Hot Point (6 page)

Vern looked down into her face and was even more tempted to earn a hard slap. In the bright sunlight of the afternoon he could see what last night's darkness had hidden. Her eyes didn't merely give the impression of green, the almost colorless blue that some women called green. No.

Denise's eyes evoked the Coldplay song “Green Eyes” that his mom sometimes sang when she was in a mellow mood. Against Denise's tan and flawless complexion, her eyes really stood out, and they were inspecting him curiously.

“Ready when you are.” He managed to sound normal, or at least not totally Neanderthal, and she led the way. Following behind her, he really was walking as if he'd stepped in a gopher hole.

And then it clicked. Yesterday she'd laughed thinking that he'd made a joke about her wishing he'd fall in a gopher hole. The reality was that he'd barely been able to stand up after remembering the loss of his friends to a shattered swash plate in a Coast Guard MH-65 Dolphin.

It only reinforced his guess that Denise didn't have a mean bone in her body. Which was a really distracting thought because she wielded one hell of a body.

She led the way to her Fiat Spider two-seater convertible sports car—one of the few cars besides his own Corvette left in the parking lot. There was a bunch of the smokejumpers' trucks, left here when they flew out. Everyone else had pretty much scattered for the evening.

Denise apparently just assumed that she was driving. That was probably a good thing since at this point his attention span was deeply involved in resisting the urge to reach out and stroke the shining mane of hair floating within easy reach.

The car's black paint was a perfect gloss. The red leather bucket seats were immaculate. He'd always appreciated the image of this woman in this convertible whenever he saw it, but he'd never really noticed the condition of the car itself. It was an absolute showpiece. Restored to new condition even though it must be forty years old.

He was tall enough that, with the top down, he could simply step over the door and slide down into the seat. The leather was as comfortable as it looked, once he moved the seat back. Even the wood paneling of the dash looked freshly oiled.

“This is beautiful!”

“Thanks. Her name is Irene.” Denise pulled her hair over her shoulder as she sat down. With a dexterous flash of nimble fingers that held him mesmerized, she trapped her glorious mane in a thick French braid secured by a neon-red hair tie—like a danger warning sign at the end of a long load—before tossing the braid back over her shoulder. A pair of dark sunglasses soon hid her green eyes, and she fired off the engine. You didn't do something as mundane as “start” an engine like this one. It rumbled and roared to life.

“Irene? Like in ‘Goodnight, Irene'?” Had he taken his life in his hands getting in this car?

Denise backed it out carefully over the gentle crunching of the heavy gravel in the parking lot.

“Irene as in Irene Adler.” She shifted it into first gear, revved the engine, and popped the clutch. With a gravel-spewing, fishtailing jolt, they shot past his bronze-colored Corvette convertible that glowered with jealousy at being left behind. The Fiat launched out of the parking lot and onto the narrow two-lane that wound down the mountain.

“Crap!” was all he managed as the car carved the turns, gripping the road at least as well as his Vette. He managed to relax his desperate grip on the wood-and-leather dashboard because hanging on made him look decidedly feeble and not the least bit calm, cool macho. Though he was sufficiently wise to retain his tight hold on the inside door handle.

She slammed into third and laid into another corner, then did a double-clutch downshift to rocket up a short but steep grade in second.

“Why her?” The one woman ever to outsmart Sherlock Holmes.

“Because Irene is tricky, but when she's running clean, I'll bet that even your fancy Vette can't catch her, any more than Holmes could.”

Of course she'd know what car he drove. One, it was one of the hottest cars in the lot. Two, she was a mechanic through and through and probably knew the cars better than their owners.

And he'd bet that while his Corvette probably could catch her—it had like a jillion times more power and road traction than this little Italian dream—he'd never be able to keep up with this car if Denise was at the wheel.

He glanced over at her. Her left hand, fine-fingered and delicate looking, handled the leather-wrapped steering wheel like a chopper's cyclic, twisting them easily down the winding road. Her right hand worked the five-speed stick with an effortless confidence to edge the most out of every curve and straightaway.

