For the second time that day, he felt the searing sting of flames licking his body. Only these flames were the product of his own desire.
She didn’t respond initially, and he could sense her struggle to remain unaffected. Gage would have none of it. He didn’t merely seek entrance into her mouth with his tongue, he demanded it. And once inside, he made it his personal mission to affect Aubrey as much as possible. She held out for another few seconds, then conceded with a soft moan.
Mindless of the warm summer sun beating down on them and the occasional passing car or pedestrian, he kissed her over and over. Venturing from her mouth, he tasted a delicate earlobe and the sweet curve of her neck where it joined her shoulder. She shuddered and sighed, and he took her mouth again.
“Enough,” she gasped when he finally allowed her to catch her breath.
Because he was fast approaching the point of no return, he eased back a step.
Aubrey pressed her palms to her flushed cheeks. “We can’t do this. It’s crazy.”
“I want to see you. I think it’s pretty obvious there’s still a lot of attraction on both sides.”
She worried her bottom lip and shook her head. “Not a good idea.”
“I disagree.” Gage’s heart rate had finally slowed to something his overcharged system could tolerate. “Have dinner with me later this week. We’ll talk.”
Her dubious expression spoke volumes. “You’re right about one thing. There is still a lot of attraction on both sides. But I’ve only been back in town a few days, and it’s not like we’ve remained close through the years.”
“Okay, w—”
She cut him off with a raised hand. “I’m not ready…not going to start dating you again. It would be a mistake. For a lot of reasons.”
“Aubrey…”
“I’m out of here in six weeks when my leave of absence is over. And I don’t think either of us wants another miserable parting. One was more than enough.”
Gage was struck by the sudden pain clouding Aubrey’s eyes. Pain because she’d hurt him and regretted it? Or had he hurt her? Truthfully, he’d never stopped to consider the possibility that his refusal to accompany her to Tucson might have been viewed by Aubrey as a form of rejection. Well, maybe he should consider it and consider it hard.
“I really have to go.”
“Aubrey—”
She grabbed the door handle of her SUV and got in. This time, he didn’t stop her.
“Goodbye, Gage. And good luck with the fire.” She shut the door.
He stayed, watching her pull out of the parking lot and replaying the last five minutes in his head. Kissing her had been great. Unbelievable. He didn’t regret it for one second. But it was clear he’d pressured Aubrey for more than she was prepared to give. And if he didn’t want to scare her off, he’d have to take a less headstrong approach.
Fortunately, Gage counted patience as one of his strong suits, along with perseverance.
If he’d learned anything as a Hotshot, it was when to fight and when to back off.
And that backing off didn’t signify quitting.
Chapter 4
Gage was dirty, hungry and more tired than he could remember being in a long time. He wanted a hot shower, food—any food would do—and fourteen hours of uninterrupted sleep. In that order.
Standing at the back door of the ranch house, he indulged himself in a good, long stretch. When he finished, he treated the family dog, Biscuit, to an ear-scratching and head-patting combo. The fire hadn’t been the worst one Gage had fought by any means, but there had been a few hairy moments, thanks to Mother Nature and her unpredictable whims. In addition, they were shorthanded, forcing all the Hotshots to work double shifts. The one time he’d visited the community center and saw Aubrey was his only break in three full days. But what a break it had been.
Since then, he’d repeatedly relived those minutes they kissed, lingering in particular on the taste of her warm and giving mouth. Not to mention the exact moment she melted against him, abandoning all efforts to resist. He thought less about her sudden turnaround. It surprised him how she’d gone from searing hot one minute to icy cold the next, and he intended to focus the sum total of his mental energies on resolving whatever prompted it.
Tomorrow, when he actually had some mental energy in supply.
He guessed it to be somewhere between ten and ten-thirty in the morning, if his blurry vision could be trusted. Good. His father and sister would be out somewhere working the ranch and not in the house. He’d persuade his mother to fix him breakfast while he showered, assuming she was home and not at work, then sleep until supper. She’d cover for him, and he could avoid a confrontation with his father until he’d had a chance to refuel and reenergize.
