by Nora Roberts
Jesus, a little deeper, a little to the left, and bye-bye, Stovic. “The blade mostly got your pants.”
She looked him in the eye again. She’d have lied if necessary, and her stomach jittered with relief she didn’t need the lie. “You’re going to need a couple dozen stitches, but that shouldn’t slow you down for long. I’m going to do a field dressing that’ll hold you until you get back to base.”
He managed a wobbly smile, but she heard the click in his throat as he swallowed. “I didn’t cut off anything essential, right?”
“Your junk’s intact, Chainsaw.”
“Hurts like hell.”
“I bet.”
He gathered himself, took a couple slow breaths. Rowan felt another wave of relief when a little color eked back into his face. “First time I jump a fire, and look what I do. It won’t keep me grounded long, will it?”
“Nah.” She dressed the wound quickly, competently. “And you’ll have this sexy scar to impress the women.” She sat back on her haunches, smiled at him. “Women can’t resist a wounded warrior, right, Lib?”
“Damn right. In fact, I’m holding myself back from jumping you right now, Stovic.”
He gave her a twisted grin. “We beat it, didn’t we, Swede?”
“Yeah, we did.” She patted his knee, then got to her feet. Leaving Libby tending him, she walked apart to contact Gibbons and arrange for Stovic to be littered out.
Eighteen hours after jumping the fire, Rowan climbed back onto the plane for the short flight back to base.
Using her pack as a pillow, she stretched out on the floor, shut her eyes. “Steak,” she said, “medium rare. A football-size baked potato drowning in butter, a mountain of candied carrots, followed by a slab of chocolate cake the size of Utah smothered in half a gallon of ice cream.”
“Meat loaf.” Yangtree dropped down beside her while somebody else—or a couple of somebody elses by the stereophonics—snored like buzz saws. “An entire meat loaf, and I’ll take my mountain in mashed potatoes with a vat of gravy. Apple pie, and make that a gallon of ice cream.”
Rowan slid open her eyes to see Matt watching her with a sleepy smile. “What’s your pick, Matt?”
“My ma’s chicken and dumplings. Best ever. Just pour it in a fivegallon bucket so I can stick my head in and chow it down. Cherry cobbler and homemade whipped cream.”
“Everybody knows whipped cream comes in a can.”
“Not at my ma’s house. But I’m hungry enough to eat five-day-old pizza, and the box it came in.”
“Pizza,” Libby moaned, then tried to find a more comfortable curl on her seat. “I never thought I could be this empty and live.”
“Eighteen hours on the line’ll do it.” Rowan yawned, rolled over, and let the voices, the snoring, the engines lull her toward sleep.
“Gonna hit the kitchen when we get back, Ro?” Matt asked her.
“Mmm. Gotta eat. Gotta shower off the stink first.”
The next thing she knew they were down. She staggered off the plane through a fog of exhaustion. Once she’d dumped her gear she stumbled to her room, ripped the wrapper off a candy bar. She all but inhaled it while she stripped off her filthy clothes. Barely awake, she aimed for the shower, whimpered a little as the warm water slid over her. Through blurry eyes she watched it run dingy gray into the drain.
She lathered up, hair, body, face, inhaling the scent of peaches that apparently tripped Gull’s trigger. Rinse and repeat, she ordered herself. Rinse and repeat. And when, at last, the water ran clear, she made a halfhearted attempt to dry off.
Then fell onto the bed wrapped in the damp towel.
THE DREAM crept up on her in the twilight layer of sleep, as her mind began to float back from the deep pit of exhaustion.
Thundering engines, the whip of wind, the heady leap into the sky. The thrill turning to panic—the pound, pound, pound of heart against ribs as she watched, helplessly, Jim plunge toward the burning ground.
“Hey. Hey. You need to wake up.”
The voice cutting through the scream in her head, the rough shake on her shoulder, had her bolting up in bed.
“What? The siren? What?” She stared into Gull’s face, rubbing one hand over her own.
“No. You were having a nightmare.”
She breathed in, breathed out, slitting her eyes a little. It was morning—or maybe later—she could tell that much. And Gulliver Curry was in her room, without her permission.
“What the hell are you doing in here?”
“Maybe you want to hitch that towel up some? Not that I mind the view. And, in fact, could probably spend the rest of the day admiring it.”
She glanced down, saw she was naked to the waist, and the towel that had slipped down wasn’t covering much below either. Baring her teeth, she yanked it up and around. “Answer the question before I kick your ass.”
