Wildfire on the Skagit (Firehawks Book 9) (5 page)

He could feel her body heat close beside him despite the warmth of the night. Could feel a need in him for…

“Yes,” she whispered from close beside him.

“Huh? What?”

“I been watching you, Rook.”

He’d been watching her, too. And not just how she fought fire. He liked the way she commanded and the way she moved.

“You may love this moment, but you hate it too. Hate the waiting just like I do.”

“I didn’t say a goddamn word,” he turned to face her, unnerved at how close that shot was to the mark. He hated the war but, someone help him, he loved the fight.

“Didn’t need to,” Krista’s light eyes and hair caught the warm glow from the fire far below.

“You look…” like he needed his head examined. She moved like Special Forces, had the silence of one too. Not just Master Sergeant, but also a multi-tour field grunt. How the hell did a civilian get like that? She looked like one of those Norse goddesses, the ones who wielded true power.

It’s like she was custom made for him.

Well, he was about to get his ass kicked back to the Zulies, but that didn’t stop what he did next.

He snagged a hand around her neck and kissed her, hard. He clenched his gut for the punch he deserved. But instead she returned his kiss with a heat that matched his own. Her tongue fought his as her own hand fisted in his short hair.

He was suddenly as eager and clumsy as a sixteen-year old boy from Boise getting his first kiss at the Turner Gulch boat ramp on Lucky Peak Lake. Some switch had been thrown and he was taking all the heat that Krista could give. Unaware of his own actions until they were complete, he grabbed one of her magnificent breasts, firm, lush, far more than a handful. Rather than pulling back, she leaned into his hold on her.

Evan shifted to nuzzle her neck—and instantly regretted it. Like all smokies after a fire, she had a band around her neck of sweat-dried ash and soot that had been ground into her skin by her shirt collar until it was a gray-black ring that tasted of salt and charcoal.

She laughed. It was a big hearty laugh for all that she kept it soft. He felt it move through her chest beneath his palm.

“Sorry,” he hated himself for saying it. He pulled back and removed his hand from her breast. “I shouldn’t have.”

“Not in the Army anymore, Rookie.”

“But you’re still my comman—my boss.”

“No, Akbar is. I’m just his jump partner. You want to go kissing him though, you’d better ask Laura first. She’s pretty possessive about her man.”

“I’ll do that,” he did his best to keep his tone dry. It still wasn’t right the way he’d grabbed at her, driven at her. God, he wanted to throw her on the ground this instant and just bury himself in her until all of his black anger and pain was spent.

He’d tried that before, a long time ago. It hadn’t turned out well. A two-month relationship hadn’t made it to the first day of month three. He’d never figured out how to apologize for that one and then she’d been gone—with a real clear,
Don’t you call me. Ever!

“Just steer clear, Krista. I’m fine on a fire, it’s just on the ground that I’m a mess.”

She didn’t respond for a long time and he couldn’t turn to look at her. Couldn’t face her because he didn’t want to see the disgust on her face.

“Been a smokejumper ten years, Rookie. I live for messy.”

Then she stood up, and did the craziest thing. She leaned down and gave him the softest kiss he’d ever had.

# # #

“Let me know when you’re ready to wrestle some more,” Krista whispered into his ear then started the hike back up over the rise to camp.

What the hell was that, girl?

She never, ever kissed or slept with anyone on her team. It just made for an ungodly snarl. She’d watched other women try it, smokie or hotshot crew, and it always screwed up everything. Sometimes so bad that they bailed on the career ‘cause it so messed with their heads.

But when Evan had unleashed that kiss on her, her brain had switched off and she’d finally figured out why she’d sent him on down the line that first day—the fourth reason. He didn’t move or act like anyone she’d ever met in a decade of jumping fire. There was a barely contained power in him like a big blaze on the edge of blowup—that moment when forest fire became wildfire.

Besides, she’d never been kissed like that before in her life and she’d had some good ones over the years. He hadn’t held back like she was some tender female, he’d gone at her like he wanted her any way he could get her.