Vern cruised in his Corvette with its automatic transmission; Denise flew.

Stray strands of hair had escaped the quick braid and danced about her head, catching the sun like a halo. This was a side of her that he'd never imagined. She was always so quiet and unpresuming, caring only about her helicopters and nothing else, never revealing an emotion. At MHA, Denise seemed the sort of woman to drive a Toyota because of safety, probably a Prius for mileage or a Camry—a staid and careful choice.

Instead she'd transformed into the sexy babe in a high-powered Italian sports car. And the more she drove it, as much as he hated to admit it, the more he saw that she was a better driver than he was. He'd have to get her up in the Firehawk someday. Then he'd show her a thing or two. Of course, if she kicked his ass when they were aloft as well, he'd have to turn in his manly club membership card, so maybe better not to risk it.

The warm wind, rushing so furiously by, made it hard to talk. That, and she'd plugged her phone into a wire snaked under the edge of the dash. Florence and the Machine's “Howl” was, well, howling out of the car's speakers. Denise had definitely done some serious work to the sound system while she was making the car so perfect.

Any illusions he'd had about the town of Hood River being a half-hour drive from MHA's Hoodie One base camp were completely blown apart.

They tore past the orchards thick with apples, pears, and late peaches.

They flew past vines lush with grapes and wineries thick with tourists.

Traffic wasn't a nuisance, despite the road being just two lanes; it was a challenge. She slalomed better than Lindsey Vonn medaling in the Winter Olympics. And looked better too, which was saying a lot, 'cause Vonn was model hot and world-class-athlete fit. His libido briefly wondered if Denise also shared Vonn's habit of modeling skimpy bikinis in snowy settings. He told it to shut up and go away, he was busy at the moment—hoping he'd survive the car trip into town.

In twenty minutes flat, they rolled into town despite the heavy fall traffic along the route. She hadn't achieved it by speeding, well, not any more than he would, but rather by not wasting a single second during the entire passage.

She parked with the same efficiency and speed that she drove. Had there been two fewer inches, they wouldn't have fit. She nailed the parallel parking on her first try without hesitation. That was just creepy; nobody did that.

By the time Vern was able to release his stranglehold on the door handle and climb out of the car, Denise had transformed back. No race-car-skilled driver in evidence, no rock and roll; she was once again the quiet woman he'd thought he knew at least a little.

He rested a hand against the slender trunk of a handy maple tree to make sure that the world had slowed down enough to be grasped by normal human perceptions. The people on the busy sidewalk moved at a rational pace as well. And the sidewalk pretty much stayed in place. His world had returned to normal speed.

“That was”—he searched for an appropriate word—“unexpectedly intense. Have you been a member of NASCAR for long?”

She aimed a smile at him that definitely weakened his knees. The smile was as beautiful as the woman. “I do like to drive.”

“No,” he corrected her as she circled to him and they joined the people walking farther into town. “I like to drive. That was a whole other thing again. It wasn't racing. I need a new word for it. I'll have to work on it.”

“It's sort of my alone time. I didn't mean to be rude, if I was. Was I?” She looked worried and hurried along before he could respond. “Behind the wheel is when it's just me, the machine, and the road. I get kind of—”

“Not rude.” Vern got the words in edgewise and stopped her rolling apology. “Miraculous” was more what came to mind. One of the camp rumors was that Denise was as cold as the steel machines she maintained. So not! “You were…passionate.” That was the word he hadn't found a moment earlier. He liked to drive, but she was passionate about it. And that peek into Denise Conroy was as surprising as going to work one day to fly his MD500 and finding out he was the next MHA Firehawk pilot. Bruce and Mickey had shrugged off that he'd been the one Emily chose to promote, but he knew there was still envy behind their sincere congratulations. It had been a huge step.

“No, I just like to drive.”

Vern desperately needed to cover what he'd said, because it evoked other images of how “passionate” might look on Denise Conroy that were wholly inappropriate, especially as she had a boyfriend. “Well, if you ever want to discover what driving is really about, I'll let you try my Vette.”

“Feh!”

