Burns So Bad (Smoke Jumpers) (3 page)

She also wanted to jump.

It didn’t matter that she had a
heart that sometimes bordered on busted, or that her PSVT was arguably grounds
for sitting out the season. Forever. The PSVT was a heart arrhythmia she could
work around and she needed to jump. B trumped A every
time. The first day she’d gone out a plane bay, wind roaring in her ears and
fire waiting for her on the ground, she’d known. This was her calling.
This
was what she loved.

As the marshmallows heated up and
disappeared, the guys started talking, trading chitchat. War stories at first.
Fires fought, fires lost. Who’d hiked in, hiked out or bunked down in the
shake-and-bake, holding the fire-resistant shelter in place as the fire roared
overhead. Twenty-acres became two hundred, then two thousand in a familiar game
of one-ups-manship. First, the fire stories, then the Penthouse letters to the
forum. She had no idea why the bigger the fire, the bigger the dick, but
clearly there was a connection.

Jack
flashed her a grin from across the fire and she felt her own answering smile.
She loved the rough-and-tumble un-PC crew. Her guys were honest to a fault
and—for most of them—missing any kind of a verbal filter. Jack’s
fiancée appeared to have taught her man something, because Jack had stopped
sharing when the conversation took a right turn from fighting fires to fending
off the females.

Joey started telling some
impossible story involving a fire truck and the fire chief’s twin daughters and
pretty soon good-natured laughter greeted each new addition to the tale. He
didn’t believe his bullshit either, but the team egged him on, demanding deets.
Which Joey added.

Or made up.

Gia needed to write a book.

The rest of the team sprawled on
their packs, popping the tops on the MREs. Catching five or ten minutes of rest
because they all knew the fire wasn’t done with them. Evan fished a squashed
PB&J out of his pocket and Rio leaned over and snatched it playfully.

“Man, you’ve got to work on Faye’s
cooking skills.”

Two slices and a slap of peanut
goodness sounded way better than the MRE Gia had forced down. Any meal that
came in a poop-brown plastic bag was definitely no Wolfgang Puck special.

“That sandwich is my own stuff,”
Evan grumbled, slapping a hand on Rio’s shoulder. Rio rolled with the blow, but
he let his brother pluck the sandwich from his hand. “You think Faye should be
cooking because she’s the girl in our relationship?”

Rio’s answering laugh crinkled the
corners of his eyes. “Shit, no. I think she needs to cook because I
know
you can’t. The two of you are gonna
starve, unless you decide to move in with Nonna.”

Rio’s contagious smile had Evan
grinning ruefully. “Faye wants us to have our own space, but those Sunday
dinners are a lifesaver.”

Rio always could make anyone smile.

Stop
it.

Attraction in the workplace was a
no fly situation. Sex with someone Gia worked with? An even worse idea. Sure,
her team was parked around a campfire, shooting the shit and sharing sexcapades.
The topic of conversation was about as far from PC as words could get, but the
conversation wasn’t mean-spirited either.

And
it meant that her fellow jumpers saw her as one of them.

She wasn’t having sex with a
co-worker, and definitely not one of her boys. After all, she knew
precisely
what kind of no good,
love-em-and-leave-em nonsense those boys got up to. Exhibit A? Tonight’s
stories. If she slept with a jumper, she would become irrevocably a girl
in the team’s eyes and then she didn’t jump again without a fight. They were
good guys and they had hearts of gold—but they were
protect and defend
to the core. She’d end up the girlfriend waiting at
home and, as much as she loved being a woman, she was also a jumper. This was what
she did and she was good at it.

Rio Donovan was damned pretty
however, bona fide eye candy, and she wasn’t going to deny herself a look.

It was just touching that was
off-limits.

“We need another story,” Joey
demanded when conversation finally lagged, speaking around a mouth of
marshmallow. He looked like a five year-old demanding his companions flip the
television to his favorite station.

Mack grinned and settled back.
“Bedtime stories are the best.”

There was no doubt in Gia’s mind
what kind of story her boys wanted. This wasn’t toddler time at the local
library. All heads swiveled towards Rio, even Jack and Evan looking interested.