Luck, unfortunately, wasn’t on Gage’s side.
He stepped into the bright, sunny kitchen of the Raintree home and nearly collided with his father, who had apparently been on his way out the door.
“Morning, Dad.” Gage quickly recovered and blustered through a friendly greeting. “How’s the ankle?” He sidestepped the older man, making straight for the refrigerator.
Having raised two children, one headstrong and the other a handful, Joseph Raintree long ago perfected a stare worthy of freezing a guilty twelve-year-old in his tracks. Gage wasn’t a kid anymore, but the stare still had the ability to immobilize him. He came to a grinding halt.
“You’ve been gone since Tuesday,” Joseph said in a low voice. His lips hardly moved, yet each word struck Gage like a tiny bullet.
There wasn’t more than a half-inch difference in their heights or the widths of their shoulders. And before the gout had gotten so bad, his father regularly gave Gage a run for his money in arm-wrestling matches. Steel-gray hair and a pronounced limp were the only visible signs Joseph had aged in the last twenty years. Inside the man, Gage knew, was a different story. Chronic pain had taken a toll on his father, in more ways than one.
“No message. No phone call. Your poor mother was worried sick.”
“Wait just a minute.” Gage exhaled and steadied himself. “I called home the minute I hung up from dispatch and talked to Hannah.”
“Who didn’t tell us until that evening where you were.”
And this was somehow Gage’s fault? “Her lack of communication skills isn’t my problem.”
“You’re part of this family, which makes it your problem.”
“Dad, even if she never said a word, you knew where I was.” Gage bent over the sink, ran the cold water and splashed a handful on his face. “All you had to do was listen to the local news or pick up the phone and talk to a neighbor,” he said after toweling dry. “Maybe leave this damn ranch once in a while and go into town.”
“You will not take that tone with me.”
“Dad—”
“What you will do is get dressed and finish the chores that need doing around here. Between you being gone and my gout, we’re behind. The herd hasn’t been moved to the south range yet, and we’re almost a week late in filing the latest grazing study report.”
“Didn’t Hannah do anything while I was gone?” Anger and resentment built inside Gage, fed in large part by his utter exhaustion. His younger sister, it seemed to him, got away with as little work as possible. He didn’t understand it, given her intention of taking over management of the ranch one day from their father. “I’m not the only one in this family capable of filling out forms.” He looked past his father into the family room. “Where is Hannah, anyway?”
“Registering for summer school.”
Gage slumped against the refrigerator and scrubbed his bristled jaw. “Summer school. How could I forget?”
How could he?
Hannah majored in agricultural management at Pineville College. She made the two-hour round-trip drive three days a week, arriving home too late to get much work done on the ranch. If not for a scholarship, she wouldn’t be attending college at all.
Gage didn’t begrudge his siste
r an education. Since he had no plans to follow in their father’s footsteps, he was all for Hannah doing it. And he himself had attended firefighting academy. But he did begrudge her their father’s blatant favoritism. Hannah was separated from Gage by eight years and three miscarriages. As the long-awaited and much-wanted second child, she could do no wrong in the eyes of her doting parents.
“I thought we agreed Hannah was going to stay home this summer.” Convinced his argument fell on deaf ears, Gage nonetheless persisted. “You know June and July are the busiest months of year for me.”
“Can’t be helped. She needs some class for next semester.”
Gage pushed off the refrigerator. One class might be doable, if they all worked together.
“You’ll have to pick up the slack,” Joseph continued. “No more taking off for hours or days on end whenever the mood strikes you.”
“I’m a Hotshot, Dad. Our job is to fight fires and save the very land your cattle graze on. What’s left of it after four years of drought.” A part of Gage’s brain recognized the futility of his words, but the other part wouldn’t shut up. “I also head the Blue Ridge Volunteer Fire Department. If this house were to go up in flames, I’d be the one driving the engine here. But I suppose even then you’d accuse me of taking off when the mood struck.”
