by Dani Collins
“Thanks. I just got back, literally this morning.” Jacqui touched her hair, self-conscious enough to take a step toward Vin like he was her personal archangel or something.
It was silly, but Laurel had always intimidated her, even though she was nice as pie. Maybe because she was so friendly and easily charmed everyone around her. She had been a few years ahead of Jacqui in school, popular and gorgeous, and with a quality that made her a shoo-in for head cheerleader, prom queen… whatever her heart desired. She had even made accidental pregnancy at college seem like something to aspire to. The handful of times Jacqui had seen her son, well, he was the cutest thing on two legs so, yeah. Laurel was perfect, as far as Jacqui could see.
Although, if she wasn’t mistaken, there was an undercurrent of something between her and the new captain. Hostility? Something else? A combination?
“Kingston,” the other man greeted Vin, then looked at Jacqui with inquiry.
Vin introduced them.
“I wasn’t expecting you to come in on your way from the airport,” Sam said. “Unless… Were you here to see…?” His gaze lifted to Russ’s ’chute and a subtle air of further reserve came over him. Like he recognized how hard this might be for her and wasn’t sure how to keep from being what he was—her husband’s replacement.
“It means a lot to see it,” she said huskily, “But I also thought, if you had time, we might, um, talk about my job.”
“That’d be great.” He nodded decisively. “Whoever took over for you at the end of last season only hung around for a couple of weeks. Things are a mess. I need someone in here pronto.” He waved an invitation for her to accompany him into his office.
Laurel waved goodbye and left.
Sam closed the door behind them and moved behind Russ’s desk. It didn’t bother her as much as he probably expected it to. Hugh had occupied this office for years before he retired and bought The Drop Zone, so it wasn’t strictly Russ’s office in Jacqui’s mind.
As they both sat, Sam said, “I should have said”—a shadow passed over his expression and he muttered the platitude—“I’m very sorry for your loss.”
Jacqui caught back a snort.
“Likewise,” she said with a quirk of fatalism around her mouth.
For about one second they shared a look, both fully aware how inadequate the words were.
They both looked away. Yeah, grief sucked balls.
Sam cleared his throat. “Would you, uh, be interested in training your replacement? Or did you just want to give me an idea of your duties and maybe offer a few suggestions for a good fit?”
Jacqui opened her mouth and was probably more surprised than he at what came out. “Actually, I want to do it. I want my job back.”
Chapter Three
Vin wandered to the windows that looked across Flathead Lake, but turned when he heard footsteps behind him. Tyler Dodson was coming from the ready room and wore a look of alertness.
They clasped elbows and bumped shoulders, then Tyler said, “Did I hear Jacqui?” He thumbed toward Sam’s office.
“Yeah. I just picked her from the airport.”
Tyler rocked back on his heels, expression sober. He was widely regarded as a hard-ass, not quick to grin or crack jokes at the best of times, but if you were in a tight spot, he was the one you wanted at your back. He’d been a helluva mentor when Vin had first arrived five years ago. Tyler knew the area like the back of his hand, having grown up around here with Russ and a bunch of the other locals. Russ’s death had hit him like a sack of hammers, making him even sterner with all of them about following safety protocols.
As he looked toward Sam’s office, Tyler’s expression grew concerned. “How’s she doing?”
Vin shrugged, not having figured out how to answer that despite the numerous times he’d been asked since she’d left.
Jacqui had held it together through the funeral, but had snapped shortly after, hightailing to Florida and no one blamed her.
Vin had already been staying with her and Russ after breaking up with Tori. Russ was that kind of guy, always looking out for his crew. It had been summer, hardly a time when Vin could easily find new digs. Russ had put Vin in their guest room and none of them had been there much anyway, all three of them working long hours here so it hadn’t felt too much like he was imposing.
