by Pamela Clare
The food arrived, Sam and Cheyenne carrying large trays covered with plates. A dark-haired young woman in a chef’s uniform followed them, carrying McBride’s pizza.
“I hear we have a Chicagoan at the table,” she said.
McBride held up a hand. “That’s me.”
“I’m Victoria Hawke, owner of Victoria’s Chicago-Style Deep Dish Pizza.” She set the personal pizza in front of him. “Here’s a taste of home. Enjoy.”
McBride inhaled the scent. “It smells like the real deal.”
Hell, it smelled incredible.
Victoria stood and watched while McBride took a bite. “And?”
McBride chewed, surprise and appreciation on his face. “This is just like Lou Malnati’s pizza back home.”
Victoria smiled. “I’ll be seeing you here again.”
McBride nodded, taking another bite. “You damned well better believe it.”
Chapter 6
Brandon watched his chainsaw bite its way through another lodgepole pine, sweat dripping down his face and the back of his neck, his throat parched, radio traffic buzzing in his earpiece. He gave the tree a shove, sent it toppling to bare earth, then stepped back and took a deep drink of water. The dozer crew had arrived a few minutes ago and was starting a run, stripping away anything that could burn and leaving a wide swath of bare soil.
That’s how he felt—stripped bare.
He’d known that Libby would freak out if he told her how he felt, and he’d done it anyway. What the fuck had he been thinking? If he’d kept his mouth shut, he’d be looking forward to seeing her when he got off his shift tomorrow rather than wondering whether he’d just torched their relationship.
To hell with that.
He couldn’t keep pretending that she didn’t mean anything more to him than a good time. He loved her. If he’d had his way, they would move in together, maybe talk about getting married, but that was too conventional for her. Did she truly think he’d turn into a sexist man-baby the moment their relationship got serious?
No, that wasn’t it.
She was afraid. She’d never talked about her past relationships, but clearly, someone had hurt her, belittled her, left her feeling used and abandoned.
Brandon would love to punch the son of a bitch in the face.
Or maybe she doesn’t love you the way you love her.
The thought shot through him, left desolation in his chest.
He closed his eyes, drew in a breath. He shouldn’t be thinking about this, not here, not now. He had a job to do. He shouldered his pack, picked up his chainsaw and moved down the line, stepping out of the way as the dozer passed.
A hand landed on his shoulder.
Hawke stood there, sweat and soot on his face. “Time for a lunch break, Silver.”
“Thanks, chief.” Brandon stepped off the line, walked with his chainsaw back toward the brush truck where the other members of his shift were already eating.
Brandon wasn’t given to hero worship, but he would have followed Hawke into hell if Hawke had asked him to. True, the man drove his crews hard, but he never asked anything of them he wasn’t willing to do himself. Most of all, he put their safety first. His standing up to that limp-dick idiot Robertson today was just one example of the way he fought for his firefighters and for the people of Scarlet.
Brandon went to sit with the others, took off his gloves, and reached with sweaty hands into his backpack. Then in his earpiece, someone started singing “Baby Love.” Whoever it was couldn’t hold a tune to save his life—and didn’t know the lyrics.
“Good God! Talk about ruining my appetite.”
“Who the hell is that?”
“I think it’s Diaz.”
Brandon clicked his hand mic a few times, trying to let whoever it was know that their piss-poor singing was going out over the radio.
Then Hawke’s voice cut in. “Hey, whoever is auditioning for the Supremes—your hand mic is stuck.”
Diaz’s voice came back. “Sorry!”
Howls of laughter.
Yeah, the crew would be giving Diaz a hard time about that for a while.
Brandon had just unwrapped his sandwich, when a gust of wind tore the napkin from his hand. All laughter and conversation stopped, heads turning as the wind carried the napkin through the air, depositing it twenty feet up the dirt road.
Then Miller’s voice came over the radio. “There’s a spot fire on the other side of the road, maybe fifteen feet to the south of B-shift’s lunch spot.”
Diaz came out of nowhere, charged across the dirt road, and beat the shit out of the flames with his fire flapper. “It’s out.”
