He caught it and tucked it behind her ear. “Didn’t miss a single one, did I?”

  “No.” This time she turned to him. Her face was set hard, as if she was trying to pull up the steel shields, but they didn’t scare him any longer. “What about it?”

  “Denise, my beautiful, crazy mechanic, I’m blown away by you is what. I’d wager you don’t know how to relax much. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “While you do?”

  He cracked open the gallon jug he’d bought to take to Mom and Dad and took a slug off it before passing it to Denise. “Professional slacker Taylor. That’s me.”

  “Now let me guess: didn’t like school, probably one of the troublemakers.” She began counting on the fingers of one of those delicate but strong hands he’d learned to really appreciate. “Six years U.S. Coast Guard.”

  “Chief Petty Officer Taylor, at your service.” He saluted as well as he could while leaning back against an apple tree in the warm fall sunshine.

  “Is that good?”

  “In six years, without college? Hell, yeah.”

  “So, damn good in the Coast Guard, maybe even a couple of medals that you aren’t admitting to.”

  He shrugged nonchalantly. Three. “Yeah, maybe. If you don’t count the Good Conduct Medal for a protracted bout of behaving against my natural tendencies.”

  “Four years flying fire for MHA,” Denise continued. “Has the respect of two of the best military pilots on the planet. And loves his parents. Did I miss one?”

  “Nope. Wait, yes. Totally crazy about an overwound Wrench who really needs to learn to relax.”

  “I need to relax?” She ground out each word separately.

  “Couldn’t hurt to try.”

  She snarled at him, rolled from sitting beside him, and landed kneeling across his lap. Hands on his shoulders, she pinned him back against the tree he’d been leaning against. “I. Don’t. Need. To. Relax.” Then she cursed under her breath. “Okay”—she unfisted his T-shirt—“maybe a little.”

  He ran his hands onto her waist and up along her back. When he gently tried to pull her into a hug, she kept her arms stiff. “Relaxing right now might make this a good moment.”

  “Damn you, Taylor.” But she was smiling as she cursed him and didn’t complain as he pulled her into his embrace and kissed her.

  * * *

  The way Vern kissed her beneath that apple tree sent waves of heat coursing through Denise’s body. It didn’t matter where or when…or what they’d finished doing only moments before. She didn’t want to have an insatiable need for anyone.

  But she did. For him.

  He took his time kissing her. As if doing so was the most important thing in the world.

  And every time he did that, her lists and agendas faded from her brain, scattered as effectively as a rotor’s downwash over autumn leaves until there was only the present—this moment, this place, his embrace.

  How in hell was she supposed to relax? Brenna was headed off for her first time as lead mechanic. She and Vern were flying into a total unknown—the elusive “second contract” job flown for…who knew. Honduras. It was in Central America. The people wouldn’t even speak English there. Not just foreign, scary foreign. That she was going to meet Vern’s parents only added to the load.

  And the biggest stressor at the moment was that, goddamn it, she was in love with him.

  She definitely didn’t know what to do with that.

  She’d never told Jasper she loved him because she hadn’t. Never told anyone except her dad. And that had only been when she was a little kid. After Mom died, it was like that part of them was killed along with her. She and Dad were careful with each other, taking care to not brush against sore places. A bullet had taken the words “I love you” out of her life and they’d never come back.

  Until now. Here they were.

  Vern was no longer kissing her.

  “Where did you go, Wrench?”

  She sat back on his thighs and brushed her hands down his chest in apology.

  “Somewhere not good.” He didn’t even have to guess.

  She nodded but didn’t look up to meet those dark, caring eyes. She didn’t want pity for her pain. She just wanted… There was the question that had always eluded her. Wanted what?

  Vern slowly pulled her in until she could bury her face against his shoulder and just hold on. Just stop for a moment and be held; another part of her father that had died and left a hollow ache in them both.

  Denise considered crying, considered having a good weep and letting it out. Against Vern’s shoulder she felt safe enough to, but nothing came. She was—

  “I thought that was your car in the lot.” A terribly cheerful female voice that Denise half recognized spoke from somewhere nearby.

  “Mom!” Vern struggled to shift Denise while getting to his feet, while knocking over the uncapped cider jug, then reaching to rescue it, while… He collapsed back against the stout tree hard enough under the burden of Denise’s weight in his lap that she could hear the thonk as his head hit.

  “Ow! Shit!” His hands were gone from around her and were now wrapped behind his head. If she hadn’t jerked back in time, he’d have rapped her sharply in the nose with the top of his head as he bent forward to cradle it.

  Denise rescued the jug and capped it. Then she was left, still sitting on Vern’s thighs, with no choice but to look up at the woman standing a few feet away.

  “Good thing I bought another jug. Knew you’d be wanting some, but I thought you’d come see your mother first.”

  This time Denise was able to place the voice, rich and melodic even in speech. Margi Taylor—Denise had hours of the woman’s music on her main playlist.

  She was tall, nearly her son’s height. Her hair, rather than dark with a hint of curls like Vern’s, was a cascading flutter of rippling coppery red that brushed her shoulders and framed her freckled face.

