With Aiden in camp, she didn’t fear getting run over by a Hot Shot crew this evening. The gas supply had been restored and crews were being carried to and from the drop point by truck. Besides, Aiden looked exhausted, so a hike was probably the last thing on his agenda. Becca could relax once he wasn’t sitting within five feet of her watching every move she made.
Julia almost pouted, her lip drawing down, but in the end she didn’t argue. “I suppose there’s time before dinner. Would you like to come?” Julia asked Aiden.
“Sure,” Aiden stood with envious energy, as if he hadn’t been working on a fire since the wee hours of the morning.
Pressing her lips tightly together so that she wouldn’t release a primal yowl of frustration, Becca gathered up her instruments and walked away, not waiting to see if Julia and Aiden would follow her. Only when she was trudging up the path did she look back. Julia was trailing along as if she were the older, pregnant woman, not Becca. Aiden walked just a few steps behind, calling out greetings to friends as he passed, then pausing to share a joke with one of the equipment managers.
Why hadn’t she noticed in Las Vegas that he was a loud
er, more comedic version of Colin Farrell? Too much energy. Too much volume. Too young. Too much a danger for her peace of mind. What would Sirus say if he knew Aiden had fathered this baby? He’d forget about ever thinking she deserved a chance at that Boise job, that’s what.
That’s when Becca saw that Sirus was watching them.
And he wasn’t smiling.
“I
SENT
J
ULIA BACK
.” Aiden strode past Becca on the trail, barely breathing hard.
“You what?” She leaned one hand against a tree, unable to take as deep a breath as she needed since the baby stretched and elbowed her lungs. Becca didn’t know who to be angrier at— Julia and her aversion to the woods, or Aiden for casually dismissing her.
The Boise job was slipping through her fingers.
Aiden paused mid-stride to look back down on Becca. “Julia was congested and having trouble keeping up. And, you know, if she can’t keep up with
you,
something’s gotta be wrong.”
“You insufferable idiot!” She was ten times angrier at Aiden than she ever could have been at Julia.
“Hey, I was being nice.” Aiden had the nerve to look offended.
Becca found it hard to draw enough breath to chew his irritating butt out, which was good because she couldn’t afford to start a fight with him. He might bring up the topic she most wanted to avoid—her baby. Becca straightened, trying to make room between the baby and her lungs, releasing a groan of frustration. How she longed to tell Aiden what she really thought of him.
“Hey.” He peered at her. “You don’t look so good. Let’s take a breather.” Aiden stepped closer, towering above her only because of the steep incline. He held out his canteen.
“I’ve got water, thanks.” Somehow, she managed to regain her composure, although she had to clench her teeth to do so. Without accepting his canteen or reaching for her own water, she looked at her watch, still unable to believe he’d sent Julia back. Why would he do that without asking her? “I’m running late.” This was her chance to talk some sense into Carl. It was clear they weren’t getting any air support from NIFC.
Canteen still in hand, Aiden glanced at his own watch. “What’s your hurry? Everybody needs a breather now and then, especially a pregnant woman. Let’s just sit down and talk until you’re ready to go again.”
And then Becca realized why he’d sent Julia back. He wanted to talk to her about the baby. He couldn’t do that with Julia tagging along.
She slapped his canteen away and tried to step past him. “You’ll have to do better than that.”
“Calm down,” he advised with his arms spread to block her way, as if he actually cared what happened to her, sounding and looking so sincere that Becca almost believed him, until the baby kicked her.
He was sneaky all right. If she didn’t watch out, he’d tell everyone in the fire industry what they’d done in Las Vegas, destroying her credibility, making her unemployable. Then he’d take this baby from her.
A pregnant woman’s paranoid delusions? Hardly. What did she really know about Aiden? And if he trapped her into some kind of visitation or custody agreement, she had no way of knowing what kind of father he’d be.
Becca’s breath came in quick, shallow gasps now. Too much air. She was going to have a panic attack. All because of him.
“Hey, slow down. This is how accidents happen.” Aiden spread his arms out again and wouldn’t let her pass.
“If you don’t move out of my way,” she managed to pant, “what happens next will be no accident.” She’d taken self-defense. Perhaps it was time to put it to good use, although she couldn’t imagine doing much damage in her current pregnant state.
Her distress must have penetrated that thick skull of his because Aiden moved aside. “Okay, how much farther until we reach Carl?”
“Another ten to fifteen minutes.” She puffed past Aiden, barely able to resist slapping at him, which was so unlike her that she nearly stumbled. Her cheeks felt hot and her eyes filled with tears. The dratted hormones, the plans she had for the future at risk, and Aiden’s knowing the truth had made her into a paranoid, monster-woman. It wasn’t the best of moods to confront Carl.
