Page 1 of Falling for the Playboy Pilot

DALTON

T he blue horizon stretched in front of me, full of endless possibilities. Flying always made my soul feel full. I could go anywhere, as long as my fuel lasted. But today’s flight wasn’t a joy ride. I was on the clock. No one could stop me from enjoying myself, though.

Zach Bryan’s “Something in the Orange” pumped through my headphones. It wasn’t loud enough to drown out any messages from home base, but it provided a little mood music, making the flight perfect.

I banked slightly. While I was keeping an eye out for smoke, I was also taking a mental snapshot.

It was an image I would sketch later, although I would never be able to capture the way the light danced on the ridges or the sheer drop-offs where rock had broken away and crashed down the side of the mountain.

I had flown this stretch so many times I had it memorized for the most part, but there always seemed to be a little detail here and there that I hadn’t noticed before.

The gorge cut through the landscape like a scar.

It was deep and narrow with the river at its base.

I had been in that gorge more times than I could count.

It was beautiful hiking as long as you knew what you were doing.

The inexperienced person would be in danger.

Flash floods were very real and the steep drop-offs could sneak up on a person.

Add in the rockslides and it could be treacherous.

So far, we had saved the area from devastating fire, but eventually, it would happen. The beauty would be charred and I would have to find a new place to fish, camp, and hike for a while. That truth felt closer now than it had in recent years.

It was late May and we were promised an active fire season after a dry winter. Even Telluride felt the lack of snow, having a weak ski season. The whole area was a tinderbox waiting for a spark to set it ablaze.

I loved the silence and the beauty up here. My cabin was secluded, and when there was a big snowfall, I happily didn’t leave for weeks at a time. Unfortunately, I wasn’t going to be spending much time at home this summer.

I would be busy putting out fires. We would have thousands to put out over the next few months. A slow fire season didn’t exist, and guys on base had taken to calling it the Great White Buffalo. Every year continued to trend hotter, drier, and windier. It was a lethal combination.

I adjusted my grip on the yoke, feeling the familiar vibration of the engine against my palms, making me one with the machine.

I should have been born with wings. I was a solo person in general and being in the S-2, a single-pilot plane used for firefighting, was perfect.

I loved flying alone. I loved the quiet.

The solitude. The sheer fucking beauty of it all.

No one to answer to, no one to worry about.

Just me and the sky. And if God decided it was my time to go, I’d go alone and not take anyone else down with me.

My eyes scanned the ground below, looking for the telltale signs of smoke. “I know you’re out here,” I said in a soft voice.

We had a smoke report from one of the fire lookouts. Sometimes it was nothing and sometimes a spark could turn into a forest fire that would burn thousands of acres of land. I had twelve-hundred gallons of water ready to drop if and when I saw the smoke.

When the call came in, I jumped at the chance to take the flight. We were just getting into the swing of things and I knew future flights would be me and another pilot. I hated having to deal with other people in my cockpit. They always had opinions.

And their opinions didn’t mean shit to me.

As I flew, my mind drifted to the old days. Not the real old days. My time in the Army was what I thought of as my first life. If a person really got nine lives, I was probably on round six or seven.

Flying a commercial airliner after my time in the Army had been a paycheck.

A good one, really. But that was about all it had going for it.

Three years in the cockpit of a Boeing 737, hauling screaming toddlers, bitchy women, and arrogant, entitled assholes was more than enough for me.

Passengers could test a saint’s patience and I had never been a saint.

“Sir, my Coke is flat.”

“My seat won’t recline.”

“Can you ask the pilot to turn down the turbulence?”

I didn’t miss the politics that went with working in the business. Airlines all had a lot of rules. Wear this. Don’t say this. Smile. The boss is coming for an inspection. Your uniform isn’t pressed.

What I did miss was the women.

I groaned thinking of all the flight attendants I’d had fun with over my three-year commercial career. There wasn’t much to do in the hotel between flights, so we found ways to entertain each other. Usually in bed. Or on the floor. Or against the wall.

Apparently I left them all wanting more because my escapades built me a reputation. They started seeking me out—over, and over, and over again.

Some of them had been messaging lately with little flame emojis and winks. Amelia from Dallas. Kate from Salt Lake. Even fiery Roxanne, who once introduced me to things I’m pretty sure still aren’t legal in Utah. Just thinking about that woman and her tongue on my cock had things stirring to life.

Maybe when I had some time off, I would hop a puddle-jumper to Denver and let Roxanne remind me why solitude wasn’t always the best option.

The woman was hot enough to set the whole valley aflame.

