Burning Up

by Anne Marsh

  So far, the weather report this summer was your standard-issue hot and dry. Solution could still be as straightforward as getting the word out about basic fire prevention and praying like hell that the storm cells stayed far away from Strong.

  A man could always hope.

  Town came out of nowhere, just like it always did. One minute, there was nothing but the ribbon of highway shimmering in the California heat. Next moment, familiar signs flashed past, advertising pick-your-own fruit and fresh cherries. His old truck whined harder, the engine complaining about the hot, dry climb up into the foothills of the mountains, but he was almost there. If he pulled over now, he might give in to the urge to turn around. Truck didn’t want to be here, out in the middle of nowhere, and neither did he.

  The only company he had on this hot, dry stretch of road was a pickup cooling down beside a big sign, tailgate dropped and flats of fresh-from-the-field berries ready for sale. Blink, and you’d miss it.

  The past rushed up to meet him as if he’d never left.

  Strong’s founders had parked the town right on top of a pack trail that had eventually become State Route 49, as if the original townspeople had worried life might just pass them by if they weren’t careful. Pulling his truck off the highway, he let the vehicle crunch slowly onto the gravel shoulder in front of the fire station. Just maybe, they’d been right to worry. Everything looked the same. Historic Main Street ambled lazily along both sides of the highway, the clapboard stores painted a cheerful rainbow of pastels. A wide-plank sidewalk sported barrels of red geraniums and white daisies. Hell, he half expected to see chickens scratching or a sheriff’s posse saddling up, but there were just a handful of signs advertising a half-off sale at the antiques store and Blue Lou’s special of the day.

  Christ. It was even worse than he remembered. The new fire station was a simple, two-garage building standing in for the run-down historic wreck the town had finally abandoned a few years ago and put up for sale. Black-and-yellow black-eyed Susan crawled straight on up the side of a seldom-used front door. He’d always known he’d been made for adventure and not for cottage-cozy in a small town, no matter how pretty. There was plenty of pretty in Strong, and it made his feet itch.

  When he swung down from the truck’s cab, they were waiting for him. His Nonna and her Ben. Her shoulder-length hair was tucked into its usual loop, although more gray streaked it now. He’d never figured out how she anchored the twist, but the hair obeyed. He’d never known how she got all her boys to listen, either, because she wasn’t a screamer, and she never so much as hollered at them. She was blunter than hell, but he’d never mistaken that wry little twist of her mouth for anything but her loving acceptance of life and the boys that life had placed in her path.

  She smiled when he headed toward her, holding out her arms so he could swing her up and around in a bear hug.

  Ben, on the other hand, didn’t look anywhere near as welcoming. Which figured.

  The fire chief was the old dog here, and damned if he wasn’t set in his ways.

  “Nonna rope you in, boy?” Ben Cortez didn’t look as if he was buying whatever story Nonna had spun about her boys paying her a little summertime visit. No, he looked pissed as hell with a side of frustrated. Nonna could do that to a man, though. Wrap him around her finger without ever realizing she’d done it. She’d had old Ben dancing to her tune for years.

  “Can’t a man come home for a few weeks?” He slammed the door of the truck behind him. Nonna just shook her head, but she’d gotten the message.

  “Sure,” Ben drawled, “but other men might be wondering why it took ten years for him to drag his sorry ass on back.”

  “Ben . . .” Nonna’s voice was pure warning, and Ben threw up a hand. “Apologies.” The older man grunted the word as if it hurt.

  “No problem.” Jack couldn’t blame the man for feeling put out that Nonna had gotten around both of them. Again. Problem was, when a man loved a woman, he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. “I’m here now. You going to turn away a helping hand?”

  “I’m not that stupid,” Ben muttered. “Even if some folks might think so.” He shook his head. “Come on in, then, and take a look at what we got.”

  “Let the boy settle in first,” Nonna protested. “He just got here, Ben. He doesn’t need to fight fires this afternoon, does he?”