Aiden didn’t say a word, but she could hear his booted feet following her up the ever-steepening trail. She was giving him a great view of her wide ass-ets, when her best feature was now her bountiful boobs—not that she wanted him looking at those either. At any moment, she expected him to ask about Las Vegas or the baby, until she became so taut and filled with tension that she wanted to scream. At any moment—
“I was wondering—”
“Don’t.” Becca spun, fully intending to cut off any attempt for the talk to become personal, but she lost her footing and slid down into him.
“All right, let’s sit down.” Aiden put a hand on her arm and
firmly guided Becca down to the ground, squatting in front of her. “Trust me. Don’t push it in the mountains. The meteorologist will wait. It’s time for a drink.”
“I don’t want a drink.” And Becca hadn’t a minute ago, but as she looked into his dark eyes, her mouth seemed to dry out. She sat awkwardly on the ground, her knees tight together. With her belly so large, the baby practically rested in her lap, quiet now as if hunkered down against Becca’s stormy, unpredictable temper. “And I don’t want to talk about my baby.”
His expression turned deadly, black brows pulling low. He opened his mouth as if about to swear at her. Then he looked at her stomach, pressed his lips firmly together and shook his head. “I admit. I have questions. But I don’t want to go into it right now when you’re obviously upset and we’re miles from camp. I can’t exactly carry you down the mountain by myself. Now, take a drink.”
On top of sending Julia back, he was accusing her of being fat? “Of all the nerve. I don’t want—”
“Yes, you do.” He cut her off and sighed, closing his eyes as he worked his expression into something less threatening. When he reopened them, Aiden’s smile was gentle, nothing resembling the cocky smile he’d given her down in camp. “I have a feeling that pride of yours doesn’t get thirsty, but the rest of you does.”
He was right. She’d been pushing herself hard, ignoring her body’s and her baby’s needs in her desire not to let anyone down on the fire. Becca found his canteen in her hands and without much thought, she lifted it to her lips, never taking her eyes off Aiden. She couldn’t figure him out. Everyone had an agenda.
She shifted her bottom on the hard ground and narrowed her eyes. “What are you up to?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’re being nice.” If she ignored the fact that he’d sent Julia back, if she believed him about her needing to go slow, and shoved the paranoid monster to the back of her mind, she might possibly have considered him a good guy.
As Aiden squatted at her feet, Becca could almost feel the compassion in his eyes racing through her blood, heating her neck, her skin and elsewhere. On some level, he seemed to care about her, even if it was only as a pregnant woman who seemed to need watching over. She didn’t want Aiden to be nice to her. She couldn’t afford him to be nice to her.
“I’m just doing my job. Sometimes you just do what they tell you.” He tried to smile but couldn’t quite. “Socrates wanted me to tell you about what happened on the mountain the other day. He thought it would help you fight this fire. Admittedly, I’ve let this—” he gestured in the direction of the baby “—get in the way. I’m not usually so…difficult. I do have friends, you know.”
Aiden was being civil, and she liked him when he wasn’t scowling at her, which just wouldn’t do. It made her vulnerable. She reminded herself to be tough. “I don’t understand why Sirus picked you. When they’ve sent me firefighters in the past, they’ve been crew bosses, like Jackson… I mean, Golden.” She tilted her head. “Your job is up there, fighting fires.” Far, far away from her.
Aiden shrugged. “Not today. Today my job is to help the Incident Command team…to help you.” There was something about the way he said it, perhaps because he looked away, that led her to believe he didn’t want to be here—with her—any more than she wanted to be with him.
The rejection hurt, poking her irritation back to the surface. “That’s ridiculous. How are you supposed to help me? You
know nothing about weather patterns, fuels and fire behavior.”
Quick as a shot, he stood, looming over her. “Don’t I? I’ve been a Hot Shot for close to ten years. I’ve fought fires that were as predictable as my grandmother’s casserole, as ornery as a bull and as determined to put something deadly over on us as this fire is.” His eyes blazed with anger and his words with passion. “It’s always rough being among the first ground-pounder crews out on a fire. You don’t know what to expect. I’m in charge of the safety of my unit. I have to listen to what fire experts, like you, said twelve hours ago and put it in the context of what the fire’s doing now. So, don’t presume that I can’t help you or don’t know anything just because I’m not a legend, like Golden. I know a hell of a lot more than you think. If Socrates thinks I can help you, then you better believe that I can help you.”
Rarely had a man spoken to Becca with such intense emotion. She could sense his frustration with her and his pride in being a firefighter.
Unaccountably, she wanted to kiss him.
