Hot Shot

by M. J. Fredrick

  He nodded and gestured toward the table. She sat first, nearly moaning with relief at getting off her feet. He hadn’t seen her sit since the day he got here.

  “You aren’t leaving Doug, are you?” he asked half-jokingly. How would he react to news that she was available again? Since Peyton had come into his life, he hardly thought of Jen at all, and no longer fantasized about finding his way back to her. Last week he might have rejoiced, maybe allowed Jen to suffer a bit before starting a campaign to win her back. Now, he’d probably feel sad she’d sacrificed what they had together and was unable to make her new life work, but he wouldn’t pursue the relationship again.

  Damn. That was liberating.

  She didn’t dignify his comment with an answer. “This is my last fire.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  He couldn’t keep the shock from his expression. Jen was third-generation Hot Shot, had been in fifteen years, was damn good at her job, was only about the job. She’d finally achieved everything she’d worked for. Was it because of Doug? Did she want to quit before she was fired? Why would she—?

  Before he could complete the last question in his mind, he knew. She’d told him once, a long time ago, the one reason she would leave the Forest Service without a fight. She probably thought he didn’t remember. His stomach dropped, swear-to-God dropped, to the toes of his boots.

  “You’re pregnant.”

  He had the pleasure of seeing the surprise on her face, then the wariness, but that was the only joy he felt. She couldn’t figure out how he’d react? She wore his best friend’s ring, answered to his best friend’s name and now carried his best friend’s child.

  Damn, it hurt. Knock-your-breath-out-of-your-chest kind of hurt. During their short marriage, they’d discussed children in the abstract, but the reality that she was having a child, had created a child with Doug, churned up everything inside him once again, all the old feelings, pain being the strongest of all.

  He lowered his head to his hands, feeling very old and very…mortal. He knew she still had the power to hurt him, but hadn’t expected her to use the power so effectively.

  Through the haze of pain, he saw her watching him hopefully. Part of him wanted her to hurt like he did, but the part that once loved her wanted her to be happy. He just couldn’t make his mouth form the words.

  “Gabe, I’m sorry.”

  He sensed her reaching across the table for him but couldn’t face her.

  “For what?” he asked finally, dragging his hands down his face. “You got on with your life just like you wanted. You don’t need my blessing.”

  “I thought it would be better if you heard it from me.”

  Gabe closed his eyes. He stood, unsteady on his feet. He looked down at her, saw the girl he’d married, the girl he’d made love with, laughed with, fought with, cried over. Lost to him forever now. God. He touched her cheek and dredged up the only words he could manage.

  “Take care of yourself, Jen, all right? We’re going to Missoula, see what we can find out. We’ll be back tomorrow. All right?”

  But he didn’t wait for her answer before he walked away.

  Something was definitely wrong with Gabe. He’d fetched Peyton with little more than a “come on”, led her to a battered pickup and barely waited till she was in before he pulled out in a spray of dust.

  She questioned his changed mood once they were on the road. “What is it? I thought we were waiting till tomorrow.”

  “I just want to get this done so everything can get back to normal.”

  Normal, as in chasing fires up a mountain. Check. “So how far to Missoula?”

  “Little more than an hour.”

  Plenty of time. Maybe too much. “So what is normal for you?”

  He glanced over at her, but his expression was closed. “What do you mean?”

  “When you’re not on a fire, what’s normal? Do you have a house in Albuquerque?”

  “An apartment. No one’s there to take care of it when I’m gone.”

  “Your family doesn’t live there?”

  “No.”

  “So why do you live there?”

  He scrubbed his hand over his face and glanced in the rearview mirror, the move telegraphing his impatience with her questions. “Because it’s beautiful. It suits me.”

  “Where’s your family?”

  He blew a breath out through his nose. “My dad died, and my mom doesn’t remember me.”

  Her heart wrenched. She didn’t have the best relationship with her parents, couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her dad, but for his mother not to remember him had to be devastating. “Oh, Gabe, I’m so sorry. Alzheimer’s?”

  “Yeah.” He changed lanes unnecessarily. More of that energy with no place to go.

  She started to reach toward him, wanting to give him some show of support, but realized he would brush her off. “Is she in a home?”

  “Yeah.”

  Damn, back to those one-word answers again. “Where?”

  “South Carolina. Where I grew up. She’s in Sumter.”

  “Do you ever see her?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “Every now and then. I don’t see the point. It only upsets her and frustrates me.”

  It would make him nuts, having something so out of his control. “Do you have any other family there?” She hoped he had a buffer, someone who could share his burden, though he wouldn’t admit it was a burden.

  “My aunts visit her, see she’s taken care of. I send them money.”

  “But you don’t have any brothers or sisters?” she asked, uneasy now. He was answering her questions without evading her. He wasn’t happy about it, but he wasn’t holding back. So she couldn’t stop. She wanted to understand the man beyond the Hot Shot, the man who shared her bed.

  The man she was terrified she loved.

  “No. I was an only child, late in life. A mistake, I guess.” He shrugged. “My parents already had their careers and I was incidental.”

  “What did they do?”

  “Doctors, both of them.”