When Jacqui left, Vin had been on forced leave, hitting some required counseling even though he’d been working through shit all his life without help, thank you. The season was almost over anyway and someone had needed to feed and walk the dog, so he’d stayed at their house, filling his winter with finishing it. Jacqui had missed Muttley so they’d started Skyping.
At first, Vin had presumed she was keeping in touch with all her many friends in the area, but it soon became clear he was the only person she was talking to on a regular basis.
He didn’t know how to take that, so he did what he always did and just accepted it.
Being the furthest thing from a gossip, he stuck with, “As well as can be expected,” clichés and changed the subject. “You planning any hikes soon? I could use one.”
They were working out a route and a time when Jacqui came out of Sam’s office.
She smiled when she saw Tyler and hugged him.
“We missed you,” he said as he set her on her feet again.
“I missed you, too. So much, in fact…” She splayed her hands, expression bemused, but kind of glowing.
Damn she was pretty, Vin was thinking, as he heard the rest of what she was saying.
“I just asked for my job back. I am back. Here. Staying.” She laughed, hands going to her pink cheeks like she was trying to steady her spinning head. “Sam told me to start as soon as I can.”
“That’s great,” Tyler said, brow furrowed, but he nodded approval and sounded proud of her. “Really great, Jac.”
Her smile was as big and beautiful as it could get. Vin hadn’t seen her smile like that in more than half a year. He hugged her with a lackluster arm as she pressed into him, but he was distracted by mixed emotions swirling with such ferocity, he couldn’t pick them apart and identify them.
One stood out tall and isolated as the jump tower, however. The familiar one of being betrayed by the universe.
All he could think about was the number of hours he’d put into her house, believing it was going to be his. He had felt like he was finally stamping ownership on his own space.
Five years in one town was longer than he’d ever spent in one place, ever. Buying his own house—one that wasn’t a shared title like the house with Tori that he was being forced to sell because of their divorce—but a house that would be all his, would have given him the stability and sense of roots he’d always craved.
But, as usual, he was being yanked back up again.
Because Jacqui was staying.
Which wasn’t a bad thing, but still. What the fuck, Jac?
*
Jacqui was trembling, really shocked with herself, but it felt right.
“Sam is just like the rest of you,” she told Vin as he drove. “The minutia of putting together contact lists and updating software and formatting reports so they look pretty is a hairball he’d rather throw up than swallow. But I’m a nutter for whiteboards and paperwork, aren’t I?” She scrubbed Muttley’s ears. “Keeping the office organized is my version of putting out fires. I’m excited,” she confided, sending a grin toward Vin’s profile.
He wasn’t smiling, which kind of niggled. Was he judging her? Was she supposed to grieve longer and be too broken to return to where her husband had been killed doing his job?
She had thought she and Vin were friends. When he first arrived as a rookie smokejumper five years ago, he had lived in what she and Russ had called the crew shack. It had been a neglected old farmhouse on the parcel of land where their real house now sat. Russ hadn’t torn it down right away because it had been handy for out of town firefighters who were covered in soot and mud and saw those quarters a
s a step up from sleeping in the bush. Jacqui had talked to Vin almost daily as she had dropped by to watch her own house progress.
Vin had eventually taken an apartment in town and she would have only seen him at work, but he started seeing Tori the following winter.
Jacqui had gone to school with Vin’s ex, not that she and Tori had run in the same crowds. Tori had been two years older and more of a party girl, but Russ was always making plans with different members of his crew so the four of them had done things as couple friends—barbeques and watching games. Tori wasn’t much for camping so that had fallen off very quickly. Tori absolutely hated that Jacqui knew all the inside jokes among the crew, but she’d asked Jacqui to be a bridesmaid when she and Vin had married a year later.
Vin and Tori had bought a house and Tori had quickly learned what it really meant to be married to a smokejumper. You barely saw your husband for the four months of best weather. When you did, he was exhausted and only home for a day or two, usually hungry and sore—more of a zombie than a lover.
