by Bella Andre
Maya.
Ever since joining the Tahoe Pines Hotshot Crew fifteen years earlier, his decisions had been clear-cut. He put out fires. He supported his men. No woman had ever come between him and what he knew to be the right course of action.
Until now.
Until Maya.
Everything in him wanted to keep her safe. He'd never forgive himself if something happened to her.
But the same was true for his crew. He already felt responsible for what had happened to Connor and Robbie. He couldn't let another one of his men end up in the burn ward.
No matter what he did, no matter which choice he made, he was screwed.
But years of dealing with that split second between life and death had taught him to make the hard decisions, and to make them fast, before indecision compounded the problem. And the fact was, no matter how compelled he was to protect Maya, she was tough. And smart. She understood the danger she was in, that conducting this investigation put her life at risk. Whereas, his men were trying to stay one step ahead of a complex and deadly fire. Logan couldn't let them continue that battle without his support.
Late-afternoon tourist traffic crawled on the lone highway that ringed the lake. Large sunburned families were crowded into cars after a happy day at the beach, intent on their fun even though the sky was hazy and the air quality was terrible. Logan wove through lanes as safely as he could manage, to speed up his trip into the housing development. He was running behind a ticking clock, one he was afraid he might never catch up with.
He parked in front of a manicured front lawn and moved quickly past the fire trucks, toward his squad boss.
Gary's expression was grim. “Tell me you've found the asswipe who did all this.”
“Not yet,” Logan said, “but as of fifteen minutes ago I've been taken off suspension.”
“Thank God for that,” Gary said.
Logan scanned the scene. The few men the hotshots could spare to work on saving the houses had been joined by the urban teams. From where he was standing, the fire looked to be raging completely out of control.
Gary confirmed his assessment, saying “Zero percent containment. We're fucked.”
Gary's cell phone rang and Logan watched his squad boss's face go ash gray as he listened to the caller.
He clicked his phone shut. “That was the hospital.”
Logan braced himself. “Connor?”
Gary shook his head. “No. He's fine. In pain, but he'll heal. It's Robbie.”
All day he'd thought about Robbie, pictured him unconscious in the hospital bed, every inch of his skin covered in bandages.
“He's not doing well. His blood pressure is low. His heart rate is all over the place. They're not sure he's going to make it.”
“Jesus,” Logan said in a low voice. “He's all alone.”
“I'll keep holding down the fort. You go help Robbie fight like hell for his life. And whatever you do, Logan, bring him back alive.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE MOON hung low over the hotshot station when Maya walked in and saw that it was nearly empty, except for a lone, dark-haired man sitting at the dining table, his head bent down over maps and charts. With a fire like this, hotshot crews worked as long and hard as was humanly possible, only taking short breaks to refuel and snatch an hour or two of sleep to recharge.
She hated bothering firefighters in the middle of a blaze when they were exhausted and desperately needed downtime. But the longer it took her to find the arsonist, the more potential danger the firefighters faced. And so she'd forge ahead with her investigation and continue asking hard questions.
“Excuse me, I'm looking for Sam MacKenzie.”
The man looked up at her and she was momentarily startled by his looks. His eyes were a penetrating blue, his hair jet black, his jaw was actually chiseled, and his forearms were sinew and muscle.
“Ma'am.”
She swallowed uncomfortably, hating what had to be said.
“You're Mr. MacKenzie?”
He nodded, pushed back his chair, and stood up. Tall with broad shoulders, he gave off the impression of great strength. “Ms. Jackson, you are just the woman I wanted to talk to.”
“Chief Stevens informed me that several witnesses saw a man bearing your description standing outside my hotel room yesterday afternoon.”
“That's right.”
Hotshots never backed down from a challenge. Well, neither did she. She looked him directly in the eye. “I need to know why.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “I came to talk some sense into you.”
The tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood up. “Excuse me?”
“You've got the wrong suspect.”
She couldn't stand to add another hotshot to her list. But Sam seemed intent on writing his own name down for her. “Are you telling me you know who the right one is?”
“No, ma'am, I don't.”
For a minute there, she'd been afraid he was going to say You're looking at him.
She breathed a small sigh of relief before saying “Witnesses said you slipped a note under my door.”
“I wanted you to know I'd been there. That we needed to talk about Logan. We depend on him. Hell, he nearly died yesterday trying to save my brother in a blowup.”
Softly, she said, “I was there. I saw what he did. What you did.”
But Sam wasn't impressed by her admiration. “You sent him into the site of the explosion with that damn sniffer, didn't you?”
“He offered.”
“And you were more than happy to let him risk his life for you, weren't you? After all, if he'd died, he would have just been another casualty on your spreadsheet.”
Maya's hands fisted at her sides. “How dare you accuse me of something like that? I didn't want him going anywhere near that fire.” She stopped herself from admitting that her heart had nearly stopped a dozen times while she stood on the roof and watched Logan collect the data.
Sam was unrelenting. “All I know is that he could have died getting your damn data. Two dead hotshots in two days, is that what you want?”
Her heart stopped beating. “Two?” She must have heard him wrong. “Robbie's in the hospital. He's alive.”