“You’re twisting the situation around to suit your own purposes!”
“If I am twisting the situation around, I’m not the only one,” Gage replied.
He broke eye contact first, ending their staring match, and tugged his filthy T-shirt free from the waistband of his pants. “I’m tired, Dad. I’ve had at most ten hours sleep in the past three days. Let me shower and take a nap. I’ll fill out the reports and fax them in before supper. If sending them in sooner is that critical, Hannah can do it when she gets back.”
Gage was well aware his sharp tone made him sound more like a frustrated teenager than an adult, but he was too tired to care. Both men turned when the back door flew open, and Hannah burst into the kitchen, her long black hair caught up in a bouncy ponytail.
“Hey, big brother.” The smile she showered on Gage lit up the room. If she ever put that smile to serious use, half the male population of Pineville College would be throwing themselves at her feet. “The prodigal son returns.” Her glance traveled from Gage to their father, causing her smile to droop slightly. “Did I walk in on the middle of something? Oh, I get it,” she said when no one answered. “None of my business.”
“Actually, it is—”
Joseph didn’t let Gage finish. He limped over to Hannah and bent down so she could plant a kiss on his cheek. “Did you get registered for your class?”
A stab of resentment penetrated Gage’s empty and growling stomach.
“Two classes.” Hannah extracted a paper from the back pocket of her jeans and waved it. “Remember?”
“Two?” Gage said, “I thought you were taking only one class.”
“Agricultural accounting and animal industry 101. I start next week, Monday through Thursday. Sorry, Gage.” The dark eyes she turned on him were the mirror image of his own in shape, size and color. Hers, however, were dancing and not the least bit apologetic despite her words. “These are accelerated classes, three hours each. I won’t be home until afternoon. Hope that’s not too much of a problem. Dad said you wouldn’t mind covering for me.”
“Funny, he didn’t tell me that.”
Joseph Raintree countered Gage’s sarcasm with some of his own. “You weren’t here to tell.”
Gage made an abrupt dive for the door. He felt like if he stayed in the house a minute longer, he’d suffocate. “I’ll do my best, but no promises. If I get called to a fire, I’m out of here. And speaking of getting out of here…”
“Where to you think you’re going?” Joseph called after him.
“Somewhere quieter.”
Gage no sooner shut the back door than it flew open and Hannah appeared.
“Wait. A letter came for you yesterday from the Forest Service. You might want it.”
Gage took the letter from her outstretched hand and glanced at the return address. Could it be? So many weeks had passed, he’d long since lost hope. Tearing open the envelope, he prepared himself for bad news.
His luck, however, had taken a turn for the better.
Pleasure spread through him as he read the first paragraph. “I made it.” The lowness of his voice took him aback, considering he wanted to shout his good news.
“Made what?”
Hannah stood at his elbow, trying none too discreetly to read the letter over his shoulder. Biscuit also stood nearby, tongue lolling and tail wagging, though his interest clearly lay in another petting.
“The list of candidates being considered for promotion. To crew leader.” Gage surrendered to the grin tugging at his mouth. “I report Monday morning for my initial interview.”
“Congratulations, big brother! That’s awesome.” She grabbed his arm and gave it an enthusiastic shake. “You so deserve this promotion.”
“It’ll mean more hours for me if I get it.”
Hannah’s expression said she couldn’t believe he was worried about such an insignificant thing. “We’ll manage.”
“Thanks.” Without thinking, he reached up and yanked affectionately on her ponytail.
Suddenly, his hand went still. How often had he done this exact thing in the years they were growing up? Too many times to count.
His resentment for his younger sister instantly faded.
“The monthly grazing reports are late. Think you can fax them out this afternoon, Hannah?”
“No problem.”
