by Tawna Fenske
Willa, out there in the crowd, flanked by the two women she’d been with the first night he met her. Crap, he’d forgotten their names. Kayla and—something with an A?
It didn’t matter; his eyes were glued to Willa. She could be standing between Beyoncé and the Cookie Monster for all he knew. A surge of adrenaline rippled through him, and he closed his eyes, channeling all that energy into the song. His fingers flew over the frets as he wailed into the mic about longing and lust and desire so strong, it left you sleepless.
Basically, all the things that had been simmering under the surface of his skin since the night he slept with Willa. Since he left her house after a lazy pancake breakfast and a promise to call sometime.
That usually meant a few days, but idiot that he was, he ended up texting her two hours later. A text that went ignored until the following morning when she dashed off a perfunctory note about being really busy with work.
He thought she was blowing him off. Had still thought it up until the moment he spotted her in the crowd at his show. She wore a fitted black tank top and a little jean skirt, and the look she was giving him said this wasn’t a coincidence. She’d come here to see him. To watch him play.
He leaned into the mic and delivered the song’s final notes with gusto, mouth watering as he watched her hips sway to the music. She smiled at him, and Grady’s voice wobbled as he remembered what it felt like to sink inside her.
Damn, she’s beautiful.
The song wound down, and the drummer finished out the set with a flourish. Grady sang the final notes in a lust-fueled haze.
“That’s all for this set,” he said into the mic. “We’re gonna take a quick break and we’ll be back in a few minutes.”
He turned to put his guitar in the rack, wondering if he should play it cool. His bandmates headed for the bar where the flirty waitress had been hooking them up with free drinks all night. Maybe he should wander over there and let Willa come to him.
But his feet carried him halfway across the floor before he could give them other orders, and suddenly, he was standing next to Willa and her friends.
“Hey, it’s Smokey.” The dark-haired one nudged Willa in the ribs and grinned. “We haven’t been properly introduced, but I’m Kayla. Is it okay if we just keep calling you Smokey the Bare?”
Grady grinned, already liking Willa’s friends. “I’ll have it stitched on the back of my jump suit.”
The curly-haired blonde laughed. “Gotta love Willa’s gift for wordplay. I’m Aislin, by the way. Smokey does have a nice ring to it.”
Willa looked ready to run and hide in the bathroom, but she managed a nervous eye roll instead. “Very funny,” she told them. “You know damn well his name is Grady.”
Kayla made a half-hearted effort to wipe the smile off her face, but her somber look wasn’t too convincing. “That’s about all we know.”
“Willa’s not the sharing sort,” Aislin put in. “But we saw your truck pulling out of her driveway and put two and two together.”
Grady glanced at Willa, on the brink of commenting that he found her to be pretty damn sharing, but the discomfort in her eyes had him holding back. “I don’t kiss and tell.”
Willa glared at her girlfriends. “Weren’t you two headed to the bar?”
Kayla eyed him some more while Aislin glanced back toward where his bandmates had headed. “The line’s not bad yet.”
“It will be,” Willa insisted. “Better hurry.”
Aislin winked at him. “We can take a hint.” Still grinning, she grabbed Kayla’s arm and towed her away before Grady could pepper them with questions about Willa.
Did it mean anything that she’d talked with them about him? Not much, clearly, but if she was as tight-lipped as they claimed she was, maybe it meant something that they were treating him with friendly flirtation.
Stop grasping at straws.
“Sorry,” Willa offered as soon as her friends were out of earshot. “Does the Smokey the Bare humor annoy the crap out of you?”
“Not at all.” He stuck his hands in his pockets, determined to play this as cool as she was, though he had a killer urge to touch her. “Did you know it’s actually just Smokey Bear?”
Willa frowned. “What?”
“Smokey Bear, not Smokey the Bear,” he said. “That’s the name of the Forest Service mascot.”
