Burn So Bright

by Jennifer Bernard

  Suzanne’s shoulders were quaking with silent laughter. Josh bent to her ear and whispered, “I hope you’re taking notes. That commando thing is worth checking into. Not that I don’t love these.” He trailed his finger along the waistband of her panties.

  In response, she tickled him in the ribs. He made a sound that caught the woman’s attention.

  “Hello, is someone in here?”

  “Yes, just fixing my dress,” Suzanne called. “Don’t mind me. Good luck with your date.”

  The woman “hmmphed” and left the restroom. As soon as she left, Josh pushed open the door of the stall. He hurried to the door and snagged the club soda still sitting outside.

  When he ducked back in, Suzanne was already dressed and twisting her hair back into a knot. Staring into the mirror, she waved off the soda. “Never mind. It’s already nearly dry and right now it’s the least of my worries.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s the worst of your worries?” He tucked the club soda into her bag in case she changed her mind. “That she might have caught us eavesdropping? She shouldn’t worry. I’m erasing that from the memory banks starting now.”

  “No, it’s not that.” She finished with her hair and turned to face him. A troubled expression darkened her deep blue eyes. “Logan has...well, he’s never kissed me like that.”

  Josh shoved his hands into his pockets. “What do you mean, ‘like that’?”

  “Don’t worry, it’s a compliment. To you, I mean. And I must have had a lot of champagne or I wouldn’t be saying all this. He’s never kissed me like…like he couldn’t ever get enough. Like he wanted a kiss more than breathing.”

  Oooooh. Suddenly this seemed like a tricky situation. He didn’t want to come between Suzanne and her fiancé. A fiancé was a solid thing to have, and Josh had nothing solid to offer. He and Suzanne were completely different and they were headed in opposite directions. He couldn’t allow her to think that anything else was on the agenda.

  “I like breathing too. It’s almost as good as kissing,” he quipped.

  “But the way you kissed me…”

  “I know. It was amazing.” He preened like some kind of cocky asshole. “I’ve been told I’m a champion kisser. Don’t let it worry you.”

  Frowning, she pulled a shimmery blue shawl from her bag and draped it across her front, where the champagne had spilled. “So you kiss everyone like that?”

  Her tone of voice was dubious, and he couldn’t blame her. That kiss was not a regular everyday kind of smooch. It was more of a once-in-a-lifetime thing. He needed some time to figure out why it felt that way. For now, he had to laugh it off.

  “Listen, if Logan needs a few lessons, I can probably work with him,” he said, mock-seriously. “But my kind of skill and experience doesn’t come cheap.”

  Ah, there it was. Suzanne’s patented “look of scorn.” He didn’t usually care much for that look, but right now, it was for the best. “I’m sure we’ll muddle through without the mighty Josh Marshall’s kissing lessons.”

  “Good. After all, you probably picked up a few tips yourself during the kiss.”

  Shaking her head in disgust, she pushed past him. “You know what? I think I’m going to block the whole thing from my mind.”

  He followed her across the tiles toward the door. “I would too, but there’s no way I’m forgetting the way you moaned. ‘Ooooh, Josh. Oooh, baby. Oooh, that feels so good.’”

  She flung open the freakishly well-oiled door, making it bang against the wall. “I didn’t say anything like that, you idiot.”

  “There was moaning.”

  “There will be moaning if you don’t stop saying silly stuff.” She clicked down the hallway in her little silvery strappy sandals, which made him remember how it felt when she wrapped her leg around him.

  Which practically made him moan right there in the hallway. “See you around, Suzie Q,” he said in a voice too low for her to hear.

  3

  Josh slept badly that night. It had been a brutal fire season so far, and it was only August. The hotshot crew had been working nonstop and everyone was on edge.

  And he kept having that dream. The one where he was back in the fire shelter in Big Canyon, with the wildfire roaring over him. Over all of them. Fire and death raining from the sky. In the dream, the wind kept whipping the thin aluminum fabric away from his body, exposing him to the blast of the furnace of flames. Then it changed, and he was hiding under a bed and the howl of the fire turned into voices yelling. Familiar, beloved voices.

