Burn It Down

by Jess Anastasi

  Aaron and Lewis shared a quick look before Aaron nodded. “We’ll tell him. Thanks again.”

  The pair hurried off, seeming in better condition now they’d warmed up under the sun a little.

  “Do you think we should have had them checked out by paramedics?” he belatedly wondered out loud as the two boys disappeared along the trail leading to the campground.

  “They already were.”

  At his blank stare, Jared pointed at himself with a grin. “Firefighter standing right here? I’m trained as an EMT as well.”

  He felt his cheeks warming a little at the obvious oversight. Duh, he knew most firefighters at least had comprehensive first aid training, with some being qualified paramedics outright. It was like he’d left his brain out in the lake.

  “I saw them when they first got into trouble,” Jared continued. “They weren’t in the water for very long, and neither of them went under for any length of time. Probably just had a bit of a fright. Not too smart to take a boat out when you can’t swim, though.”

  No, it wasn’t. And it was exactly the kind of trouble where people should know better that he and Buck had been dealing with over the past few weeks.

  “Thanks for being so quick on your feet.” He was genuinely glad Jared had been on hand. “If I’d been on my own, I wouldn’t have been able to bring both of them in before the boat completely submerged, and it all might have turned out much worse.”

  Jared sent him a self-deprecating smile with a wink. “It’s what I do, run toward danger when most smart people run away.”

  “Are you saying you’re not smart?” he found himself teasing, no idea where the sudden—flirtiness?—had come from.

  “That’s what you took from that statement?” Jared huffed a mock sigh and crossed his arms, making the muscles in his shoulders and biceps flex. “I throw out my best big-damn-hero line and you question my intelligence. You’re hard on my ego, Troy Hurst.”

  Was Jared actually flirting back with him? His heart skipped a beat, not sure what he wanted to do with the idea. All he knew was he’d suddenly become very aware of the fact they both stood near-naked a few short steps away from each other and pressing himself up against the hard, damp muscles of Jared’s chest was something he really wanted to do.

  “So, we should get down to business.” His voice came out with a slightly husky edge, and he cleared his throat self-consciously.

  Jared arched an eyebrow at his choice of words, leaving him silently cursing himself. He’d been attempting to steer the conversation onto more solid, professional ground but had somehow managed to do the exact opposite.

  “What do you want to see first?” he pushed on, determined to ignore his own inadvertent innuendo.

  “I’m pretty sure I’ve already seen the best thing in this entire park,” Jared replied, this time not bothering to hide the fact he was checking Troy out. If he’d had any doubts about Jared being gay, they were long gone now. A straight guy did not look at another man like they wanted to lick him in all the interesting places. The sudden vivid image of Jared running his tongue up his hard cock made his entire body clench. Goddammit.

  “But how about we get dressed and start with the campground?” Jared continued, either unaware or playing at oblivious over how the heated examination had affected him.

  “Sounds good.” Yep, getting dressed definitely sounded like a great idea. Not that he was averse to the idea of Jared finding him attractive, but his apparent bisexuality had just decided to smack him full force in the face and he needed a few minutes to get his shit back together. “We can take my SUV. It’s parked just up the rise.”

  Jared nodded, so Troy quickly turned to retrieve his clothes, very determinedly not looking to where Jared was probably also getting dressed. Only when he had every lace, button, and buckle refastened did he finally look up, finding Jared leaning against a nearby picnic bench watching him with keen eyes. He was wearing a simple pair of tan cargo shorts with a tight EFD navy blue T-shirt and ball cap, and had probably taken less than half the time to dress, since Troy had to put his full park ranger uniform back on.

  “Ready to go?” Troy asked in an even voice, despite the way his stomach was flipping over itself for some stupid reason. No, not some stupid reason. The reason was six-foot worth of leanly muscled firefighter with killer green eyes.

  Never mind the heatwave, Jared Winters was probably going to make him combust before the morning was out.

