Plain Jane and The Hotshot
Meagan McKinney
Roughing it in the Montana wilderness with an all-female mountain group seemed the perfect way to heal music teacher Joanna Lofton's broken heart. But the camp's matchmaker had other ideas. And so did elite smoke jumper Nick Kramer, who was setting off enough sparks to ignite a wildfire in Jo. Nick liked a woman who didn't back down from danger - or desire.Jo was fast making this confirmed loner yearn to keep those home fires burning. But could Nick convince this marriage-shy charmer that "once burned" didn't have to mean "twice shy"?
Just Ahead Of Her In The Moonlit Darkness, A Figure Stepped Out Onto The Dock.
He walked to the far end, near the water. Then he abruptly turned and stared at her.
“Humans or black bears?” he called out in an amiable tone.
Jo drew up short at the sound of the voice at the dark end of the dock.
For a brief moment warm relief flooded her as she realized that Nick was all right.
But then she realized she’d just been set up. She’d bet all the gold in Fort Knox that Hazel was playing matchmaker, and if Nick Kramer was playing along, then he’d be sorry.
So very sorry, she thought as she stared at him in the moonlight.
“Skinny-dipping, my brave firefighter?” she asked.
His silhouette was clear, backlit by silver moonwash, slim-hipped and wide-shouldered. When he came toward her, moonlight illuminated his handsome profile, emphasizing the strong jaw, patrician nose and his hard, much-too-experienced lips.
Desire licked at her in a dizzying rush.
Dear Reader,
Revel in the month with a special day devoted to L-O-V-E by enjoying six passionate, powerful and provocative romances from Silhouette Desire.
Learn the secret of the Barone family’s Valentine’s Day curse, in Sleeping Beauty’s Billionaire (#1489) by Caroline Cross, the second of twelve titles in the continuity series DYNASTIES: THE BARONES—the saga of an elite clan, caught in a web of danger, deceit…and desire.
In Kiss Me, Cowboy! (#1490) by Maureen Child, a delicious baker feeds the desire of a marriage-wary rancher. And passion flares when a detective and a socialite undertake a cross–country quest, in That Blackhawk Bride (#1491), the most recent installment of Barbara McCauley’s popular SECRETS! miniseries.
A no-nonsense vet captures the attention of a royal bent on seduction, in Charming the Prince (#1492), the newest “fiery tale” by Laura Wright. In Meagan McKinney’s latest MATCHED IN MONTANA title, Plain Jane & the Hotshot (#1493), a shy music teacher and a daredevil fireman make perfect harmony. And a California businessman finds himself longing for his girl Friday every day of the week, in At the Tycoon’s Command (#1494) by Shawna Delacorte.
Celebrate Valentine’s Day by reading all six of the steamy new love stories from Silhouette Desire this month.
Enjoy!
Joan Marlow Golan
Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire
Plain Jane & the Hotshot
Meagan McKinney
MEAGAN MCKINNEY
is the author of over a dozen novels of hardcover and paperback historical and contemporary women’s fiction. In addition to romance, she likes to inject mystery and thriller elements into her work. Currently she lives in the Garden District of New Orleans with her two young sons, two very self-entitled cats and a crazy red mutt. Her favorite hobbies are traveling to the Arctic and, of course, reading!
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
One
“You she-cubs need to think of something other than men and makeup.” Hazel McCallum, the matriarch of Mystery, Montana, furrowed her brow in concentration as she continued speaking to the young woman sitting next to her in the car.
She slowed down for the empty logging truck that growled up the mountain slope ahead of them, then rambled on, “I know one goes with the other, but this trip’s just for the gals. No men allowed.”
“I wear hardly any makeup, Hazel, you know that. And as for men, I’m not exactly attracting them like flies to honey—with my bad luck, I’m not going to have to be reminded to put all my boyfriends in the toy box for a weekend.” Joanna Lofton almost laughed. Hazel darn well knew she was the little gray mouse of Mystery, and that the matriarch was coyly trying to forget that fact made Jo’s alarms go off.
“But all that girlie froufrou won’t matter up on Bridger’s Summit,” Hazel rattled on, as if purposely not hearing Joanna. “There might be a few males up there, I suppose, but only if you count the bears, too.”
“Bears?” Jo’s eyes widened. The plain-Jane high-school music teacher was Montana-born and-bred, but even she was used to civilization. Her neighborhood in Mystery Valley was a world of cedar town houses and tiny tourist shops, with picturesque cattle ranches seen only from the road, Hazel’s vast Lazy M spread included. Bears, rattlesnakes and other hazards of the wild were seldom encountered in the valley anymore.
The Bitterroot National Forest, in sharp contrast, was practically the old frontier untamed, and Jo was having second thoughts about letting her friend Hazel talk her into the trip.
Jo had agreed without really thinking about it. Hazel said the girls’ weekend would do her good, perhaps get her out of the funk she was in. But there was never any talk of being mauled by wild animals.
“Did I hear the word bears?” Bonnie Lassiter interjected nervously from the back seat. “Grizzly bears?”
Hazel and Stella Mumford, the other woman who, like Hazel, was well into her seventies, laughed as if on cue.
“You believe these two youngsters, Hazel?” Stella teased. “You’d think both of ’em are from Manhattan. Bonnie, even a townie like me knows you’ll find few grizzlies anymore in the lower forty-eight.”
Jo glanced behind her to exchange a sympathetic glance with Bonnie. They were both the same age, twenty-five, and both from Mystery. Jo knew Bonnie was a divorced hairstylist who worked in Mystery Valley’s most popular salon. They were also both starting to realize they had committed themselves to ten rugged days in the unfamiliar wilderness.
Hazel saw their covert glances, and a sly smile pulled at her lips.
