Chasing Fire

by Нора Робертс

  “Is this why you were studying maps?” she asked him. “Looking for a picnic spot?”

  “That was a happy by-product. I haven’t lived here all my life, and I want to know where I am.” He scanned the canyon, the spills of water as they walked up the rising trail. “I like where I am.”

  “Was it always Northern California? Is there any reason we have to wait for the food to start the life story?”

  “I guess not. No, I started out in LA. My parents were in the entertainment industry. He was a cinematographer, she was a costume designer. They met on a set, and clicked.”

  The creek fell below as they climbed higher on the hillside.

  “So,” he continued, “they got married, had me a couple years later. I was four when they were killed in a plane crash. Little twin engine they were taking to the location for a movie.”

  Her heart cracked a little. “Gull, I’m so sorry.”

  “Me too. They didn’t take me, and they usually did if they were on the same project. But I had an ear infection, so they left me back with the nanny until it cleared up.”

  “It’s hard, losing parents.”

  “Vicious. There’s the log dam,” he announced. “Just as advertised.”

  She let it go as the trail approached the creek once more. She could hardly blame him for not wanting to revisit a little boy’s grief.

  “This is worth a lot more than a mile-and-a-half hike,” he said while the pond behind the dam sparkled as if strewn with jewels.

  Beyond it the valley opened like a gift, and rolled to the ring of mountains.

  “And the hamper’s going to be a lot lighter on the mile-and-a-half back.”

  Near the pond, under the massive blue sky, he set it down.

  “I worked a fire out there, the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness.” He stood, looking out. “Standing here, on a day like this, you’d never believe any of that could burn.”

  “Jumping one’s different.”

  “It’s sure a faster way in.” He flipped open the lid of the hamper, took out the blanket folded on top. She helped him spread it open, then sat on it cross-legged.

  “What’s on the menu?”

  He pulled out a bottle of champagne snugged in a cold sleeve. Surprised, touched, she laughed. “That’s a hell of a start—and you just don’t miss a trick.”

  “You said champagne picnic. For our entrée, we have the traditional fried chicken à la Marg.”

  “Best there is.”

  “I’m told you favor thighs. I’m a breast man myself.”

  “I’ve never known a man who isn’t.” She began to unload. “Oh, yeah, her red potato and green bean salad, and look at this cheese, the bread. We’ve got berries, deviled eggs. Fudge cake! Marg gave us damn near half of one of her fudge cakes.” She glanced up. “Maybe she’s in love with you.”

  “I can only hope.” He popped the cork. “Hold out your glass.”

  She reached for it, then caught the label on the bottle. “Dom Pérignon. Iron Man’s car and James Bond’s champagne.”

  “I have heroic taste. Hold out the glass, Rowan.” He filled it, then his own. “To wilderness picnics.”

  “All right.” She tapped, sipped. “Jesus, this is not cheap tequila at Get a Rope. I see why 007 goes for it. How’d you get this?”

  “They carry it in town.”

  “You’ve been into town today? What time did you get up?”

  “About eight. I never made it to the shower last night, and smelled bad enough to wake myself up this morning.”

  He opened one of the containers, and after breaking off a chunk of the baguette, spread it with soft, buttery cheese. Offered it. “I’m not especially rich, I don’t think.”

  She studied him as flavors danced on her tongue. Caught in a pretty breeze, his hair danced around his face in an appealing tangle of brown and sun-struck gold.

  “I want to know. But I don’t want bad memories to screw your picnic.”

  “That’s about it for the bad. I’m not sure I’d remember them, or more than vaguely, if it wasn’t for my aunt and uncle. My mother’s sister,” he explained. “My parents named them as my legal guardians in their wills. They came and got me, took me up north, raised me.”

  He took out plates, flatware as he spoke, while she gave him room for the story.

  “They talked about my parents all the time, showed me pictures. They were tight, the four of them, and my aunt and uncle wanted me to keep the good memories. I have them.”

  “You were lucky. After something horrible, you were lucky.”

