“That’s enough wood to last until the end of February,” she said, smiling at the neat stacks. She ran her hands over my chest as I drained the cup and pulled her to me.
“Never let it be said I left my woman wanting for that,” I said, kissing her deeply and letting my hard evidence speak for itself. “I mended the gate on the south fence and rebuilt that older section of the back porch. I ought to get into some dry clothes and finish up in the attic… I want to get as much done as I can before…”
“Before you have to leave,” she finished for me. “I know… You have to go back in the morning.” She turned and went back in the cabin.
“We should talk about it,” I said, following her inside. She sat down by the fire with her hands in her lap, not looking up at me. “We’ve been avoiding it since I got here.”
“What is there to say?” she asked, watching the fire burn. “You’ll go… And I promised you I’d stay.” She looked up with pain in her eyes. “I can’t change who you are… and I know better than to try…” She smiled wanly. “I learned a few things over the last few years too, you know… And I love you for dedicating yourself to the things you believe in.”
I sat down beside her on the old hearth rug and wrapped my arms around her. “Em… that’s what we need to talk about.” I reached for her hand and turned it so her ruby flared red hot. “This ring came with a question last time.” I lifted her hand to my lips and kissed the brilliant stone. “Same question now, babygirl…
“I’m asking you to marry me… Not a year from now… not even a month from now, Em.” I looked into her face and saw my entire future in the depths of her eyes. “I have to go back for the crew’s sake, to finish what we started. Hell, your brother’s still out there…
“But we can wrap this fire up and I can be home before the end of the month.” I kissed her hands, her face, the tears that ran down her cheeks. “I don’t want to push you… if this is all moving too fast, sweetheart. I know I barged right back into your life like we could just pick up where we left off…”
“Yes…” she said, so quietly I almost didn’t hear. I swallowed hard.
“So it’s too soon? I’m pushing too fast…?”
“Yes, you’d better make an honest woman of me,” she said, smiling through her tears. “I’ll never learn how to say goodbye to you, Jason, but I won’t be afraid of what I can’t control anymore. I love you… and we belong together. I can’t imagine any other life…”
“Then before I go in the morning, we’ll pick the day,” I said, stroking her hair back. “Make it the wedding of your dreams, as big or as small as you want… Connie’ll do anything she can to help out. Planning it will make the time go by so fast you won’t even notice I’m gone…” I unbuttoned her shirt and feasted my eyes on her beauty, knowing I was the luckiest man in the world. “I’ll be the one waiting for you at the end of the aisle,” I said, unzipping her jeans and easing them off. “But you don’t have to wait for your wedding present,” I teased, “I’m giving it to you early…”
She threw her head back and rolled her sparkling eyes. “Men and their huge… fucking… egos…”
I buried my face in her neck and felt her breasts quivering with pleasure and her own amusement. I sucked in a breath, chores forgotten, knowing I would spend the rest of the day and most of the night inflicting my own sweet punishments. I touched her with an aching slowness that heated the room around us and honed the excitement between us to a sharp, sweet point.
“This is my last fire, Ember,” I said, rearing up over her naked flesh. “When I come home to you… when I marry you the way I should have done before you ever got away…
“It’s for good this time, sweetheart. It’s for good.”
23
Ember
I didn’t like the look on his face.
“To the northeast…? You’re certain…?... It’ll move twice as fast over grassland. And there’s a fucking pine ridge only fifty miles south of there…” He held the phone tightly enough that his knuckles blanched, and lines formed between his brows. I sat up on my elbows, not caring that the blankets slipped down. My nipples tightened in the cold morning air and I reached for my robe.
“I can be headed back within thirty minutes,” he said, and I felt the cold reach deeper in my belly. “I’ll meet you there by early afternoon and we’ll burn in more fire lines. As long as we can clear enough to keep the embers at least a hundred miles back…”
I tucked my feet into my slippers and headed downstairs, leaving him to finish his call. I’d spoken to Randy only long enough to hear his voice… and to promise to tell Connie he was tired and sore, but otherwise fine. But I could tell by the timbre of his voice that all the news wasn’t as good. I started a fire in the cookstove and put fresh grounds into the coffee pot. My stomach rolled at the smell of smoke and I had to put my hands on the counter for a moment to steady myself…
“It’s going to be fine, you know,” Jason said as he wrapped his arms around me and pressed his warm mouth to the back of my neck. I could feel the steady beat of his heart through my robe, reaching out to comfort me. “It’s only a shift in the wind, babygirl. It happens all the time. Another couple of hours and it’ll likely have shifted again.” He turned me to face him. “The sooner I go, the sooner I’ll be back,” he said with a smile. “I’ve got a couple more weeks of work ahead of me… and you’ve got a wedding to plan.” He kissed me until I could smile back at him. Somehow, he seemed to have more than enough courage for both of us. “Then I’ll be coming home to my bride, to the only place that ever felt like home… and to a whole new life with you…”
I turned in his arms and reached up to straighten his collar. His blond hair was still tousled from last night. His jaw was dark with stubble and he’d dressed fast and carelessly. Somehow his clothes seemed like a barrier, making him seem farther away… as if he were already halfway gone. I knew he could sense it, and I smiled up at him, trying to look braver than I felt. He took the calendar off the wall and sat down, pulling me onto his lap and wrapping his arms around me. He flipped the pages, month after month. I hadn’t even bothered to look at it, once the holidays had started approaching…
He traced his finger down my arm… over my hand… and took my fingertip in his. He nuzzled into the nape of my neck, and I could feel the smile on his face as he trailed my finger down the rows of days. “How about… this one?”