She stared at him, those deep green eyes perplexed. “Did you just mansplain a fictional bear to me?” Her words were more teasing than offended, and she cocked her head to the side and looked at him. “Wait, is there seriously no ‘the’ in the title? It’s just Smokey Bear?”
“Yep,” he said, wondering if his knowledge of fire-suppression geekery made him more or less interesting to her. “The Forest Service launched Smokey Bear in the early forties to urge people to help prevent wildfires,” he said. “In the early fifties, Eddy Arnold had this big hit song called ‘Smokey the Bear.’”
“See? I knew I’d heard it with a ‘the’ in there.” Willa shifted a little, moving close enough that he could graze her elbow with his fingertips if he wanted to. God, he wanted to, but he held back. No sense acting like a possessive douchebag.
“Apparently, the songwriters just thought the rhythm flowed better with ‘the’ added,” he said. “But the Forest Service is always reminding people that’s not the real name. It’s just Smokey Bear.” He grinned, fully aware he sounded like a dork but finding it hard to care. “It’s one of those PR things that drives people batty.”
She laughed, and the sound gave Grady a warm glow in the pit of his stomach. “You’re a font of useful trivia, Smokey.”
“I do my best.”
Willa tipped her chin toward the stage. “You sounded really good up there. You’re a man of many talents, huh?”
“So it was good for you, too?” He grinned as her face turned pink again. “Or were you not making a sex joke?”
“No, I wasn’t.” She glanced around, a tiny ghost of a smile tugging the edges of her mouth. “But yeah, it was good. Stupendously amazing, if you want the truth.”
Hot damn.
It was all Grady could do to refrain from doing a fist pump or asking why she hadn’t called him back. None of those things would win him any cool points or get him any closer to setting that second date.
“When do you fly out again?” she asked, seemingly eager to change the subject.
“I’m on duty at the air base in a couple of days,” he said. “Whether I fly out depends on whether fires start popping up, but this time of year, they always do.”
“How long are the shifts?”
“Eight hours a day on base, but we’ll go for twenty-four hours straight if we’re out on a fire,” he said. “Sometimes longer. Forest fires don’t exactly follow a time clock.”
“Sounds brutal,” she said.
“It can be,” he admitted, shuffling his feet to stand just a half inch closer to her. “We’re on duty for twenty-one days at a stretch, but if we’re out on a fire, they don’t want us going more than fourteen days without a break. Usually just a day or two, but it’s something.”
“And you do that all summer?”
“Longer than that.” The crowd bumped him from behind, pushing him closer to Willa. It was his first time feeling grateful for being jarred. “The season starts early, sometimes in March. And the way the climate’s been lately, I can get sent out to fires in California as late as December.”
“Wow.” She sounded genuinely shocked. “That’s a long time to be on.”
“It’s even longer when I do Australia’s fire season,” he admitted. “I could pretty much work all year if I wanted to.”
“Do you want to?”
“Sometimes.” He shrugged. “I love the job. I love traveling around the country knocking out forest fires before they can get bad. I love the camarader
ie. And I love the feeling of jumping out of the plane, having the world spinning around me and the wind howling.”
Someone jostled her from behind, and Willa tipped forward into him. He caught her easily, thrilled by the excuse to touch her. He took his time letting go.
“Jumping out of a plane sounds terrifying,” she said.
He smiled. “There’s this moment right after the chute deploys, just after the bounce, when everything goes silent… You’re just drifting through space with nothing but the sound of your heartbeat thudding in your ears.”
“I can’t imagine that.” She shook her head. “You couldn’t pay me enough to jump out of an airplane.”
“It’s a good job,” he said. “Just not one I can do forever.”
“Physically, you mean?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged, oddly self-conscious about discussing his career with her. “Smokejumping’s a young man’s gig. It’s rough on your body, so you’ve gotta think ahead to what you’ll do when the aches and pains make it too dangerous to keep jumping.”
“And what will you do?”
He thought about what he’d admitted during their first date. His silly fantasy about running a bakery. It was more a joke than anything, just something to amuse himself with on sleepless nights.
