Falling Hard (Colorado High Country #3)

by Pamela Clare

  Then Ellie couldn’t hold it back any longer. “Guess what I was doing last night—or maybe I should say whom.”

  There was a moment of silence—and then Claire squealed. The sound pierced Ellie’s eardrum. She jerked the phone away from her ear.

  “Oh, my God! You were with Jesse, weren’t you?”

  “Yes.” Ellie had no sooner said this than she got a page from the ER. “I need to go, Claire. We’ve got an ambo coming in.”

  “What? Oh, no you don’t! You can’t call me, tell me you slept with a super-hot guy, and then hang up on me.”

  Ellie laughed, but the situation was serious. “I’ll call later. Love you. Feel better.”

  She hurried from the cafeteria to the stairs and down to the ER.

  “We’ve got two injured parties coming in—shrapnel wounds. Apparently, there was an explosives accident up at the ski resort.”

  Ellie’s heart gave a hard knock.

  Explosives accident at Scarlet Mountain Resort?

  Handling explosives was Jesse’s job.

  Chapter 12

  “Can’t you turn the siren off?” Jesse called up to Chloe Rivas, who was driving. They were making a big fucking deal out of nothing. “No one’s dying here.”

  Hawke, who’d ridden up with the ambulance when he’d heard the call, pressed sterile gauze against the cut in Jesse’s forehead, his hands in sterile gloves. “We like the sirens. They make us feel important.”

  He gave Chloe a nod, and she cut the noise makers.

  Jesse looked over at Ben, who lay on the gurney, still pale as a sheet, an IV running wide open in his arm. “You hanging in there, buddy?”

  “I’d be dead now if it weren’t for you.”

  “Yep.” Jesse wasn’t going to sugar coat it for him.

  The kid had fucked up, nearly killing them both.

  They’d gone back to Eagle Ridge when the wind had died down to toss a few bombs. Jesse had thrown his on the count of three, as they usually did. He’d started to ski away. “Fire in the hole!”

  But Ben had stood there, live charge still in his hands.

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “The fuse went out.”

  Jesse had reacted on instinct. He’d grabbed the charge out of Ben’s hands and hurled it as hard as he could, throwing himself on top of Ben, knocking him to the ground, and covering his own ears.

  BOOM!

  The blast wave had shaken the ground beneath them, the negative air pressure making Jesse’s eardrums pop, hot shrapnel from the canister slicing through his ski pants and parka and striking him in the forehead. For a moment he’d laid there, stunned.

  Kevin had radioed for a rescue. Jesse had sat up, blood streaming down his face, and started first aid. From there it had become a circus.

  A helicopter. A ride down to the lodge. Every patroller at the resort standing around looking like someone had died. Half a dozen Team members in the parking lot ready to help with a rescue. Ben babbling and bleeding and in shock.

  Fuck.

  Jesse had insisted he could drive himself and Ben to the ER, but Matt, worried about possible concussion or internal injuries from the blast, had insisted on an ambulance. And here they were.

  Hawke leaned in and examined the laceration on his forehead. “Looks like you’ve got some debris stuck in there. You need stitches.”

  “Yeah?” Jesse didn’t know how to say it without sounding like an asshole, but he’d seen much, much worse. “I can do this myself, you know.”

  “No headache or dizziness?” Hawke asked.

  “For the fifth time, no.”

  “Anyone ever tell you that you’re grumpy when you’re bleeding?”

  They pulled into the ambulance bay and stopped, and Jesse caught a glimpse of a team in green scrubs waiting for them.

  Ellie.

  The doors opened, and there she was. Her gaze met Jesse’s, emotion in her green eyes. Had she been worried?

  Okay, so maybe there was an upside to being fussed over like this.

  The other EMT whose name Jesse didn’t know jumped out and pulled Ben’s gurney out of the ambulance. “Shock and lacerations.”

  Ellie walked alongside Ben’s gurney, glancing over her shoulder at Jesse as she walked through the automatic doors.

  Lucky bastard.

  Hawke held Jesse back. “I think they’re bringing a wheelchair.”

