Page 23 of Falling for the Playboy Pilot

DALTON

W e wound our way back toward the party. “Mouth still on fire?” I asked her.

She laughed. “No. I think I’m recovered. Thank you for saving me from myself. I should have listened to your warnings.”

“We all had to learn the hard way,” I said. “We tried to save you.”

She was gorgeous and wild, and it rattled me more than I wanted to admit.

In the cockpit, rules were everything. They were necessary.

They kept us alive, kept us focused, kept us from making the kind of mistakes that got people killed.

But down here, watching her laugh at her own misfortune with that chili, seeing her drop to her knees without a second thought to pet a mangy cat, I loved how free she was.

How she didn’t second-guess herself or worry about what other people thought.

It scared the hell out of me, and fear was not an emotion I was accustomed to.

I’d built my whole life around control, around keeping people at arm’s length where they couldn’t hurt me.

Where I couldn’t hurt them. But Janna was different.

She didn’t just slip past my defenses; she bulldozed right through them like they were made of tissue paper.

The way she’d looked at me when she caught me with Max, like she was seeing something in me that I tried to keep hidden. The way she’d laughed when she figured out I had a soft spot for a stray cat.

I watched her walking beside me, still licking the last of the ice cream from her cone. I felt something shift in my chest. Something dangerous. Something that said she might be worth the risk of putting my heart out there where it could get smashed to pieces.

I pushed those thoughts down before they could take root.

I’d gotten good at that over the years. I was really good at compartmentalizing, shutting off parts of myself that were too dangerous to examine.

Building a lasting, meaningful relationship wasn’t something I thought about.

That was for other people with normal lives.

People who hadn’t seen the things I’d seen, and who hadn’t lost friends like I had.

I’d watched good men disappear into smoke and flame. I’d stood at too many funerals, shaken hands with too many widows, looked into too many kids’ eyes and seen the exact moment they realized their dad wasn’t coming home.

I glanced at Janna again, at the way the setting sun caught the gold in her hair, and felt that familiar tightness in my throat.

She was everything I couldn’t afford to want.

Young, full of life, believing she was invincible the way we all did before the job taught us otherwise.

She still looked at flying like it was pure magic instead of controlled chaos that could go bad at any second.

The smart thing would be to keep my distance. Keep things physical, keep it simple. Don’t let her get too close to the parts of me that were already broken.

“Dalton?”

I blinked and glanced over at her. I had been off in my own world. “What?” I asked.

She nudged me. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Fine.”

“You sure? You looked like you went somewhere else.”

I looked away. I wasn’t used to people noticing. And definitely not asking. “Just thinking.”

She nodded. “About what?”

I shook my head. “Nothing important.”

Her voice got softer, quietly persuasive. “You can tell me.”

We had passed by the party and were walking toward the edge of the property. I hadn’t even realized we were still walking.

I sighed and kicked at a loose stone. I hadn’t talked about the dark thoughts that plagued me. Not with anyone. But something about her made me feel like I could trust her with the things that haunted me when I was alone at night. Hell, anytime I was alone with my thoughts.

“Let me tell you a story,” I said quietly.

She didn’t say anything.

I took a deep breath and gathered the courage to just spit it out. We found a couple of tree stumps to sit on, away from the noise and lights of the party. I could hear the distant sound of laughter and music, but it felt like we were in our own little world out here.

“Three years ago, we got called out to a fire about forty miles north of here,” I began, my voice rough. “Started as a small spot fire, maybe ten acres. The kind we could usually knock down in a couple hours if we caught it early.”

Janna settled beside me, not saying anything, just listening. The way she waited, patient and still, made it easier somehow.

“They sent in a crew of jumpers first. Eight guys. Good guys, all of them. I’d worked with most of them before.

” I rubbed my jaw, feeling the familiar knot form in my stomach.

“The plan was simple. I’d make a retardant drop on the north side to cut off the fire’s path, give the jumpers a safe zone to work from while they built a firebreak. ”

The memory played out in my head like a movie I’d seen too many times.

It was the recurring nightmare that visited me at least once a week.

“Wind was tricky that day. Kept shifting, but nothing we hadn’t handled before.

I made my drop right where I was supposed to, laid down a good line of retardant.

Looked perfect from the air. The jumpers were in position.

Everything was going according to plan.”

I stopped, my throat tight. Janna’s hand found mine in the darkness, her fingers threading through mine. I didn’t pull away.

“I flew back to base to reload. Standard procedure. Should have been an easy run. I was going to be back in the air in twenty minutes, max.” I shook my head, still angry at myself after all this time.

“But there was a problem with the mixing equipment. Took them forty-five minutes to get me loaded up again.”

The silence stretched between us. I could feel her waiting, not pushing, just there.

“By the time I got back, everything had gone to hell. The wind had shifted hard, came out of nowhere. The fire jumped my retardant line like it wasn’t even there and circled around behind the jumpers. They were trapped in a box canyon with flames on three sides and nowhere to run.”

My voice cracked on the last words. “I could hear them on the radio, calling for extraction, but there was no way to get a helicopter in there. Too much smoke, too much heat. I made drop after drop, trying to open up an escape route, but it was too late. The fire was moving too fast.”