The truth was a lot less amusing.
“I don’t really know.” His voice sounded tight, and he ordered himself to ease up. “I’m not big on making plans.”
She stared at him like he’d just spoken Yiddish. “Like—for your future?”
This seemed not to compute for a woman hell-bent on planning everything, even the number of dates she’d grant a guy before they’d had even one.
Grady shrugged, wondering how quickly he could change the subject. “Some guys end up becoming pilots when they’re done jumping. It’s a natural transition, and you get to keep your benefits.”
He was just spewing words now, and the way she watched his face told him she knew damn well there was more to the story.
More, like the fact that planning for the future scared the ever-loving shit out of him. Like the fact that somewhere in the back of his brain, he knew a job as dangerous as his meant there might not be a future.
It was all he could do to keep his face impassive, to let none of that fear show in his eyes. “Anyway, I’ll keep working the double seasons as long as I can,” he said, raking his fingers through his hair. “Summer season here, then southern hemisphere in the off-season. The money’s good.”
Willa nodded. “Gotta build up that nest egg.”
Before he could respond, her friends reappeared, each of them clutching two glasses.
“The waitress asked me to give you this,” Aislin said, handing him a glass. “Said it’s your favorite.”
“Thanks.” He took a sip and yep, it was his favorite IPA.
“Tell us about yourself, Grady,” Kayla chimed in. “We’re dying to know more about any guy who gets into Willa’s pants on a first date.”
“Not an everyday occurrence, in case you’re wondering,” Aislin said. “You must be something special?”
She posed it like a question, and Grady couldn’t figure out if he was expected to rattle off a list of things that made him special. He couldn’t come up with anything, so he was grateful when Willa rescued him.
“Cut it out.” She whacked her friend on the shoulder, making her slosh some of the drink she gripped in one hand. “You’re embarrassing the guy.”
Unembarrassed, Grady appreciated the rescuing anyway. “Willa’s amazing,” he said, resisting the urge to slip an arm around her waist. That would be too relationship-y, and they weren’t doing that.
But still, he brushed her hand with his. “The job keeps me gone a lot, so I don’t have a lot of time for dating.”
Aislin studied him as she handed one of the drinks to Willa. “Then the two of you should get along great,” she says. “Willa’s not big on relationships.”
“So I’ve heard.” He smiled at her and felt his chest squeeze when she smiled back.
Kayla made a clucking sound. “That look right there confirms you weren’t sleeping on her couch the other night.”
Aislin laughed. “Like there was any doubt. You think he slept over so he could reboot her computer or organize her spice cupboards?”
Kayla smiled and sipped her drink. “So that’s what the kids are calling it these days.”
Grady gulped his beer, enjoying this a helluva lot. They were teasing her, sure, but he didn’t get the sense she minded all that much. And from what he knew of Willa, she had to be every bit as good at dishing it out.
He looked at her over the rim of his glass. “The band’s all going to the Ramble Inn after the show,” he said. “You three are welcome to join us.”
Aislin shot a look toward the stage where the drummer—a third-year smokejumper named Ryan—was adjusting something on his kit. “If your friends are coming, I’m in.”
“I’m game.” Kayla eyed Tony, the bass player and one of Grady’s best friends on the crew. “You boys have obviously been eating your Wheaties.”
Grady laughed. “Blame the hour of mandatory PT every morning.” He glanced at Willa. “So how about it? Is it a date?”
Willa quirked an eyebrow at him. “We’re having our second date at a dive bar?”
Wait, no.
Shit.
Grady glanced at Willa’s friends, hoping they’d back him up on this. “Actually, it wouldn’t be a real date,” he said. “Your friends will be there; my friends will be there—it’s really more of a group hangout.”
“Excellent point.” Aislin flashed him a smile. “It’s no different than what we’re doing right now, and obviously this isn’t a date.”
“Obviously,” Kayla agreed.
He’d have to remember to send flowers to both of them. Or maybe just introduce them to his buddies.
