Plain Jane & The Hotshot (3 page)

J
o noticed little of the waning day's beauty on her way back to the summit campground, for she was too preoccupied with angry resentment directed at Nick Kramer.

Big deal, so he was a smoke jumper—a “Hotshot,” at that. He figured women would be all over him, and perhaps they were.

Her brow furrowed. She didn't need this. She was still licking her wounds over Ned. It rankled her that she'd even noticed Nick Kramer—and his incredibly piercing eyes and his big athletic body.

His sexy voice, too.

She frowned.

She might as well admit it: she was angrier at her
self than at him. At least she was self-aware. Being brutally honest with oneself in the company of the opposite sex was the only way to stay sane, and most of all, safe. And more than anything, she was determined to stay safe.

Her thoughts unwillingly jogged back to Nick. He wasn't vain but he sure was arrogant. Couldn't he have faked just a little humility? She felt her own mouth twist cynically. No, he'd probably scored so often he didn't need it. He struck her as the type who considered himself God's gift to women.

Just like back there at the pump—he acted as though he was doing her a favor by hitting on her.

The water container was heavy, and the return to camp uphill. She arrived back at the cabins out of breath, wet and out of sorts.

“
There's
our water girl,” called Dottie, who had gotten a fire started in the outdoor oven and grill at the center of the clearing. “We were starting to think maybe you skedaddled with that smoke jumper.”

Hazel, busy untangling a length of fishing line, glanced at Jo and immediately recognized the turmoil she was in.

“Here, let me wrangle that, hon,” Hazel offered, and the seventy-five-year-old startled Jo by carrying the water container easily with one strong arm.

“We were just kidding,” Hazel added for her ears only, “about you meeting up with Nick Kramer.”

“Meeting up? Huh! I think the creep followed me to the pump.”

“Creep?” Hazel repeated the word as if it was foreign to her. “Girl, either you need glasses or I do. If he was any better-looking, he'd be a traffic hazard. Here you go, chef.”

She plunked the water down near the fire.

“Where's everybody else?” Jo asked, glancing quickly around.

As she spoke, Kayla emerged from the younger women's cabin, carrying a shiny little vinyl shower kit and a fluffy pink towel. She crossed to the big water container and began filling an empty plastic milk bottle, slopping water all over the ground.

“Go easy on that,” Dottie snapped. “Jo didn't haul it up here so you could pour it on the ground.”

“It's only water,” Kayla pouted. “Jo, you don't mind if I take a little, do you?”

“Knock yourself out,” Jo replied, totally uninterested in a clash with Kayla—the conflict with Nick Kramer had been enough for one day.

Dottie noticed Jo's frown and sent her a sympathetic smile as Kayla walked away. “I know you must be wondering why I brought Kayla. It's a crying shame, but she deliberately acts dumber than she is because she thinks men find it attractive.”

“She's right—plenty do,” Hazel cut in. “Hell, I love cowboys, but most of mine care only about boobs, not brains. They get nervous real quick when a gal mentions a book she's read.”

“Well, anyhow,” Dottie said, “Kayla doesn't mean to come off as irritating. At heart she's really a
sweet and friendly girl. It's just that she's insecure. She works hard to keep all eyes on her. It didn't sit well to see that gaze go your way.”

“If you mean Nick Kramer's gaze, believe me, she can have him. I'm not playing the dating game anymore,” Jo said.

“I certainly would be if I were your age,” Hazel assured her. “He's the bee's knees, all right.”

“He's horny, that's all,” Jo stated bluntly.

“Horny as a funeral in New Orleans, most likely,” Hazel agreed. “So are you, but you won't admit it.”

Jo flushed.

“Besides,” Hazel went on, “that's not all. Give the man some credit. He does an incredibly dangerous job that has to be done. He's not stupid. He knows he can get laid. But I think he actually likes you, Jo.”

“What makes you possibly think that?” Jo asked, incredulous.

“My gosh, hon, it would be obvious to a blind man. The guy's eyes lit up the moment he saw you.”

“And why not?” Dottie demanded. “A looker like you, he's just being honest.”

Right, thought Jo, honest—just like Ned Wilson, who praised her looks so much it embarrassed her. But what good was it to be called attractive by men who cared about nothing else but sexual gratification? Men who lied to get what they wanted, then returned to their families or took off for parts unknown? Her answer from now on was always going to be, “No thanks.”

