by Marie Fraser
“You clean up nice too,” she smiled.
“I try,” he said, ushering her forward. “Shall we?”
“Absolutely,” she said, her eyes meeting his jade stare.
Sarah was surprised when Jackson pulled her chair out for her. He hadn’t seemed to chivalrous type, despite walking her to her car earlier in the week. He was such a contradiction. On one hand he was manly and masculine to the core, but he had this tender side that she kept seeing peeks of. She liked his contradictions. “So how’d you get into firefighting?”
“It’s in my family. My great-great grandfather helped with the great Chicago Fire. My grandfather and dad also served so it sort of just seemed like the thing to do.”
“You didn’t ever want to be anything else?”
“Not really,” he shrugged. “But then, I’ve been hauling hose since I was old enough to tug on it. My grandfather would make me unravel the garden hose and then put it away. When I got bigger, my father would bring the tank truck home and make me practice unraveling and resetting the hose. Eventually is became second nature. How’d you get into photography?”
“My grandmother bought me a disposable camera when I was about five. When I filled it she took me to the store to develop the photos and bought me a new one. As I grew up I was gifted with more sophisticated cameras. By the time I graduated high school, my passion for photography had morphed into a budding career. I worked on the school newspaper while I was in college and sat with photographers whenever I could. I earned an apprenticeship with a renowned woman who’s known for taking incredible landscape pictures. After that my experience and degree landed me a job with National Geographic. I worked there for a few years, making a name for myself so to speak. After that I wanted something small scale, something I could manage on my own. I wanted a schedule I determined and so I started out with photo anthologies and made it on my own. So, that’s what I do now.”
“But you’re covering a wildfire.”
“Yes and I’m also taking incredible pictures that won’t look nearly the same when this fire’s rage burns out.”
***
Jackson certainly couldn’t argue with that. The landscape wouldn’t look anything like it had before the fire had started. Already they’d lost thirteen homes, most of which the owner’s couldn’t replace. Hopefully they had fire insurance. “You live in the area?”
“Out near Crystal Bay.”
“That’s getting close to the fire’s edge now.”
“I know,” she sighed. “I’ve been holding my breath, just waiting to get an evac order.”
“Nothing yet?”
“Not yet, but I don’t expect it to be long now.”
They finished their dinner and Jackson asked Sarah if she wanted to walk along the boardwalk. “I’d like that.”
He offered her his arm and together they strolled down by the water. “I always did like it best by the water.”
“You come here often?”
“Whenever I need to think. The water listens well and doesn’t try to solve the problem for me.”
“I take it you’re not fond of advice?”
“I just don’t want someone telling me things I already know, or trying to tell me what I should do. Those are things I need to figure out on my own. Truthfully, the more someone tries, the more I want to dig my feet in, just for spite.”
Sarah laughed and Jackson looked her way. “We have something in common.”
“Oh?”
“I just…I hate when people try to act as if they know me, or what I’m thinking for feeling. I want people who accept me for who I am, even if I’m being a raving bitch at the moment.”
“Raving bitch, huh? You do that often?”
***
Sarah laughed again, marveling that Jackson could make her laugh so easily. Humor was a definite turn on. “Not often, but I’m not going to pretend to be a princess all the time either, nor am I a saint.”
“Well thank God. Can you imagine how boring that’d be?”
“I take it you’re a little bit of a devil?”
“Darlin’,” Jackson crooned. “You have no idea.”
Sarah didn’t pull away when he reached for her hand and settled into a surprisingly comfortable silence as they walked along the water’s edge. When they reached the end, Jackson turned to her. “I don’t know how you feel, but I don’t really want this to end.”
“I don’t either,” she said, her blue eyes magnified in the moonlight. “That doesn’t always mean I can get what I want.”
“Work?”
“Some,” she said, “Some is the fact that trusting people, even hot firefighters, isn’t something that comes easily to me.”
“Alright,” Jackson said. “Then I suppose I’ll walk you to your car and say goodnight.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Sarah stopped at the driver’s side door of her Prius and turned, smiling when Jackson stepped closer. “I had a great time.”
“Me too,” he said, his voice richly dark. “Can I see you again?”
“Next Saturday afternoon work for you? I’m booked solid through the week.”
“Alright,” he smiled. “I’ll pack us a lunch and we can picnic up on Mt. Rainier.”
Sarah chuckled. “That’s a hell of a drive for a picnic.”
“OK so I was exaggerating.”
“I forgive you,” she said, leaning up to brush her lips over his. She’d mean the contact to be light, a sort of fun goodnight. Then his lips had kissed her back and Sarah forgot to do anything but feel. Her arms came around his neck and somehow her car was pressing into her back. “Jackson.”
“Hm?”
“I…I have to go,” Sarah breathed, her body trembling from his touch. If she didn’t get away, she was terribly afraid she’d ask him to come home with her.
“Alright,” he sighed, pressing his brow to hers. “Just so you know, letting you go tonight is in the history books as possibly the stupidest thing I’ve done in a hell of a long time.”
Sarah smiled. “Then blame it on me.”
“Deal,” Jackson grinned. “I’ll see you Saturday, pretty Sarah.”
