Denise knew in that instant that they weren’t going to stop anytime soon. They weren’t going to kiss a few times and move on. No. They were going to sleep together, and that wasn’t going to be particularly far in the future.

  She’d never known it so early on or known it so assuredly.

  Leaning farther into the helicopter, she rested her head on his shoulder and let herself simply enjoy being held.

  She also had never so looked forward to it.

  * * *

  Vern had thought he was in trouble before.

  Ha! Not even close.

  He finally managed to trade places with Denise, so that she was the one in the pilot seat with her checklist and he was the one standing outside the door.

  Bruce and Mickey strolled by, especially slowly. Bruce looked somewhere between aghast and horrified. Mickey gave him a look that said, “Who the hell you kidding, Vern? Guys like us don’t get women like Conroy.” And Vern wanted to bury his nose in her hair again and smell the heady woman, mechanic, summer-afternoon scent of Denise Conroy.

  “Anything I can do, Wrench?” He fell back on the familiar. It was the only way he could find to not simply ravage her where she sat. A nice kiss was a long way from an invitation to a tumble. Nice kiss? Shit! Who was he kidding?

  “No. Go away, Slick. You’re distracting me.”

  Vern nodded, managed to fumble on his cap, and turn for the showers. A really cold one.

  “Don’t make the shower too cold, Flyboy,” Denise called from behind him as if she’d read his mind. “Save a little heat for me.”

  The smooth tarmac offered no excuse of a gopher hole or a stray tuft of grass to explain his stumbling gait as he moved away from her.

  * * *

  Denise finished her inspection as quickly as she could. The choppers had come in at a half hour to sunset. She’d lost a little time with Vern that she’d never, ever regret. And spent an hour going over the choppers. The ash and dust were taking their toll. She shifted a half-dozen items onto the “check daily” list and sent the update to Malcolm and Brenna. But for the moment, she didn’t have to order any unusual maintenance.

  She found Vern sitting in the Zulies’ mess hall, drowsing over his half-finished dinner. The hall was a large, low room that could fit the sixty smokejumpers as well as their support staff. With the smokies still in the field, MHA was rattling around the big space.

  The chow line ran down one end of the hall. Wooden tables—every single thing in Missoula was either made of wood or covered in it. Even the room’s Sheetrock walls had wide-board trim. It must come from being at the junction of a half-dozen national forests. Steel chairs with faded red padding where the only break in the theme.

  Denise grabbed her own meal tray quickly and moved to sit across from Vern. The small Formica table had definitely seen better days, but it was clean and the spaghetti and meatballs smelled heavenly.

  “C’mon, Slick. Eat up, then you can go to bed.”

  When he didn’t respond, she rapped his knuckles with the handle of her knife.

  “Huh. Wha’? Oh, hey.” He stared around, clearly uncertain of where he was.

  “Eat up, Vern.”

  He finally spotted his meal and began to eat mechanically.

  Denise looked around the room and could see that the other pilots each had their own attendees. They all looked hammered, but the three Firehawk pilots were beyond pale.

  Emily’s daughter, Tessa, clearly thought it was time to play and run around after spending much of the day aloft with her dad. One of the Zulie ground crew appeared with a teddy bear in her hands and whisked the girl away. Mark was practically fork-feeding his wife. He didn’t look all that much better himself.

  Even as Denise watched, Jeannie packed it in, curled up across three chairs—which looked terribly uncomfortable—and appeared to fall instantly asleep. Cal swept her into his arms with a tenderness that came right out of a girl’s dreams.

  Carly was in slightly better shape, leaning heavily on a limping Steve as they left. His injury might never let him walk normally again or carry his wife, but it made them no less a beautiful couple.

  The rest of the MHA and Zulie crews were at least functional, but the chatter was low, no more than a soft murmur in the long room. The view of the parked choppers and failing daylight out the broad windows only reinforced that it was time to be done with this day.