  CHAPTER TWO

  JARED LET the park ranger, Troy, go ahead of him up the slight grassy incline toward where the SUV was parked. He told himself it definitely wasn’t so he could check out the guy’s ass in those indecently tight khaki pants. He told himself that, but he was totally lying. He’d always thought park ranger uniforms were dorky and decidedly un-sexy. On Troy, however… oh baby.

  Who could blame him, though? Troy’s perfectly muscled butt should come with a warning label. He was fairly certain he’d burned through more than a few brain cells when Troy had bent over to collect his clothes a few minutes ago, completely oblivious to how tempting he looked in that position. In his mind, all Jared had been able to see was himself yanking down the trunks molded to Troy’s ass like a second skin and thrusting into the tight heat of his body.

  Well, the morning was certainly looking to be more entertaining. When his commander had gotten caught up with some kind of family emergency, Jared had volunteered to take the meeting to assess the mounting fire risk the drying Sam Houston National Forest presented.

  It wasn’t so much the forest itself but the recreation taking place within its confines that was the problem. Under the right perfect-storm conditions, anything from a stray piece of broken glass to an engine spark or even a damned birthday cake with candles could turn into the kind of wildfire that destroyed homes and lives indiscriminately.

  The US Forest Service had conducted an 1100-acre prescribed burn in midspring to hopefully minimize the hazard and create breaks for any fires that did occur, but the risk of something catastrophic was climbing along with the temperature every single day. The devastating wildfires in California that’d killed so many and destroyed countless homes were still fresh in people’s minds.

  He hopped up into the white SUV with Park Ranger blazoned along the side in yellow-and-green stenciled lettering, grateful when Troy immediately cranked the AC to blasting. His wet underwear had practically snap-dried within a few minutes of climbing out of the lake; the sun was that intense. The dip had been refreshing—even if the reason for it had been unfortunate. Plus, the added bonus of seeing Troy walking out of the water in nothing but those tight gunmetal gray trunks had pretty much made his year. Daniel Craig had nothing on Troy Hurst.

  Broad-shouldered, muscles for miles, and half a head taller than him, Troy had smooth tanned skin that obviously saw a lot of the sun—probably not surprising considering his line of work. He had dirty-blond hair, intense brown eyes, and a smattering of freckles across his nose. Basically, he was all kinds of delicious.

  He thought he’d detected a hint of interest in the man’s gaze, but it’d been tempered by confusion, which told him Troy was either straight with some deeply buried curiosity or possibly identified somewhere else on the sexuality spectrum and hadn’t quite figured himself out yet. Or the guy was so far in the closet, not even Adam Lambert himself could drag him out of the shadowy depths.

  Either way, Jared wasn’t particularly interested in being the one to help him figure it out, no matter how hot the guy was. He’d played that role once before and unsurprisingly it hadn’t ended well.

  Jared snorted quietly at himself. Hadn’t ended well was a total understatement. Complete fucking disaster was probably closer to accurate.

  “Something wrong?” Troy asked, splitting his attention from the dirt track they were bumping over to glance at him.

  “Just wondering how I got here,” he said far more breezily than he felt.

  “People usually come in via the southern
entrance off Old Farm Road—”

  “Ha-ha,” he cut in as Troy broke off with a smirk. “I meant my commander was supposed to take this meeting, but he had some family stuff to deal with, and somehow I ended up volunteering.”

  “Meant to be, I guess.” This time Troy only sliced him a brief sideways look, but Jared didn’t fail to see the speculation in his gaze. A pleasant warmth trickled through his body, even though alarm bells were going off in his mind since he’d literally just finished telling himself Troy was the kind of complication he didn’t need when his life was finally settling down into some form of normalcy. No drama to be found. And he wanted to keep it that way.

  “So, what exactly are we checking?” Troy asked as they pulled into the campground and parked under the wide branches of a shady tree near the shower block.

