Burns So Bad (Smoke Jumpers) (30 page)

Rio gave her the look. “Next time,
I’m arguing harder for a church.”

She tugged gently on his hand,
pulling him into position in the door. “You don’t get a next time, remember?
This is it. You can argue against jumping when we’re doing our vow renewals at
our fiftieth.”

His slow answering smile set all
the fires she needed. “Right. Remind me why I’m doing this?”

Spotted Dick’s voice crackled on
the headset as he announced that he was bringing the plane around for the jump
pass. It was almost time. She snuck another glance out the open door. Making out
individual faces from this height was impossible but she knew they were all down
there, waiting for her and Rio.

Leaning up, she planted a kiss on
his mouth. “Nervous?”

He grimaced. “This is my first
time, Gia. I’ve never done this before.”

“I’ll be gentle,” she promised,
loving his laugh and knowing that she wasn’t alone in her nervousness. This was
the jump of a lifetime, a leap of faith she knew in her heart she was ready to
make… but that didn’t stop the butterflies gathering in her stomach.

“Breathe in, breathe out,” she
reminded him. “Just keep it steady.”

A simple lesson she’d learned from
PSVT. Breathe in, breathe out. One breath following
the other. Together.

The preacher moved closer and
started the ceremony. This was what she and Rio had decided on. No big ceremony,
just the two of them, the woman uniting them in holy matrimony, and their
witnesses. Face-to-face, hand-in-hand. Gia liked the simplicity of it all,
followed by the grandiose gesture of literally jumping feet first into
marriage. Which would be all the more special because of the welcoming
committee waiting for them on the ground and the reminder that they weren’t
doing this alone.

“Rio Donovan, do you take Gia
Jackson to be your wife?”

The fierce look on her Rio’s face
as he waited for the preacher to finish made her smile. “Hell, I sure do.”

“Do you swear to love, honor and
cherish her? To protect her and to forsake all others forevermore?”

“I do.” His thumb rubbed over the
back of her hand, the small circles anchoring her.

Moments later, she made her own vows,
repeating the words so many other women had said before her. She loved blazing her own trail, but
sometimes it just felt right to take the familiar path. This was one of those
times.

Rio raised her hand and tugged off
her glove with his teeth, working the diamond band over her finger. The wedding
ring was sparkly but nothing to catch on her gloves or when she was out in the
field. Beautiful and full of substance—like him. The weight on her finger
was unfamiliar but welcome.

The preacher kept right on talking,
the beautiful words of the ceremony rolling around them, over the headset and
filling the air. Absolutely perfect.

“Rio and Gia, you have promised
your love for each other with these vows and these rings. I now pronounce you
to be husband and wife.”

Joey whooped louder than he ever
had going out the plane’s bay.“Kiss the groom, honey.”

And she did. A sweet kiss, with hot
promise of more. Later. Breaking off only because Joey gestured them into the
open door. It was time to go. Time to take that leap of faith together.

“Ready?” Rio looked at her and the
expression on his face had her heart turning over in her chest. God. She was
lucky.

“You bet. I was born ready.”

His little growl heated her right up.
“You made me chase you, honey. There wasn’t anything
ready
about you.”

“And you liked it,” she countered,
drinking in his grin.

“Count it down,” he said, tugging
her just a little closer, and she did. On three, they were out the bay
together. Clearing the plane, they hung in the air for a long moment. Just the
two of them, the roar of the wind filling her ears as her eyes locked on Rio
and they started the free fall.

Not alone. Never again.

He reached out and she took his
hands. For one perfect moment, they hung there in the air together. They’d hit
their breakoff altitude soon and then she’d have to let go, but the separation
would be only temporary. Rio would be waiting for her on the ground or she’d be
waiting for him. Every time.

“I love you,” she said, squeezing
his hand. “And I’m letting go now, but only temporarily.”

“Right back at you,” he growled.
“Damn straight we’re in this together. Forever. I love you,” he said and the
truth of his words was written on his face. Her big, strong Donovan loved her
with all his heart and soul.

She soaked in the jump of a lifetime,
the ground spinning closer.No
malfunction this time. Just two people moving in unison, soaring towards the
wedding drop zone where their jump team, friends and family wait for them.

Feet-first into
happily ever after.

The heat is
on…

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He’s a rough and tumble hotshot who’s never met
a blaze he can’t handle.

She’s a free-spirited fire camp cook—who’s on the run from the
law.

When these two meet, it’s a five-alarm attraction…

Keep reading for a preview of

Hot Zone

“Kiss
the first hotshot you see.” Rosalie, the cook on Sarah Jo’s left, waved her
spatula for emphasis, her ponytail bouncing with each gesture. “Whoever’s first
in line, just lay one on him.”

Another
cook mimed kissing, hooking a tanned arm around the neck of an imaginary lover.
“A hot kiss, mind you. You’re not kissing your
grandma. A little lip, a little tongue—that lucky boy won’t know what hit
him. Nothing to it. And nothing you haven’t done
before, I bet.”

“A
hot kiss for a hotshot,” another whooped, and Sarah Jo shook her head.