  Vern had lost the thread of his meal again while she’d been looking around.

  Denise looked at his plate and decided he’d eaten enough.

  She piled a couple slices of garlic bread on top of her pasta, stabbed a fork into it, and took that in one hand. With the other, she tugged on his hand. “No way I’m carrying you, Vern. Get a move on. Time to get you in bed.”

  His fingers slid into hers as he made it to his feet. No jokes about getting her into bed with him; yet more proof of the depths of his exhaustion.

  She led him down the hall. Any attempts to imagine they were walking along romantically holding hands were belied when he clipped a shoulder on a doorjamb and nearly crushed her hand in his grip as he struggled to remain upright. It was a close thing, but she managed to save her dinner.

  He’d been assigned one of the two-person bunkrooms. The room was enough wider than the tiered bed to stuff in a chair, a set of drawers, and maybe set your boots on the floor where you wouldn’t trip on them. An open window let in the very last of the evening light and a soft breeze that thankfully only hinted at the smoky haze now filling the valley.

  Vern collapsed onto the bunk with only the barest guidance. She set her dinner on the dresser, closed the door, and began unlacing his boots. Denise hesitated at his shirt and pants, but he couldn’t sleep in those. Managing to elicit a little help from him, she got him down to underwear and T-shirt.

  Then the T-shirt was gone and his autonomic habits almost hauled down his briefs before she was able to stop him. Clearly a man used to sleeping naked.

  Six feet one of naked Vern Taylor. She definitely wasn’t ready for that.

  Denise had to take a steadying breath at the mere thought; not that the tight cotton underwear left much to the imagination. But even on its own, his chest was devastating enough. Jasper had tended toward the well fed. Not fat, but he showed definite signs of enjoying his food, and you could already see the suggestion of the beer belly that would arrive over the next five years, now that his knee had ended his windsurfing days.

  Vern was as fit as any firefighter, even one who flew for a living. Just because he had a slender frame didn’t mean that it wasn’t sheathed in a smooth flow of muscle.

  He settled in and she got a sheet over him, which was a blessing. She fetched her dinner and perched on the foot of the bunk, leaning back against the vertical support. She’d only stay until she was sure he was settled. At least that’s what she told herself.

  “You’d make a good wife, Wrench.” His mumble was only half coherent.

  A chunk of meatball caught in her throat and she barely managed not to choke on it. Light, she needed to say something light. “You shopping for one, Slick?”

  “A wife? Hell no. Not old Vern Taylor.” He rolled onto his side, reexposing his chest to the warm evening air that slid in through the window beyond her shoulder.

  “Why not?” She wasn’t disappointed. It wouldn’t make any sense if she was. They weren’t an item and she was a sensible woman. She wasn’t disappointed… She only felt that way. Which was stupid because she didn’t want to be a wife anyway. She just wanted… She had no idea.

  “’Cause.” His voice was no more than a mumble.

  “’Cause why?”

  “Come lie down with me and I’ll tell you.”

  He hadn’t opened his eyes, so she couldn’t read his expression. He looked harmless and beautiful in the last light of day. His muscled chest was becoming a land of shadows and promises. His face fading even further into mystery.

  It was stupid.

  She set her half-finished plate back on the dresser.

  Getting into bed with him was absolutely not a smart idea.

  She took off her boots because climbing into his narrow bed wearing boots was even dumber than climbing into his bed to begin with.

  One part of her brain acknowledged that she must be more tired than she’d thought if that last bit of reasoning had made any sense.

  Yet the same rationale prevailed until she stood in the gathering darkness wearing no more than a T-shirt and underwear.

  She slid into the small space between Vern and the edge of the bed.

  His arm came around her waist and pulled her back to spoon against him. He didn’t grab for her breast or anywhere else. He simply wrapped his arm around her and tucked his fingers between her ribs and the mattress.