“It’s a date, JP.”
“No one calls me that except my grandmother.”
Sarah laughed as she slid into the driver’s seat. She liked that she could see Jackson standing exactly where she’d left him. The fact that he’d watch her drive away said something about the integrity of this hot firefighter. Something that struck a chord with her when it came to trusting him.
***
Jackson woke to the noxious smell of smoke and instantly his eyes flew open, his body already alerted to the danger. “Fire!” he yelled, scrambling toward the pole. He slid down to the lower level and started tossing gear on both the tank truck and the engine. Within a minute he heard his fellow hotshots scrambling to help. “JJ, check the perimeter, take Irish with you.”
“Got it,” Jasper Jansen said.
“Steve?”
“Yeah, Cap?”
“Help Alex and Ava finish up the engine. We need to get out of here.”
“Where are we heading?”
“We’ll know more when Irish and JJ get back.”
Ten minutes later, they all huddled around to hear the news. “Wind’s picking up strong,” JJ said. “It seems, for now, to be heading west, but we all know how big of a bitch the wind can be.”
“True that,” Harry Denismore said.
“So,” Finn O’Leary added. “We need to double check that all the residents in the path of the fire have been evacuated.”
“Then we’ll split into teams of two. Never stray outside radio contact and for God’s sake, if you get lost, use the gifts God gave you to find your way.”
Everyone knew the gift Jackson spoke of and they all had taken the same oath, knowing they protected both regular citizens and those with the ability to shift into something beyond their human selves. Jackson paired himself with Leon
Torte. The Frenchman had never turned his back on trouble and his weak command of the English language meant he wouldn’t try to interpret the conversation he’d have to have with Sarah. Her neighborhood was directly in the path of the now raging wildfire and he hated to cause her grief, but he had to ensure that she and those who lived near her were safe and out of the way of this fire.
“We’re going to hit these neighborhoods,” Jackson said, pointing to three spots on the map. All of them lay in a line heading directly west and Jackson had starred Sarah’s. With the lights on his truck going and his sirens on, Jackson tore down the dusty road that would lead toward Bear Flats and the surrounding areas.
***
Two hours later Jackson was driving into a new suburb, calling on a bullhorn that an evacuation order had been given and there were no exclusions. “Hey!” Jackson heard when he stopped speaking. Turning he locked eyes with Sarah. “What if we don’t want to go?”
“There’s no negotiations on this ma’am,” Jackson said, his eyes pleading with her to just do as he asked. When he saw her chin come up, he knew she wasn’t going to just go easily. He stopped the truck, recorded himself on the bullhorn and told Leon to keep driving and just play his recording over and over again. “If anyone asks you a question, tell them your supervisor is indisposed at the moment.”
“OK,” Leon said, grinning. “You like her, eh?”
“It’s complicated.”
Jackson jumped from the truck and jogged toward Sarah’s house. “What the hell was that?”
“What?” she said over her shoulder.
“Don’t give me that crap,” he said. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
“The only thing I know, Cap, is that I’m not leaving my home.”
“So the talk we had the other night was just bullshit?”
“No,” she said, finally turning to face him.
“OK, so what are you waiting for?”
“Nothing,” she shrugged. “I won’t leave-“
“Until it’s too late, right?”
Her blue eyes simmered, fury filling them from the bottom up, so that they grew darkly tense and damn sexy. It’d been too long, Jackson thought, if he could think about sex at a time when he wanted equally to murder her.
“I’m not leaving, until I know for sure that my house is going to be lost to this big bitch of a fire.”
“Well get ready, princess. With the winds shifting this way there’s no doubt your neighborhood is on the hit list.”
“Then you don’t have anything to worry about, Captain.”
“Do you think this is a game?” Jackson said, stepping closer to her. “Some damn chess game where your ego’s on the line?”
“I think you’d like nothing more than to be right, to lord it over me.”
“What?” Jackson said, irritation bubbling dangerously on the surface. He knew just how quickly irritation could turn to anger. He wanted to reach out and knock some sense into her, so instead he turned around and took a deep, cleansing breath. “Look, Sarah. I get it. I get the need to know for damn sure that what you hold dear is about to become rubble before you ever give in. I’m asking you, pleading with you to get out while you can. I can’t stay here and make sure you do, much as I’d like to. I have to go help my partner. Please, pack what you can’t part with and get out before this fire comes for your home, because it will.”
Chapter Three: Best Laid Plans
Sarah watched Jackson Pike walk out of her home and wondered what he’d lost in life that made him so skeptical. Turning toward her kitchen she ignored the strong smell of smoke and decided the occasion called for coffee with a kick of bourbon.
An hour later, she sat at her kitchen table, knowing now that Jackson had been right. She just couldn’t bring herself to leave, though. Her grandparents had lived and loved in this house. They’d given it to her when her own parents hadn’t wanted it and how could she walk away from that? Insurance money would never give her back all she’d lose if the fire came this way. Even as she thought it she knew that the fire taking her house was inevitable. The smoke was starting to invade all the places it could and it was starting to affect her breathing.