She stood a long time in the shadows of the camp and stared down at the sleeping smokies by the light of the failing campfire.

Krista wished desperately that she didn’t want him to try again.

Chapter 4

The next three fires,
which hit back to back, Evan threw himself into the firefight. He’d seen what the MHA teams could do and he did everything in his power to make sure he fully integrated in—driving himself until he was nearly shattered with exhaustion.

He’d also made sure that he ended up on Akbar’s teams whenever there was a split.

By the time they hit Day Five on the Deerness Fire in northern California, he’d been running at full tilt for over two weeks without a break; they all had. The Deerness finally laid down around midnight. Everyone had dropped where they stood and slept.

Now it was just coming up dawn. Clear of smoke, the pines of the Shasta-Trinity National Forest were a soft wonderland. The Black ranged across three ridges, but already deer and squirrel were nosing around the edges. A Steller’s jay cocked its black crested crown at him to see if he had any food, then flitted off with a high-pitched
skreeka!
of disgust when he didn’t make some offering.

“Tell me,” Akbar waved him over to help ready the gear for pickup.

“Tell you what?” Evan knew exactly what, but he really didn’t want to talk about it.

“Tell me why you’re trying to kill yourself on the fire or I’ll yank your rookie ass off the line. I can’t have you endangering the team.”

That shocked Evan upright. Not just off the team. Not just away from Krista.

But a
danger
to the team?

God, no!

That went against all his training both as a soldier and a firefighter.

“Fuck!” he dropped down to sit on a boulder at the edge of the stream where they’d been rolling up hoses—getting ready for the helicopter to airlift them back to the local airfield.
Not again!

Akbar sat down beside him. He was a little man, a head shorter than Evan, but there was no question who ruled on a fire. There were jokes that he was a direct descendant of Agni, the Hindu god of fire. And knowing Akbar, he’d been the one to start the rumors because what did a bunch of Oregon smokies know from Hindu gods.

“You started clean,” Akbar told him. “Damn good on the fire up by Mt. Rainier. Something happened there. You got even better, but you also got crazier. Now I know from crazy, jumped fire with TJ who wouldn’t quit until a tree almost took him out after forty years as a smokie…and still he wanted back in. But you got some other-level shit going on.”

Evan stared down at his blackened hands; soot ingrained in every pore and knuckle line despite wearing gloves. He felt sick to his stomach and cold with a sudden sweat that he’d be the one to put the team at risk.

“You aren’t gone scary yet, Evan. But you gotta ease back. You keep driving like you are and you’re gonna hurt yourself.”

If he hurt himself, that would take others off the fire to assist him. If he hurt someone else in the process…

Unacceptable, soldier!

“I’ll…”
what?
“Fix it, Akbar. Sorry to spook you.”

“Long way from spooking me, Rookie,” Akbar slapped his shoulder cheerfully. “Just consider this my early warning system. For spooky you gotta meet my wife,” his laugh was always easy and twice his size. He went back to rolling hose.

“Unpredictable?” Evan struggled to catch his breath, to focus on something other than his one fear.

“Duh! Woman married me of all damn fool things to do.” Akbar picked up the sixty-pound Mark III water pump as if it weighed nothing. He carried it to the stack of gear they’d been mounding near the helispot where an MHA helicopter would land to clear all of their equipment off the hillside. “She got me to stop dead in my tracks and never look back. If that ain’t some kinda spooky magic, nothing is.”

That wasn’t the kind of problem Evan was having. He wasn’t fighting his attraction to Krista. He was in pitched battle against bringing his shit into her world. That first taste of her had turned an idle curiosity into a heap of need that was fast burning up his insides.

Well, hiding sure as hell wasn’t working. It was like he’d forgotten his training. Green Berets don’t hide from problems, they fix ‘em.

Time to fix this, Ev.