The cattle baroness might have looked petite behind the wheel of her cinammon-and-black Fleetwood, her suede driving gloves only enhancing the “little old lady” impression. But there was nothing fuddy-duddy about the seventy-five-year-old’s driving skills, nor her fierce passion for Mystery, which was why she had embarked upon her latest endeavor of playing matchmaker in order to keep her beloved town young and alive.
“Move it or lose it, bull-whacker,” she muttered, the Cadillac swooping out smoothly to pass the truck.
Jo tried to feel excited about the adventure in store for her. If she didn’t know better, she’d have sworn Hazel was going to try to hone those matchmaking skills on her, but Hazel had described the Mountain Gals Rendezvous as a lot of fun and a sort of female confidence-building course. The older women, all “graduates” of the course themselves, no longer actively participated in the more-strenuous activities; they only supervised, letting the younger women take turns leading each other in a series of mental and physical challenges.
And no men were allowed. Hazel had made that clear before Jo would even consider coming. Jo didn’t want a fix-up. After Ned, all she wanted was to lick her wounds and stay very far away from the flames that had burned her.
“Low country’s in the rearview mirror now,” Hazel said when the birch-covered foothills were abruptly replaced with steeper slopes and gradually thinning timber.
“Jo, I hope you at least were a Girl Scout,” Bonnie declared, “because I sure wasn’t. Only place I ever camped out was in the backyard.”
Jo looked back at Bonnie, sending her friend a hesitant smile. “I think I know some heavy-duty survival skills—like how to roast marshmallows.”
It was a harmless joke, but Jo’s timidity seemed to irk the outspoken and hard-charging Stella.
“My goodness, Jo,” she scolded mildly, “do you know you’re so timid you even have a one-sided smile? Put your whole mouth into it! Pretty girl like you, it’s a shame. Where did you inherit that shyness of yours? If I didn’t know it for a fact, I’d never believe your momma was Miss Montana. Hon, when you’ve got a dazzling smile, don’t hide it under a basket.”
Jo realized Stella meant well. But the heat of resentment came into her face at yet another reminder that she lived in her mother’s beauty-queen shadow, inadequate, a flawed colorless chip off the dazzling marble block.
Other girls were allowed to develop their own personalities, while Jo was expected to effortlessly replicate her mother’s charming, gregarious, photogenic, always “on” vivacity. The ironic result was to make a naturally shy girl even shier.
“Never mind who was Miss Montana,” Hazel interceded, sensing Jo’s discomfort. “It’s all history now. The point is, any gal needs a backbone, not a wishbone. The rendezvous is just what these town girls need to put some stiff in their spines.”
Hazel’s right, Jo tried to rally herself, the past is just history now. She was on a new road to a new outlook on life. The hurt couldn’t count so much if there were no men around, even if that hurt caused by a cheating English professor in a midlife crisis left a hard, piercing sadness down deep where language couldn’t soothe it.
At the sudden, unwelcome memory, Jo felt the warm and stinging threat of tears.
“Five more minutes and we’re officially campers,” Hazel announced as she swung the car off the blacktop road onto a narrow gravel access lane. Although bigger trees had thinned out, stunted jack pines closed in on the lane and cut off any distant view.
“Here, Jo,” she added in an undertone, handing Jo a faded but clean bandanna. “I think you got some dust in your eyes.”
Hazel knew the main details about Ned. Neither woman believed there was dust in her eyes.
Jo managed a wistful smile. She still regretted her decision to come on this trip, but she knew she could at least fake enthusiasm for ten days out of respect for Hazel’s good intentions.
The narrow access lane took them around the shoulder of Lookout Mountain to a remote campsite near Bridger’s Summit, a few simple cabins without electricity, plumbing, or other amenities.
Jo could see a small clearing just ahead with only one car in it. But Hazel slowed the Fleetwood to a stop even before she reached the campsite, and no one had to ask her why.
Sun-drenched Crying Horse Canyon, visible as a deep gash beyond the cabins, lay below them, beautiful and serene. The Stony Rapids River cut a churning green ribbon through its middle.
But a few ridges’ distance to the north of Bridger’s Summit, dark smoke smudged the horizon.
Even as the new arrivals watched, a U.S. Forest Service helicopter hovered into view, dangling a giant bucket over a forested gulch below. The hinged bucket opened its steel jaws and bright-orange retardant misted into the gulch.
“Fire’s still pretty far away,” Stella remarked as Hazel pulled into the clearing and parked.
“Several ridges,” Hazel agreed in a dismissive tone. “I’ve seen the fires come closer. Besides, before we left I checked the long-range fire conditions with the rangers. State weather service is predicting low winds and high humidity next few days, and those conditions don’t favor the fire even if they say we might have to be evacuated.”
Stella laughed, unloading the trunk after Hazel unlocked it. “They always have to say that, Hazel, my dear. It’s a standard warning so you can’t sue their butts for attractive nuisance.”
“Attractive nuisance?” Jo repeated with a bemused smile, taking her knapsack.
“It’s a legal term. You know, for something that attracts people to it, yet is dangerous. Like kids playing in abandoned refrigerators.”
“Well,” Hazel scoffed. “In my day, an attractive nuisance had big boobs and her eye on your husband.”
She pointed with her chin toward the other car, a new beige Chrysler with Texas plates. “That Texas turncoat Dottie and her grandniece Kayla must be here.”
Jo shook off her misgivings as she stretched her stiff muscles. The place was attractive, and as far as she could see, there were no nuisances at all.
Hazel gazed around the camp clearing for a glimpse of Dottie and Kayla, but still spotted no one.
“I rented those two biggest cabins right near the rim of the canyon,” she explained. “One for age and one for beauty. Looks like we have the place to ourselves right now. Maybe the smoke scared off the tourists.”
