Her Reluctant Hero: A Romantic Suspense Boxed Set

by MJ Fredrick

  Doug seemed to have something he wanted to say. Good Lord. It was like being on frickin’ Oprah. Not for the first time Gabe wished he was the hell alone. He walked ahead, leaving Peyton with Doug, hoping to discourage her curiosity, but kept his ear tuned to the conversation.

  “So what’s going on here?” Peyton asked, and Gabe envisioned a bundle of dynamite having its fuse pulled in the nick of time. She’d been bursting with the question since she’d laid eyes on Doug.

  “You know Jen?”

  Gabe hadn’t expected Doug to be quite so forthcoming. He heard an understanding tone in Peyton’s response.

  “The incident commander?”

  “I’m married to her.”

  “And—oh.”

  Gabe slowed, let them catch up as anger boiled in him, as violent as the fire they’d just walked away from. “Maybe you’d like to tell her how you ended up married to her.”

  “I don’t think...” She looked from one man to the other.

  Hell, no. He wasn’t letting her off easy. She’d started this. He took a step toward her, and a small part of him was glad she didn’t step back. He didn’t want to pull any punches, and if she could stand up to him, more power to her. “You mean you don’t want to hear about how the three of us were always together? Best friends? How Doug was the best man at our wedding?” The questions rolled out of him, one after another, and he didn’t take his eyes from her face.

  Peyton sucked in a breath and broke eye contact. Doug had stopped too.

  “I was a smokejumper for a few years when I first came out here, before I got sick of jumping out of planes. The best of the best, Jen called them. She wanted me to leave the Hot Shots to go back to it, and when I wouldn’t, she turned to my best friend.” Saying it aloud for the first time threatened to choke him but he went on. “You don’t want to know that on our fourth wedding anniversary she told me she’d fallen in love with Doug and wanted a divorce?”

  “Gabe, I—” She tried to stem the flow with an ineffective raised hand, but he waved it off. Her questions felt like a betrayal after their night on the mountain. Why had he expected anything different? Doug inspired betrayal.

  “No, you wanted to know. You ask questions, that’s what you do.”

  He had to walk away before his temper took an uglier turn. She reached out but he shook her off, putting distance between them again.

  “And then he decided he’d show her. He went up with another crew and jumped one more time, damn near killed himself on the mountain,” Doug said. “Landed in a tree. He was in the hospital for three days.”

  Gabe spun on the other man. Betrayal. That was all the man understood.

  “Gabe,” Peyton said, but Gabe barely heard her over the roar in his ears. He pivoted and started down the mountain.

  “I’d like us to be friends again.” Doug raised his voice to cover the distance.

  Gabe slowed a bit but didn’t look back. “That can’t happen.”

  “It’s been three years—”

  “It could be twenty.” Gabe turned to face the man he’d once loved like a brother. “You made your choice. Live with it. Now if we all want to get back to camp in one piece, we better keep our mouths shut and walk.”

  Peyton was more miserable on the short hike back to camp than she’d been crawling through the tunnels of the cavern, than running for her life up the mountain. Gabe walked apart from them, tension and anger clear in the line of his body. She hadn’t improved matters by asking Doug about the rift; worse, she’d lit a fuse with her damned question.

  Gabe had almost died after Jen asked him for a divorce. What was it with alpha men wanting to prove themselves?

  Doug tried to be nice, staying even with her, trying to distract her with conversation, but her gaze strayed again and again to Cooper. Her heart ached for hurting him, for bringing his pain to the surface. Where were her reporter instincts where he was concerned? Apparently she’d left them back on the mountain.

  Those thoughts were pushed aside when camp came into view. Despite her aching feet and fatigue-numbed muscles, she wanted to run the rest of the way. She passed Gabe in her eagerness. He caught her arm and eased her back.

  “Hold on there, Tex,” he said, a trace of humor in his voice. “It’s farther away than you think. You don’t want to give out so close to the goal.”