  Her blouse, a flowing gypsy cut in darkest blue, revealed a freckled cleavage, and tight jeans showed where Vern had inherited his lean form. She had a smile for her son that radiated good humor as she bent to kiss the top of his head and say in that wonderfully rich voice, “You are so damn cute, Vern. All better now?”

  “Yeah, sure. That helps a concussion a whole bunch.”

  “You’re beautiful.” Denise hadn’t meant to say it aloud, hadn’t even thought it clearly before speaking, but it was true. Margi Taylor radiated “mom” in a way that Denise had no other appropriate words for.

  “Thanks.” Margi accepted the comment cheerfully. “What’s a beauty like you doing with someone who can’t even stand up to greet his mother without banging his head?”

  “Uh… falling in love with him, I guess.”

  Margi raised a single eyebrow.

  Denise’s words registered in her own brain at about the same moment as Vern’s.

  “You what?” He jerked his head up fast enough to bang it on the tree again. “Ow!”

  Denise took the simple expedient of slapping her hand over her mouth. She was going to keep it there forever, never speak again because who knew what would come out next.

  Margi’s laugh rang through the orchard. This time she pulled Denise over to kiss the top of her head.

  The great laugh was another thing Vern had gotten from his mother.

  * * *

  Vern spent the rest of the afternoon trying to get Denise aside, but he was stymied at every turn. First, Mom insisted Denise join her for the drive to the house, leaving Vern to follow in his Vette. Dad was out of town, moving a boat for someone from Tacoma up to Tofino, at least a three-day trip. They were going to totally miss him.

  Then at the house, the two women had gone for a walk together down to the Point Robinson lighthouse. He’d tagged along, more than a little miffed. Had Denise really said that she loved him? Man, if ever there was a conversation he did not expect to be having…but his mother wasn’t even giving him a chance to try.

  Point Robinson reached halfway across the east channel of Puget Sound. The low, sandy beach had two keeper’s cottages, a radio tower, and a lighthouse so automated that it no longer needed its keepers. The red-roofed white structure and its three-story tower guarded the dangerous shoals along this side of the main shipping channel to Tacoma’s busy port.

  It guarded the shoals as carefully as his mother appeared to be guarding Denise from his questions about what the hell had just happened.

  He finally clued in to what was going on, found a nice driftwood log, and sat down to wait. On further consideration, Denise had looked as shocked as he felt. So Mom was giving Denise some time and space to deal with it. As long as Vern was hovering over her shoulder, that wasn’t going to happen.

  So, they wandered off, and he stayed perched on his driftwood bench and studied the far shore. The rising hills of Des Moines were thick with houses. Beyond, looking four miles away rather than forty, Mount Rainier punched its volcanic cone up into the blue sky. Fourteen thousand feet, with nothing around it.

  He’d flown Colorado fires. There, the peaks, the Colorado Fourteeners, started at six or even eight thousand feet. Mount Rainier was just as tall but the upslope turn started at around five hundred feet. Even Mount Hood was snarled up in low foothills, whereas Rainier punched upward out of nothing, ruling the land far and wide. Today it looked as if it had been painted against the sky.

  Denise loved him.

  What the hell was he supposed to do with that?

  Mom was as unflappable as ever, so who knew what she was really thinking. Actually, it wasn’t hard to know. The two of them might have been mother and daughter, the way they were acting.

  He glanced down the beach. They’d walked out to the very end of the point and were strolling back toward his position near the lighthouse.

  He knew Mom was actually an amazing judge of character. And he could read her. Margi was not being polite to her son’s girlfriend; she genuinely liked Denise. If she didn’t, it would show. He’d see it. So his first guess had been right. They should meet and would like each other.

  Vern had also learned to read Denise. A little. It was as if her cloak of invisibility was becoming tattered at the edges. Or maybe she didn’t need it as much as she had before.

  Normally when she spoke to someone, she was doing her intense, “how much can I communicate in how few words” thing. He’d always thought it was an efficiency monomania, but he was starting to suspect the reason had more to do with shyness that she kept hidden behind that efficient facade.

  At the moment she looked…happy.

  He turned back to inspect Rainier. The day was calm and the sky clear, but it was early October and the top of the mountain didn’t know that it was a nice day below. A massive lenticular cloud, the shape of two contact lenses back to back, loomed ominously above the peak. He’d grown up able to see the mountain creating its own weather systems out the living room window.

  Some part of him suspected that the lenticulars were a special warning. High winds, high danger coming. But what portent were they warning him about?

  “Do you think he’s calmed down enough?” His mother was now close enough behind him for her voice to carry easily over the low rumble of a rusty, blue container ship rounding the point toward Tacoma.

  Denise’s voice was softer and he had to strain to hear her. “It’s not him I’m worried about. It’s me.”

  “Don’t be.” Mom made that comforting “Oooo!” noise she always did while giving someone an especially fierce hug. “Now go talk. I know my own way home.”

  * * *

  Denise still hesitated. She could feel Vern waiting. He didn’t appear angry, though there was only so much you could read from someone’s back. She wasn’t feeling brave, but she forced her feet across the packed sand and circled the log to sit beside Vern and watch the passing ship.

