“Slow down, Ice. She’s not a rookie. Not quite. She worked part of a season with a Bureau of Land Management hotshot team in Idaho.” He fished around on his desk and came up with a dog-eared file folder. He flipped it open, turned it around, and held it out to her. “Besides, real-life experience is an acceptable substitute for the usual field training, and she’s got that covered.”

“She’s still a rookie as far as I’m concerned.” Mallory regarded the folder as if it were a rattler coiled in the brush trailside, waiting to strike. There couldn’t be anything good inside that file. Smokejumpers returned year after year to the same crew; vacancies were few, and the waiting list long. She hadn’t seen Russo’s name on any applications, but somehow, Russo had managed to leapfrog to the head of the list, and that could only mean someone had pulled strings. Anyone qualified for the job didn’t need to do that. “Come on, Sully. You know this doesn’t make any sense. If she’s already on a crew, why move her over to ours? We’ll have to train her to jump—”

“You’d have to train whoever joined us to jump, Ice.”

“Still, I don’t get it.”

“Neither do I.” Sully gave her a wry shrug and waggled the folder. “I wasn’t given the option. She’ll be here this morning. You might as well look at this.”

Reluctantly Mallory took the folder and glanced at the typed application and the color photo clipped to the top of the page. Jac Russo. Twenty-seven—well, at least she had a couple of years on Russo in age and quite a few more in experience. At just thirty, she was young to captain a jump crew and wouldn’t have wanted to start out the season breaking in a hotshot who discounted her authority because she was younger or less experienced. The photo was a good one. Even the Polaroid head shot couldn’t dampen the appeal of bittersweet-chocolate eyes and thick black wavy hair—true black, not dark brown like her own—and also unlike hers, neatly trimmed above her collar. Russo’s face was a little too strong to be pretty, with bold cheekbones and an angular jaw. A decent face, nothing out of the ordinary, really. Mallory got caught in the dark eyes that almost leapt out of the glossy surface of the photo—intense, unsmiling, penetrating eyes. Eyes that held secrets and dared you to reveal yours. Okay, so maybe she was a little bit good-looking. The guys would probably be happy to have her around as long as she had even marginal skills. Mallory didn’t agree. She couldn’t afford to have anyone jumping who couldn’t carry her own weight. No one was coming out of the mountains on a litter on her watch. Not this year. Not ever again.

“I’m telling you right now,” Mallory said, flipping a page to look at the work experience Russo had listed, “if she can’t cut it, I’m not putting her up in the air. I’m not going to let her endanger my team. I don’t care whose daughter she is.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” someone said in a husky alto from right behind her.

Mallory spun around and went nose to nose with a woman about her height, their bodies colliding hard enough for her to feel firm breasts and a muscled torso press against her front. Molding to her—except that had to be her imagination. She pulled back, and the black-haired stranger took her in with a slow up-and-down perusal and an expression that was half-arrogant, half-amused. Her lips were full and sensuous and unsmiling—like in the photo.

“Jump to conclusions much?” the woman said.

“Sorry,” Mallory muttered. “I didn’t realize you were behind me.”

“I gathered that.” The really nice lips smiled, but the eyes were cool. “I’m Jac Russo.”

“Yes.” Mallory indicated the folder. “I saw the picture.”

“Did you also see the part that said I’ve got search and rescue experience? Can handle explosives? How about the part—”

“I noticed you’re short on field experience,” Mallory said tightly, “and this isn’t remedial class. Basic training starts”—she checked her watch—“in forty-five minutes.”

“I’ll be ready,” Russo said. “And I’m a fast learner.”

“We’ll see,” Mallory murmured.

“What—you’ve already made up your mind?” Jac’s expression tightened and her eyes went flat. “Let me guess. Something you heard on TV, maybe?”

“Sorry, I must have missed the bulletin,” Mallory shot back. She lifted the folder. “I was talking about what isn’t in here.”

“Don’t be so sure you know all about me from what you read,” Russo said.

“I’ll reserve judgment till I’ve seen how you run. You’ll be first up this morning.”

“Good enough.”

Sully cleared his throat loudly. “Russo, I’ve got some paperwork for you to complete.”

“Yes sir, I’ll be right there.” Jac didn’t shift her gaze from Mallory’s. “I didn’t get your name.”

“Mallory James.” Mallory smiled thinly. “I’m the ops manager and training coordinator. You can call me Boss. Or Ice.”

“What do your friends call you?”

“Mallory.” She made sure Russo got the message she wasn’t planning to fraternize with her. Not that she ever really did with any of the crew. She hung out with them, swapped stories, but she never really shared anything personal with anyone. Breaking away from Russo’s probing gaze, Mallory turned and tossed the folder onto Sully’s desk. She wasn’t sure what besides anger might show in her eyes, and she didn’t want Russo to see past her temper to her worry, or her fear. “Roll call at oh six hundred. Don’t be late.”

“Can’t wait.”

Mallory snorted and strode away.

Jac watched until the ops manager disappeared into a building across the tarmac. Well, that was a great start.

She’d been hoping to slide in under the radar, but that obviously wasn’t going to happen now. She couldn’t tell from the conversation exactly what was behind Mallory James’s animosity. Most of the time, a cold reception had little to do with her and a lot to do with her father. The higher he’d risen in national politics, the more airtime he got and the more controversy he stirred up. He seemed to thrive on the reactions his often extreme positions evoked—even death threats didn’t bother him. Unfortunately, the more visible he became, the more his notoriety overflowed onto his family. Her mother was an anxious wreck who didn’t want to leave the house past the line of protesters lined up across the street and the reporters in the driveway. Her sister Carly was generally humiliated by her parents anyhow, the way all seventeen-year-olds were, and was trying even harder than Jac had to prove she was nothing like their ultraconservative right-wing father. She’d started running with a tough crowd of dropouts and delinquents.