“You missed breakfast, and you were heading toward missing lunch.”
“We worked the fire for eighteen hours. I didn’t get to bed till about three in the morning.”
“So I hear, and good job. But somebody mentioned you didn’t get to eat, and have a fondness for bacon-and-egg sandwiches, with Jack cheese. So . . .” He jerked his thumb at the bedside table. “I brought you one. I was going to leave it on the nightstand, but you were having a bad one. I woke you up, you flashed me—and just let me insert you have the most magnificent rack it’s ever been my privilege to view—and that brings us up to date.”
She studied the sandwich, the bottle of soda beside it. This time when she breathed in, the scent nearly made her weep with joy. “You brought me a bacon-and-egg sandwich?”
“With Jack cheese.”
“I’d say you earned the flash.”
“I can go get you another if that’s all it takes.”
She laughed, yawned, then secured the towel before grabbing the plate. The first bite had her closing her eyes in ecstasy. Wrapped in pleasure, she didn’t order him off the bed when she felt it give under his weight.
“Thanks,” she said with her mouth full of bite two. “Sincerely.”
“Let me respond, sincerely. It was way worth it.”
“I do have exceptional tits.” She reached for the drink, twisted the top off. “The fire kept changing direction on us, spitting out spots. We’d get a line down, and she’d say, Oh, you want to play that way? Try this. But in the end, she couldn’t beat the Zulies. Have you got any word this morning on Stovic?”
“Now known as Chainsaw. He and his twenty-seven stitches are doing fine.”
“I should’ve kept a closer eye on him.”
“He passed the audition, Rowan. Accidents happen. They’re part of the job description.”
“Can’t argue, but he was part of my team, and I was senior member in that sector.” She shrugged. “He’s okay, so that’s okay.”
She shifted her gaze. “Your hands look better.”
“Good enough.” He flexed them. “I’m back on the jump list.”
“Dobie?”
“He’s coming along, but it’ll be a couple more days anyway. Little Bear discovered Dobie can sew like Betsy Ross, so he’s been keeping Dobie chained to a machine. I won fifty-six dollars and change at poker last night, and Bicardi—one of the mechanics—got half lit and sang Italian opera. That, I believe, is all the news.”
“I appreciate the update, and the sandwich. Now go away so I can get dressed.”
“I’ve already seen you naked.”
“It’ll take more than a breakfast sandwich for you to see me naked again.”
“How about dinner?”
God, he made her laugh. “Out, hotshot. I need to hit the gym, put my time in and work out some of these kinks.”
“To show what a classy guy I am, I’ll refrain from making any of the obvious comments to that statement.” He rose, picked up the empty plate. “You’re one gorgeous female, Rowan,” he said as he walked out. “It keeps me up at night.”
“You’
re one sexy male, Gulliver,” she murmured when he’d gone. “It’s messing with my head.”
She put in ninety in the gym, but kept it light and slow to avoid overworking her system, then hit the cookhouse.
Feeling human again, she texted the basics to her father.
Killed the fire. Am A-OK. Love you, Ro
She headed to the loft to check the chute she’d hung the night before. She began to check for holes, snags, defects.
She glanced up when Matt and Libby came in.
“Well, don’t you look flat-tailed and dull-eyed.”
“Remind me never to eat like a pig before crawling into bed.” Libby pressed a hand to her belly. “I couldn’t settle till after five, then lay there like a beached whale.”
“You didn’t make it to the cookhouse,” Matt commented when he brought his chute over.
“By the time I scraped off the stink, I barely made it from the shower to the bed. Slept like a rock,” she added, smiling at Libby. “Had room service, put in my ninety PT, ate more, and here I am ready to do it all again.”
“Sweet.” Libby spread out her chute. “Room service?”
“Gull brought me a breakfast sandwich.”
“Is that what they call it in Missoula?”
Rowan pointed a finger. “Just the sandwich, but he did earn some points. Have either of you seen Chainsaw?”
“Yeah, I poked in before I ran into Matt. He showed me his stitches.”
“Is that what they call it in California?”
“Walked right into that one.”
“He’s lucky,” Matt said. “Only hit meat. An inch either way, different story.”
“It comes down to inches, doesn’t it?” Libby ran her fingers over her chute. “Or seconds. Or one tiny lapse of focus. The difference between having an interesting scar or . . .”
