Plain Jane & The Hotshot (11 page)

“S
o this is the famous Mystery Valley,” Nick said in a deeply impressed tone, enjoying a stellar view of it from the twelfth-story balcony of the area's finest resort hotel. “No wonder you and Hazel love it. Crops, grassland, forest, and all of it surrounded by mountains. I've seen a lot of the American West, but nothing to top this.”

Jo pointed toward a huge pasture dominating the distant view.

“You can't actually see the town itself from here except for the spire of the Methodist Church. But that's one of Hazel winter pastures. The Lazy M occupies one-third of the valley. Right now her cattle are up in the summer pastures in the foothills.”

“She's the big nob in this town, and to think,” he said with that wolfish grin she'd grown to love, “
we're
driving around in her Caddy and using her plastic. I feel like a VIP.”

“You complaining?” Jo teased. “Or maybe you're just tired of the company?”

“Yuck, sick of it,” Nick said, literally lifting her off her feet as he pulled her into a deep, breath-quickening kiss.

Nick and his three companions had received the customary one week off, at full pay, always granted to smoke jumpers who received the coveted Lifesaving Award, as the four of them had. But a grateful Hazel, who had wept with gratitude when all eight of them emerged from the trees safely, had insisted that wasn't enough.

“Both of you kids are heroes to me,” she effused to Nick and Jo, “and you're gonna have a heroes' holiday, on me.”

Nick could have named anyplace in the world, so Hazel and Jo both took it as a promising sign when he immediately voted for “this Mystery Valley that seems to produce such remarkable women.”

It hadn't been quite the private getaway they'd envisioned, however. Their faces were still too fresh from the recent, dramatic rescue photos and subsequent media interviews—hotel staffers and other guests recognized them, and there was always an awkward “celebrity stir” each time they appeared in the dining room.

It was all so silly.

They wanted none of it. A cabin in the woods and a well for water was all they needed.

Jo finally broke from the long kiss to say, “You know, Hazel really likes you. She sure has been banging the drum on your behalf.”

“No accounting for taste, I guess. The only question is, how do you feel about me, Ms. Lofton?”

“Well, you're pretty good in the sack.”

She said this deadpan, and they both laughed.

“Seriously,” she said, “I agree with Hazel's first impression of you.”

“Which was?”

“That you're a keeper.”

“If Kayla hadn't absconded with my note, you might never have thought otherwise.”

His arms tightened around her, and she shivered, thinking how fragile their beginning was, how full of fear and flight. It was a wonder any two people could get to know each other.

She looked at Nick and realized how easy love was once found. But before that, it was a lot easier to talk herself out of trying to love than to give it a shot. “All Kayla did,” she said, “was give me an excuse not to risk my heart. I didn't want to be used like Ned had used me.”

She framed his handsome face with her palms. “But after our escape, as brave as I was in the river, when I saw you I realized I had to be brave one more
time. I couldn't push you out of my life completely. I would have lost so much.”

He grinned. “Kayla gave herself the hiccups, she was sobbing so hard when she confessed. You mad at her?” he asked, pulling her close again.

“Oh, I tried to be, but she was so miserable I couldn't stay mad. What we went through on the river…it sort of bonded us, I guess. You know, we actually hugged and made up before she and Dottie went home.”

Jo harbored no bitterness, for the trip into the wild had ended with two key discoveries, both very welcome: that Nick had not deserted her, after all, and that she possessed all the confidence and inner strength she'd ever need. Or in Hazel's earthy terms, she had a backbone to go with her wishbone.

Neither one of them had spent much time fully dressed the past few days. Her hand moved down inside the folds of his robe.

“Um, I see
this
fireman is feeling sparky.”

“Hey, don't start something you don't plan on finishing.”

“Who said I don't plan on finishing?”

She knew him well enough by now to know he had at least two types of smile: one, quick and easy, that he used as a defense against others getting too personal; another, charming and roguish, that could instantly turn her on as it was now.

“I want you,” she whispered urgently, giving his arousal an inviting squeeze.

He never did require an engraved invitation—he easily scooped her up into his arms and carried her back to the queen-size bed. He untied her silk robe and shucked it, along with his own.

Moaning with the building intensity of their sudden passion, still unslaked after several days, they sank onto the bed, Jo rolling over to straddle him.

He grabbed both breasts, but she toyed with him, sometimes letting his mouth take her nipples, sometime making him do without as she rocked herself against him.