  “That you’ve got the fire restriction guidelines in place.” He indicated the notice he could already see pinned up on the cinder block wall. “And people are following the rules. Also need to check the grounds are free of rubbish, especially glass, and the scrub is kept cut back at a safe distance from tents and RV points.”

  Troy picked up his wide-brimmed hat from where he’d dropped it on the console and settled it on his head. It wasn’t the usual ranger hat but a well-loved tan cowboy-style Stetson, the type that was a dime a dozen in Texas.

  “Sure. People won’t get at all cranky if we poke into their business.”

  Jared shrugged in return. He’d rather piss off a few tourists than drag their burned bodies from the remnants of a fire. “They’ll get over it.”

  He climbed out of the SUV and yanked the EFD baseball cap out of his back pocket, where he’d crammed it before getting into the vehicle. Troy waited for him at the nose of the SUV, thumbs hooked into his belt loops and hip cocked, the gun and other bulky equipment that came with being a ranger riding naturally just below his waist. Jared could easily imagine him out of uniform in a pair of faded denim jeans, cowboy boots, and Henley or soft plaid shirt. The guy was a walking wet dream and didn’t even seem to realize it.

  “Let’s head this way,” Jared said as he passed him, resisting the urge to adjust the crotch of his suddenly very tight cargo shorts. Maybe if he just ignored his half-hard dick, the thing would calm the hell down.

  Troy silently trailed him as he beelined to the nearest campers, casting his gaze across the area as he walked, checking for any obvious fire dangers. The closest small RV was owned by an older couple, seasoned travelers who were familiar with national park protocols and didn’t have a problem following the guidelines or being questioned about it. They were an easy start to the morning, which he was thankful for.

  The next two campers they visited weren’t quite as easy, but more because they were inexperienced young families with toddlers running around. The following family wasn’t home in their RV, but their site looked clean and well-maintained. The entire time he worked, Troy followed him like a silent shadow, observing but not intervening.

  After moving on to the next tent, they found it empty as well, the occupants also apparently having gone out for the day. Jared checked what he could see of the setup without disturbing anything and was satisfied enough to move on.

  “You really know your stuff, huh?” Troy commented as they went to the public barbeque area so Jared could check the fittings were all up to standard, and again, there wasn’t any rubbish lying around.

  “You’d hope so after doing this job for the past seven years,” he replied with a hint of amusement, telling himself he didn’t care if he impressed Troy or not.

  There he went, lying to himself again.

  “Started young?” Troy asked, clearly not bothering to hide his curiosity.

  “Could ask the same about you,” he replied, tossing a smile over his shoulder as he walked.

  “I’ve been at this six years, after a few years of college,” Troy answered, adjusting his hat slightly as a hot breeze kicked up.

  That had to make him maybe two or three years older than him, Jared calculated. “I started training to be a firefighter straight out of high school. Never wanted to be anything else. My grandfather was a firefighter.”

  “Living up to family expectations?”

  “The opposite, actually.” He gave a quick shrug to downplay what had actually been a big fat deal. “I didn’t know my grandfather. He died on the job when my dad was twelve. We never stopped hearing about how my own father resented him for it—leaving him and his mom struggling to make ends meet. Becoming a firefighter even though I knew he hated it was my way of rebelling I guess.”

  He snapped his mouth shut and focused ahead, not sure why the words had spilled so easily from his mouth. Usually he was more guarded about how and why he’d become a firefighter. The old wanted to since I was a kid story was often enough for most people.

  “Hell of a way to rebel,” Troy commented. “He must be proud now, right?”

  “Not so much,” Jared muttered. “Nothing I ever did seemed good enough for him, so becoming a firefighter—the one thing he didn’t want for any of his boys—was my way of saying screw you.”

  “You’ve got brothers?”

  Jared looked back at him, surprised out of everything he’d said, the brothers thing was what Troy had asked him about. There was understanding in his warm dark eyes, however, and it said he didn’t need to explain.