  That stunned her more than anything she’d learned about him to this point. He didn’t act like a man who’d lived a life of privilege. “Really? Is that why you became an EMT?”

  One corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk. “A far cry from medical school, as far as they were concerned. I just—I’m not cut out for the bureaucracy of working in a hospital.”

  “Were they upset?”

  “Oh yeah. Worse, I became what amounts to a manual laborer. Me being good at it didn’t matter to them.”

  She felt a twinge for the man whose parents didn’t value who he had become. Her parents hadn’t always understood her choices, but they’d never made her feel like a failure.

  No, she hadn’t needed help there.

  “Neither of them supported your decision?”

  “Hell no.” He chuckled humorlessly. “They were of like mind on that account, at least. Maybe the only thing in their marriage they agreed on. And then fifteen years after leaving home, I met Jen, who had her own ideas of making me better than I was.”

  A thought struck her then. “That’s why you don’t want to be the focus of my article.”

  He glanced over at her. “What?”

  “You think I’m not seeing you for who you are, that I’m trying to make you better than you are.” Her words came faster as her thoughts tumbled over themselves. No one had put him first in his life. Their expectations were more important than knowing the man for himself. Did he understand this? Did he see a connection with her in her relationship with Dan?

  Frustration tightened every line of his body. “There you go, analyzing me again.”

  “No, but this is huge.” Her fervor reverberated through the cab and she shifted with a bounce toward him. “People have pushed you to be what you aren’t, and you think I’m doing the same thing.”

  “I think you tried with your husband. I think you wanted him to be anything but wha
t he was. I bet he picked up on it.”

  Tears burned her eyes, all of a sudden. “I hated him being a cop. I hated him out there facing people every day who held no respect for human life. But I was right, wasn’t I?”

  “Is it a comfort to you? Being right?”

  “He left me!” The tears were choking her now, burning her nose as she fought them back. Because if she started crying, she wouldn’t stop. “That job was more important to him than I was, and he picked it over me, and it killed him. He was the only, he was the only—” Her breath came too fast, she couldn’t form the words, glared out the window, the scenery whipping past, blurred by her tears. “I loved him with everything in me. What was wrong with me that he couldn’t love me back the same way?” That no one could. Gabe would be no different. His job would come first. He’d said that was something he and Jen had in common. Why was it wrong of her to want more?

  “You think it was a conscious decision? Did he think, ‘Hell, I’ll show her, I’ll go out and get shot in the face?’”

  “Of course he didn’t.”

  “Of course he didn’t. He was a good guy.”

  She whipped her head around, swiping the tears from her face, no longer worried what he thought. “What makes you say that?”

  The expression in his dark eyes was gentle. “You loved him.”

  She couldn’t see that look, not when she was hurting so bad. “He might still be alive.”

  “What?” Gabe’s surprise echoed through the cab.

  “If I hadn’t been there. If he hadn’t known I was there. If I’d been anywhere else that night.”

  “You wouldn’t have been with him when he died.”

  “It’s not like he died in my arms.” She felt the weight of his body in her arms, smelled his blood. She squeezed her eyes against the image of blood everywhere. “He was dead before I got to him. And it’s my fault. I have to live with it.”

  Gabe was quiet awhile, blaming her too, no doubt. “So are you writing these articles to assuage your guilt, or to revel in it?”

  Shock edged past her pain. “What?”

  “Are these articles your penance?”

  When she opened her mouth to answer, she had no idea what to say. This wasn’t her penance. When she’d started writing them, she’d done it to be closer to Dan, to try to understand. Okay, maybe too little, too late, but that was how she’d stumbled onto this series.

  Not to make up for her decisions, but to understand his. And now to understand Gabe.

  She turned back to look out the window, hiding the tears that threatened. But so far, she understood even less. Herself least of all.

  Chapter Twelve

  Peyton couldn’t sleep. The hard mattress was softer than the ground, the scratchy sheets more comfortable than her smelly sleeping bag. She’d showered, had the AC on and still tossed and turned.

  Without being asked, Gabe got them two rooms, adjoining. He probably wished her back in Chicago, probably regretted inviting her to help Doug. She wished she shared his regret.

  She hadn’t been alone in days, not easy since she was used to being alone ninety percent of the time. She may have forgotten how.

  Her thoughts were too loud, Gabe’s words echoing. Bad enough she had those ideas about herself without hearing them from a man she admired.

  The TV didn’t drown out the swirling thoughts as her mind whipped through the events of the past few days with dizzying speed, only to land on one bit over and over.

  Gabe.

  God, she missed him, his calm reassuring presence, his sharp mind, his warm body. After only a few days, the man saw things in her she had forgotten about herself, saw strengths in her she didn’t recognize. While at first she’d wanted to impress him, she learned he didn’t need to be impressed. Yes, he wanted her to do a good job on the line, but he was pretty damn accepting of her mistakes. In the short time she’d known him, he made her feel better about herself than anyone ever had.

  He’d seen her stripped bare—of defenses and everything else—and he still accepted her.

  So why was she lying here playing victim? She’d decided that she was taking charge of her life. Easier said than done, especially when it came to how another person made her feel, but she would make him see her side.

