“Maybe not what they think. But it matters what I do.”

“Look,” Jac said, “I know I didn’t finish the course and—”

“Let’s get Ray squared away. Then you and I will have a sit-down.”

“Okay. You’re calling the shots.” Relieved that Mallory was letting the subject drop, at least temporarily, Jac reached for the door of the standby shack and pulled it open, stepping aside for Mallory to pass through.

Mallory regarded her quizzically. “Thanks.”

Jac realized what she’d done and laughed. “Sorry. My mother raised me to be chivalrous.”

A smile flickered across Mallory’s mouth, almost but not quite cracking her impenetrable cool. “Interesting fact.”

“I’m just a mass of them.”

“Really.” Mallory kept walking, leaving Jac to follow in her wake.

The infirmary occupied a small room off the main building and held three beds, well-stocked equipment carts, and several locked medication cabinets. A Native American who Jac presumed was Benny, given his flight jacket, stood beside a bed where Ray now lay under a snowy white sheet. Another guy with curly blond hair and a slow grin who Jac recognized from the cafeteria that morning leaned against the far wall. One of the regular smokejumpers.

Mallory strode directly to the bed and leaned over Ray. “How’s the stomach?”

“About like my head,” Ray said, his voice tight and strained. “Both a little bit off.”

“Headache?” Mallory shone her penlight into Ray’s eyes again, and he winced, slamming his lids shut.

“Little bit.”

“Got a little photophobia there too,” Mallory muttered. She glanced at Benny, who had just taken Ray’s blood pressure. “Vitals?”

“Nice and stable. One twelve over seventy, pulse is ninety.”

“We’re going to keep you here overnight, Ray,” Mallory said. “I don’t want you getting up and walking around. You’ve probably got postconcussion syndrome, and it may take a day or two for your stomach to settle and the headache to resolve. You know the drill. If anything changes—if you notice any weakness, alteration in sensation, worsening of the headache—let whoever is with you know right away.”

“Can’t I just—”

“No,” Mallory said quietly. “You need to be here. Either that, or in a hospital.”

“Jeez, don’t do that.”

“I won’t, not as long as you’re stable.”

“Fine. Anything you say.”

Mallory smiled. “Naturally.” She signaled to the guy against the wall. “Cooper, can you pull a suture set for me. I want to take care of his forehead.”

“Sure thing, Ice. I’ll get everything set up for you. Hey, Ray. Any allergies or anything?”

“No,” Ray said and started to shake his head. He moaned and went pale again. “Oh man. I hope this doesn’t last long. I hate to puke.”

“I’m with you there,” Mallory said, giving his shoulder a squeeze.

Jac tried not to stare when Mallory rose, shrugged out of her pack, and removed her jacket and sweatshirt. Her throat went dry watching Mallory walk to a small sink in the corner and wash her hands and arms. The back of her tank was sweat stained, a vertical diamond between her shoulder blades a shade darker than the rest. Jac didn’t see the outline of a bra, and couldn’t help but check out Mallory’s breasts when she turned. Not too big, firm and round. Tight-nippled. Damn it, she was so damn hot. “Ice” couldn’t be further from the truth. Jac swallowed, her mouth feeling as if it were stuffed with cotton. She couldn’t ever remember a woman affecting her this way, especially one who wasn’t the slightest bit interested in her. She cleared her throat. “Can I give you a hand?”

Mallory regarded her in that implacable, unreadable way for a long second. “Sure. I could use an assist.”

“Great.” Jac removed her own sweatshirt, washed up, and sorted through the glove packs Cooper had placed beside the suture tray on top of a metal stand. “Sevens?”

“Seven and a half.” Mallory’s gaze drifted over Jac’s hands. “Eights?”

“Yeah.”

Mallory opened the suture pack and snapped on her gloves. After Mallory filled the syringe with local anesthetic, Jac handed her one of the Betadine swabs that came in the suture pack. Mallory efficiently cleaned the area around the laceration in Ray’s forehead. “I’m going to anesthetize you, Ray. It’ll sting for a few minutes.”

“Yeah, sure, no problem,” Ray muttered wearily, his eyes closed. He didn’t budge when Mallory inserted the needle multiple times along the edges of the laceration, injecting the local anesthetic with epinephrine designed to decrease the slow trickle of blood.

While Mallory did that, Jac opened suture packs and loaded needle holders for her. Then she found suture scissors and waited to cut suture as Mallory tied.

Mallory was quick and adept, and within a few minutes the laceration was closed with a neat row of running black nylon sutures. Jac had assisted on or performed the same procedure a dozen times herself, but she didn’t think she’d ever seen anyone look sexier while suturing. She felt dampness accumulate between her breasts and down the center of her belly and between her legs, and only part of it was from the heat in the room. Just being in the vicinity of Ice James made her unaccountably hot. Too bad she wouldn’t be around long enough to try thawing out the ice.

Chapter Five

Mallory snapped off her gloves and tossed them into the wastebasket. As she taped a light dressing to Ray’s forehead, Jac cleared away the instruments, working quickly and efficiently. That seemed to be Jac’s modus operandi—quick, efficient, capable, strong. Capable? Strong? Now where did that come from? Most firefighters were competent and capable—you didn’t last long in the job if you weren’t. Male or female, it made no difference—all were skilled professionals. Jac was no different. Mallory was the one behaving differently, so hyperaware of Jac’s presence her concentration was shot. While she’d been suturing and Jac had been assisting, Jac’s shoulder had brushed hers, their arms had crossed, their hands had touched. Nothing that didn’t happen all the time in close working quarters. Only her skin never tingled and her stomach never did slow rolls when she casually brushed against other firefighters.

Enough already. She had one goal and one goal only. To take care of her team. Nothing else mattered.