“Sarah!” Jackson called, a mask muffling his voice some. “Sarah Peterson!”
“Jackson?” Sarah called, coughing as smoke filled her lungs when she inhaled.
“Jesus Christ, Sarah!” Jackson cursed. He reached for her hand, all but dragging her behind him. When he felt her resist, he turned his head to look at her.
“I can’t go,” she said, tears staining her eyes and streaking down her now suit covered face.
“Sarah,” Jackson said gently. “If you don’t go, you’re going to die. The fire is right outside and will take you with it. Is that how you want to die, how you want to be remembered?”
“I…” she stumbled. “I can’t-“
“You can’t stay,” he said, giving her hand a squeeze. “We’ll come back, Sarah. I’ll come back here with you and we’ll save whatever we can, I’ll help you build again. But you can’t stay.”
Sarah stepped toward the door, her steps hesitant, almost resentful. She reached for the knob and was knocked back by the hulking form of Jackson’s body. The heat that burst through the door knocked the air from her lungs and pressed her for air she didn’t have. “Stay down,” Jackson ordered, his deep green eyes boring into hers. She gave a barely perceptible nod before he stood and shoved the door shut, pinning it with her grandmother’s antique writing desk. “Where’s the back exit?”
Sarah pointed, still on the ground like he’d said. “That way.”
“Come on then,” Jackson said, reaching for her hand. He yanked her up and all but shoved her out in front of him. When they got outside, the heat blasted them as smoke blew over their backs. “Your car?”
Sarah turned and saw that her car was still intact. “You got keys?”
“There’s a spare set above the drivers’ side.”
“Good, let’s get out of here.”
“It’s a cul-de-sac.”
“Then we’re going to see if your little four burner can scale that hill.”
***
“Great,” Sarah said sarcastically. Still, what choice did she have? She was even more perturbed when Jackson slid into the driver’s seat and pushed the passenger door open.
“Get in.” She stood with her arms crossed, stamping her foot. “Be pissed at me if you need to be, but for God’s sake, get in the damn car, Sarah!”
She did, however reluctantly she felt about the whole situation, she couldn’t simply perish in a fire that would surely consume her home. “Where are we going?”
“My friends have a base that should suffice, we’ll go there first and find out from there. You got your cameras?”
“Yeah.”
“Lean out the window, because those are the shots of a lifetime.”
Looking back Sarah had to admit that no one else would garner shots like the ones she could take from here. She took her camera out of the bag and focused it on the huge plume of smoke and spire of flames that rose up behind her like an avenging demon. When she felt Jackson’s hand on her thigh, she looked sharply at him and noticed that it wasn’t a come-on as much as he was trying to make sure she didn’t fall out the window. Touched, she refocused her camera and snapped nearly a roll of film before taking a break.
“Get any good ones?”
“I’ll analyze them when we stop.”
“Great,” Jackson said. “So what do you do with all those pictures?”
“Sell them, mostly to magazines, but I’ve also done an anthology. I’m working on my second.”
“Anthology?”
“It’s a collection of written work by one or more authors who put their written work together. I don’t write, but I work with an author who uses my photos for her writing. She pays me piece rate and very well.”
“Wow, that’s great. Mind if I ask how much a piece costs?”
/> “It depends,” she grinned. “What did you have in mind?”
“The photos you took the first time we met.”
“Ah,” she said, smiling. “Those are rare one-of-a-kind you know.”
“I’m listening.”
“Fifty.”
“Fifty dollars?”
“Yes.”
“For the whole roll?”
This time Sarah laughed, a sound that was almost foreign to her ears. “Per photo, unless you’d like to buy the whole role. That’s thirty-five pictures times fifty dollars apiece. Well that’s nearly eighteen hundred dollars. So, I’ll cut you a first time customer deal. You can have the whole roll for a thousand.”
“Jesus,” Jackson said. “You should be arrested for scalping.”
“Hardly,” she said. “But I have to eat and I like expensive things. So, people who want my photos know what they’re worth.”
“Would you sign them?”
“If you got them framed, sure.”
“Deal,” Jackson said, holding out his hand.
“You’re honestly going to pay me a thousand dollars for my pictures?”
“Fine, I’ll pay you the eighteen hundred.”
“No, I just-“
“You drive a damn hard bargain, but I…I think they’re worth it.”
Sarah’s laugh bubbled out and Jackson felt for the first time that she’d be okay, even if the fire took her home. “Not to put a damper on things, but do you by chance have fire insurance?”
“Obviously,” she said. “Not that it’ll replace all the heirlooms I’m going to lose if the fire burns my house. But it’ll cover the house and then some.”
“Will it cover all you’ll lose in prints?”
Sarah looked down at the camera in her hands. “Not likely, although my collections are nothing compared to someone like Ansel Adams.”
“Ansel Adams, huh?”
“The famous landscaper?”
“Never heard of him.”
“Figures,” Sarah scoffed. “He’s only the most iconic landscape artist of the twentieth century.”
“Iconic huh?” Jackson chuckled. “Did he strip for the camera?”
“You’re an idiot.”
“No denying that, ma’am,” Jackson grinned, giving her a saucy wink to go with it.