Sweet Burn

by Anne Marsh

  “I’m going to check in with the fire chief and the sheriff,” he said to Jack. “See where we’re at. I’ll call you back when I know what’s up.”

  He had a pretty good guess though.

  “They’re calling for a shelter in place,” Jack said, confirming Mack’s guess. “The highway only runs north/south. The way north is cut off by the fire and there are spot fires up and down the south route. They need to let it burn over, at least until they can get the tankers up and start dumping water on it.”

  “Got it.” He tapped Call End and slid the phone back into his pocket. They had reinforcements and two engines, which was something to work with, but shelters in place were tricky. The sheriff and the fire chief had their heads together, but they looked up as he approached. The chief’s gaze dropped to Mack’s T-shirt and then back up.

  When Mack identified himself, the fire chief nodded. “We were told we had a jumper here.”

  His guys were already spraying down the building and surrounding vegetation. The sheriff moved toward the casino, presumably getting ready to deliver the bad news to the happy gamblers inside. When the remaining police officers began pushing cars away from the building and towards the outer edge of the parking lot, Mack handed his keys to Mimi. “Move our Harleys over there on the south side of the dumpster.”

  Thank God, she didn’t ask questions, just moved off at a run. The bikes were the last thing he was worried about right now, but it gave her something to do and gave him space to ask his questions.

  “The plan is to shelter in place?” He made it a question but, Jesus, the truth was obvious. The fire was creeping down from the hills too fast and if the police were moving the cars, then they wanted those fuel tanks as far from the main building as possible. The hoses roared, slamming water into the side of the building. Had anyone inside had figured it out yet?

  “Yeah.” The fire chief eyed him speculatively. “You done this before?”

  He gave the man a level look. “Only on paper. I’m a smoke jumper. Where we go, there aren’t too many buildings.”

  “Welcome to my version of hell.” The fire chief flashed him a tired smile. “We’ve been trying to knock down the fire north of here, but no luck. She’s going to have to burn.”

  “Is there time to evacuate?” Mack eyed the line of fire again. It had inched past the knobby outcrop of black rock he’d picked as his spot point. The line was definitely moving fast, fueled by the breeze on his face that would have been nice, if it wasn’t thick with smoke. It looked to him like they were out of time all right.

  The fire chief shook his head. “We’ve already got one hotshot team holed up in a canyon. The shift caught them unawares.”

  Mack cursed. Taking cover in the field was always a risky proposition. “Did they have to deploy?” he asked, referring to the portable fire shelters they all carried. Those shelters could save lives, but they weren’t infallible and there was plenty of room for operator error. Plus, if the fire didn’t move over quickly, the shelters were useless. The protection they provided was purely temporary.

  “We don’t know. We lost radio contact.”

  Hell. That sounded bad, but it wasn’t something he could fix or afford to worry about now. He had a casino full of people to keep safe.

  “One road out?”

  “With fires burning on both sides.” The fire chief motioned toward the casino. “You should join the good sheriff in there and convince people not to run. I’m hoping people listen. How many do you think we have inside?”

  Mack did a quick estimate. “Eighty or ninety minimum on the floor alone, and that excludes anyone working behind the scenes in the kitchen or up in the rooms.”

  “If they panic and hit the road, some of them will make it out.” They both eyed the parking lot’s single exit. Even without the police cruiser, the lone exit point made for a hell of a bottleneck and people got funny. Carpooling wouldn’t be high on the list of priorities, not when it meant leaving your own car and stuff behind to burn. Plus, people died trying to run. If the road was under siege, sheltering in place was the safest option they had.

  No way would he get these people out in time. He had at least twenty cars in this parking lot alone, and the employees parked on the other side of the building. Sure, some of them would make it. Some, but not all. The busses wouldn’t have time to load everyone. Plus, when the fire blew down, anyone still on the open road would die.

  Mimi loped back toward him. The expression on her face said she knew they were in trouble. He grabbed her hand and threaded his fingers through hers. Fuck. He so did not want her here. She should be back in his bed or hers, warm and safe. She shouldn’t be anywhere near a firestorm. Of course, every single person inside the casino probably felt the same way.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll go back inside and help the sheriff communicate the happy news.”

  “Mack?” Mimi’s voice asked all sorts of questions he didn’t know how to answer.

  He looked back at the fire line moving too quickly toward them. She was outside. She could leave right now and she wouldn’t bottleneck in the parking lot, but…a motorcycle offered no protection from the flames and the smoke. If she had to ride through any part of the road and there were flames, there wouldn’t be much of anything between her and the fire. She was safer here with him.

  “We’re sheltering in place,” he told her.

  She blinked at him. Looked back at the fire that was coming closer and closer. “We don’t want to leave?”

  “There’s nowhere to go,” he said quietly.

  ***

  Mimi followed Mack inside. He was all firefighter now, his hard gaze assessing and weighing what he saw outside and translating that into an action plan. The people inside didn’t know how lucky they were to have Mack fighting for them. Trailing along behind him, she felt useless. Her firefighting skills didn’t extend beyond dialing 9-1-1 and stop-drop-and-roll.

