Playing With Fire: inspirational romantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 2)

by Susan May Warren

  Then, suddenly, “Fine. I get it.” She capped the water bottle, handed it back to him. “You’re right. I’m just in the way.”

  He frowned. “Liza—”

  “No, really, Conner. I don’t want to be a burden.” She turned to Skye. “Did you bring a blanket?”

  Skye looked at CJ, then Conner, but nodded to Liza. She pulled her survival blanket from her pack.

  “Do you mind if we share it?” Liza asked, and Skye shook her head.

  “Liza, it’s not like that,” Conner said, not sure why her words raked through him, burned him. “You’re not a burden, it’s just—”

  “Oh, no.” She held up her hand to stop him, her voice oddly light. “It’s true. You don’t need me, and really, with CJ here, it’s probably best.” She sat down under the shelter. “Do you mind if the girls take the hotel room?”

  He shook his head, not sure why he felt like a jerk.

  Nor why she’d given up the fight.

  Liza curled into the back of the shelter. Draped a portion of the blanket over her, closed her eyes. Skye joined her, sat down with her back to her. Looked at the boys with a shrug.

  “C’mon, Conner,” CJ said. “You can bunk with me.”

  “There’s a bear out there,” Conner said grimly. “I’ll take the first watch.”

  He walked to the river’s edge, stared out at the night, the stars falling from the sky like fire. How many times had he returned to Sedona in his memory—sitting out under a starlit night, Liza tucked beside him?

  He’d done it again. Pushed her out of his life when all he longed to do was pull her close, hold on.

  “Think we’ll find Esther?” CJ came to stand by him.

  Conner didn’t have an answer. Instead, “Maybe you should take the ladies back in the morning. That bear just might be hunting us, and I don’t want them alone.”

  “Skye’s pretty savvy.”

  Conner glanced at him. “You’re willing to take that chance?”

  “I trust her. She’s capable and smart. And we need her—both of them, to find Esther.”

  Conner stiffened, his hands in his pockets. But CJ was right—he needed Liza, too, although more than just for this search. Probably since Deep Haven, but definitely today when she’d reached down, grabbing his shirt just as the river tried to take him under.

  But Conner saved us. No, they’d saved each other.

  And tonight, they’d worked together to keep each other alive, to build something.

  He glanced at her, tucked under the dark folds of the shelter.

  Deep down inside, you don’t believe that God will work things out for good. You’re so afraid that God won’t keep His own promises toward you and He’ll let you down that you’ve stopped hoping. Stopped having faith.

  Maybe, despite his assertions, he didn’t have faith. Not really. Not the kind that reached out in hope, knowing God might be at the end of his grasp.

  But maybe that’s exactly what he needed to do—reach out in hope. Believe that God would help him keep his promises.

  He turned back to CJ. “Yes,” he said. “In answer to your question, we’re going to find Esther.”

  Chapter 12

  “I can’t sleep.” Liza turned onto her back, her shoulder pressed against Skye’s as they huddled together under the makeshift shelter. The night arched overhead, pressing through the cracks in the bough-tossed roof. The smell of balsam and pine mingled with the hint of smoke drifting from the still-crackling fire.

  She wouldn’t have spoken, but Skye had just rolled over onto her side, her back to Liza. With the fire warming their enclave, Skye had shoved off the blanket, wrapping up in her Blue Sky windbreaker.

  Near the river, Conner sat on a rock, staring downstream as if he could somehow pinpoint Esther with his x-ray night vision. CJ had curled up next to the fire, emitting the faintest snore.

  “I don’t see why not,” Skye said quietly. “With the roots of the mightiest oak in the forest dissecting our tail bones...”

  Liza wanted to smile, but, “I hope Esther has found someplace warm to hole up in.” She wouldn’t think of the alternatives. The discovery of the backpack lit hope like a bonfire inside her. “We should be out there looking.”