Jo mustered a mechanical smile.

Both older women were only being nice. But no matter how right she knew Hazel was, colorings of insecurity—even of inferiority—often tinged even Jo's brightest moods.

Plucky but pathetic—that's how she felt when she tried to act confident. Ever since Ned, trying to start over made her feel like a gunshot victim trying to whistle past a shooting range.

“Well, guess I'll finish unpacking,” she said, mainly to end the awkward silence. Both older women watched her cross the clearing.

Dottie, who had known Hazel for seven decades, suddenly grinned.

“I've seen that look in your eye before, Hazel McCallum. What are you up to now?”

“Who, me?” Hazel feigned the innocence of a cherub. “I'm just happy for Jo, that's all.”

“Happy! Crying out loud, she's all upset.”

“She sure is,” Hazel agreed. “And I
like
seeing her animated like this, even if it's negative emotion. That girl is too dreamy and unassertive. Sometimes she even comes off like a mouse. But Nick Kramer's got her all revved up.”

Hazel's eyes narrowed. “I've learned to trust my instincts over the years where love is concerned. And right now they tell me that Jo is all wrong about Nick—sure, he's a hunk, all right. But the eyes are the windows to the soul, and I saw real depth of char
acter in Nick's eyes. Despite what Jo may think, he's not the slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am type.”

Hazel said no more. Her mind was too full of machinations for conversation right now.

Nick Kramer and Jo Lofton struck Hazel as perfect for her master plan. She was on a secret mission that had become the passion of her twilight years: a mission to save her beloved hometown of Mystery, Montana, population four thousand and dwindling. Mystery, and the fertile valley it lay in, had been founded by Hazel's great-great-grandfather, Jake. But the longtime ranching community was changing rapidly as outside developers moved in, turning it into a summer-tourist mecca. More than anything else, Hazel feared that uncaring strangers would obliterate its original identity, making Mystery just one more indistinguishable hodgepodge of chain stores and trendy boutiques.

It would be a loss too great to be endured.

Sure, change was inevitable, but Hazel wanted it guided by love and vision, not profits.

So the matriarch of Mystery had come up with a plan: pairing natives who loved Mystery, as Jo did, with the kind of outsiders who would bring new life while respecting the old traditions—precisely the kind of unselfish man Hazel sensed Nick Kramer was. Greedy yuppies did not put their lives on the line to save forests and protect strangers. Hazel had a special affection for men who “stood on the wall,” as she described those with dangerous jobs.

While it was too early to know anything for certain where Nick and Jo were concerned, Hazel had developed a sixth sense around romance. She'd become a matchmaker, a second career that so far had produced three wonderful marriages. Her instincts had been instantly alerted the moment Nick and Jo had laid eyes on each other. As the playwrights phrased it,
the stage lit up.

And where there's smoke, the matriarch punned to herself, usually you'll find some fire, too.

 

“Okay, you clowns, listen up,” Nick called out as he returned with the canteens to his fire crew's base camp on Lookout Mountain. “So far it's been a piece of cake. Right now the crews on both sides of us are ahead of the fire curve. We've had enough humidity lately to make the flames lay down nice.”

He tossed the string of canteens down.

“But the barometer is falling, instead of rising like it was predicted, and you know how those flames will roll over if the air gets too dry, especially if the wind kicks up. So tonight we take advantage of a full moon and thin out the green pockets down on the canyon floor.”

“I got a better idea, Nick,” called out his radioman, Jason Baumgarter. “Let's go up on the summit and do a safety inspection of the cabins—a whole carload of babes is camped up there.”

This suggestion was met with cheers and whistles.
Nick's twelve-man crew were seated around the hearty flames of a campfire, eating supper.

“Our fearless leader,” quipped Nick's second-in-command, Tom Albers, “has already reconnoitered that situation topside, gentlemen. I saw him walking with a well-endowed blonde earlier, sacrificing himself for the rest of us.”

“Yes, for my sins,” Nick clowned, looking humble.

The fire crew jeered him good-naturedly in return, a familiar ritual. But despite the usual camp routine as the men prepared to go on duty, Nick felt a new distraction this evening, and she wasn't blond.

Rather, she was a dark-haired, green-eyed beauty with one hell of a chip on her shoulder.

Jo Lofton had intrigued him from the first moment he'd laid eyes on her. But unfortunately, the emotions she stirred within him dredged up other feelings, too, and memories he usually worked hard to quell.

