The lower right wing strut had completely blown apart, the wing hanging at a forty-five degree angle. With the wind chop and the heat, Gilly knew that a hotshot team of angels had kept them aloft.
Something her father—the Reverend John Priest—had suggested in Sunday’s sermon about the difference between living dangerously and living dangerously for the Lord. Got it, Dad. She didn’t have to dig deep to find the thinly veiled reproach.
Except, she’d had everything under control. Really.
Although, she had appreciated God showing up to lend a hand to the rescue.
“The Lolo team is hiking out for pickup,” Miles Defoe said now, running operations from the Ember office. “Let me know when they connect with their buggies. Then you can take off.” The incident commander had met them on the tarmac when the plane came in. Had given her a thin-lipped look and shook his head.
Even Patrick Browning, their mechanic, was speechless as he inspected the damage. His family ranched a piece of land to the north—protected a herd of buffalo on their property, which he often surveyed with his own Cessna. The fact that he worked for the Forest Service on an on-call basis even after the death of his son last year showed a commitment to saving lives despite the brutal reminder of all he’d lost.
She well remembered Tom Browning, a few years younger than she was, too young and brave to die. It was guys like Tom that made Gilly drop into the canyon. Guys like Tom...and Reuben.
Which brought her, for a second, right back to that enigmatic look he’d given her across the lake. She hadn’t exactly been close enough to see it as much as feel it.
Gratitude?
Respect?
She didn’t care that they’d grounded her. Because her jumpers were safe. For now, maybe even for the rest of the summer.
Sadly, that meant she would be relegated to the machine shop for the winter. Or worse...
Roped into making cupcakes. Her gaze fell on the large bakery box of chocolate cupcakes decorated with the Ember Fire base emblem, sent over by the Hot Cakes Bakery.
She just wanted to roll her eyes.
How embarrassing to have her sisters involved in something that made them look like stereotypical women... Soft, sweet, and silly.
She would never, ever be one of those girls who swooned in a man’s arms and let him carry her off into the sunset.
She could carry herself into the sunset, thanks.
“Dispatch, Lolo One here. Our pickup has arrived.” The radio lit up, and Gilly confirmed their position, updated the map, and surrendered her chair for the evening shift.
She grabbed her shoulder bag and headed outside into the balmy late afternoon, the smell of pine and loam in the air, roused by last night’s rain.
They could use a lot more of it. The hills around Ember still bore evidence of the parched summer, the pastures brown, the trees dark and dry, some turning to bronze. They’d fought over a dozen fires just in the upper northwest alone—a few that the National Interagency Fire Center out of Boise suggested might be arson.
They’d nearly arrested Conner Young, one of the Jude County Smokejumpers, as a suspect. As if. The thought of one of their own—or anyone who knew firsthand how a fire could kill a person, their lungs boiling, their skin peeling off, or worse, literally roasting to death under their fire shelter—deliberately setting a fire, destroying a forest, wildlife, and threatening lives was—
Well, simply unthinkable.
Thankfully, it seemed they weren’t being chased by an arsonist anymore. Conner had been exonerated when the NIFC determined that he hadn’t been responsible for any possible blazes caused by his experimental firefighting drones. And then the so-called arsonist had vanished.
They didn’t need an arsonist around to increase the risk to their lives.
Gilly headed for her car, the classic red Mustang with the brown ragtop, shiny under the sun like a beacon of joy in the parking lot. So what that she spent more time fine-tuning it than she should—at least it was dependable. And a sweet ride with the top down on a sunny summer day.
A girl who’d spent most of her high school years restoring a car would never spend her life baking cupcakes.
She opened the door, tossed in her satchel, then walked to the hangar.
The massive garage door stood open, an old Douglas DC-6 in for a repair on the left outboard engine. A red Snap-on tool chest was rolled up under the wing, a ladder extending to the double wasp, radial engine.
She only saw the gray coveralls of the mechanic and took a guess. “Patrick?”
“Sorry, Gil.” Hudson Rich, one of their full-timers, leaned down from his perch. “Patrick finished up the airframe on the Annie and took off for the weekend, the lucky dog.”
