Page 3 of Birchwood Burn (Black Timber Peak Hotshots #2)

THREE

JACE

The irritation at having to search for this woman is still strong in me.

It doesn’t matter how gorgeous and perfect she is; it, in fact, pisses me off more.

What the hell was she thinking, going for a hike during a fucking wildfire?

I get the fire was not over the entire mountain, and they were far from it, but look how quickly it spread.

Fires do that; they’re not predictable or reasonable. They have a mind of their own, and they don’t care who is in their way.

Her throat has to be shredded, and I try to coax her to slow down her drinking.

Who knows how long it’s been since she had anything to drink?

The heat also guarantees that she is sweating out whatever she has inside of her.

Her lips are chapped and peeling. She’s pale, with a flush layering over it from the heat, which is worrying me even more.

I want to get her out of here now. She has heavy bags under her eyes from lack of sleep and stress, and yet she’s still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.

I dig through my bag and pull out a portable oxygen canister and place it over her mouth, trying to get as much relief for her lungs as possible. The coughing and wheezing sound she makes isn’t good, and I can’t imagine what the continued inhalation of this wildfire is doing to her lungs.

“Take deep inhales.” I hold it over her mouth and line up my mask to my face and follow suit.

The smoke is getting thicker, and we need to get moving.

I pull the mask from my face and reach for the radio on my shoulder and click the button to open the line.

“Jace here. I got the girl.” I give off my estimated location.

“Standby.” The helicopter pilot, Coop, radioed over. He’s going to scout out our location and give me directions to head to.

Larissa’s enormous eyes watch me, and gratitude oozes from them, along with something else. Something I’m afraid to identify because I wonder if I wouldn’t be able to let her go. That’s how strong this pull to her is.

All of this is insane. This is what my sister, Gina, writes about in her romance books.

Or at least I think it is. She writes sex scenes, and I’m sorry, but I’m not reading that.

Not written by her, at least, but I wanted to understand the book world she’s in.

We’ve discussed her work, and apparently, there’s a thing called Instalove.

What the fuck is that supposed to be? But readers go ape-shit crazy over it.

And what I’m experiencing right now is a lot of what’s described in those books.

I feel a need to know everything about her, and it’s building in intensity. The more I’m around her, the stronger it’s getting, overtaking common sense. Not once in my thirty-eight years have I ever been so drawn to somebody, but here I am, and I don’t know what to make of it.

She talks with the mask over her mouth, and I can barely make out what she’s saying, but I’m gathering it’s more thank yous.

“Save those up, Trouble. We’re not out of the woods yet.”

She tips her head at my nickname for her.

But it suits her. She is trouble. Trouble for the situation we’re now in.

Trouble for being so damn gorgeous. And trouble for making me feel things I don’t want to be feeling.

I’ve been single for the past decade for a reason, and I don’t want things to change now.

I rub her back as she coughs some more, and my arm is electric from the jolts pulsating off her and up my arm.

At least, I don’t think I want things to change.

The thwop, thwop, thwop of the helicopter blades comes through the sounds of the fire.

Larissa drops the mask. “Well, thank you for coming to find me. I truly believed I was alone out here. You need to stop the fire, not find some stupid tourist who weakened at her friend’s suggestion for a hike.” She rolled her eyes before closing them and putting the mask back on her face.

There’s no response to her statement that doesn’t have me agreeing with her, which at this moment is a rather shitty thing to say.

She shows remorse and is upset at what she’s putting everybody through.

But again, it’s our job to protect these mountains and everybody and everything on top of them as best we can.

“Jace, get moving. Two sides of the fire are about to get married. So move your ass west and move now.”

“Shit.” I grab the radio and respond. “Copy that. Okay, Trouble, we’re goin’ to have to move and move fast. Are you ready?”

She nods and stands, but wobbles, and I check her feet, and her shoes have been compromised by the fire. They don’t have much support. Shit. She gains her balance and walks, but flinches on her feet for a few steps before gritting her teeth and toughing it out.

Fuck. Her feet are destroyed on top of everything else.

I’m tempted to throw her over my shoulder in a firefighter’s carry, but something tells me she’ll fight me on that. I’ll hold off until necessary.

“Keep up with me, okay?”

I throw everything into the bag and sprint in front of the woman. She nods, and I start us off on a jog. I want to run, but there’s no way her feet will handle it. I’m constantly looking over my shoulder, and she’s sticking close to me, watching my feet.

“Coop, we’re heading west. How long do we have?”