That was before we got horizontal. I was pretty sure she had some kind of formal training on how to use those lips. Dear lord.

The headset squawked in my ear. “Fire spotted,” the female voice said. Laser had eyes like an eagle. I wasn’t surprised she had found the site before me.

I immediately slipped back into professional mode. “Big?” I asked.

“Nah. Not yet. I’m dropping the smoke to mark it for you,” Laser said calmly.

She was in the spotter plane ahead of me.

I was flying a heavy beast while she was able to move faster and get lower.

I slowly dropped in elevation. To anyone on the ground, it might look like I was chasing her in a game of tag.

Her smaller plane was all windows, giving her a clear one-hundred-and-eighty-degree view.

“Dropped,” Laser’s voice said. “Knock it dead, Herc.”

“I see it,” I said, scanning the treetops. “Starting the run now.”

The red smoke rose above the trees. Red was a lot easier to see.

The red smoke plumed from a meadow area that should be damp right now but was likely all dry grass and undergrowth that harbored a spark for a long time until it sprang to life.

Where there’s smoke, there is always going to be fire.

It wouldn’t take long for that small fire to explode when it hit the trees.

One tree became a torch that sparked hundreds more in a violent chain reaction.

Adrenaline pumped through my veins. Between the excitement of flying and the thrill of fighting one of the most formidable beasts known to man, I was riding high.

It was what I lived for. Being in the sky was exciting, but I loved to push the limits and scraping the belly of my plane along the tips of the trees always gave me a rush.

I wasn’t going to do that this time. The trees rose up as I descended, throttle tight in my hand.

I aligned my nose with the red plume and angled down for the drop.

“Here we go,” I muttered, thumb ready on the release.

I pressed the button.

Nothing.

“Shit.”

I pressed again, jabbing it harder than should have been necessary.

Still nothing.

“What the fuck!” I hit the damn thing again, wanting to punch a hole through the instrument panel.

“The drop doors aren’t opening,” I snapped into the radio. “I fucking told those guys the release was sticking.”

There had been a weird lag in the hydraulics last week. It wasn’t obvious, but I noticed it. I thought it was just a hiccup but even the tiniest issue could be a big deal once you were in the sky.

I’d reported it. Loudly. I had been told it was just grit in the system. They told me to work it loose. It might have worked. But it didn’t this time. When I needed it to fucking work, it was dead.

“Son of a bitch!” My cool calm had cracked, and anger bled through. “That fire is five minutes from exploding and I can’t drop any fucking water!”

“Don’t do anything crazy, Herc.” Laser’s voice carried her dread and concern through the headset.

“Crazy?” I hissed. “Wait until I land. I’ll show you crazy.”

I pulled back on the stick and banked hard away from the site, the smoke curling past the wing. The S-2 groaned under the maneuver, heavy with the full water tank still sloshing behind me. I had to keep her steady. I probably shouldn’t manhandle the old thing so much but I was in a hurry.

“Get someone else up here. Now!”

Ten seconds later the radio crackled. “Pickle is on his way.” Chief’s voice was calm. Not the least bit bothered by the idea we were risking a major problem because someone didn’t do their damn job.

“This is why I hate shared equipment,” I muttered, teeth clenched.

“You hate everything shared,” Laser replied dryly.

She wasn’t wrong. If I could fly barefoot and shirtless just to avoid standard issue anything, I would. I liked things that were mine. My plane. My rhythm. My choices.

“What’s the plan, Herc?” Laser asked.

I adjusted altitude and exhaled. “Going to circle back. Take another look. If I can’t get her to drop, I’m heading back to base.”

“Be smart, Dalton.”

Ah. The real name. Now I knew she was serious.

I snorted. “Copy that.”

I leveled out, trying not to think about the fact that every second we lost gave the fire more time to grow. The wind could change on a dime. A little patch of undergrowth could become a hellish fire in ten minutes flat. Mistakes like this could get people killed.

But I couldn’t fix that with a stuck release valve. I could see the last bit of red smoke and flew over again. I tapped the control. Still nothing. My thumb hovered over the button like maybe, just maybe, this time it would work.

“Fuck.”

The red plume below thinned as the wind carried it away.

“Shit. No go. Heading back to base.”

“I’ll radio the tower,” she said. “Let them know you’re coming in heavy.”

“Appreciate it.”

The headset clicked off and I was alone again. Now it was Jelly Roll singing about being a sinner. I hated leaving a job undone. Hated even more that I was right about the goddamn valve and no one listened.

Someone on the ground was about to get my fire—and they fucking deserved it.