Page 4 of Smokin’ Situation (Masked Men of Sage Springs #3)

Tristan

“Dude, you don’t wanna go there.” Baker’s voice cut through the fog in my head, and I turned toward him with a frown.

“Go where?”

“ Her , trust me. She’d eat you alive. The Thomas sisters are not for the faint at heart,” he replied with a significant nod toward the beauty in the cutoff denim shorts that’d scrambled my brain the second she jumped out of that big ass truck she drove.

“She can eat whatever she wants,” I muttered, suddenly cursing my brain-to-mouth filter.

Baker laughed loudly, slapping me on the shoulder, and I winced as the sensation of fire licked up my arm and across my back.

Nerve damage was a fucking dick punch. I knew I was lucky that I could still feel it.

My burns could’ve been worse. I could’ve been carrying around much worse damage than surface burns.

My once smooth skin was puckered, pink, angry, and still hurt like a bitch, but I was grateful to still be alive.

“Trust me, there’re plenty of other available women in this town who would be interested in the brooding, mysterious new cowboy firefighter. Just start talking in a southern drawl and wear a cowboy hat when you’re not on duty and you won’t know what to do with all the attention you get.”

“Not interested,” I grunted, briefly glancing over my shoulder, my eyes meeting Rhey’s dark ones before she broke my stare, her cheeks flushing a deep shade of pink.

I wanted to say it was the heat of the day, but there had been a vibe we’d both been dancing around while I helped her get set up.

I’d been kind of a dick, trying to keep our focus on getting her booth set up while she was just trying to be friendly.

Most people would say that someone driving a truck as huge as hers was overcompensating for something, but I couldn’t see a damn thing about that woman that didn’t set my brain on fire.

But I was here to help today, to prove to the chief that I didn’t need a damn probationary period or to be “eased into duty” or whatever else bullshit he’d spouted off at me when he’d reluctantly hired me for the volunteer squad.

But I was having a hard time focusing, even though I knew I needed to.

It’d been months since I’d touched a woman, and I wanted—no, I needed —to touch that woman.

But it was probably also a terrible idea since I should’ve been focusing on getting my new life settled and trying to do whatever stupid bullshit the Chief wanted to get in his good graces.

Part of me also wanted to text my brother and demand the details on his employee, since she currently had his brand stretching across her ample chest. A chest that my baser instincts had imagined burying my face in while she was adorably rambling on the way to her booth.

“Yeah, your mouth might say that, but your eyes are undressing her, dude. Get it together. As far as I know, she doesn’t do relationships, and I’m not one to perpetuate rumors, but there are other reasons she might be off limits to you.”

“I’m just here to help people get set up and prove that I can handle being on duty.”

“Mm hmm, sure. Not here to ogle pretty brunettes that blush the moment you make eye contact at all. But for real, don’t let Chief’s restrictions get to you, he just wants to make sure you’ve got a second to breathe before he metaphorically—well, maybe literally—throws you back into the fire.”

“I’ve had more than enough seconds to breathe over the last four months. Sitting around on my ass has only made it harder to move past it,” I gritted out, my jaw tense .

“Well, then, since you’re not sitting on your ass anymore, go make yourself useful.

” Leave it to Baker to give me some tough love.

At least he had a permanent position in the department.

He didn’t have to worry about the politics of trying to earn your spot.

Not that I was sure I really wanted a full-time spot if one miraculously opened in this tiny ass town.

“Yes, Lieutenant,” I quipped sarcastically and headed back to the festival coordinator for my next assignment.

The first two months I’d been trapped in my brother’s place had been torture.

It hurt to breathe, every minute stretch of my damaged skin felt like being stabbed with needles.

I was constantly exhausted. And I hated all I could do was lay on my stomach in the bed in his tiny guest room and watch countless hours of streaming shows I didn’t give a shit about.

When the forestry service had cut me loose with a fat severance check early in the spring, I’d fallen into a depression that I was still finding it hard to shake.