“Feh? You actually said ‘feh' about my Corvette? It's a 2006 Z06 convertible with five hundred and five horsepower. Have you ever driven one?” They turned a corner toward the restaurant and were nearly run over by a family of five, each toting a major sugar-rush worth of ice cream cones. He considered offering his arm to escort her. Then he considered that he'd completely lost his mind.

“No, but—”

“Nope.” He cut her off. “Not another word until you've tried it.”

She nodded. “Fair enough.” Then she flashed that radiant smile at him. “Of course that means that you'll have to drive Irene as well. That way we can both be impartial. And you'll see what driving is really about.”

“Deal.” They shook on it.

He'd expected her hand to feel small and dainty. Instead it felt strong and warm. It was the first time they'd touched in a year and a half of knowing each other. He liked discovering that she was strong in addition to being powerful. Even for that brief moment of contact he liked how her hand felt in his. He decided maybe it really was okay if he disliked Jasper, if only for being with Denise.

She'd parked on the edge of the town, which wasn't saying much. The heart of Hood River was perhaps six blocks square of tree-lined streets and low buildings. For whatever reasons the town had begun, it really only had three reasons for existing now.

It drew massive numbers of tourists to the best windsurfing in the world on the Columbia River Gorge, which meant there'd be no parking in the core, not even for the short Spider. Second, from the town up to the base of Mount Hood itself was some of the best fruit-growing country around in a state known for its orchards and wine. And third was the high-tech factory that made small surveillance drones like the one MHA used for observing fires.

They strolled side by side past busy tourist kitsch shops and crowded bars. It was early evening and people were spilling out onto the sidewalks sipping beers while waiting for a table.

Of course, being MHA Hoodies, there was no question where they were going.

The Doghouse Inn was a decrepit, old brick building that was going to be the first thing to collapse if the big earthquake ever hit—or even a small one. The harsh winds and alternating drenching by the Pacific Northwest rains and baking hot sun of eastern Oregon had aged the exterior until one could imagine that it was held together only by the dried glue of stale beer and old nicotine that must be on the inside. Even the sign was disreputable and a third of the neon was out.

When asked why the outside was such a disaster, the owners claimed they hated tourists—though they took outsiders' credit cards with a minimum of disdain. But word of mouth packed the place regularly despite the bar's crusty exterior.

Those who braved the dark entryway entered
the
prime pub in town. It was brightly lit, with an old wooden floor and solid tables and chairs. The windows were so few that there was little impression of the outside world, which only made the inside all the more friendly and welcoming. This was a place that neither the patron nor the proprietor wanted to leave quickly.

The first thing that hit in the cheerfully appointed room was the noise. No wall of heavy rock and roll. No brain-piercing country wails. The playlist was modern, soft, and easily ignored. What hit you was the sound of laughter and happy conversation.

Right behind that was the smells of Gerald's awesome little kitchen in the far corner. The man was like an eighteen-star chef in the world of burgers. He might do only one thing, but he did it so well that you never tired of it. Vern's mouth watered over more than the delectable woman at his side.

If you were a real regular, the third thing that hit you was Amy, the spunky and totally hot redhead who ran the bar. She was busy with a big order so all Vern got this time was a hasty wave, instead of a small-tornado-style hug. Denise received an assessing glance that Vern really hoped she'd missed.

Gerald, who was also Amy's husband—and massive enough that even a lunatic didn't mess with his wife—shot a wave.

The highly polished oak bar ran down one side of the room, boasting enough regional microbrews to satisfy even the most dedicated beer taster. The floor was packed with cozily close tables so that conversations crossed from one table to the next as easily as to the person seated beside you.

Despite all of that, the walls and ceiling were the best and definitely the most unique feature of the pub. Every surface was covered with overlapping postcards, ads, and photographs from around the world of dogs in their doghouses. Miniature show-dog poodles perched in pink pagodas, a bulldog in his boxing-ring-styled bed, a team of racing huskies with their heads peeking out of the rows of small doors on their whole-team dog-box truck—complete with a sled on top and icicles hanging from the truck's bumper.