  “I don’t need a wheelchair, for fuck’s sake.” Jesse grabbed the gauze out of Hawke’s hand and stepped to the ground, still in his ski boots, doing his best to maintain direct pressure.

  He tromped inside, passing the person with the wheelchair, Hawke following along beside him.

  “Where do you want this one?” Hawke called out. “He’s a pain in the ass.”

  “Put him there.” Ellie pointed to the bed next to Ben, her expression serious. “If he gives you any guff, call security.”

  “You got it.” Hawke grinned. “Hear that, tough guy? Get in the nice bed, or I’m calling security.”

  Ellie took Jesse’s vitals again. Blood pressure, pulse, blood oxygen, temperature—they were all normal for an extreme athlete. She wrote down the results, stuck the pen and paper in her pocket and poked at the laceration on his forehead with a gloved finger. “Are you feeling numb yet?”

  The doc had spread lidocaine gel on it about thirty minutes ago. They were going to have to clean the wound before they sutured it.

  “A little.” Jesse sat up in the bed wearing only his boxer briefs, looking far too sexy for a patient in the ER, a sheet drawn casually across his lap.

  They had already cleaned the dozen or so small lacerations on his back, his legs, and the back of his head. None of those had required stitches. But the laceration on his forehead was jagged and deep.

  Ben, the other ski patroller, had already told her what had happened, breaking down in tears while she’d cleaned him up. His story had left a sick feeling in Ellie’s stomach. Jesse had come close to being killed today.

  The logical part of her brain, the one that was helping her maintain a professional demeanor, kept reminding her that Jesse was fine, that he’d saved not only his own life, but Ben’s too. Still, something inside her couldn’t shake a sense of panic.

  “We’ll let the lidocaine sit a little longer.” She turned to walk back to the nurse’s station, but he caught her arm.

  “Hey, are you okay?”

  “No,” she whispered. “You were almost killed.”

  He brought her hand to his lips, kissed it. “Just one of the risks of the job.”

  She yanked her hand away. “Getting blown up is a risk of your job? Well, then, I hate your job.”

  Perilously close to tears, she turned and walked into a nearby conference room, shut the door, and leaned back against it, taking deep slow breaths.

  The door opened, and Jesse stepped inside, long underwear drawn over his boxer briefs. “Hey, come here.”

  She knew this wasn’t the time or the place for personal feelings, but when he reached for her, she went to him.

  He drew her against his bare chest, one big hand stroking her hair. “It’s okay. It was just a freak accident. It won’t happen again—not on my watch.”

  She fought not to cry, knowing that she shouldn’t be here with him like this. “You’re supposed to be in your exam bed. Patients can’t just run around hugging nurses.”

  “Shhh.”

  For a few minutes, he held her, strong arms enfolding her, his familiar scent and the warmth of his skin reassuring.

  “I should get out there.” She pulled away. “I’m on the clock. I can’t be getting emotional like this.”

  He searched her face, running his thumb over her cheekbone. “It’s okay.”

  She narrowed her eyes, glared at him. “Next time you try to tell me you’re not a hero, I’m going to throw this in your face.”

  He chuckled. “Okay. That seems fair.”

  “Now get back in bed. Doctor Warren is
going to be here to clean that out and stitch you up soon.”

  “I could do that myself, you know.”

  “This isn’t Iraq where you have to fix everything with duct tape. Get back in bed before you get me in trouble.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I didn’t think the fuse was lit,” Ben told Julia Marcs, a sheriff’s deputy. “I didn’t see any smoke. I thought it had gone out.”

  Jesse offered the only explanation he had. “Must have been the angle of the light.”

  “You saw the smoke?” Deputy Marcs was conducting the official investigation on behalf of the sheriff’s department.

  Jesse nodded. “Yeah, I did.”

  Both he and Ben were waiting to be discharged, a process that seemed to take longer than stitching his head back together.

  “What happened then?”

  “I didn’t have time to do anything but react. I skied over to him, grabbed it and threw it. I knew we didn’t have enough time to get away, so I knocked Ben to the ground, hoping the blast wave wouldn’t catch us.”