# # #

Krista sat on the floor, slouching against the rear bulkhead of the DC-3, and tried to let her body unwind. The return flight from the Deerness Fire to MHA’s base up at Mount Hood was only about three hours. Most of the smokies had crashed into sleep the minute they were aboard, some stretched out on the floor, others atop lumpy piles of gear. That opened up enough of the sideways facing seats down one side of the hull for others to stretch out there.

Krista had landed sitting beside the jump door, and Evan against the back of the pilot’s seat at the far end of the plane.

She’d considered being hurt, the way Evan had backed away from her. Considered it seriously even though she was so used to it. School dances, county fairs, boys never approaching her.

But then she’d watched how Evan Greene attacked the fire. This was a big, powerful man battling some serious issues. And she could only respect the way he did it, by working so damn hard that he was forcing other MHA crew to struggle to keep up.

It was kind of funny that maybe she’d so messed with a man’s head that he was turning from a good firefighter into a great one. She didn’t have that kind of effect on guys. They jumped her or she jumped them, they had a good time for as long as it lasted, and they were done.

But Evan had something else happening and she could tell it wasn’t just about her, so she’d let it run a while.

He read fire as well as the next five-year smokie, but he fought it like only she and Akbar could—with a tireless efficiency that pushed right past physical limits as if they weren’t even there. Probably his soldier training. Even Ox didn’t have that level of discipline, he simply had such a deep capacity that he could keep up.

But whatever drove Evan, she was starting to be ticked that it seemed to be driving him away from her rather than towards.

Whatever demons were biting his ass didn’t scare her, they were his demons after all, not hers. And, she had to admit to herself that she liked that about him. Johnny Q. Boring, Mr. Enlightened and well-rounded, “I know who I am,” never did anything for her. Oh, they could be fun for a tumble; but the dark-and-broody soldier guy? That made Evan…interesting.

“He doesn’t do something about it soon, I will,” she muttered to herself.

“Ha!” Akbar had been slouched against the rear bulkhead close beside her, but she’d thought he was asleep. “That explains it.”

“Explains what?” she knew her attempt to sound innocent was lame. She’d never gotten away with it before. She’d tried, like after gluing the school quarterback’s locker shut with industrial adhesive from the auto shop, with the quarterback inside—in payment for how he was treating the cheerleaders. Rather than being thankful, they had all flocked to the jerk’s defense. Then when they’d found out she’d been the one—real tough, she was the only person bigger than he was in the school and she’d been lousy at protesting her innocence—they’d ostracized her even more than she already was.

“No way,” Akbar sounded totally pleased with himself. “I’m not copping on a bro, but now I get what’s going on.”

“Careful or I’ll rename you Johnny the Dweeb and I’ll make it stick.” Her failed attempts to look away from the sleeping rookie wasn’t helping her claims of innocence any.

“You can’t,” Akbar didn’t sound the least worried. “It’s my name.”

“Soon to be Johnny the Dweeb,” she threatened. But he was right. Johnny Akbar Jepps’ middle name actually meant “great,” so Akbar the Great was technically redundant. And he
was
a great firefighter even if he now owed her three beers for better parachute landings and she only owed him one.

“I can tell you this though,” Akbar shifted into a more comfortable position and shut his eyes. “Only one way you’re gonna find out what’s driving him. Gotta get up close and personal for that, just like I did with Laura.”

“You went after her like a lovesick bull calf.”

“Yep,” he agreed sleepily. “And look where it got me.”

Krista considered the advice and decided it was one of the smarter things Akbar had ever said. She wasn’t interested in anything permanent, but Evan Greene was one of those guys that was permanently interesting. She considered thanking Akbar, but his breathing had shifted into a soft snore.

He was smiling in his sleep.

Laura had definitely done something strange to him.

Chapter 5

They’d left the Deerness
Fire shortly after dawn. From fire to airport by helo then DC-3 back to base.

Evan had brooded on Akbar’s advice for the entire flight back and come to only one conclusion—he’d been a total chicken shit. No wonder he was feeling so pissed at the world; he wasn’t being honest.

