Burns So Bad (Smoke Jumpers) (4 page)

“I love it,” she said finally,
because her mother clearly was waiting for some kind of a response.

“But you love your graduate
program,” her mother pointed out. “You could work in the lab for the summer. It
has air-conditioning. You’d get a byline on a journal article. Or,” the
enthusiasm kicked up a notch in her mother’s voice, “I’m sure you could still
take that television station up on their internship offer. You could be on
TV
, Gia.”

Been there, done that and scored
the commemorative bumper sticker. Her college internship had been informative.
Reading the weather on pt. wasn’t a bad gig, but it was safe. Boring. Not how
she imagined spending the rest of her life. Take your pick.

“I jumped last summer,” she pointed
out.

“Exactly why you should try
something new this summer!”

“I loved it,” she continued
doggedly. “This is what I want to do.”

Blessed silence filled the air for
a moment, but Gia knew her mother was simply regrouping. Sure enough, her
mother went for the big guns.

“You could get hurt. What happens
if you have an attack while you’re out there surrounded by fire?”

“I won’t.”

“You can’t know that for sure.”

Unfortunately, her mother was
right.

“And I’ve got a special pocket in
my jumpsuit just for my pills. I jumped last summer and didn’t have any
problems.”

“I worried about you every day.”
Her mother meant it, too. She’d have spent Gia’s dream summer wondering if her
daughter was gasping for air on a forest floor somewhere, while Gia had been
jumping head over heels out the plane and into love with the whole job of smoke
jumping. Last summer, she’d still been a lowly trainee, though, and she’d only
gotten in a handful of jumps with the Arizona jump team she’d assisted. This
summer, however, she was on Donovan Brothers’ payroll and summer had already
started heating up with plenty of jump time for everyone.

“Please don’t,” she said, knowing
that two words couldn’t stop her mother from doing what her mother had spent a
lifetime doing already. There was no cure for that and her mother had the best
of intentions. It was just that Gia was done with living in her mother’s
protective cocoon. She was twenty-four. She was an adult. She didn’t need to be
bubble-wrapped like the glass angels her mother took out of storage precisely
once a year to be hung carefully on the Christmas out of harm’s way.

She loved the freedom of the jump
followed by the deafening roar of the wind in her ears as the forest swung in a
crazy patchwork quilt of burned-unburned beneath her. The rude jerk of the
chute snapping open and the slow, slow glide to the ground followed by a
balls-out fight to slow the flames was her idea of the perfect day.

Yep.

She
loved
that part of her new job and if that made her crazy, so be
it.

“Gia—” Her mother sighed and
there was an ocean of feeling in the sound. Frustration. Love. And, yes, fear.
Gia couldn’t lie and say her job was safe.

“I don’t want to read the weather
on TV,” she said quickly. “Not ever. That’s not what I planned on doing and TV
station jobs aren’t that easy to score anyhow. I don’t think they’d want me.”

She wasn’t a hair and makeup girl.
That was for certain.

“I love you.” Her mother said those
three words like they made all the difference. And they did. Gia wanted to
smack her head against the loft’s wall, but the words were out there. Her
mother loved her. Her father loved her. The whole family of aunts and uncles,
nephews and nieces, loved her. And that meant she was supposed to stay home
where it was safe so none of that love was at risk.

She’d felt less trapped in a box
canyon with the winds shifting and the flames licking at her boots.

“Mom—” She had no idea what
to say.

Joey’s head popped up in the loft’s
entrance. “You coming with?”

Reprieve.

“Look, Mom, I’ve got to go. I’ll
call you again. Later.” Much, much later.

Unfortunately, their conversation
would just be a replay of the same old same old. She’d already said everything
she could think of and none of it was enough to buy her freedom.

###

After a firefight like Rail
Mountain’s seven thousand acre bonfire, the jump team liked to unwind at Ma’s.
To call Strong a small town was an understatement—the place boasted one
main street, with a handful of one-of-a-kind local businesses that included the
bar. The place looked like pretty much every other hole-in-the-wall she’d
decorated in recent years—a long, polished bar, plenty of stools, and a
very nice flat-screen and pool table in the back. Tonight’s on-call jumpers
were nursing Cokes, but the rest of the guys had already ordered several rounds
of beer and tequila.

