Thankfully, he had some ideas of what to do with her.
1
Just as some days are hotter than others, some fires are hotter than others. And the Checker Mill Fire was a scorcher.
Tori Ellison checked her watch but couldn’t see it. Even shining her helmet headlamp on it didn’t really help. Her eyes were lack-of-sleep sore and they stung from smoke and salty sweat. She couldn’t taste anything but that salt and the char that it collected as it dribbled down her face; the peanut and dark chocolate flavor of her energy bar hadn’t lasted more than a few minutes before being overwhelmed.
She’d volunteered to scout what lay over the next ridge while the rest of her Hotshot fire crew crashed out for an hour. She was supposed to go ten minutes out and ten back, but couldn’t seem to focus on the watch to tell how long she’d been gone. Three minutes? Fifteen? She no longer knew.
It was zero-dark-thirty, like the military guys said, which was all that really mattered.
Where was here? She wasn’t so sure of that either.
She was always doing dumb, impulsive things like this. In college one of her nicknames had been the Energizer Bunny because she’d never had the sense to stop until she dropped. The Bunny part had been shed after she’d punched a particularly obnoxious frat boy hard enough to shatter his nose.
When Tori hit the fire line, her new firefighter nickname was Ginger within three days.
It wasn’t that her hair was red—she was a bob-cut blond. The crew chief, Candace Cantrell, had grown up with a Labrador named Ginger who also never knew when to stop.
A low-hanging Douglas fir branch slapped in her face because she was too weary to step around it. At least it was green and smelled of life and fresh pine. She felt bolstered by its presence; it was standing in the cool forest night, trusting her and her team to save it from the encroaching wildfire.
Tori trudged by it and promised to do her best—trudged because trotting was long past her abilities at the moment. They’d come off the Bell Creek Fire along Washington’s Skagit River less than forty-eight hours ago and now had been on the Checker Mill for the last thirty-six straight. The Cascade Mountains were rough and she normally liked the challenge…when she was conscious.
She crested the low ridge in a thick stand of trees. It would take a lot of cutting to clear a fire line here if they had to. Too tired to even dodge the branches, she raised her arms in front of her face and ploughed through the heart of the stand.
The trees gave way the moment before her feet snarled in thick vines and she face-planted on the ground.
Her radio crackled, “Ginger, check in.”
“Yo, Candace.” The ground was soft. Well-tilled soil cool against her cheek. She didn’t waste extra effort trying to stand up. It felt so good to lie down, for even a moment.
“Report.”
“Hard-ass,” Tori teased her. Since it was something the Hotshot team’s leader was proud of, it was a safe call. “Trees much thicker at the ridge. Eight to eighteen-inch diameter Doug fir. Can’t see much else.”
“Where are you now?”
“Lying on the ground,” she looked around to try and be more specific, and was confronted by something large and green. Big enough to completely block her view. “In a zucchini patch.”
“A residence?”
That would be bad news. Needing to defend a residence, or worse a neighborhood, could drastically change a fire attack plan.
“Ginger?”
“Hang on. Hang on. Sheesh!” Tori forced her arms beneath her and levered herself upward. They shook with the effort. She’d really tapped herself out this time; right out to the limits.
Once upright she twisted her head side to side to swing the headlamp around.
“I’m in a vegetable garden,” she reported.
“You’re in my vegetable garden, ‘Ginger’,” a deep male voice sounded from the dark.
She twisted the lamp around and found a mountain man standing about ten feet down a row of tomatoes. Except he wasn’t hairy, messy, or clad in rotting animal skins. He wore gym shorts and a frown. She couldn’t see his eyes because he had his arm raised to protect them from the glare of her lamp, but from the nose down was very fine. Not a six-pack ab guy, but no extra bits either.
“Who are you? And why were you eavesdropping on my private conversation?”
“My name’s Colin James. And if you’re in my garden on the radio, how private can your conversation be?”
Tori hit the transmit key, “I’m in Colin’s secret garden. And he’s just as much of a know-it-all as the one in the book.”
“If Dickon shows up, he’s mine,” Candace replied. “I always had a crush on Dickon.”
Tori heard a soft Hey! in the background, probably Candace’s husband Luke, a top member of the IHC crew.
“What are you doing in my squash?” the man asked from behind his raised arm.
“Well, that’s no way to address a lady, Colin.”
2
Her voice was the only thing that distinguished her as one. Colin had been lying out in the hammock watching the stars—it was too beautiful and warm a night to stay in his cabin—when he’d heard a hard grunt and rustle from his vegetable garden.
It had sounded human rather than ursine—he didn’t worry about bears here…much. When he’d looked, there was a light shining low under his plants. Not stopping for shoes or a flashlight, he raced out to scare away the poacher. He’d put a lot of time and care into his garden and no midnight skulker was going to rob him.
He’d been stopped in his tracks by what he found. Between the zucchini and the pumpkins lay a fully clad firefighter, and one that was making no effort to get up.
By the reflected light off the nearby leaves, Colin had seen a hardhat that might have once been yellow under all the soot. The firefighter wore similarly colored jacket and pants, heavy boots, and a small pack. One hand clutched a nasty-looking axe and the other a handheld radio.
