Burn For You: Outback Skies, Book Three

by Couper, Lexxie

  Just in time to see Jess and the other men haul Harry out of the way.

  “Time’s up,” he yelled again. The roar of the fire devoured his words as easily as it devoured the bush. “We’ve gotta get out of here now!”

  A heartbeat later—time that dragged for an eternity—Jess and her team pushed Harry’s inert form into the chopper’s interior.

  Evan didn’t waste time checking to see if the father of three was alive. If he did that, none of them would be.

  He threw himself into the pilot seat and took off. Propelled the Bell 205 upwards, through flames and smoke that were not just circling them but reaching for them. Hungry for them.

  Enveloping them.

  The world disappeared. Became a sweltering shroud of black and red and orange.

  Behind him came the unmistakable sounds of a person performing CPR. Below him came the furious blast of another eucalyptus tree detonating.

  Evan pulled back on the controls, hurling the chopper higher through the smoke. Higher. Higher.

  Until they burst out of the inferno, out of the blackness and into a cloudless dusk sky.

  * * *

  Four hours later, with the north containment lines once again secure, and over 50,000 hectares of burning scrubland and vegetation extinguished, Evan finally allowed himself to climb out of his chopper.

  The AS350 B3s from Sydney had arrived and were taking turns dumping the fire still burning with water sucked up from the water hole in the middle of the national park. On the ground, the teams sent from Sydney, Tamworth and Dubbo worked with Jess’s small crew of volunteers.

  Setting foot on the Wallaby Ridge’s helipad, Evan turned his gaze to the western horizon and studied the angry red glow marring the midnight sky. He’d give himself fifteen minutes. Enough time to grab something to eat, a coffee maybe, and then get back up there. Exhausted as he was, the night—the fight—wasn’t over. They may have contained the north front once again, but the risk of the blaze breaking lines again, especially with the way the wind was gusting and building, was high. Too high.

  “Harry’s going to make it.”

  Adjusting his baseball cap on his head, Evan shot the man currently walking towards him a quick look.

  Charlie Baynard gave him a smile he could only describe as drained. It was a first. Until now, Evan had never seen Wallaby Ridge’s Senior Constable anything less than one hundred percent alert. “He’s got a lung full of shit and ash and smoke, but he’s going to make it. The doc’s dealing with him and Grub now at the hospital.”

  Evan scrubbed at his face, his fingers charting the twisted scarred mess of flesh that was his temple, cheek and jaw. His brain wanted to remind him, as it always did when his fingers or gaze encountered the damaged skin, how it came to be that way, how much he’d lost. He wouldn’t let it. Not now. That kind of haunted torture was reserved for moments alone, in his home, staring at himself in the bathroom mirror.

  Staring at his naked body and reliving the—

  “Grub going to be okay?” he asked Charlie, killing the bleak reverie.

  The senior constable snorted. “The bastard sucks more shit into his lungs daily with those roll-your-owns he smokes. The doc says heat exhaustion got to him.” He paused, fixing Evan with a steady look. “You know, they’d all be dead if you hadn’t got them out.”

  Evan shook his head. “I didn’t do anything anyone else wouldn’t do.”

  Charlie snorted again. “That is the most convoluted way of saying stop paying me a compliment. And it’s also shit. Not many people would risk their life like that. They’re calling you the hero of Wallaby Ridge.”

  Evan’s gut knotted. He frowned at his friend. “Who’s they?”

  “Everyone. The nurses at the hospital, Harry, Grub. Hell, even Jess used the word hero, and you know what she’s like, the only person she ever says anything good about is Desmond.”

  Evan tugged at the brim of his baseball cap, pulling it lower over his face as he turned back to the bruised-red horizon sky. “I’m no hero.”

  “Well,” Charlie muttered, “you better be ready to tell the pretty thing heading our way now that. ’Cause I’m pretty certain the hero of Wallaby Ridge is exactly who she’s come to talk to.”

  Dragging his stare from the western sky, Evan gave Charlie a puzzled look. “Tell who that? What the hell are you…?”

  The question died on his lips as a woman entered his line of sight.