  “It could have blown your hand off.” Ben was still coming to grips with what had happened. “It could have killed you.”

  Jesse didn’t mince words. “If it had gone off in your hand or mine, it would have killed both of us. No question.”

  Across from the little room where Deputy Marcs was interviewing them, Ellie was still busy. A woman had come in with a migraine. A middle-aged man had arrived in an ambulance having chest pain. Then a homeless man had been brought in by Scarlet PD, who’d found him outside Food Mart suffering from hypothermia.

  A part of Jesse liked watching her work. She was good at her job—professional, compassionate, skilled. Every once in a while, she looked over at him, and he could see in her eyes that she was still upset.

  Yeah, she was still upset. He got that. He just didn’t understand why—not when everything had turned out all right in the end.

  “You say you just reacted?”

  It took Jesse a moment to realize Deputy Marcs had asked him a question. “There wasn’t time for anything else.”

  “How long have you been working with explosives?”

  “Well, ten years in the Rangers, plus a couple of years at the resort.”

  Marcs stopped writing and looked up. “You were an Army Ranger?”

  “Ten years of sustained combat ops with the Seventy-Fifth Ranger Regiment.”

  Deputy Marcs closed her notebook and stood. “That experience came in handy today. I’m glad that I’m talking to you instead of waiting for the coroner’s report.”

  Ben looked like he wanted to puke.

  Ten minutes later, Jesse got his discharge papers. Ellie went through the instructions with him line by line and then had him sign. He was free to go.

  He stepped into his ski boots and found himself wondering what the fuck he was supposed to do now. Ben, who was still shaken, caught a ride home with a roommate. But Jesse’s vehicle was still parked up at the ski resort.

  He tromped across town to The Cave—a ten-minute walk in ski boots.

  Megs sat in the ops room doing paperwork. She looked at his boots and pointed west. “The lift line is that way.”

  “Funny.” He glanced around, hoping to see Hawke or Taylor or one of the other guys. “Anyone around who can give me a ride back up to the resort?”

  “Belcourt’s in the back. You might be able to bribe him.”

  Jesse started to go, then remembered. “Hey, can I borrow one of the UTVs for SnowFest? I’m volunteering for the first-aid tent, and they need a way to cover the event grounds in case someone needs transport.”

  “Fine with me. Fill out the paperwork.”

  “Thanks.” He headed for the door to the bay.

  “Hey, Moretti, good job up there today. I’m not sure what we would do without you.” For Megs, it was an emotional outburst.

  “Thanks.”

  Jesse found Belcourt sharpening the spikes on crampons—a tedious but necessary chore. “Hey, man, can you give me a ride up to the resort?”

  “Sure thing.” Belcourt’s gaze took in the bandage on Jesse’s forehead and the ski boots on his feet. “You look good for a man who got blown up.”

  Jesse filled Belcourt in on what had happened as they walked out to the parking lot and climbed into Belcourt’s beat-up, piece-of-shit Ford.

  They were about ten minutes up the road when Jesse just had to ask. “Do you understand women?”

  Belcourt looked surprised by the question. “Do I understand women? That’s like asking me if I understand the wind. Why? You having problems?”

  “No. Kind of. Okay, yes.”

  Belcourt waited for him to go on.

  “There’s a woman I’m kind of seeing.”

  “The woman with the twins who came to Knockers?”

  “Yeah.” Jesse had forgotten that most of the Team had already seen him with Ellie. “She’s a nurse. She was working in the ER when I was brought in. Rather than being happy I’m not dead or injured, she seems angry. She told me she hates my job.”

  Belcourt nodded, a thoughtful frown on his face. It took him a full two minutes to say anything. “I got into a car accident late one night when I was sixteen. When I got home, my granny hugged me and then started yelling. I think she was just scared at the thought of me getting hurt. People show love in strange ways.”

  And damned if adrenaline didn’t shoot through Jesse’s bloodstream. “Wait, wait, wait. Nah, man, it’s not like that. We’ve only just connected. I’ve known her for only two weeks. We probably haven’t even spent twenty-four hours together.”