I took his thick finger in mine and moved it downward a little more. “Here, I think…” I said, chewing at my bottom lip. “So Mom and I can shop for a dress… and you and Randy have half a chance to recover.” I turned in his arms and wrapped them around his broad shoulders. “She’s never gonna believe this,” I said, watching his blue eyes sparkle. “I’m not totally sure I do yet…
“Are you sure you can really walk away from a job you’ve been so dedicated to for so long?”
“I’ve loved you longer,” he said, pushing back my hair so he could hold my face in his big, capable hands. “Life gives us all choices… And this time I’m making the right one, for both of us… and for the family we’re going to have one day.” He kissed me until the room seemed to spin on its side and my robe spilled off my shoulders. He dropped his face lower and cupped each breast tenderly, nuzzling me… suckling me… until a tingling heat rose up from my belly and spread through my chest.
“I could come with you,” I offered. “I’ve been thinking I should start taking photographs again and I can’t think of a better opportunity to begin with…”
“I want you to keep the home fires burning until I come back. To stay safe and warm until I put a proper wedding ring on your finger and get to take my bride to bed for the very first time,” he said in a tone that made every muscle inside me tighten wickedly.
But he gathered my robe back together and held the collar primly under my chin. “Soon I’ll never have to leave you behind again… but now I’ve got to go,” he said. “I swear it’s for the last time, babyg
irl…
“Just wait for me this one last time…”
I watched as he drove away.
I waved with one hand and held Rye by the collar with the other. The dog would have chased after Jason if I hadn’t held him tight.
I knew the feeling.
It was the cold that eventually drove us back inside. And the breeze that was picking up. Jason had built the fire high in the fireplace for me, and the kitchen was plenty warm enough from the cookstove. But the cabin seemed chilly, too strangely and too suddenly empty. Reilly snuffled around the floor the way he always did, making soft huffing noises, his nails clicking cheerfully on the floor. But everything that was familiar a month ago was strange and different now. Too still, too quiet… just empty.
Jason had left a work shirt draped over the back of a kitchen chair, and I picked it up and held it to my face. My body responded to his scent, and for a second it was like he was still with me. A hundred memories flooded deep, from my tingling skin into my heart, my mind. I sighed and opened my eyes… the calendar caught my eye. He’d drawn a heart shape around our wedding day in ink…
I sat down, keeping his shirt to my cheek, touching the day our future would begin. “He’s coming back to make us a real family,” I said, breaking the silence. Reilly responded by putting his big paws on my lap and snuffling his nose into Jason’s shirt. His eyes were bright, one silly ear was flipped inside out. He sneezed suddenly and I laughed out loud. It didn’t matter that I would miss Jason more than I could even imagine for the coming weeks. It didn’t matter that I would sleep alone in the bed upstairs, and have nothing but Rye and the sound of my own infernal typing for company…
My whole life had changed in a heartbeat, and that heartbeat was him. He was coming home and I had a wedding to plan. I picked up the calendar and gave our wedding day a big, noisy kiss. Reilly barked and jumped, happy for any excitement whether he understood it or not, knocking the calendar out of my hands. It fell to the floor in the shuffle, open to a different day that I’d circled in pencil, a reminder to myself. I bent down and picked it up…
That day had come and gone, forgotten and without notice. I hadn’t paid any attention to how long it had been. Reilly woofed and danced a circle with pure, unbridled pleasure.
I almost did too.
24
Jason
I’d watched in the rearview mirror until I lost sight of her. It was the hardest fucking thing I’d ever done, leaving her. Why did I always seem to be driving in the wrong direction…?
All the more reason to get back out there and stop the fucking fire in its tracks, once and for all. I’d made a commitment to the crew and I’d honor it. Randy, my best friend, was still out there and about to become my brother-in-law. It was my job to get us both back home safely… and as soon as possible. I knew I had to focus, to keep a clear head in order to make that happen. But Ember had burned her way deep under my skin. And she was smoldering there… even now…
There wasn’t an inch of her skin I hadn’t touched… hadn’t tasted during the night. I could still feel her silky thighs and the velvety heat of her sweet depths. She’d grown softer, rounder, ripening in the last few years, blossoming into a beauty I almost couldn’t comprehend. Like the majesty of the Rockies, or the quiet splendor of a sunset… like the raging, uncontrolled power of a wildfire, she left me breathless. I could never possess her, any more than a mountain could possess the sky. But every time I touched her, every time I took her in my arms, I experienced the same sense of awe. That she had been made for me, just as I had been made for her. That together we were perfect, complete in a way that finally made us both whole. All that was left was to make her my wife. And the mother of my children. Just the thought made my cock stiffen with anticipation.