For the first time, Sam's expression softened. “The call just came in from the hospital. Robbie's gone.”
Logan raced to Tahoe General in record time, but he was too late. Standing in the hallway, staring at Robbie's empty bed, images flashed by, one after the other, of Robbie's antics, his practical jokes on the other hotshots, how much he'd sucked at cleaning the burned chili out of the bottom of the aluminum pot. He'd been no more than a kid, but they all knew he'd grow into a hell of a firefighter one day.
Now he was gone.
Logan's legs were stiff as he followed the nurse to Connor's room. She opened the door and put her hand on his arm as he walked past her.
“I'm sorry,” she whispered, her eyes soft and sympathetic. “I'll leave you alone with your friend.”
Logan watched Connor's chest steadily rise and fall as he moved toward the bed. Even though Connor was heavily drugged for pain, every few breaths he grimaced. Logan stared at his friend's face, remembering too well the agony etched across it as they'd outrun the fire.
He owed it to his men—especially to Robbie and his family—to find the arsonist soon, before anyone else got caught in his flaming trap.
Quietly, he left Connor's room. Out in the hallway, he called his squad boss. “He's dead, Gary.”
Because wildland firefighting was one of the most dangerous professions in the world, clinical psychologists spent a couple of days with the crew every year forcing them to talk things through. Hotshots understood that even when they did everything right, death was sometimes an inevitable outcome.
But everything was different this time. Robbie hadn't been killed out on the mountain, wielding a Pulaski. He'd been caught in a madman's web.
Gary's sound of anguish mirrored what w
as in Logan's heart. “He was just a kid.”
“I'll be back at the station in fifteen,” Logan said. For Robbie's sake, if nothing else, he needed to take down the fire while Maya continued to track the arsonist.
The killer.
But Gary wasn't on board with that plan. “The winds are too squirrelly for any of us to be out there. Everyone on crew is already on their way back in. I'm not authorizing anyone to fight fire again until morning. Not even you.”
Futility tore through Logan. “Shit. I should have been there.”
“None of this is your fault,” Gary said. “None of it. Go home, Logan. Try to get some sleep.”
The signal went dead before Logan could pull rank. He wanted to be in Desolation Wilderness fighting the goddamned fire. But Gary was right about one thing—he couldn't let his men see him like this. It was his job to keep it together no matter what. His crew looked to him for strength and he wouldn't disappoint.
He drove home on autopilot while Robbie's favorite Bruce Springsteen song played on the radio.
Maya wasted a precious hour driving first to the hospital and then to the station. The nurse said she'd missed Logan by a matter of minutes and Gary hadn't said much of anything at all, just that he was glad she'd finally come to her senses and taken Logan off suspension. The fact that she'd felt like a fly buzzing around a swatter was irrelevant. All that mattered right now was finding Logan and making sure he didn't blame himself for Robbie's death.
She breathed out a deep sigh of relief when she pulled into Logan's driveway and saw moonlight glinting off the bumper of a station truck.
Her heart thumped hard in her chest as she climbed the same front steps he'd carried her up after the explosion that afternoon. Although they'd made love only a handful of hours ago, it seemed like a lifetime had passed since then.
She knocked on his door, then rang the doorbell, but there was no reply. Taking the chance that it would be unlocked—she'd grown up in a house where no one had needed a key—she turned the knob, and the door swung open. She stepped inside, scanning the empty foyer for sign of Logan.
He emerged silently. On the surface, he didn't look any different. The same dark shadow covered his jaw, and he stood with his usual self-confidence. But she'd been trained to look deeper than that and instantly noted grief in the tightness around his mouth, frustration in his eyes.
“I heard about Robbie,” she said softly. She wanted to reach out for him, wanted him to know she understood what he was going through. “I'm so sorry, Logan.”
His big, strong hands pulled her toward him and she was momentarily shocked by the enormous hard-on she felt against her belly, but only for a short moment. After all, hadn't she dealt with her loss in exactly the same way? Hadn't she used Logan's body to try to forget her sadness?
She owed him this. And she would gladly give him a piece of herself if it would help deal with his loss in some small way.
She pressed herself into him and rubbed her breasts against the wall of his chest, and a growled curse was on his lips as he captured her mouth in a hard kiss. Mindful of his cuts, she gently wrapped her arms around his wide back and opened her legs to bring him closer. His hands moved from her hips to her hair, then back again.
Somewhere in the background, she heard fabric ripping, realizing he'd ripped her T-shirt off her body only when the ruined cotton fell to the floor. Her bra came off just as quickly, and then his mouth was on her skin, hot and insistent as he sucked her nipples in between his teeth, cupping her breasts so that he could lave them both at the same time.
A moan sounded, maybe hers, maybe his. She arched into his mouth and pushed her hands into the back pockets of his jeans, his tight muscles jumping against her fingers. He barely took the time to undo her zipper before yanking her pants and underwear off, and when his fingers found her she was already wet and swollen, desperate for more. His cock came free from his jeans and boxers and he lifted her off the ground, forcing her thighs around his hips.