  “Maybe not.” Ben stumped up the stairs to the firehouse porch, the old wood protesting each step. “But, since it’s what he came for, he might as well see what he’s gotten into. Unless you warned him already?”

  Jack shot Nonna a glance, but she was just following Ben up the steps and into the firehouse, for all the world as if she belonged there. And damned if she didn’t. If it came down to it, if the town needed her, she’d board Ben’s truck and ride out with the boys. Underestimating Nonna was pure mistake. He’d learned that—more than once—as a boy.

  The command center was just a bulletin board with a map of the town and its environs held up with three thumbtacks. The bottom corner had escaped its pin, curling up. Low-tech. Jack didn’t have a problem with low-tech, but what he was seeing was impossible. Recent fires had been flagged with pieces of colored tape and ringed with black Sharpie, drawing a clear pattern. An unnatural pattern that shouldn’t have been there.

  “Yeah.” Ben watched him. “That’s the problem I’m seeing, son. Little fires, lots of them. Maybe they’re coincidence, but it’s early in the season, and we’re already at last year’s max, with months to go yet.”

  “What’s this?” Jack stabbed a finger down on the blank spot at the center of the fire marks.

  “Farm.” Ben hesitated. “Lavender Creek. Lots of little fires around there.”

  “The old Stillerson place?” The Stillersons had farmed that land for years, but the old man had to be close on seventy now, and farming was damned hard work.

  “Not anymore.” Ben threw in another one of those little pauses that meant the man was thinking hard and Jack wasn’t going to like the topic any, but he finally continued. “Stillerson sold out about a year back. Packed up and took himself down to Florida. We all worried the developers would swoop in and start building, but the farm sold as-is. She came out here a few months ago to run it herself.”

  “She?”

  “My niece. Lily.” Ben’s steady gaze didn’t let up. Hell. Jack had forgotten the lack of privacy in a small town. Ben—and everyone else—knew precisely what he and Lily Cortez had gotten up to in the Stillersons’ lavender fields. “She went down to San Francisco for a while. Did some marketing work there. Now she’s come back. That a problem?”

  “No,” he said, focusing all his attention on the map and the message it was screaming. Most of the fires were centered around that lavender farm. “No problem at all.” Lily Cortez back in town—now he knew this was a bad idea. He and Lily Cortez had history. A history that made a California wildfire look tame.

  “You sleeping at the house?” Nonna asked quietly when Jack finally left the firehouse. He’d read through the fire reports and asked some fine questions. Jack wasn’t happy, not with her or the situation, but she knew her Jack. He’d do the right thing by them all, even if it was the last thing he wanted. Sometimes she regretted pushing him, and she figured she’d have more regrets before the summer was over. “Your room is still there, Jack. There’s always a bed for you.”

  She’d made sure he’d always known that, but still, he hadn’t returned. She hadn’t wanted to push.

  But now they needed him.

  Something wasn’t right here in Strong, and, whatever it was, she couldn’t fix it for any of them. Not this time.

  “I know that,” he said, turning his head to smile at her, that familiar half grin tugging at his lips. For a moment, all she saw was the mischievous ten-year-old who had stolen her heart away. “But I’ll still bunk down in the hangar, Nonna,” he replied, referring to the town’s old airstrip and its weather-beaten shelter.

  Jack hated walls and
always had. He’d claimed they closed in on him, and she’d never had the heart to push for the reason why. He’d been a ten-year-old foster child who was decades older inside and who insisted that his real family were the two other foster boys he’d come with. That trio of boys had been a family—and someone else, somewhere, hadn’t been. She got that, and she’d respected the unspoken boundaries. Some things were off-limits, even for the mother she’d become.

  So she never asked. She’d just brought them up, taught them well—but she’d never forced them to talk about what they’d left behind to come to Strong. Like feral puppies, she thought fondly. She’d coaxed and cajoled, put out one bowl of food after another and then sat by it, waiting to see what happened.... They could come to her or not. They’d all come.

  “You’ll stop by for meals, though,” she ordered lightly.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he returned, falling into their familiar routine.