Looking at women like Jo was downright madness for him, because it made him yearn for a lifestyle he wasn't sure he could live. Many people suffered from what was done to them, but Nick had discovered that his deepest scars were mainly scars of omission—the parents he never knew, the loving home he never had, the lack of any reason for putting down roots.

The one woman he had dared to let himself love, for whom he would have given up this nomadic job of his, did not let him make that choice. Karen had
left him. According to her, she'd found something better. And her stubbornness triggered his own.

“Earth calling Nick Kramer,” a voice said loudly, and Nick's thoughts suddenly scattered.

Tom Albers stood before him in the gathering light, buckling on his utility belt.

He stared down at Nick with a face taut with concern.

“You got a mind for this today? Last thing we need is a preoccupied man getting himself into trouble.”

“I'm all right,” Nick said, his jaw hardening.

Tom nodded. “How do you want us to insert?” he asked again. “Two teams or three?”

“Three,” Nick replied, forcing dangerous thoughts of Jo Lofton out of his mind. “One north of the river, two south. It's too steep for vehicles, so we'll have to hike out. Each team leader radios me on the hour.”

“Got it,” Tom affirmed.

But as Nick rigged his ax to his backpack, Jo's taunting words snapped in his mind like burning twigs:
I'm not a challenge—I'm a zero possibility where you're concerned.

“L
et's go, ladies. Rise and shine!”

Hazel's strong voice was like an explosion in the slumbering peace of the cabin.

Jo bolted upright in bed, wondering what the emergency was.

“Up and at 'em!” Dottie's twanging voice chimed in, loud enough to wake snakes. “We should be five miles down the road by now, cowgirls. Shake the lead out.”

Still groggy, Jo groaned when a powerful flashlight beam swept into her eyes.

“My God, it's still dark outside!” Bonnie complained.

“C'mon, sweethearts, are you bolted to those beds?” Hazel said. “The wilderness is calling you.”

“Okay, okay, we're up,” Jo protested, although she couldn't help grinning when she saw the stupefied look on Kayla's sleep-puffy face.

Dressing in the dim illumination of an oil lantern, Jo donned the sturdy outdoor clothing she'd packed: blue jeans, red flannel shirt and sturdy high-top shoes. A splash of water to her face and she felt almost human. Brushing back her hair, she tied it into a ponytail and tucked it under her shirt.

While she tucked it, however, heat crept into her cheeks. She was recalling the scene yesterday with Nick Kramer.

I still feel the challenge in spite of your generous peep show.

In your dreams, bucko, she wished she'd retorted. Why did the good lines always come to her too late to use them?

As Hazel had promised, the day's new sun was just edging over the horizon by the time the girls, still knuckling sleep from puffy eyes, trooped up to the crackling flames of the breakfast fire.

Seeing the sun blaze to life, hearing the “dawn chorus” of hundreds of birds celebrating the arrival of daylight, Jo felt instantly buoyed. Her freshly renewed anger at Nick Kramer receded, and she felt a little thrill at the natural beauty around her.

She could see why this wilderness spot had grown on Hazel and her friends. “Back of beyond,” Hazel called it.

“We're burning good daylight,” said the wise ma
tron gruffly when Kayla straggled in, inappropriately dressed in pink shorts and a midriff top. “We've got a three-mile hike down to the canyon floor and the river, so let's make tracks.”

 

Jo hadn't realized how much her sedentary teaching job had affected her physical condition. After only thirty minutes on the trail—a series of looping switchbacks that descended to the floor of Crying Horse Canyon—she was short of breath. So were the rest of the younger women.

Yet amazingly, Hazel and the other two seniors were strutting out front, setting the brisk pace, joking and chatting and identifying various birds.

But no one was suffering the way poor, befuddled Kayla was.

Jo couldn't help feeling a little sorry for her. Her golden-braised midriff was already pocked with the swollen bites of pesky flies, and several times she had scraped her exposed legs on thornbushes. She even managed to snag her ankle bracelet while stepping over a downed tree branch. If Jo hadn't caught her in time, Kayla would have been sprawled facedown in the dirt.

“Break time,” Stella called when they reached the halfway point, a little fern bracken with several fallen trees providing seats.

Hazel, in the meantime, seemed intent on studying the skyline to the north.

