“It’s about a two-hour trip to the actual site, not including the hike to the Wind River Peak. We’ll pack a lunch and gear. Wait…I didn’t even think to ask you. Do you like camping?”
“I’ve done my fair share.”
“Good, we’ll take camping gear as well.”
He settled beside her and this time took food from the platter, instead of stealing from her plate, after she cast a playfully evil look his way.
“Sounds like fun. So besides the photo op for me, what’s special about this place?”
She turned to him. The answering smile slid from her face when she noticed the look on his.
“I’ll tell you all about it on the way.” He finally answered. “Sound fair?”
“Okay. Sounds fair,” she replied, tucking away her curiosity. They made quick work of the food, and before she knew it nothing remained but scraps.
She laughed. “I guess I was hungry.”
“Me, too. But now I’m hungry for you.”
He pushed the tray away and planted a kiss on her mouth.
“I thought you said we didn’t have time to indulge in those hungers right now.”
“There’s always time for a little indulging, Emma. Always,” he replied, before capturing her mouth with his.
Chapter 16
Dry air blew warmly across Emma’s face as she peered through the lens of her Nikon.
She angled the camera toward the billowing clouds and took several shots before refocusing so that the majestic-looking Wind River Mountains were brought into tighter view.
Beyond the few scattered ranches they encountered on the way to Sweetwater and the occasional convenience store/gas station peppered along the endless stretch of country highway, the route could have appeared as the set of a movie depicting the end of civilization.
They’d stopped only once to refuel at one of the rare stations they encountered before they drove over the last pass that would take them into Lander Cutoff. From there it was another twenty miles until they reached their destination.
“We’ll be there in ten minutes.”
Emma leaned against the seat and smiled over at Shane. Despite the long drive, Emma couldn’t deny the appeal of being alone with Shane.
And she loved the other side of his personality, one she’d glimpsed only occasionally. The carefree boyish side, where he’d do anything and everything to make her giggle. And one of those had been his driver’s side karaoke rendition of an old Ike and Tina Turner song.
When the song had come on the radio, Emma reached forward and turned up the volume, dancing lightly in her seat, feeling carefree and just…happy, happier than she’d felt in a long time.
When he’d started singing along, complete with falsetto, Emma had laughed until her side ached. “Your voice is higher than Tina’s!”
“Yeah, well, you have to admit, I do a damn good falsetto!”
“Oh yeah, you’re good, all right,” she’d quipped back.
When he wriggled his brows up and down, Emma shook her head, completely enjoying their exchange and enthralled with this side of him, one she was beginning to see was yet another part of the complex man that he was.
“If you ever want to think about a new career, I think you should seriously look into doing a karaoke tour. You’re a natural!” She smirked as he pinned her with a mock glare.
“I’ll have you know I’m known as the karaoke king of Lander,” he said, one side of his mouth quirking in a smile he was trying to hide from her.
“You are not!”
“Am, too! I take my karaoke seriously. In fact, I’m thinking of taking my act on the road after the fire season is over,” he said, totally deadpan. If not for the glimmer of humor in his light blue eyes, Emma would have sworn he was serious.
“Oh, God, you need help!” she replied, dissolving into giggles.
Emma brought her camera from her lap. Instead of bringing the lens to her eye, she simply observed the landscape unfolding. Throughout the drive, she’d been struck at times by the desolation of the area. Although she’d traveled extensively in her profession, usually in remote locations, at the moment she couldn’t recall another place where she’d felt so completely cut off from the world. Ordinarily the feeling of being alone was as familiar as it was comfortable for Emma. She’d felt alone for most of her life.
She turned and glanced over at Shane. A small smile played around his sensual mouth as he tapped his fingers on the steering wheel in time to the music from the radio.
As though aware of her thoughts, he turned his attention from the road briefly, his thick eyebrows lifting in question.
She shook her head, silently reassuring him that everything was fine.
When he returned his attention to the road, she immediately amended her thoughts.
Despite the isolation of the area, she didn’t feel cut off or alone. And that was because of Shane. The realization came at the same time as another one hit, and this one made her draw in a shuddering breath.
She blew out the air slowly, her heart racing as she glanced down at her hands.
Her fingers were clutching her camera, her arms trembling from the tension of her grip. She forced them to relax, breathing in and out in even breaths to try to combat the dizzy feeling that was making her head spin and her stomach roll.
She allowed herself to lay against the headrest as she closed her eyes.
She was falling in love with him.
“You okay?”
“Yes…I’m fine,” she replied after several moments, and cleared her throat. She kept her eyes closed, unable to look at him, the reality of her feelings slamming into her, hard and unexpected.
“Just resting my eyes for a minute.”
“Okay. But don’t rest too long. We’ll be there in another few minutes or so.”
She cleared her throat, forcing words through lips gone dry. “Great.” When she felt the dizziness pass, she glanced over at him. The lines of his forehead creased, concern in his eyes.
“You sure you’re okay?”