  That familiarity was comforting, but she wondered if it would be enough. She needed something, she admitted, as Jack bent his head and bussed her cheek, his arm wrapping around to squeeze her before letting go. He’d gone and grown up on her, the years flying past in a blink, just like the other mothers had warned her they would. He was a man now, and while she wouldn’t have traded who he’d become for another day lived in the past, still, sometimes she mourned the connection she’d lost. The little boy who would never be entirely hers again. She’d watched his face when Ben had talked about Lily Cortez, had seen the shadows in Jack’s eyes.

  Jack had unfinished business with Lily.

  She didn’t need to be a rocket scientist or a mind reader to know that he’d be paying the girl a visit before too long—perhaps even before the day was over—and then things would really start heating up. She might never see sixty again, but she still remembered those days in her own youth. What it felt like to not know which end was up, only that someone else was suddenly, unexpectedly the sun, moon, and stars in your life, whether you liked it or not.

  Whether she liked it or not.

  Maybe, before the summer was over, she’d lose him a little more, this time to Lily Cortez. That didn’t have to be a bad thing, she reminded herself, watching him stride down her steps and get into that battered old pickup of his. She wouldn’t be losing him. Just sharing him.

  Sharing was good.

  She wouldn’t be lonely. She had her boys and her town. That should be enough for any woman, now, shouldn’t it? Sometimes, though, when things got real quiet, she admitted the truth to herself. Waving to Ben, who was crossing the street toward her, she settled back in her chair. Somehow, over the years, it had become tradition for him to park himself on her porch in the late afternoon to share a drink and the day’s gossip. Better than a girlfriend any day, Ben was, even if all they drank now was lemonade. She shook her head ruefully. Past sixty and wanting something, something different for herself, even though she didn’t have the words to describe what was missing. This was a real good first step, though.

  Whatever she imagined was missing, having her boys home and sitting on her front porch would help fill the hole.

  Chapter Three

  Jack Donovan had a date with his past. As he guided Betsey along the smooth curves of the long driveway, the two-story farmhouse came closer and closer, and his good intentions receded further and further. Hell if he knew what he was doing driving up here. Two days in Strong, and all his good intentions had gone up in smoke.

  He’d recognized years ago that hands-off was the honorable approach when it came to Lily Cortez. She was someone special—and even his rebellious younger self had recognized that truth. She was the kind of woman who tempted a man to wrap his arms around her and hold on. At sixteen, she’d been peach sweet, all innocence and passion, and too damned young for the kind of thoughts he had whenever she brushed past him.

  He’d left because leaving had been the right thing—the honorable thing—to do, and he wasn’t bad to the bone. Not yet. He knew he was hard and experienced. He’d seen things, done things. Life on the streets of San Francisco hadn’t been easy. Neither were three tours of duty in the military. He was older now.

  And so was Lily.

  He killed the engine, letting the truck coast to a gritty halt on the gravel surface of the driveway. No one was on the porch to meet him, which meant he was going to have to get out of the truck and haul his ass over there. Unfortunately, he wasn’t half as reluctant as he should be. No, the problem was, he wanted to knock on that door, all right.

  Smoke jumping was a dangerous thrill—and a damned serious job. Which was why he was here, he reminded himself, shoving open the door of the truck. The door shut behind him with a satisfying slam. He needed to warn the neighborhood. Wedged square on the California-Nevada border, the town of Strong was pure trouble in fire season. Ben had shown him the hot zones in the nearby wildlands. And this year, with a possible arsonist added into the mix, there was bound to be trouble. He’d put the team on jump alert. Plane could be up in the air in ten minutes.

  The hand-painted sign announcing the farm’s name—Lavender Creek—was beautiful, all painstakingly lettered, and it was going to burn faster than shit if the sign’s owner didn’t get her ass into gear and cut back the grass. The front porch wasn’t much safer, a feminine spill of lavender and roses. Purple and rich, shocking pink, the silky petals scattered across the ground in a thick carpet, a boldly sensual statement teasing a man to reach out and slide a finger along the fragrant cups of color.

  Pure tinder.

