“Now it’s…just a fire?” Well mostly. “I still want to kick its flaming ass, but it’s no longer destroying my past. I guess that happened a long time ago.”
Evan offered her another handful of her own trail mix as the tendrils of smoke swirled about them. All up and down the line, the smokies would be doing the same, taking on hurried calories in preparation for the imminent arrival of the fire when there wouldn’t be time.
“I lost so much here. I still am losing it,” she waved toward the flames eating up her childhood memories one by one. “But it seems less important now.”
As she said it, she knew why. This man beside her. This man who had cleaned her up in the shower. Who had trusted that she would be safe on the fire. Who hadn’t let her out of his sight for more than a few moments in the last thirty-six hours because he cared that much that she remained safe.
Well, she cared that much about him. And that alone made the present more important than the past.
She glanced toward the fire, they still had a few more moments before they had to get back to it.
Krista rested a hand on Evan’s chest and looked at him. He needed—
No, he deserved to know the last piece of the story.
“I know how it must feel to have lost your sister.”
His face clamped down hard. He had the decency not to protest, only shaking his head once in denial, but it was clearly costing him.
“My father was dead within weeks of my starting my first fire season. My only true friend, the only person to ever really believe in me. He didn’t use a rifle, but he might as well have. He had cancer but never treated it because we couldn’t afford it. Never tried, never admitted to it. I found the hospital tests buried in his papers when I cleaned out the house. He held it together until I was gone.”
Evan’s face had shifted. His hand slipped up to cover her own on his chest. “That’s why you fought against the fire the way you did.”
She nodded, now speechless at his perfect understanding of her.
“It was erasing all you had left of your father.”
Krista buried her face against his shoulder. She’d thought it would be easier if she said it, told him why. But it hurt so damn much. All the pain she’d been hiding throughout the two days on the fire, maybe throughout the decade she’d been fighting fire, poured out of her all at once.
She never cried. Not when she had received news of his death, not at his graveside, not when she’d sold the house and shop.
Now, against the shoulder of a man she’d known only a few months, it poured out of her. Not in great wracking sobs, but in streaming, silent tears.
Evan still held her one hand tightly against his chest, and wrapped his other around her shoulders. Held her tight despite the mess she was.
The heat of the tears washed away so much of the pain, but they didn’t fix who she was. Didn’t change that someone who looked like her could never deserve a man like Evan.
She shouldn’t care.
Sure she was crazy about him. Hoped he stayed deluded about her for a good while longer.
But she did care.
Wanting what you can’t have, Krista. The curse of her life.
She’d wanted a good wife for Pop, but Mom had skipped mere months after Krista was born.
She’d wanted prosperity for him too, but that had never come.
She’d wanted to fit in, to belong, but by sixth grade she’d been the tallest girl in the school—including the high school—and twice as wide.
Firefighting with Mount Hood Aviation was the only place she’d ever fit in, doing a man’s job with her man-strong body.
Firefighting…and curled up against Evan Greene in full gear, stinking of sweat and char.
Oh god. That freshened the font of tears she couldn’t seem to stem. When she eventually lost Evan—when he woke up, saw who she really was and it finally ended—it was going to rip her completely apart.
“Krista, Babe?”
No one had ever called her “Babe.” That’s what you called pretty little things.
“Fire’s coming. You up for it?”
She nodded against his shoulder, relishing his easy strength for just a moment longer.
Then she yanked herself free from his grasp and wiped at her face, glad that the darkness and, soon, a fresh layer of soot would hide their tracks.
“Let’s do it,” she managed on a hoarse croak that sounded like a dying frog. Real attractive.
He nodded in acknowledgment, then did one of those crazy Evan things.
Hooking a hand behind her neck, he kissed her so hard and deep that she had vertigo when he abruptly let go and turned for the fire with one of those cat-ate-the-canary grins of his.
It was only as he walked toward the leading edge of the fireline that her body reported where his other hand had been.
She dusted at her Nomex fire shirt to smear the sooty handprint he’d left over her breast.
Then she too turned toward the fire.
To stand beside her man for as long as he was willing to stand beside her.
# # #
By the time the sun rose and they’d been on the fire for forty-eight straight hours without a break, the smokies were done.
Evan felt as if he’d been shattered, from the inside out. Every movement hurt. His body ached. His hands and feet were blistered and bandaged.
Ox was limping. Ant-man’s face was bloody from where a bad step had sent him tumbling down a slope—only a slash pile had stopped him from a far longer and more probably lethal fall. Akbar sat back against a boulder, head back, massaging a knee, and grinning like a goddamn idiot.
They all were.
The battle had raged back and forth across the ridges of Goat Mountain. Evan tried to estimate how many times he’d climbed it as he’d raced to beat the latest break in the line. Twenty-five hundred feet from valley floor to the peak, at least six times that he could remember, but it could have just as easily been ten. Another couple trips up and down and he’d have climbed the height of Everest.
Pass. He’d be lucky if he could walk another dozen steps.