  A tall, willowy woman with hair the colour of midnight, skin the colour of creamy coffee and eyes the colour of a cloudless summer sky.

  A woman who loved Cohen Brothers films, hot chili slathered all over her Vegemite toast for breakfast, and dancing barefoot on the beach.

  A woman who went skydiving in her spare time and fostered abandoned dogs until they found new homes.

  A woman who, as far as he knew, was still his ex-wife’s best friend.

  A woman, he noticed, carrying a Chanel Eight News microphone like it was a weapon, with a camera man from the same news network trotting behind her like a faithful puppy.

  Jenna McGrath. A woman who’d stirred the primitive centre of what made him a man from the very second he’d met her.

  Fuck.

  2

  No way.

  Jenna’s stride, normally utterly confident, purposeful and commanding, betrayed her. She stumbled, her four-inch Manolo Blahniks scraping over the gritty concrete, her mic slipping from her loosening grip.

  Reflexes contracted her fingers around the microphone before it could fall to the ground. Her cameraman, Theo Theodopolis, snared her upper arm before she herself could tumble in that direction.

  “Gotcha, boss,” he muttered, laughter in his voice.

  She tried to shoot him a grateful smile over her shoulder, tried to show her appreciation for his quick action, but she couldn’t seem to drag her stare from the man in the baseball cap and battered bomber jacket standing near the helicopter.

  There was no way it could be who she thought it was.

  No way.

  For starters, the Evan Alexander she knew five years ago would never hide under a baseball cap. Evan Alexander only ever stood tall and arrogant, smile smugly charming, oozing sexy-as-sin cockiness and surety.

  That Evan, the one her best friend had married—correction, so-called best friend—had married would never wear his collar up hiding half his face.

  Evan Alexander knew he was too good-looking to deny the world his countenance. Evan Alexander preened when the world looked at him. Evan Alexander would not, repeat, would not turn his back on a reporter making their way towards him like the man in the bomber jacket was doing now.

  Which meant the man Wallaby Ridge was hailing a hero couldn’t be Evan Alexander, right?

  Right?

  So what’s with the punch-to-the-tummy sensation then, Jenna? The same punch-to-the-tummy sensation you always got every time your eyes connected with Evan’s back when you still hung out with him and Tracey?

  Drawing in a slow breath, she straightened her spine and continued towards the man so very obviously ignoring her approach. There was no way it could be Evan. No way. It was a freaky trick of light, is all. A snatching glimpse of eyes similar to Evan’s. Hell, what with the way the man was wearing his baseball cap so low over his face, and with the cocked-up bomber jacket collar, she was lucky to have seen his eyes at all, especially in the darkness of the evening. Where were all the streetlights in the Outback? Surely the helipad should have some kind of illumination? How did they see anything out here at night with so little electric light? By the gazillion stars overhead?

  “Miss.”

  She flicked the tall man standing beside the one ignoring her a look. He smirked at her, an unreadable expression on his face.

  Jenna swallowed, casting her gaze over him from eyes to boots and back to eyes again. Charlie Baynard, Wallaby Ridge’s Senior Constable. A ripple of apprehension shot up her back. She’d spoken to him only a few moments ago, trying to
track down the hero of Wallaby Ridge. He’d been intimidating then, shielding a small group of firefighters just in from the massive blaze from a frenzied gaggle of print-media reporters desperate to get a story.

  “Senior Constable.” She licked her lips, her belly tight. Why, she had no idea. There was no reason for it. The man with his back to her wasn’t Evan. She indicated towards that broad back with her head, gripping her mic tighter. “Is this who I’m after?”

  Charlie Baynard nodded. The shoulders of the man refusing to look at her stiffened.

  “It is,” Charlie said. “But I don’t think he’s in the mood for talking. And I wouldn’t call him a hero if I were you.”

  Jenna frowned. “But he is. Everyone is talking about the helicopter pilot who risked his life to save the team on the north line of the fire. Even his own captain says they’d all be dead if he hadn’t…” Huffing into her fringe, she tore her focus from the smirking police officer and reached out to tap on the other man’s shoulder. What was she doing wasting time with Baynard? “Excuse me, I’m Jenna McGrath from Chanel Eight News. I’m wondering if you’d permit me a few moments to talk about what you did out there?”

