“And you’re really straight. Unless something else changed down there in Santa Fe.” Mallory looked over her shoulder, hoping no one was within hearing range.

“Ho ho. You’ve got a crush.”

“Oh my God, I do not. God. She’s a rookie.” Mallory stowed her tray. “I’ve got to get going. I want to talk to Sully, and then I need to check the tower.”

“You’re avoiding.”

Mallory turned her back to escape toward Sully’s office. “No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.” Sarah tagged along, laughing. “You’re avoiding your best friend’s nosy questions.”

“I am not.”

“So, do you think she’s hot?”

“Geez, Sarah. Is this high school now? No.”

Sarah grinned. “So where is she sleeping?’

Mallory imagined Jac’s quiet breathing in the dark, pictured her moving around in the morning, her thick dark hair tousled from sleep. Her mind skittered away and landed on a grainy image of Jac on the smeared and rumpled pages of a newspaper, naked and defenseless and unable to protect herself. The rage in her chest turned to ice.

“In the loft.” No big deal, right? She was way too old for a crush, and even if she wasn’t, she had more sense than to be seduced by a cocky grin and soulful eyes. Dark, intense eyes that saw inside her.

Mallory shivered. The wind had picked up. Ought to make the jumps challenging. She’d have to adjust the tension on the guidelines to counter the shear forces. Plenty to do, plenty to think about. None of those things were Jac.

*

“Hey, you want a spot?” Anderson peered down from the head of the weight bench. “You’ve got a fair amount of weight on there.”

Jac pushed out a breath and shoved the bar up, feeling her deltoids and chest muscles start to quiver. “Yeah, thanks.”

Anderson’s hands appeared next to hers, under the bar, waiting to catch it.

“What’s your count?”

“Ten,” Jac said, lowering the bar to her chest, stopping it just inches above her breasts. She kept her breath moving in and out, oxygenating her muscles, and shoved it up again.

“Eleven.” Anderson looked down at her, his expression calm and steady. “One more, and then let it rest.”

“Fifteen,” Jac grunted.

He grinned, looking amused even upside down. “I wouldn’t push it, not if you want to have anything left for the jumps this afternoon.”

“Blackmail,” Jac muttered and let him guide the bar back onto the hooks. Her breath was coming fast and a little ragged. She’d already done two sets before he showed up, and she still had a hard time blocking Hooker’s voice out of her head.

“I hear you did a solid with Ray out there today,” Anderson said quietly.

Jac sat up and toweled the sweat from her neck. “What do you mean?”

“Just that you got to him first, handled things, and sent him up to the helitack like a pro.”

“Word gets around fast.” Benny. Must have been Benny, because Mallory wouldn’t have said anything.

Anderson grinned. “Nothing else to do while sitting around waiting for a call. Don’t worry, it was all good.”

“If I worried about stuff like that…” Jac shrugged.

Hooker came into view, sauntering in her direction. He still wore the tight green T-shirt and had changed into sweats. He was husky, heavily muscled, and took up a lot of space.

Hooker gave her a grin as if they were best friends. “Got bad news for you, buddy.”

“Life’s full of it,” Jac said as if she couldn’t care less. Hooker was standing so close to the bench if she tried to stand her breasts were going to rub against his chest. His legs were spread, and she had no desire to end up with her crotch snugged up against his. So she sat, which put her eyes at about the level of his belly button. She tilted her head just enough to see his face. He was looking down at her, a look in his eyes that was all too easy to read. If the guy got a hard-on, she was gonna punch him in the nuts.

“I think you’ve missed your chance with the boss lady.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“In case you had any ideas of getting over on her, I think somebody’s got there first. Cute little blonde with big tits. I saw them getting cozy out in the yard before they went off together. Like lip-lock cozy.”

“Not interested in what you saw, heard, or think, Hooker.” Jac pushed up off the bench so fast, Hooker stepped back in surprise. Jac kept her hands at her sides, even though she wanted to slam him in the chest and knock him on his ass. Mallory and Sarah, it sounded like. Made sense. The two of them had worked together for a lot of seasons. If they were lovers, they’d want to be posted together. The two of them together—it shouldn’t matter to her, but it did. She wasn’t about to let Hooker know that. She looked past him to Anderson as if Hooker weren’t there. “Thanks for the spot. See you this afternoon.”

“Sure thing,” Anderson said with his usual even tone.

Hooker laughed and clapped her on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, babe. If things get really tough, I can take care of you.”

“The only thing I’ll need you to take care of is my back out in the field,” Jac said.

“Anywhere, any time,” he crooned. “I’m there.”

Jac ignored him and headed to the locker room to grab a quick shower and change. Mallory and Sarah. She could see it, but she didn’t want to.

Chapter Ten

Mallory strode into the main staging area in the central room of the standby shack and signaled for Emilio Torres, a thin, quiet man fifteen years her senior, to join her. Emilio was the loft master responsible for seeing that the necessary equipment was loaded onto the jump plane during a fire dispatch. He was also the rigging master, in charge of chute repair and preparation. She trusted him with her life.

“Ready, Emilio?”

“All set.” Emilio gestured to the group of rookies gathered around one of the forty-foot-long tables in the center of the room where a chute was laid out ready to be prepared. “You want me to do the demo first?”

“Yes. Then while I take half over the obstacle course, you can have the rest for rigging practice.”

“Sure thing, Ice.”

Mallory walked around to the far side of the table and pointed to the chute. “After today, the only person who should ever touch your jump pack is you or Emilio. I shouldn’t have to tell you that you can never check your chute enough times. During boot camp, you’ll clear the chute with Emilio before every jump.”

