Love Under Two Jessops (14 page)

He hung up and said, “That was Artie Ferris. There’s a grass fire just across the line in Hamilton County. They could use a hand.” He met her gaze, regret in his eyes.

“Go.” There was no way Chloe would ever stand in the way of these men doing their jobs. They’d pretty much finished eating, and she was glad for that, at least. “I’ll take care of the cleanup. And don’t worry, I’ll cut my leftover steak in two and keep it wrapped in the fridge for y’all.”

“It’s not the steak I’m ruing.” Grant leaned over and kissed her lightly.

“It’s the dessert.” Andrew got to his feet and, as he seemed to love to do, plucked her right up out of her chair. He planted a very yummy but too-fast kiss on her lips. Then he set her down.

“If y’all wait just a moment I have something for you.” Chloe didn’t let herself think that this would be a big step for her—one that she’d only ever taken once before. She just grabbed her purse off the counter and opened it.

She pressed a spare key to her house into the hand of each man. “You can wake me up when you get back to town, if you’ve a mind to.”

Chloe was kind of getting used to the way her two lovers met each other’s gazes for a moment, communicating God only knew what.

“Baby girl, that’s an invitation we just can’t refuse. We’ll see you when we get home.”

There was that word again. She reached up and kissed each of the men, and then gave them her best smile. Chloe pushed the uncomfortable echo to the back of her mind.

It was only a word, after all.

Dawn split the sky, pretty pink shards of light that speared through the pale blue in the east, slicing through the deeper navy in the west, wrestling the light from the dark.

Smoke that had been scented and tasted and
felt
through the long night now became a visible pall, a low, dirty-colored cloud that hung in the air above the charred grasses of the Central Texas pastureland.

The weather forecast called for winds out of the west of about twenty to twenty-five miles an hour for the day. Like every other man on the line of this bitching fire, Andrew prayed for the meteorologist to be wrong—and for the winds to hold off until the beast had been fully slain.

They’d made progress. When they’d arrived on scene, it was to learn that the front line of this fire stretched for more than three miles. All along that line, groups of men and trucks fanned out and fought together, beating the flames back.

He and Grant had summoned their roster of volunteers—which last night had included the cowboys, who would, God willing, soon be their brothers-in-law. Steven Benedict had been on that roster, too, and between the five of them they were able to fight the fire
and
both train and keep an eye on the four new, young recruits who were getting their first taste of active duty as members of the Lusty Volunteer Fire Department.

Kenny Jones, Trace Langley, and a pair of Jessop twins, Maury and Lorraine—the last two cousins, of course—had all joined the department as volunteers a few months before. They’d had a number of seminars and some training sessions, but nothing trained a firefighter quite as well as actually fighting a fire.

The newest members of the department were all in their senior year of high school, which made them between seventeen and eighteen years old. Their parents had had to sign off on their joining the department, of course. The rules the fire department operated under were stringent when it came to teenaged volunteers. Fires were assessed for level of danger, and there were some fires the kids would have to sit out, period. Still, this was a valuable experience for the students, and in the case of this kind of a grass fire—one that wouldn’t likely, based on the fuel available, explode into a raging inferno—their contribution was valuable. Service with the Lusty Volunteer Fire Department was not only a family tradition for most of the families in town, but it served as a credit toward community service hours—a new innovation at the schools in these modern times that Andrew Jessop approved of wholeheartedly.

Andrew kept his focus on the job at hand, continuing to fight the battle, the actions and reactions ingrained, practiced, but
never
routine. His mind was never so sharp, his focus never so absolute, as when he was on a fire line.

He’d joined the Lusty Volunteer Fire Department when he, himself, had been in his senior year in high school. He still remembered his first fire, also a grass fire, during an unbelievably dry and hot summer. There’d been a lot of fires that year, but that first one had confirmed for him what he wanted to do with his life. It had been the same just the year before for his brother, Grant.

He’d never been able to put his finger on why, exactly, he’d been drawn to this career. It had never been the shiny red trucks, or the lights and sirens. There’d been no trauma in his past, no loved one lost to flames that called on him to battle, again and again, what many of them called, simply, the beast.

His need to fight fires was instinctive, beyond feral. Fire had been here before mankind had walked upright. The attraction, the draw, the need to conquer this most primal force of nature, simply
was
.

He stepped back, carving out a moment to take stock, to see where they were now that daylight had crept up on them.

“The young’uns seem to be doing all right.” Steven came over and offered him a bottle of water.

Andrew nodded his thanks, pulled down his mask, and swallowed nearly half before handing it back. “Yes, they are. That Trace kid, I didn’t recognize him. Who’re his folks?”

“They’re from up north, near Abilene. His mom hired on at Darryl’s Duds back in July. They’re renting the apartment above the store. She’s a widow. Her husband died in Afghanistan about two years ago. Trace has a younger sister and brother, aged about twelve and seven, if memory serves.”

“That explains it, then. He’s got a pretty level head on him and a mature attitude for his age.”

“I’ve had him out to the ranch a few times.” Steven wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “He came by and asked if he could trade some after-school labor for his little sister getting riding lessons.”

Andrew didn’t ask, because he knew Steven would not only have said yes, he’d have found a way to pay the boy for his work, too. Now that it was lighter out, he gave Steven a once-over and couldn’t help but notice his cousin was carrying a fair bit of smoke and ash on his coat and britches. He figured he might be more than a bit grungy looking himself.

“Any idea how we’re doing, here?” Steven asked.

