Driving Chloe Wild: A Smoke Jumper Short Story

Driving
Chloe Wild:

A Smoke
Jumper Short Story

ANNE MARSH

Copyright © 2014 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.

Cover
design by The Killion Group, Inc.

The bride
by the side of the Vegas highway stuck her thumb out when she spotted his
truck. Hitching for a ride, he thought, when she should have been riding high
in a limo. A bright red roller bag decorated with polka-dot duct tape peeked
out from behind the enormous white mountain of her wedding dress. She shifted
as he drew closer, waving her thumb frantically, and he caught a glimpse of
pink Converse sneakers. It wasn’t a sight a man saw every day—and that
was saying something, since Adrian Henry had spent the last two years working a
Vegas firehouse. He’d seen plenty of things, some of which he would have given
his right nut to unsee.

From the
looks of the bride, she’d had a similar day. Her mascara had run, giving her a
raccoon-like look (as the baby brother to three older sisters, he’d been the
unwilling subject of far too many make-overs and had learned the difference
between waterproof and wash-off when he’d had to go to first grade sporting
mascaraed lashes). She wasn’t crying now, however. In fact, she looked angry.
Maybe she sensed he had no intention of stopping. He probably wasn’t the first
to pass her by, even if the highway was empty now. The dress billowed around
her, one of those big puffballs of white and gauzy stuff.  Her veil
fluttered from the outer pocket of the roller bag.

The only
thing missing was the groom.

When he
blew on past her, going fifty because he couldn’t put Vegas behind him too
fast, she blew him a quick kiss and flashed him the bird. Oh, she was trouble.
He respected her
fuck you
attitude, however. Whatever had happened to
her, she’d done her crying and now she was getting on with living. Like him.

His foot
hesitated, shifting from the gas pedal to the brake, like it had a mind of its
own.
Don’t rush in. Not this time.
He’d been first into that burning
apartment building last month—and the final firefighter out. No more
rescues. No more knee-jerk reactions. That was his new mantra.

Lord
knew, he shouldn’t stop. But he was a Louisiana boy and his mother would kill
him if he didn’t. His sisters would also bend his ear if they ever found out
and they’d displayed an uncanny ability to ferret out his misdeeds over the
years. He didn’t have time to rescue damsels in distress. He had to be in
Strong, California in forty-eight hours to start his new job as a smoke jumper
with Donovan Brothers and he
needed
this new job. His last fire call had
been bad. When he joined the jump team, he wouldn’t have to remember finding
three small bodies inside that last bedroom. No more structural fires for him,
no more riding the ladder, sirens screaming. Sure, he still got that adrenaline
rush when the tones went off and every man in the station house ran for the
engine, but now he knew there was every chance he didn’t get there in time.

And,
sometimes, no chance at all.

Smoke
jumping would let him fight fire, but out in the open, him against Mother
Nature, jumping right into the heart of the big one from a plane. He liked the
idea of that, so much so that when his cousin, Cole Henry, had texted him about
the opening with the Donovan Brothers jump team, he hadn’t thought twice. He’d
quit his job, loaded his shit into his truck, and headed out of town.

As of
this morning, he was starting over, on the road and headed somewhere better. He
got the feeling the little gal parked by the side of the road might understand
those sentiments. When he looked in his rearview mirror, however, she had her
back to him and was staring determinedly down the Nevada highway, back toward
Vegas. She’d have a long, hot wait. He hadn’t passed anyone for miles and it
was already hotter than Hades. The weather was perfect fire weather, everything
tinder dry and ready to spark.

Damn it.

He hit
the brakes and stopped the truck. She immediately walked up the side of the
road to him, tossed her bag in the back next to his gear, and yanked open the
passenger side door. All before he could get a word out. She was a take-charge
thing, half-teary and half-upset, riding that thin edge between righteous anger
and an all-night binge with a package of Oreos and two quarts of Ben and
Jerry’s. A wise man would have kept on going because a woman like this was
going to be holding a grudge against his gender for a long, long time.

“Step on
it,” she ordered, like they’d already settled everything between them and he
was simply here to pick her up.

She
dropped down on his seat, her dress billowing up around them both. White tulle
on his arm, his thigh—there was a sea of gauzy white pretty much
everywhere he looked. Her dress was one of those strapless numbers, the kind
held up by double-sided tape and a whole lot of praying. His eldest sister had
explained once that if she inhaled deeply, the whole thing could end up around
her waist. Examining his passenger, he decided that might not be a bad thing. The
parts of her he could see around the explosion of white were pretty as hell.
She was petite, but something about her screamed
strong
. Her bare arms
were lightly muscled, her skin sun-kissed everywhere he looked, thin white
lines from a bikini top crisscrossing her shoulders. She also came with a
handful of freckles in places he’d like to kiss. Seeing her naked—
touching
her—would be a fantasy come true.

And
that was before he got a good look at her face. He’d noticed the mascara tracks
from the road, but now he saw that her blonde hair had been caught up into a
complex twist, curls escaping left and right. Someone must have sacrificed a
can of Aqua Net to its creation, however, because her hairdo was only
half-wilted from the heat radiating in from the outside. When she leaned over
and yanked the door shut, he caught a glimpse of a heart-shaped face, with long
lashes and brown eyes. She was pretty, not beautiful, but there was something
painfully alive and impishly naughty about her eyes. He’d always been a sucker
for eyes like hers. He might not believe in love at first sight, but he was
plenty convinced in lust at first sight.

Starting
with his errant bride.

