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One corner of his mouth pulled up a bit when he smiled, conveying self-confidence, cockiness.
Surely that in and of itself was a fatal flaw.
Finding her comfort zone once more, Jo dismissed her initial attraction to him as simply a brief surge in hormones following a dry spell. Besides, the last thing she needed on this trip was a man, handsome or not.
“Nick’s not just a smoke jumper,” Hazel interjected. “He’s a Hotshot.”
“Hazel,” Bonnie objected in a murmur, “you’re flirting with him already?”
Hazel and Stella both laughed, Hazel even slapping her thigh at Bonnie’s ignorance.
“Hotshots,” Hazel explained, still chuckling, “are the elite among the smoke jumpers, you goose. The gung-ho guys that get sent in closest to the source of the fire. Don’t you watch the Discovery Channel? I knew it from that emblem on his shirt.”
“Glad to meetcha, Nick,” she added, quickly making introductions all around. Jo felt Nick’s gaze linger on her, and she fought the urge to squirm.
Jo knew she was no Kayla. Nothing fulsome and obvious about her looks, but she had never considered herself unattractive. She had inherited her mother’s lucent green eyes and arching eyebrows, along with a shiny profusion of thick brunette hair that formed a widow’s peak on a gentle, curving brow.
But that was where the mother-daughter comparison ended.
At five-two, Jo Lofton was petite like Hazel, in sharp contrast to Diane Lofton’s leggy five-ten frame—legs just perfect for gliding with catlike grace down fashion runways in Paris and New York, as indeed Diane had until she’d married and settled down.
Long legs, Jo observed bleakly, much like Kayla’s.
“Don’t tell me we’re in danger here, Nick?” Hazel said.
“Not at the moment, Mrs. McCallum,” he replied in a polite, pleasant voice. The musician in Jo immediately recognized a perfect baritone.
“Mainly we’re in this area just to thin out a few green pockets,” he added. “There’s cheatgrass down below in the gulches that provides good tinder for airborne sparks.”
Cynically Jo thought there was cheatgrass all around in the world and not just the gulches, but she remained silent.
“We’re not really going to be invading you,” Nick continued. “I lead a twelve-man team that’s in charge of monitoring Crying Horse Canyon, and we’re using Bridger’s Summit as our staging area. But we’ll be downridge and we won’t be in your way.”
“Of course you won’t be,” Kayla said, flashing him a toothy smile wide as the Texas Panhandle. “What a neat coinkydink that we’d all end up here together.”
Coinkydink? Jo thought, groaning inwardly. That’s the way some of her sophomore female students talked.
Bonnie met Jo’s gaze and rolled her eyes in an oh, please fashion.
“In fact,” Kayla enthused, “why don’t we all have supper together this evening? We could make it pot-luck!”
“That’d be great,” Nick replied, his tone already squashing the idea, “but my team works twelve hours on, twelve hours off, and we go on duty in another hour. We work nights during the quarter of the full moon. It’s cooler.”
Kayla pouted, demurely touching her cheek with one of her elegantly polished nails. “The night shift sure ruins a guy’s social life,” she said, watching him from lazy, lidded eyes.
“We’ll be seeing each other,” Nick said, looking at Jo again with steady attention, which made her feel an inner tickle of nervous fear. “Right now you folks need time to settle in, so nice meeting you.”
“See you later,” Kayla called out behind Nick’s retreating form. “How cute is he?” she said to the others in a lower tone. “Look at that trim caboose.”
“He’s a hunka-hunka burning love, all right,” Hazel agreed, though her thoughtful gaze remained on Jo.
“Never get seduced by a firefighter,” Stella warned sternly.
“Why not?” Kayla demanded.
“Because,” Stella replied, deadpan, “every time you get hot, he’ll beat you over the head with a shovel.”
The corny joke caught everyone off guard.
They all laughed, even Kayla, whom Jo had to admit looked beautiful and confident when she laughed.
But moments later Jo’s thoughts turned to Nick, the way his eyes had settled on her and refused to look away, the way his presence seemed to draw every female gaze like a vacuum. It had been a while since she’d wondered what it would be like to be held by a man, kissed and stroked. The very thought of it sent a neon sign of warning through her mind, but she still found herself wondering about the man Hazel called a Hotshot.