Fix that now, soldier.
But circumstance didn’t lend him any opportunity.

After landing on the grass-strip runway at the MHA base, they unloaded several tons of crap. Then everyone pitched in to clean, organize, repack chutes, and reset all of their gear into the speed racks. The base might be set up in an old, rundown boys’ camp with a grass runway down the middle, but the gear was top flight and was always maintained in perfect condition first, no matter how tired they were.

Evan passed Krista half a hundred times, but she was always going the other way, or one of them was loaded down.

His frustration was climbing with each passage. The only way he was going to be able to fix the problem as he’d promised Akbar was to get Krista alone and apologize properly. And that just wasn’t happening.

Then everyone hit the showers.

It was coming up noon by the time he was clean.

The guys got him to go back in to scrub off a missed spot on his back several times before he caught on that they were just messing with him. Damn it! He was even reacting like a rookie.

They got a good laugh and he felt even stupider than he already did.

In the Green Berets, SFG was supposed to stand for Special Forces Group, not for being such a Stupid Fucking Goon that you fell for every stupid ass…

He took a deep breath. Green Berets were the guys they sent to build peace in the villages and to build relationships to support the counter-insurgency; he’d been one of the very best at it. His ODA had ferreted out more terrorists than anyone except maybe Delta Force because of how smoothly they worked with the Afghan civilians.

And here he was wound up like an idiot…rookie!

He deserved the goddamn name.

Mark Henderson, the MHA Incident Commander, declared the rest of the day off. No fire calls until tomorrow. After fourteen days on fire, it wasn’t very generous, but based on the cheers, the crews were psyched anyway. Everyone except for him. And he knew that was only because his mood sucked at the moment.

They stampeded to the parking lot and headed down into the town of Hood River perched on the edge of the Columbia Gorge. They were going to hit the Doghouse Inn, the smokejumper bar they’d introduced him to during training and try to pick up some windsurfers. It was a great dive, one of the best he’d ever been in, but he totally wasn’t in the mood.

So he stood there and watched the gravel fly as battered pickups and over-powered muscle cars ripped out of the parking lot. He didn’t know what Krista drove, but he stood there until the parking lot quieted and the first birds were daring to call out tentatively, testing the abrupt silence after the noontime mayhem.

He’d missed her again. Well, following her to the Doghouse was just going to place him in the same unmanageable crowd.

“Shit!” he muttered softly to himself, the calling bird, and anyone else who was listening.

He spun on his heel and walked smack into her. Krista had come up not two feet behind him wearing running shoes, worn jeans, and a stretched t-shirt that proclaimed, “Wildland firefighters do it in the wild.”

“Goddamn it!” he stumbled back a step, then another. “How in the hell do you keep sneaking up on me?” And why was he yelling at the woman he’d just spent the entire flight trying to figure out how to talk rationally to.

“Hello yourself.” She was smiling at him. “Pretty day, isn’t it? How are you? Pissed at the universe? Really? What a shocker.”

He growled. It was all he was capable of.

“So, why are you looking for me?”

“How did you…” Because he was that obvious. Evan closed his eyes and counted to ten. Then to twenty. He considered going for thirty but it wasn’t helping.

He opened his eyes and she hadn’t moved. Still had that smile that made her look so damn good, and like she knew shit that the rest of the universe didn’t.

“Look, I’m sorry about—”

“Yeah, you said that before. Dumb thing to say. Try again.”

He clenched his fists to try and keep still. To hold his focus. Clenched them until his fingers throbbed. Bore down as if he was lifting a heavy weight and…it wasn’t doing any more good than the counting had.

Evan turned and walked off across the gravel parking lot. Maybe he’d just crawl into his Toyota pickup and drive back to Montana, see if he could still get a slot with the Zulies.

This time he heard her, trotting lightly over the gravel behind him, but making far less noise than she should in the process.

“Hey, Evan. Slow down there.”