Out of nowhere, a massive tree in flames drops in front of us. I turn and cover Larissa with my body until the ground stops shaking. I lift my head. We’re blocked off from the direction we need to head.

“Come on.” I grab Larissa’s hand and start running south. I radio to Coop. “Change of plans. We’re blocked off, so we’re heading south. Tell me we’ll beat the blaze.” I’m running out of breath as adrenaline courses through my body.

I frown at the wheeze from Larissa’s breath. She’s been out in this smoke with no proper gear for far too long.

“Jace, move your ass.”

I’m doing that, but the smoke has now been met with the flames, and it’s moving fast. The two sides of the blaze I can see in the distance are going to be circling us in no time if we can’t make it through there.

“Fuck.” I turn, grab Larissa, and throw her over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry. She yelps but says nothing and makes no sudden movements. I push my legs as hard as I can and run with everything I have in me.

The radio has Coop yelling at the other helicopters to get the water dropped now. But I don’t focus on anything but the destination of running down the mountain and hitting through the line before the fire meets.

Larissa’s breath wheezes in my ear, but she stays still, and I hold her tight as the heat bears down on us, and I struggle to get oxygen. I drop my mask over my face and hope it helps.

The fires are now in front of me and close to connecting. I yell and push as hard as I can, but the flames are fierce and determined to trap us within their ring of hell.

“Dump it.” Coop yells into the radio, and the fires and I are about to meet, when a sudden rainfall flows down on top of us, and slows the fire’s progression, and then another large dump occurs. I don’t stop running, I keep moving. The fire needs to be behind us.

I keep the pace for another minute before I slow down to a jog, but I don’t dare stop. I’m breathing heavily, pushing my body to its max. Still holding on to Larissa, who hasn’t said a word or moved, but lies over my shoulder, fighting for breath.

“You okay, Trouble?”

“For this situation, yes. Are you okay?” Her voice is quiet and emotional. At this point, I ignore it, since we’re still in a dangerous situation.

My body shakes from the strain and stamina, and my chest gulps for air, but I say breathlessly. “Oh, this. Yeah, I’m good. Just peachy.”

It softens the mood, and Larissa chuckles.

“Jace, you there?”

“I’m here. Where can we get picked up?”

“Damn, you lucky son-of-a-bitch.”

Several people laugh over the radio. Knowing most of those men are my crew. When the line frees up, I radio in. “Hey, it’s not over til it’s over. Now get us the hell out of here.”

“Can you let me down now?” Larissa’s soft voice asks.

With a perimeter check, as long as we don’t stop and walk fast, we might be okay until we get to where Coop plans to extract us. I lower Larissa to her feet and make sure she’s steady, but I keep hold of her hand as we walk. She hisses but bites her lip to continue walking.

“Do you need me to carry you some more?”

She shakes her head. “No. What you did was impressive, but I can’t keep making you carry me. You’ll hurt yourself.”

I lift my brow, waiting for her to explain.

“Well, I’m not a small woman. The fact you ran like that is insane, especially with my fat ass over your shoulder.”

The ease with which she said she had a fat ass appalls me. And trust me, I checked out her ass, and there’s nothing fat about it. It’s juicy and grabbable with the right amount of bubba-licious-ness to it.

I clench my jaw and try to bite back what I want to say, and it doesn’t work.

It hardly ever does. I’ve always voiced what needed to be said, and over something like this, I’m not about to let it go.

“I never want to hear you say anything like that about yourself again. You’re fucking perfect.

With all the right curves, a man dreams of falling into those kinds of curves every night. You hear me? Never again.”

Larissa’s jaw drops, and I have to turn away, as dirty thoughts of filling her mouth invade my mind.

Fuck. What is wrong with me? This woman is way too young for me, and we might die, and here I am thinking of sex and having her in every position possible.

She says nothing as she works to process my outburst. Which is fine by me.

I don’t want to risk saying something inappropriate, because the fat ass comment stinks of a man putting her down, and it makes me want to go mental and do something murderous.

Something that shouldn’t be my first reaction, not when you’re a first responder with people whose lives depend on you.

“Jace, I found a cliff, but you’re going to fly. The fire will corner you, so we only have one shot at this. But I can’t land anywhere.”

Shit. I’m okay with it, but a civilian? Better not to tell her what he means when Coop said we’re going to fly.

“Where am I heading?”

“Keep going in the direction you are.”

“Copy that.”

“And Jace?”

“Yeah?”

“Run.”

I look at Larissa, and she nods, dropping my hand, and runs. My hand is cold and empty now, and I want to continue touching her, but we’ll move faster if we don’t.