  The man half turned his head, enough to grant her a glimpse of what little profile the low baseball cap peak and high collar allowed. “I just did my job,” a deep voice, scratchy and husky from smoke, no doubt, declared. “There’s no story here.”

  The tension in Jenna’s stomach fluttered. Her throat thickened.

  In amongst all that scratchy timbre was a voice she recognized, one that had stayed with her long after she and Tracey had parted ways. One that visited her often in her dreams and when her hands took care of the yearning in her body.

  She stared at the glimpse of a profile. At the downcast eyes refusing to look at her.

  “Evan?”

  His name slipped from her lips, doubt and confusion tripping over the syllables.

  The broad shoulders encased in beaten leather stiffened. She saw his eyes squeeze shut. Saw his head dip a fraction, as if weighed down by a fatal sense of acceptance.

  And then the man every member of the media here in Wallaby Ridge wanted to talk to turned and faced her fully. Fixed her with eyes as piercing as they’d ever been despite the dark shadow thrown over his face by the peak of his baseball cape, and Jenna forgot how to breathe.

  “Hi, Jenna.”

  A lump lodged itself in her throat. Got stuck there, fast and tight.

  She caught sight of white twisted flesh beneath his left eye, over his cheek. Saw a hint of the same on what little of his jaw and the side of his neck was visible behind the cocked collar of the bomber jacket.

  Are they…are they scars?

  The shocked thought ran through her head at the very second she realized just how long she’d been staring.

  Fuck.

  Blinking, she snapped her focus to his eyes again, taking a step back as she did so. And collided with her cameraman.

  “What the hell, boss?” Theo muttered.

  She didn’t look at him. Couldn’t tear her stare from Evan. Her heart did its best to dislodge the lump in her throat. Her belly did its best to turn itself into a pretzel. “Evan,” she repeated his name, at a loss for any other words.

  With a humorless curling of his lips, Evan reached up and removed the baseball cap from his head. “Surprised to see me here?”

  Jenna’s stomach dropped.

  The man standing before her was not the Evan she knew. He may be the same size and shape—six foot plus, broad shouldered, narrow hipped and imbued with a latent strength the faded Levis and bulky jacket couldn’t hide—but that was where the similarities ended. Before her stood a man with Evan’s shaggy light brown hair and hawkish nose and defined lips, but without his smug cockiness and sarcastic confidence. A man with scars marring most of the left side of his face, scars that disappeared into his hairline at his temple and down past the collar of his jacket. Scars that, her brain also registered, ribboned his left wrist and the back of his left hand.

  Before her stood a man with a guarded reticence, a withdrawn reluctance.

  A…wounded man.

  She swallowed, her pulse pounding in her ears. “I…” she croaked.

  Jesus, what was wrong with her?

  The dry smile on Evan’s lips—lips she’d imagined with guilty heat on her own often when she and Tracey had been friends, even more after she’d learned they’d divorced—stretched wider. Became hollow. “I guess you didn’t know.”

  She frowned. Swallowed again. Forced words to her tongue. “That you weren’t living in Sydney anymore?” She shook her head. “No.”

  A chuckle rumbled in his chest, a hint of the confident Evan she’d known five years ago. For a moment, true emotion flickered in his smile, like a ray of sunlight escaping a blanket of thunderclouds.

  Jenna’s heart slammed harder into her throat at the sight.

  And then that warmth vanished, replaced once more by a defensive wariness. “How’s Tracey?”

  At the mention of her once best friend, Jenna’s stomach clenched. She forced her own dry chuckle. “I guess you don’t know,” she replied, doing her best to keep her voice neutral.

  Evan frowned and shook his head. Jenna couldn’t help but notice how the scars on the side of his forehead bunched above his eyebrow. God, how had he come by them? A fire? An accident?

  Dropping her gaze to the peak-a-boo toes of her ridiculously non-Outback-appropriate shoes, she licked her lips, her mouth dry. “She and I aren’t exactly…friends anymore.”