But as soon as it was out, an ember ignited another one and another.
Hawke walked up to them. “Wind’s picking up. Let’s get rolling with the brush truck. Otherwise, we’re going to be playing a losing game of whack-a-mole with these spot fires.”
Brandon stood, finished his sandwich in a few bites, and washed it down with a gulp of water. “Back to work, everyone. Break’s over.”
They were running out of time.
Conrad lay with Kenzie on their bed, her head resting on his chest, the heat of climax cooling into contentment. “God, I love you.”
“Mmm.” She stirred, stretched, as languid as a kitten. “I love you, too.”
Nooners were their thing, a tradition from the days when they’d first gotten together. Who needed a sandwich when you could get laid for lunch?
Conrad told her about this morning’s rescue, still stuck between amusement and embarrassment. “Then she said, ‘I’ve wanted to fuck your brains out for years. I have a shirtless photo of you in my locker at work. Oh, those pecs!’ Her boyfriend was walking alongside us and heard her.”
“Are you serious?” Kenzie sat up and stared down at him in surprise, laughing, her dark hair spilling over her shoulder. “She really said that?”
“Yeah, she did. If I could have made myself vanish into thin air, I would have.” God, it had been awkward. “Everyone tried not to laugh, but I could see they were smiling. Bastards.”
Kenzie straddled him, her palms moving over his chest. “Your pecs are pretty amazing, but it’s weird to think of another woman staring at your body and getting all worked up.”
Conrad didn’t know which photo of him the woman had in her locker. His climbing career spanned more than a decade and hundreds of magazine articles. It’s not like he had posed shirtless to titillate women. He’d probably been climbing, had shed his shirt because he was sweaty, and some reporter had taken a photo.
Kenzie stretched out on top of him, her breasts pressing against his ribs, her head resting on his sternum. “The Team is going to tease you about this forever, you know.”
“Yeah. Like I said—bastards.” Conrad trailed his fingers along the graceful curve of Kenzie’s spine. “How was your morning?”
She told him how she’d gone to Winona’s clinic to talk with her about the Team fundraiser. “She was treating a golden eagle. She had to euthanize it. She said it must have eaten a poisoned rodent. It was such a beautiful bird. I got all choked up.”
“Sorry to hear that.” He could hear in Kenzie’s voice that she was still upset.
She had a big heart. It was one of the things that Conrad had always loved about her. That big heart had saved him.
He’d come back from Nepal almost two years ago a broken man. A serac had collapsed on Everest’s Khumbu Icefall, killing everyone on his climbing team, including his best friend, Bruce. Conrad had been knocked into a crevasse and had survived. Grief and guilt had all but consumed him until Kenzie showed up at his door with a little golden retriever puppy. She’d made up a story about how Gizmo wasn’t being good to little Gabby and had begged him to foster the puppy.
Kenzie had known what Conrad hadn’t—that caring for helpless little Gabby would bring him back into the world of the living.
He was a lucky man.
They talked about other things after
that—the Team fundraiser, the relentless summer heat, the chance that Kenzie might be pregnant even now. They’d been trying for a baby for a little more than a month, the fulfillment of a promise Conrad had made before leaving for Nepal to attempt the Khumbu Triple Crown. Conrad hadn’t been sure how he’d feel about being a father, but now he couldn’t wait.
They snuggled, savoring the minutes, but all too soon, it was time to get up, get dressed, grab something from the fridge for lunch, and go back to the real world.
“Back to picking up dog poop,” Kenzie said at the back door. “I live such a glamorous life. What are you doing this afternoon?”
“I’m heading over to the Cave.” That was the name Team members gave the old firehouse that served as their headquarters. “Megs wants help washing and inspecting ropes. I think she wants to check drugs in the med kits, too, and make sure nothing has expired. I figure it’s my turn. I want to stay on Megs’ good side.”
Kenzie slipped into his arms, a smile on her face. “Megs adores you.”