The request didn’t faze Rio, not in
the slightest. He eyeballed his audience and sprawled back on a pile of packs
like a modern day pasha, all sexy confidence. “A story?”

Mack snorted. “Or tell the truth if
you dare.”

“You and Mimi still dating?”
someone asked.

Rio looked disappointed. “You’re
asking me to kiss and tell?”

Last summer, Rio had taken up with
Mimi Hart, the local bartender and proud owner of Ma’s Bar. That was the camp
gossip, backed up by a handful of Facebook photos. Gia was fairly certain the
pair hadn’t survived the year. At any rate, she hadn’t spotted Rio and Mimi
together since she’d joined the jump team. Since Rio didn’t strike her as the
subtle type, she figured he wasn’t slinking around with Mimi on the side. No,
if he’d been dating the other woman, he’d have been up front and open about it.
There was a lot to be said for Rio’s blatant, unabashed sensuality.

While
the team grumbled, Rio looked over at her. It was just a look, she told
herself. Nothing different from the way he’d looked at her every day for the
past month. A small smile tugged at his lips.

“You up for a story, Jackson?”

Two could play this game. “Sure.”
She grinned back at him.
Give as good as you got.
That was rule number one in fire camp.
“I’m always game to hear the same old same old.”

A chorus of wolf whistles filled
the air. Her guys always enjoyed a little friendly one-ups-manship.

“You think you can tell a better
story?” Rio asked.

“Absolutely.” Right on cue, every
head swiveled her way. “We are talking about sex, right? I think my
subscription to Cosmo is still valid and I’m fairly certain I’ve got all the
working parts. Fact or fiction—you decided.”

Rio smiled.

She watched his face, wondering if
he’d break first in this mental game of chicken they were playing. Probably
not—Rio never quit, never gave an inch when he wanted something—so
she was on the hook for a hot bedtime story for the guys. Looking at him was
pure pleasure. His dark gold hair was buzzed short to his scalp and, at some
point during the day, he’d pushed his aviator glasses on top of his head. Dirt
and five o’clock shadow streaked his jaw, but his eyes were focused on her
face. She had no idea what was going through his head, but that was Rio. He was
all smiles and grins on a real pretty surface, but he kept his thoughts and
real feelings hidden.

Finally, he grinned. “Ladies
first.”

“Someone better buy me a beer,” she
said. Mack tossed her his canteen and, uncapping it, she swallowed. After a day
in the field, the water tasted copper and flat. God. A beer would be pure
genius right now.

“Once upon a time,” she started and
her audience groaned. Someone hollered something about a ban on fairy tales,
but she kept right on talking. “There was the girl who we’ll call Gina, to
protect the innocent.”

“You claiming to be innocent?” Joey
tipped his canteen toward her and she winked, settling back against her pack.

“Now Gina was paying her own way
through grad school and those tuition bills packed a wallop. She figured she
needed to get a gig in addition to teaching because she was pretty damn sick of
Ramen noodles.”

“So she hooked up with a bunch of
smoke jumpers.” Someone hooted. “Becoming a weatherman comes with a stiff price
tag.”

She didn’t want to talk about the
weather.

Not when she could be out living it
on the frontlines.

Grinning, she plowed ahead with her
story. “Smoke jumpers are ugly ass bunch—present company included—and
our Gina was looking for something a little prettier. So she put her on dancing
dress and this pair of five-inch stilettos…” She mimed sliding a pair of fuck
me shoes on her feet, holding out her ash-covered steel-toes. “Just like mine
here. A real sexy number.”

“This isn’t Miss America,” Evan
groused. “You don’t have to show me your shoes.”

“You watch beauty pageants?” Mack
leaned in. “Hell, man, the swimsuit part is okay, but a shoe parade on the
boardwalk?”

“How come you know about it then?”

“I got sisters. And a mother and
way too many aunties.” Mack grinned and swiped a marshmallow. “Other than that,
I’m pleading the Fifth.”

“Well our Gina wasn’t running for
Miss America. She was looking for something a whole lot less nice.”

“Did she find what she was looking
for?” Rio eyed her and she told herself that was
not
a shiver she felt chasing down her spine.

