Hot Point (11 page)

“You'd make a good wife, Wrench.” His mumble was only half coherent.

A chunk of meatball caught in her throat and she barely managed not to choke on it. Light, she needed to say something light. “You shopping for one, Slick?”

“A wife? Hell no. Not old Vern Taylor.” He rolled onto his side, reexposing his chest to the warm evening air that slid in through the window beyond her shoulder.

“Why not?” She wasn't disappointed. It wouldn't make any sense if she was. They weren't an item and she was a sensible woman. She wasn't disappointed… She only felt that way. Which was stupid because she didn't want to be a wife anyway. She just wanted… She had no idea.

“'Cause.” His voice was no more than a mumble.

“'Cause why?”

“Come lie down with me and I'll tell you.”

He hadn't opened his eyes, so she couldn't read his expression. He looked harmless and beautiful in the last light of day. His muscled chest was becoming a land of shadows and promises. His face fading even further into mystery.

It was stupid.

She set her half-finished plate back on the dresser.

Getting into bed with him was absolutely not a smart idea.

She took off her boots because climbing into his narrow bed wearing boots was even dumber than climbing into his bed to begin with.

One part of her brain acknowledged that she must be more tired than she'd thought if that last bit of reasoning had made any sense.

Yet the same rationale prevailed until she stood in the gathering darkness wearing no more than a T-shirt and underwear.

She slid into the small space between Vern and the edge of the bed.

His arm came around her waist and pulled her back to spoon against him. He didn't grab for her breast or anywhere else. He simply wrapped his arm around her and tucked his fingers between her ribs and the mattress.

Denise tugged the sheet over them and tried not to be overwhelmed by the sensations. He held her with an impossible surety and familiarity that made it feel both safe and normal. His flat chest against her back. His warm breath a mere whisper on her ear as he nuzzled into her hair.

“Hey, don't go to sleep yet. You promised.” A final belated and hopeless flail for common sense, but she spoke it anyway.

“Promised what?”

“Why you don't want to be married?”

“Oh.” He tucked his face down against the back of her neck as if hiding behind her hair. “My mom and dad. They're so perfect together.” His words were dragging out. Slurring.

“I'd think that would make you want to get married.” She had to shake him and repeat her question to elicit the final sleepy answer.

“Never be good enough for someone like you.”

By the time Denise recovered from the shock of his answer and tried another question, she was answered by a soft snore against the base of her neck.

Denise had never wanted to get married either, but for wholly different reasons. She never wanted to make anyone suffer the loss that had so shattered her father. By keeping herself to herself, and only entering into shallow and relatively meaningless relationships, she had kept her vow to herself.

But that didn't fit into how Vern saw her. He saw her as important. He also had her up on a pedestal she could make absolutely no sense of. There was no way she'd ever live up to some unreal creation of his mind.

Yet she felt plenty real lying here against Vern's chest, his arm wrapped around her waist as if he'd never let her go.

She was awake a long time that night. Not worrying at some technical problem as she usually did. Nor reviewing some mental checklist to make sure she hadn't missed anything.

She simply lay in Vern's arms and enjoyed herself, feeling important to someone and listening to Vern's gentle breathing.

Vern woke slowly. After years of flying to fire, something about the morning woke him before sunrise. Maybe it was the call of the first bird of the day. Or the first hint of light in the sky despite closed eyelids.

He liked this time of day, even if his brain insisted that coffee was necessary to actually face it. It gave him a chance to collect his thoughts, get oriented for the day. And when he was with someone, like now, it occasionally gave them time to—

With someone?

A woman…the smoke and summer smell of her hair nearly overwhelmed him…Denise. Denise Conroy lay curled up against him. Her head pillowed on one of his arms, a soft warmth against the inside of the other that encircled her trim waist.

How in the hell had…

Any thoughts of waking slowly were banished by his body's instant and intense reaction to holding her. He tried to shift his hips back away from where he pressed against her tight behind, but after about a half inch, his back bumped up against the wall behind the bunk bed.

Obviously still mostly asleep, Denise snuggled back into that tiny gap he'd managed to create. Now he was pinned back against the smooth wood.

Unsure what to do, he lay there unmoving as she slowly came to life in his arms.

A gentle sigh.

A bit of a stretch.

She turned her face into the pillow, taking the pressure off his arm which responded with a sharp tingle and sting of renewed blood flow.

Vern kept waiting for the moment she came awake and bolted from his bed. But it didn't come.

Instead, once she was most of the way awake, she pressed her back more solidly against his chest and slid her hand over his arm until she was holding it in place around her waist.

Then, with fingers partly laced into the back of his, she pulled his hand up and rested it over her breast.

He'd never felt anything quite like it. It wasn't only the way her breast filled his palm, or the way it responded and tightened against his fingers, something he could easily feel through her T-shirt. It was that she placed his hand there and held it against her chest, letting him know exactly what she wanted without the least hint of coyness.

Denise Conroy couldn't be an uninhibited lover. Could she? She was too careful, too distant, and…definitely felt too good.

