Hotshots (Wildfires Book 1) (4 page)

“Sorry,” Keely said with a grimace. “I am just not looking forward to listening to them bitch about shit. The last team I was with were complete assholes about everything. The food, where I put my shampoo, how I liked to chill out and read every night, the list went on and on. I swear, I would have tried to take cooking lessons if they hadn’t been such pricks. Acting like I was their personal slave even though I was part of the team.”

Jez frowned. “Really? I have never had any of the guys treat me like that before. Who did you work for?”

“An outfit out of Cali,” Keely said slowly and then looked around. “They were nothing like this crew, I hope it doesn’t turn out the same.”

“Wow,” Jez frowned. “Corbin runs a tight ship, he won’t let shit like that happen here.”

“That is what I heard as well, it is the only reason I tried out for the crew. I was going to quit wildfire crews altogether but someone gave me his name,” Keely said and smiled. “Plus I saw a few pics of the guys and yeah, they at least make good eye candy.”

Jez laughed loudly, she didn’t realize the sound stopped three men in their tracks as they stared with intense attention.

***

They loaded up and drove the distance to The Shack, and into the transport area without stopping. Everyone jumped down from the rear of the vehicle on their own, all except Barbie, she sat there sniveling. She was Corbin’s problem, and they left him to it. The trainees were tired and hungry, and it didn’t take long for the twenty-four people to head for the showers.

Nix was fortunate that he got a closet sized room on his own. He looked around the small space; it would do for his needs. Since the room was situated smack in the middle of the hallway with two rooms on either side, he could only hope his neighbors didn’t snore. His bathroom and the one in the next room must set back to back on the wall, because from the sounds that were coming through, he could tell someone was enjoying sharing their shower. He did his best to ignore them and took care of his own satisfaction before leaving the cubicle. If he was going to have to listen to people having sex, he preferred to hear a woman’s moans over a male’s groans any day.

His stomach felt like his throat had been slit, time to find some food, hopefully whoever had KP duty was at least able to boil fucking water and make something edible. Hell, half the guys were awesome cooks; it was the other half he worried about. His stomach turned as he thought of one particular meal last year that had all the guys in the shitter trying to purge the offensive meal. Who the fuck could fuck up hot dogs and mac and cheese? The answer, a dude whose mama never taught him how to check expiration dates on fucking milk. He shivered at the memory.

The smell of burnt bread and something else none of the men could describe wafted through the hallway of the huge house. Jez grimaced as she heard the men beginning to come out of their rooms. Shit, at least she had been able to get down here before Keely completely destroyed the kitchen. It had been close, because when she walked in, flames had been shooting up the stove vent from a pan Keely apparently forgot about.

“I told you.” Keely grinned and shook her head. “How about I pay you to finish off the cooking this week?”

Jez grinned, “How about you take some cooking lessons with the money you are willing to pay me so when my turn comes around, you can cook.”

Keely looked like she was thinking about it and then smiled and shook her head. “Nah, I would hate for any future beaus to get the wrong idea about me. I mean, hey if I can’t cook, then they won’t have ideas about me being barefoot and pregnant.”

Jez snorted and turned back to the stove. She had salvaged the salad Keely had been making and then threw away whatever she had been attempting to cook, making a simple spaghetti and meatballs. It wasn’t the best she could do, but at least they would have carbs.

“What the hell is that smell?” a male voice yelled down the hallway.

“I hope like hell this isn’t what we have to look forward to this week,” another voice groaned.

Keely looked at her with a smirk and Jez rolled her eyes. “Told you so,” her new friend whispered and Jez fought to keep the laughter from bursting out. Yep, they were bitching already.

The guys began to trickle in, Keely smiled at them and announced to all of them that she sucked at cooking and therefore was trading favors for whoever wanted to sign up. Keely ended up pleading with Jez to help her out when the only guys who wanted to trade had bathroom detail. Gross.

“Hey,” one of the guys yelled from the table. “This is good, maybe we should have Jez cook all the time.”

“Yeah,” another one chimed in. “Best meal we have had yet. Where did Barbie go?”

“She didn’t make the cut,” Nix announced and the room went silent. They didn’t care one way or another if the blonde bimbo actually was cut, they cared more about the fact the cuts had started. The men looked around the room and appeared to try to measure who would be at the table a week from now, no one could tell.

Jez turned around and smiled at all of the guys trying to take the tension out of the room, but her eyes landed on Nix and the other two men who flanked him. Damn it, eye candy on crack, she wasn’t going to be able to keep it cool if they looked this good every day. Keely laughed, changing the subject in the room, and teased all the guys about her cooking and taking praise for asking Jez for help, while she shuffled to the opposite end of the huge table of men and sat down, keeping her eyes on her plate.

The voices flowed around her as she picked at her food and tried to appear relaxed. The guys laughed and teased each other and soon she was able to actually ignore the three men who silently ate and stared at her intently. Damn.

“Jez?” One of the younger men laughed loudly when she finished telling an off-color joke. “You are the woman of my dreams, cooks like a chef, and has the mouth of a hot-shot.”

She heard someone clear their throat and then a deep voice said, “Why don’t we eat and hit the sack, training is at the ass crack of dawn.”

The guys moaned and she looked up to see Nix frowning right at her. What the fuck did she do? The guys who were on clean-up laughed and joked as they piled the dishes on the counter. Jez stacked hers and then turned only to bump into Gray who was standing close to her. When he grabbed her arm to steady her, she felt the zing of awareness zap right through her.