It was strange but true. After the Everest catastrophe, Megs had flown all the way to Nepal, trekked to the Buddhist monastery at Tengboche where he’d taken emotional refuge, and dragged his ass back to the United States. She, too, had lost friends to mountains. More than anyone, she had understood.
“I should be home around six.” Kenzie opened the door. “Gizmo, Gabby—come.”
The two dogs, who’d been dozing on their beds near the woodstove, hopped up and followed at her heel, their golden tails wagging.
Conrad watched as the three of them made their way out the back gate, amazed by the turn of fate that had brought them into his life.
Yeah, he was a lucky man.
Lexi Taylor locked the front door to her office, an old Victorian cottage she’d remodeled, and walked to her silver Lexus IS convertible to pick up her three-year-old daughter, Emily, from the Inn. Emily was in a half-day preschool program that gave Lexi time in the morning to meet with clients, but today’s meeting with Marley, the owner of Nature’s Meds, a marijuana dispensary, had gone on longer than usual. Lexi had had no choice but to call her dad and step-mom and ask them to pick up Emily and feed her lunch, something they were happy to do.
“What do you think I am—her grandpa or something?” her dad had joked.
The drive to the Forest Creek Inn took only a couple of minutes. She turned onto First Street to find her father standing with Rose in the middle of the street, both of them looking west. They must be talking about the fire. Lexi could just make out the pillar of smoke.
Austin had said it was a small blaze, but he’d been asked to shut down county trails and campgrounds just in case. Unfortunately, some people didn’t appreciate the effort the county was making to keep them safe and had taken their anger out on Austin. As a park ranger, he was used to it, but it wasn’t his favorite part of the job.
Lexi pulled into the long driveway that led to the family parking area in back. Her father had just had the Inn repainted, its walls a bright, lemony yellow, the Victorian fretwork a crisp white again. The place had been in Lexi’s family since the first days of Scarlet Springs and was the only building in town to have survived the big fire of 1878. Though she’d sworn as a teenager not to have anything to do with the Inn when she grew up, it would belong to her and her younger sister Britta one day, and she hoped to pass it on to Emily.
She parked, walked to the back door, and knocked.
Kendra opened it. “Your mommy’s here, Emily.”
Lexi stepped inside the air-conditioned coolness to find Emily eating orange sherbet.
“Hey, Emily. That looks yummy. Can Mommy have some?”
Emily, mouth full, held out her spoon with the innocent generosity of a child.
“Thank you, sweetie, but it’s yours. You can finish it.”
“She ate all of her peanut butter sandwich and her carrot sticks, so I gave her a treat. I hope that’s okay.”
“Of course.”
Kendra had married Lexi’s father after her mother had been killed in a car accident. Lexi had been four, while Britta, who lived in California now, had been only three. But Kendra had never wanted to be a mother, and her relationship with Lexi and her sister had been rocky at best until recently. But whatever her failings as a stepmom, Kendra was a wonderful grandma. She adored Emily—and spoiled her rotten.
“Why are Dad and Rose standing in the middle of the street?”
“I think they’re watching the fire.”
“There’s not much to see.”
“Thank God for that.” Kendra took Emily’s empty dish to the sink. “You know your father. If he thinks the Inn is at risk, he can’t quit worrying.”
“It’s not like staring at the fire will put it out.”
“Maybe you could explain that to him.”
Lexi left Emily with Kendra and went out the front door to find her father, wearing shorts, sandals and a Hawaiian shirt he hadn’t buttoned, arguing with Rose, owner of Rose’s New Age Emporium, which sat across the street from the Inn.
“If you keep coming out here to look at it, you’re going to draw the fire to us,” Rose said, her long silver hair tied up in a messy bun.
“What the hell kind of bullshit is that? My eyeballs aren’t magic.”
“It’s the law of attraction. Whatever you fear, you bring about.”
Lexi’s father snorted, rubbed his protruding beer belly. “Like I said—bullshit.”
He and Rose had known each other all their lives and lived across the street from each other for the better part of fifty years. They bickered the way siblings might. Both were stubborn, and both were experts on everything—at least in their own minds.