Really,
the kissing wasn’t the problem. Unfortunately, she remembered kissing all too well. It was too much
kissing that had landed her in the fire camp in the first place. The last guy she’d kissed had been no
prize.

Not
that her current job was much consolation. The cafeteria had been a mess hall
back in Civilian Conservation Corp days, a period now falling into the category
of long, long ago. The building was still utilitarian—but now also
dilapidated, all worn linoleum and fuzzed-out screens. The cooks propped the
screen door open with a rock. It definitely wasn’t the Ritz, with its wooden
picnic tables dotting the surrounding clearing for the overflow crowd.

And
it was certainly no dating Mecca.

“I
can’t just kiss the first guy,” she protested, her mouth on auto-pilot while her libido considered the option. Seriously. The Big Bear Rogues lit
fires that had nothing to do with the trees and protecting the wildland
interface. Hell, she’d interface with Dade Johnson, the hotshot team’s
second-in-command, any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Twice
on any day.

Dade
Johnson was a bear of a man. When cooking got boring—which was most of
the time—she amused herself by imagining him as a frontiersman. All that
honed muscle and disciplined focus. Precisely the kind of man who knew his way around the
forest. Comfortable with a hunting rifle or a ten-mile hike, he’d
probably grown up on a diet of outdoor activities. He moved with an easy
confidence that did unspeakable
things
to her insides.

Because
she had to wonder if he’d know his way around a bed and a woman’s body just as
well.

No,
there was no missing the Big Bear Rogues’ second-in-command. He loved what he
did, showing up for more fires than even Sam Clayton, the team’s leader. First
in, last out, those two were practically joined at the firefighting hip, although rumor had it that Sam was finally settling
down—with his former high school sweetheart of all people.

“She’s
thinking about it.” A feminine voice gleefully called her back to earth.

Hell
.

“You
don’t think an uninvited kiss smacks of”—Sarah Jo waved her own spatula
before prying the slightly charred pancake off the griddle she was
manning—“sexual harassment? Won’t I be setting myself up for a sure meet
and greet with a pink slip?”

Because she needed to hang on to this job. Paychecks didn’t
magically deposit themselves into her checking account. Down to her last few
dollars, she’d stopped for gas in Strong, California, and seen the Help Wanted
posters pinned to the wall. Old-fashioned kind of cute, she’d thought, tickled
that someone still went the 8-x-11 route with a strip
of tear-off numbers on the bottom. She’d called, done a phoner,
and then come up to camp for the face-to-face interview. Thank God no one had
actually asked her if she could cook. She’d also flipped a digit on her
Social—close enough to excuse when someone eventually noticed—and
gambled no one had time to run a full background check when they were
shorthanded.

Rosalie
shook her head. “Those boys like a good joke.”

“Uh-huh.”
Frowning, she examined the pancake. One side was definitely edible. The other?
Not so much. With a mental shrug, she carefully positioned the pancake on the
stack. Show only the good side. She’d learned that, hadn’t she? Strategic
cover-up was the story of her life.

“The
first guy in line. That’s the dare.” Rosalie crossed her arms over her ample
chest where large letters declared
Firefighters
light me up
. “I dare you. We all had to do it. You want to be a summer cook
and one of us, you kiss the guy.”

Sarah
Jo knew better than to rise to the bait, but she’d never been one to back down
from a dare. She was going to do this. All she hoped was that the first man in
line was decent looking. Maybe that made her shallow, but if she was having her
first kiss in months, she wanted a
good
one.

“Hostile
work conditions,” she groused, pouring more batter out of the ancient
Tupperware container.

“Honey,
you want hostile, you go out there.” Rosalie jerked a thumb southeast where a
thick column of oily black smoke punched up over the horizon. Seen from a
distance, the fire was little more than a thick, sluggish haze right now. The
hotshots had headed out early that morning, to keep the fire small. Early was
the perfect time to catch a fire and put it out. Later, when the sun rose and
the day heated up, fire became a bear to stop.

“You
really did it?” She had to ask.

“Kissed
the first man I saw? Honey, you bet I did. That hotshot didn’t know what hit
him. Took him home with me, too, and kept him.” Rosalie laughed, her amusement
shaking her entire frame.

“This
isn’t some kind of weird dating service, is it?” Sarah Jo eyed the cook, because
sometimes suspicion could be a lifesaver.

After
all, she’d gone out with a perfectly respectable deputy sheriff, no questions
asked, and
that
ex-boyfriend had
burned a house down around her ears. Working at the fire camp was, she figured,
a good move because he’d never look for her city-loving self here. Big Bear was her second chance, and sex
wasn’t on her to-do list. Although a kiss hardly counted as sex. A quick peck
on the lips, a flirty answer to the girls’ dare, and her place here this summer
was secured.

So, fine. The other cooks wondered about her. Fitting in
usually wasn’t a problem for her. Sure, she was irreverent and she never quite
knew when to shut her mouth, but most people liked a good laugh and she enjoyed
the company. Still, she was clearly the ringer here. She curled her lip, eyeing
her charred handiwork.