She stopped, judging their reactions. This was the point when rookies sometimes came to the realization that jumping out of an airplane with nothing but a bit of flimsy-looking nylon to break their fall was a lot less glamorous and a lot more daunting than they’d been willing to admit. No one spoke. “How many of you have ever jumped?”

Hooker was the only one of the six rookies to raise his hand.

“Where?”

“Skydiving,” he said.

Mallory nodded. “You’ll discover pretty quickly that we jump differently. Our landing zones are much smaller, our chutes are designed to float differently, the draft on your body when you’re fully loaded will be different, your landing will be different.” She smiled at him. “What I’m saying is, you’re going to have to unlearn what you know.”

He grunted and shrugged. Mallory held his gaze for a few seconds, then swept the rest of the group. “Those of you who have never jumped are not at a disadvantage. In fact, we generally prefer that you have no experience. No bad habits to unlearn.”

A couple of the guys laughed.

“Every day for the next week will break down like this—morning run and classroom work before lunch. After, you’ll run the obstacle course—standard setup. Rope climbing, clearing obstacles, climbing barricades. At the end of the course, you’ll be climbing the jump tower for a series of simulated drops.” Mallory checked her watch. Right on time. “Fit in your gym workouts when you can. Minimum requirement is forty-five sit-ups, twenty-five push-ups, and seven pull-ups. Questions?”

“How high is the tower?” asked Stan Rubin, one of the few professional firefighters among the rookies.

“Fifty feet. The cable lift is a hundred at its highest point.”

“That’ll produce a little speed on the way down,” Anderson remarked.

“Because you’ll be on a pulley rather than using a chute, you’ll feel the landing impact much as you would when dropping from the aircraft,” Mallory said. “I’ll take Rubin and Russo on the course first. The rest of you stay here so Emilio can get you acquainted with your jump gear. Your partner assignments for the jump simulations are on the wall by the door.”

Mallory took stock of the rookies. Anderson, as usual, appeared thoughtful. Rubin stoic. Jac was intense and focused. Hooker rolled back on his heels, bored. Mallory tried not to let her gaze linger on Jac’s face, but it was hard. Hard not to look at her, even harder not to want to.

*

“Ready for this?” Sarah asked as she and Jac got into line at the foot of the jump tower.

Jac looked up to the top of the platform fifty feet above her head. It didn’t really look all that high off the ground. “Ought to be a piece of cake after the obstacle course.”

“It’s a bear, isn’t it?”

Jac stretched her shoulders. “Forty-five feet of rope never looked so long in my life.”

“Did Mallory offer to let you out of the rest of the course if you could beat her time up?”

Jac regarded the blisters on her palms. She could still feel the burn of the braided hemp rubbing on her wrists above her gloves. Mallory had gone up the rope like a monkey. Her legs had entwined with the rope as naturally as if it were a lover. The muscles in her arms and shoulders and back contracted and relaxed in the steady unbroken rhythm that propelled her to the top as effortlessly as if she were walking down the street. She would have been beautiful under any circumstances. Considering how Jac had been thinking about all that muscle moving over her, or under her, she’d been glorious. Jac swallowed hard, her throat so dry it stung. “I’m not dumb enough to bet against her. But Rubin was.”

“After he saw her climb?” Sarah laughed. “How bad did he lose?”

“I think the performance anxiety really got to him. He almost fell off.”

“What do you want to wager a few more give it a try next round?”

“Doesn’t she ever get tired?”

“Not that I’ve ever noticed,” Sarah said softly, glancing up to where Mallory was just a dark slash against the fading afternoon sun.

Sarah’s face softened as she watched Mallory move around above them, and Jac wondered if she was reliving some intimate personal moment. She wanted to ask but didn’t know how. It wasn’t any of her business what their relationship was. She’d just have to go slowly crazy trying not to speculate. “What about you? You ever beat her time?”

“Not on the rope,” Sarah said. “But I’m a mighty fine tree climber, if I do say so myself. I’ve never actually raced her up a pine, but I think I’d have a good shot.”

“I think I’d much rather climb a tree than a rope.”

“It’s awesome. One of the reasons I can’t wait to get back here every year.”

“What do you do in the off-season?”

Sarah smiled. “Spoken like a true smokejumper. Most people consider this the off-season and the rest of the year their real jobs.”

“What about you?”

“I guess I’d have to say this is what I really care about,” Sarah said pensively. “The rest of the year I teach riding and train horses at a ranch in New Mexico.”

“Sounds pretty interesting.”

“It is. But out here”—Sarah shrugged and swept her arm toward the mountains—“when I finish working a fire, I know I’ve done something worthwhile. Made a difference. No question in my mind.”

“And had fun doing it.”

“Like you wouldn’t believe.” Sarah shot her a grin.

Mallory’s voice came over the radio. “Five-minute warning.”

“Okay,” Sarah said briskly. “Give me a run-through of the drop sequence.”

Jac repeated what Mallory had reviewed after they’d completed the obstacle course. “Jump, check the canopy, check the airspace, check the three rings, grab the toggles, disconnect the stevens, steer.”

“You listen good, rookie.”

Jac laughed. “I’d rather not fall on my ass first time out. I haven’t exactly had a great start.”

“Sounds like you did just fine,” Sarah said.

“All the same, I can do without any more attention,” Jac said. Especially not Mallory’s. And especially not for something she’d screwed up.

“You’re not actually jumping today, so you don’t have to worry about the landing. Just the same, run the jump sequence in your head every time.” Sarah looked Jac over. “You look good to go. The more times you do this, the easier it’s going to be going out the plane.”