She made herself nod, past the melon-sized lump rolling around in her stomach. She turned away from him, staring out the window, lost in her own thoughts.
“Ohhhh, Shane…”
Shane paused in his unpacking, shielding his eyes from the sun’s glare as he glanced up at her, the look of rapture on her face tugging a grin from him.
“Should I be jealous?”
She laughed lightly but didn’t respond, too busy taking a rapid-fire succession of pictures.
She all but vibrated with excitement.
Shane stopped unpacking, unable to look away from her.
They were headed toward the southern end of Wind River Range, which would lead them to the remote Sweetwater Trailhead. After setting up camp, he planned for them to hike to Wind River Peak early in the morning, before he’d take her to the site itself.
After he’d found a good spot to set up camp for the night, he’d brought out their gear, and as he worked getting them set up, she roamed the area, taking shot after shot.
As he watched, she alternated between snapping off shots and glancing over the landscape, occasionally looking down at her camera and checking the images she captured. Once satisfied with what she had, she brought the camera back to her eyes and took more pictures.
Sitting back on his haunches, he allowed his gaze to rake over her, relieved that whatever happened in the truck to dispel their lighthearted banter and make her go silent on him had gone away, recalling the change that had come over her during the last ten minutes of their drive to their base camp.
When he’d asked her to come to Sweetwater, he’d asked her for a few reasons. The first was to help her with her article, thinking the opportunity for her to learn about the site and take pictures would be invaluable to her.
The second reason had been less noble, which was to simply be alone with her without having to share her attention with the others, a time for just the two of them. The thi
rd was one he was still struggling with.
He hadn’t brought anyone to Sweetwater. And the fact that he wanted to bring Emma further into his world, on a more private level, in a way he’d not shared with anyone else, lurked in the back of his mind.
“It’s absolutely beautiful, Shane,” she said with near reverence in her voice, finally turning around to face him.
“You’re a nature lover, are you?”
“Without a doubt!” She grinned at him, before bringing the camera back to her eyes and taking a flurry of shots.
In her excitement, her chest swayed just the smallest bit, jostling beneath the T-shirt she wore as she moved around, angling her camera toward whatever it was that had caught her eye.
After taking a few more shots, she released the camera and allowed it to hang from the strap suspended around her neck.
“Got enough for now?”
“Yep, I think I have enough.” It was then that she glanced at the site, noticing the work he’d done. “Oh, Shane, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to get caught up in work. I should have helped.”
He stood, dusting his palms against his khakis, smiling down at her. “It’s no problem. I enjoyed watching you.”
“So what’s on the agenda?” she asked as he walked toward her, her face glowing.
“You know, I like this side of you,” he said, pulling her into his arms.
When he wrapped his arms around her, holding her loosely within his grip she immediately lifted her arms around his neck.
“Oh, yeah? And what side is that?”
“I don’t know…laid-back, content.” He shrugged. “Carefree. I don’t think I’ve seen this side of you. I like it,” he finished simply. She tilted her head to the side, considering him, a grin on her face.
“There are many sides to me, Shane Westwood, and don’t you forget it. I’m a complex woman, didn’t ya know?” she quipped, and he kissed the tip of her round nose and pulled away.
“Yes, I’m beginning to see that.” He smiled down at her.
Devoid of makeup, her thick hair secured in a high ponytail, her lips, pouty and full, smiling up at him, Shane was struck with her natural beauty.
When she stood there, within his arms, gazing up at him, only a hint of a smile on her face, Shane felt his heart ricochet inside his chest, as the reality of what he felt for her hit him like the proverbial ton of bricks.
He noticed the ghost of a smile slip from her face. He must have stared too long.
He moved one hand away from her waist and skimmed it up the length of her back before reaching her neck.
Her gaze remained glued to his, as he trailed his fingertips around until he reached her slender neck, spanning the hollow of her throat with his outstretched hand.
Right there, he wanted to lay her down and make love to her. Make love until the two of them were too weak to do anything but lay useless and weak. Make love to her until there was no memory of anyone else for either of them. Make love to her until neither one of them could deny what was happening to them. Make love to her until he could forget the reasons he felt more comfortable being alone and didn’t buy into the notion of happily ever after with a woman. He immediately rejected the thought. What they had was hot, amazing. The sex was the most explosive he’d ever shared with someone else. But that’s all it was, all it could ever be, even if sometimes his heart told him otherwise.
He rested his forehead against hers briefly before easing away.
“We’d better get a move on, while there’s still light.”
Chapter 17
Emma grimaced and readjusted her pack.
Her feet hurt like hell and her back was beginning to burn from carrying the backpack for the last hour. Although Shane had carried the heavier pack with most of their gear, she was more than ready to take a break.
Despite that, she pressed on, excited for the opportunity to view a historical fire and gather information for her article. But more than that, she was eager and more than a bit anxious, wondering what it was about the place they were headed that held significance for Shane. And she was more than sure that it did hold some value for him.
“Just over this bridge is the trail that will lead to the site,” he told her as she was hoisting the pack higher on her back.
