by Nora Roberts
She didn’t want to talk about this. Why was she? She couldn’t seem to help it, she realized, with him watching her intently, speaking so calmly.
“How do you know she still blames me?”
The sunlight picked out the gold in his brown hair as he drank down more water. “To wind it up, the cook takes off, and finds religion—or so she claims and maybe even believes. Not enough grace and faith to tell the father’s grieving family about the baby, until she comes back to base looking for work. So I call bullshit on the God factor.”
“Okay.” Maybe she couldn’t help it because he’d laid it out flat, and in exactly the way she saw it. “Wow.”
“Not quite finished. You seek out the cook, engage her in private conversation. Though, of course, privacy is slim pickings around here. During the not-so-private conversation, the cook becomes very steamed, does a lot of snarling and pointing, then storms off. Which leads me to conclude finding religion didn’t include finding forgiveness, charity or good sense.”
“How did you get all this? And I do mean all.”
“I’m a good listener. If you care, the general consensus on base is she had Jim’s kid—and Matt’s niece—so she should get some support. In fact, Cards is taking donations for a college fund in Jim’s name.”
“Yeah,” Rowan replied. “He’d think of that. He’s just built that way.”
“The consensus continues that if she gives you grief or talks trash about you, she gets one warning. Second time, we meet with L.B., lay it out and she goes. You’ve got no say in it.”
“I—”
“None.” The single syllable remained calm, and absolutely final. “Everybody pretty much wants her to keep her job. And nobody’s going to let her keep it if she causes trouble. So if you don’t agree with that, you’re outvoted. You might as well stop being pissed off and depressed because it’s not going to do you any good.”
“I guess I don’t agree because it’s me. If it was somebody else, I’d be right there.”
“I get that.”
“Leaving out a lot of stuff I’m not in the mood to talk about, my mother died when I was twelve.”
“That’s hard.”
“They weren’t together, and . . . that’s the lot of stuff I’m not in the mood to talk about. My father raised me, with his parents taking a lot of the weight during the season when he was still jumping. What I’m saying is, I know it’s not easy to be a single parent, even with help and support. I’m willing to cut her some slack.”
“She’s getting slack already, Rowan. She’s working in the kitchen. It’ll be up to her if she stays.”
They’d walked back while they talked. Now he gestured toward the gym. “Feel like lifting?”
“Yeah. Can I use this?” She tapped his MP3 player. “I want to check out your playlist.”
“Working out without the tunes is a sacrifice.” He pulled it off, handed it to her. “Consider that when you’re lining up the reasons to sleep with me.”
“I’ll put it at the top of the list.”
“Nice. So . . . what did it bump down?”
She laughed and walked inside ahead of him.
Once she finished her daily PT, cleaned up, she hiked to the cookhouse to fuel up on carbs.
In the dining hall, Stovic chowed down on bacon and eggs and biscuits while Cards ragged on him for being a malingerer between forkfuls of pancakes. Gull had beaten her there and was already building a stack of his own from the breakfast buffet.
Rowan grabbed a plate. She flopped a pancake onto it, laid two slices of bacon over that, added another pancake, two more slices of bacon. She covered that with a third pancake over which she dumped a hefty spoonful of berries.
“What do you call that?” Gull asked her.
“Mine.” She carried it to the table, dropped into a chair. “What’s the word, Cards?”
“Plumbago.”
“That’s a good one. Sounds like a geriatric condition, but it’s a flower, right?”
“Shrub. Half point for you.”
“The flower on the shrub, or plant, is also called plumbago,” Gull pointed out.
Cards considered. “I guess that’s true. Full point.”
“Yippee.” Rowan dumped syrup over her bacon pancakes. “How’s the leg, Chainsaw?”
“Stitches itch.” He glanced over as Dobie wandered in, grinned. “But at least it’s not my face.”
“At least I didn’t do it to myself,” Dobie tossed back, and studied the offerings. “If I hadn’t lost that bet, I’d’ve joined up just for the breakfasts.” To prove it, he took a sample of everything.
“Your eye looks better,” Rowan told him.
He could open both now, and she recognized the symphonic bruising as healing.
“How are the ribs?”
“Colorful, but they don’t ache much. L.B.’s got me doing a shitload of sit-down work.” He pulled out a bottle of Tabasco, pumped it over his eggs. “I asked if I could have some time today. I figured I’d walk on down, check out your daddy’s operation. Watch some of those pay-to-jump types come down.”
“You should. A lot of people make a picnic of it. Marg would pack you up something.”
“Maybe I’ll go with you.”