On the surface they looked like money machines, but just like their coming home at all, income wasn’t guaranteed. It highly depended on how active the season was. Come winter, they might work search and rescue or help with prescribed fires and other projects, as Vin did, but money could be tight.
Jacqui’s marriage had been less fraught. Russ only went on the occasional jump and even though he was only home to sleep during the summer, just like all the local hotshots, Jacqui had worked the same long hours right alongside him. Their lives had been stead-eddy, which was why she’d managed to talk him into trying for a baby.
She turned her mind from that and glanced at Vin again. His profile was sharp and still, grim even.
“It feels weird to look forward to something,” she said, hands slowing on where she was massaging Muttley’s thick, silky ruff. “Dad and Shar will be disappointed, but I had this awful, heavy feeling about the move to Florida. I thought it was grief, but now I’m here, I realize it was homesickness. This is where I’m supposed to be.”
She looked to him again, hoping for understanding.
Russ had bought minutes from the base, so he could rush back for calls. They were already at her driveway. Vin hit the button to open the garage door, but didn’t pull in. He got out to get her luggage, though, and carried it to the empty spot in the garage.
“You’re not coming in?” Jacqui followed him into the garage where he was snapping his fingers at the dog, telling him to stay home.
“No. I’ll go see who’s at The Drop Zone. Ask around for a place to live.” He wore a positively neutral expression, not sounding angry, but the way he started back to the open door of his running truck without another word felt like a huge slap in the face.
“Vin!”
She hadn’t even thought about the house. Her brain skidded and veered like it was on ice, trying to figure out what to say.
“Wait. I didn’t—”
“Jac, it’s fine. It’s your house,” he said flatly. Kind of patronizing. “I’m glad you’re back, that you’re staying. I just need to figure out what it means for me. I’ll come back later for my stuff.”
“Wait!”
He didn’t. He slammed into his truck and backed out, leaving her final call of his name echoing around the hollow space of her cold garage.
*
Vin didn’t mean to be a dick, but he was hugely pissed. Driving away was definitely the lesser of two lousy moves.
He didn’t know why this surprised him. He was long past wondering why or how or if life would betray him. It was a given. Whatever good was offered to him on one hand would be taken away with the other. That was how it went for him and there was no point fighting it.
Just as there was no point fighting Jacqui. Telling his best friend’s widow he was angry and she couldn’t have her house back was not a war he could win.
He was still furious and liked the sound of a beer or something stronger, but when he walked into The Drop Zone, he saw Tori was on shift. That always soured his desire to be here, even though they had perfected cool civility to an art form.
There was nowhere else to go, though. This bar was a meeting place for all of Glacier Creek. Locals collected in the dining area for food that was pub-style, but better than average. Hugh Ferguson, the captain who’d retired from the base to give way for Russ, ran the bar and served pretty much anything so long as it was beer. Along with the mining town paraphernalia decorating the walls were gems like “Forget the truck, ride the firefighter” signs. This was meant to be a haven for the hotshots. They all came here to play pool and watch the game and talk shop.
But since breaking up with Tori, Vin hadn’t felt as welcome as he once had.
Tori’s smile at a table of patrons fell away to a neutral, “Hi Vin,” as she looked up and saw him. She wore a tight low-cut top over tight jeans tucked into cowboy boots, accentuating her rocking sweet bod. It was all part of the hustle for tips, same as the quick smiles and flirty banter and excellent service. He didn’t begrudge her for playing the game to win. That was her job and his came with its own drawbacks.
Still, it was one more reason he had never felt secure in her or their marriage.
Maybe he wasn’t capable of feeling secure. It was probably true, since he couldn’t think of a time when he hadn’t expected a woman to eventually leave him or a job to fall through or a vehicle to break down. He’d read something once about self-fulfilling prophecies, that if he expected something, especially if it was bad, he would unconsciously make it happen.