“He finished repairing the wing?”
“Worked all week on it.” He gestured to the plane parked outside the hangar, beyond the lot. “It’s been inspected—no test run yet—but he patched up the wing, remounted the struts, and riveted her back together. He did a good job.”
“Of course.” She waved at him and headed outside to where the Annie sat in the shadow of the giant hangar. Fresh rivets banded the new main strut with the bracing wires also taut and re-attached. The wing looked reconstructed, patched, although still not painted, the metal bare and shiny in the fading sun.
Gilly ran her hand over the wing. “Good job, Annie. Thanks for holding together.” And for a second, she was back in the sky, feeling the world shake apart.
She shook her head. Nope. She wasn’t the kind to go back, relive her near misses. If she did, she’d probably end up on the ground in the fetal position.
“Gilly!”
The voice made her turn, and she spotted Kate waving to her from the back of Jed’s motorcycle, her hand on Jed’s shoulder.
Jed and Kate’s budding romance had roared to full flame over the summer, and Jed had put a ring on her best friend’s finger a couple of weeks ago.
Gilly tried not to be jealous—but it must be nice to trust someone enough…
No. She certainly didn’t need a man to wrap her arms around or to lay her head against a strong chest and sway to music on the dance floor.
She didn’t need a man at all.
Gilly lifted her hand to Kate and walked over to her redheaded friend. Kate wore jeans, a flannel shirt tied around her waist, a Jude County Smokejumpers gray T-shirt. She had probably spent the day in the ready room repairing chutes, packing supplies, refolding packs. After a fire entrapment at the beginning of the summer, she went part-time as a jumper and spent most of her time as a fire behavior analyst, jumping only when the roster was slim.
Jed was always calling the team in for more training, assessing fire scenarios. Gilly guessed he had probably spent the day going over their plan of attack on the Fountain Lake fire, trying to figure out how to keep them out of situations that nearly cost them lives. Now, he sat on the bike, his dark hair cordoned back with a baseball cap, his eyes hidden by a pair of aviator sunglasses.
“Hey, Gilly,” he said.
“What’s up?” Gilly asked.
“We’re headed over to the saloon to catch the Ember End-of-Season Roundup semifinals.” Kate answered. “Reuben’s riding a bull, and I think CJ’s doing some roping.”
“Just because we live in Montana doesn’t mean we’re all cowboys. What is it with those two? They spend a week busting their backs fighting fire and the weekend getting them broken on wild animals?”
Jed hiked his glasses down his nose. “We all decompress different ways. Rube’s pretty good. You should check him out.”
Kate waggled an eyebrow at her fiancé’s words.
“Stop it.”
“No, really, Gilly,” Kate said. “Neither Jed nor I are blind. We see the way you look at Reuben.”
“What—no, listen, I’m not interested in—”
“All that muscle wrestling, as you say, a wild animal?”
“All that misplaced testosterone. I pull him out of a fire just to see
him break his skull? I don’t think so.”
“Oh, so that’s it. You don’t want him getting hurt.” Jed grinned.
“No—-I mean, yeah, but—listen.” She swallowed, found her footing. “Reuben barely knows I’m alive. He’s practically a caveman around me. And, we’re teammates—sort of.”
“Gilly. Reuben is just shy.” Kate said. “Trust me, get him going, and he’s got plenty to say.”
“To you, maybe.” Although she could admit that maybe he spoke more with action than words, given that look from him after the Fountain Lake fire.
The mystery behind it could still light an odd fire deep in her bones.
She felt the burn of a blush spread across her face.
Jed’s face turned solemn. “Reuben is a great guy—a little tight-lipped, but he definitely knows you’re alive, Gilly.”
And what did he mean by that? But Jed, pushing his aviators back up, added, “You did save his sorry hide.”
Oh. Right. That made sense.
“Maybe it’s time to celebrate that with your team, huh?” Kate asked.
And Kate, her best friend since childhood, knew just how to hook her.
She gave Kate a wry smile. “We’ll see.”