He stood beside Krista, looking down. They had their arms around each other’s waist and Evan would be content to stand like that for a long time.
Of all the smokies, they were the only ones not looking toward the still sparking and sizzling, but fully contained, fire.
Instead they stood alone on the south side of Goat Mountain’s summit.
The others admired what they’d done—they’d beaten the monster. Again.
To the south, nearly five thousand feet below them, the narrow slice of the Skagit River valley wandered through the towering peaks of the North Cascades. The trees were dark green with mid-summer, but the river was bright beneath the high sun, only thinly softened by the last of the fire’s smoke drifting lazily upward.
From this distance, they could see Concrete sitting inside a wide bend of the river.
“There’s a joke about Concrete,” Krista spoke softly beside him.
“Tell me.”
“Most of the town is down in the Skagit’s flood-plain. A lot of old single- and double-wide manufactured homes. We say one of the advantages of living there is that you never have to clean your house.” Like a good storyteller, she left a pause for him to fill.
“Never?”
“Nope. You just wait for the Skagit to flood each spring. Then you open the front and back door and it washes the place clean.”
He chuckled dutifully. “Small towns.”
They watched the vintage planes climbing up out of the field. With the helos and air tankers no longer on site, they’d opened up the air space and everyone was making a circle out to see the results of the burn. This was a year of the fly-in that would be talked about for a long time.
He made a point of waving at each one as it passed overhead and waggled its wings at them.
“Let’s go,” he suggested.
“Where?”
He nodded down the slope.
“Into Concrete? On purpose?” she made her voice sound horrified.
“Henderson said we get a couple days off. I’d like to see where you grew up.”
“Do I get to see where you grew up?”
He shrugged, surprised at how small a pinch remained. “Sure, as long as we don’t have to meet my parents.”
“Deal.”
Evan wondered at how easily they were both moving beyond their past. Until now it had so defined his every action, but with Krista beside him he now understood that the past didn’t matter. What mattered was who he’d become and who he’d be in the future.
He looked at Krista in surprise.
“What?”
He shook his head and simply let himself enjoy her stunning blue eyes.
Some things he wasn’t ready to say, even if he was thinking them.
Chapter 15
The town of Concrete went nuts. It was the only way Krista could describe it.
Once the helos had fished them and their gear off the top of the mountain—and they’d slept the clock around—several of the smokies decided a trip up the Skagit to the fly-in would be fun.
She suspected that Evan was behind all of the sudden interest, but she couldn’t prove it.
It took a little bit of shifting gear and personnel at the airport. The helos and most of the smokies headed south, back to the MHA air base for their days off. But they convinced Doug and Terry to bring their black-and-flame painted DC-3, Jump M1, up to the fly-in for the second day of the event.
Once they were on the ground, she got clear of the plane as fast as she could. The seventy-year-old bird had created its own sensation, far and away the largest plane to come to the fly-in, which was fine.
Krista wanted no part of it.
But there were disadvantages to being so tall, broad, and blond. In addition to scaring off most men—though not Evan as he’d proven most satisfyingly once they woke up this morning—it also made her easy to pick out in any crowd.
Krista was recognized.
Mayor Veronica Tam now Nelson had been the head cheerleader for the Concrete Lions—thin, pretty, and popular. But seeing how she’d been letting herself be treated was the reason that Krista had ultimately epoxied the quarterback into his locker.
“Krista! I haven’t seen you since…”
Pop’s funeral. Veronica had been one of the few to attend other than herself. When Krista had finally thought to ask, Veronica’s answer had surprised her.
“When you locked up Brian, I finally understood that I had some value. It took me a while, but I got rid of him and found myself a decent guy. I’m here for you, not your dad. I hope that’s okay.”
Still the only real friend Krista had ever made in Concrete. Odd to call one conversation ten years ago a friendship, but it was.
“What brings you home?” Veronica wanted to know.
“I was in the area,” she’d evaded.
Then Evan, damn him, leaned in with that charming smile of his and whispered to Veronica. “Number Two smokejumper,” then he pointed up to the scorched scalp of Goat Mountain looming high above the Skagit River valley.
Veronica’s jaw dropped; her gaze swinging back and forth between the fire that had come within hours of forcing her entire town to evacuate and Krista’s own face.
Krista was hard pressed not to blush.
“I forgot you were a smokejumper,” Veronica whispered in shocked awe.
“Number Two on the top team flying,” Evan gleefully put in.
Krista was on the verge of fisting his ribs, maybe hard enough to crack a couple, when he kissed her cheek.
“Best damn smokie I’ve ever jumped with.”
Her surprise stopped her intent to perform mayhem upon him.
That’s when the place went nuts.
Akbar had already gone south to spend his days off with Laura, so Krista was the senior member of the team. Everyone instantly assumed she’d been the lead smokie as well as Incident Commander of the entire firefight that had ultimately included a dozen aircraft and well over a hundred people.