He bent the arm that she lay on until he had her in a double-breasted cross-hold, and she groaned. It was a ripple of sound that he didn't hear, but instead felt riding up her back where it pressed against his chest.

She was guiding his hand down over the perfection of her flat stomach when a loud thump sounded against the door.

“Rise and shine. Shower if you need it. Airborne in thirty.” Mark moved off and was pounding on the next door before he'd even finished the instructions.

Indeed, in the time Vern had been watching Denise awaken, the predawn light had brightened beyond the window. Time to shower, shave, eat, and prep for flight. Just. Maybe if he skipped the shower. And the shave.

She finished guiding his hand downward. He was glad she was wearing underwear, even if there wasn't much of it. A thin swatch of smooth cotton masking neither texture nor growing heat.

At her guidance, he cupped her.

And his reflexes took over.

He pulled her hard back against him. He leaned into her, pressing them both together until they both were writhing, their breath caught equally short and ragged.

“Oh God!” She clamped his hand in place for a moment between her soft, smooth thighs and the next moment slid from his arms and was standing before him. “That is such a fantastic way to wake up!”

Vern tried to speak. Even without his morning coffee, he tried to reach deep for words but couldn't dredge up any.

Denise, in a bright blue T-shirt and a tiny swatch of white cotton, looked like neither a china doll nor some miniaturized version of a larger woman. She'd been designed and built to exactly the height she was; her hips fit her frame as well as her breasts. Her legs were as long and magnificent as her hair.

She was dressed and gone, leaving behind a sweet kiss and the worst arousal of his entire life.

Then he thought about Denise. No shuddering release. No jerking breaths.

Well, at least he wouldn't be the only one suffering today.

* * *

With her full crew on-site, Denise didn't join Vern for the flying.

Well, she could have, but too many things in her head needed straightening out.

Overnight the smoke in Missoula had thickened noticeably until it hid the helicopters before they were even a mile aloft. The hills ten miles away on the far end of town were relegated to myth and rumor.

Some of the locals began wearing white face masks, reminding her of her one trip to Beijing as part of a Sikorsky exhibition. The transport that had delivered them had to do an instrument landing despite their midday arrival, and they'd never left the airport. The airport hotel was part of the exhibition center. That had been her one foreign trip, other than Canada, before MHA's trip to Australia last winter, and she hadn't been able to see anything more than a thousand yards away through the smog. An air show where you couldn't see the aircraft flying overhead. Only the Chinese teams had even bothered going aloft.

Figuring the Missoula locals knew the score, she had her crew put on masks as well.

Once the choppers were aloft, she corralled Malcolm and Brenna. At a battered mess-hall table, they reviewed their extreme-conditions plan. Check the filters at three hours, fully prepared to replace immediately. Review the high-temp readings captured by the HUMS during each refueling. Air compressors to blow out errant ash and grit, especially the carbon of char, which was highly abrasive on moving parts.

A heavier cleaning could be done over lunch.

She made a quick radio call to Mark to stagger the big chopper pilots' lunch breaks by a half hour so that her team could really hit each bird in a unified effort. The littler birds staggered at the fifteen-minute marks.

Her team was up to it. Mal had been with MHA a year, and Brenna was new this season but had shaken down well. Remarkably well.

Mark had asked Denise if she wanted to make any changes before the winter season. Most firefighting outfits laid off the bulk of their crews over winter, mothballing their aircraft. However, MHA had been approached by several countries for off-season work.

Malcolm wasn't eager for travel, so this could well be his last fire of the season. He had a winter gig lined up at Columbia Helicopters as soon as MHA's season was done. Columbia had acquired a bunch of retired military equipment and purchased another outfit. They needed a team to convert each one to Columbia's specs, which were as stringent as MHA's own.

Brenna was up for travel though, and Denise had given the tall Eurasian woman the contract extension a month ago so as not to lose her. Tall. Well, taller than her but way less than Vern.

Denise spent much of the morning wondering how she and Vern could fit together so well. He was so much taller, yet their bodies were as custom-made for each other as her Fiat's throttle linkage. It simply worked, even if common sense said it shouldn't.

She shuddered deliciously at the memory of their waking. Her judgment hadn't been slow to kick in. Vern had simply felt so good that she'd decided to revel in it for a moment. A long moment that had fired off nerves she didn't even know she had. So foreign they'd scared her. Not scared so much as…

Something that strong.

Was it pleasure? Or fear? She wasn't even sure how to tell the difference. All she knew was that it was huge and they hadn't had time then to investigate it further. She'd slid from his arms wanting to keep the wonderful part, just in case the next part did turn into fear. Like a cozy set of thick fleece clothes, she'd tucked the memory of those sensations around her through the morning and cherished them.

With the maintenance plan finally knocked into shape, Denise sent Malcolm and Brenna to scrounge up two additional service carts and stock each one with everything they'd need for a midday servicing by chopper type. Three models, three carts.

