Ignite (Firefighters of Montana Book 3) (10 page)

Not that Ace had used that word, but still. He was taking her on her perfect day. How could that not be a date?

Picking out what she was going to wear had been a difficult exercise. First, because she had very little in the way of clothing that might entice the male species. She’d always viewed clothes as something of a necessity. Certainly not something to get excited about or something to express herself with.

Her wardrobe was jeans and khakis and scrubs and little else. So, she’d found a pair of jeans she thought fit her best, a t-shirt with the lowest V of a neckline she owned. It showed off next to nothing, but she supposed if he’d been attracted to her in a turtleneck last night, this ensemble couldn’t be half bad.

Besides, they were hiking. First.

She groaned aloud because she knew she was being an idiot. And she hated being an idiot. But today was about doing things that weren’t normal for her. Today was about doing something out of character, so idiocy was probably going to have to go along with the good out of character things she was doing as well.

When the knock sounded at the door, her heart jumped and her pulse seemed to pound abnormally hard in her neck. But she got up and she answered the door. When she saw Ace on the other side,
some
of the nerves ceased. She still felt all weird and fluttery, but smiling at him was easy.

He was just so damn hot. His dark hair was wavy and long enough to run her fingers through, but not too terribly long. His smile was like sin incarnate. Not that she knew much about sinning, but whatever she knew was going to come directly from his mouth, from his arrogantly appealing smile.

“Good morning,” he offered, his voice just as delectable as his smile.

“Good morning,” she replied, all too primly. Before the feeling of sounding so stupid could swamp her, he swooped in and pressed a quick but determined kiss to her mouth. Funny when he did that, she couldn’t muster feeling like an idiot at all.

“Ready?”

“Yes. Are you really going to take me hiking?”

“Absolutely. Why wouldn’t I?”

She grabbed her keys and her purse. “I don’t know. It just seems kind of weird.”

“It’s
your
perfect day. If anything is odd, it’s you, honey.”

“Well, I’m well aware of that,” she muttered, locking her deadbolt before walking with him down the hall.

His truck was parked out front and he opened the passenger door for her, allowing her to climb in before he closed it.

Strange, she’d been tied in nervous knots all morning, but with his company and his good-natured conversation, it was hard to feel nervous.

She liked talking with him almost as much as she liked being kissed by him, and she wondered how many people felt that way about their significant others.

Not
that that was what he was. She just…wondered. Jess and Cole always seemed so easy together, as though they could communicate without even speaking. They obviously enjoyed each other, and her brother always got a kind of dumbstruck look on his face when Jess walked in.

But her parents…they were their own, strange, icy thing. And Carter and Sierra had been having
quite
the rough patch and…

Why are you thinking about them?

She had no idea. She tried to focus on the road. Ace drove them out of town and into the mountains. She hadn’t explored much outside of Kalispell, all that had really mattered to her was the hospital and her apartment building, but now she realized that had been a mistake. She should have gone out exploring. She should have used the move here to give her an excuse to spread her life outside of a hospital setting.

Well, now she was.

Ace pulled the truck into a parking lot. There was a little sign about Gabriel Falls, which was where the trail apparently led. He got out of the truck and so did she, meeting him at the back where he was pulling a backpack and a cooler out of the bed of the truck.

“Are you going to carry all that?”

He grinned at her. “This is nothing compared to what I have to carry in my pack when I’m jumping.”

“Oh, well, sure, but why would you want to spend your time off carrying around something heavy when that’s what you do at work?”

“I can’t jump for a week, can’t fight fire for a week. If I walk into base, I’ll get roped into paperwork or cleaning or crap like that. Trust me, honey, this is much preferred to any of those things.”

She watched as he tossed a couple bottles of water from the cooler to the backpack, followed by a bag she assumed was full of food. He added a Swiss army knife and some matches.

“Are we going to be gone that long?”

“You like to ask a lot of questions,” he replied, zipping the bag up.

“I am going hiking with someone I barely know. I should probably ask a few more questions.”

He laughed, but he didn’t seem offended. “You’re probably right. What else should you be asking me?”

She thought about it, but really all that seemed to matter was he was easy to talk to, easy to kiss, and she liked him. She supposed if he ended up being some sort of psycho then she deserved whatever she got but, for the time being, she was going to enjoy yourself.

“Well, I guess the most important thing would be what kind of food you brought.”

He laughed again, this time it held a hint of surprise. She liked a little bit too much that she could surprise him so easily.

“I packed an assortment of sandwiches and chips.”

“But what kind of chips?” Lina pressed. “You can tell a lot about a person based on the kind of chips they pack.”

He flashed a grin that made her heart flutter oddly. “So I can tell a lot about a person by their perfect day, and you can tell a lot about a person based on their chip preference?”

“Oh, yes,” she returned with mock seriousness.

“There’s a bag of Cheetos and a bag of pretzels. What does that tell you about me?”

“Well, that depends.”

“On what?”

“On which ones you plan on eating.”

He laughed again, shaking his head at her as he locked up the truck. “I plan on eating the Cheetos. I packed the pretzels in case you were some health nut.”

“Correct answer.”

“So, I’m going to have to fight you for the Cheetos then?”

Lina pretended to think about it. “Well, what size bag did you bring?”

“What if I brought one of those little single serving packages?”

“I guess you’d have to get ready to eat pretzels with your lunch then.”

He grinned and without warning swooped down and kissed her. Not the easy brush of lips like this morning. This was…intense. His mouth and tongue probed hers and she just
melted
against him.