“Okay then, Ray,” Mallory said, adjusting the sheet over his chest. “Get some sleep. Cooper will be here for a while, then I’ll be back.”

“Thanks, Boss,” Ray muttered, keeping his eyes closed.

Mallory turned to look for Cooper, but her gaze landed unerringly on Jac. Her instinct was to look immediately away, but she couldn’t. Jac stood three feet from her, watching her with a contemplative expression, as if waiting for Mallory to answer an unspoken question. Mallory wanted to say Stop, don’t look at me, don’t ask me any questions, don’t ask anything of me. In the next breath she wanted to close the distance, obliterate the space between them. Say See me, touch me. That was completely crazy. Her imagination was out of control. Jac wasn’t doing anything at all.

“We’re done here.” Mallory took a step back, needing to sever the connection she didn’t want and hadn’t asked for. When she looked away, the hypnotic pull of Jac’s dark eyes broke, releasing her, and she was caught off guard by a swift surge of loneliness, as if she had lost something she hadn’t known she needed. She countered the momentary weakness with a surge of temper. She did not want this. And she definitely did not need it. “Meet me on the hangar deck in ten minutes.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Good.” Mallory had to find her footing, reestablish control. She was the team leader. Her path was clear. All she had to do was keep her distance, and she’d be fine. This strange draw she felt to Jac Russo would disappear fast enough once they got back on the training schedule.

Mallory spun on her heel and left the infirmary as quickly as she could without seeming to flee. Outside, she found the other rookies still congregated in front of the hangar. Striding over to them, she answered their unspoken question. “Ray got a little banged up out on the trail, but he’s stable now. You all made it in under the required time, so you’re good. Everyone take a break. This afternoon, we’ll work with full packs, so eat a big lunch.”

Her announcement was met with grins and a chorus of approval.

“Sure thing.”

“Roger that.”

“Yes, Cap.”

Hooker stepped a little apart from the crowd. “Russo find him?”

Mallory hesitated. She didn’t buy Jac’s story—the timing and terrain didn’t support the sequence of events, but she wasn’t sure why Jac had put forth the explanation. Until she knew more, she didn’t want to lay responsibility on her. “The details are a little sketchy right now. Ray is sleeping.”

“Are we going to evacuate Kingston to a regional medical center?”

“No need to. He’s doing fine.”

“If he goes bad, it’s an hour to the nearest hospital.”

“He was never unconscious.” Mallory kept her temper in check. Maybe Hooker was just worried about one of his colleagues. Maybe. “There’s no evidence of serious injury, and he’s being carefully monitored. He doesn’t want to go, and I don’t see any reason to send him at this point.”

“Sure thing, Boss,” Hooker said, his tone just short of sarcastic. “Whatever you say.”

He swaggered away, his tone and manner cocky. Mallory wasn’t surprised or even all that bothered. She’d seen plenty of firefighters like him, guys who thought they knew better than all their bosses, male or female. Not that many females headed teams, but that was mostly because there just weren’t that many in the system. The few ranking women were usually well respected and had no problems. But when you worked in a predominately male profession with guys who made the word macho sound prissy, you were bound to run up against some guys who resented female authority. Maybe Hooker was in that camp, maybe not. Right now, she couldn’t worry about it. She had one injured rookie and another who by rights should be packing to go home. She should already have told Jac Russo to go home. Russo hadn’t been her pick, and she didn’t want Russo on the team. Boot camp was designed to root out the physically unfit and the psychologically ill-suited for smokejumping. The course was rigorous for good reasons and rookies didn’t get second chances. She had a perfectly legitimate reason to let Russo go.

Mallory headed toward the hangar, wondering why she wasn’t even certain what she was going to say when Jac showed up, let alone what she was going to do. Her avoidance of the simple, obvious decision couldn’t have anything to do with the way Jac looked at her. She wouldn’t let it.

*

Jac leaned down over Ray and said, “Check you later, buddy.” He was already asleep. Straightening, she said to Cooper, “I’ll be by in a while, but if something changes, would you give me a holler?”

“Friend of yours?”

“He is now.”

Cooper nodded. A veteran like him would appreciate how strongly and quickly allegiances were forged among those on the line. “Sure thing, rookie. See you in a bit.”

“If I’m still around,” Jac muttered. She left the infirmary and headed across the yard to keep her appointment with Ice James, trying not to dwell on what was about to come down. Nothing she could do to alter the facts. Whether she stayed or whether she left was completely up to Mallory. She hadn’t passed the first leg of boot camp, and no excuses would be offered. The job was black and white. There was no such thing as a margin for error when fighting a fire. Errors meant injury or death. There were no second chances, no do-overs, no remediation. Mallory had made it pretty clear first thing that morning that she wouldn’t make any kind of concessions for Jac, and why should she? Out here, Jac was the same as everyone else. A firefighter whose past was unimportant, whose place was defined by her performance and nothing else. She wouldn’t have it any other way and wanted nothing more out of her life than to be judged by her actions, not by the words or opinions of others. So now, she could hardly argue that the verdict be based on anything other than her performance. Not her intentions, not her desires, not her needs.

Jac stared at the dark recesses of the hangar, feeling as if she were walking into the belly of the whale. Taking a breath, she entered the cavernous space. The jump plane occupied the place of honor in the center of the room, poised like a great beast ready to leap from its hiding place into action at the first sight of prey. Benches holding machine parts and tools lined the far wall. The air smelled like engine oil and metal shavings—tart and pungent. The space exuded an anticipatory feeling, as if waiting for the adventure to begin. She remembered Mallory saying she slept in the loft and imagined her asleep, surrounded by the scent of machines. She wasn’t surprised Mallory slept just one step away from the aircraft that would carry her to the fire line. Mallory struck her as a woman who welcomed a worthy opponent. She liked that about her. Liked it a lot.