Burns So Bad (Smoke Jumpers) (10 page)

As long as no one said anything,
however, she could pretend.

She was good at that.

Today, however, Rio had made his
intentions of running by her side clear. He’d kept his mouth shut for the first
three miles, letting her settle into the rhythm of the run, but now he was
clearly gearing up to talk. At least she knew his cardio endurance was good.
“You okay?”

“Never better.” She kept her eyes
fixed on the trail. There was one hell of a dip coming up and she had no desire
to bite it.

He made a sound. “Gia—”

Her heartbeat picked up, a familiar
fullness clogging her throat. There was no telling which moment her mis-wired
heart would pick to backfire, but this was apparently one of them. Maybe. She
focused on calming her breathing. Having a PSVT attack in front of Rio wasn’t
an option.

“I think we should renegotiate,” he
said from behind her. “Go public.”

She flipped him the bird. “You make
us sound like a stock trade,” she called, hoping he’d write off her breathiness
to the uphill run.

He mumbled something, but she
didn’t turn her head.

Instead, she counted heartbeats.
Onetwothreefourfive.

And it didn’t work.

She still wasn’t ready to discuss
what they’d done. She put on a spurt of speed and beat him to the dip. After
that, it was single file for the remaining three miles and he didn’t have a
chance to ask his question again. Honestly, she didn’t know what she’d have
said. Thanks for a good time? Call me if you’re interested in a repeat later
tonight? Because she hadn’t been signing up for a relationship or even serial
sex. No, if she was being honest, she hadn’t thought beyond finally, finally
going to bed with Rio Donovan. Somehow, she’d imagined that once (or twice,
thrice, or even a dozen times) would be enough and they’d go on with their
lives.

See? That was her big mistake right there.

The
trail crested, the forest spreading out beneath them in a dense canopy of treetops.
To go with the bright, hot day, the weather report had promised thunderstorms
at night. The whole area was bone dry, waiting for one well-aimed lightning
strike to set off a wildland fire. Business would be knocking at the jump
team’s door before long.

Thinking
about incoming fire calls was safer than thinking about the man dogging her
heels. She started down the trail, digging in to slow her descent.

“You
don’t even know what I want to talk about,” he called.

She
could guess, so she picked up the pace.

Seeing Rio every day she came to
work—after spending the night in his arms—made it impossible to
forget the reasons getting involved with Rio would be an epic fail. Mentally
she ran through the list, losing herself in the steady rhythm of her run.
First, Rio was playboy naughty. Gia got that. He didn’t mean to hurt anyone,
but he’d never slow down and stop. This heat between them burned so bad and the bad was both good—and not.

Hot sex was definitely not
something to dismiss and he’d been her first.

She’d had dessert before she’d
eaten her vegetables.

She could live with that, and he’d
made it clear that a repeat wasn’t out of the question. Unfortunately, her head
kept pointing out the other outcomes just as clearly. Sleeping with him publicly—and
she didn’t mean in the voyeuristic
look
at me
sense, although inviting eyeballs on their relationship felt just as
intimate—would definitely jeopardize her place on the team. They’d more
or less gotten away with it so far, but he and his brothers owned Donovan
Brothers and that made him her boss. Worse, he was protective. She’d seen that
over and over in him and she’d already spent a lifetime trying to fight free of
an over-protective family. If he became her full-time lover, he’d want to
protect her. Keep her safe. And there was nothing less safe than jumping out of
a plane into the heart of a fire.

Been there, done that, and she was
still trying to get off the family guilt ride. No way she invited more in the
form of hooking up even semi-officially with Rio.

Bursting out of the trees, she
spotted the finish line for their run. Covered with pornographic graffiti and
ancient love stories, the battered picnic tables were a welcome sight. She put
on a final burst of speed, nothing but the air sawing through her lungs and the
burn in her muscles. Forty yards between her and happy collapse.

Rio tore by her with a whoop.

She
had just enough time to think
shit
and then her chest tightened, her heart sprinting into overdrive as she lunged
for the picnic table. Now wasn’t the time for a PSVT attack, but the disease was
the ultimate party crasher.

