like daughter, right?

She looked away, lest he see the imprint of her hopes in her eyes.

Apparently he hadn’t. Jed picked up his Pulaski, stepped away. “I want to save lives and fight fire. In that order.”

She took a breath. “Right,” she said. “Me too.”

“Good.” His expression warmed. “Like you said, we’re going to need all the jumpers we can pass. And, apparently, I’m begging you to stay.”

And this was exactly how she’d gotten-in trouble before, falling for his easy smile, the smoky, sweet texture of his eyes.

Oh, she shouldn’t do this again. Except her voice, her brain, had decided to jump first, to leave her heart hanging. “Yeah. I’ll be glad to help.”

“Perfect. Bright and early tomorrow morning then.” He whirled around as if to stride away, and she nearly bumped into him when he stopped, turned back. Took a breath. “And please, Kate. Don’t make me regret this. I’m counting on you not to do anything stupid.”

The warm feeling dissolved into a puddle of black. Her mouth tightened, but she gave him a hard, crisp nod. “Don’t worry, Jed. I promise I won’t get anyone hurt.”

His mouth tightened as she stalked past him, the embers of their barely rekindled friendship neatly snuffed out.

Somehow, with his suggestion Kate train the recruits, Jed had awakened the ghost of Jock Burns.

Jed couldn’t help but feel he’d traveled back in time to his days as a recruit, drenched in sweat, wrung out, yet mesmerized by a leader who just didn’t know when to quit. And who made the entire thing seem like some sort of intense Outward-bound vacation.

Kate had clearly adopted Jock Burn’s magic recipe for team success—hard work plus prepared fire fighters, mixed in with generous amounts of camaraderie.

Oh, goody, goody, a three-mile run, but Kate had cold water and time off waiting for them after today’s PT.

The recruits were actually grinning.

Jed stood on the running board of his truck, holding the stopwatch. Overhead, the blue dome of the sky stretched cloudless, not a hint of rain, the air crackling with heat across the compound. The sun glared on the tarmac, bright off the red-and-white hull of Gilly’s Twin Otter jump plane, and the Air Tankers sat parked in orderly rows, gassed up and ready for a callout. The buzzing of an air compressor from the dome metal hangar suggested repairs or maintenance checks on one of their ancient Russian An-2s.

Kate had changed out of her Forest Service uniform into a pair of black running pants, an athletic shirt, her hair braided into two red pigtails and held back with a teal bandanna. She now stood at the head of the assembly of the remaining recruits. Apparently, she planned on leading the pack while Jed remained behind to harass the stragglers.

Figured.

It would help if she didn’t look like she belonged on the cover of
Fitness
magazine, her curves outlined in that purple V-backed running shirt.

She climbed onto the back of his truck, and he averted his eyes from her legs.

“Today’s run is just practice—you won’t get cut if you can't finish the three miles in less than twenty-two minutes and thirty seconds. But if you can’t pass this run next week, you’ll be cut, game over. Got it?”

She glanced down at him, and he knew she added the last for his sake—he’d already had it out with her once for coddling the team.

Give them a chance to prove themselves,
she’d said yesterday afternoon as they watched the recruits practice their landing rolls.
I didn’t get it the first time either.

Yeah, well, look where letting her prove herself had landed him. Replaying their nearly combustible kiss in his head into the wee hours of the night, evoking even more memories all the way back to Alaska, and wishing he’d had the sense back then to send her packing back to Montana.

Then, maybe he would have gotten her out of his system, and she would have moved onto something safe, like grizzly taming, and he would be training the team with some grumpy, hard-bitten, bald and paunchy smokejumper from Missoula.

The sun hovered above the horizon, still cruel as the recruits lined up for their run, Kate in the middle. The base seemed hollow today, the standby barracks ghostly with the sight of so many pickups, motorcycles, and motley cars baking away in the parking lot.

Someone was unloading a truck of dry goods into the supply warehouse, now depleted of food and gear. A few more cars parked in front of the head shed where dispatchers, weather heads, and division commanders monitored the progress of the Glacier Rim fire.

The Jude County hotshot team—with Conner, Reuben, and Pete attached—worked mop-up on a fire in the nearby Glacier National Park, helmed by a smokejumping team out of Missoula.

“Go!” Jed started the watch, and the runners left him in a poof of dust and grunts. He hunkered down into his truck, put it into gear, and let it roll behind them.

In three weeks, Jed just might have a team ready to add to the attack, thanks to Kate and her morale-boosting encouragement, her stories of jumping fire, and not a little dare and challenge she threw out, especially to the youngsters—CJ, Tucker, and Ned.

Not to mention Hannah Butcher. The minute he’d introduced Kate as their jump trainer, Hannah glued to her like she might a big sister, seeing perhaps a kindred spirit. Kate’s addition to the training team lit a new fire under the recruit, and Hannah gritted her teeth as she bumbled landing after landing, refusing to give up long after the two other female recruits had walked off the course.