Tapping
his fingers on the wheel, he tried to make up his mind what he should
do
with her. “You don’ think we should introduce ourselves first?”

***

Getting
into the truck’s cab had required a hop-and-jump number to swing herself up.
The move definitely wasn’t dignified but Chloe had abandoned all pretense at
dignity earlier, when she’d put on her monstrosity of a dress. The thing was
twice her size and clearly had a mind of its own. Unfortunately, her choices at
Goodwill had been limited. The only other option had been a silky sheathe that
might have accommodated half her body, but which had most definitely not been
large enough to hold her entirely.

Truly,
she didn’t care if the driver were an ax murderer (okay, she did, although it
was close). She needed out.
Now.
Or yesterday. Yesterday would have been
even better, before she’d agreed to elope with Big Timmy and quit her job at
the diner.

Burned
her bridges.

Pissed in
the pond.

“Go,” she
said again because her rescuer had clearly missed his cue.

“Now I’m
definitely thinkin’ we might have ourselves a problem, sweet thing.” The
truck’s owner had a smoky Louisiana drawl that made her girly bits sit up and
take notice.
Yum.
He was a dark haired, dark-eyed man, big enough to
more than filled up the truck’s cab. He wore a T-shirt with a fire department
logo, faded jeans, and a pair of battered steel-toed work boots. The aviator
sunglasses shoved up on top of his head meant she could clearly see his
expression as he stared at her, clearly stunned. Yeah. She had that effect on
people.

“Your
truck’s pointed in the right direction.” She fastened her seatbelt. Axe
murderer or not, going headfirst through the windshield wouldn’t improve her
bad day any. She sensed, however, that she could trust him. It might have had
something to do with the cat carrier parked on the cab’s narrow backseat. Her
rescuer apparently travelled with a momma cat with two small orange kittens.
Any man with cats couldn’t possibly be all bad and even partially bad was an
improvement on the men currently in her life.

“Uh-huh.”
He didn’t step on the gas, didn’t get them moving. She risked a backwards
glance over her shoulder at the wedding chapel. The building was missing a few
pink Spanish tiles from the roof, but the painted palm trees on the white
stucco were defiantly cheerful and the strings of white Christmas lights
twinkled absurdly in the afternoon sun. There were no other signs of life yet,
but her luck would run out soon enough. That was just how her life had gone so
far. Except, she reminded herself, she was changing that. She’d make her own
luck, thank you very much.

“You expectin’
company?”

She
ignored his question, because, duh, her dress should have been his first clue.
Brides didn’t fly solo. “Try the left pedal,” she suggested sweetly.

He
scrubbed a hand over his head. “Last time I checked, my truck was missing a
taxi
sign.”

She
sighed. “You’re not terribly flexible, are you?”

Flexibility
was important.  Marrying (or almost marrying) Big Timmy would have been a
mistake, because he’d been every bit as unbending as her own daddy. Big Timmy
had ideas about how his wife should behave and she was pretty certain she’d
have been a disappointment on that front. He wouldn’t have been a
hitter—she’d learned how to avoid
that
, thanks to her
daddy—but words could hurt almost as much as actual blows and she had no
desire to live out the rest of her life in a disapproving deep freeze. It was
just as well Big Timmy had failed to show up at the chapel today. She wondered
briefly who had talked some sense into him, but it didn’t matter.

“You don’
know me,” he pointed out, which was true.

“You can
drive and tell me all about yourself.” She’d listen, too. She was perfectly
happy for this man to talk and talk, as long as he kept on driving. She needed
to shake the dust of Spotlight, population 347, from her feet. A population
minus one, she promised herself, because she wasn’t staying here. She’d sworn
she’d do whatever it took to move on and start over. Now, it looked like God
had heard her prayers and sent her this man. He wasn’t precisely what she’d
hoped for, but she’d make do. She always did. Plus, she had every stitch she
owned in the world crammed into her suitcase and just two hundred bucks to her
name. Waitressing was not a lucrative gig and rent, even in Spotlight’s trailer
park, had eaten up most of her income.

He looked
at the wedding chapel, then back at her. She sighed. He was going to make her
explain and she hated explanations. Explanations always got her into hot water.

“Did you
lose your
beau
?”

Beau
sounded exotic and downright lovely coming from this man’s mouth. He probably could
have read her the phone book, and she would have drunk in the caramel-colored
words, his soft burr exotic and downright decadent. It was like offering
hummingbird cake to a woman on a diet. What else could he say? Pretty words.
Lover words.
No
. She was done with the male of the species. All she
needed right now was a driver and a way out.

“Yes,”
she said, shoving down the mountain of tulle. “Do you think you could drive
now?”

”You’re
just goin’ to get in a truck with a total stranger? Do you have any idea what
could happen to you?” Now her mystery white knight definitely sounded more
grumpy than suave.

She
wrestled her skirts down while her stranger methodically ticked off a list of
horror stories. Throat slit, body tossed in a ravine. Deader than a doornail
and no coming back. She got it.

She
stopped him mid-description of a serial killer who had hunted Vegas prostitutes
for eighteen months before he’d been arrested. Hopefully, her new ride hadn’t
mistaken her for a hooker. “You’ve got sisters, don’t you?”

His big
hands tightened visibly on the steering wheel. She checked, but there was no
ring or pale circle of skin where a ring had been. Some guys shucked their
jewelry like they did their promises.

“
Oui
,
you bet,” he growled. “Three of them. And if any of
them
hopped into a
truck with a total stranger, I’d be lockin’ her up.”