Thin wisps of smoke curled in the wind, and Jo
could hear the steady
thucka-thucka
of chopper blades as the Forest Service fought blazes in the adjacent canyons.

“Is the fire getting closer?” Jo asked Hazel.

“I can't tell,” her friend admitted. “But it does feel like the wind's been rising, instead of dying down as predicted. And if you ask me, the humidity is down, not up.”

“You can smell flames a little more, too,” Stella said, taking off her floppy jungle hat to swat at flies. “And I'm guessing smoke has forced more insects into this canyon. I've never seen this many flies.”

“I hope the fire
does
spread!” Kayla burst out resentfully. “I'm sick of this Danny Crockett stuff.”

“Davy Crockett,” Hazel corrected her, laughing in disbelief. “Some Texan you are,” she added before leading the women to one of the quiet pools in the river.

“Bait your hooks,” she ordered. “This is one of the best fishing holes west of the Great Divide.”

“This is incredible!” Stella marveled after they'd been fishing for not even an hour. “The trout are practically leaping on the banks for us.”

Even Kayla had gotten over her pouting. Now she seemed to be having the time of her life as she reeled in fish after fish.

It was especially remarkable, Jo told herself, because they were all “survival fishing,” using just fish-line and hooks tied to sticks—no fiberglass poles, no reels, only twigs for bobbers.

“Are they suicidal?” Hazel wondered as she tossed another fat trout onto the growing stack.

“It's the fires nearby, Hazel,” a friendly masculine voice called out from behind them. “It's messed up the river ecosystem and forced a huge number of fish into other feeding habitats.”

All six women turned to see an amazing sight: twelve men in their physical prime, all smudged and rumpled, all jockeying for a better view of the fisherwomen.

“Well, boys,” Hazel greeted them with amiable irony, “am I
that
much of a sex goddess in blue jeans? Oh, I see—you've noticed the
children.
”

“Mighty fine-looking kids, ma'am,” one of the smoke jumpers cracked, and another added: “We do baby-sitting gigs between fires.”

The men laughed, including Nick, but he also added in an undertone, “Manners, boys, manners.”

His eyes found Jo's, and he sent her a friendly, let's-make-peace smile.

Despite being over her earlier anger, however, a mechanical smile was all she could muster. Especially with a dozen men ogling her—although Kayla, not surprisingly, seemed their primary focus.

“Y'all been puttin' out fires like big, brave heroes?” the blonde asked, waving at them.

“With our bare hands, sugar!” one of them assured her.

“We're off duty now,” Nick explained. “We spent the night burning out some cheatgrass pockets—that's
why we're smudged. No fires in Crying Horse Canyon. Now we're just hiking back to our camp.”

With twelve men and six women, neither Hazel nor Nick attempted any introductions. But no name tags were required—his men weren't bashful about breaking off into little groups to flirt with the women a bit before they left.

Jo wasn't in the mood for socializing.

She waded partway into the river and tried to look intently busy baiting her hook.

But Nick made a point of walking over to her.

“I'm glad I'm not that worm,” he joked as she poked one with her hook. “I mean—you know, the symbolism and all.”

She didn't like the way he seemed to crowd her. The river water was ice-cold and she dared not go farther out.

Her noncommittal glance only seemed to amuse him.

He tried another tact. “Look, I'm sorry if I came off a bit flip or smart-ass or whatever yesterday. That crack I made about you baptizing everybody—well, that was out of line.”

“I see.”

He shrugged one shoulder. When he replied, his tone wasn't quite so friendly. “No need to get all gushy with forgiveness.”

Her cheeks heated. “Look, don't worry about it, Mr. Kramer—”

“I only came over to make conversation—”

“Actually,” she challenged, leveling him a cool stare, “I don't think you're interested in conversation.”

“I give as good as I get,” he defended himself, his tone taking on a scalpel edge. “I s'pose you're a scrubbed angel?”

“More scrubbed than you,” she returned, giving his soot-smudged face a once-over.

He stopped. Then as if suddenly finding the humor in her words, he tipped back his head and laughed. White, even teeth sparkled.

She found herself wanting to laugh, also, or at least smile. But instinct told her it would only lead her down the path to attraction, and then, destruction.

“Look, apology accepted, Mr. Kramer,” she finished, dismissing him.

“You give every man that go-to-hell look?”

She glanced at him and must have given him another one, judging from the sneer on his face.