  “You won’t carry me?” she teased, testing his mood.

  He snorted, a good sign. “Fat chance.”

  “Gabe, I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t.” He jabbed a finger toward her. “Don’t say another word. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Okay, all right, I understand.” She sucked in a deep breath, then added in a rush, “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “Sounds to me like you’re still talking about it. Let’s just forget it.”

  She nodded once, pressing her lips together in frustration, and hiked on.

  A shout went up as they approached camp, and yellow-shirted firefighters swarmed out of tents and hurried toward them, cheering. They circled Gabe, everyone reaching for him, trying to touch him, whether to see if he was real or as a good luck charm, Peyton didn’t know. He accepted their greeting with tired grace, less the conquering hero than a guy who’d done his job.

  The crowd parted and a little blonde ran forward and launched herself at his chest, tucked her head under his chin and wrapped her arms around his waist. Peyton saw the shock on his face, saw it was Jen just as he gave in and wrapped his arms around her.

  “I thought I’d killed you,” Jen said, her voice muffled against his chest.

  He held Jen in his arms. For the first time in three years everything he wanted was right here. She’d come to him, had worried about him, when her husband stood only ten feet away. He couldn’t stop himself from folding his arms about her, feeling her against his body one more time, bending his head to smell her hair.

  Knowing she was no longer his.

  One last time. He put his hands on her shoulders and set her away from him sadly.

  “We’re fine. Tired, and Peyton needs something to eat.” He looked over Jen’s head at Peyton, who watched him with a mixture of horror and fascination. Behind him, Doug’s expression was probably the same. Before today, he would have been rejoicing for causing Doug pain. Today, revenge just felt pathetic and sad. Like he’d shed a skin on the mountain and come back ready for a new life.

  “Go to your husband,” he said quietly to Jen, the woman he’d craved for three years, the woman he still thought of as his wife. “You sent him to get us. Make sure he knows he’s done good.”

  The hurt on her face made him tighten his grip on her shoulders for just a minute as he resisted the desire to pull her into his arms. Then she stepped away, toward her husband, and Gabe turned, not quite man enough to watch their embrace.

  He found himself face to face with Peyton, who watched the little scene behind him with avid interest. He took her arm firmly and steered her toward the mess tent.

  “Let’s get something to eat and you can shower.”

  “Cooper!”

  Gabe staggered back as Kim launched herself against him. In reflex, he caught her as she hooked her legs about his waist. Beyond her, Peyton quirked a brow. He scowled in response to her silent question.

  “We were so worried!” Kim blubbered against his shoulder. “We shouldn’t have left you!”

  “You had to get those kids out of there.” He patted her back awkwardly, before resting his hands on her hips and wondering how to dislodge her. “You did the right thing.”

  “We thought we’d left you behind to die. It came up so fast.”

  He drew back to look at her. It was tough as hell being a hard-ass with a female hanging on your front. “Did all the kids get back in one piece?”

  “Yeah, they were real troopers.”

  Finally realizing the brashness of her greeting, Kim climbed down his body, swiping at her face, trying to regain some dignity. Gabe watched her
matter-of-fact maneuvering with some amusement.

  “I’m, ah, sorry. Got a little excited.” Her face was only a shade lighter than her hair, and she studied the ground.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said with more joviality than he might have ordinarily shown, disguising his embarrassment as well as hers. “Just be glad you’ll get the next twenty-four hours off.”

  “We should celebrate,” she said, then brightened. “Let’s celebrate! I’ll round up the crew and we’ll go into town for drinks.”

  Gabe glanced over her head at Peyton, who stood nearby with uncharacteristic uncertainty in her bearing. “What do you say, Peyton? Sound good to you?”

  “Um, sure.” She sounded surprised at being included.

  Gabe nodded to Kim. “All right, good. You round everybody up. We’ll get cleaned up some so we don’t scare the locals.” He stepped around Kim toward Peyton. “Let’s see about your shower, huh? Line’s over there.” He gestured to the yellow-shirted arrow pointing at a line of semitrailers. “You get five minutes. I’ll meet you back here.”