He walked past his truck. Maybe he’d just walk back to Montana. But when he hit the turn in the dirt road that led down the mountain, he walked straight across it into the trees. He’d always felt at home in the trees; something he’d missed desperately in Afghanistan. Even when they had forests there, they made no sense—thick holly and oak atop the ridges, and thinning down or gone in the desert-dry valleys.

A couple hundred yards downslope past the road he found a log. A big tree, a Doug fir that was a good four feet in diameter. It had toppled to the forest floor and buried itself halfway into the duff. Too weary to go further he sat and faced outward farther into the shadowy woods.

A small stream, probably glacier cold, ran nearby splashing brightly over stones and ducking under fallen tree limbs. It rested a brief time in a pool a dozen feet across, then continued on its way. Surrounding it were mature spruce and pin oak, no alder, a lot of detritus carpeting the ground; it had been a long time since there was a fire here.

He sat…and waited.

As silent as a deer, Krista moved up beside him and sat just a hand’s breadth away.

He’d run dry. Had no idea what to say.

So he just sat.

# # #

Krista was puzzled by Evan. He wasn’t just avoiding her. He was hurting, but not in any way she recognized.

So she sat on the log beside him and tried to puzzle it out.

When a rookie—a true rookie, not someone as massively skilled as Evan—couldn’t break through on a new skill, they’d internalize it until it became a canker sore. If she couldn’t find a way to dig it out or break through, the rookie was just gonna get stuck, maybe permanently.

Krista had also watched candidates make it through the entire training and then freeze at the door on their first fire jump after dozens of practice ones. Never get past it.

Or stand in front of their first big fire and get so hypnotized by the flames that they would have stood there gaping until the fire burned right over them.

But Evan wasn’t like any of those, so Krista didn’t even know where to begin to help. And she really did want to help. Maybe, for a change, she could stop teasing him and actually answer some of his questions.

“I grew up here,” Krista finally spoke and it was hard.

There were memories she didn’t want to relive because she couldn’t get them back. Pop was gone and had taken all of the good memories with him.

“Not here, but in the forest. North of here. Pop built fine furniture using wood off the land. My first and best memories were tramping through the woods looking for just the right piece. Could take us days. Then when we found it, I’d run home and fetch Charlie, a big roan gelding. We’d drag the log back to this milling saw we had. Pop cut his own lumber, shaped and formed it. I was never much at woodworking, but I loved the forest and I could track down a good fall like nobody’s business.”

“That doesn’t explain how you’re so quiet in the woods?” His voice was rough when he finally spoke.

“We were pretty broke, so most of our food came from the forest. Pop was a felon, grand theft auto as a kid. Just some joy ride that crossed four state lines before he totaled the car. Law says felon equals no guns. We did bow hunting: deer, elk, got a bear once. Rabbit, even duck. I learned how to be silent there,” that silence was something they shared.

And Krista loved the forest, could never get out in it enough. Didn’t matter if they’d just spent a week or a month on a fire, she was always happiest walking beneath the trees.

“Where did you learn to be so damn quiet?” she asked him.

“Fort Bragg, North Carolina,” his voice was still dull. Monotone. “And three consecutive tours overseas, long ones.”

“Knew you were military, didn’t know you drew that card.”

“Volunteered. Special Forces. Green Beret.”

Krista didn’t know what to say. A number of boys from her high school had gone military to get out of Concrete. They’d all come back. A few in a box, most of the others just…changed and not all of those in a good way.

She inspected Evan’s profile, but there was no clue there.

He continued to stare steadfastedly straight ahead.

“Well, at least that explains why you’re so damn good at what you do. You’ve definitely got the skills.”

“Even if I don’t have a name.” There was a small spark of humor; the first she’d heard since the Mt. Rainier fire. She’d take that as a good sign.

“Haven’t pinned you down yet, Rook.”

His smile was perfunctory, his nod small, his gaze distant.

“But that’s not what’s eating at you. So what is?”

He just shook his head.

She hit him. She bunched her fist and drove it into his arm. Krista had leveled assholes in a bar with that blow, had taught the auto shop teacher exactly what you didn’t do to high school girls. Taught him so well he’d left Concrete that night and never come back.