  He woke up sweating and shuddering, and blinked at the sun filtering through the casement windows. They were set high on the concrete walls of the dorm, which was an old Army barracks that had recently been transformed into a fire and rescue compound. From the angle of the sun, it was still early. In the summer, it was hard to shake the habit of waking up at dawn.

  He jumped out of bed and pulled on his workout clothes. His lifelong habit was to run first thing in the morning, no matter what time it was or what he’d done the night before. From personal experience, he could confirm that running was the best hangover cure around. The other guys teased him about his punishing workouts. But he enjoyed beating his body up. It temporarily blocked out the crap that still bounced around in his head.

  He jogged lightly down the hallway, feeling every sore muscle he’d acquired during the last week of cutting line. In the mess room, he spotted Kit Evans, who was kicking back on the old couch with a paperback. “What’s up, Kit?” he asked the young Texan, who didn’t look up.

  “I’m not running with you, so forget it.” He turned a page. It was a sore point with the crew that Josh always woke up chipper.

  “Am I the only morning person in this whole crew?”

  “Yes.” Kit raised his book higher to hide his face. “Leave me alone.”

  Josh gave up on Kit and cruised over to the table, where Rollo huddled over a tall thermos of coffee like a mama bear protecting a cub.

  “Morning, champ!” Josh greeted him brightly. “What’s cooking?”

  Rollo clamped his big hands over his ears. “Can you get your sunshiny ass out of here? Go run, or skip to my lou, or whatever.”

  “Big guy have a wee bit too much champagne last night?” Josh breezed toward the coffeepot, tweaking him in the ribs on his way past. It was a bit like poking a bear. Rollo gave a low rumble of warning. Good thing Josh had his Adidas on. He picked up the pace and jogged out the front door. Who needed coffee anyway?

  “Marsh!” Rollo yelled after him. “Answer your damn phone. If it goes off one more time this morning, it’s going under my boot.”

  Warily, Josh turned, still jogging in place, to make sure Rollo wasn’t trying to lure him back for revenge. But the big guy didn’t really operate that way. Rollo was all heart. Well, heart and a lot of beard. He made the lumberjack look work like nobody’s business. But right now his soulful blue eyes were looking a little bloodshot and he was brandishing a cell phone in his big fist.

  “Sorry, man.” Josh jogged back and took the phone from him. He’d left it plugged in to charge last night and missed five calls. None of them from the lovely and amazingly kissable Suzanne, sadly. All of them from his brothers. He handed the phone back to Rollo. “Here. Got your boots on?”

  Understanding flashed across Rollo’s face. “Family drama?”

  “Not talking about it.”

  “Come on, bro. You gotta at least see if it’s an emergency.”

  “You don’t get it. It’s always an emergency. And yet, it’s never an emergency.” But he took the phone back and clicked on the first message, which was from his brother Chad.

  “Dude, you gotta call Mom. She let the bull out of the pasture last night. He went and trampled all of Dad’s turnips. He’s mad as hell.”

  Josh erased that message, and the next one, which was from his brother Andy. “Dad just drove a tractor over Mom’s alfalfa. He’s going crazy and he won’t listen to either of us. Will you call him? Plea
se, bro. You gotta do something.”

  Erase.

  Next message, from Chad: “You know what, Josh? If you’re going to be fifteen hundred miles away, the least you could do is help us out long-distance. Just give a fucking call, would you? They’re trying to kill each other.”

  All of Josh’s good-morning cheerfulness evaporated like mist at noon. His parents had fought their way through marriage and were in the midst of the slowest, most agonizing divorce in the world. It had started when he was still at home, in high school. And it was still going, eleven years later. They were officially separated now. But neither was willing to let go of the ranch, so they’d divided it in two.

  Clearly, that was a better solution in theory than in reality.

  Josh punched Chad’s number and waited, fuming. As soon as his brother answered, he launched into his usual rant. “Listen, moron. If Mom and Dad want to act like immature little kids, there’s nothing you or me or anyone can do about it. Why do you have to drag me into it?”