Gia straddled the stool, nursing a
shot of Patron with a side of lime. The jukebox pounded out one of her favorite
country tunes and some of the guys had already got up to dance.

She could get up and join them.

She loved dancing even if she
wasn’t particularly talented in that department. Once she felt the beat and let
the music wash over her, having two left feet didn’t matter. Joey executed a
particularly complicated twist-and-turn, accidentally pinning his partner
against his chest. Mack shoved away with a laugh and Gia smiled. They were good
guys.

Mimi leaned over the bar and Gia
checked the level in her glass. Nope. She was still good.

“Holy hotness,” Mimi said.

Gia eyed the jump team whooping it
up on the floor. “You have a particular example of hotness in mind, or should I
just be skeeved that you have a thing for my coworkers?”

Apparently, Mimi did have a thing
for firefighters.

Mimi laughed, a raspy, happy sound.
“Honey, are you truly that blind? You work with some of the hottest men around.
You have to know that.”

Of course, but they were all
off-limits. That thought had her banging back the rest of her tequila and
nudging the empty shot glass across the counter toward Mimi. “I work with them.
You try that for a week and see how much sexy is left. Cursing, farting, peeing
in the bushes—I promise you, cutting line is not romantic.”

Liar.

Mimi obligingly poured another shot
of Patron, waving away the fiver Gia offered. “On the house. You’re a minority
of one.”

Gia bet that meant the other woman
wanted something and, sure enough, Mimi reached beneath the bar and pulled out
a calendar. Gia bit back a groan. Evan Donovan had plenty to answer for. His
fiancée, Faye Duncan, had shot a charity calendar. Usually, Gia was all for
helping out the less fortunate but, in this particular instance, Faye had done
so by convincing the smoke jumpers to strip down to their skivvies. Or less.

Mimi tossed the calendar onto the
bar. “I have it on good authority,” she said, “that there’s a sizable female
contingent out there enjoying Strong’s toy catalog.”

That calendar was like late-night
as-seen-on-TV products. Looking away was impossible. Gia’s fingers reached for
the calendar and started flipping, even as her brain put out a cease-and-desist
order.

“I can’t,” she groaned, but did.
Mack made a real fine Mr. March. Which she didn’t need to know. “My eyes are
burning.”

“Be glad you weren’t here then,”
Mimi said darkly. “Faye is all about equal opportunity. You’d have been
stripped down and Miss July.”

Since
no way in hell
seemed like the wrong response for a charity
project, Gia turned the page—and came face to face with September.
Fuck
. Make that
Rio
.

Rio straddled a chair, his jump
suit unzipped and pushed down to his waist. Cut. There was no other way to
describe the man, because his stomach’s sculpted planes and lines redefined
six-pack abs
. He leaned forward in the
photo and damned if Gia didn’t want to pretend she could reach in and touch his
sun-bronzed skin. She imagined most people would be plenty happy when September
rolled around and they could hang Rio on their wall for a month. She winced. If
she was honest, she’d count herself in that number.

“He’s mighty fine.” Mimi traced
Rio’s picture with her finger, with a small smile that said she was making a
very happy trip down memory lane.

Two could play the gossip game. “I
heard you two are dating.”

Mimi laughed and removed her hand
from Rio’s picture. “Your gossip’s out of date. We spent some time together
last summer, but Rio and I haven’t dated for months.”

Relief probably wasn’t the safe
reaction, but that was all Gia had. The look on Mimi’s face said she’d
suspected as much too, and Gia hated being transparent. She drained half the
shot glass and sucked on her lime while she considered that.

Mimi surveyed the bar and sighed.
“It’s not like there’s an active dating scene in Strong. My good parts are
drying up.”

“I’ll drink to that.” Gia raised
her shot glass to toast that statement. When she banged the empty back down on
the counter, Mimi topped it off.

“You got a ride home tonight?”

“I’ll find one.” After four shots
of tequila, she had no intention of going anywhere near her truck.

“I’ll take you when I close up.
Just tell me one thing.” Mimi leaned closer. “I heard you saved Rio’s fine
ass.”