And then the firefighter had spoken and turned out to be a she. Named Ginger.
“If you’re lying in my vegetables, I’ll address you any way I choose. And get that light out of my eyes.”
“Oh, sorry,” she turned the lamp toward the ground.
He had a brief glimpse of an oval face and a hint of blond hair before she flicked it off and they were plunged into darkness. He blinked hard, but his night vision was shot and wouldn’t be back for several minutes.
He couldn’t see, but he could hear that she hadn’t moved.
“Are you planning to just lie there all night among my veggies?”
She giggled. “You have a very comfortable garden.” A firefighter who giggled.
“What are you doing here anyway?”
“Uh,” Ginger paused. “I’m here because…” she sounded as if she was trying to figure that out for herself, “…oh, yeah. I’m here because there’s a forest fire in the next valley over. I’m the scout.”
Suddenly a dozen things he hadn’t paid any real attention to earlier in the day made sense. He’d kept smelling wood smoke, but no one in their right mind would have their fireplace going on such a hot day. Besides, he was pretty sure that he had no neighbors for a long way in any direction.
Also there had been clouds to the north, but he hadn’t really paid attention. The novel was finally going well and he hadn’t been outside all day. Yet another reason he’d retired to the hammock with the sunset. Now though, he remembered that the clouds had been an odd color for a lightning storm, too dark.
There’d also been the sound of helicopters, but they were often used in logging operations. Maybe not so much today.
“How close?” he swallowed hard.
“A mile or so. I seem to have lost track.”
“What kind of a firefighter are you?”
“An exhausted one.”
“Here,” he reached out into the dark. “Let me help you up.”
Somehow they found each other’s hands. But when he braced a foot forward to pull her up, he stepped barefoot right on a planting stake. He tumbled forward onto her with an exclamation on his part and a curse on hers.
“That’s your idea of being helpful?” she grumbled from where she lay beneath him in the dark.
“Ginger, this is Candace,” the radio squawked loudly in his ear. “Are we looking at an individual or a community? I don’t show anything on the map.”
He tried to roll off her, but the big zucchini bush stopped him. When he shifted the other direction, he partly rolled onto her fireaxe.
“Hey Candace. I can confirm an individual. Clumsy, but cute.”
“I’m not—” Well, maybe he was being a klutz. But he hadn’t exactly been prepared for a female firefighter lying on the dirt in his garden.
“Ginger!” The woman on the radio was sounding irritated.
“Hang on.” Then Ginger reached up to assist him in getting off her, and clipped him fairly solidly on the jaw with a leather-gloved fist.
He tumbled into the vines.
“Oh crap. I’m sorry.” She giggled again even as she groped around in the darkness, grabbed his arm for support, which pulled him back atop her with surprising strength. “Well, isn’t that interesting.”
This time when he tried to pull himself free, she pulled him down and kissed him. Hard.
3
What was she doing? Tori was deep in the kiss before any part of her brain woke up enough to be rational. The mostly unclad Colin was lying full upon her and, after a brief hesitation, was proving he was an exceptional kisser.
After enjoying the situation for several more moments, she managed a “Whoa.” Then she pushed against his shoulders to shift him up and far enough away for her head to stop having ideas about where to go next with this mostly naked man. He tasted deliciously of male and toothpaste—a welcome relief from her own salt sweat and char—but it was dumb as could be for her to randomly kiss a total stranger.
Colin didn’t resist as she pushed him back. Kept going until he was kneeling between her legs.
“Um,” she had nothing to add to that. And she was almost tired enough to drag him back down on her.
“Ginger!”
“Spoilsport,” she told the radio without keying the transmit key.
“She’s persistent,” Colin observed from nearby in the darkness. Her eyes had recovered enough to make out his outline against the stars.
“You have no idea. She needs to know…” something.
“I live alone here. Solo cabin. Is the fire coming my way?”
“Candace,” somehow Tori had held onto the radio during the kiss. “It’s a solo cabin of a man who tastes like mountain spring water.”
“You kissed him?”
“Either I did or he did. I’m a little fuzzy on the details.”
“Uh-huh,” Candace wasn’t buying it. “I’ll send Luke up with a couple saws. Make sure the site is prepped for best defense. The fire has slowed and will be good until dawn. We’ll get air attack to lay down a perimeter as soon as the helos are back aloft with the sunrise. Take an hour break.”
“Roger that.”
Now the question was, what to do with an hour?
4
On the gas camping stove, Colin had heated up the leftover chili he’d been planning to have for lunch tomorrow. The woman across the table was wolfing it down while it was still scalding hot as if she hadn’t eaten in a week.
“Don’t they feed you?”
“Only between fires. No time during a burn. You cook this?” She mumbled around a mouthful, halfway through the bowl.
“Yes, my chef is off this week.”
“It’s good,” she drank back a glass of water in a single gulp. “Really good.” She slowed down and began looking around the candlelit cabin. “I see the butler is off this week too.”