Evan had kissed her then avoided her. Fine. But he didn’t get to ignore her when she was sitting right here.

Even as she fired off the blow, Evan snapped out a hand so fast that she couldn’t see the move though she was looking right at him.

One moment she was millimeters from punching him hard enough to send him tumbling off the log.

The next, his massive hand was wrapped around her wrist. He didn’t knock her blow aside, he simply absorbed the full force of it with that grab. Then he didn’t lever her wrist to take her down, though she could feel just how effortlessly he could do that. She was strong, but he was in a whole other category.

“Sorry, reflexes.” He held her wrist a second, maybe two, then let go.

“You’ve got a problem, Rook.” She massaged her wrist, not that he’d hurt it, but rather to feel the impossible power and speed Evan had exhibited. She’d never seen anything like it. Of course she’d never met a six-year Special Forces vet before either.

“I got problems?” He nodded. “Yeah, I knew that much.”

“If Akbar’s right, the problem is me.”

That got his attention.

He spun to look at her for the first time. His dark eyes had often tracked her from a distance. She could feel the heat of his look even when she was close against a fire. Now it was high noon and despite them sitting a hundred yards into thickly shadowed woods, his dark eyes were clear and bright as crystal. A shade of brown as beautiful as a hundred-year oak.

“Not you. God, Krista, not you. That’s what I’m sorry for. The problem is all me.”

Krista cricked her neck. Not her? Some part of her had
known
it was the too-tall, too-broad, too-strong girl. And a part of her that she’d thought had accepted that truth back in high school, still wallowed in humiliation deep down inside.

Not her?

Evan was sitting still once more, so still he almost disappeared into the forest right before her eyes. Except for those eyes. They might be the color of the forest, but they were so brilliant and so alive.

“Then what
is
the problem?”

# # #

Evan shook his head, “I’ll be goddamned if I know. I’m just toxic. Someone as incredible as you should steer clear of me. Way clear. It’s the best advice I’ve got for you. I’m sorry I made you think this was about you.” Then he turned back to stare at the woods and the splashing stream.

He couldn’t stand to keep looking at her. Maybe her life hadn’t been idyllic, but he could hear her love of the time with her dad. She had more energy and passion than he’d ever have again. That much he’d left overseas with the bodies of too many friends. And before that…but he couldn’t bear to think about that.

At least he’d said what needed to be said. As long as they didn’t need to keep avoiding each other, he could face the fire. He’d just have to crank it down a notch or two. Keep his head in the game so that Akbar would know Evan could chill when he needed to.

He could feel Krista inspecting him, but knew he’d blown whatever chance they’d had.

It’s never too late to come see us, Captain Greene,
he could hear the voice of the Veteran Affairs counselor they’d made him visit as part of leaving the military.

But he wasn’t one of those poor saps with PTSD. He’d been afraid that he might be, but when a tree had exploded right near him on his third fire, he hadn’t descended into hysteria or terror. He hadn’t revisited the battlefield in his mind except for a sharp bite of bitter adrenalin on his tongue. Sure he’d jumped plenty in surprise, but he hadn’t known that a tree could explode from superheated sap with the force of a AT4 anti-tank round.

He was just—

Krista grabbed his face in both hands and kissed him hard.

“What the hell?” He managed to pull back.

She didn’t say a word, instead she took up his right hand and unfolded it from the fist he’d unconsciously clenched it into.

He tried to help, but couldn’t seem to connect willpower to hand muscles.

When she had it unfolded, she looked him square in the eye. There was mischief in those bright blues, but he couldn’t make any sense of it.

# # #

Krista wasn’t afraid of him. There wasn’t a mean bone in his body, just some hurt ones.

Watching him sit there and fold up on himself, she no longer felt anger over him pushing her away after that first kiss, at avoiding her ever since, or even at assuming his apology covered the bases. All he’d done was show her what a good man he was, even if he didn’t see it.