  His gaze met hers. “Really lucky. They didn’t just take me in. I was theirs, and I always felt that.”

  “The difference between being an obligation, even a well-tended one, and belonging.”

  “I never had to learn how wide that difference is. My cousins—one’s a year older, one’s a year younger—never made me feel like an outsider.”

  That played a part in the balance of him, she decided, in the ease and confidence.

  “They sound like great people.”

  “They are. When I graduated from college, I had a trust fund, pretty big chunk. The money from my parents’ estate, the insurance, all that. They’d never used a penny, but invested it for me.”

  “And you bought an arcade.”

  He lifted his champagne. “I like arcades. The best ones are about families. Anyway, my younger cousin mostly runs it, and Jared—the older one—he’s a lawyer, and takes care of that sort of thing. My aunt supervises and helps plan events, and for the last couple years my uncle’s handled the PR.”

  “For families by family. It’s a good thing.”

  “It works for us.”

  “How do they feel about your summers?”

  “They’re okay with it. I guess they worry, but they don’t weigh me down with that. You grew up with a smoke jumper.” They added chicken and salad to plates. “How’d you handle it?”

  “By thinking he was invincible. Talk about superheroes. Mmm,” she added when she bit through crisp skin to tender meat. “God bless Marg. I really considered him immortal,” Rowan added. “I never worried about him. I was never afraid for him, or myself. He was... Iron Man.”

  Gull poured two more glasses. “I’ll definitely drink to Iron Man Tripp. He’s why we’re both here.”

  “Weird, but true.” She ate, relaxed in the moment and felt easier with him, she realized, than she’d expected to be. “I don’t know how much of the story you’ve heard. About my parents.”

  “Some.”

  “A lot of some’s glossed over. My father—you’ve probably seen pictures—he was, still is, pretty wow.”

  “He passed the wow down to you.”

  “In a Valkyrie kind of way.”

  “You’re not the sort who decides to die in the battle.”

  “You know your Norse mythology.”

  “I have many pockets of strange, inexplicable knowledge.”

  “So I’ve noticed. In any case, a man who looks like Iron Man, does what he does... women flock.”

  “I have the same problem. It’s a burden.”

  She snorted, ate some potato salad. “But he wasn’t one for coming off a fire, or out of the season, and looking for the handy bang.”

  She arched a brow as Gull merely grinned. “It’s not his way. Like me, he’s lived here all his life. If he’d had that kind of rep, it would’ve stuck. He met my mother when she came to Missoula, picked up work as a waitress. She was looking for adventure. She was beautiful, a little on the wild side. Anyway, they hooked up, and oops, she got knocked up. They got married. They met in early July, and by the middle of September they’re married. Stupid, from a rational point of view, but I have to be grateful seeing as I’m sitting here telling the tale.”

  He’d known he’d been wanted, all of his life. How much did it change the angles when you, as she did, considered yourself an oops?

  “We’ll both be grateful.”

  “I thin
k it must’ve been exciting for her.” Rowan popped a fat blackberry into her mouth as she spoke. “Here’s this gorgeous man who wore a flight suit like some movie star, one of the elite, one at the top of his game, and he picks her. At the same time, she’s rebelling against a pretty strict, stuffy upbringing. She was nearly ten years younger than Dad, and probably enjoyed the idea of playing house with him. Over the winter, he’s starting up his business, but he’s around. My grandparents are, too, and she’s carrying the child of their only son. She’s the center. Her parents have cut her off, just severed all ties.”

  “How do people do that? How do they justify that, live with that?”

  “They think they’re right. And I think that added to the excitement for her. And in the spring, there I am, so she’s got a new baby to show off. Doting grandparents—a husband who’s besotted, and still around.”

  She chose another berry, let it lie on her tongue a moment, sweet and firm. “Then a month later, the season starts, and he’s not around every day. Now it’s about changing diapers, and walking a squalling baby in the middle of the night. It’s not such an adventure now, or so exciting.”