  The silence stretched. At first she felt uncomfortable with it. It took her a while to figure out that Vern was leaving her the space to talk when she was ready. He melted her heart. She leaned over and kissed him on the shoulder. “She’s wonderful.”

  He nodded his agreement and kept watching the ship heading south, slowly turning his gaze further and further from her.

  “Something she passed on to her son.”

  “What did you two talk about?”

  Denise tried to remember but couldn’t. “I’m not sure, really. We talked about my job, her music, my family, yours, the weather. Nothing, really. But it all felt important despite that. I don’t know why, but it did.”

  That finally broke his attention from the ship and returned it to her. Now that he was facing her, she could see the question that he was holding so carefully inside. Well, so was she.

  “Yes. I did say that.” No need to define “that.”

  “And?”

  “You don’t make it easy, do you?”

  He offered the slow smile, the goofy one that tugged on one side of his mouth long before the other, but started in his eyes. “I think it would cost me major demerits to speak first. I have to check my manly club ratings-guide under the ‘macho reticence’ heading, but I’m sure it’s bad.”

  “How about doing it for me anyway?” It was a low move, making the guy speak first, but she didn’t know what else to do.

  “Do I love you?”

  She shivered despite the warm sun and her light jacket.

  “I’m thinking that I do. Our bodies love each other. There’s no question of that.”

  “None,” she agreed.

  “Every time you come around or even walk by, my mind goes blank and all I can think of is you.”

  “Mine goes quiet.”

  “Same thing.”

  “No, I don’t think it is.” She tried to puzzle out how to describe the feeling. “I’ve spent my whole life trying to be the perfect child. Take care of Dad. Be a person he could be so proud of because I never made a single misstep or mistake. Trying to make up for Mom’s death, I guess.” She’d never put it in quite those words, but it rang true.

  “Sounds like a lot of work.”

  “It is. I never noticed it until you.” She reached out and their hands slid together as naturally as if they’d always been that way. “Because my mind was never quiet until I was with you. No guy ever did that for me.”

  “Is it a good thing?” There was worry in his voice. Worry because he cared for her?

  She looked around her at the water, the mountain, and a seagull soaring silently above them on the light breeze. The setting was idyllic, yet it had probably looked no different in the last decade, or the one before that. Could there be something this stable between them? Beyond that, could she be a part of anything that stable? “It’s not a good thing, Vern. It’s the best. I don’t know what it means, what I said, but I think you’re the first man who can help me figure it out.”

  “What you said? You mean that you love me?”

  “Yes, you turkey.”

  “Good, that’s settled.” He stood and pulled her to her feet by their joined hands.

  “What’s settled?” She stumbled in the sand as he turned and slowly led her back up the beach.

  “That we’re in love with each other and it’s confusing the hell out of both of us.”

  “Oh, that?” She sassed him just as he’d been teasing her.

  “Yeah, that.”

  It thrilled her that she kept finding jokes around Vern, another previously undiscovered piece of herself brought to light by his presence in her life. Even in the span of this supremely strange conversation, the truth had become clearer—as it did whenever they were together.

  “I love you, Vern Taylor.”

  That ground him to a halt. He turned slowly without releasing her hand.

  “Wow.” She hadn’t expected the reaction that coursed through her and made her feel as if her feet weren’t quite in contact with the earth. “It’s quite something to say that out loud.”

  “It’s quite something to hear it,” he agreed.

  “So?”

  He didn’t sigh. He didn’t evade. He leaned down to brush his lips over hers before shifting his mouth to whisper in her ear. “I love you, Denise Conroy.”

  It really was quite something to hear.

  Chapter 10

  “I remember it.” Denise had ducked inside the cool dimness of the hangar as soon as Vern had the door cracked open.

  Yuri’s Bell 47 helicopter was right where he’d left it, huddled in the back of a hangar at Vashon Municipal Airport. It had a large, transparent-plastic bulbous nose and no doors. The bench could seat three in a pinch. The instrument console sported a bare dozen gauges on a stubby pillar between the two pilot positions. It was such a simple machine that nothing more was needed.

  The engine was mounted vertically on the back of the cockpit, its driveshaft attached to the rotor blades through a simple centrifugal clutch. The back was an open frame metalwork truss stretching rearward to a tiny two-bladed tail rotor.

  If you painted it dull green instead of shining white and attached a pair of stretchers, it would be right out of the M*A*S*H television show.

  “What did you do to my poor bird?” Denise walked up to pat it on the nose.

  Vern laughed. Those were exactly the words that had begun their relationship. “The few, the proud, the heli-aviation firefighter pilots of MHA. We’re all in the crapper with you, Wrench.”

  “Leave me alone, Slick.” She stuck her tongue out at him. “Go find me some fuel and oil.”

  He really was gone on this woman. By the time he tracked down the fuel truck—thankfully Gary kept the keys behind the passenger-side sun visor for locals, she’d popped the small chopper up off its skids onto a set of wheels and scooted the bird out of the hangar where it had been quietly sitting for the year since Yuri died.

  Well, he liked her confidence that she’d get it running.