  “We can’t find her in the dark,” Skye said, and yes, Liza knew that. “By the way, I’m sure Conner will change his mind in the morning. He was just tired—”

  “No, the thing is, he’s probably right. We need be focused on finding Esther—and if that means me staying out of the way...”

  Skye rolled over onto her back. “Just so I’m clear—he’s the one who suggested going in the river, right?”

  “Yeah, but he had climbed out, would have been able to rescue himself if it weren’t for me. I couldn’t hold on—and because of that, we went over the falls.”

  She found herself subconsciously fisting her hand, as if he might still be holding it.

  “And if you hadn’t, we might not have had to cross the river. And we never would have found her backpack. Clearly God has a plan, and you falling into the river was part of it. Who knows what amazing things He’s going to do tomorrow? I for one don’t want to miss it.”

  Liza let Skye’s words sift through her. “I’m just praying she’s okay.”

  Silence, then, “I got lost once, when I was three years old, at a county fair. I don’t remember it, but the short of it is that my mother thought I had walked away with my father to get ice cream. When he returned and I wasn’t with him, they realized I’d wandered off. Thousands of people were there, and my parents were frantic. I was gone for over three hours before a woman whom my mother didn’t know, but who knew my mother through an acquaintance, came up holding my hand. She’d seen me, recognized me, and somehow found my parents. Later my mom told me that while she didn’t know where I was, God did. After all, He had the perfect view. And she simply prayed that He would keep me safe until she found me. That’s been my prayer for Esther. God knows where she is, and I’m praying He keeps her safe until we find her.”

  The perfect view. “I’d take that right now—a view all the way to the end of the story,” Liza said.

  Skye laughed. “I used to do that—I’d read a book and flip to the end to make sure the heroine lived happily ever after, and if she did, then I’d read the book.”

  “That would be nice—a promise that life would end happily.”

  “A promise doesn’t mean it’ll work out the way we want, right? In fact, in a way, if we know the ending, it steals from our everyday faith, those baby steps forward. What if we saw the entire path—would we take it? The future is scary enough—maybe we’re just supposed to cling to God for today and let Him worry about tomorrow.”

  Liza rolled over onto her side, her head propped on her arm. “Who are you?”

  “My dad’s a pastor. But it’s true, right? People say, ‘God doesn’t give us more than we can handle,’ but that’s not true at all. Those are just words to make us believe we’ll survive. But God purposely gives us more than we can handle so we’ll turn to Him. We have the promise of God’s love, God’s presence, even that He’ll work out our suffering for good... And maybe that’s enough, come what may. Or it should be. The question is—will you trust God today because of who He is, or do you need a promise of a happy ending?”

  A happy ending.

  Maybe that was her problem. She didn’t trust God for a happy ending, either. She wanted His promise.

  No faith. In Conner. In God.

  But promises didn’t stave off trouble. Or broken hearts.

  Maybe she and Conner were more alike than she’d thought.

  Liza cast her gaze over to him, her voice soft. “I kissed him.”

  “I knew it!”

  “Shh!”

  Skye’s voice cut low. “I knew it. It was the way you two looked at each other when he landed at camp. You broke his heart, didn’t you?”

  “What? No—he broke mine.”

  Skye made a little noise o
f dissent. “Didn’t you hear him? He said he couldn’t worry about you when he was trying to find Esther—”

  “Yeah, because I keep getting in the way.”

  “No—because he likes you. Maybe even loves you.”

  It’ll kill me, again.

  The fire popped, the top of the pyramid collapsing in an explosion of spark and flame. Embers scattered into the night, and across the site Conner turned, as if to check.

  Looking over the fire, she could almost feel his eyes on her, holding her.

  “I was in love with him, too,” she said softly. “He chased me from Minnesota to Arizona, and for the first time, I started to think that maybe God didn’t want me to be single. That He’d put a guy into my life that liked me enough to track me down and not push me away when he was done with me.”

  She knew how that sounded and didn’t care. Next to her Skye just nodded, as if she had her own broken places.

  Conner got up, stretched, then walked over to the fire.