  “Who is this?” Chad asked, joking. But Josh wasn’t in the mood.

  “I spent three years trying to negotiate some kind of truce. I’m done. I told them I’m done. I told you guys I’m done. Why won’t anyone believe me?”

  “Dad’s talking about selling the ranch,” Chad said. “I mean, his share.”

  “Yeah? Good. Because this ranch-sharing arrangement is not working.”

  “So where does that leave me and Andy?”

  “Buy it from him. He’d probably sell it to you cheap.”

  “He can’t sell it cheap because he wants to move to Austin and houses are expensive there. Besides, he thinks I’m in league with the devil. You know, Mom.”

  Josh closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Even at such a distance, the toxic atmosphere of the Marshall family drama filtered through the phone. “I don’t know what to tell you, Chad. You have to get out and find some other kind of life for yourself. Forget the ranch. They’re going to drive it into the ground anyway. There won’t be anything left when they’re done throwing the dishes at each other.”

  “It’s easy for you to say. You wanted to leave. You never wanted to stay in the first place.”

  The three brothers had been very close. But he was the youngest and the only one still at home when all hell had broken loose. His brothers had both been deployed, while he’d been stuck at the ranch, collateral damage from the worst divorce in Texas.

  He’d left as soon as he could, and he hadn’t been back since, not even for holidays. He didn’t understand why his brothers stuck around. “Why don’t you come out to California and get a break from that crap.”

  “Nah, I got too much work to do here. Cindy’s pregnant.”

  “Really, man? Congratulations.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.” Chad sounded happy, but Josh had to wonder. This poor kid would have grandparents who had once gotten into an armed standoff that required the sheriff’s intervention. Was that the right family to bring a child into?

  “Listen, I gotta go,” Josh told him. “We just got back from a big-ass fire. I have a ton of catch-up to do.”

  Chad grunted. “Some days, I think a wildfire would be a cakewalk compared to this. Later, man.”

  Josh hung up. He agreed with that statement one hundred percent. He’d rather risk his life in a wildfire any day than suffer through one more bitter fight between the two people who had given him life.

  He stepped inside the mess hall to ditch his phone.

  “All good?” Rollo asked as he palmed a muffin from an open box on the table. He was looking slightly more human, now that he’d consumed an entire thermos full of coffee.

  “Sure. Peachy.”

  Rollo tossed him a pager. “Take this with you. Apparently the entire interior of Alaska is up in flames.”

  Josh groaned and pocketed the pager. “Seriously? Someone better tell Boise that I need my beauty sleep.” Boise was where the National Wildfire Coordination Center was located. They were the ones who decided where each hotshot crew would be sent.

  “You sure do. Can’t fight a wildfire looking like that.” Rollo stretched out his long legs and propped his stockinged feet on the mess hall table. Where they ate dinner—rarely, since they were mostly out in the field. Josh decided not to pick a fight about it.

  “Where’d you get off to with Suzanne last night?”

  “We made out in the ladies’ restroom. She took off all her clothes, but she left her spiky heels on. It was freaking hot.”

  Rollo released one of those rolling-thunder laughs that seemed to come right from his gut. “You’re hilarious.”

  Josh winked, just to make sure Rollo took it as a joke.

  But the joke was at least partially on him, because now that damn image was implanted in his brain again. Suzanne rocking those boy shorts that showed off all her long, lean muscles. As he launched himself up Heart Attack Hill, he lingered on that memory. Then another one took its place. In this one, she wore that vulnerable, heartfelt expression while she told him that Logan never kissed her “like that.”

  To chase that image from his head, he focused on the narrow trail that wound uphill through groves of pine and birch trees. He gratefully drew clean air into his lungs. The air in Jupiter Point was always so fresh and clear—it was one of the reasons the stargazing was exceptional here. Just one of the things he liked about this place.

  Another one being the girl who’d been wrapped around him last night.