More, the young recruit bore adoration along with the fire in her eyes when Kate got up to teach. Like today, during Kate’s class on letdowns staged in the training area of the base. Located in an acre or more of meadow set off by a chain-link fence, the training area housed the jump tower and receiving berm, the letdown practice platform, the landing roll simulator, an old Twin-Otter, decommissioned and grounded, and the obstacle course, worn and muddied.

Hannah had stared at Kate, hanging twenty feet up in the letdown simulator, as if mesmerized.

Yeah, well, him too. Kate turned into an acrobat when she donned jump gear.

“The first thing you have to keep in your head is that if you’re coming into the trees and you don’t spot an opening, steer toward the smaller ones. And don’t try and grab anything—that’s a great way to break an arm,” Kate had said, dangling in her gear as if she’d just landed in a giant ponderosa.

Jed had stood at the edge of the crowd, sweat trickling down his back, hoping she wouldn’t bring up his brilliant tree landing from so many years ago. Just thinking about it made his leg ache.

“Once you’re hung up, you want to check your chute and see how secure you’re hung. You don’t want to tie off to a chute that will break free halfway down.”

And there it was, the quick glance in his direction. He wanted to raise his hand and suggest that he’d snapped his leg
before
his stellar letdown that crashed him fifty feet through the branches back to earth. But, well, he couldn’t be sure. Everything after he’d plowed into the black spruce turned fuzzy until he woke up, Kate untangling him from his rigging.

“Also check for loose lines around your neck. You don’t want to strangle yourself the minute you cut yourself free. Once you’re sure you’re free, go ahead and rid yourself of your reserve, then grab up your letdown rope. Take about six feet—leave the rest in your pants pocket. You don’t want to drop it.”

She had her rope out, demonstrating how to wrap the rope through the D rings, then slowly lowered herself to the ground, landing with a soft crunch on the grass.

Showoff. But, okay, not a bit of daredevil in that move, and everyone, with her patient instruction, landed their letdown. Especially Hannah, who might have been a climber in an earlier life.

It could be that Kate had a soft spot for Hannah, too, because while Hannah seemed fearless in the air and while dangling above the ground, she couldn’t seem to nail her PLFs—parachute landing falls. Kate spent an hour during lunch instructing Hannah on her landing rolls in the sawdust pit.

Now, Hannah seemed determined to prove herself as they ran. The runners had passed the first mile marker, Kate now out in the lead with Tucker Newman, the snowboarder from Minnesota. Jed had trained him three years ago, when he’d shown up to join the shots, and had a fondness for the quiet, hard-working kid. He bore high hopes Tucker would make it onto the team.

Kate set a brutal pace—less than eight minutes a mile, in blazing heat, but next week would be with full gear—boots, uniforms—so perhaps this was mercy. Even in Alaska she’d always nailed the workouts, her red hair a beacon for the recruits who hadn’t spent off-season in training.

He probably should forgive himself for passing her, his guilt misplaced. After all, she seemed exactly the person she claimed to be...the best smokejumper he’d ever seen.

At mile two, he drove past the stragglers, shouting out times, then headed up to the front and to the finish line marked by the base entrance. There he climbed out and leaned against his truck.

Kate rounded the corner ten feet behind the leaders—Tucker, and then CJ, the rodeo junkie from eastern Montana.

They surged by him, racing at the end, and Jed clocked the pair in well under twenty-one minutes. Kate flew in at twenty-one minutes, point three seconds.

She stood at the finish line, her hands on her hips, catching her breath as he called out the times.

Her gaze, however, hung on the stragglers—the two preppies out of Chicago, a former linebacker from nearby Kalispell, and Hannah.

Hannah pushed hard, wheezing, her short legs fighting to get her time.

Jed showed Kate the time as Hannah crossed the line, ahead of the final three stragglers.

“She’ll make it,” Kate said and walked away.

“Hey, Boss!” CJ came running up to him, sweat pouring off his temples, down his yellow T-shirt. With a thicker upper body than Tucker, muscles used to swinging a rope and wrestling a steer, he probably had to work twice as hard as Tucker for the same run time. However, with their different backgrounds, the two combined for a lethal pair. “A bunch of us are heading over to Hannah’s place for some BBQ ribs her dad’s been smokin’ all day. Kate said to make sure I invited you.”

Kate said?

Jed glanced at her retreating form now in a light jog toward the jumper standby shack. They’d barely spoken other than conversations about training, and he had only himself to blame.

He could still hear his stupid words ringing in his ears.
Please, Kate. Don’t make me regret this. I’m counting on you not to do anything stupid.

Way to win friends. Any goodwill he’d cultivated by inviting her into the training he’d eviscerated with that comment. Evidenced by her follow-up.
Don’t worry, Jed. I promise I won’t get anyone hurt.