  “Two,” he replied, swallowing as his heart skipped a few beats. “We’re close, even though my dad tried to stop them from seeing me for a while. Tate, the youngest, is actually living with me at the moment. Finished high school last year and hasn’t quite figured out what to do with himself. He was thinking about applying to train as a firefighter as well and got sick of arguing with our dad over it. Then there’s Delany, he’s a Texas Ranger. Technically Del is my cousin, not my brother, but his parents were killed in a car accident when he was four, so he came to live with us. He’s not quite a year younger than me.”

  He pulled to a stop and took off his EFD hat to run a hand through his sweaty hair, the sun beating down mercilessly. But it was nothing compared to the heated storm of confusion over why he’d practically spewed almost his entire life story to a man he’d met a little over an hour ago. All he needed to do was tell Troy about Kevin and the park ranger would know more than he’d shared with another living person in the last decade. Maybe he’d gotten heatstroke and shooting his mouth off was some weird side effect.

  “Wish I had brothers,” Troy said wistfully as he stopped in front of Jared, thumbs hooking into his belt loops again. “Only got an older sister. She’s an accountant in Houston and we hardly talk. Never really had anything in common.”

  Jared opened his mouth, not even sure what he was going to say in return, but angry shouting had both of them turning to search out the cause of the commotion.

  “Not again,” Troy muttered before taking off at a jog in the direction of the noise.

  Jared quickly caught up with him, and when they rounded a cluster of tents, he spied the problem. A couple of older guys who probably should have known better were grabbing and shoving at each other—couldn’t really call it a fistfight. Their movements were sloppy and uncoordinated, and as he got close enough to hear one of the men yelling in an unintelligible slur at the other, he realized they were probably both drunk despite the hour.

  Troy grabbed one of the men by the collar and yanked him back. “Hey! Break it up!”

  When the other guy looked like he was going to lurch at Troy, Jared quickly jumped into the fray and shoved him back, almost passing out at the waft of alcoholic fumes coming off the guy.

  “What the hell is going on here? Do you all need to sober up in the sheriff’s cells today?” Troy demanded in a loud, hardass voice, making the man resisting his hold go still.

  Jared stepped back from his own half of the party, worried about getting puked on as the guy swayed and blinked against the beating sun.

  “This asshole nearly got my Lewis killed!�
� the man standing behind Troy said, pointing with an unsteady finger in completely the wrong direction.

  Jared glanced around, and sure enough, Lewis and Aaron, the two kids they’d rescued from the water, were standing in the shade of a nearby tree, and both looked like they wanted the ground to open up and swallow them.

  “It’s his own damned fault! I told them fool kids not to touch my shit! Now they’ve gone and sunk it,” the guy he’d pushed away shouted in return, his face going an alarming shade of red. Aaron came hurrying over with a bottle of water.

  “We’re sorry, Dad. We were trying to fix it so you and Uncle Hal could go fishing like you wanted, remember?” Aaron gingerly held out the water, and Jared frowned when he noticed the slight tremor to the kid’s hands. “Here, you’ll feel better if you have some cold water—”

  The guy suddenly turned on his son in a fit of fury. “Don’t fucking tell me what to do! You’re always touching my shit when I tell you not to. Good for nothing piece of—”

  The man’s fist went back, and Jared moved before he’d even thought about what he was doing. If he had taken even half a second to consider, he would have realized anything else would have been a better solution. But he acted on pure instinct, putting himself in front of Aaron and taking a fist to the face, sending him stumbling back a step.

  For half a second, the guy looked stunned, but then the rage took over again and he drew back his fist to aim a second punch at him. “Get the hell outta our business—”

  Jared brought an arm up to block the second hit, but before it landed, the guy was thrust back when Troy wrapped a hand around his forearm and wrenched him off-balance. Drunk as he was, the guy sprawled in the dirt, uttering a string of nonsensical swear words.