“Call me on my cell phone if you have any trouble with them.” He replaced the letter in the envelope and stuffed it in the front pocket of his T-shirt.
“I can handle the reports.”
Gage nodded. “You’ve got what it takes to run this place, you know.” And she did, if she ever quit fooling around and really applied herself.
His compliment brought a smile to her face. Gage was again struck by her prettiness.
“You sure you won’t stay?” she asked. “Dad’ll cool off in a couple of hours. He just likes to, you know, parade his authority.”
“Parade his authority? That’s a pretty big mouthful for an agricultural major.”
“You’d be surprised at all the stuff I’ve learned in animal psych class that applies to people.”
Gage chuckled. “See ya later, squirt. Tell Mom I’m sorry I missed her.”
Ten minutes later he reached the end of the dirt road leading from the Raintree ranch to town. The pickup truck bumped as the tires hit pavement, tossing the various loose items that littered the front seat into the air. Gage headed east. He’d known his destination all along. It was the same place he always went to whenever he craved solitude.
Next to the community center sat a small block building that housed the volunteer fire department’s sole engine. It wasn’t the ragtag couch in the back room that drew Gage, but rather the small, run-down motor home parked behind the station.
The same motor home he and Aubrey had occupied during their brief marriage—only then it had been parked on the Raintree ranch.
Gage had continued to live in the motor home for several months after she left, foolishly hoping she might one day return. Even after he moved back into the ranch house and his old bedroom, he occasionally escaped to the motor home for some peace and quiet. A couple years ago, Joseph Raintree decided to dispose of the eyesore. Gage hooked the motor home to his pickup truck and hauled it to the fire station rather than the landfill, claiming it was for the guys to use.
So far, he was the only guy to use it.
The mattress in the motor home’s sole bunk was lumpy and sagging, a condition fresh sheets and new pillows didn’t improve. At the moment, however, it appealed to Gage more than the finest quality feather bed. And yet, when the driveway leading to the fire station appeared, he drove right past it and in
stead took the turnoff farther up the road, the one leading to Aubrey’s grandmother’s house.
He told himself he was just checking on the handicap renovations—to see what progress the others had made, if any, during his three-day absence.
It was a bald-faced lie, of course, and he darn well knew it.
*
At the sound of a vehicle door slamming, Aubrey placed the can of tuna fish she’d just opened on the kitchen counter and went into the living room. One of the volunteer firefighters must have stopped by to make another repair. Probably Kenny Junior. When he left the previous day, he promised to return and replace the front door threshold with a lower one.
His timing was actually good. Aubrey and her grandmother had recently finished a strenuous, yet productive, round of physical therapy. Bound and determined to walk on her own again, Grandma Rose had pushed herself hard. But rather than take a quick nap before lunch, as was her habit, she’d asked Aubrey to wheel her next door to Mrs. Payne’s. The two friends were engaged in a heated race to finish the baby quilt before Mrs. Payne’s grandchild made his grand entrance into the world.
Aubrey flung open the front door, ready to greet Kenny Junior, only it wasn’t him. A different volunteer firefighter climbed the porch steps. This one younger, taller and…filthy from head to toe.
“Gage! What are you do—” She pushed open the screen door and stepped out. Her hand stopped just short of taking his arm. “Jeez, are you all right? You look awful.”
“Thanks.” He moved as if each step resulted in excruciating pain.
“What happened? Were you injured?”
“Only a little.” The crooked smile he aimed her way lacked its usual luster. “And not in the line of duty.”
“Is that a joke?” By way of invitation, she opened the screen door and he followed her inside.
“Yes, it is. And evidently a bad one. You can blame my warped sense of humor on my dad. He didn’t exactly give me a hero’s welcome when I got home this morning.”
“Oh, Gage.” Because he obviously wanted to make light of an upsetting situation, Aubrey changed the subject. “I heard on the news this morning the fire is nearly contained.”
Just Kate: His Only Wife (Bestselling Author Collection) Page 20