  Liza watched him, the way he crouched, stirred the ashes, resettled the logs, added more. So capable, the kind of man she could trust. “I got scared. He finally kissed me, but—”

  “You didn’t want to give out your heart without a few guarantees.” Skye was looking at CJ, who roused when Conner nudged him with his boot.

  “But he couldn’t give me guarantees. He lost his parents when he was seventeen, his brother a few years later, and he refuses to let himself hang on to anyone too tightly. Or to let himself look too far into the future.”

  CJ got up, handed Conner the blanket. Conner draped it over his shoulders like a superhero.

  “But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t put everything he has into the now.” Liza watched him hunker down, roll himself into the blanket. “It’s what makes him a good smokejumper. He lives from fire to fire.”

  And had called her in between.

  Yeah, she should have trusted him to keep holding on despite his fears. Despite her wounds.

  “That’s what CJ said. That he doesn’t know what fire he’ll jump next, so he just fights the one in front of him,” Skye said softly. She propped herself up to watch as CJ climbed onto the boulder. “I’ll admit it—I feel a little safer with them on guard.” She settled back onto the ground.

  Me too. Liza watched the firelight flickering over Conner’s blanketed body, a wave of tenderness heating her core.

  The question is—will you trust God today, because of who He is, or do you need a promise of a happy ending?

  Promises or not, she’d never stopped loving him.

  And if that meant letting him go, walking away to help him keep his promise to Shep, then that’s exactly what she would do.

  #

  After nearly twenty years of sleeping on the ground—from sandy draws in Iraq to mountain ledges in Montana—Conner still couldn’t figure out how to sleep without knots in his back. Or maybe the knots came from fighting the nightmare images of Liza going over the falls.

  Liza screaming at a bear.

  Liza with arms and legs wrapped around him, kissing him as if she’d never let go.

  And wedged in the crannies of those thoughts, the ever-present worry about Esther.

  Please, God, let her be alive.

  He stood now at the shore, watching the dawn creep over the river, the rose gold scraping away shadows to reveal the razor-edged rocks cut from the churning water. Just upstream the roar of the falls ate away at the early-morning chirrup of sparrows.

  Tracing his and Liza’s treacherous escape rendered Conner just a little hollow.

  They’d jumped a thirty-foot falls, ridged on each side by jagged, lethal-edged rocks that could have broken legs, smashed skulls. The tree they’d ridden had snagged downriver, a massive skeleton with an eight-foot root base designed to entrap and drown.

  A horde of angels, no doubt, had engineered their escape.

  The realization bolstered his decision to send Skye and Liza back to camp.

  Still, CJ was probably right. They needed all the help they could get. Today, please, let them find Esther.

  As if to buoy his reach for faith, a glorious sunrise trumpeted into the morning, hope borne on shafts of light that filtered through the forest and glimmered on dark rock. Lavender clouds tufted the sky, edged in rose, shiny with the morning glow.

  The air suggested a scorcher of a day, despite the cool mist off the river. An early-morning crow called, soared low, and landed in a nearby aspen.

  “I figured you’d be up.”

  Liza walked up to him, holding a cup of instant coffee. She had drawn her long hair back into a handkerchief, the effect turning her beautiful brown eyes luminous, a familiar sweet jolt of espresso to his system. He fought the crazy urge to reach up, run his thumb along her cheek, wipe away the sleep lines.

  Tug her back into his arms.

  “Sunrises.” He raised a shoulder.

  “Agreed. Charlie and I used to sneak down to the dock at camp—he’d bring a fishing pole—and we’d sit and watch the sunrise. Of course he wasn’t my stepbrother then, but that was even better. I knew he wanted to spend time with me, rather than being forced to.”

  Her words made his chest ache.

  “Remember the sunset off Doe Mountain? The way the mesa turned practically red, the sky this perfect shade of royal blue? And in the middle, a strip of fire that looked as if the sky was aflame.”

