Burns So Bad (Smoke Jumpers)

ONE JUMP PUTS IT ALL ON THE LINE…

Summer is heating up in Strong, California. The jump team’s bad boy, Rio Donovan is
one hundred percent pure, sensual trouble. He never backs down from a fire or a
dare and he loves putting it all on the line when he parachutes into the heart
of the fire. When the fire camp gets a much-needed new player, however, Rio
lands in uncharted territory. The jump team’s newest member is sexy,
strong—and female. She’s supposed to be just one of the boys, but
Rio burns to claim her one heated kiss at a time. This jump, Rio Donovan’s
putting it all on the line. Body
and
heart.

INTO
THE FIRE… AND INTO LOVE

Kissing
a fellow smoke jumper would be career suicide and Gia Jackson has worked too
hard and too long to earn her spot on Strong’s jump team to jeopardize it all
now for a man. The love-em-and-leave-em boys of summer aren’t her type and she’s hiding a few
secrets of her own, but, when her chute tangles with Rio’s on a jump, he’s
thrown into her arms. Literally. She’s held firm on the fireline for years—but can she hold the line now against Rio’s seductive charm?

Burns So Bad

ANNE MARSH

Copyright © 2013 Anne
Marsh

All rights reserved. No part of this book
may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical
means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or
retrieval system, with the written permission of the author, except where
permitted by law.

Jump thousand
.

The familiar summer anthem of the
smoke jumpers exploded through his head. Adrenaline flooded Rio Donovan’s body as
he anticipated the exhilaration of dropping through the air as he threw himself
out of the DC-3’s cabin and streaked towards Rail Mountain. Sixty
seconds and two thousand feet.

God, he loved his job.

The plane pulled away with a roar,
only half-drowning the whoops of his boys jumping out of the cabin behind him.
Rio Donovan shot a sideways glance at his jump partner, angling his body away
from hers. Christ, she was a cool customer. She watched the ground rushing up
to meet them without so much as cracking a smile. He’d bet she’d already
cataloged the burn area and mentally marked a half-dozen hot spots she’d rush
to knock down as soon as they were on the ground. Gia Jackson was good. There
was no doubt about that. She’d earned her place on Strong’s jump team. So he
had absolutely no business noticing how the jump harness separated her breasts
into two teasing mounds. She was one of his boys too and… not going there.
Fifteen hundred feet to the ground and his next job.
Focus, Donovan.

Look
thousand
.

The forest fire beneath belched a big
ass plume of dark smoke on his right, the sideways drift half-obscuring the
small speck of burned over meadow he was aiming for. The drift streamers had to be down there
somewhere, the red ribbons an X-marks-the-spot he wouldn’t see for at least
another thousand feet. The meadow swung crazily as the wind buffeted him hard, twisting
him in a circle before he got the spin under control and his boots down because
he needed to get horizontal, fast. Feet first, straight up-and-down. A holler
tore from his throat.
Fuck, yeah.
This
was living.

Straightening his legs, he dropped below
Gia. He weighed more than she did and he’d bet it killed her that he’d make the
LZ first. He loved how competitive she was. Beating her to the landing zone would
be fun.

Reach
thousand.

Still mentally counting down, he tightened
his grip on the rip cord.

Pull
thousand.

And yanked hard.

And nothing. Not a goddamned thing.
The lines twisted around the drag chute, turning his backup into a mess of
flapping nylon and rope. Cursing, he took his eyes off the ground rushing up to
meet him and eyeballed the tangled mess. That was okay, he thought, his hands
already reaching for the utility knife strapped to his thigh. Cut it away and
pull the reserve chute. Plenty of time. Still, he didn’t waste any seconds,
sawing the sharp edge hard and fast through the ropes, because panicking was a
luxury he couldn’t afford. Every second closed the distance between himself and
the ground and dying hadn’t been part of his plans for today.

The tangled lines fell away,
seeming to float next to him for a long second. He was bigger and heavier and
the gravity
really
was a bitch. As
soon as he pulled the reserve ripcord, however, he knew today wasn’t his day.
Or it was his last day.
Nada.
The
reserve chute didn’t fire and so now he was falling, not jumping, because he didn’t
have a working chute.

The ground spun again in a crazy
360 and there was no good way to land this.

No way to pull out and demand a
do-over.

He’d auger. Pancake.
Die
.

Flashes of memories raced through
his heads, bright pops of had-beens, the places and people he’d loved. He’d done
his fair share of loving and he had almost no regrets there. All he prayed now
was that Jack and Evan wouldn’t let their adoptive mother see his body. She
didn’t need to carry that kind of memory with her. A thought and a prayer and
then he watched the ground rising up toward him, because if he was going out, he’d
see the end coming. He had less than thirty seconds to live and to start dying.

###

Rio Donovan was falling.

The sheer impossibility of that
truth hit her, but Gia Jackson hadn’t got where she was in life by refusing to
accept the impossible. Her playful, sensual, Harley-riding
computer genius of a partner who’d gleefully kicked her ass at every fire
they’d jumped so far in this short season… was falling. To his death. His drag chute drifted away uselessly above him, tangled around a mess of
lines, and she spotted no reserve chute. He’d have pulled the cord. She knew
it. Instead of riding the toggles toward their landing
zone, his big, leather-gloved hands were crossed over his chest. Gia couldn’t
make out his gorgeous face behind his protective helmet, but he was head up,
feet down, barreling toward the ground in a one hundred miles an hour free fall.

No one, not even the legendary Rio
Donovan, could survive that kind of hit.

She was his goddamned jump
partner—and he hadn’t called out or hollered. What the hell was he
thinking? They were supposed to communicate. That was part of the plan. She’d
enjoy rescuing his fine ass just so she could yell at him for the sheer
stupidity of his giving it up move.