“That’s a yes. I expect to see you there.” Kate winked as she fitted on her helmet. Jed gunned them away.
Gilly cast another look at the AN2 then wandered back to her Mustang and headed home to her tiny bedroom in her parent’s rambler next to the Ember Community Church.
The sun lay just over the horizon, a shimmering line of amber across the jagged western mountains.
Hopefully, she wouldn’t stay grounded forever. Maybe Miles’s memory would dim over the winter months.
She parked the Mustang on the basketball court and headed inside, the garlicky smell of a roast in the Crock-Pot filling the house. An old-fashioned woman, her mother produced dinner on the table every night at six p.m. and raised her daughters—well, two out of three of them—with the cooking and baking skills to feed an army of starving firefighters.
Of course her kid sisters, Juliet and Isobel, had taken those skills and parlayed them into a thriving business—a bakery that kept the entire town of Ember in cupcakes, muffins, and designer wedding cakes.
If only they might have picked a different name, Gilly might be willing to occasionally take them up on their prodding to swoop in and help.
Hot Cakes. The last thing she wanted to be known as was “one of the girls down at Hot Cakes.”
No, thank you. She already had enough trouble keeping up her reputation as a fearless pilot, thanks to her less-than-fierce frame. Sort of like Mighty Mouse behind the controls.
She headed downstairs to her basement bedroom and shut the door.
“Gills—open up.” Juliet tapped on the door.
Gilly opened it a crack. “What?”
It simply wasn’t fair that her sisters nabbed all the good looks. Especially Juliet, with her curves, her long brown hair, those big hazel-green eyes. Isobel was a near clone but with blonde hair, hazel-brown eyes, and just a little shorter. Juliet and Belle were beautiful, smart, and sweet—the perfect pastor’s daughters, the kind that men most wanted for wives.
The only reason Juliet, at age twenty-five, hadn’t yet settled down was that she couldn’t make up her mind which fella to choose. As for Belle, she’d inherited the same hard-work genes Gilly had and spent most of her time perfecting her cake-decorating skills.
“Let’s go to the rodeo,” Juliet said.
Really? If she wouldn’t go to the rodeo with Jed and Kate, why would she even think of being seen there with Juliet, a walking magnet for male attention? Gilly opened the door the rest of the way and found her sister dressed in a patterned dress and a pair of black cowboy boots.
“Jules—” Gilly started.
“Aw, c’mon. I love rodeos. They’re so...tough guy. Besides, I heard a couple of your smokejumper friends were competing.” Her eyes glowed.
“My smokejumper friends? Juliet, you have a lineup of fresh hotshots every season. You don’t need my help to meet my”—she finger-quoted the words—“smokejumper friends.”
Juliet made a face. “Yeah, well, those hotshots aren’t here to stay. Besides, when I tell them I’m the preacher’s daughter, they run for the hills.”
Gilly laughed, although that never seemed to slow down the firefighters she had known.
“Fine. But please don’t embarrass me.” Gilly moved away from the door and Juliet came in to sit on her bed. Gilly shed her JCWF T-shirt and green Nomex pants—her uniform for the day—and grabbed a pair of faded jeans.
“Wear a dress,” Juliet said.
“What? Are you kidding? No.” Gilly jerked on the jeans. Oh, what she wouldn’t give for just a few of Juliet’s curves. “I don’t do dresses.”
“C’mon. Just because you run in a guy-dominated world doesn’t mean you’re a guy.” Juliet got up and went to Gilly’s closet, raked through it. Sighed. “I’ll be right back.”
Juliet exited and Gilly was left to stare in the mirror at her reflection. She’d never been the type to go in for the girly stuff—okay, well, once, a very long, ancient history time ago, she might have been the epitome of the word girl. A ballerina. But that all had changed one dark summer night.
Fast.
Forever.
And there was no going back. So she was left with this—a sunburned face that outlined white raccoon eyes from her aviator glasses, freckles across her tiny nose, unexciting lips, dark auburn hair that never cooperated, hence always the ponytail, and a body that felt most comfortable in a bomber jacket, jeans, and a baseball cap.