  He assessed his surroundings with the practiced eye three tours of duty as a United States Marine had perfected. House might sit on a hilltop, but the land dropped away, covered in bone-dry waves of steel blue and green. Lavender. Acres and acres of lavender. At least the fire would smell good.

  Worse, the house on top of a low hill sat with its back to the wildlands. To the north and west, fields surrounded the farmhouse and cut off access to the roads. Only way out in a hurry was down the main drive and out to the county road.

  As he got out of the truck, the heat hit him hard. He hadn’t felt heat like that since the last time he’d gone head-to-head with a wildfire. Maybe he could convince Lily Cortez to hit the swimming hole with him. Relive their high school days. Shucking the flannel shirt he’d pulled on in the cooler predawn hours, he tossed it onto the passenger seat through the open window and grabbed a handful of fire-prevention literature.

  Yeah, right. She wasn’t going to be happy to see him. He strode across the gravel and took the porch steps two at a time—the boards had warped and needed replacing—and banged on the door.

  Through the closed door, he clearly caught the feminine curse on the other side as the door’s owner wrestled with the knob. Heat or age or just general poor maintenance—he shot the porch a quick look—had the door sticking. She needed a handyman.

  When she finally managed to shove it open, she kept on coming, sailing through the door frame and landing firmly in his arms. The day was looking up. She was even more beautiful than she had been all those years ago. Before, she’d been a pretty girl. Now she was all woman. Still on the short side but all soft curves and long, dark hair. She’d let her hair grow, a riotous mane that tumbled halfway down her back. Heat made little curls out of that hair, curls that clung to his fingers as he gripped her arms to steady her. Filling his arms full of Lily Cortez felt damned good.

  “Thanks,” she said, and then, “That’s embarrassing.” Her laugh made his dick hard, and she hadn’t even looked up yet. Hadn’t recognized him. She was still getting her balance.

  “No problem,” he said, and he set her on her feet. Those feet were delicate, sun-tanned, and he couldn’t have stopped himself from sweeping his gaze up those long, bare legs if he’d wanted to. And he didn’t. What he wanted was her.

  Then she looked up, and her face froze.

  “Oh, no,” she said. Yeah. She remembered their kisses.

  He remembered those eyes. Always watchin
g. Watching him. Watching him as he horsed around with his brothers. The erotic thrill of those eyes wasn’t something he figured he’d ever forget. What she’d made him want should be illegal. She’d driven him crazy with wanting to know what it would take to convince her to stop watching. To join him. He’d masturbated to that fantasy—and felt like an asshole. Because those eyes were both curious and innocent, and even then, before he’d done his tours in the military, he’d known that innocence made those eyes off-limits.

  When he’d finally kissed her, that long, sweet, hot kiss after the drive home from the swimming hole, he’d pulled her slowly up against him, drinking in the heat and the scent of her, while he waited to make sure she was sure, that she didn’t really want to pull away from him. He’d kissed her and kissed her, and she’d kissed him back, and he’d never managed to figure out what he’d done to encourage her. Or what it would take to convince her to kiss him again. Seeing her now brought all those old fantasies crashing back.

  She dressed differently now, no longer hiding beneath her clothes. The snug tank top and cutoff denim shorts were clearly meant for comfort, but she filled them both out, too, and his fingers itched to touch, his mouth watering to taste all that sun-kissed skin. She’d taste every bit as good as she looked. Watching the sexy ease of her body slipping across the porch, he was sure of it.

  Once upon a time, she’d looked at him as if he were her prince charming.

  The soft slap of her bare feet on the worn wood of the porch filled up the silence, so he watched silently as she slid sun-browned feet into white flip-flops, her toes curling into the rubber. His erection pressed against his jeans, reminding him he had unfinished business with Lily. She was ignoring him, and that pissed him off. So he set out to get her attention.

  This time, he wasn’t going anywhere.

  “All grown up,” he drawled, settling his large frame against the low railing of her porch. Those brown eyes widened as she finally looked him in the eye, and he swore his dick got harder.