  She reached for another piece of chicken. “He’s never, not once, said a word against her to me. What I know of that time I got from reading letters he’d locked up, riffling through papers, eavesdropping—or occasionally catching my grandmother when she was pissed off and her tongue was just loose enough.”

  “You wanted to know,” Gull said simply.

  “Yeah, I wanted to know. She left when I was five months old. Just took me over to my grandparents, asked if they’d watch me while she ran some errands, and never came back.”

  “Cold.” He couldn’t quite get his mind around that kind of cold, or what that kind of cold would do to the child left behind. “And clueless,” he added. “It says she decided this isn’t what I want after all, so I’ll just run away.”

  “That sums it. My dad tracked her down, a couple of times. Made phone calls, wrote letters. Her line, because I saw the letters she wrote back, was it was all his fault. He was the cold and selfish one, had wrecked her emotionally. The least he could do was send her some money while she was trying to recover. She’d promise to come back once she had, claimed she missed me and all that.”

  “Did she come back?”

  “Once, on my tenth birthday. She walks into my party, all smiles and tears, loaded down with presents. It’s not my birthday party anymore.”

  “No, it’s her Big Return, putting her in the center again.”

  Rowan stared at him for a long moment. “That’s exactly it. I hated her at that moment, the way a ten-year-old can. When she tried to hug me, I pushed her away. I told her to get out, to go to hell.”

  “Sounds to me that at ten you had a good bullshit detector. How’d she handle it?”

  “Big, fat tears, shock, hurt—and bitter accusations hurled at my father.”

  “For turning you against her.”

  “And again, you score. I stormed right out the back door, and I’d have kept on going if Dad hadn’t come out after me. He was pissed, all the way around. I knew better than to speak to anyone like that, and I was going back inside, apologizing to my mother. I said I wouldn’t, he couldn’t make me, and until he made her leave, I was never going back in that house. I was too mad to be scared. Respect was god in our house. You didn’t lie and you didn’t sass—the big two.”

  “How did he handle it?”

  “He picked me right up off the ground, and I know he was worked up enough to cart me right back in there. I punched him, kicked him, screamed, scratched, bit. I didn’t even know I was crying. I do know if he’d dragged me in, if he’d threatened me, ordered me, if he who’d never raised a hand to me had raised it, I wouldn’t have said I was sorry.”

  “Then you’d’ve broken the other big one, by lying.”

  “The next thing I knew we were sitting on the ground in the backyard, I’m crying all over his shoulder. And he’s hugging me, petting me and telling me I was right. He said, ‘You’re right, and I’m sorry.’ He told me to sit right there, and he’d go in and make her go away.”

  She tipped back her glass. “And that’s what he did.”

  “You got lucky, too.”

  “Yeah, I did. She didn’t.”

  Rowan paused, looked out over the pond. “A little over two years later, she goes into a convenience store to pick up something, walks in on a robbery. And she’s dead, wrong place, wrong time. Horrible. Nobody deserves to die bleeding on the floor of a quick market in Houston. God, how did I get on all this when there’s fudge cake and champagne?”

  “Finish it.”

  “Nothing much left. Dad asked me if I’d go to the funeral with him. He said he needed to go, that if I didn’t need or want to, that was okay. I said I’d think about it, then later my grandmother came into my room, sat on the bed. She told me I needed to go. That as hard as it might be now, it would be harder on me later if I didn’t. That if I did this one thing, I would never have to have any regrets. So I went, and she was right. I did what I needed to do, what my father needed me to do, and I’ve got no regrets.”

  “What about her family?”

  “Her parents cold-shouldered us. That’s who they are. I’ve never actually spoken to them. I know her sister, my aunt. She made a point of calling and writing over the years, even came out with her family a couple times. They’re nice people.

  “And that concludes our exchange of life stories.”

  “I imagine there’s another chapter or two, for another time.”

  She eyed him as he refilled her glass. “You stopped drinking, and you keep filling my glass. Are you trying to get me drunk and naked?”