She trailed off, paled a little. “I’m sorry, Matt. I wasn’t thinking.”
“It’s okay. You didn’t even know him.” He continued his inspection, cleared his throat. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t know, not for sure, if I was going to be able to really do it again until yesterday. In the door, looking down at the fire, waiting for the spotter’s hand to come down on my shoulder. I didn’t know if I could jump fire again.”
“But you did,” Rowan murmured.
“Yeah. I told myself I did it for Jim, but until I actually did it . . . Because you’re right, Libby. It is about inches and seconds. It’s about fate. It’s why we can’t let up. Anyway.” He let out a long breath. “Did you know Dolly’s back?” he asked Rowan.
“No.” Surprised, Rowan stopped what she was doing. “When? I haven’t seen her on base.”
“She came back yesterday, while we were on the fire. She came by my room this morning after breakfast.” He kept his gaze fixed on his chute. “She looks okay. Wanted to apologize for how she was after Jim died.”
“That’s good.” But Rowan felt a twist in her belly as she completed her chute inspection.
“I told her she ought to do the same to you.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Yeah, it does.”
“Can I ask who Dolly is?” Libby wondered. “Or should I mind my own business?”
“She was one of the cooks,” Rowan told her. “She and Jim had a thing. Actually, she tended to have things with a variety, but she’d narrowed it down to Jim most of last season. She took it hard when he died. Understandable.”
“She came at you with a kitchen knife,” Matt reminded her. “There’s nothing understandable about that.”
“Well, Jesus.”
“She sort of came at me,” Rowan corrected as Libby gaped at her.
“Why?”
“I was Jim’s jump partner that day. She needed to blame somebody. She went a little crazy, waved the knife at me. But basically she blamed all of us, said we’d all killed him.”
Rowan waited a beat to see if Matt would comment, but he kept his silence.
“She took off right after. I don’t think anyone expected she’d be back, or get hired back, for that matter.”
Matt shifted his feet, looked at her again. “Are you okay with it?”
“I don’t know.” Rowan rubbed the back of her neck. “I guess if she doesn’t wave sharp implements at me or try to poison me, I’m cool with it.”
“She’s got a baby.”
It was Rowan’s turn to gape. “Say what?”
“She told me she had a baby, a girl, in April.” His eyes watered up a little, so he looked away. “Dolly named her Shiloh. Her ma’s looking after her while Dolly’s working. She said it’s Jim’s.”
“Well, God, you didn’t know before? Your family doesn’t know?”
He shook his head. “That’s what she apologized for. She asked if I’d tell my mother, my family, and gave me some pictures. She said I could go see it—her—the baby—if I wanted.”
“Did Jim know?”
Color came and went in his face. “She said she told him that morning, before the jump. She said he was really excited, that he picked the name. Boy or girl, he told her, he wanted Shiloh. They were going to get married, she said, in the fall.”
He drew a wallet-sized photo out of his pocket. “Here she is. This is Shiloh.”
Libby took the picture. “She’s beautiful, Matt.”
His eyes cleared at that, and the smile spread. “Bald as a melon. Jim and I were, too, and my sister. I’ve got to call my ma,” he said as Libby passed the photo to Rowan. “I can’t figure out how to tell her.”
Rowan studied the chubby-cheeked, sparkle-eyed infant before handing the photo back. “Go take a walk, work it out in your head. Then call your mother. She’ll be happy. Maybe a little mad she didn’t know sooner, but overall she’ll be happy. Go on. I’ll take care of your chute.”
“I can’t get it off my mind, so I guess you’re right. I can finish the chute later.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Thanks. Thanks,” he repeated, and wandered out like a man in a dream.
“It’s a lot to deal with,” Libby commented.
“Yeah, it’s a whole lot.”
She let it simmer in the back of her mind while she worked. Others came in, and since word of Dolly Brakeman’s return spread, it reigned as the hot topic of the day.
“Have you seen her yet?”
Rowan shook her head at Trigger. Since she’d finished clearing her own chute, she focused on Matt’s.
“Word is she came in yesterday afternoon, with her mother and her preacher.”
“Her what?”
“Yeah.” Trigger rolled his eyes. “Some Reverend Latterly. The word is it’s her mother’s preacher guy, and Dolly’s going to church regular now. And so they closeted up with L.B. for an hour. This morning, she’s in the kitchen with Lynn and Marg, frying up the bacon.”
“She can cook.”