Transience was the message that was consistently delivered to him, though. He hadn’t made Jacqui change her mind about moving.
Had he? There was a part of him that had been wishing she wasn’t moving away. Why?
He gave his head a shake. He wasn’t here to psychoanalyze why or how he was homeless again. He was cooling off and figuring out a new game plan.
He went to where some of the crew were playing pool, exchanged greetings and took up a stool next to Hugh’s son, Liam.
Liam had cleared rookie training a few years ago, then spent the last couple of years fighting fires in Australia, exercising a desire that Vin saw in a lot of young men. Liam wanted to make his own mark, rather than follow in his father’s footsteps.
Granted, Vin hadn’t wanted to be a grocery buyer like his own father, but having lost his old man before he got to know him, he didn’t chafe at the idea of turning out like the man who’d made him. Vin always wanted to point out what an arrogant move it was to thumb your nose at your dad and bugger off so you could “find” yourself.
Of course, he was just in that frame of mood tonight. Surly and critical. He would have been more comfortable sitting down with Ace Clark, one of the smokejumpers who’d been with the station for a few seasons now, but had gone with Sam into the park for a few days.
Both Liam and Ace were good for sarcastic jabs that would lighten his mood, but Liam had grown up here in Glacier Creek. Ace was more like Vin. He came from foster care, not that they’d had any heart-to-hearts about it, but silent understanding went a long way. Ace wouldn’t commiserate that life was unfair or try to solve Vin’s problem. He’d say, “That sucks,” and would fully expect Vin to do what he would do, pick himself up and move on.
Tori brought him a beer, he asked for a burger, and she ran him a tab without asking so they didn’t have that “Do I tip my ex?” awkwardness. He would add twenty percent when she rang it through on his credit card and they would get through this evening barely exchanging more than what they’d already said.
Except she was an in-your-face reminder that he’d already lost a house to a woman. Fuck, he was mad. What did a guy have to do?
“Did I hear Jacqui is coming back?” Liam asked.
Vin snorted. “Gotta love the smoke-eater grapevine. Yeah. I picked her up at the airport this morning. She got her job back this afternoon.”
Liam paused in raising his beer to his lips.
“I meant I’d heard she was coming back to empty her house and sell it to you. But she’s back back? Staying?”
“Apparently.” Vin muttered the word into the foam in his mug, taking a long, cold draw, irritated with himself for revealing what was chewing his insides.
The men playing pool glanced over and made a few remarks about how it would be good to have her in the office again and how hard it must be for her to come back. A somber stillness went over the pool table as everyone thought of Russ.
“I guess that puts you out of a place to live,” one of the men said to Vin.
“Yeah. Let me know if you hear of something,” Vin said, doing his best to make it sound casual, not devastating.
Someone at the other table tossed out some trash talk to one of the men about his ability to set up a shot. It deflected the attention from Vin and got the men playing again, allowing Vin to sink back into brooding.
His phone buzzed with a text as he was eating his burger. He glanced at it long enough to see that Jacqui wanted to talk. He tucked the phone away and ate, then took a turn shooting pool. He wasn’t trying to be an asshole, but he wasn’t ready to get into it with her. There was no point.
A few more of their crew arrived from snowshoeing all day and he settled in to BS for the rest of the evening.
*
“Hello?” Russ’s sister’s voice sounded hesitant when she answered Jacqui’s call.
“Roni? It’s me. Jacqui.”
“Oh, my God,” Rhonda said on an audible exhale. “I saw Russ’s name on the call display… I figured even if it was Vin, it had to be bad news.”
PTSD. Jacqui had a version of it herself, thinking every fire truck siren was a death knell, which was bewildering because there hadn’t been any sirens going off when she got the news about Russ. All the same, her mind associated the sound with tragic loss. She always worried for the unknown firefighters called to duty.
“You’re calling from the house!” Roni said with belated surprise. “You’re here. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? I could have picked you up from the airport.”