“Hey, Dad, Rose. What’s going on?”
“Hey, Lexi girl.” Her father reached out, wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
“Your dad is out here obsessing about a little bit of smoke.”
“I’m telling you, the fire is bigger than it was a little while ago.”
Was it? Lexi couldn’t tell. “Well, you can’t put it out by staring at it, Dad.”
Her father glanced down at her. “Is Austin up there?”
She nodded. “He’s staffing a roadblock. He had to close the parks and campgrounds.”
Her father chuckled. “I bet all the tourists love him for that.”
“Yeah, not so much.”
“Don’t worry about Austin, Lexi, dear,” Rose said. “He’ll be fine.”
But Lexi hadn’t been worried—not till that moment. Her irritation sparked. How like Rose to put a worry in her head that hadn’t been there. “Of course, he’ll be fine.”
Nate West leaned against the wooden fence, watching while his nephew, Chase, rode Buckwheat around the corral, the sun beating down on them, wind kicking up clouds of dust. “You’re doing great. Now bring him to a trot.”
Chase clicked with his tongue, squeezed his legs, and Buckwheat responded, moving easily into a trot. “Good job, Buckwheat.”
Buckwheat was Emily’s horse—or he’d become Emily’s horse after she and Megan had moved to the ranch. He was the gentlest gelding Nate had ever known, as mild as he was beautiful, his palomino coloring gleaming in the sun.
“Good job, Chase!” Nate called out.
All the kids had ridden twice this morning already. Then they’d had lunch out on the deck—burgers and homemade French fries. This was Chase’s third turn on Buckwheat, while Addy and Maire played horses in the yard behind the house and little Tristan played with Jackson and Lily in the playroom.
“I want to ride Buckwheat.” Emily stood at Nate’s elbow kicking the dirt with her boots, impatient to have another turn.
“Your cousins don’t get to ride all that often. You get to ride every day. I know it’s hard, but try to be patient.”
Sophie met Nate’s gaze and leaned down. “Thanks for letting Chase ride Buckwheat. It’s awfully sweet of you, and it makes Chase so happy.”
“Why doesn’t C
hase have his own horse?”
“We live in a house in the city,” Sophie explained. “There isn’t room for a horse.”
“Oh.” Emily clearly thought that was the most disappointing news ever.
Out in the corral, Chase was having the time of his life. Nate gave him a few more minutes, knowing that the kid lived for this.
“You know, Sophie, if he and Addy want to come up and stay here for a week or so, we’d be happy to have them. They could ride every day. I would work with them myself. They’re both good with horses.”
“Are you sure? They can be a handful.”
“What kid isn’t? We’ve got plenty of room, and you know my old man loves nothing more than a full house and spoiling other people’s kids.”
Sophie laughed. “It’s true.”
Nate climbed over the fence. “Okay, buddy, bring him back to a walk. That’s right. Just like that. Now, when you’re ready, bring him to a halt. Good job, buddy.”
Nate walked over to horse and rider and lifted Chase to the ground, adjusting his little cowboy hat. “You’re getting to be a real cowboy.”
Chase reached up, petted Buckwheat’s muzzle. “I love you.”
Buckwheat whickered.
“I think he loves you, too.” Nate led boy and horse to the fence. “Thanks for being patient, Emily. You can ride again, and then we’ll unsaddle Buckwheat and let him out into the field so he can graze, okay?”
Emily smiled bright as sunshine, clambered over the fence, and waited for Nate to lift her into the saddle. He adjusted the stirrups and then gave her the reins.
“You’re all set.
Emily had been riding since she was four and didn’t need his help. She moved Buckwheat smoothly into a walk and then a trot, her laughter making his heart constrict. It was one of the most beautiful sounds in his world.
Emily and her mother had accepted him despite the terrible scars that disfigured half his face and body. They’d brought him back to life when he’d thought he had no reason to live. No, Emily wasn’t his biological child. He had adopted her when he and Megan had gotten married, and he loved her every bit as much as he loved his son.