  “Naked’s always the goal.” He said it lightly as he sensed she needed to change the mood. “Drunk? Not when I’ve witnessed you suck down tequila shots. I’m driving,” he reminded her.

  “Responsible.” She toasted him. “And that leaves more for me. Did you know Dobie and Stovic scrubbed up and painted my room?”

  “I heard Dobie got to first base with you.”

  She let out that big, bawdy laugh. “If he considers that first base, he’s never hit a solid single.” She took her fork, carved off a big mouthful of cake right out of the container. Her eyes laughed as she stuffed it in, then closed on a long, low moan. “Now, that is cake, and the equivalent of a grand slam. Enough fire and chocolate, and I can go all season without sex.”

  “Don’t be surprised if the supply of chocolate disappears in a fiftymile radius.”

  “I like your style, Gull.” She forked up another hefty bite. “You’re pretty to look at, you’ve got a brain, you can fight and you do what needs doing when we’re on the line. Plus, you can definitely hit a solid single. But there are a couple of problems.”

  She stabbed another forkful, this time offering it to him.

  “First, I know you’ve got deep pockets. If I slept with you now, you might think I did it because you’re rich.”

  “Not that rich. Anyway.” He considered, smiled. “I can live with that.”

  “Second.” She held out more cake, then whipped it around, slid it into her own mouth. “You’re a smoke jumper in my unit.”

  “You’re the kind of woman who breaks rules. Codes, no. Rules, yes.”

  “That’s an interesting distinction.”

  Full, she stretched out on the blanket, studied the sky. “Not a cloud,” she murmured. “The long-range forecast is for hot and dry. There won’t be a lot of champagne picnics this season.”

  “Then we should appreciate this one.”

  He leaned down, laid his lips on hers in a long, slow, upside-down kiss. She tasted of champagne and chocolate, smelled of peaches on a hot summer day.

  She carried scars, body and heart, and still faced life with courage.

  When her hands came to his face he lingered over those flavors, those scents, the fascinating contrasts of her, sliding just a little deeper in
to the lush.

  Then she eased his face up. “You’re swinging for a double.”

  “It worked for Spider-Man.”

  “He was hanging upside down, in the rain—and that was after he’d kicked bad-guy ass. Not to mention, he didn’t get to second.”

  “I’m in danger of being crazy about you, if only for your deep knowledge of superhero action films.”

  “I’m trying to save you from that fate.” She patted the blanket beside her. “Why don’t you stretch out in the next stage of picnic tradition while I explain?”

  Gull shifted the hamper aside, lay down hip-to-hip with her.

  “If we slept together,” Rowan began, “there’s no doubt we’d bang all the drums, ring all the bells.”

  “Sound all the trumpets.”

  “Those, too. But after, there’s the inevitable tragedy. You’d fall in love with me. They all do.”

  He heard the humor in her voice, idly linked his fingertips with hers. “You have that power?”

  “I do and, though God knows I’ve tried, can’t control it. And you—I’m telling you this because, as I said, I like your style. You, helpless, hopeless, would be weak in love, barely able to eat or sleep. You’d spend all the profits you make off quarters pumped into Skee-Ball on elaborate gifts in a vain attempt to win my heart.”

  “They could be pretty elaborate,” he told her. “Skee-Ball’s huge.”

  “Still, my heart can’t be bought. I’d be forced to break yours, coldly and cruelly, to spare you from further humiliation. And also because your pathetic pleas would irritate the shit out of me.”

  “All that,” he said after a moment, “from one round in the sack?”

  “I’m afraid so. I’ve lost count of the shoes I’ve had to throw away because the soles were stained with the bleeding hearts I’ve crushed along the way.”

  “That’s a fair warning. I’ll risk it.”

  He rolled over, took her mouth.

  For a moment, she thought the top of her head simply shot off. Explosions, heat, eruptions burst through her body like a fireball. She lost her breath, and what she thought of as simple common sense, in the wicked whir of want.