Finally, when his arms went around her hips and stilled her, she knew there was only one way to go.

She bent his hard length to the perfect angle and lowered herself onto him, feeling him deliciously filling her. Crying nearly incoherent words of pleasure and encouragement, she began moving her hips, letting his hands take full measure of her breasts as she rubbed along his length.

His head turned from side to side as the pleasure built. Faster and faster, harder and harder, she rode him, her own ecstacy building as he cupped her breasts, kissing each nipple in turn, nibbling them just a little and making them swollen and hard with pulsing blood.

Their lovemaking had shown several moods, and right now their shared mood was pure possession. She had no desire, this time, to prolong her pleasure, to draw it out teasingly. Instead, she, like him needed a thorough coupling and intense explosion of release.

They had driven each other to the edge of control. The moment of possession came like a massive wave, the climaxes wracking her body into surrender. She cried out just as he, in a few deep, final lunges, released himself inside her, his pleasure as hard and greedy as her own.

Much later, when they had each drifted back to the surface of awareness, he murmured in her ear, “You know, Hazel has already assured me there's a good job waiting for me here in Mystery.”

Jo, almost forgetting to take her next breath, replied, “Think you might take her up on the offer?”

“If I was ever tempted, it's now. She's pretty convincing when she says there's no better place on earth to put down roots and raise a family. I'd like to give it a try.”

She sat up in bed and looked at him. She remembered how he'd pulled her to him after they'd made it safely to Hazel's car. Their faces black with soot and exhaustion, he had made her feel as if she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. There was nobody besides her, he'd told her, and so far he'd done nothing but prove it again and again in the weeks since.

She'd sworn when they parted that fateful day, he'd said the three magic words—“I love you”—but the frenzy afterward made her think it must have been her imagination.

“Nick Kramer, are you thinking of settling down?”

He gave a wary sideways glance. “Only here. Only with you. Otherwise, I'm lost. All I'll have is that fistful of air.”

“So you're asking me to marry you and help raise that family of yours?” Her face was taut with wonder.

He caressed her breast and pulled her back down into the bed. “I sure am. So what's the answer?” He gave her that slow, sexy smile she had come to know was hers alone.

She kissed his lips. “The answer is yes, but just a warning, though, Hotshot—life around here isn't as exciting as smoke jumping.”

“I beg to differ,” he countered, lowering his mouth to hers. “There's plenty of fire in you.”

 

Almost three months after the rescue on the Stony Rapids River, a brand-new blanket of powdery snow covered the Bitterroot National Forest like an ermine cloak. It was the first real accumulation of the winter.

Ranger Mike Silewski slowly prowled the park's main access road, the Blazer's front snowplow lowered for action. While he worked, he kept the radio tuned to the midday news report out of Helena. The newscaster closed with a human-interest story that instantly riveted Mike's attention:

“Wedding bells will soon be chiming for a Mystery, Montana, music teacher and the heroic smoke jumper who saved her life. And Hazel McCallum's world-famous Lazy M ranch in Mystery Valley will soon host its fourth big wedding in recent memory.

“In a ceremony slated for late May, Joanna Lofton, twenty-five, and highly decorated firefighter Nick Kramer, thirty, a Colorado native, will tie the knot on a relationship that began a few months ago when they were briefly thrust into the national spotlight.

“Last August Montana residents joined millions of other Americans in a tense, minute-by-minute vigil after Kramer and three comrades risked almost certain death to rescue Lofton and her fellow rafters from fire-ravaged Crying Horse Canyon.

“Neither one of the engaged couple was available for comment regarding their plans. But cattle magnate Hazel McCallum, seventy-five, granted a brief interview from her home. She confirmed that Kramer, now a special consultant to the Montana Bureau of Forest and Land Management, has become a resident of Mystery Valley. He is also teaching forest conservation at Summerfield Community College near Mystery.

“‘I'm on the board of regents for the college,' McCallum told reporters, ‘and happily the other regents share my belief that our instructors should be working professionals who've done more than just read some textbooks. Nick's course has been wildly popular. We're lucky to have him. In fact, he's just the kind of man this valley needs.'

“Ms. McCallum hinted, at the end of her interview, that she expected a substantial number of weddings in Mystery's near future.

“When asked to elaborate, she declined, saying
only: ‘Oh, I'm a sentimental old romantic, is all. It's just a hunch.'”