  She was rising from the bed with the intention of heading to his room when the news about the fire came on.

  “Gabe!” Peyton pounded at his door, not caring about the hour, about the annoyed shouts from the rooms surrounding theirs. “Gabe!”

  He pulled the door open, the phone tucked between his ear and shoulder. She saw the tears on his cheeks before he turned away. She entered the room, closing the door behind her.

  “Who is it?” she asked.

  He indicated the phone and mouthed, “Jen.”

  She’d meant who died. Had the four dead Hot Shots been Bear Claws? Someone they’d celebrated with last night? But he’d given his attention back to the phone. She leaned against the dresser, all her attention on him, not caring that eavesdropping was rude.

  “No, Peyton just came in. I know, there’s nothing we can do tonight.” Frustration colored his voice. “We’ll go to the base first thing in the morning, get back there as soon as we can. No, wait for me. I want to do it. I need to do it.” He glanced over at Peyton. “Yeah, you too. Try to get some sleep. Good night.” He hung up the phone, stared at it. “Doug’s been charged with the murder of the Hot Shots who died out there,” he said over his shoulder, his hand still on the phone, like he was using it to brace himself. “Four counts of manslaughter. They picked him back up at the fire camp.”

  “Jesus.” She dropped to the edge of the bed, her legs weak.

  “Yeah, and if that’s not bad enough—”

  “It’s someone you know.” Peyton forced the words past numb lips.

  Dan had lost friends in the line of duty, and had had a similar reaction. It had been hard comforting him, trying to absorb his pain, but this was harder, because while she’d never thought Dan would fall, now she understood Gabe was not invulnerable to the same fate.

  Gabe dragged his hands over his face, not looking at her. “Yeah.”

  “Not from your crew.”

  “No. Friends.”

  “And you want to bring them back.”

  He did turn to her then, his eyes dark and hot with pain.

  “I need to.”

  She didn’t understand his desire, but she wasn’t going to argue with him, not now. She covered his hand with hers, not sure if he wanted the contact. She did. “What can I do?”

  He pulled away and reached for the keys to the truck. “You can hope a liquor store is still open.”

  None were, but they were able to pick up a couple of six-packs at the grocery store. Gabe twisted off the cap of the first bottle before he closed the motel room door behind him, had half of it drained before Peyton fished her first bottle out of the bag.

  She sat on the bed, cross-legged, no longer concerned about keeping him at arm’s length. “Tell me about them.”

  “I knew two of them, Jon and Bev.” He sat against the headboard and reached for another bottle. “This was Jon’s favorite beer. I trained with him, about a million years ago, and Bev was on my crew before I moved over to the Bear Claws.”

  “You slept with her.”

  He looked at her sharply. “What made you say that?”

  She merely lifted her eyebrows as she drank.

  “Yeah, I did. Hell. It was a long time ago, before Jen.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “She wasn’t going to do this long, was only going to do it to pay for college, and hell, she should have graduated about seven years ago. She must’ve got bit.”

  “What was she going to school for?”

  “Testing me to see how well I remember her?”

  “Just curious about the kind of woman who draws you.”

  “You already know you, and Jen.”

  “And I can see no similarity, except this.” She laughed, pullin
g a strand of blonde hair through her fingers. “So tell me about Bev, unless it bothers you.”

  He shook his head. “She was young. This was, what, almost ten years ago. She wanted to be a kindergarten teacher, and had that look, you know, the dimples, the twinkling eyes, the kind of singsong voice. And yes, she was blonde. She had this great energy. Really lit up the place.” He took in a deep breath through his nose, his focus on his hands.

  “Did you love her?”

  “No. I liked the hell out of her, though. Seriously, she left to go back to school. I don’t know what she was doing back up here.” He turned his head, opened his eyes. “I don’t want you back on the mountain.”

  “What?” She nearly knocked her bottle over. If he’d slapped her face, she wouldn’t have been more surprised.

  He righted the bottle before the beer foamed over the lip and onto the mattress. “I don’t want you up there. If this fire can take two veterans…” He lowered his head, gathering himself, then looked back at her. “Well, I don’t want to go get your body.”

  She reached over, cupped her hand over his cheek, the stubble bristling against her palm. “Why do you feel you have to get theirs? It isn’t your fault they died.”

  His gaze sharpened and he drew back from her touch. “I know.”

  “You going up there won’t solve anything.” She leaned forward, tucking her beer in the circle of her legs. “You don’t want me to go up there, I don’t want you to go up there. You shouldn’t see them like that.”

  “If it were me, I’d want someone I know to be the one to bring me down. It’s the right thing to do.”

  Honor. It meant so much to him, and made him the man he was. The man she loved.

  Whoa. How had that slipped past her defenses? And now that it had, could she pretend it wasn’t there?

  Did she want to?

  “Will you be there when I get back?” he asked.

  And because it was such a small thing, because it was good to be needed again, she said, “Yes.”

  He leaned toward her, took her beer and put it on the table before cupping her face in his hands and kissing her deeply. She wrapped herself around him, unable to stop herself.