Instead, she nodded slowly, trying not to think of him as more than a colleague, trying not to remember the frenzied way his hands felt on her body. Becca could control a physical attraction. She focused on breathing steadily and on what Sirus expected of her—to be a good manager and team player. “All right. Tell me. Tell me about that fire a few days ago.”
Aiden stared at his boots for a minute as if composing himself and then cleared his throat. “We hiked up to the ridge and took stock of the fire. It looked peaceful enough, so we chose an anchor point—the little creek—and we started to clear a line. The brush was only four-foot high, dry as a bone and easy to dig out by the roots. We made good distance until after lunch.” He paused, looking up at the sky. “I’d like to say
it was me that noticed something was wrong, but it wasn’t. It was Golden. Several times in the past, he’s noticed when a fire’s about to wake up and get dangerous.”
She could sense by the way he stared at the smoke-strewn sky that he wasn’t telling her everything. She wanted him to share everything. “Golden may have called you to action, but you noticed something as well, didn’t you?”
Aiden met Becca’s gaze. After some hesitation, he nodded, backing away a bit as if uncomfortable. “I’m not psychic or anything. The fire kept changing. I’d look over and it would be crackling, as tame as you please. And then the next minute it would… I don’t know…dance or something, flaring several feet into the air.” His brow wrinkled.
That wrinkle was the tip-off. “And…”
“And what?” He tried to look as if there were nothing else to tell, but she knew better.
“You may as well tell me the rest of it,” she prompted, willing to wait.
It took a moment for Aiden to cave in, during which time he stared off to the side. “It’s nothing really. Just a feeling, like when you dive too deep in the water and you feel pressure in your ears.”
That wasn’t good. Not his ability, but the abrupt pressure buildup. Sleeper fires had that characteristic.
“I didn’t feel anything like that today,” he added quickly, trying to make light of a skill few firefighters had. “You know, if this fire keeps this up, it might be as tricky as some of the deadlier fires I’ve worked on.”
“Deadly fires?” Becca echoed, a knot forming in her stomach. She’d been on a few of those herself and still carried the sorrow and doubt. Could she have done anything differently to prevent their deaths?
“I was down in southern California a couple of years ago
when things got out of control,” Aiden said, his eyes drawn back to hers. “I was on the Ruby fire when we lost a smoke jumper. And the Coyote fire that trapped two engine crews several years back.”
“We lost two,” Becca murmured.
“Yeah.” Aiden knelt back down, examining her expression. “Were you there?”
She had been, but she could barely bring herself to admit it with a nod. It was the one fire—the only fire—where she’d relied on a new computer-simulation program without a backup system in place. The fire had taken advantage of the miscalculation. Two people had died. Even now, four years later, Becca’s stomach churned.
She’d do anything to keep firefighters safe, even if it meant depriving herself of food and sleep, and driving those that worked for her to pursue other, easier roles in NIFC. Even if it meant putting up with egotistical meteorologists.
“Bad calls made on that fire,” Aiden said quietly.
Again, Becca could only nod. She couldn’t even look at him. He’d been out there, too. He had every right to point the finger of blame her way.
“It’s like I said. We deal with a lot out in the field. Besides, those firefighters took a chance. They made a choice and it didn’t work for them.” Briefly, he touched her hand, the first indication she’d had from any firefighter on the Coyote fire that she wasn’t to blame.
Selfishly, she wouldn’t have minded a hug about now, a physical touch to absolve her soul of guilt. It was hard to think about the people she hadn’t saved, their families, their futures cut short.
“Hey, it’s not as if bad calls never happen. Look at this fire.”
“Are you saying that you think Incident Command gives orders that endanger you? How dare you?” She scrambled to her feet, grabbing onto a tree trunk for support. She wanted to run, but she was almost eight months pregnant, on a steep slope and had already nearly taken a tumble today.
“No, no. It’s just… Becca, give your pride some breathing room.” He got to his feet, studying her as he did so. “It’s not as if anyone blames you. Don’t go looking for heartache where there is none. You’ll kill yourself.” His words unexpectedly soothed her indignation, but the burning feeling turned into something worse.
No one had blamed her. Becca just blamed herself. She regularly donated to a memorial fund for both firefighters who’d perished. “But decisions are based off recommendations, and they listened to my recommendation on the Coyote fire to deadly consequences. It could have been you who died. Your friends— Jackson and the rest.”
“But it wasn’t. You helped make sure most of the men and woman on that fire made it home. You helped keep me safe.” He ran his palm down her arm, giving her hand a gentle squeeze, easing her burden with a compassion she hadn’t received before. “According to Chainsaw, each fire we survive means we’ve got a task left to fulfill.”