In order to do that, however, she
had to get closer. She made a left-hand turn, curling up into a ball to drive
her fall faster and close the distance between them.

“Problem, golden boy? ” She had to
yell to be heard over the wind’s roar as she gripped the toggles. Snatching Rio
from mid-fall wouldn’t be a walk in the park. He outweighed her, plus she had
to avoid tangling his arms and legs in her line.

Rio’s head snapped up. “Technical
malfunction,” he drawled, like it was an everyday occurrence. His eyes stared
into hers and this close she could just make out the long lashes he wielded
like a weapon. She’d wondered before what it was like, seeing the world through
Rio’s eyes. If he felt it, he never showed fear. She loved that about him.
Nothing ever seemed to scare him. God, to face life like that would be a
miracle.

“Need a hand?” She maneuvered
closer.

“I’m open to suggestions.” His body
hung there in the air relaxed, as if he wasn’t hundreds of feet from dying.

She looked down, scanning for the
first two sets of jumpers. Add Rio’s weight to her own and she’d sink like a
stone and getting too close to another chute would steal her air and drop them
both on the other canopy. Killing three people today wasn’t part of
her
plan.

“Grab on,” she snapped, because she
didn’t have his kind of patience.

God
.
Of course he hesitated.

“My boobs and I will survive the
contact, I promise,” she snarled, correctly reading his hesitation. Now was no
time to discover his inner gentleman.

Rio wrapped himself around her with an
audible grunt. He might have said something, but she doubted it was
thank you
. Probably an order or a
command, she decided, hauling hard on the toggles. There was no time to figure
their descent out better. Face to face, he scissored his legs around her waist,
pulling her tight. Despite two bulky jumpsuits and the yards of safety webbing,
she swore she could feel the heat of him. There was definitely no missing his
strength.

“Get your head out of my way.” She
craned her head, trying to see around Rio’s helmet. He growled, but tucked his
face against her throat. After all, now he was riding blind, trusting her to
land them both safely. He might not have a choice, but she’d bet he hated the
feeling. She liked being in control herself.

The ground spun below them, mixing
up meadow with char and snags. The mountainside sprouted flames, first on her
left and then on her right, as she faced them into the wind and steered for the
LZ. The spotter in the DC-3 had warned the landing would be tricky. Sure
enough, a blast of heat baked her face when she swung too close to the burn
site and the air started to choke up with smoke. She adjusted her grip on the
toggles, taking them westward.

“You sure about this?” he growled,
sounding damned unhappy for someone who’d been about to die.

“You want me to dump your ass now?”
she countered, correcting the chute’s trajectory.

“Hell.” His body tensed and she
knew holding him was impossible if he decided to let go. “How much do you
weigh, Jackson?”

She didn’t take her gaze off the
LZ. She was off the landing zone by twenty yards right now and hanging them
both up in a tree—when Rio didn’t have a safety harness—wasn’t her
first choice. A hundred foot fall would just kill him more slowly than the free
fall.

“You’re asking a lady her weight?”

She could
feel
his smoky chuckle in her ear. God. The things that chuckle
made her think of were probably illegal in at least half the southern states.
“You’re no lady, Jackson,” he said.

He was right. “I’m your jump
partner.”

There
.
The clearing spun into view again and she steered hard. The guys on the ground
had
Oh, shit
written all over their
pusses because they knew a problem when they saw it. They scrambled, pulling in
their chutes and making room. She’d bet the lack of next steps was killing
them, because unless they sprouted a giant trampoline out of their asses, all
they could do was wait and watch.

And it was almost over.

“We the last in to this party?”
Having a wingman was unexpectedly useful because she couldn’t take her eyes off
the ground.

Rio looked up, completely
unconcerned. “Nope. We’re going to beat the last two jumpers if you hurry this
up.”

“Got it.” She did too. She wasn’t
letting him fall.

“Gia.” She couldn’t look at him
now, but he had her full attention nonetheless. He made her name sound deadly
serious. “You let me go if you can’t land us both. Promise me.”

Always a fucking gentleman. It was
a good thing for him she played by a different code. She shifted, repositioning
them, and the move pressed his chest against hers.
Welcome to my late night date fantasies.
“You’re my jump partner. You
don’t fall on my watch.”

That was the truth. Landing
tandem—without a safety harness—was a high-risk maneuver, but letting
him falling simply wasn’t an option. He’d have done the same for her and they
both knew it. That was what partners did. Too bad for him if he had an issue
with her being female or having her girly bits squashed against his front. Rio
was out of choices and he’d have to make do with her.

“Gia—” The way he said her
name, she didn’t know it was a curse or a prayer.

So she gave him the truth. “I’ll
kill you if you let go.”

The final seconds were a blur of
holding on and braking hard. The ground swung left-right-left in a nauseating
arc as she picked a point over Rio’s shoulder and drove them in. The muscles in
her arms and back screamed at the doubled weight. But the chute held.
Rio
held. She bent her legs, getting
ready to hit. Two broken legs would make her deadweight in this firefight. But
as soon as her steel toes got close to brushing the ground, Rio pushed away,
letting go and tucking into a roll.
Perfect
as always.
Her boot clipped his shoulder—so sorry—and she
caught his grunt as she slammed into the ground a few feet away.

He wasn’t dead.

Hallelujah.

If she’d been more of a
church-going, praying person, she’d have cranked out a few verses of something,
but instead she ran, chute flapping, slowing her momentum to the litany of
thank Gods
in her head. The rest of the team moved in now that
she and Rio were on the ground, whooping and high-fiving. Her head ran roll
call, automatically taking stock of who had landed. Jack and Zay, Liam and
Angel, Quinn and Van. Evan Donovan’s big arm grabbed her as she tore past him,
swinging her effortlessly to a halt. “Nice job.”