  She looked at him and her heart clenched. Damn it. Lusting after him was one thing, but falling for him any other way was more dangerous than the fire heading their way. She didn’t have a damned thing to offer him but more trouble. She could hear the sounds of cars being pushed away from the building, the sheriff’s deputies understandably more concerned with clearing a safety zone than with property damage. The wind had picked up in the few minutes they’d been outside and there was another sound now, one that she didn’t want to think about too closely. The sound of flames chewing through the scrub brush. Oh, God.

  She would not panic.

  She would do something that counted. Just once. Just this one damned time when it mattered most. She grabbed the back of Mack’s T-shirt and yanked hard. She couldn’t just drift along in his wake.

  “Tell me how I can help,” she ordered.

  Her firefighter looked down at her, but his feet didn’t stop moving toward the building. He opened the door. “We’ve got maybe thirty minutes until the fire reaches the parking lot. After that it will take ten to fifteen minutes for the front to pass over us. Everyone needs to gather in the center of the casino floor, away from the windows and the exterior of the building. Grab all the bottled water you can and pass it out. People should dampen something that’s cotton and use that to cover their mouths if smoke starts getting inside.”

  She could do that.

  The problem was, it didn’t seem like much of anything.

  Mack, on the other hand, was a bona fide hero, ready and able to rescue an entire fucking casino of people. Okay. He had help in the form of two engines’ worth of firefighters, a sheriff, and a handful of deputies, but he was also the guy everyone gravitated toward. When Mack spoke up, other people listened.

  It only took him a moment to swing himself up on top of a card table and give a loud whistle that caught everyone’s attention.

  “Here’s the deal,” he said and then he laid it out for everyone.

  What they would do.

  What they would not do.

&n
bsp; So strong. So absolutely sure that he could and would keep every single person inside the building safe. You didn’t have to justify yourself to Mack or earn his approval. If you needed help, he gave it. For him, it was that simple.

  She wished she were the same.

  She’d never really thought much about dying, but funny how a wildland fire bearing down on her made those thoughts take precedence. She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to be having some kind of personal epiphany or watching Technicolor flashes of her life’s highlights reel, but neither of those options were happening. Instead, she had an urge to stand up and chant fuck you, universe. That was definitely more her style.

  Letting the people around her know that she was scared…

  Nope. That wasn’t happening. Life had taught her early on to never show vulnerability. It was kind of like showing white belly to a predator—life would take a big ass bite and, even if it didn’t kill her, it sure would hurt. She could spend all the time in the world trying to be perfect, but it wasn’t going to work.

  She was damned imperfect.

  In fact, now she thought about it and did one of those personal inventories the self-help books recommended (in all of ten seconds because, hey—wildland fire headed her way), she’d never had a future as the poster child for good.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Waiting had never been something Mimi did well. The strange mixture of light and dark outside made her feel on edge and uneasy. When she snuck away from the group and peeked outside through the front doors, the sun was trying to come up while the smoke from the fire choked out all the natural light, leaving only orange and black. The fire chief had herded everyone onto the casino’s main floor minutes later. His radio crackled, broadcasting updates from the field. Many of the clusters of people seemed nervous, clutching cell phones and dialing frantically. She supposed it was interesting to see who was snapping selfies and documenting the fire, versus who was waiting it out with a loved one on the other end.

  She didn’t have anyone to call.

  Other than Mack, who was right here.

  There was no one who needed to know she was sheltering in place in a casino that was about to be overrun by a wildfire front and that someone should check and make sure she was okay. And didn’t that feel like yanking a Band-Aid off feelings she’d pushed down and pretended were a-okay? All those people had someone to call. Someones who cared about them and were worried and who would be praying, cursing, hopping in their cars, because they’d do anything to bring their loved ones home.

  She had a bar.

  And maybe she had Mack. She leaned back against Mack, his knees up and braced on either side of her. His chest would have made the perfect pillow but resting was out of the question.

  “How long?” she asked.

  “Jack estimates fifteen minutes tops.”

  “You really think this is going to work?” She didn’t ask her question too loudly. She didn’t need to start a stampede. The fire chief had made it plenty clear what would happen if someone popped a door when the firestorm passed over.

  “It’s not my first choice but, yeah.”

  The chief had stationed his firefighters on the outer perimeter. Mack wasn’t over there with them, which struck her as odd. Usually, wherever the firefighters went, there went Mack. “You need to go stand with them?”

  She couldn’t interpret his expression. “You want me to go?”

  Absolutely not. If she had to do this (and clearly Mother Nature wasn’t giving anyone here a choice), having Mack by her side was the only way she wouldn’t turn into a gibbering basket case.

  “Stay,” she said and he nodded.

  He pulled back the collar of her jacket and fished for the tag on her T-shirt. “You wearing any synthetics?”

  “Is it going to matter?”

  “It shouldn’t.” He hesitated. “But if something goes really wrong, Mimi, you need to strip off anything that isn’t all-natural, okay?”