  *****

  Oh God. Oh heaven. Okay, maybe the water was tepid, but it was wet. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back so the soot wouldn’t run into her eyes. Black rivulets ran down her body as she lathered her hair. It had been flat with sweat and positively black when she took off her hard hat. What she wouldn’t give for a razor.

  The sad trickle of water was her refuge. She deserved it after the last thirty-six hours.

  She had her story, and then some. What she’d experienced, what these men and women were capable of, could keep her in articles for a year.

  Or a book. The idea popped into her head and expanded exponentially. A first-hand account of this life-or-death job.

  Better, it gave her a reason to stay, to go back to the fire line. She would finally be committed to a job, like the people she wrote about.

  After the cave, she’d sworn she was through. But the thrill of facing death and beating it pulsed through her. She loved the uncontrolled feeling of it. No safety nets here. You mess up, you’re toast. Literally. She wanted to experience it again and hoped to discover it had only been a fluke, that she didn’t love danger the way her husband had.

  Or was the book idea only a reason to stay close to Gabe Cooper? She wasn’t so shallow, to let interest in a man dictate her actions.

  Yes, interest in a man. She admitted it to herself now. Every minute they spent together, he was becoming more and more his own man in her mind, not an article for a story, not a reminder of Dan. Someone with his own strengths and foibles and heartaches.

  Someone she couldn’t afford to let any closer. Maybe if she stayed, Jen would put her with another crew. But the thought took some of the shine from her idea.

  Gabe had said they were only allowed five minutes in the shower, but surely no one would notice if she took a little longer. She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes.

  A disturbance near the showers caught Gabe’s attention as he made his way back after dodging a horde of reporters who had staked out the mess tent. The usually orderly line of tired filthy firefighters waiting for a shower had shifted into a mob, shouting at one of the semis.

  He ambled over, hung back as several of the more irate men banged on the metal wall of the trailer. “What’s going on?”

  “Some rookie’s using up all the water.” One of the men scowled, not looking at him.

  He scanned the group for a blonde ponytail, already pretty sure who the culprit was. “Anybody try shutting it off?”

  “There’s other people showering too.”

  He sighed and strode to the front of the crowd to knock on the door.

  “Peyton? You in there? Peyton?”

  No answer. He pressed his shoulder to the door and pushed open the cubicle.

  Peyton shoved herself away from the wall with a cry and flung one arm across her breasts, plumping them up like an offering, and her other hand over her crotch beneath the slight swell of her belly. That left her with no hands to throw the soapy hair out of her face, so she glared at him through wet hanks of hair.

  He leaned against the doorjamb with his arms folded over his chest and grinned at her. He should end every adventure with such a treat. Weak water pressure trickled over her white skin, slightly chafed from her washcloth. He had to shift to hide his reaction to the sight.

  “Do you mind?” she demanded, her voice the growl of a hostile cat, at odds with all that softness.

  She threw herself back when he reached in to shut off the water. He picked up the towel from the rack and shoved it at her.

  “You’re pissing off the troops, Peyton.”

  She glanced from the towel to him with a kind of hopelessness. If she reached for it, she’d have to move one of her strategically placed hands.

  After another appreciative perusal of the curves she’d hidden beneath her shapeless clothes, he took pity. A shame, really, to hide breasts like that, legs like that. But the flush now covering her whole body told him it was time to retreat. He hooked the towel over the rack again and backed out.

  “I’m just telling you if you turn the water on, we’ll have a riot out here. Now get dressed. My crew is taking us to town for some real food and maybe a real bed.”

  Her head snapped up and his jaw snapped shut. More embarrassed than he would have expected by the inadvertent suggestion, he closed the door.