There was a reason she didn’t work for Hot Cakes, besides her pride. She simply wouldn’t fit in.
“Ta-dah!” Juliet returned, holding a dress, light blue with a lacy top and hem. “I bought it a few years ago, but it doesn’t fit me, and I was thinking...”
“What? No—are you kidding me? So—”
“Girly? Yep.” Juliet held it up to Gilly. “And if you think you’ll get cold, you can just add a denim shirt over it, tie it around your waist.”
“I’m not worried about getting cold, Jules—I need the shirt for modesty! This dress barely covers my backside.”
“That’s not true. Hold up your arms.”
Gilly frowned at her but obeyed. Juliet dropped the dress over her. Billowy and soft, it accentuated her thin, muscular legs and distracted from the fact she didn’t have much in the back to cover up. “Now, we’ll put up your hair, add some boots, and you’ll be adorbs.” Jules winked at her. “Maybe catch the eye of one of your jumper pals.”
“That’s what this is about—I don’t need to catch the eye—”
“Stop it. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed any of the cute guys on your squad.”
“They’reteammates, Juliet.” She made to pull off the dress, but her sister grabbed her hand. Gilly surrendered. “Fine. But no—I haven’t noticed any of them.” She opened the door, walked down to the bathroom, grabbed a brush for her out-of-control hair.
Except. Well. But the last thing she’d do is fling her heart out for some man to trample on.
Or more.
Besides, Reuben was just so…well, she’d have to stand on a bench to kiss him. And how that thought drifted in, she didn’t know, but…okay, yes, it wasn’t exactly random, or rare.
She’d wondered more than once what it might feel like to be swept up in those massive arms, to know the quiet man who often ended up in the copilot’s seat, fighting his sensitive stomach during a flight.
And she found it oh-so interesting that he hadn’t dated one—not one—girl since arriving on base seven years ago.
Seven years was a long dry spell.
Oh, for cryin’ out loud.
She ran the brush through her hair, and Juliet appeared to put it up in a messy bun. She handed Gilly some mascara and lipstick, and soon Gilly was in over her head.
“We’re taking yo
ur Mustang,” Juliet said.
Reuben just needed a way to burn the frustration away. To jolt free of the residual hum of fear, the panic that gripped him around the throat when he thought of their run to freedom.
Regret did that—lived deep in his gut, an ember, smoldering.
He needed something bigger than himself—a fifteen-hundred-pound black-and-white Plumer bull named Custer, a beast with so much mean in his eyes he didn’t need the horns to make a man’s gut roil. But he had them—cut off on the ends, just in case—and tonight he’d already tried to tear up everything that got near him—the horses, the stalls, the barrels.
Even the cowboy trying to ride him.
Reuben straddled the chute, breathing hard, trying to remember what he’d learned about this bull. Just a junior bull in the big world of PBR, this animal was known as a sunfish bucker—twisting up his belly, mid-kick. If Reuben managed to stay on longer than four seconds, the bull might settle into a spin. Throw Reuben off like a top.
Not tonight.
Reuben simmered with a restless energy, something dark and brooding lit by the fire, still seeing Hannah nearly perish as the wall of flame bore down on them. He could still smell the sizzle of flame in water, feel his boots on the superheated embers as he and Hannah ran down the road.
He still heard Hannah’s scream as she fell, tasted his heart in his throat as he grabbed her by the scruff of her jacket, boosted her up, dragged her into the open toward the cool water of Fountain Lake.
How they’d survived, he still couldn’t work out, although he knew it had mostly to do with Gilly’s miraculous rainstorm of rescue as he’d run toward the wall of flames.
He’d never been a fast man—not even in football. Well, a lineman didn’t actually have to be fast, just sturdy. But he ran like he could have gone to state, his regret—no, his stupidity—ringing in his ears like the brutal wind.
Why hadn’t he stopped Pete earlier, listened to his gut, told them to head the other direction? They would have cleared the fire before it jumped the road.
And then he wouldn’t be waking from his sleep, nightmares piling one over another.
Burnin' For You: inspirational romantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 3) Page 3