Jac had been hoping to escape some of the recent fallout here, but no such luck. She was used to being judged on the basis of her father’s latest sound bite, and usually that didn’t bother her. Today it did.

She squared her shoulders and faced the guy watching her speculatively from behind the desk. She’d been proving herself all her life—or more accurately, disproving the assumptions everyone made about her. In high school all she’d had to do was demonstrate her willingness to break the rules to crack the mold her family had created for her. Considering that breaking the rules usually involved sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll—all the things her father railed against—divorcing herself from her family’s politics hadn’t been all that hard. Most of the time rebelling had been fun, but she wasn’t sixteen anymore, and while she still chafed under the weight of rules and regs, she’d pretty much given up all the rest. The drugs and rock ’n’ roll for sure, and the sex most of the time. But then, it didn’t take a whole lot of sex to get her into a whole lot of trouble.

Realizing the guy was still watching her, still waiting, she said, “I guess you weren’t expecting me.”

He grinned fleetingly. “You’re quick.”

Jac shook her head and muttered, “Damn it, Nora, thanks for warning me.” She walked forward and held out her hand. “Jac Russo. I take it you got that part already.”

“Chuck Sullivan. I’m kind of the overseer around here, but Ice calls the shots.”

“Interesting nickname.”

His gaze narrowed. “None better at the job.”

Jac held up her hands. “Hey, I don’t doubt it. She just seemed a little fiery there for a minute.”

Again the fleeting grin and a shake of his head. “Not much riles her up.”

“I’m not sure I’m happy about having that privilege, then.” Jac sighed. “I didn’t know about this myself until yesterday when someone on my father’s staff told me, but I thought you’d been contacted. I don’t blame you for being pissed.”

“I’m not pissed,” Sullivan said quietly.

Jac tilted her head toward the door behind her. “She is.”

“Don’t worry about it. Pass basic training, you’ll be part of the team.”

Too bad it wasn’t that easy. Being good at what she did, being qualified, pulling her own weight—all those things helped her fit in, but they never helped her to be accepted. When she’d been younger, she’d desperately wanted to be accepted. Now she didn’t care. At least that’s what she told herself most days. The freeze in Mallory James’s eyes was nothing new, although usually the disdain was motivated by something other than her showing up where she wasn’t expected or wanted. All the same, for the first time in a long time, she’d wanted to melt the icy reception she’d gotten used to receiving.

She wanted this job, sure. She’d wanted it for a long time, but she hadn’t planned on getting it this way. But now she was here, and she wanted to stay. She wanted Mallory James to admit she was good enough to stay.

Chapter Two

Mallory about-turned out of Sully’s office and steamed across the yard to the standby shack. The barracks in the back, adjacent to the locker rooms, held twenty single, plain, metal-framed beds, ten to a row down each side. She chose to sleep in the hangar loft, not out of modesty but just for a few moments of peace and quiet at the end of the day. The guys would be stirring any minute. No time now for anything but a quick shower and a hurried breakfast, but it really didn’t matter. She was too aggravated to relax anyhow.

She cut through the main equipment room on her way to the locker room. Orderly rows of jump suits, helmets, and gear belonging to the crew on the jump list she’d made up the night before hung from pegs on the wall. Her Kevlar jacket and pants hung closest to the door. She was the IC when she jumped, and as incident commander, she was first in and last out of the hot zone.

A windowless swinging door on the left side led to the women’s locker room, where she and Sarah Petrie, a veteran jumper and her best friend, stored their extra gear and clothes, and shared a six- by-six-foot communal shower. The plywood walls didn’t do much to mute the noise when all the guys were next door, and any conversation was easily audible. Not that the illusion of privacy really mattered. They lived together for six months straight, eating and sleeping and sweating and risking their lives together. Privacy took on a whole new definition under those circumstances. The only truly private place was in her head.

She peeled off her clothes, piled them on the bench running lengthwise between the row of gunmetal gray lockers and shelves holding towels and cubbies for gear, grabbed a towel, and walked naked to the shower. After twisting the dial to hot on one of the four showerheads, she stepped under the water. Standing under the pounding spray, she replayed the meeting with Jac Russo. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what annoyed her, and that annoyed her even more. Sure, Russo had circumvented normal channels in getting the posting, and that offended her sense of order. Maybe her sense of fair play too. All the same, she didn’t usually vent her feelings out loud, particularly in front of people she didn’t know. Or in front of a coworker like Sully. She prided herself on being in control, on being cool, on placing reason ahead of emotion. It’d earned her the nickname Ice, and she liked it. Some people extended the name to Ice Queen, but she wasn’t bothered by that. If she did keep her feelings under wraps, what of it?

Perfunctorily, she squirted shampoo into her palm and lathered up her hair, turning, eyes closed, letting the heat smooth out some of the tension in her back. So why was she bothered so much by Russo? Because she hadn’t picked her? That seemed a little bit petty, and she didn’t like thinking of herself that way. But Russo was an unknown, and unknowns made her uneasy. Fire was enough of an unknown, appearing on its own timetable, spreading at its own rate, jumping lines where least expected, blowing up, cresting a ridge where it never should’ve been, trapping eleven wildland firefighters in a clearing that should’ve been a safety zone. A safety zone she’d picked. Nine of them had walked away.