  “You’re not?”

  The ambiguous tone in Evan’s voice raised her head. He studied her, his jaw bunched.

  Unable to stop herself, she ran her gaze over his face. Three quarters of it was flawless. Evan had been the most gorgeous, drop-dead sexy man she’d ever met. Tracey had bragged often, during the long hours she and Jenna had sat together in their social media lectures at university. “I’ve landed the hottest guy in Australia,” she’d whisper. “Who wants to fuck Ryan Gosling when I’m fucking Evan Alexander?”

  Jenna had never vocalized her agreement. For one thing, she was still in awe of her new friend, who came from old money and whose parents were firmly in the social-elite circles of Sydney. For another, Jenna herself was seeing—admittedly off and on—a guy who may not be the living embodiment of sex-on-legs but was still lovely…in a safe, sweet, beige kind of way.

  Jenna had accepted not everyone could date a hunky firefighter. She’d even been happy for her friend when Tracey had announced in the middle of Written Communications 101 that she and Evan had eloped over the weekend and flashed about a gold band on her wedding ring finger, smiling like the proverbial cat who’d swallowed the proverbial canary.

  That night, she’d told her boyfriend how happy she was for Tracey, describing the delight in her friend’s face with genuine joy. Her boyfriend, Richard, had hummed and nodded, checking the text messages lighting up his iPhone’s screen as he did so.

  It was only twelve months later that Jenna had realized all those text messages were from Tracey.

  Sending him pictures of herself in various stages of undress.

  It was twelve months and fifteen minutes after that that she’d discovered Richard had been returning the favour in kind.

  “Harmless flirting,” Tracey had declared when Jenna had confronted her about it. “Only a parochial girl like you would be upset by something so lame.”

  “Just a bit of stupid fun,” Richard had said and professed his undying love for her.

  Jenna had called it the end. Of her and Richard. And her and Tracey. Parochial or not, she’d been too hurt to brush it off. Too betrayed.

  She’d cut her ties to both of them. Fortunately, Tracey had dropped out of uni just after that, leaving Jenna to finish her Communications degree without the constant reminder her best friend had been sexting with her boyfriend.

  More than once, Jenna had considered calling Evan and telling him wha
t his wife had been doing. Especially after she’d heard rumours of their divorce. But every time she’d try to find the courage, his image would fill her head, his smoldering sexiness would taunt her and she’d find herself sick with embarrassment.

  Why would a guy that good-looking, that successful, that confident believe his wife was flirting with someone else?

  Now that guy was unexpectedly standing right before her, most of the left side of his face disfigured, not a hint of confidence about him. He looked like he’d been pulled through Hell and was haunted beyond words. And still, as it always had even back when she’d firmly believed his and Tracey’s relationship the ultimate true love romance, her heart hammered hard in her throat when his eyes met hers.

  Still, her belly knotted when she thought of his smile, his laugh.

  Did you think you were just attracted to his looks back then? You’ve never been that superficial. That was Tracey’s domain.

  “Why not?”

  Jenna frowned.

  “You said you’re not friends with Tracey anymore. I knew you weren’t hanging out as much, but why did you stop being friends?”

  A lump filled her throat. God, what did she tell him?

  Telling a man sexier than sin his wife was doing the dirty on him was one thing. Telling a man who’d no doubt suffered pain and torment beyond her understanding was another.

  She lifted her shoulder in a feeble shrug. “We just grew apart,” she answered, finding it hard to meet his gaze even as she found it harder to think about not looking at him.

  God help her, she needed to get a grip. She was a journalist with one of the country’s highest rating news stations. She was here to cover the Mutawintji National Park fire, not get all mixed up over a man from her naïve, inexperienced past.

  Dragging in a steadying breath, she shrugged again, this time making sure it was less feeble and more empowered-big-city-girl-with-awesome-job indifference. “It’s no big deal.”

  Evan regarded her silently.

  She stared back at him. Licked her bottom lip. Swallowed. Damn, she’d forgotten how just being in his presence had affected her.