“She sure did. She took herself
down to a strip club her friends told her about and she got a job dancing
weekends there.”

Mack frowned. “Are we in fact
territory here—or fiction? Because I’m just saying—knowing which
would help me visualize this better.”

Gia grinned at him. “I’m not
telling, but if you were standing in line outside the club on a night she was
dancing, you’d better be slipping the bouncer more than twenty bucks to get and
park your ass in the good seats, because Gina could dance. She had this little
school girl skirt and stockings that came up to right here.”

She sliced a finger across her
Nomex-clad thigh. Yep. Every eye in the house followed that move. Sex had that
effect on her boys. Even Rio was watching.

Which was the whole point if she
was being honest with herself.

She wanted him watching her.

Rio was playboy naughty. Gia got
that. He didn’t mean to hurt anyone, but he’d never slow down and stop. That
heat between them, it burned so bad and the bad was both good—and not.
She could have him and the erotic possibilities of that had her hormones going
wild. Unfortunately, her head saw the other outcomes just as clearly. She couldn’t
sleep with him without jeopardizing her place on the team. He and his brothers
owned Donovan Brothers. That made him her boss. Worse, he was protective. She’d
seen that over and over in him. If he became her 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.

That was also true.

The radio picked that moment to
squawk, interrupting her Cosmo-inspired masterpiece. “Base to jump team, come
in.”

Evan cursed and grabbed the mike.
“Jump team to base, we copy.”

“Playtime’s over, gentlemen.” She
flipped them a two-fingered salute and turned her attention to the radio. The
chorus of groans was quickly hushed by the update from the command center. The
winds had picked up and the fire they’d believed knocked down had come roaring
back for round two.

So much for the rest break. They’d
be working through the night. She shoved to her feet, reaching for her pack. As
she headed for the trail, falling into single file behind Joey, Rio’s hand
circled her wrist—touching her, against all the rules they didn’t talk
about—his thumb rubbing over her pulse. Which wasn’t speeding up, damn
it. She couldn’t play his kinds of games.

“That true? What you said, back
there?”

That sexy rumble had her walking
faster.

“Every word of it,” she said. “Now move your ass, golden boy. We’ve
got a fire to catch.”

The hangar’s loft was the
unofficial landing zone for orphaned and surplus gear, a handy place for the
jump team to store their shit and the unofficial
leave me alone I gotta talk
spot for the team. Gia wasn’t the only
one who had issues calling home.

She flopped onto a pile of gear
bags—sweet Jesus, those things weren’t pillow top mattresses—and
eyeballed the hangar. Home sweet home. Signing on with Strong’s jump team for
the summer didn’t feel crazy at all. In fact, being here felt damned right. For
the first time in her life, she was living life on her terms. For three months,
she had nothing but flames and planes to look forward to it and she wouldn’t
have swapped it for the world.

In two months, she’d head back to
Davis and her off-campus apartment. She’d finish her degree and starting
hunting for what her parents called a
real
job.

The loft smelled like old smoke and it wasn’t difficult to
find the source. The chute packs sported plenty of burn marks on the packs, as
did her boots. It didn’t get much more real than this. The fire that had
scorched the team’s collective ass earlier this week didn’t know that it was a
play date in her parents’ opinion, her last-ditch effort to outrun their
genuine concern for her health and well-being.

Nope, the fire didn’t give a rat’s
ass.

Fire burned, chewing through
whatever fuel it found, and if she was too slow, she’d
be fuel and not firefighter.

She was good with that.

Her parents weren’t.

Damn it.

She punched the familiar number
into her cell. Too bad the reception here was absolutely stellar. After a
couple of minutes of obligatory chitchat—and, hey, they discussed the
weather too—her mother segued into her favorite topic.

“Why would you want to jump out of
a plane and into a forest fire?” Her mother clearly would never voluntarily
walk to the edge of an open plane bay and hurl herself outside into the open
air. Her mom’s idea of a plane ride was the Expedia special to Hawaii. “That’s
dangerous work, honey.”

No kidding.

The silence stretched on for a
minute.