Dobie wagged an impaled sausage at Stovic. “You’ve got that gimp leg.”
“The walk’ll take my mind off the itch.”
It probably would, Rowan thought, but just in case. “I’ll give you the number for the desk. If you can’t make it, they’ll send somebody to get you.”
Marg stepped in, scanned the table as she walked over and set a tall glass of juice in front of Rowan. “Are you all going to be wandering in and out of here all morning, and lingering at my table half the day? What you need is a fire.”
“Can’t argue with that.” Rowan picked up the glass, sampled. “Carrots, because there are always carrots, celery, I think, some oranges—and I’m pretty sure mango.”
“Good for you. Now drink it all.”
“Marg, you’re looking more beautiful than ever this morning.”
Marg cast a beady eye on Dobie. “What do you want, rookie?”
“I heard tell you might could put together a bag lunch if me and my fellow inmate here mosey on down to Rowan’s daddy’s place to watch the show.”
“I might could. You tell Lucas, if you see him, it’s past time he came in to pay a call on me.”
“I’ll sure do that.”
AS HE HAD a short window before a tandem jump, Lucas made a point of walking out when he got word a couple of the rookies from the base were on the grounds.
A lot of tourists and locals came by to watch the planes and the jumpers, with plenty of them hooking the trip to his place with a tour of the smoke jumpers’ base. He figured it was good for business.
He’d started with one plane, a part-time pilot and instructor, with his mother handling the phones. When they rang. His pop ran dispatch, helped with the books. Of course in those days, he’d only been able to give the half-assed business his attention off-season, or when he was off the jump list.
But he’d needed to build something for his daughter, something solid.
And he had. He took pride in that, in his fleet of planes, his full-time staff of twenty-five. He had the satisfaction of knowing one day, when she was ready, Rowan could stand on what he’d built and have that solidity under her.
Still there were days he watched a plane rise into the sky from the base, knew the men and women on it were flying to fire, that he missed it like a limb.
He knew, now, what it was to be on the ground and know someone he loved more than anything in the world and beyond was about to risk her life. He wondered how his parents, his daughter, even the wife he’d had so briefly had ever stood that constant mix of fear and resignation.
But today, so far, the sirens stayed silent.
He stopped a moment to watch one of the students—a sixty-three-year-old banker from town free-fall from the Otter. Appl
ause broke out in the audience of watchers when the chute deployed.
Zeke had been Lucas’s banker for close to forty years, so Lucas watched a moment longer, gave a nod of approval at the form, before he walked over to the blanket where the two men from the base stretched out with what he recognized as one of Marg’s famous boxed lunches.
“How’s it going?” he asked, and crouched down beside them. “Lucas Tripp, and you must be Dobie. I heard you got in a scuffle at Get a Rope the other night.”
“Yeah. I’m usually prettier. It’s a pleasure meeting you,” Dobie added as he held out a hand. “This one’s Chainsaw, as he likes to use one to shave his legs.”
“Heard about that, too. If you’re going to get banged up, it might as well be early in the season, before things heat up.”
“It’s a real nice operation you got here, Mr. Tripp,” Stovic commented.
The polite deference made Lucas feel old as an alp. “You can hang the mister around my father. We’re doing pretty well here. See that one.” He gestured toward where Zeke touched down and rolled. “He won’t see sixty again. Bank manager out of Missoula. Granddaddy of eight with two more coming. Known him longer than either of you have been alive, and up until a couple months ago, he never said a word to me about wanting to jump. Bucket List,” Lucas told them with a grin. “Since that movie came out, we’re getting a lot of clients and students with some age on them coming in.
“I’ve got a tandem jump coming up. Client’s due in about fifteen. Fifty-seven-year-old woman. High-school principal. You never know who’s got a secret yen to fly.”
“Do you miss it?” Dobie asked him. “Jumping fire.”
“Every day.” Lucas shrugged as he watched his banker wave to a trio of his grandkids. “But old horses like me have to make room for you young stallions.”
“You must have a lot of stories from back in the day.”
And older yet, Lucas thought, but grinned at Stovic. “Get a couple beers in me, I’ll tell them all, whether you want to hear them or not.”
“Anytime,” Dobie said. “Anyplace.”
“I might take you up on it. I better get on, give the principal the thrill of her life.” Lucas pushed to his feet. “Enjoy your day off. You won’t get many more of them.”
“I don’t see how he could come to give it up,” Dobie commented. “I don’t think I could.”
“You haven’t jumped fire yet,” Stovic pointed out.