He looked around and grimaced. “I’m not generally this messy.” He was ten miles up a dead-end road and an hour-long hike on a steep trail past that. He hadn’t exactly prepared for visitors. And it wasn’t that bad. His sheets were still spread on the couch, his clothes piled on the chair, and the floor hadn’t been swept in a while. But the dishes were clean and the food all stowed. His desk was a train wreck, but that was always the case when he was in the middle of writing a novel.
At least he’d taken a wash in the stream recently. Colin rubbed at his chin. Okay, should have shaved somewhere in the last few days, but how was he supposed to have known that he was going to have his first-ever visitor in five summers.
“You’re not exactly all spic-and-span yourself,” he told her.
She’d staggered into his cabin, dumping hardhat, jacket, and axe across the threshold. The cotton shirt she wore underneath was both sweat- and soot-stained. But it clung to her in amazing ways. The easy strength she’d revealed in the vegetable garden was evident in her athlete’s shoulders. Her curves were feminine and sleek; as unlike his ex-wife as could be.
Mirella had been voluptuous…and needy as hell. The latter had made him feel the powerful protector at first, but what had started out as charming had become a cloying emptiness in the woman that could never be assuaged. He’d been on the verge of running and damn the expenses, when she’d decided to fill that emptiness with another man. He was still smarting from the whole mess—despite his lucky escape—and was not looking for another woman.
But looking at the woman before him was proving to be a pleasure.
“You’re staring.”
He was. “I am,” he shrugged an apology. “You offer a lot to look at, Ginger.” Her fitness, her curves, the face that would have looked merely nice on any lesser woman. Ginger’s face was alive with emotion; smile or sarcasm, her feelings showed easily past the deep exhaustion.
“That’s not my name.”
“But on the radio…” he trailed off at her self-deprecating smile.
“Nickname I earned for being as dumb as a dog. Tori Ellison,” she held out a hand and he shook it, “I never know when to quit.”
“Easy answer, never.”
5
Tori looked up at Colin sharply. It was the easy answer, but no one else ever understood that.
Hotshot crews were trained to keep going no matter what, right until the hallucinations of exhaustion set in, and she was still twenty-four hours from that state. But for everyone else, it was always a challenge to keep going. To push harder.
Instead, Tori always saw it as never having “quit” as an option. It made all the difference in the world, but she’d never been able to explain that to anyone satisfactorily.
“What makes you say that?” she asked carefully as she continued to eat the magnificent chili.
Colin looked around his cabin as if he’d stored the answer to her question somewhere in the room.
It was a sweet setup. A generous one-room; a mountain cabin without being primitive. Big windows that told of a magnificent southern view hidden by the darkness. They sat at a small table for two that might be more workbench than dining table. A hand pump at the sink spoke volumes. But there were also shelves of books, a cozy wood stove, and, perched at a desk cluttered with paper and books, sat a small laptop computer—the only sign of electricity in the whole cabin. She spotted the large battery and would bet that there was a solar panel somewhere outside that fed it. The laptop, she decided, was the focus of the room. The rest was disorganized, not because he was a slob—for the kitchen was immaculate—but because he didn’t care.
He too had turned to the desk as if the answer was there somewhere but he couldn’t see it. No. He saw it clearly, but wasn’t sure about sharing it.
“Writer’s cabin,” she guessed.
He nodded, then froze l
ike a animal wondering if it was too late to escape the fire.
“Published.”
A very careful nod.
So, not a comfortable topic. Which meant he was either a total failure or a major success. If the former, the kitchen wouldn’t be so neat…or the desk so messy; a failure would fail in multiple ways. So, a success that he didn’t want to reveal, that had him living in a remote cabin with a vegetable garden.
She returned to her study of him rather than his cabin. Not a burden. Tori had thought he was good-looking by the light of her head lamp, but his arm had hidden his best feature. Warm brown eyes lively with a sharp brain behind them. A writer’s brain. But they were also warm with emotion, and each time they drifted down her body, more and more heat was revealed there.
“I dated a writer once,” she said without thinking first.
“I hate him already,” Colin offered the comment amiably.
“He was okay. But he didn’t understand about perseverance.” Tori had learned enough while dating Andy to know that writing was all about perseverance. She could see that Colin was surprised she knew that reality.
“You’re frustrating me at the moment,” he remarked and it sounded like a topic change, so she let it be.
“Good. Only one thing this girl likes more than frustrating a handsome, successful man.”
“What’s that?”
And suddenly Tori was the one who wanted the topic change. She knew that she was far too tired if she’d let that slip out. She’d gotten into firefighting courtesy of a brief fling with a smokejumper. He’d been fun enough, but their brief foray into the wilderness had been life changing.
Tori had always like the outdoors. She’d earned dual degrees in botany and ecology before that trip. To hang with a group of firefighters deep in the wilderness had been an option she’d never thought of until she met the smokie in a bar. He’d offered the briefest glimpse of a life in that uncontemplated world of wildland firefighting.
She’d even found it easy to fall in with the typical firefighter talk once she became one. But there was still a woman with a dream who’d been born on that trip.
The Ides of Matt 2015 Page 29