Ox, Ant-man, Nick the Greek, and Evan were suddenly her personal entourage and weren’t helping her efforts in the least about fixing the misunderstanding.
The pilots were over with their DC-3, talking pilot things with the other fliers—the immaculate seventy-year-old plane was a huge hit.
But for the “Lead Smokie” and her collection of men, suddenly nothing was good enough.
Tacqueria Los Jarritos, the best Mexican food in the Pacific Northwest, was serving up their killer burritos in smokie-sized portions. Pints of Boundary Bay stout appeared at their sides.
While they ate, the Concrete Lions High School Marching Band played along the airfield, occasionally having to scamper for cover as planes returned from flying over the extinguished fire.
“The Lions?” Evan raised his voice to ask over a slightly off-key but very cheery version of Louie Louie.
“The Concrete Lions. School mascot.”
Then that crazy smile of his appeared.
“What?”
“Krista the Mama Lion!” he declared.
“No!”
“Yes!” Ox jumped in. “Rook! That’s perfect!” And he and Evan high-fived.
“No!” she tried to protest once more to no avail, already knowing it was a lost cause. This piece of the past, this place, would now follow her for her entire jumping career. Though maybe that wasn’t a completely bad thing. She did love these hills and the river. Maybe when she finally retired she’d build a cabin out here and spend some time learning the new forest.
Whatever else the fire had felt like, the countryside had felt like home—a place so familiar that she would always belong no matter how long the absence. Or how much of it was torched. The forest was always changing, and this was a natural one. What was unnatural was that they’d stopped it.
Once the marching band was done, the PA come on.
Krista turned to look at the announcing stand—the flatbed of a rusting lumber truck—when she recognized Veronica’s voice. The Mayor thanked the marching band and then…
Mayor Veronica Nelson announced that the smokies who’d killed the Bell Creek Fire and saved the town were on site.
Krista was going to kill her one high school friend.
The crowd roared with approval. In moments everyone was on their feet all around the airfield, cheering and clapping.
Veronica was waving her up to the platform.
No goddamn way! She shook her head hard and kept her seat.
She was on her feet before she realized that Ox and Evan were lifting her up.
“They love you,” Ox told her.
“No they don’t.” Krista knew from long experience that she was not beloved of the people of Concrete. She’d never fit in anywhere other than as an MHA smokie.
“Their loss,” Evan said as he began using that Special Forces’ strength to walk her toward the stand.
She tried to bolt, but Ox, Ant-man, and Nick were right there behind her. Still, she might have tried to fight them, but Evan’s arm wrapped possessively around her waist was confusing her.
“What do you mean their loss?” she managed as her fellow smokies—who she swore to hate forever more—continued nudging her toward the platform.
“Should be obvious, Mama Lion.”
Krista shook her head. It wasn’t. The ongoing cheers and applause were turning into a blur around her.
Somewhere a chant had started as more locals recognized her and it was gaining speed, “Krista! Krista!” No one had ever done that before.
They reached the base of the little ladder that had been propped up as a set of stairs onto the lumber truck’s flatbed.
Evan pulled her around to face him as the chants and applause continued.
“It’s their loss, Krista, if they don’t love you. Because I do and it’s about the best feeling of my life.”
“About the best feeling?” He loved her? Was he just saying it or—
“I expect when we get married it will feel even better.”
All she could do was blink. Then she managed a gasp. “But…you haven’t asked!” Did she even want him to? She knew the answer to that.
And realized that the question didn’t matter worth a damn.
All that mattered was the answer.
“Yes!” she shouted and dragged him into a kiss.
The crowd erupted with cheers.
Beneath the roar she pulled back to look into those dark eyes and knew that Evan Greene would take the future just as seriously as he’d taken both of their pasts.
“That’s a commitment, Lover.”
“Damn straight, Mama Lion.”
Krista kissed him quickly and climbed the ladder, waving the other smokies to climb up behind her.
“Lee the Ant-man.”
“Nick the Greek.”
“Gustav the Ox,” she introduced each one as they reached the platform and the crowd roared and cheered.
Then she looked deep into Evan’s eyes as he stepped up beside her and Krista knew.
This is what forever felt like.
This is what it felt like to leave behind the out-sized girl and embrace the powerful woman.
“And this…” she waited for the crowd to still. “This is Lover Boy.”
“Lover Boy?” Ox asked in surprise. “Yes!” He crashed a fist into Evan’s shoulder.
Evan groaned as the crowd laughed and cheered.
But his smile was all for her.
And best of all, she’d be reminded of that every single time his new name echoed down the fireline.
About the Author
M. L. Buchman has over 35 novels in print. His military romantic suspense books have been nominated for the RT Reviewer’s Choice of the Year award, and been named Barnes & Noble and NPR “Top 5 of the Year,” Booklist “Top 10 of the Year” and RT Book Reviews “Top 10 Romantic Suspense of the Year.” In addition to romance, he also writes thrillers, fantasy, and science fiction.
Wildfire on the Skagit (Firehawks Book 9) Page 15