She set about stocking the one for the three Firehawks and let her mind drift again, while her hands did their job by rote.

Her body actually still vibrated from this morning. More than cozy, the emotions were shimmering through her as well as the physical sensations. She'd never before even considered doing the things that she'd done.

The man felt so good that he should ship with a warning label: “Caution! Dangerous levels of wonderful.”

And she'd let an intensely erotic dream melt into the waking moment—both had to do with her and Vern Taylor.

She'd covered it with a cheerful thanks: “That is such a fantastic way to wake up!” (Could she possibly be any perkier?) Then bolted from the room.

Vern made her want to be all of the things she wasn't. She wanted to be…bad. She wasn't even sure what that meant. It wasn't as if she were a naive and virginal sixteen-year-old, actually twenty before she'd—but she set that aside. She was a dutiful daughter and a dedicated professional.

Vern filled her with a desire to kick out the jambs and just see what happened. Maybe see who she would be if she wasn't always so damned careful.

She began working on a customized maintenance checklist for today's conditions and loading it onto everyone's tablets.

At the same time, another checklist worked its way through her thoughts.

First, they'd kissed. Check.

Second, far sooner than she'd imagined possible, they'd slept together. Check.

Third, heavy petting. They'd already gotten a pretty serious start on that as well. Big check mark there.

Fourth, oh damn. She was so not ready for what came next. Making love was not an area in which she received many compliments. She hadn't noticed it at first. Then she'd chalked it up to men just not being verbal, and then she'd finally concluded it was probably her. Maybe she was too analytical about it. Or too—
Bad
place!
she admonished herself.

As she forced her attention back to the task of finishing the maintenance list, some small, rebellious part of her wondered how it would feel to make love with Vern.

* * *

“What's gotten into you?” Mark harassed him over the command frequency.

Vern triggered the radio to answer Mark. “Maybe I'm just this good.” He was flying fast and clean this morning—so deep in the groove that no one could touch him.

“Nope,” Mark replied cheerily. “Now punch the center of the saddle in grid S-34 and let's see if we can stop this section from jumping to the next ridge. Watch the winds.”

Vern had been watching them but appreciated the extra warning. The fire was climbing the ridge face, sucking up cold air to feed the base of the flames with its powerful heat-driven upwelling. When the hot air and smoke crested the first ridge, it rode skyward in a massive plume that reached the jet stream another twenty thousand feet up. There the smoke was sheared off to the east, settling over Missoula, Butte, Bozeman, and Billings before moving out to shadow the Great Plains.

But at the crest of the ridge, the rising hot air separated from some of the cold air it had dragged aloft but not had time to heat. On the verge of the saddle—where a high mountain valley separated the ridgeline from an even higher one beyond it—a horizontal rotor of wind was forming. It was as if someone held a giant rolling pin made of wind horizontally over the valley and was beginning to spin it on its handle.

Curls of smoke were being dragged down past the ridge by the slow rotor. And where there was smoke, there were cinders able to ignite new fires in the valley and up the next ridge. To stop it, they had to coat the area with retardant.

“Mark,” Vern called over the radio, “I'm going to take this one a bit high. Jeannie, hang back and let's see what my drop does. I don't like the way this pattern is forming.”

“Roger that.” Jeannie might be a better pilot, he hated to admit. She was a bloody natural. But his six years of service flying and four years actually on wildfires to her two on fires made him a better flier when it got ugly. And this looked like it might be shifting toward ugly.

“Hang on,” Steve called from his usual seat in the back of Emily's chopper. “Let me send the drone in ahead of you.”

Vern held back and waited for the tiny craft to come zipping down from whatever section of the fire it had been observing. Less than a minute later, the tiny cross shape, six feet long with a ten-foot wingspan, zipped by overhead.

Vern tipped the cyclic forward and followed the drone in. He stayed back as far as he could and still see it clearly. The drone only had one speed, so he followed it in at ninety miles per hour, half what his bird could do. That was okay by him. It gave him a wide margin of power and maneuverability if he needed it.

Most of it was clear air. The edges of the smoke weren't doing anything violent; some wind shear perhaps, but he wasn't going anywhere near those. Their job was a series of runs down the back side of the saddle to coat the trees.

There was that strange curl again. Almost as if it was the clear air that was in turmoil, not the smoke-filled air.

At least he was far enough back that he'd have time to react if it—

The drone slammed down and sideways. No gentle shift; it was there one instant and flung into the saddle and the smoke the next.

At ninety miles per hour, Vern had about two seconds to react.

He hauled up on the collective, teasing the very edge of blade stall, and heaved the collective sideways to cut across the wind current. The wind roll that he'd observed had, somewhere in the last thirty seconds, become a microburst downdraft.

He felt his heavy bird fighting it. Shifting right though, he was pulling left. A swirl of smoke wrapped about him, cutting his visibility to zero.

At full lift on the rotors, his distance-to-ground radar was feeding him a strong negative even though the rate-of-climb gauge was pinned positive.