  Denise tugged the sheet over them and tried not to be overwhelmed by the sensations. He held her with an impossible surety and familiarity that made it feel both safe and normal. His flat chest against her back. His warm breath a mere whisper on her ear as he nuzzled into her hair.

  “Hey, don’t go to sleep yet. You promised.” A final belated and hopeless flail for common sense, but she spoke it anyway.

  “Promised what?”

  “Why you don’t want to be married?”

  “Oh.” He tucked his face down against the back of her neck as if hiding behind her hair. “My mom and dad. They’re so perfect together.” His words were dragging out. Slurring.

  “I’d think that would make you want to get married.” She had to shake him and repeat her question to elicit the final sleepy answer.

  “Never be good enough for someone like you.”

  By the time Denise recovered from the shock of his answer and tried another question, she was answered by a soft snore against the base of her neck.

  Denise had never wanted to get married either, but for wholly different reasons. She never wanted to make anyone suffer the loss that had so shattered her father. By keeping herself to herself, and only entering into shallow and relatively meaningless relationships, she had kept her vow to herself.

  But that didn’t fit into how Vern saw her. He saw her as important. He also had her up on a pedestal she could make absolutely no sense of. There was no way she’d ever live up to some unreal creation of his mind.

  Yet she felt plenty real lying here against Vern’s chest, his arm wrapped around her waist as if he’d never let her go.

  She was awake a long time that night. Not worrying at some technical problem as she usually did. Nor reviewing some mental checklist to make sure she hadn’t missed anything.

  She simply lay in Vern’s arms and enjoyed herself, feeling important to someone and listening to Vern’s gentle breathing.

  Chapter 6

  Vern woke slowly. After years of flying to fire, something about the morning woke him before sunrise. Maybe it was the call of the first bird of the day. Or the first hint of light in the sky despite closed eyelids.

  He liked this time of day, even if his brain insisted that coffee was necessary to actually face it. It gave him a chance to collect his thoughts, get oriented for the day. And when he was with someone, like now, it occasionally gave them time to—

  With someone?

  A woman…the smoke and summer smell of her hair nearly overwhelmed him…Denise. Denise Conroy lay curled up against him. Her head pillowed on one of his arms, a soft warmth against the inside of the other that encircled her trim waist.

  How in the hell had…

  Any thoughts of waking slowly were banished by his body’s instant and intense reaction to holding her. He tried to shift his hips back away from where he pressed against her tight behind, but after about a half inch, his back bumped up against the wall behind the bunk bed.

  Obviously still mostly asleep, Denise snuggled back into that tiny gap he’d managed to create. Now he was pinned back against the smooth wood.

  Unsure what to do, he lay there unmoving as she slowly came to life in his arms.

  A gentle sigh.

  A bit of a stretch.

  She turned her face into the pillow, taking the pressure off his arm which responded with a sharp tingle and sting of renewed blood flow.

  Vern kept waiting for the moment she came awake and bolted from his bed. But it didn’t come.

  Instead, once she was most of the way awake, she pressed her back more solidly against his chest and slid her hand over his arm until she was holding it in place around her waist.

  Then, with fingers partly laced into the back of his, she pulled his hand up and rested it over her breast.

  He’d never felt anything quite like it. It wasn’t only the way her breast filled his palm, or the way it responded and tightened against his fingers, something he could easily feel through her T-shirt. It was that she placed his hand there and held it against her chest, letting him know exactly what she wanted without the least hint of coyness.

  Denise Conroy couldn’t be an uninhibited lover. Could she? She was too careful, too distant, and…definitely felt too good.

  He bent the arm that she lay on until he had her in a double-breasted cross-hold, and she groaned. It was a ripple of sound that he didn’t hear, but instead felt riding up her back where it pressed against his chest.

  She was guiding his hand down over the perfection of her flat stomach when a loud thump sounded against the door.