“Speaking of beauty,” Stella muttered, gazing beyond the cabins to where a hiking path emerged into the clearing. “Methinks I see Dottie’s niece from Dallas. Talk about ‘attractive nuisance.’ Just look what she’s found in the woods.”
Jo, struggling under her heavy aluminum-framed backpack, looked just in time to see a man and a woman emerge from the surrounding pines and head in their general direction.
The curvy blonde had to be Kayla. She wore too much eyeliner for camping, and her denim cutoff jumpsuit, hardly designed for practicality, revealed long tanned legs and a glittering gold chain around the left ankle.
Jo glanced at the man with her. His appearance was a mystery. It was supposed to be a girls’ weekend—no men allowed. But the “talented” blonde had managed to find one in the woods, anyway.
“Hey-aaaay, y’all!” the girl called out in a cheerful drawl, waving at them. “I’m Kayla. Aunt Dottie’s off down the slopes gathering firewood to cook supper. Said she’s starving.”
Kayla placed one hand on the man’s left arm. “And this handsome gent is Mr. Nick Kramer. We’re going to be invaded by men! Smoke jumpers, at that.”
Jo studied the tall, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped man. Although athletic-looking in faded jeans and crewneck, he had a falcon-quick, alert gaze that evidenced a keen intelligence. He wore his cola-brown hair in a short brushcut; his eyes, she saw when he drew nearer, were amber-brown.
Not only was he incredibly handsome, she marveled, but he seemed most unaffected by it. Her experience with good-looking men—like Ned—had been that no woman could compete with their narcissism.
This man might not be vain, but that, she told herself, didn’t mean he wasn’t flawed in some other important area.
She covertly studied him.
One corner of his mouth pulled up a bit when he smiled, conveying self-confidence, cockiness.
Surely that in and of itself was a fatal flaw.
Finding her comfort zone once more, Jo dismissed her initial attraction to him as simply a brief surge in hormones following a dry spell. Besides, the last thing she needed on this trip was a man, handsome or not.
“Nick’s not just a smoke jumper,” Hazel interjected. “He’s a Hotshot.”
“Hazel,” Bonnie objected in a murmur, “you’re flirting with him already?”
Hazel and Stella both laughed, Hazel even slapping her thigh at Bonnie’s ignorance.
“Hotshots,” Hazel explained, still chuckling, “are the elite among the smoke jumpers, you goose. The gung-ho guys that get sent in closest to the source of the fire. Don’t you watch the Discovery Channel? I knew it from that emblem on his shirt.”
“Glad to meetcha, Nick,” she added, quickly making introductions all around. Jo felt Nick’s gaze linger on her, and she fought the urge to squirm.
Jo knew she was no Kayla. Nothing fulsome and obvious about her looks, but she had never considered herself unattractive. She had inherited her mother’s lucent green eyes and arching eyebrows, along with a shiny profusion of thick brunette hair that formed a widow’s peak on a gentle, curving brow.
But that was where the mother-daughter comparison ended.
At five-two, Jo Lofton was petite like Hazel, in sharp contrast to Diane Lofton’s leggy five-ten frame—legs just perfect for gliding with catlike grace down fashion runways in Paris and New York, as indeed Diane had until she’d married and settled down.
Long legs, Jo observed bleakly, much like Kayla’s.
“Don’t tell me we’re in danger here, Nick?” Hazel said.
“Not at the moment, Mrs. McCallum,” he replied in a polite, pleasant voice. The musician in Jo immediately recognized a perfect baritone.
“Mainly we’re in this area just to thin out a few green pockets,” he added. “There’s cheatgrass down below in the gulches that provides good tinder for airborne sparks.”
Cynically Jo thought there was cheatgrass all around in the world and not just the gulches, but she remained silent.
“We’re not really going to be invading you,” Nick continued. “I lead a twelve-man team that’s in charge of monitoring Crying Horse Canyon, and we’re using Bridger’s Summit as our staging area. But we’ll be downridge and we won’t be in your way.”
“Of course you won’t be,” Kayla said, flashing him a toothy smile wide as the Texas Panhandle. “What a neat coinkydink that we’d all end up here together.”
Coinkydink? Jo thought, groaning inwardly. That’s the way some of her sophomore female students talked.
Bonnie met Jo’s gaze and rolled her eyes in an oh, please fashion.
“In fact,” Kayla enthused, “why don’t we all have supper together this evening? We could make it pot-luck!”
“That’d be great,” Nick replied, his tone already squashing the idea, “but my team works twelve hours on, twelve hours off, and we go on duty in another hour. We work nights during the quarter of the full moon. It’s cooler.”
Kayla pouted, demurely touching her cheek with one of her elegantly polished nails. “The night shift sure ruins a guy’s social life,” she said, watching him from lazy, lidded eyes.
“We’ll be seeing each other,” Nick said, looking at Jo again with steady attention, which made her feel an inner tickle of nervous fear. “Right now you folks need time to settle in, so nice meeting you.”
“See you later,” Kayla called out behind Nick’s retreating form. “How cute is he?” she said to the others in a lower tone. “Look at that trim caboose.”
“He’s a hunka-hunka burning love, all right,” Hazel agreed, though her thoughtful gaze remained on Jo.
“Never get seduced by a firefighter,” Stella warned sternly.
“Why not?” Kayla demanded.
“Because,” Stella replied, deadpan, “every time you get hot, he’ll beat you over the head with a shovel.”
The corny joke caught everyone off guard.
They all laughed, even Kayla, whom Jo had to admit looked beautiful and confident when she laughed.
But moments later Jo’s thoughts turned to Nick, the way his eyes had settled on her and refused to look away, the way his presence seemed to draw every female gaze like a vacuum. It had been a while since she’d wondered what it would be like to be held by a man, kissed and stroked. The very thought of it sent a neon sign of warning through her mind, but she still found herself wondering about the man Hazel called a Hotshot.