“Sorry I'm not some sober-suited, country-club accountant who never gets his hands dirty. I admit I haven't shaved in a while. I sleep in a tent and bathe in rivers, but it's hard work fighting a fire. And I didn't expect to meet some woman—”

She finally turned around and faced him.

His mouth formed a tight defensive line. His eyes were wary.

“Please don't think I don't appreciate your sacrifice,” she said. “Many would be unable to fulfill even your smallest of tasks to fight a wildfire. However,
Mr. Kramer, this is a fishing hole, not a watering hole. If I wanted to meet a big strong man like you, I'd have gone to a bar, not gone camping.”

He stared at her, anger simmering in his face. “Know what? You need some serious couch time, lady.”

“Here we go again with your ‘clever' double meanings. Your couch, I suppose?” She lifted an eyebrow.

“I don't have one in my tent. But maybe you should see a shrink to deal with this man-hating thing of yours.”

A bubble of anger swelled within her. “Oh, I get it, sure. Any woman who fails to breathe heavy when the Hotshot comes around must not be a
real
woman, right? Well, I'll have you know that despite what you've been fed, a real woman's fantasy isn't to be picked up and carried off into the sunset. We've figured out men like you. You'll be right back here trying to pick up another woman to carry off tomorrow night. So thanks, but no thanks.”

Fury sparked in his amber-brown eyes.

But before he could retort, the two of them realized something simultaneously: how silent the area had suddenly become.

Heat again leaped into her face and neck when she glanced at the others.

In the peak of anger she and Nick had spoken too loudly—all the rest were avidly listening, waiting for more.

A teasing cheer broke out.

“Damn you, are you happy?” she whispered at him.

“Smooth technique, Romeo,” one of the smoke jumpers called over. “She's eating from your hand, stud! We're all taking notes here, chief.”

“Way to go, Nick!” another one regaled him. “You've snatched defeat from the jaws of victory!”

Nick, clearly still angry, turned and walked away.

Jo tried to return to fishing. But when her pole suddenly jerked with a hooked fish, she was caught off balance. She fell into the knee-deep icy water, her line almost towing her across the pool.

Her cry of surprise and dismay triggered more laughter.

But Nick wasn't laughing. Instead, he was at her side, pulling her to her feet.

Wet from the collar down, bone-cold from the glacial stream, she could barely utter a thanks between her chattering teeth.

He met her gaze, his arm like a post, steadying her.

“Men like me have their place in this world. You'd do well to remember it,” he said for her ears only.

“I don't need a rescuer,” she insisted breathlessly.

He dropped his hold on her, and she wished he hadn't. On her own in the shallow rock-bottom pool, she realized how unsteady she was.

“This'd be yours, I think,” he said, holding out the huge trout on her fishing line.

Wet, speechless, chagrined, she took the trout.

His gaze flicked downward to her water-plastered red flannel shirt.

She didn't need to look herself. She could feel how cold and hard her nipples were. At the rate she was revealing herself to him, she'd be naked by their next meeting.

“Yeah, maybe you're right,” he said, his tone pensive and bitter. “Maybe I'm the one who needs rescuing.” He sounded as if he was admitting to some kind of deep, forlorn ache.

He left her standing alone in the pool. But as he ordered his men to hit the trail again, a slyly smiling Hazel piped up.

“Say, boys! Since the fires have sent us this bounty of fish, why don't you stop by our camp this evening for a fish bake before you go on duty?”

“We've got far more than we can eat,” Kayla added. “Shame to waste it, guys.”

“That's certainly gracious of you ladies,” Nick agreed. “Gives us a break from freeze-dried food. Thank you. We'll be there.”

He and Jo pointedly avoided looking at each other—a fact that made Hazel's smile stretch even wider.

She hadn't come up here expecting to make another match. But then again, thought the matriarch, the essence of “luck” was merely the readiness to seize a good opportunity.

Nick Kramer and Joanna Lofton were getting along like a cobra and a mongoose. So far.

But nothing made Hazel more hopeful than seeing a young couple with deep wells of inner feeling—she had heard it just now, unmistakably, in both their voices.

Either it would all blow up in Hazel's face, or she would secure one more marriage and another fine family for Mystery's dwindling population.

No middle ground here, she predicted, watching Jo gather up her catch, still frowning.

They'd either become passionate lovers or mortal enemies.

Just which outcome, however, was still too hard to call.