  “Rise and shine. Shower if you need it. Airborne in thirty.” Mark moved off and was pounding on the next door before he’d even finished the instructions.

  Indeed, in the time Vern had been watching Denise awaken, the predawn light had brightened beyond the window. Time to shower, shave, eat, and prep for flight. Just. Maybe if he skipped the shower. And the shave.

  She finished guiding his hand downward. He was glad she was wearing underwear, even if there wasn’t much of it. A thin swatch of smooth cotton masking neither texture nor growing heat.

  At her guidance, he cupped her.

  And his reflexes took over.

  He pulled her hard back against him. He leaned into her, pressing them both together until they both were writhing, their breath caught equally short and ragged.

  “Oh God!” She clamped his hand in place for a moment between her soft, smooth thighs and the next moment slid from his arms and was standing before him. “That is such a fantastic way to wake up!”

  Vern tried to speak. Even without his morning coffee, he tried to reach deep for words but couldn’t dredge up any.

  Denise, in a bright blue T-shirt and a tiny swatch of white cotton, looked like neither a china doll nor some miniaturized version of a larger woman. She’d been designed and built to exactly the height she was; her hips fit her frame as well as her breasts. Her legs were as long and magnificent as her hair.

  She was dressed and gone, leaving behind a sweet kiss and the worst arousal of his entire life.

  Then he thought about Denise. No shuddering release. No jerking breaths.

  Well, at least he wouldn’t be the only one suffering today.

  * * *

  With her full crew on-site, Denise didn’t join Vern for the flying.

  Well, she could have, but too many things in her head needed straightening out.

  Overnight the smoke in Missoula had thickened noticeably until it hid the helicopters before they were even a mile aloft. The hills ten miles away on the far end of town were relegated to myth and rumor.

  Some of the locals began wearing white face masks, reminding her of her one trip to Beijing as part of a Sikorsky exhibition. The transport that had delivered them had to do an instrument landing despite their midday arrival, and they’d never left the airport. The airport hotel was part of the exhibition center. That had been her one foreign trip, other than Canada, before MHA’s trip to Australia last winter, and she hadn’t been able to see anything more than a thousand yards away through the smog. An air show where you couldn’t see the aircraft flying overhead. Only the Chinese teams had even bothered going aloft.

  Figuring the Missoula locals knew the score, she had her crew put on masks as well.

  Once the choppers were aloft, she corralled Malcolm and Brenna. At a battered mess-hall table, they reviewed their extreme-conditions plan. Check the filters at three hours, fully prepared to replace immediately. Review the high-temp readings captured by the HUMS during each refueling. Air compressors to blow out errant ash and grit, especially the carbon of char, which was highly abrasive on moving parts.

  A heavier cleaning could be done over lunch.

  She made a quick radio call to Mark to stagger the big chopper pilots’ lunch breaks by a half hour so that her team could really hit each bird in a unified effort. The littler birds staggered at the fifteen-minute marks.

  Her team was up to it. Mal had been with MHA a year, and Brenna was new this season but had shaken down well. Remarkably well.

  Mark had asked Denise if she wanted to make any changes before the winter season. Most firefighting outfits laid off the bulk of their crews over winter, mothballing their aircraft. However, MHA had been approached by several countries for off-season work.

  Malcolm wasn’t eager for travel, so this could well be his last fire of the season. He had a winter gig lined up at Columbia Helicopters as soon as MHA’s season was done. Columbia had acquired a bunch of retired military equipment and purchased another outfit. They needed a team to convert each one to Columbia’s specs, which were as stringent as MHA’s own.

  Brenna was up for travel though, and Denise had given the tall Eurasian woman the contract extension a month ago so as not to lose her. Tall. Well, taller than her but way less than Vern.

  Denise spent much of the morning wondering how she and Vern could fit together so well. He was so much taller, yet their bodies were as custom-made for each other as her Fiat’s throttle linkage. It simply worked, even if common sense said it shouldn’t.