She knew one thing, however. The best way not to get burned was to stay away from fire.
And that, she planned to do the entire weekend.
Two
Kayla’s great-aunt Dottie McGratten showed up only a few minutes after Nick left, both her arms filled with firewood and kindling. She had an old hickory-nut face, well seamed, under a startling profusion of snow-white hair, barely restrained by a Dallas Cowboys cap. The wife of a retired oil wildcatter and formerly from Mystery Valley, she was still as spry as Hazel and Stella.
“The old gals are going easy on us tonight,” Bonnie observed as the three younger women settled into their cabin before supper.
“Yeah, but judging from their sly grins,” Jo said, “it’s only the calm before the storm.”
“And it’s going to be some storm,” Bonnie said, busy spreading her sleeping bag over the bare springs of her bed. “Star navigating, first-aid, fishing, rafting—if we survive this we’ll get our Ranger Rick badge.”
“You keep the badge,” Kayla quipped demurely. “I’ll take Ranger Rick.”
Jo glanced around the cabin. There was an old iron stove with nickel trimmings, three metal bedsteads, one along each wall, and little else besides a few nails in the walls for hanging clothes.
Ten days, she thought. It didn’t sound very long when she agreed to this. Now it loomed before her like a period of banishment, each day an eternity.
But she owed Hazel, if not herself, a cheerful attitude. McCallum money had financed McCallum Secondary School before there was even a Montana state legislature. And recently, since the hard-pressed state budget had virtually eliminated funding for art and music education, Hazel had almost single-handedly rescued the programs—and Jo’s teaching position.
So what Hazel wanted, Hazel got, even if she had the addled notion to try to make an inept camper survive the wilderness.
“I have dibs on this,” Kayla chimed in, flopping her blond self down on the thin mattress. She carefully arranged her cosmetics on a little wooden shelf beside the bed.
Bonnie turned to Jo and said under her breath, “She’s got dibs on everything, inanimate or not.”
Jo smiled distantly and placed her backpack on the middle bed.
Next to her, Kayla picked up a compact and examined herself. Her eyes rose to meet Jo’s.
“Dottie says your momma was Miss Montana?” Kayla asked, her voice a little wistful.
There it was again, Jo thought, her mother’s fame dredged up almost immediately by a virtual stranger. She felt a fist clench in her chest as she was reminded, yet again, that she dwelled in a perpetual maternal shadow.
“Dottie says right,” Bonnie supplied when Jo refused to reply. “And she was one of the finalists for Miss America.”
“Well…Montana,” Kayla said dismissively. “I mean, that’s nothing like being Miss Texas or Miss New York.”
“Why not?” Bonnie demanded.
Kayla studied her face carefully in the compact mirror before she replied.
“Oh, you know. Big frog in a small pond. We’ve got so many pretty girls in Texas, so it’s a real competition. But y’all in Montana got such an itty-bitty population.” Kayla flashed a mouthful of stunning enamel at Jo. “Not that I’m saying your momma didn’t deserve it. Shoot, I’ve seen pretty girls up north, occasionally, though winters up here will try a girl’s complexion.”
“We manage,” Bonnie assured her, amusement in her tone.
Jo had realized that Kayla wasn’t the brightest light on the porch. But as the dig just now proved, she was skillful at delivering stinging words in a syrupy tone.
Just like Jo’s mother, who had believed she only had her looks to count on, Kayla was probably just as insecure. Even though Jo should have hated the curvaceous beauty, she just couldn’t. There was too much about Kayla that was familiar.
“Officer on deck!” Hazel joked, stepping into their cabin. “Sorry to break up the gabfest, girls, but it’s time for your work assignments.”
“Work?” Kayla said. “I thought this was a vacation!”
Hazel cast a dubious glance at the redundant creams, lotions, toners, mask potions and other cosmetics crowding Kayla’s shelf. “If we want halfway decent meals, it’ll be a team effort,” she replied. “Kayla, it’s your job to gather firewood and kindling each day. Bonnie and Jo, you’ll take turns hauling water.
“This is going to be an interesting ten days, ladies,” Hazel predicted, adding, “One of you had better get water now. Dottie’s starting supper.”
Jo couldn’t help wondering what Hazel was up to, for there was definitely some secret purpose behind her manner, her sly glances.