“I think the next hour will tell the tale.” Andrew looked at their section of the head, already thinning, with nowhere near the twenty to thirty feet of depth it had when they’d started. “I just talked to Artie on my cell phone a bit ago. He says each group is gaining on the bitch.”

“Good. I’m not as young as I used to be,” Steven said. “It’s been a while since I’ve pulled an all-nighter like this.”

Andrew grinned. “You mean one that didn’t involve your lovely wife, of course. Come to think of it, you are a couple of months older than I am.” He gave his cousin a teasing jab. “And yeah, I can see middle-aged deterioration setting in.”

“Fuck you.”

Andrew laughed and slapped his cousin on the back. Quick break over, he pulled his mask back into place and headed back to the front line. He worked with Trace, using the opportunity of the live fire to impart as much knowledge as he could. The kid had instincts. Andrew was going to see about the possibility of his getting a scholarship. If this was what he wanted to do for a living, Lusty would see to it the boy had a shot.

They worked methodically, and they worked smart. They watched and waited and finally the last of the orange glow they’d battled dwindled out. They continued to work, ensuring that their section of the head had been completely defeated. Within the hour he predicted, the call came that this grass fire was beaten. The beast, once more, had been killed.

They held their position, waiting to be relieved by a fresh batch of volunteers who would keep a vigil for a while yet, who would use shovels and rakes and water to ensure the fire was out for good. Andrew cast his gaze over what just the day before had been a vast, vital piece of pastureland. Yes, drought would do its damage from time to time, but grass came back fairly fast after a drought. One good rain, and that which had turned brittle would once more bend easily in the breeze. The combination of rain and sunshine would bring back the green, sometimes right before his very eyes.

It took the land a little longer to recover from a wildfire, but it would recover.

The young volunteers, looking grimy and tired, gathered around Andrew. Standing quietly and sipping on water, they, too, cast their eyes over the blackened landscape. They’d worked hard all night, and while cleaning up after themselves was a lesson they would need to learn eventually, Andrew didn’t think it needed to be learned today. The adults—Chase and Brian and Steven—put away the equipment and generally got ready to call it a done deal. Grant was across the way, speaking with Artie. Andrew would like to be in on that conversation. Now that the beast
had
been killed, he had questions, and he had suspicions. But he had a responsibility to his crew first. Grant would fill him in, later.

“Fire is actually a part of the cycle of nature,” Andrew said, “an important tool in the planet
’
s arsenal for the management and development of her resources. In some ways it can be argued that
we’re
the unnatural ones who’re in the way and need to be managed—taking land that was meant to be open and corrupting it to our own uses helps skew Mother Nature’s plan.”

“In science class we learned about the giant sequoia trees in the Sierra Nevada Mountains,” Trace said. “Those trees
need
fire in order to reproduce.”

“That’s right. If the planet were unpopulated, there would be a cycle of fire and rebirth everywhere there is vegetation. But it’s not, of course—which is why we have to manage our forests and our land in such a way as to reduce the risks of fires, while at the same time helping nature find that balance.” Andrew exhaled. The kids were paying attention with a kind of single-minded intensity created by exhaustion.
Lessons are over for now
.

He made sure he met each of their gazes. “Thanks, guys. Y’all did real well tonight. You worked hard, and you listened. And something else—you made a difference here. I’m proud of each one of you.”

Andrew caught the approving looks from his cousins. One of the things he recalled most fondly from his youth was the way the adults around him had given praise when it was due. He didn’t understand why the simple act of saying positive words wasn’t practiced more widely in the world. It was an investment in people that cost nothing yet could net huge returns.

Four teens who had just a few moments before been dragging their asses now stood taller, suddenly reenergized, because Andrew had taken the time to tell them they’d done well.

It would be tough to choose which action gave him the biggest sense of satisfaction—that, or fighting the fire.

Andrew waited until they were alone back at the firehouse before he asked Grant the one question that had been rolling around in his mind. “It was arson, wasn’t it?”

“There’s no hard evidence yet, but yeah, Artie thinks it was. They’re going to comb the area where they know the fire started, later today. They might find something—either evidence of an accelerant, or God knows what.”

Accelerants often burned hotter and faster than the fires they started. By studying the burn pattern, investigators could usually determine the exact ignition point. They could sometimes even find trace elements of accelerant left over.

Some people thought the flames they created would burn away the evidence of their crime, but that seldom was actually the case.

“I hope if it was arson, they find the crazy son of a bitch who started it, and fast,” Andrew said.

“You and me both, brother.”

They didn’t say it out loud, but it was one thing firefighters feared when they suspected a case of arson. Sometimes, for whatever reason—be it money or revenge—a person would deliberately set a fire. And sometimes, when they did, lighting fires would then become a fascination for them, a then, finally, a disease. When that happened, no one knew where the beast would be unleashed next—or who it would destroy as it raged.

* * * *

Carrie had called her late last night to let her know that Chase and Brian had joined the firemen on the call to Hamilton County. Chloe had watched the news on television out of Waco before crawling into bed. They’d shown pictures of the wildfire, with some of the men fighting it in stark silhouette against the backdrop of the orange flames.

She’d never been this close to anyone who put themselves in harm’s way on a regular basis. Now here she was falling hard for two men who were first responders—firefighters. Carrie had told her that when she’d first met the brothers Jessop, Grant had been healing after an “incident” while spending the summer learning how to be a smoke jumper.

Chloe shivered. Just the image of her men
parachuting
into a fire zone was enough to make her skin tight with fear.