She knew one thing, however. The best way not to get burned was to stay away from fire.
And that, she planned to do the entire weekend.
Two
Kayla’s great-aunt Dottie McGratten showed up only a few minutes after Nick left, both her arms filled with firewood and kindling. She had an old hickory-nut face, well seamed, under a startling profusion of snow-white hair, barely restrained by a Dallas Cowboys cap. The wife of a retired oil wildcatter and formerly from Mystery Valley, she was still as spry as Hazel and Stella.
“The old gals are going easy on us tonight,” Bonnie observed as the three younger women settled into their cabin before supper.
“Yeah, but judging from their sly grins,” Jo said, “it’s only the calm before the storm.”
“And it’s going to be some storm,” Bonnie said, busy spreading her sleeping bag over the bare springs of her bed. “Star navigating, first-aid, fishing, rafting—if we survive this we’ll get our Ranger Rick badge.”
“You keep the badge,” Kayla quipped demurely. “I’ll take Ranger Rick.”
Jo glanced around the cabin. There was an old iron stove with nickel trimmings, three metal bedsteads, one along each wall, and little else besides a few nails in the walls for hanging clothes.
Ten days, she thought. It didn’t sound very long when she agreed to this. Now it loomed before her like a period of banishment, each day an eternity.
But she owed Hazel, if not herself, a cheerful attitude. McCallum money had financed McCallum Secondary School before there was even a Montana state legislature. And recently, since the hard-pressed state budget had virtually eliminated funding for art and music education, Hazel had almost single-handedly rescued the programs—and Jo’s teaching position.
So what Hazel wanted, Hazel got, even if she had the addled notion to try to make an inept camper survive the wilderness.
“I have dibs on this,” Kayla chimed in, flopping her blond self down on the thin mattress. She carefully arranged her cosmetics on a little wooden shelf beside the bed.
Bonnie turned to Jo and said under her breath, “She’s got dibs on everything, inanimate or not.”
Jo smiled distantly and placed her backpack on the middle bed.
Next to her, Kayla picked up a compact and examined herself. Her eyes rose to meet Jo’s.
“Dottie says your momma was Miss Montana?” Kayla asked, her voice a little wistful.
There it was again, Jo thought, her mother’s fame dredged up almost immediately by a virtual stranger. She felt a fist clench in her chest as she was reminded, yet again, that she dwelled in a perpetual maternal shadow.
“Dottie says right,” Bonnie supplied when Jo refused to reply. “And she was one of the finalists for Miss America.”
“Well…Montana,” Kayla said dismissively. “I mean, that’s nothing like being Miss Texas or Miss New York.”
“Why not?” Bonnie demanded.
Kayla studied her face carefully in the compact mirror before she replied.
“Oh, you know. Big frog in a small pond. We’ve got so many pretty girls in Texas, so it’s a real competition. But y’all in Montana got such an itty-bitty population.” Kayla flashed a mouthful of stunning enamel at Jo. “Not that I’m saying your momma didn’t deserve it. Shoot, I’ve seen pretty girls up north, occasionally, though winters up here will try a girl’s complexion.”
“We manage,” Bonnie assured her, amusement in her tone.
Jo had realized that Kayla wasn’t the brightest light on the porch. But as the dig just now proved, she was skillful at delivering stinging words in a syrupy tone.
Just like Jo’s mother, who had believed she only had her looks to count on, Kayla was probably just as insecure. Even though Jo should have hated the curvaceous beauty, she just couldn’t. There was too much about Kayla that was familiar.
“Officer on deck!” Hazel joked, stepping into their cabin. “Sorry to break up the gabfest, girls, but it’s time for your work assignments.”
“Work?” Kayla said. “I thought this was a vacation!”
Hazel cast a dubious glance at the redundant creams, lotions, toners, mask potions and other cosmetics crowding Kayla’s shelf. “If we want halfway decent meals, it’ll be a team effort,” she replied. “Kayla, it’s your job to gather firewood and kindling each day. Bonnie and Jo, you’ll take turns hauling water.
“This is going to be an interesting ten days, ladies,” Hazel predicted, adding, “One of you had better get water now. Dottie’s starting supper.”
Jo couldn’t help wondering what Hazel was up to, for there was definitely some secret purpose behind her manner, her sly glances.
But the serene beauty of the Bitterroot country soon scattered her thoughts as she descended a looping path, the only sound the natural chorus of insects.
There were more trees as she descended, aspens not yet blooming gold, and narrow silver spruces. She reached the stone footbridge Hazel had mentioned; it arched over a narrow but deep-cut, bubbling stream.
It was peaceful on the bridge, beauty surrounding her on all sides, and she paused to enjoy the moment. Long, narrow shafts of sunlight poked through the overhead canopy of leaves, making silvery flashes of the minnows below in the creek.
A swarm of mosquitoes assailed her, and she suddenly remembered that her long hair, which because of the windy car ride she’d pulled into a ponytail and tucked into her blouse, was useless as protection.
Absently, Jo set the water container down and undid the two top buttons of her blouse. With graceful, languid movements, she reached behind her collar and pulled out her hair.
A masculine voice startled her. “Going skinny-dipping?”
She flinched, turning to confront the handsome smoke jumper who’d shown up with Kayla. Nick Kramer, that was his name. She remembered how his quick gaze seemed to take in every detail—the way a gyrfalcon studies a meadow looking for a little gray mouse.
She had to shade her eyes from the sun behind him. What with the sun blindness and the fact that his dark silhouette seemed to tower over her, she took an instinctive step back.
When his own gaze dropped south and lingered there appreciatively, she glanced down and felt her cheeks heat with embarrassment. With two buttons undone, her blouse was wide open and gave him a good view of her bra and bare flesh.