  Chapter Eight

  Peyton should be scandalized that Cooper had seen her naked. She grabbed the towel and rubbed it vigorously over her body. His high-handed attitude, pushing into her shower, should piss her off. She would be pissed off, as soon as she ate a hot meal and slept in an honest-to-God bed.

  That was what he’d meant when he mentioned a bed, wasn’t it?

  That was what she wanted him to mean.

  It was.

  Her extra clothes had been lost in the fire and she grimaced as she put her filthy clothes on her mostly clean body. She slicked her soapy hair back into a ponytail. Surely there was a Walmart or something nearby where she could at least get some underwear, some T-shirts.

  Of course facing Gabe after he’d seen her naked added to her stress. He’d also seen her sniveling, panic stricken and crying, so at least he had the whole picture.

  Not that it mattered.

  She walked out of the shower looking nearly as bad as when she walked in, her hair clumped with shampoo, black streaks still on her skin. Head held high, she passed the line of firefighters who scowled at her for making them wait for their turn under the spray.

  The long van Gabe’s crew had commandeered for the drive into town sat near the command tent. Though Gabe had a seat beside him in the front, she chose the middle seat, wanting distance from him, not only because of the shower incident, but because of the mountain. Kim happily sat beside Gabe. Great. As if Gabe wasn’t enough, she had to deal with Kim for the first time since the rocks in the backpack. Fun time.

  Peyton stared out the window at the smoke billowing from behind the mountain. Would she feel the same way if she hadn’t learned the history of him and Jen, if she hadn’t been the one to bring such painful memories to the surface?

  The charred face of the mountain was so far away. How had they come such a distance in just a few hours? Had any crews been sent out with the smokejumpers to battle it? As tired as she was, she felt guilty for not being out there herself.

  She didn’t see a Walmart on the drive into town. Hell, it wasn’t much of a town, just a cluster of wood-shingled buildings with hand-lettered signs. The people who lived and worked here were no doubt thrilled the fire was miles away, or their little wooden town would be ashes.

  One shop was labeled The General Store. Please, God, let them have underwear. As soon as Gabe parked the van, she hurried over as the rest of the crew headed for the restaurant.

  At least she’d had the sense to keep her money in her fire pants. She dug it out to count it. Unless they charged outrageous
prices for panties, she was in good shape.

  Near the entrance, she grabbed a couple of souvenir T-shirts proclaiming the splendor of Montana, then hunted for underwear and socks.

  The only socks in stock were brightly colored and very girly, but the grit in her boots right now gave her little choice. Panties were easier to find but expensive. Still, she bought two packages and vowed to throw her current pair away. The only bras available were the armored variety, like her mother used to buy her, the cheap ones from Sears that made her boobs look misshapen, but she didn’t have the luxury to go without.

  She carried her selection to the checkout, counting out her money. The heavyset elderly man attending the store had risen from his stool when she’d walked in, watched her progress throughout the store. Maybe he suspected she was a shoplifter, so she made a show of having money.

  Instead, he waved his hand at her offering. “That’s no good here.”

  Discouragement weighed her down. She couldn’t bear being in these filthy clothes one minute longer. Just looking at the clean cotton made her itchy. “But I need this stuff. I lost my pack—”

  “Good. Take it. I’m not taking your money.”

  She frowned, confused. “But—”

  “You guys work your asses off up there protecting me and mine. It’s the least I can do.”

  He thought she was a Hot Shot. Well, she was, but hadn’t really considered herself more than a reporter doing a Hot Shot’s job. Everyone at camp saw her as a reporter too. That this stranger thought she was a hero like Gabe and the others gave her a strange sense of pride.

  “I have the money,” she insisted, holding it out to him.

  “And I told you.” He closed his hand over the drawer of the register. How could he afford to offer her what was easily fifty dollars worth of merchandise? He couldn’t have the kind of business in this area that would give him the luxury to ignore fifty bucks. “It’s no good here. I’m too old to do what you do. This is my way of saying thank you. Now be a good girl and accept a gift graciously.”