Willa folded her arms over her chest, pushing her breasts up in a deliciously distracting display. “So this won’t be a second date?”
“Nope,” he said. “Guess we’ll have to do that some other time. Maybe when I’m off again in a few weeks?”
“All right.” She eyed him oddly, and he honestly couldn’t tell if she was annoyed or excited about the prospect. Maybe a little of both.
From the corner of his eye, he saw his bandmates reassembling onstage. It was time to get his ass back up there. “Will I see you at the Ramble Inn?”
“Maybe.” Willa surveyed the rest of the band. “As long as you tell me those guys are all fine, upstanding citizens who won’t roofie my friends’ drinks or grope them without consent.”
“There will be no roofie-ing and no nonconsensual groping,” he assured her. “Mostly because they’re not like that, but also because I’d junk-punch anyone who pulled that kind of shit.”
“Then we have a date.”
“No,” he said, backing toward the stage. “Definitely not a date.”
She saluted him as he ran back and hopped up onstage. He strapped on his guitar and started for the mic, then stopped himself. Turning back to his bandmates, he gestured them to huddle up.
“What?” Tony muttered, adjusting his bass.
“Slight tweak to the set list,” he said. “Help me out with this one.”
He named the song, promised to buy all the beer at the Ramble Inn if they went with it, then turned and stepped up to the mic.
“This next one goes out to Willa Frank,” he said.
He strummed a few chords, finding the right key. Then he hit the pedal and cranked it up to eleven with a metal version of “Smokey the Bear.”
Finding Willa in the crowd, he locked eyes with her as he belted out the words. “Smokey the Bear,” he sang. “Prowlin’ and a growlin’ and a sniffin’ the air.”
What had started as an inno
cent kids’ jingle became something altogether sexier as he howled the lyrics against the scream of the electric guitar. Out on the floor, Willa was laughing, but there was heat in her eyes. If she were any other woman, he’d be patting himself on the back right now, thinking his odds of getting laid were strong.
But she was Willa—beautiful, unpredictable, totally unique Willa—so all the rules flew out the window.
Grady closed his eyes and delivered the next verse with his heart pounding in his ears.
…
As it turned out, only Tony and a young rookie named Jimmy could make it out that night. Ryan had a date, Pete was coming down with something, and Archer was dead on his feet after ten days working a fire in Southern California.
Grady herded Tony and Jimmy inside like a prison guard escorting his charges into the cafeteria.
“Tell me again why it’s so important we go on this date with you,” Jimmy grumbled as they headed for their usual table in the back corner of the bar.
“It’s not a date,” Grady said. “It’s a gathering. Come on, we do this every time we play Boyton.”
Tony snorted. “Yeah, but you’re not usually this jacked up about it.”
True, though it annoyed Grady that they’d noticed.
“Whoa, the new bartender’s hot.” Jimmy nodded at the cute redhead behind the bar, who smiled back even bigger when her gaze snagged on the “Hart Valley Smokejumper” logo printed across his T-shirt.
Grady resisted the urge to whack Jimmy on the back of the head. The kid was still at that newbie stage where he got off on having women swoon when they found out what he did for a living. He hadn’t reached the stage yet where the girlfriends dropped like flies after discovering just how seldom a smokejumper stuck around. Being alone all the time was a definite downside of latching on to someone in this profession.
So was the constant worry that your significant other might not come home at all.
“Isn’t that your girl?” Tony’s voice jarred Grady’s attention off the bartender and over to the opposite side of the room.
Willa strode through the door, and Grady’s heart lurched into overdrive. Kayla and Aislin strolled in behind her, but Willa stole the show as far as Grady could see. Cheesy as hell, but it was like a spotlight shone down on her, illuminating her path from the door to the bar. He stared, admiring the sway of her hips, the fullness of her mouth, the way her hair brushed shoulders bared by the black tank top she wore. He couldn’t see her eyes from here, but he didn’t have to. The precise shade of sunlit greenish-brown had been burned into his brain.