Janna’s grip tightened on my hand.

“But they never gave up. Command called in a helicopter for extraction. Risky as hell in that smoke and heat, but it was the only chance those guys had.” I paused, remembering the chaos at the staging area.

“I wasn’t supposed to go. I was a pilot, not a rescue jumper.

But I knew that terrain better than anyone, and I knew those guys.

I’d been in their spot before. I think I told you that’s how I got my start. ”

“Cheryl—Laser did,” she said.

I nodded. I could still smell the smoke, feel the heat radiating up from the canyon floor.

That day had been burned into my memory in more than one way.

“The chopper pilot was good, but he needed a spotter. Someone who could guide him through the smoke to where the jumpers were holed up. I grabbed a headset and climbed aboard.”

Janna’s thumb traced across my knuckles, a small gesture that made it easier to keep talking.

“The smoke was so thick we could barely see ten feet in front of us. Had to fly by instruments mostly, with me calling out landmarks when I could spot them. The heat was incredible. It felt like flying into an oven. The chopper was struggling in the thermals, getting tossed around like a toy.”

I closed my eyes, remembering the desperate voices crackling through the radio. “We found them in a clearing about the size of a basketball court. They’d deployed their emergency shelters, but the fire was closing in fast. We had maybe five minutes before that whole area went up.”

“The pilot brought us down as close as he could, but we couldn’t land. Too much debris, too much smoke. So we hovered about six feet off the ground while the jumpers made a run for it. One by one, they dove into the chopper. Seven guys made it.”

My voice dropped to almost a whisper. “Martinez was bringing up the rear. He was maybe twenty yards from the chopper when a burning tree came down right in front of him. Cut him off from us. The fire was moving so fast…”

Janna’s other hand covered our joined ones. She was doing all she could to comfort me. Or maybe she was trying to comfort herself. She was probably imagining herself in a similar situation.

“I did something stupid. The kind of thing that gets people killed. I grabbed a rope and rappelled down from the chopper. Told the pilot to hold position no matter what. The heat was so intense I could feel it through my gear, but I had to try. Martinez was trapped behind this wall of flame, and I thought maybe I could get to him.”

I touched my left leg unconsciously, feeling the familiar tightness of scar tissue beneath my jeans.

“I almost made it. Got within maybe ten feet of him when the wind shifted again. A wall of fire rolled over us both. I managed to get Martinez to the rope, got him clipped in, but my gear caught fire. The flames went right through my pants, burned through to the skin.”

“Oh God, Dalton,” Janna whispered.

“The chopper crew pulled us both up, but Martinez had inhaled too much smoke. Too much superheated air. His lungs were cooked. He died on the way to the hospital.” I stared out into the darkness.

“If I’d been forty-five minutes earlier like I was supposed to be, if the equipment hadn’t malfunctioned, if I’d made that second drop when I should have—Martinez would still be alive.

All of them would have had a clear escape route. ”

Janna shifted beside me, but I kept staring into the darkness, unable to look at her.

“Dalton, that wasn’t your fault?—”

“Wasn’t it?” I finally looked at her, seeing the pain in her eyes, the way she was looking at me like I was something broken that needed fixing.

“I’m the one who laid down the retardant line.

I’m the one who left them out there while I dealt with equipment problems. I’m the one who should have been back in the air, giving them cover. ”

“You saved seven men,” she said quietly. “You risked your life to save them all. You did everything you could.”

“It wasn’t enough.” The words came out harsher than I intended.

“It’s never enough. That’s the thing about this job, Janna.

You can do everything right, follow every protocol, be the best pilot in the world, and people still die.

Good people. People with families, with kids, with whole lives ahead of them. ”

She was quiet, her thumb still tracing patterns on my hand. I had never told anyone all the dirty details. Most of the folks around there knew the story. The guys that did survive had all told their versions. But no one had ever heard it from my point of view.

I waited for her to say something, anything, but the silence stretched on.

Part of me wondered if I’d just made a huge mistake telling her all this.

Maybe she was sitting there realizing exactly what kind of damaged goods she’d gotten herself mixed up with.

Maybe she was thinking about Martinez’s family, about how I’d failed to save him, about how I might fail to save her if it came down to it.

I didn’t want her pity. That’s what I got from most people when they found out about the accident.

I was so used to that look, like I was some wounded animal that needed to be handled with kid gloves.

The careful way they would change the subject, the awkward silences, the way they would start treating me like I might break if they said the wrong thing.

I stole a glance at her profile in the darkness. She was still holding my hand, still sitting close enough that I could smell her shampoo mixed with the lingering scent of barbecue smoke. But her face was unreadable, and that scared me more than I wanted to admit.

“You probably think I’m some kind of head case,” I said, trying to keep my voice light but hearing the defensive edge creeping in anyway. “Guy who can’t let go of something that happened three years ago.”

She turned to look at me, and I saw something in her eyes that wasn’t pity. It was deeper than that, more complicated.

“No,” she said quietly. “I think you’re a hero and you don’t know it.”