The hardness of his chest, the scrape of his whiskers, everything about him seemed to envelop her and intrigue her. She forgot momentarily where she was or why she was here, because he was kissing her and that was all that seemed to matter.

Slowly and with what seemed like great effort, Ace pulled away. There was his too intense gaze again and today she was surprised to find she liked it. She wanted to keep seeing it. Over and over and over again. Because no one had ever been intense when it came to her, and she was more than a little excited he might be.

“You said your perfect day included Cheetos and Cheez whiz, if you recall.”

Her throat tightened uncomfortably. He’d listened… Remembered. It shouldn’t mean anything, but somehow it meant quite a bit.

“Ready to hike?” he asked, his voice infused with a rasp that hadn’t been there earlier.

“Sure.” Hike. Yeah that was what she was ready for.

*

Ace traversed the
trail up to the top of Gabriel Falls. It was a trail he’d hiked a lot of times since moving to Kalispell. He wasn’t the kind of guy who was good at sitting still and alone. He needed movement or noise, something to keep his mind occupied so it didn’t…dwell.

So even in the winter months when there was no smokejumping to be done, but it was frigid and covered in snow up to his knees, he would find himself needing to move, needing to see something beautiful and awe-inspiring. Besides, it had been good practice for joining the winter search and rescue crew—for making his settling into Kalispell permanent.

“Are we almost there?” Lina asked.

He had to bite back a grin at how out of breath she sounded. He supposed a different man would be feeling sorry for her, but he knew she could handle this. She was in too good of shape, and too stubborn-minded, not to handle it.

“Almost,” he replied good-naturedly. As they ascended the hardest part of the trail, he made an effort to help her up over a couple boulders that led to the top where they would be able to overlook the entire waterfall.

A few times she shook off his outstretched hand, determined to do it herself and he liked that about her, too. He kept looking for flaws, things that would drive him nuts about her, but he kept…coming up empty.

They’d had some good rain and snowmelt at the higher altitudes the past few weeks, so he could already hear the rushing water falling to the lake below. He glanced back at Lina as she scrambled over the last big rock. Her cheeks were flushed from exertion and she was definitely panting.

“This still your perfect day?” he asked, unable to resist needling her.

She gave him a narrow-eyed glare as though she’d interpreted his question as a challenge. “I guess I should’ve specified non-strenuous hike.”

He chuckled. “I guess you should have. But you have to do the work to see the beauty.” He gestured to the overlook and she stepped toward it with him.

It was a little wooden plank deck-like thing built into the side of the mountain. Stepping out on it allowed them to step out over the valley a little bit and see the falls more clearly.

She stepped out, her fingers curling around the railing of the lookout. “Oh,” she breathed.

He shouldn’t have worried she might find the view lacking—for a lot of reasons—but all of the nerves he hadn’t realized coiled into his gut evaporated. Because she was taking in the sight below with a wide-eyed intensity that made him want to stare at her rather than the falls.

“It’s amazing,” she said, her voice low and reverent.

It would be silly to tell her she was the only woman he’d ever brought here. It would be silly to explain to her she was the only woman he’d ever even thought of bringing here. Not just because it was her perfect day, though that had a lot to do with it, but because, for some reason, he wanted to get to know her, and he wanted her to know him.

He was getting himself into a world of hurt. This could only end in hurt, and much like last year when the jump team had lost Russ, Ace found himself walking towards the hurt rather than away from it.

“Was it worth the climb?” he asked, using the same reverent tone she had.

Her blue eyes turned to his and her smile was breathtakingly beautiful. “I guess,” she said with an attempt at a shrug.

“Bullshit,” he scoffed, not about to let her be coy about it. Not about this. He pointed out to the valley below, the craggy grey of rock, the faint green of the plants, the crystal clear lake that a rushing column of water was tumbling into. “Look at that and tell me what you really think.”

She looked out over the falls, something in her face softening. He didn’t know why, but seeing the softness on her seemed like a big deal. She didn’t seem like the type who would tolerate it much. She wasn’t just tolerating it now, she was letting him see her softness. See the way she was. Odd how that felt like a gift.

“It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. It was worth the hike up and it’ll be worth the hike down. It was even worth taking a chance on some stranger not tossing me off a cliff.” She looked over at him her, lips twisting into a smirk. “Happy?”

“Yeah,” he said, meaning it all too much. He was indescribably happy she was pleased, and he didn’t know what on earth that said about him or them or this, but here he was. And he was happy, and he was enthralled and he was… So very screwed, likely.

“Ready to eat?” he asked, shrugging the pack off his shoulders. He started pulling the food out and she helped get them situated in a place where they could sit on the ground and eat.

They put it all together in a companionable silence he didn’t notice at first. He was used to silence, but he realized somewhere along the way as they chewed their sandwiches and looked out over the falls, he hadn’t been used to silences with other people. He hadn’t been used to enjoying a person’s company simply because they were there.

“You have a lot of friends?” he asked, gripped by the need to get to know her better.

She startled and glanced at him as though he’d asked her if she murdered people for fun. Then she looked down at her sandwich, seemingly uncomfortable. “Not really,” she said with a kind of odd look. “My brother’s girlfriend and my other brother’s wife are pretty much it. Believe it or not, I wasn’t very good at getting people to like me when I was younger. I’m kind of an ass.”

“How so?” He didn’t remember anything about Lina from his days in Marietta but, then again,
nothing
about his experience or his crowd would have come near Lina McArthur.