“Can I help you?” she asked defensively, fingers fumbling to button her blouse.
“Me?” He almost seemed to laugh. “Usually I’m the one doing the helping.”
“I asked if you needed some help. I did not say help yourself,” she snapped.
“Evidently I should, judging from what I’ve just seen.”
She felt the betraying flush all the way to her collarbone.
The corner of his mouth tugged. “Let me guess—you’re a closet nudist? Hey, don’t let me interfere with your free expression of—”
“I was not undressing,” she flung at him.
“I’m sorry, then.” His words were strangely quiet and wistful.
He was well over six feet and she had to look way up to meet his gaze. Being a townie and an academic, she usually only worried about intellectual might, but now, alone in the woods with a man who was strong enough and big enough to take without asking, she suddenly became acutely aware of her physical vulnerability. She took another wary step back from him.
He only flashed that self-assured grin of his. “I’m not following you, so forget the paranoia. I’ve got the same job you have.”
He held up at least a half-dozen plastic canteens, all strung on a length of cord.
Seeing the canteens brought her back to reality. He wasn’t some woman-hungry medieval maurader. It was the twenty-first century, and he would prove no threat at all if she just stayed uninvolved.
Reminded of her own task, she smiled her relief and picked up the water container next to her.
“After you,” he said, holding out his hand.
She smiled again, the smile she used for students who irritated her, and headed toward a hand pump just past the bridge.
“Hey,” he called from behind her. “Hazel introduced you as Jo. Is it just Jo—or something else?”
“Why does it matter?” she replied, her tone casual, her heart still beating as if she’d run a mile.
She didn’t want to have a conversation with the man. After Ned, she was sworn off men, and her only reason for coming on this trip was to get away from the loneliness he’d left her with. Now here she was, in the wilderness, feeling like the only female on ladies’ night at the Bullnose Barroom.
“It’s Joanna, but you can call me anything you like, since I doubt we’ll be seeing each other much,” she answered breezily. “Believe me, you’re here to put out fires, and I am definitely planning on avoiding fires.”
She pushed down on the rusty hand pump. Putting all her weight into it, she still couldn’t get it to move. It finally released with a bang, and she nearly fell over. Next she had trouble getting pressure built up in the thing; all she could get out of it was a series of gurgling, choking noises.
“Here, let me help you.”
He gave the handle a few fast pumps, and clear water came gushing out.
“Let there be water,” he quipped.
“Thanks,” she muttered, nervous at the way he seemed to be crowding her. “I can manage it now.”
But in fact it was difficult, once the container started to fill, to keep it up under the spout. It weighed a ton.
“Let me hold it for you,” he offered.
Her instincts gone awry, she snatched the container from him when he tried to take it. Water splashed across her blouse, plastering the thin fabric to her skin.
“It’s heavy, I just—”
“I—I can manage,” she repeated, her mouth firming in a frown. “Don’t you have a forest somewhere to save?”
She hadn’t meant to be so cutting. But he exhibited all the signs of a fast mover, and no doubt with his good looks he had a woman in every national park.
But not her.
She had no desire to join that convenient, far-flung sisterhood of harem partners.
“All right, suit yourself.” He stood back, still towering over her. “But you’re sure wasting a helluva lot of good water.”
She really was, too, for she was forced to let the container go lower and lower as it got too heavy, until most of the water was splashing onto the ground or onto her chest.
He just stood there waiting his turn, and she sent quick peeks his way, unsure if that odd contortion of his mouth was meant as a smile or a goad. The silence between them became painful, then excruciating.
She felt remorse for snapping at him.
“Well…thanks for your help,” she said, giving him a light, uninvolved smile.
She’d meant to be polite, but her wooden gratitude rang a false note, and he seemed to detect it. She was halfway across the bridge, the heavy container bumping into her legs, when he said, “Now I see why you’re the one fetching the water. It’s so you can baptize everybody, right?”
She turned to send him a cold stare.
“Just a tip,” he bit out. “When you decide to freeze out a man, make sure your shirt’s not wet, because you sure don’t look cold to me.”
Her gaze shot to her chest. Her nipples were like hard buds, completely outlined in the sheer white fabric of her clinging shirt.
In shock, she lost her grip on the heavy water jug. It bounced and poured over her feet while she crossed her arms over her chest in a lame attempt to cover herself.
He laughed out loud.
Furious, she picked up the half-empty jug and made to head for camp. She would just have to make two trips for water. And it would be worth it, because the next trip was definitely not going to include meeting him.
“Hey, come back,” he taunted. “I like a challenge.”
“Then stick to fighting fires because I’m not a challenge—I’m a zero possibility where you’re c-concerned,” she stammered, her teeth gnashing and chattering at the same time.
That goading twist of his mouth was back.
“Now that’s a sure-nuff challenge!” he volleyed.
“No,” she tossed right back, “it’s advance notice to try elsewhere.”
“I’m glad we had this friendly little chat,” he shouted at her retreating back. “And you know what? I still feel the challenge in spite of your generous peep show!”
She almost spit she was so mad.
She hadn’t spent five minutes with the man, and she couldn’t remember being this undone.
So much for controlled and dignified academics.
Three
Jo noticed little of the waning day’s beauty on her way back to the summit campground, for she was too preoccupied with angry resentment directed at Nick Kramer.
Big deal, so he was a smoke jumper—a “Hotshot,” at that. He figured women would be all over him, and perhaps they were.
Her brow furrowed. She didn’t need this. She was still licking her wounds over Ned. It rankled her that she’d even noticed Nick Kramer—and his incredibly piercing eyes and his big athletic body.
His sexy voice, too.
She frowned.
She might as well admit it: she was angrier at herself than at him. At least she was self-aware. Being brutally honest with oneself in the company of the opposite sex was the only way to stay sane, and most of all, safe. And more than anything, she was determined to stay safe.