  What kind of man was Suzanne engaged to, anyway? What did she see in him? All he knew about Logan Rossi was that he was going to be a lawyer and that he’d suggested that he and Suzanne get a free pass to make out with other people.

  So far, he didn’t like the guy at all. Suzanne deserved better. But what the hell could he do about it? He couldn’t exactly offer her an alternative. Given the Twilight Zone that was the Marshall family, no one would ever expect him to follow that path.

  Maybe he could be a kind of “big brother” to Suzanne. Yeah, that was the way he’d play it. He’d keep a close eye on her and this Logan jackass. If he saw any more danger signs, he’d…do something.

  If he had to kiss her again, well, anything to help out.

  4

  When Suzanne arrived at the office of Stars in Your Eyes Events and Tours on the Monday after the YWCA party, a young Asian couple was already waiting at the door, flyer in hand.

  “Good morning. Are you interested in one of our honeymoon packages?”

  “How did you know?”

  She smiled at them. “It’s the happy glow. I can spot it a mile away. Come on in.”

  She unlocked the front door and gestured to the two honeymooners to take a seat. The sunny office was filled with scenic shots of various romantic locations around town. Jupiter Point wasn’t on par with Hawaii or the Caribbean or other top honeymoon destinations, but the town had carved out a niche for itself thanks to its prime stargazing. Night picnics on the beach—complete with linen-covered tables and torchlight—private tours of the observatory with a chance to name a star, a sunset cruise on the sailboat That’s Amore…there were so many ways to weave stargazing into a honeymoon.

  She’d been working at Stars in Your Eyes since high school. When the owner, Marlene, had made her a full partner, she’d expanded the business into big event planning. Since she excelled at planning, she loved her job—when she was in an optimistic mood.

  The rest of the time, it could be depressing.

  Like when she was comparing the bliss in a newly married couple’s faces with her own troubled state of mind.

  Plastering on a bright smile, she got to work. “Do you enjoy sailing? There’s nothing quite like a private sunset cruise.”

  The husband shook his head, placing a protective arm over his bride’s shoulder. “She gets seasick. We’ll take a pass on that. We were looking at the nighttime stargazing picnic package.”

  “Of course. That’s a wonderful one.” As she smiled and wa
lked them through the choices, she really wished he hadn’t used the word “pass.”

  As in, “free pass.” As in, what the hell, Logan Rossi?

  She was dying to ask the newlyweds if they’d had a free pass before their wedding. But luckily, she managed to get through the rest of the booking without completely embarrassing herself.

  After the honeymooners left, she decided that this day was going to need a big hazelnut latte. Normally she would go around the corner to Evie’s gallery, which had recently added an espresso bar. But she didn’t want to hear about Sean and the other hotshots—especially Josh. She wasn’t ready to talk about what had happened between them.

  So she walked the extra three blocks to the Venus and Mars Café. It had the look of a French outdoor café, with its ironwork chairs and black awning. Its logo was a white cameo silhouette of a couple facing each other, with the merest sliver of space between their noses.

  It reminded Suzanne of Josh and the way his face had hovered over hers, those gray eyes so unexpectedly serious. For such a playful guy, he kissed with impressive, knee-weakening intensity. It wasn’t just the kiss, either. It was the way he’d looked at her, the way he’d handled the whole situation.

  Josh had opened Suzanne’s eyes to another side of him.

  Of course, then he’d ruined it by acting like a jerk again. Which was the “real” Josh Marshall? Not that it mattered. One kiss meant nothing compared to wedding plans. That was just common sense.

  She ordered her latte to go but lingered on her way out the door. She wasn’t ready to face more deliriously happy couples. Surely there must be someone here to chat with.

  Yes! Merry Warren, a reporter for the town weekly, sat at one of the little round tables in the bay window. With her tortoiseshell glasses halfway down her nose, and her wild frizz of brown hair confined by a red scarf, she was pounding the keys of her laptop. A newspaper sat under a mug and a scone. Merry was always so focused when she worked. She forgot about mundane things like the breakfast waiting right under her nose.