Instinctively, she wrapped her legs around him and when he pushed into her, high and hard, she gasped with pleasure. His erection tightly sheathed within her, her elbows locked around his neck, she buried her head against his shoulder and rocked up and down on his shaft.
She'd come to help him, but there was no denying her own release, or even to slow it down. Her muscles began to dance around him and when he pushed in deeper, she lost what was left of her control and tumbled into a stunningly powerful climax.
Logan rode her steadily through her waves of pleasure, and it was only as she was coming down from her orgasm that he pulled out and came warm against her belly.
She couldn't take in air fast enough as she clung to him, her skin damp with sweat and semen. She hadn't planned on this, couldn't have made a rational case for what had just happened between them, but deep within she knew it had been exactly right.
Logan set her away from him, lines of remorse joining those of sorrow. “Jesus, Maya, I attacked you.”
Recrimination underlay every word.
Ignoring her nakedness, she reached for his hand. “Six months ago I did the very same thing to you. It's all right. I understand exactly how you're feeling.”
His eyes briefly met hers, just long enough that she could tell he was still blaming himself for everything, including their quickie. Refusing to release his hands, she led him up the stairs and into his bathroom. She turned the shower on and stepped under the water, pulling him in with her.
“Let's clean up,” she said softly, “and then I want to share something with you. Something I hope will help.”
Exhaustion mingled with confusion on his heartstoppingly beautiful face. When, she wondered, was the last time he'd slept? She wanted to pull him against her and stroke his hair like he was a little boy, until he finally got some rest.
She ran a bar of soap over his chest, trying to keep her attention on simply bathing, but it was difficult. Very difficult. She sucked her lower lip in between her teeth as she ran bubbles across his pecs and down his washboard stomach.
He covered her hand with his own before she got any closer to his budding erection. “I can't control myself around you.”
She looked up at him and admitted the truth. “I know. I feel the same way.”
The bar of soap dropped to the tiled floor as his mouth came down on hers. But before she could kiss him back, he turned off the water and wrapped her in a towel.
“I'm a monster tonight, Maya. I don't want to hurt you again.”
“You've never hurt me, Logan. Never.” She walked over to his bed and sat down against a pillow, curling her ankles beneath her thighs. “Please, come and listen to what I have to say. And then if you want me to leave, I'll go.”
He looked at her for a long moment, just long enough for her to wonder if he was going to refuse her request. Finally, he wrapped a towel around his waist and moved to the bed.
She clasped and unclasped her hands on her lap, staring at her reddening knuckles. She'd never talked to anyone about the night she'd lost her brother. Not her friends. Not her mother. Not even the therapist who'd tried repeatedly to get it out of her. It had been none of the woman's business. Now here she was, sitting on Logan's bed, wrapped in a towel, ready to talk.
“I was sitting in the kitchen paying bills when I got the call. I still dream about it, about hearing ‘Tony's dead’ and dropping the phone. It broke on the tile floor, actually. Shattered into a hundred pieces. I remember feeling like I was that phone, like I'd never be whole again.”
It was the strangest thing, but as Logan held her, she wasn't fighting back tears. For once, she'd thought of Tony—actually talked about him—and wasn't going to cry. Maybe she was all cried out. Or maybe it was simply that being with Logan and sharing with him had sped up the healing process.
Feeling much stronger than she had in a very long while, she leaned back against the headboard and stroked the top of his large hands lightly with her thumbs.
“Hi
s landlord needed his place cleared out, but I just couldn't do it. Not without a drink to make me numb. Which is how I found you.”
He squeezed her hands. “I'm glad you did. I'm glad it was me.”
“Me too,” she whispered, coming up on her knees in front of him to kiss him gently. “And I'm glad I can be here for you.”
“I'll be all right, Maya,” he said, and she believed him. He was an incredibly strong man. But it was like he'd said once to her, even strong people needed help sometimes.
“Ever since Tony died I've been consumed by the fact that a murderer is walking around out there, just waiting for his next chance to kill somebody's brother, or sister, or best friend. Thank you for asking Patrick to look into Tony's case. You'll never know how much it means to me.”
“I want to help, Maya. Anything I can do, I'll do.”
She didn't want to get distracted by his kisses, by his touch, before she said what she'd come to say, but she couldn't resist pressing her lips to his to silently let him know how much his concern meant to her.
Forcing herself to pull away from his heat, she took a deep breath and tried to put all of her feelings into words. “I don't want you to fall into the same trap I've been stuck in, living only for revenge.”
“Is that what you've been doing?”
She closed her eyes, finally accepting the truth she'd tried to hide from for so long. “Yes, that's exactly what I've been doing.”
He dragged her body into his and as she rested her head against the hard wall of his chest, she almost forgot who was comforting whom.
She didn't unwrap her arms from his warmth as she said, “What happened to Robbie isn't your fault, Logan.”
She felt him tense. “I wasn't there to save Robbie. Now he's dead.”
He tried to pull back, but she refused to let him go. Not when he needed her so desperately, as much as she had needed him six months ago.
“You're one of the best men I've ever known. You lead your men with honesty and integrity. You've earned their trust. And mine. Forever.” She looked at him and allowed her deeply buried feelings to shine through. “Let me love you, Logan. Let me help you heal.”