  “One of the most beautiful sights I’d ever seen,” he said, not remembering the sunset at all, but the smell of her hair, the feel of her body tucked into his. And not just the memory of their first kiss, but of a night spent talking in the cover of darkness, cocooned together under a blanket. The deep realization of longing in his heart of something he might have called a happy ending.

  It all conspired to tug a grin up his face. “I didn’t want the day to end.”

  “Clearly, judging by the little camping kit you hauled out of your backpack—blanket, your camp stove, cups, and hot cocoa.” She took a sip of coffee, peering at him over the rim, her eyes shiny, inviting him into the memory.

  “Occasionally I do think ahead to the ending, or at least let myself consider the what-ifs.”

  “I know you do, Conner.”

  Her tone dissolved the memory, turned his thoughts back to last night and their argument. You’re so afraid that God won’t keep His own promises toward you and He’ll let you down that you’ve stopped hoping. Stopped having faith. Stopped believing in happy endings.

  “Liza—”

  “Listen, I know you’re worried about me, especially after the crazy day yesterday.” She spoke over him, perhaps not even hearing him.

  “It was crazy,” he said quietly. The memory of her hand clinging to his—and then that kiss, the one that followed him into his dreams. Yeah, crazy good, perhaps.

  But perhaps not for her, because she took a breath, then looked at him, her smile falling. “I’ll hike back with Skye today if you still want me to. It’ll be easier for you if you don’t have to worry about me.”

  He wanted to cringe, the reality of her words like a slap. He’d said that, hadn’t he?

  And now he wanted to change his mind. Because he might always worry about her—and frankly, he preferred to do that with her by his side.

  “I think we can find the way back,” she said. “We’ll follow the river to where Shep fell, then climb the mountain from there, and we’ll end up on the Pine Ridge trail. What do you think—ten miles, maybe?”

  His brain scrambled to catch up. “Maybe—”

  “Then we’ll tell Pete, when he returns where to find you, and by then maybe we can get reinforcements.”

  He was nodding but only heard other words suddenly echoing back to him. When this gig is over, you’re going to walk away, and I’m going to let you.

  Wait—

  “I know Esther’s out there, Conner. And I believe that you and CJ can find her. She’s a tough girl, resilient, resourceful, and we will find her, even if we
have to split up to do it.”

  Split up?

  She finished her coffee and turned away.

  He caught her arm. More reflex than clear thought, but he swallowed, found his voice, and forced it out. “Don’t go.”

  She stilled, her beautiful brown eyes holding a question, a tiny frown deepening on her face.

  “Don’t go.” This time stronger.

  He hesitated and she started to smile. “I...we started this, right?”

  The smile fell at his words. “But you don’t need me to finish it—”

  “I do.”

  He turned her to face him. “I do need you. And yeah, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but—okay, it’s more than just finding Esther.” He turned her to himself, both hands on her arms, wanting her to hear him.

  “When you called me, it was like I saw a second chance to go back to that moment, that sunset in Sedona, and say the right thing. To fix whatever went wrong between us. I’m not sure I know how, but I do know that I’m not ready for you to walk away. Or for you to let me walk away.” He took a breath. “I’ve really missed you, Donut Girl.”

  The old moniker found its place, stirred from her a real smile.

  His heart began to beat again.

  Conner let go of her arm, pressed his hand to her cheek, and ran his thumb down it. “I don’t know why, but having you around seems like just what I need to believe that it’ll all work out.”

  Liza pressed her hand against his on her cheek. And with the gesture, it seemed his entire chest exploded, a sweet, delicious heat pouring through him. She stood in the center of the morning, the sun turning her eyes a deep, golden brown, and it just engulfed him, turned him to fire.

  “I have to kiss you,” he said, his voice a whisper. “Please.”

  She set her coffee mug down, then lifted herself to her tiptoes and pressed her lips against his.

  Coffee. And the taste of the morning, fresh and alive. She smelled slightly of woods and smoke and river, but it only made him want to sink into her, to hold her. To disappear, just for a moment, into a place where time stopped, where people stayed and to a place where life felt big and whole and bright.