Her thoughts unwillingly jogged back to Nick. He wasn’t vain but he sure was arrogant. Couldn’t he have faked just a little humility? She felt her own mouth twist cynically. No, he’d probably scored so often he didn’t need it. He struck her as the type who considered himself God’s gift to women.
Just like back there at the pump—he acted as though he was doing her a favor by hitting on her.
The water container was heavy, and the return to camp uphill. She arrived back at the cabins out of breath, wet and out of sorts.
“There’s our water girl,” called Dottie, who had gotten a fire started in the outdoor oven and grill at the center of the clearing. “We were starting to think maybe you skedaddled with that smoke jumper.”
Hazel, busy untangling a length of fishing line, glanced at Jo and immediately recognized the turmoil she was in.
“Here, let me wrangle that, hon,” Hazel offered, and the seventy-five-year-old startled Jo by carrying the water container easily with one strong arm.
“We were just kidding,” Hazel added for her ears only, “about you meeting up with Nick Kramer.”
“Meeting up? Huh! I think the creep followed me to the pump.”
“Creep?” Hazel repeated the word as if it was foreign to her. “Girl, either you need glasses or I do. If he was any better-looking, he’d be a traffic hazard. Here you go, chef.”
She plunked the water down near the fire.
“Where’s everybody else?” Jo asked, glancing quickly around.
As she spoke, Kayla emerged from the younger women’s cabin, carrying a shiny little vinyl shower kit and a fluffy pink towel. She crossed to the big water container and began filling an empty plastic milk bottle, slopping water all over the ground.
“Go easy on that,” Dottie snapped. “Jo didn’t haul it up here so you could pour it on the ground.”
“It’s only water,” Kayla pouted. “Jo, you don’t mind if I take a little, do you?”
“Knock yourself out,” Jo replied, totally uninterested in a clash with Kayla—the conflict with Nick Kramer had been enough for one day.
Dottie noticed Jo’s frown and sent her a sympathetic smile as Kayla walked away. “I know you must be wondering why I brought Kayla. It’s a crying shame, but she deliberately acts dumber than she is because she thinks men find it attractive.”
“She’s right—plenty do,” Hazel cut in. “Hell, I love cowboys, but most of mine care only about boobs, not brains. They get nervous real quick when a gal mentions a book she’s read.”
“Well, anyhow,” Dottie said, “Kayla doesn’t mean to come off as irritating. At heart she’s really a sweet and friendly girl. It’s just that she’s insecure. She works hard to keep all eyes on her. It didn’t sit well to see that gaze go your way.”
“If you mean Nick Kramer’s gaze, believe me, she can have him. I’m not playing the dating game anymore,” Jo said.
“I certainly would be if I were your age,” Hazel assured her. “He’s the bee’s knees, all right.”
“He’s horny, that’s all,” Jo stated bluntly.
“Horny as a funeral in New Orleans, most likely,” Hazel agreed. “So are you, but you won’t admit it.”
Jo flushed.
“Besides,” Hazel went on, “that’s not all. Give the man some credit. He does an incredibly dangerous job that has to be done. He’s not stupid. He knows he can get laid. But I think he actually likes you, Jo.”
“What makes you possibly think that?” Jo asked, incredulous.
“My gosh, hon, it would be obvious to a blind man. The guy’s eyes lit up the moment he saw you.”
“And why not?” Dottie demanded. “A looker like you, he’s just being honest.”
Right, thought Jo, honest—just like Ned Wilson, who praised her looks so much it embarrassed her. But what good was it to be called attractive by men who cared about nothing else but sexual gratification? Men who lied to get what they wanted, then returned to their families or took off for parts unknown? Her answer from now on was always going to be, “No thanks.”
Jo mustered a mechanical smile.
Both older women were only being nice. But no matter how right she knew Hazel was, colorings of insecurity—even of inferiority—often tinged even Jo’s brightest moods.
Plucky but pathetic—that’s how she felt when she tried to act confident. Ever since Ned, trying to start over made her feel like a gunshot victim trying to whistle past a shooting range.
“Well, guess I’ll finish unpacking,” she said, mainly to end the awkward silence. Both older women watched her cross the clearing.
Dottie, who had known Hazel for seven decades, suddenly grinned.
“I’ve seen that look in your eye before, Hazel McCallum. What are you up to now?”
“Who, me?” Hazel feigned the innocence of a cherub. “I’m just happy for Jo, that’s all.”
“Happy! Crying out loud, she’s all upset.”
“She sure is,” Hazel agreed. “And I like seeing her animated like this, even if it’s negative emotion. That girl is too dreamy and unassertive. Sometimes she even comes off like a mouse. But Nick Kramer’s got her all revved up.”
Hazel’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve learned to trust my instincts over the years where love is concerned. And right now they tell me that Jo is all wrong about Nick—sure, he’s a hunk, all right. But the eyes are the windows to the soul, and I saw real depth of character in Nick’s eyes. Despite what Jo may think, he’s not the slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am type.”
Hazel said no more. Her mind was too full of machinations for conversation right now.
Nick Kramer and Jo Lofton struck Hazel as perfect for her master plan. She was on a secret mission that had become the passion of her twilight years: a mission to save her beloved hometown of Mystery, Montana, population four thousand and dwindling. Mystery, and the fertile valley it lay in, had been founded by Hazel’s great-great-grandfather, Jake. But the longtime ranching community was changing rapidly as outside developers moved in, turning it into a summer-tourist mecca. More than anything else, Hazel feared that uncaring strangers would obliterate its original identity, making Mystery just one more indistinguishable hodgepodge of chain stores and trendy boutiques.
It would be a loss too great to be endured.
Sure, change was inevitable, but Hazel wanted it guided by love and vision, not profits.