I’d been on a crew of jumpers for over a decade.

I lived, ate and breathed the job, and to suddenly not have a purpose was excruciating.

What was even harder was realizing that there was nothing keeping me in Wyoming.

That I’d spent a significant chunk of my life building a career with nothing to show outside of the job.

Only the stinging reminder I was a liability.

Most of my friends were other jumpers or worked for the forestry service, and while their lives had moved on, mine had come to an abrupt halt.

A few had texted me since I’d left, but I was having a hard time letting go of the lingering anger, which meant keeping in contact rarely happened.

They had done nothing wrong, and it made me feel like shit, but they were living the life I wanted while mine had gone in reverse.

Which meant after more than a decade after leaving Sage Springs, I was forced to come back to the tiny ass community I’d grown up in with nothing to show for myself other than the scars I now wore on my back and a few duffel bags worth of belongings.

I’d left a young, idealistic man ready to prove himself, but had returned a scarred shell of myself.

From the outside, everything seemed fine, but with every ounce of gratitude and praise from the people who found out about my career serving others, it just drove home the fact that part of my life was over.

Financial stability wasn’t a problem either. It wasn’t hard to save money when you got hazard pay and didn’t have a social life. The problem was that there wasn’t much of a career pivot available for a smoke jumper who’d been grounded. Permanently.

One who woke up in the middle of the night covered with sweat and had panic attacks when he let the memories of that day creep in.

There weren’t enough deep breathing exercises in the world that’d help you forget the feeling of being trapped like I’d been.

There wasn’t a sleeping pill strong enough to block out the phantom feeling of a wildfire out of control and threatening to consume not only the surrounding landscape, but your own body as well.

When my dad had reached out to the county fire chief on my behalf, I’d been pissed.

But it got my foot in the door. I just had to decide if I wanted to continue to be a firefighter.

This career wasn’t one you easily walked away from.

Over the years, it became a part of me, a calling I felt compelled to fulfill.

An unshakable sense of duty that permeated the fiber of my being.

I’d appreciated that he was trying to help me find a place to land, but it’d just felt like an epic fucking demotion.

Being a probationary officer on a volunteer squad was like hitting rewind on my career and starting at the bottom again.

Actually, since my first assignment had been ground support in a full-time position for the forestry service, it was below the bottom.

Sure, it was career adjacent to what I’d spent more than the last decade doing, but I couldn’t survive on a volunteer firefighter’s meager earnings.

At this point, I only got paid a fraction of what I’d been paid before, and while the health insurance I’d negotiated was decent, my passion for jumping wasn’t in my job description anymore.

And it likely never would be again. I’d lost faith in my ability to make quick decisions, and in this line of work, it was a skill that meant life or death .

But along with my career trajectory being thrown in reverse, I’d also been forced to branch out to support myself.

Which brought my new coworkers endless entertainment.

They’d started calling me cowboy since I’d taken a ranch manager position at one of the local horse ranches.

So now I babysat junior ranch hands and tourists who wanted to try their hand at ranching before they went back to their cushy lives at the end of their stay.

It wasn’t a terrible job so far, and it got me out of my brother’s place since they gave me a small cabin to live in as a part of my salary, but it wasn’t the life I’d envisioned for myself. Being back here wasn’t part of what I’d imagined for my future.

Although surveying the way the community was coming together to put on this festival, maybe I just wasn’t giving it a fair shot. Growing up here had been idyllic, but it’d never been part of my plan to stay here long term. I’d wanted more for myself, to make my mark on the world.

Shaking my head to clear the constant anxiety that seemed to be my new companion, I refocused on what I was getting paid to be here to do, not on the things I couldn’t control anymore.

As the day went on, I realized the pretty brunette who’d been lingering in my thoughts had been right; it was hot as fuck. And I was itching, literally, to pull off the long-sleeved shirt I’d carefully pulled on this morning, but with the sun high overhead, I couldn’t risk it.