But the serene beauty of the Bitterroot country soon scattered her thoughts as she descended a looping path, the only sound the natural chorus of insects.
There were more trees as she descended, aspens not yet blooming gold, and narrow silver spruces. She reached the stone footbridge Hazel had mentioned; it arched over a narrow but deep-cut, bubbling stream.
It was peaceful on the bridge, beauty surrounding her on all sides, and she paused to enjoy the moment. Long, narrow shafts of sunlight poked through the overhead canopy of leaves, making silvery flashes of the minnows below in the creek.
A swarm of mosquitoes assailed her, and she suddenly remembered that her long hair, which because of the windy car ride she’d pulled into a ponytail and tucked into her blouse, was useless as protection.
Absently, Jo set the water container down and undid the two top buttons of her blouse. With graceful, languid movements, she reached behind her collar and pulled out her hair.
A masculine voice startled her. “Going skinny-dipping?”
She flinched, turning to confront the handsome smoke jumper who’d shown up with Kayla. Nick Kramer, that was his name. She remembered how his quick gaze seemed to take in every detail—the way a gyrfalcon studies a meadow looking for a little gray mouse.
She had to shade her eyes from the sun behind him. What with the sun blindness and the fact that his dark silhouette seemed to tower over her, she took an instinctive step back.
When his own gaze dropped south and lingered there appreciatively, she glanced down and felt her cheeks heat with embarrassment. With two buttons undone, her blouse was wide open and gave him a good view of her bra and bare flesh.
“Can I help you?” she asked defensively, fingers fumbling to button her blouse.
“Me?” He almost seemed to laugh. “Usually I’m the one doing the helping.”
“I asked if you needed some help. I did not say help yourself,” she snapped.
“Evidently I should, judging from what I’ve just seen.”
She felt the betraying flush all the way to her collarbone.
The corner of his mouth tugged. “Let me guess—you’re a closet nudist? Hey, don’t let me interfere with your free expression of—”
“I was not undressing,” she flung at him.
“I’m sorry, then.” His words were strangely quiet and wistful.
He was well over six feet and she had to look way up to meet his gaze. Being a townie and an academic, she usually only worried about intellectual might, but now, alone in the woods with a man who was strong enough and big enough to take without asking, she suddenly became acutely aware of her physical vulnerability. She took another wary step back from him.
He only flashed that self-assured grin of his. “I’m not following you, so forget the paranoia. I’ve got the same job you have.”
He held up at least a half-dozen plastic canteens, all strung on a length of cord.
Seeing the canteens brought her back to reality. He wasn’t some woman-hungry medieval maurader. It was the twenty-first century, and he would prove no threat at all if she just stayed uninvolved.
Reminded of her own task, she smiled her relief and picked up the water container next to her.
“After you,” he said, holding out his hand.
She smiled again, the smile she used for students who irritated her, and headed toward a hand pump just past the bridge.
“Hey,” he called from behind her. “Hazel introduced you as Jo. Is it just Jo—or something else?”
“Why does it matter?” she replied, her tone casual, her heart still beating as if she’d run a mile.
She didn’t want to have a conversation with the man. After Ned, she was sworn off men, and her only reason for coming on this trip was to get away from the loneliness he’d left her with. Now here she was, in the wilderness, feeling like the only female on ladies’ night at the Bullnose Barroom.
“It’s Joanna, but you can call me anything you like, since I doubt we’ll be seeing each other much,” she answered breezily. “Believe me, you’re here to put out fires, and I am definitely planning on avoiding fires.”
She pushed down on the rusty hand pump. Putting all her weight into it, she still couldn’t get it to move. It finally released with a bang, and she nearly fell over. Next she had trouble getting pressure built up in the thing; all she could get out of it was a series of gurgling, choking noises.
“Here, let me help you.”
He gave the handle a few fast pumps, and clear water came gushing out.
“Let there be water,” he quipped.
“Thanks,” she muttered, nervous at the way he seemed to be crowding her. “I can manage it now.”
But in fact it was difficult, once the container started to fill, to keep it up under the spout. It weighed a ton.
“Let me hold it for you,” he offered.
Her instincts gone awry, she snatched the container from him when he tried to take it. Water splashed across her blouse, plastering the thin fabric to her skin.
“It’s heavy, I just—”