“Sorry,” she mumbled and brushed past him trying to get away.

“Hey, Jez?” She heard Keely call her as she reached the doorway. “Hang on, we need to talk about what I am making for dinner tomorrow.”

Jez smiled and waited for her friend and as they walked out the door, she glanced over her shoulder one last time before shaking her head and walking behind her friend.

Today was going to be brutal on the trainees and he wasn’t looking forward to the knowledge. They would be training in full rig, complete with their packs and provisions, just as if they were in the field and fighting a fire. The temperature was going to be in the upper 70’s with a chance of rain and thunderstorms, and in full gear, any strenuous movements would up the temperatures to around 90 degrees inside the firefighters’ suits. A real fire would soar the hotshots temps over one hundred degrees.

Knowing Corbin, they would be learning how to take out scrub plants that weren’t necessary for the environment, but wildfires loved. It was a hot and thankless job to do in the off-season, but a godsend when a team was trying to keep sparks from spreading during the fire season.

The old man was getting meaner as he got older, and Nix was thankful that he’d kept himself in shape during the off season. He knew the training routine by now, but once in a while things were changed up just to fuck with the seasoned veterans. No one but a veteran of a few years actually knew how grueling the job was until they did it. He could almost pick which ones would fail today.

Walking into the kitchen and heading for the coffee pot was routine for him. He was normally the first man awake, and regardless of who had KP duty, who was the first up made the coffee. The hundred cup coffee urn was already happily percolating away and Jez was standing at the stove with two griddles flipping pancakes like she was born to it.

Damn, he didn’t like the way he felt to see her with that spatula in her hands and her hips swaying as she listened to the music from her IPod. He could see the hot pink ear buds and wire hanging into her shirt pocket bounce on her chest as she dropped several more pancakes onto the griddles.
Fuck
.

He’d woke up with the usual morning wood and took care of it by imagining Jez on her knees in front of him sucking his cock. That was no more than a half an hour ago. Now the fucker was stirring around thinking about those lips again. He had to look away from that ass swaying around, or he’d probably end up with that spatula upside his head and reassigned away from here for the year.

He poured himself a cup of coffee and blew over the rim of the cup to take a cautious sip. Shit, not only could the woman cook, she made excellent coffee. He took his cup and sat at the table to wait for her to notice that she was no longer alone. He had some files on his reader that he needed to go over anyway, so now was as good a time as any for that particular task.

Jez caught sight of a man sitting at the far end of the table. She turned her head just a bit more and dropped the metal spatula onto the empty griddle. Damn, Hottie number one was sitting there by himself drinking a cup of coffee and tapping the screen of his work pad. She felt herself stand straighter and that crazy feeling was back in her gut, just like the first sight of him had caused her to feel.

Tall, with dark brown hair and golden brown eyes, and shoulders,
lordy yes
. His features combined to a panty soaking face she wanted to see smiling. She still wondered why he frowned at her the night before. People normally liked her, and by people that also meant men. Men usually smiled at her and tried to impress her with their looks and humor. She could spot a narcissistic man from a mile away and stayed clear of them. When she decided to take on a man, she didn’t want to be forced to compete with him for mirror space each morning.

Nix Cayson wasn’t pretty, he wasn’t conventionally handsome, the man was seriously sexy. He was also stoic and she got the feeling he didn’t like her one bit.

Being the straightforward type of woman, she slapped six pancakes on a plate, grabbed the syrup and a fork and took it over to where he was sitting. Maybe they needed to talk and he could get his hang-ups about her taken care of so it wouldn’t get awkward in the near future. Her father always told her that a team had to function as one unit, or things could get dangerous in the high country while fighting wildfires. Having the team leader giving you dirty looks all the time wouldn’t help at all. She set the plate down near his arm, and left the syrup and fork next to it before going to the coffee urn.

She sat down across from where he’d begun eating. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions? “

His eyes raised and met hers as he nodded his head. He hadn’t planned to have a heart-to-heart with her until he knew for a fact if she was going to be the type of pilot to go in hot, almost waiting for the exact moment before a line of trees fell. He admired her old man, but he wasn’t a fan of the way he did the job. Nix had been on the ground the day Stryker bought it, and almost killed his kid in the process. He was the one who had pulled her body from the wreckage and hauled her out far enough for the medics to work on her, and he had gone back to finish the job of fighting the fire. The girl’s blood stayed on his hands and gear until he and the others finally got the fire contained. They’d lost two other men that day and the blame for their deaths was laid entirely on Stryker’s shoulders as far as Nix was concerned. Officially, they’d perished in the fire, and that would always stand, but he knew if the pilot had been listening to the instructions he’d been given, the chopper and the two front men would still be alive to tell the tale.

“I’m sure you know who my father was, and you might think that I got special treatment to get here, but I had to work for the position. Jeb and Corbin demanded that I was in top shape before I was allowed to step foot inside The Shack. I’m here because I’m a damned good pilot. So if you have a problem with me being here, let’s get it hashed out now.”

She folded her shaking hands, not certain why she was so agitated. “I want to understand why you act like you don’t like me or want me here. I’ve never met you before, so if you’re in a sharing mood, please tell me. And before the others come down, if you don’t mind. I am trying to fit in here as much as anyone else, and the glares you were giving me last night, I am pretty sure some of them picked up on. I don’t want to explain my shit to other people, since we are all living together, they are going to ask.”