“In my head I have.” Dobie bit into a drumstick Marg had fried to a crispy turn. “And I didn’t try to castrate myself with a chain saw.”
Stovic gave him a good-natured punch in the arm. “It got the Swede’s hands on my thigh. Worth every stitch.”
“You try to move on that, Gull’ll give you more than a few stitches. His eyes’re homed in that direction.”
“I ain’t blind. But she’s sure got a nice touch.” Stovic dug into the potato salad as they watched the next jumper.
LUCAS CHECKED HIS LOGS, the aircraft, had a quick conversation with his mechanic and the pilot for the tandem. Even if the client arrived on time, Marcie—his service rep—would sit her down for an overall explanation, have the client fill out the necessary forms. Since she’d ordered the DVD package, he swung through to make sure his videographer was lined up for the go.
When he walked into the operations building, he spotted Marcie and the client at one of the tables dealing with the paperwork. His first thought was a cliché, but true nonetheless.
They hadn’t made principals like that when he’d been in high school.
She had red hair, and a lot of it, that kind of swept around her face, and eyes like forest shadows. Deep and green. When she smiled at something Marcie said, shallow dimples popped out in her cheeks, and her lips turned up in a pretty bow.
He wasn’t shy around women—unless he was attracted to one. He felt the wash of embarrassed heat run up the back of his neck as he approached the table.
“And here’s your jump master,” Marcie announced, “and the owner of Zulie Skydiving. Lucas, I was just telling Mrs. Frazier she’s about to experience the thrill of a lifetime, and she’s got the top dog to take her through it.”
“Well,” Lucas managed as the heat spread to the top of his skull.
“If I’m going to be thrilled, I like knowing it’s with the top dog.” She offered her hand—narrow, slender-fingered. Lucas took it loosely, released it quickly, worried he might crush it.
“Mrs. Frazier’s son bought her the package for Christmas,” Marcie added.
“Make it Ella, since we’ll be jumping out of a plane together. He heard me say I wanted to try skydiving one day, and took me seriously, even though I believe I’d had several glasses of wine at the time.” Those lips bowed up again; the dimples popped. “He and his family are out poking around, as are my daughter and hers. They’re all excited to watch.”
“That’s good. That’s nice.”
“So . . .” Ella waited a beat. “When do we start?”
“We’ll get you suited up.” Though she beamed smiles, Marcie slid a puzzled look up at Lucas. “While we do, you’ll watch a short instructional video. Then the boss will give you a little training, answer any questions. That’ll take about thirty minutes, so you’ll be familiar with the equipment, feel comfortable and learn how to land.”
“Landing would be key. I don’t want to traumatize my grandchildren.” She said it with a sparkle in her eye.
Married. Lucas’s brain caught up with the rest of him. With kids. With grandkids. Knowing she was married eased the shyness. Now he could just admire how pretty she was, seeing as she was off-limits.
“No worries about that.” He was able to grin back at her. “They’ll remember today as the day they watched their grandmother fly. If you’re done with the paperwork, we’ll get you your flight suit.”
He changed into his own while Marcie got the client outfitted. He generally enjoyed doing tandems with first-timers, soothing their nerves if they had them, answering questions, giving them the best experience possible, and a memory they’d carry for the rest of their lives. He expected this run would be no exception.
The client looked fit, which helped. He glanced at his copy of the form and noted he’d been on the mark on her statistics. Five-five, 123 pounds. No physical problems.
He stepped outside to wait for her.
“I feel official.” She laughed and did a little turn in her flight suit and jump boots.
“Looking good. I know Marcie went over the procedure with you, but I can go over it again, answer any questions you’ve got.”
“Marcie was thorough, and the video was great. The harness attaches me to you, start to finish, which is very important from my point of view.”
“It’s a good way to make a first jump. Low stress.”
She bubbled out a laugh. “Easy for you to say. I guess you’re used to screamers.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’m betting you’re going to be too happy and too dazzled by the view to scream.” He led her to a small training field. “We’ll go up to about fourteen thousand feet. When you’re ready, I’ll take you on a trip into that big sky. The free fall’s a rush, exhilarating. It’ll last about a minute before the chute deploys. Once it does, you’ll float, and listen to the kind of quiet only jumpers know.”
“You love it.”
“Absolutely.”
“I’m doing this for a couple of reasons. First for my son. I just couldn’t disappoint him. And second, I realized on the way here, to remind myself I used to be fearless. Tell me, Mr. Tripp—”
“Lucas.”
“Lucas, how many people chicken out once they’re up there?”