  He waited for Belcourt to say something. Instead, Belcourt glanced over at him with that “I have spoken, and it is so” look on his face.

  “I shouldn’t have asked you.”

  That made Belcourt grin. “Ellie Meeks—she’s a widow, right?”

  “Yeah. Her husband was a Black Hawk pilot. He was killed in Iraq.”

  Belcourt nodded but said nothing.

  And then it clicked.

  Ellie had lost her husband, and the first man she’d hooked up with since then, the first man she’d trusted, had almost been killed on the job today.

  Moretti, you idiot.

  Ellie stopped at the grocery store on her way home. It had been an exhausting and irritating day. If it had been up to her, she would spend the rest of the night soaking in a hot tub and sipping wine in front of Netflix, trying to forget the world—and the fact that Jesse had almost been killed today.

  He acted like it was no big deal, but it was.

  Why did some men find it necessary to take risks? Dan had already been an army helicopter pilot by the time she’d gotten together with him, but why had he fought so hard to make it into the 160th? There were other important jobs he might have done. When she’d asked him, pleading with him to do something less dangerous, he’d told her that someone needed to do this job, and it might as well be him.

  She had appreciated his sense of duty, but it had cost him his life. She’d lost her husband, and Daniel and Daisy had lost their father.

  To hell with that.

  Not wanting to cook, she grabbed a roast chicken and some mashed potatoes from the deli, then picked a few other things she needed—diapers, wipes, toothpaste, milk. She was about to head to the checkout lane when she decided she needed something else.

  Condoms.

  She made her way to the aisle near the pharmacy and stared at the selection. It had been a decade since she’d bought condoms—maybe longer—and the selection had definitely changed. She had no idea what Jesse would prefer—ribbed, extra lubricated, deep grooved, flavored, spiral pleasures. What the hell did that even mean?

  “Good grief.” She grabbed a variety pack and tossed it into her cart.

  A voice came from behind her. “Ellie.”

  Ellie turned to find her father standing there with a basket on his arm. “Dad.”

  Oh, God.

  Her father l
ooked into her cart, saw the box of condoms. “I won’t ask.”

  “I won’t tell.” She pushed her cart down the aisle, her cheeks blazing.

  But life wasn’t finished humiliating her.

  Rose came up behind her in the checkout lane. “It was a boy.”

  A boy?

  “Oh! Yes.” Rose was talking about the birth she’d attended. “Wonderful.”

  Rose’s gaze landed on the condoms in her cart, her face brightening. “Oh, Ellie. I’m so glad you’re moving forward. It’s time.”

  The temper Ellie had held in check all day exploded. “Oh, for God’s sake! Can’t a woman buy condoms without half the town commenting on it?”

  A hush fell over the store.

  Only then did she realize she had shouted the words.

  Ellie drove to her parents’ house, picked up the kids without staying to talk and drove home, wishing the earth would swallow her whole. Or maybe she could just go back in time and stick a sock in her mouth. Or perhaps she should pack up the kids in the car and drive to Timbuktu.

  Now word would be all over Scarlet that Ellie Meeks had met a man, and soon they would figure out who that man was. They would have opinions, of course, just as they’d had when she and Dan had gotten together.

  “You can do better than that. Your father is a doctor.”

  “Why marry a soldier? He’ll never be home.”

  “You’re going to spend a lot of time alone.”

  To hell with all of them.

  Ellie changed into jeans and a T-shirt, then went about getting dinner ready. She steamed some green beans to go with the roast chicken and mashed potatoes and set the food on the table. She did her best to focus on the kids throughout the meal. They were what mattered, not what Rose or anyone else in Scarlet thought of her.

  She’d just gotten the kids out of the tub and into their pajamas when Claire called.

  “I heard you bought condoms.” Her sister sounded amused.

  “Oh, God.” Had it gotten around town already? “Who told you?”

  “Mom. She heard it from Dad, who says he caught you in the act. He also heard you shout at Rose.” This made Claire laugh. “I would’ve paid money to see that.”