“Want me to take that for you?” he asked, with concern in his eyes as he looked down at her while she readjusted the backpack.
“I got it,” she replied, smiling past her fatigue, trudging on as they continued along the path.
When it dropped quickly, ending at a long, roped-off bridge set above a small creek, Shane turned back around to face her. “We’re almost there. There it is, over there,” he said, pointing.
Just beyond the bridge, where he was pointing, she spotted a clearing that would take them to their final site.
After crossing the old, wooden bridge, Emma kept glancing over at Shane, feeling the tension shrouding him grow thicker the closer they got. When they finally reached the site, Emma drew in a deep breath, a strange sadness overwhelming her. Unlike the land along the path leading up to the site, this area was barren, with its straw-colored grass and hollowed-out remnants of trees, all of which were evidence of the extremity of the fire’s devastation long ago.
Oddly burdened, Emma allowed her pack to drop to her feet, and with a heavy heart lifted her camera to take several shots.
She didn’t know Shane had come up behind her until he spoke. “Over there is the cabin that still stands. The only one that survived the fire. Come on, I’ll take you over there.”
Placing her camera back in her backpack, she followed him the short distance to the burned-out cabin.
Shane removed their gear from his back, placing it near the rotted steps, and turned to Emma.
“This was the first place that Kyle took me, right after I passed the test, the day after I became a jumper,” he began. Although he was looking down at her, it was as though he wasn’t really seeing her.
He turned away, looking off to the distance. “The fire grew fast. It was so fast that the West Yellowstone jumpers had to call in reinforcements.”
Emma’s brow wrinkled. She knew the story. And because of the dates, she wondered about the significance for Shane and his friend, both having been too young to actually have jumped the fire.
He turned to face her again, seemingly guessing her thoughts from her expression. “No, he didn’t jump it, but it was there that he became a man, he told me. Come here,” he said, reaching out for her to take his hand.
He sat down on the feeble steps to the old cabin, stretching his long legs out in front of him, and Emma followed, sitting close, turning toward him.
“Kyle came from a long line of firefighters and smoke jumpers. His grandfather was one of the first smoke jumpers in the West, in Montana. Kyle’s father belonged to the first group of men to start the station here in Wyoming. This was the last fire his father jumped. And he was here to witness it.”
“Oh, Shane…I’m sorry for your friend.”
Emma leaned into his body, sympathetic to the sadness and remorse in his voice for his friend’s loss.
Shane glanced down, offering her an absent smile. “It was hard for Kyle. He was only ten at the time, and it was the first time he’d managed to convince his father to watch him jump. His father’s chute didn’t open correctly, and the secondary one came out late and the wind had changed direction and blew him into a burning tree. The jump line wrapped around his body, and he couldn’t cut it before it was too late. Kyle witnessed the entire thing.”
“Oh, God, that’s awful!”
Shane sighed. “Yeah, it was. His father was everything to him.” He turned to face her, and she wrapped both arms around his waist.
“When Kyle brought me here, it wasn’t to share a sad story. It was to tell me that this was the place where he became a man.”
“How so?”
“They’d gotten his father down, and after air-evacuating him out, he lived long enoug
h to say goodbye to both Kyle and his mother. Kyle made his father a promise that he would do the same thing his father did, the same thing as his grandfather. He promised to protect those who needed him.”
Emma remained silent, her arms still linked around his waist as he spoke.
“Part of that promise was to continue their family’s dedication to fighting fires. The other was to take care of his mother.
“He knew my own story, but Kyle was never one to preach. He never was one to tell a man how to be a man. He led by example. Both as a man and a jumper.”
Emma held her breath, feeling the tension in his body.
“See, I never thought I had been man enough for my own mother. After my father left, my mother had to work two jobs, and in between those times, I rarely saw her.”
He stopped, drawing in a breath. “And when I did, nine times out of ten she had a glass of scotch in one hand and no time for me. I hated her. I hated her for bailing out on me like that. I hated her for a lot of reasons.”
He stopped talking. Emma wondered what it must have been like for him, her heart aching for the boy he once was.
“I started getting in trouble. A lot. Guess I thought bad attention was better than no attention at all. Skipping school, stealing…” He stopped, and Emma nodded, remembering when he told her the first night they were together about the trouble he got into as a young man. She hadn’t known at the time it had started earlier in his childhood, believing his behavior started when he was in foster care.
“Eventually my trouble got the attention of the school social worker, and the state took over. They placed me in foster care after coming out for a home visitation.”
“What happened to your mother, exactly?” she asked. “Doesn’t it require a lot to put a child in foster care?” She’d thought the death of his mother had been the reason for him entering the system. “How did she…die?” she asked, as gently as she could.
“The time they visited, Mom was passed out on the sofa, bottles scattered around her and the house in shambles. One look around the house, dishes piled in the sink, clothes all over the place, and me looking like the thug I was turning into and I was immediately taken from her on the spot,” he answered, his voice clipped.
Hot to Touch (Kimani Romance) Page 10