Breathe.

She’d taken her pills that morning.

###

Rio ran, fists pumping, feet
chewing up the distance between him and the goal. The harder he ran, the less
he thought about the woman dogging his heels. Gia was no quitter. He didn’t turn his head, didn’t give her
any ground, but he knew she was right there on his six like she was out in the
field. Slapping a palm down on the table, he turned and fist-pumped.

“Winner!” he crowed.

Gia hurtled towards him and he caught
her, swinging her to a halt. Flushed and determined, she sucked in air, trying
to catch her breath. Lust slammed into him. She was fucking gorgeous.

And she’d loved him and left him.
Quite literally.

“Christ, Rio.” She leaned into the
picnic table.

In addition to sexy, she looked
tired. And winded.

He frowned.

Gia usually ran circles around him.
“You okay?” he asked.

“You bet,” she said, but she didn’t
meet his gaze. Instead, she stepped away from the table and started walking,
shaking out her arms and legs. While he thought that over, he went over to his
truck, reached in the bed and snagged a bottle of water. Dehydration he could
fix.

She ignored him when he held out
the bottle, pacing faster with her fingers on her pulse and a frown on her
face. She’d run the trail as hard and fast as ever, but she was definitely
winded.

“Out of shape, Jackson?”

She plucked the water bottle from
his outstretched hand. “Never.”

He looked her over because her
barely there running shorts and jogging top demanded a second glance. Every
other inch of her body was bare, sun-bronzed and sweat-slicked and he had to
agree with her about the shape she was in. She looked glorious. Hotter than any
fantasy woman he’d ever conjured.

Maybe she’d pushed too hard.

“I should make you drop and give me
twenty.”

She grimaced. “Be kind.”

That was also not like his Gia. She
pushed herself—and she’d gut any man who tried to cut her any slack
because she was a girl or tired or even plain having a bad day. Gia didn’t do
excuses. Before she could stop him, he reached out and pressed two fingers
against the pulse beating in her throat.

“Jesus, Jackson.”

Her resting rate had to be pushing
two hundred beats per minute.

She shoved his hand away. “I’m
fine. I pushed too hard at the end.”

That was possible. But Gia had run
that trail dozens of times. She’d trained in the off-season. If she’d been
middle-aged and out-of-shape, he’d have bought the excuse she was selling. But
she wasn’t. And he didn’t.

“Gia—”

She ignored him, dropping to the
ground to stretch out her calves. He crouched beside her. She didn’t want to
admit that she had a problem, and yet she clearly did. He didn’t know how or
why, but something was up.

“I ran too hard,” she repeated. Her
eyes flashed, demanding he back the hell off. And that was the thing, wasn’t
it? He might be her jump partner, but that was all he was. He didn’t have the
right to hound her about how she felt unless it impacted the team. And her
brown eyes were looking daggers at him, promising instant death if he didn’t
drop the topic.

Maybe she had run too fast.

He hesitated.

She sighed and held her wrist out.
“Check me now.”

He wrapped his hand around her wrist,
tracing the soft skin with the pads of his fingers. Finding the vulnerable
patch where the pulse that beat in her wrist almost undid him. He pressed two
fingers against the vein and forced himself to focus. Her heart still raced,
but the mad jackhammer beat had slowed.

“See?” she said. “I’m fine.”

No, she probably had a bridge
somewhere that she wanted to sell him, but he couldn’t make her talk if she
didn’t want to. If she said she was fine, he had to believe her. And it was
possible she’d simply had a bad run.

While he weighed that possibility, is
pager buzzed madly. “We’ve got incoming,” he said.

Gia’s head came up. “Fire?”

She sounded like he’d offered her
favorite flavor of ice cream.

He nodded. “Jack just called the
whole team in. It’s a big one.”

“Can’t wait.” Gia hopped off the
picnic table. “I’ll race you back to base.”

###

The DC-3 reached the jump site
thirty minutes after takeoff. The plane’s interior was no luxury limo ride; the
team sprawled haphazardly on the floor of the stripped down interior. Seats were
for pansies, Jack had ruled, and no one had disagreed. Without the seats, there
was more room for cargo—and a clear path to the door. That worked for
Rio.