  He’d been given a jacket from the fire engine and he tugged off her leather jacket, substituting the firefighter gear. The casino floor was singularly lacking in windows, which was a win for them. No windows meant no glass to blow out. Unfortunately, it also meant no way to look out, either. She hated not knowing what was coming.

  “The tankers can go up in another ten minutes. The IC is sending two our way.”

  Ten minutes plus however long it took the planes to get here and dump their load. What if they missed? What if they couldn’t dump enough water? She needed to not think.

  “Distract me?” She didn’t want to imagine the building burning around them.

  He scooped her up and deposited her on his lap. “We could get married now.”

  “With a fire coming?” She hated excuses but, really… this wasn’t the time to stage a wedding.

  “Five minutes.” He sounded certain. “That’s all the time it would take.”

  “You need a license.” A guess on her part, but she was fairly certain that no one could just up and get married in five minutes.

  He patted the pocket of his jacket. “I’ve got one.”

  Right. Because most guys carried a marriage license around in their pockets. Of course, this was the same man who’d produced the most beautiful engagement ring she’d ever seen. She twisted the ring on her finger. This was crazy. Even Mack couldn’t pull off an insta-wedding with a fire storm bearing down on them. Could he?

  “You also need a priest. Or an officiant.”

  She had no idea why she kept manufacturing excuses. Mack always did things on his own terms. If anyone could hold off a fire and get married at the same time, it would be Mack. Rio and Gia had gotten married in the middle of freefalling, after all. She could imagine Mack doing that. Not to her, of course, because she wasn’t jumping out of a plane for anything. But she could definitely imagine him speaking his vows in mid-air, all laughing daredevil as the plane fell away and the ground rose up.

  Mack nodded towards a man leaning against a bank of slot machines. The man was on the far side of sixty, his skin weather-beaten and bronzed by the sun. Dark hair hung past his shoulders in a neat braid. He was wearing a jean jacket, T-shirt, and cowboy boots. On the outside, he didn’t look much different from many of the casino’s guests and employees. He certainly didn’t look like a priest or a minister or even any justice of the peace she’d ever seen.

  “He’s a medicine man. He can do it.”

  She opened her mouth. For weeks, she’d run from the guy and now that he had a ring on her finger, he wanted to take their relationship to the next level in less than an hour?

  “Think about it,” Mack said, brushing a kiss over her mouth and sliding her off his lap. “I’m going to go over there and give him the license just in case. He has to read it before he can marry us.”

  Wow. Mack had done his research. She watched him go, watched him come back with the alleged medicine man in tow. She had no idea what she was going to say. She’d spent so much time saying no that anything else wasn’t possible, was it? She looked at Mack. Really looked. He was the same hot guy with an amazing body and all the right moves in bed—where he was still holding out for a ring—he’d always been, but he was something more. Being near him heated her body right up, but he was also the kind of man she actually could imagine spending the rest of her life with.

  Approximately all fourteen minutes of it.

  Getting married was what Mack wanted, and maybe it wouldn’t hurt her to be a little less selfish. Getting married didn’t mean they had to stay married, after all. He could have his ceremony and, if the firestorm didn’t pass them over, then they could annul the marriage. After all, she knew plenty about annulments. These were just words, words that would make Mack happy. She could do married for thirteen minutes, forty…she had no idea how long it took to die in a firestorm.

  Mack paused and squatted down beside the dealer who had handled their bet. The older woman was curled up with a man wearing a matching uniform. Mimi cou
ld just make out the sweet expression on her face as she whispered something to the guy. Her husband, Mimi realized. She hadn’t thought about how many people did that, growing older together. Weathering life’s ups and downs, the good and the bad. It was…sweet. Sweet and powerful and something that made her throat close up just a little.

  Or maybe that was just the smoke. Mack had ordered the HVAC system shut down, because they didn’t want to pull smoke and ash inside the building, but something had to have slipped through. She curled her fingers into her water-soaked hand towel. She was ready. She could do this.

  Mack roundtripped it, bringing the medicine man, the dealer, and her husband with him.

  “How about it?” Mack extended a hand to her. “Simone and Alex here have agreed to stand as our witnesses. Roy will marry us.”

  She looked up at the dealer, who had a big smile splitting her face as she leaned into her husband’s side. Sure enough, the name tag on the woman’s shirt read Simone. A corresponding grin stretched across her husband’s face. The two of them were clearly and completely on board with Mack’s crazy plan.

  It was crazy.

  Completely irresponsible and ridiculous.

  And yet when he held out his hand, she took it, letting him pull her to her feet.

  “Okay,” she said. There. She sounded confident. Sure. Not like she’d temporarily promised away her freedom (and possibly her heart, although she was not going to think about that now). Four letters, two syllables—and everything changed.

  A ring of faces turned towards them. A last-minute wedding was clearly the distraction everybody needed to take their minds off what might be happening outside. Mimi looked around, registering curious, scared, happy, terrified. There were plenty of emotions in her audience.

  Roy spread a hotel towel on the carpet. “Pretend,” he said and she thought: I can do that. She was so very good at pretending. “This is your wedding blanket.”