So the matriarch of Mystery had come up with a plan: pairing natives who loved Mystery, as Jo did, with the kind of outsiders who would bring new life while respecting the old traditions—precisely the kind of unselfish man Hazel sensed Nick Kramer was. Greedy yuppies did not put their lives on the line to save forests and protect strangers. Hazel had a special affection for men who “stood on the wall,” as she described those with dangerous jobs.
While it was too early to know anything for certain where Nick and Jo were concerned, Hazel had developed a sixth sense around romance. She’d become a matchmaker, a second career that so far had produced three wonderful marriages. Her instincts had been instantly alerted the moment Nick and Jo had laid eyes on each other. As the playwrights phrased it, the stage lit up.
And where there’s smoke, the matriarch punned to herself, usually you’ll find some fire, too.
“Okay, you clowns, listen up,” Nick called out as he returned with the canteens to his fire crew’s base camp on Lookout Mountain. “So far it’s been a piece of cake. Right now the crews on both sides of us are ahead of the fire curve. We’ve had enough humidity lately to make the flames lay down nice.”
He tossed the string of canteens down.
“But the barometer is falling, instead of rising like it was predicted, and you know how those flames will roll over if the air gets too dry, especially if the wind kicks up. So tonight we take advantage of a full moon and thin out the green pockets down on the canyon floor.”
“I got a better idea, Nick,” called out his radioman, Jason Baumgarter. “Let’s go up on the summit and do a safety inspection of the cabins—a whole carload of babes is camped up there.”
This suggestion was met with cheers and whistles. Nick’s twelve-man crew were seated around the hearty flames of a campfire, eating supper.
“Our fearless leader,” quipped Nick’s second-in-command, Tom Albers, “has already reconnoitered that situation topside, gentlemen. I saw him walking with a well-endowed blonde earlier, sacrificing himself for the rest of us.”
“Yes, for my sins,” Nick clowned, looking humble.
The fire crew jeered him good-naturedly in return, a familiar ritual. But despite the usual camp routine as the men prepared to go on duty, Nick felt a new distraction this evening, and she wasn’t blond.
Rather, she was a dark-haired, green-eyed beauty with one hell of a chip on her shoulder.
Jo Lofton had intrigued him from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her. But unfortunately, the emotions she stirred within him dredged up other feelings, too, and memories he usually worked hard to quell.
Looking at women like Jo was downright madness for him, because it made him yearn for a lifestyle he wasn’t sure he could live. Many people suffered from what was done to them, but Nick had discovered that his deepest scars were mainly scars of omission—the parents he never knew, the loving home he never had, the lack of any reason for putting down roots.
The one woman he had dared to let himself love, for whom he would have given up this nomadic job of his, did not let him make that choice. Karen had left him. According to her, she’d found something better. And her stubbornness triggered his own.
“Earth calling Nick Kramer,” a voice said loudly, and Nick’s thoughts suddenly scattered.
Tom Albers stood before him in the gathering light, buckling on his utility belt.
He stared down at Nick with a face taut with concern.
“You got a mind for this today? Last thing we need is a preoccupied man getting himself into trouble.”
“I’m all right,” Nick said, his jaw hardening.
Tom nodded. “How do you want us to insert?” he asked again. “Two teams or three?”
“Three,” Nick replied, forcing dangerous thoughts of Jo Lofton out of his mind. “One north of the river, two south. It’s too steep for vehicles, so we’ll have to hike out. Each team leader radios me on the hour.”
“Got it,” Tom affirmed.
But as Nick rigged his ax to his backpack, Jo’s taunting words snapped in his mind like burning twigs: I’m not a challenge—I’m a zero possibility where you’re concerned.
Four
“Let’s go, ladies. Rise and shine!”
Hazel’s strong voice was like an explosion in the slumbering peace of the cabin.
Jo bolted upright in bed, wondering what the emergency was.
“Up and at ’em!” Dottie’s twanging voice chimed in, loud enough to wake snakes. “We should be five miles down the road by now, cowgirls. Shake the lead out.”
Still groggy, Jo groaned when a powerful flashlight beam swept into her eyes.
“My God, it’s still dark outside!” Bonnie complained.
“C’mon, sweethearts, are you bolted to those beds?” Hazel said. “The wilderness is calling you.”
“Okay, okay, we’re up,” Jo protested, although she couldn’t help grinning when she saw the stupefied look on Kayla’s sleep-puffy face.
Dressing in the dim illumination of an oil lantern, Jo donned the sturdy outdoor clothing she’d packed: blue jeans, red flannel shirt and sturdy high-top shoes. A splash of water to her face and she felt almost human. Brushing back her hair, she tied it into a ponytail and tucked it under her shirt.
While she tucked it, however, heat crept into her cheeks. She was recalling the scene yesterday with Nick Kramer.
I still feel the challenge in spite of your generous peep show.
In your dreams, bucko, she wished she’d retorted. Why did the good lines always come to her too late to use them?
As Hazel had promised, the day’s new sun was just edging over the horizon by the time the girls, still knuckling sleep from puffy eyes, trooped up to the crackling flames of the breakfast fire.
Seeing the sun blaze to life, hearing the “dawn chorus” of hundreds of birds celebrating the arrival of daylight, Jo felt instantly buoyed. Her freshly renewed anger at Nick Kramer receded, and she felt a little thrill at the natural beauty around her.
She could see why this wilderness spot had grown on Hazel and her friends. “Back of beyond,” Hazel called it.
“We’re burning good daylight,” said the wise matron gruffly when Kayla straggled in, inappropriately dressed in pink shorts and a midriff top. “We’ve got a three-mile hike down to the canyon floor and the river, so let’s make tracks.”
Jo hadn’t realized how much her sedentary teaching job had affected her physical condition. After only thirty minutes on the trail—a series of looping switchbacks that descended to the floor of Crying Horse Canyon—she was short of breath. So were the rest of the younger women.