Today’s fire call was a bad one,
with the incident commander calling in Strong’s jump team as backup for a team
that had been on the ground forty-eight hours and counting. More hands were
clearly called for, along with fresh supplies. Sure enough, as the plane
circled, Rio got his first look out the open door and, no shit, the caller
hadn’t exaggerated. One big ass fire was chewing up the wildland beneath the
plane. Fifty, sixty acres and the weather forecast called for the wind to pick
up, which would only push the fire further faster. Right now, though, the smoke
was a dark column punching up into the blue sky.

Mack was the day’s spotter and he’d
picked out the landing zone from earlier aerials. Fortunately, the drop site
was a clearing right on the edge of the fire, a mercifully big tree-free area,
reducing the risk of snags and hang-ups. Unfortunately, the site was parked at the
top of a steep gulch. That was never good news. While Rio craned his neck, mentally
marking visible hotspots, Mack conferred on his headset with the pilot and then
aimed the drift streamers out the door.

Mack flipped a bird towards the
ground. “Bombs away.”

Mack’s face revealed no trace of
humor, but he seemed to have his shit together, so Rio wouldn’t hassle him.
Today. He was fairly certain though that Mack was nursing a big-time case of
PTSD.

Silently, the two of them watched the
streamers go down. Nice and straight, which meant there was no crosswind to
worry about at the moment, although the wind could and did shift like a bitch.
Even at fifteen hundred feet, the flames chewed up the mountainside in an
audible welcoming choir.

Whatever Spotted Dick, the pilot,
said must have gotten the mental thumbs-up from Mack, because he motioned for
Rio and Gia to take their positions in the door. Gia bounded over as the plane
banked hard, coming back around for the jump pass.

Mack eyed the two of them; the jump
list had spelled out the first pair in the air, but not the individual jump
order. “Ladies first,” he decided.

Rio and Gia would be first on the
scene, radioing the ground conditions back up to the rest of the team. They’d
make the call whether it was safe for the rest of the jumpers or not.

Gia stuck her tongue out at him and
promptly swung into the open door, arms and legs braced, before he could
retaliate. He’d watched her jump dozens of times, he reminded himself. This was
just another day in the office, so his heart had no business kicking his
heartbeat up a notch when she leaned her head out the door and eyeballed all
that open space. As soon as Mack slapped his hand on her shoulder, she launched
herself out the door with a whoop.

At least this time Mack didn’t
follow with
bombs away
.

Rio got himself into the open door
fast. It was fifteen hundred feet to the ground and she wasn’t landing without
him.

Or that was his plan at any rate.

He shot out of the door when Mack’s
hand hit his shoulder in the familiar jump sign. Head down, he tore towards the
ground, the wind roaring in his ears.
Back
in the saddle, baby.
He’d wondered if his head would play games with him on
this first jump since the malfunction, but he was good. Bad luck, Evan had
ruled after going through Rio’s chute pack. And now he’d gotten right back on
the horse. He eyeballed Gia, marking her progress, but she’d already snapped
her drag chute and gotten her feet down. She was right on target to put down
nice and easy in the center of the clearing, so he spared a glance for the
fire. Holy shit. There was nothing nice and easy about that.

Their LZ was on top of a ridge
above a densely wooded slope that ended in ponderosa-studded forest sporting twenty-foot
sheets of flame. They’d need to pay careful attention to conditions on the
ground. The terrain was steep and, if the wind shifted, they ran the risk of
getting overrun. He got his feet down, head up.

The drag chute popped, yanking him
back and up.
Business as usual.

Jump
thousand.

Look
thousand.

Below him, Gia pulled her cord and
her chute deployed. He banked left slightly, not wanting to run the risk of
tangling his feet in her lines.

Reach
thousand.

He wrapped his hand around the rip
cord and prepared to pull.

Wait
thousand.

The ground closed in. He’d been in
office buildings that were further from the ground. Four hundred feet between
him and a terminal ending.