A new tune was starting on the
jukebox and the bar had achieved that cheerful, slightly out of focus haze that
meant no more tequila for her. “His chute malfunctioned.”

“Uh-huh.” Mimi eyed her
speculatively. “Four thousand feet above a man-eating wildfire. Tell me the
part where you snatched him out of the air.”

Gia had no idea what kind of story
Mimi wanted. The simple truth was, she wasn’t so good with girls. Guys made
sense. “I got close. He grabbed on. We landed.”

Mimi made a face, so clearly Gia
hadn’t told the story right. “Way to ruin the story. You sure he wasn’t crying
like a baby or hollering with gratitude?”

Gia pretended to think for a
moment. “Positive.”

“Well
that’s a bummer.” Mimi shook her head. “That boy owes you. You should collect.”

“Excuse me?”

“Come on. You’ve heard the stories,
right? Person A saves Person B’s life and B has to spend a lifetime at A’s beck
and call until he’s returned the favor? The Moor Azeem in
Robin Hood
?
Mulan
?
Puss in Boots
and
Shrek
? Any of this ring a bell?”

The thought of Rio
owing
her should not have her girly bits
heating up, but she could think of all sorts of things her smoke jumper could
do to pay her back. And none of them involved animated cats or ogres.

“He’s a good guy,” Mimi offered,
watching her face. “And he’s fantastic in bed.”

Too
much information.

“He’s my jump partner.” She flipped
the shot glass over, shaking her head when Mimi gestured with the bottle of Patron.

Off-limits
.

Mimi raised a finger, gesturing wait-a-minute
as another customer down the bar beckoned for a refill. “That’s a waste of a
mighty fine man, but your loss. Here. Try this.”

“I shouldn’t.” She had the day off
tomorrow, but nursing a hangover headache wasn’t in her plans. Still, her
fingers curled around the chilly sides of the short glass.

“That’s true for lots of things.”
Mimi grinned, turning away to do the refill drill down the bar. “Drinks. Men.
Life.”

###

Rio leaned against the wall, glad
for the first time for his years working covert ops. Those two tours had taught
him how to blend into the shadows when he wanted. It probably put him in
stalker territory, but right now those skills let him watch Gia without
freaking her out.

Gia.

His nemesis and fixation had her feet
hooked around legs of the barstool, her thighs spread ever so slightly to keep
her balance. By his count, she’d down four shots of tequila, so she probably
needed that assist.Gia usually
wasn’t a big drinker, but the whole team was unwinding some and she simply
wasn’t big enough to soak up too much alcohol. When Mimi slid her an icy-cold
glass with a wink, he heard Gia laugh despite the steady blare of the jukebox.
Because he was standing too close and watching her too much.

She wrapped her fingers around the
glass, raising it to her nose for a suspicious sniff before taking a big slug.
He definitely wouldn’t have pegged Gia for a whiskey sour kind of gal. He’d
have guessed a fruity daiquiri, with one of those little pastel umbrellas and a
cherry because she had a real feminine side she tried hard not to show the
team.

Rio
tried hard not to think about tongues and cherry stems.

Or
about kissing the icy froth off her upper lip, because Gia was uninhibited in
her enjoyment of her drink. She also looked damned hot out of a jumpsuit. For
tonight’s agenda of drinks and dancing, she’d paired faded jeans with a sleeveless
blouse that buttoned up the front and tied in a knot at her waist. When she
shifted on the barstool, she gifted him with a peek of suntanned skin and flat
stomach. To take his mind off
that
sexy
possibility, he shifted his eyes down her long, long denim-clad legs until he
hit a pair of cowboy boots. Gia rocked the strong and sexy.

As soon as she set down the glass,
she slid off the stool and headed for the dance floor. The move had been only a
matter of time. He still didn’t know that much about Gia—she’d only been
on their jump team for a matter of months and the job interview didn’t allow
the kind of personal questions he was meditating on—but he knew she loved
to dance. Plus, there was her alter ego “Gina.” He’d liked the hell out of that
story. He only wished he knew if it were true. In moments, her hips and arms were
swinging as she flashed a contagious smile. The guys certainly welcomed her
with open arms and, within minutes, she was twirling back and forth between
Mack and Joey.