Yet amazingly, Hazel and the other two seniors were strutting out front, setting the brisk pace, joking and chatting and identifying various birds.
But no one was suffering the way poor, befuddled Kayla was.
Jo couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for her. Her golden-braised midriff was already pocked with the swollen bites of pesky flies, and several times she had scraped her exposed legs on thornbushes. She even managed to snag her ankle bracelet while stepping over a downed tree branch. If Jo hadn’t caught her in time, Kayla would have been sprawled facedown in the dirt.
“Break time,” Stella called when they reached the halfway point, a little fern bracken with several fallen trees providing seats.
Hazel, in the meantime, seemed intent on studying the skyline to the north.
Thin wisps of smoke curled in the wind, and Jo could hear the steady thucka-thucka of chopper blades as the Forest Service fought blazes in the adjacent canyons.
“Is the fire getting closer?” Jo asked Hazel.
“I can’t tell,” her friend admitted. “But it does feel like the wind’s been rising, instead of dying down as predicted. And if you ask me, the humidity is down, not up.”
“You can smell flames a little more, too,” Stella said, taking off her floppy jungle hat to swat at flies. “And I’m guessing smoke has forced more insects into this canyon. I’ve never seen this many flies.”
“I hope the fire does spread!” Kayla burst out resentfully. “I’m sick of this Danny Crockett stuff.”
“Davy Crockett,” Hazel corrected her, laughing in disbelief. “Some Texan you are,” she added before leading the women to one of the quiet pools in the river.
“Bait your hooks,” she ordered. “This is one of the best fishing holes west of the Great Divide.”
“This is incredible!” Stella marveled after they’d been fishing for not even an hour. “The trout are practically leaping on the banks for us.”
Even Kayla had gotten over her pouting. Now she seemed to be having the time of her life as she reeled in fish after fish.
It was especially remarkable, Jo told herself, because they were all “survival fishing,” using just fish-line and hooks tied to sticks—no fiberglass poles, no reels, only twigs for bobbers.
“Are they suicidal?” Hazel wondered as she tossed another fat trout onto the growing stack.
“It’s the fires nearby, Hazel,” a friendly masculine voice called out from behind them. “It’s messed up the river ecosystem and forced a huge number of fish into other feeding habitats.”
All six women turned to see an amazing sight: twelve men in their physical prime, all smudged and rumpled, all jockeying for a better view of the fisherwomen.
“Well, boys,” Hazel greeted them with amiable irony, “am I that much of a sex goddess in blue jeans? Oh, I see—you’ve noticed the children.”
“Mighty fine-looking kids, ma’am,” one of the smoke jumpers cracked, and another added: “We do baby-sitting gigs between fires.”
The men laughed, including Nick, but he also added in an undertone, “Manners, boys, manners.”
His eyes found Jo’s, and he sent her a friendly, let’s-make-peace smile.
Despite being over her earlier anger, however, a mechanical smile was all she could muster. Especially with a dozen men ogling her—although Kayla, not surprisingly, seemed their primary focus.
“Y’all been puttin’ out fires like big, brave heroes?” the blonde asked, waving at them.
“With our bare hands, sugar!” one of them assured her.
“We’re off duty now,” Nick explained. “We spent the night burning out some cheatgrass pockets—that’s why we’re smudged. No fires in Crying Horse Canyon. Now we’re just hiking back to our camp.”
With twelve men and six women, neither Hazel nor Nick attempted any introductions. But no name tags were required—his men weren’t bashful about breaking off into little groups to flirt with the women a bit before they left.
Jo wasn’t in the mood for socializing.
She waded partway into the river and tried to look intently busy baiting her hook.
But Nick made a point of walking over to her.
“I’m glad I’m not that worm,” he joked as she poked one with her hook. “I mean—you know, the symbolism and all.”
She didn’t like the way he seemed to crowd her. The river water was ice-cold and she dared not go farther out.
Her noncommittal glance only seemed to amuse him.
He tried another tact. “Look, I’m sorry if I came off a bit flip or smart-ass or whatever yesterday. That crack I made about you baptizing everybody—well, that was out of line.”
“I see.”
He shrugged one shoulder. When he replied, his tone wasn’t quite so friendly. “No need to get all gushy with forgiveness.”
Her cheeks heated. “Look, don’t worry about it, Mr. Kramer—”
“I only came over to make conversation—”
“Actually,” she challenged, leveling him a cool stare, “I don’t think you’re interested in conversation.”
“I give as good as I get,” he defended himself, his tone taking on a scalpel edge. “I s’pose you’re a scrubbed angel?”
“More scrubbed than you,” she returned, giving his soot-smudged face a once-over.
He stopped. Then as if suddenly finding the humor in her words, he tipped back his head and laughed. White, even teeth sparkled.
She found herself wanting to laugh, also, or at least smile. But instinct told her it would only lead her down the path to attraction, and then, destruction.
“Look, apology accepted, Mr. Kramer,” she finished, dismissing him.
“You give every man that go-to-hell look?”
She glanced at him and must have given him another one, judging from the sneer on his face.
“Sorry I’m not some sober-suited, country-club accountant who never gets his hands dirty. I admit I haven’t shaved in a while. I sleep in a tent and bathe in rivers, but it’s hard work fighting a fire. And I didn’t expect to meet some woman—”
She finally turned around and faced him.
His mouth formed a tight defensive line. His eyes were wary.
“Please don’t think I don’t appreciate your sacrifice,” she said. “Many would be unable to fulfill even your smallest of tasks to fight a wildfire. However, Mr. Kramer, this is a fishing hole, not a watering hole. If I wanted to meet a big strong man like you, I’d have gone to a bar, not gone camping.”
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