From our very first time, there’s been nothing I’d wanted more than to plant my seed inside her and watch her body grow round, her belly ripen. We’d started trying when I’d asked her to marry me. But then I’d made the decision to join the hotshot crew… and she’d ended us and given me back the ring. It had all happened so fast… we hadn’t had enough time…
Maybe she would have stayed, if she’d been pregnant then. Or maybe not. The thought made my blood run cold. My heart thudded painfully in my chest as I drove farther away from her. Finding her at the hot spring had been the last thing I’d ever expected; god knows I hadn’t been prepared to take any precautions. It had felt so natural, so right to come inside her. And we’d picked up right where we’d left off…
There wasn’t any denying it. I’d wanted it from the very first time I’d touched her. My Ember, filled with my baby, would be so fucking luscious. Just the thought of taking her while I ran my hands over her round, full belly made me ache to turn the truck around. If we hadn’t already gotten pregnant, I sure as hell wasn’t gonna waste one more minute after the wedding…
“The only thing that matters now is that we’ve found each other again,” I said to the horizon. The sound of the truck’s engine and the tires on the road mostly drowned the words. “And I’ll be home in a few more weeks, Em. I’m marrying you this time, no matter what. And the only commitment in my entire life will be to love you deep and hard, until you’re carrying my baby.” I leaned one arm across the back of the seat, and shifted my weight. The images in my head of Ember pregnant had my cock pounding hard in my jeans.
I couldn’t wait to hold her in my arms, to peel her clothes off until she was naked and exposed… full, swollen breasts, her belly ripe and taut because of me…
I couldn’t see the smoke. I could smell it.
“Thank fuck, you’re back,” Randy said, dropping heavily to the ground. A firefighter’s gear can weigh almost half his own body weight, and sweat ran down his face in spite of the bitter cold. Half a dozen other men by the crew haul looked as dirty and exhausted as he was. “The pumps have been icing up, not that it matters much. Half the choppers are grounded with frozen lines…”
I’d been monitoring the radio and knew the lakes we’d been drawing from were mostly frozen over. A gust of wind swept through the gorge where we’d made our base camp and cut through my own heavy jacket. “Fire’s taken most of the scrub oak and cedar to the north?” My face was stiff with cold and my words were clipped.
He nodded and dragged his helmet off onto the ground beside him. “It’s burning hot now, and faster than ever. Everything is fucking dry as tinder.” He looked up at me, his gritty face serious. “The air temp is near freezing, sometimes well below, and even that can’t cool her down.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “The winds haven’t let up long enough for us to set more controlled burns. So we’re fighting by hand now… it’s fucking axes and chainsaws… Most of us have been on forty-eight-hour shifts…”
Halfway through his sentence, his head fell forward onto his chest and his jaw slackened. I watched the weary rise and fall of his chest. Every man on the job knew how it felt, to need sleep even more than food or water, to be too exhausted to choose.
I bent down and heaved him up and over my shoulder, taking him to sleep in one of the hauls. I would finish his shift, and another two straight days of my own after that. It was time to find the captain and learn exactly what we were up against. From everything I’d heard and from the look I’d seen in Randy’s eyes, the fire I’d left a few days ago was not the same one I’d just come back to.
Not by a long shot.
25
Ember
“Oh my god, honey,” Mom’s voice came crackling over the landline, “I don’t know why I’m surprised, Emmy. I always knew you two were meant for each other. It’s just so… so… sudden, that’s all.” I listened, my heart pounding away as she paused. “You’ve been broken up for years… you haven’t seen him or spoken to him… and now you’re getting married? And the wedding’s not even three weeks away…”
“If it were any other couple, I’d be the first one to say it was crazy, Mom. But it feels so right… like he was never even gone,”
I said. “Neither one of us knew the other would be at the hot springs that night. But we found each other again… and it’s like we never really lost each other. We fit together… just like we always have.”
“Mmm… well… That part never really is the trouble, is it?” she said. I could almost see the smile on her face. “Anybody can see the sparks that fly off you two… It was the same way with me and Ray.”
I blushed at the mention of my dad, but kept quiet, willing her to go on. It wasn’t like her to talk frankly, and my parents’ complex relationship had always been mysterious. “We got married so young,” she went on softly, like she was talking to her own memories. “He was so big and strong… like a hero straight out of a paperback novel, to a girl like me. He was headstrong… I was swept off my feet. We never really talked about what we both wanted out of life…”
“What did you want, Mom?” I asked softly, feeling bold and uncomfortable questioning her. “I know Daddy wanted a family… and that he was born to be a firefighter.” I paused, feeling a tightening sensation in my chest. “He loved you so much…”
“And I loved him,” she said with conviction. “Sometimes I think I loved him too much.” She stopped and I heard her swallow hard. “I still love him, Emmy. It didn’t stop just because we had problems. And it didn’t stop when he died, either. I should have opened up to him more… when I still had the chance. I should have told him how I felt, and what I needed to be happy…”
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