Brandon's Bride

  Brandon hovered somewhere in the middle of the pack, knowing he didn’t have the speed to play with the young bucks like Charlie, but having too much to prove to drop all the way to the back. Endurance was the ticket. He would never be as fast as the young people, but he was most likely the most aerobically fit person present. Hiking developed good lungs, and hiking up seventy-degree slopes at twenty-five thousand feet qualified you to blow up a balloon with a single, powerful puff.

  All he had to do was ignore his tired leg muscles.

  He focused on the trail, not the man stumbling to his right or the woman clutching her ribs behind him. He ran and tried to pretend he didn’t feel Coleton Smith’s black gaze pinned to his back, waiting for him to fail.

  “Being a hotshot isn’t about glory. It’s five percent fighting fires and ninety-five percent hard work. Even if you beat a wildland fire in a matter of hours, mop up can take days—long, hard days trudging through a hundred acres of soot and ruin, seeking and extinguishing every last ember in every last tree trunk and twig. Welcome to the glamorous life.”

  After the six-mile run, Coleton passed out the Pulaskis, shovels and chain saws. He split the crew in half, sending nine off to build a trail while the remaining nine began thinning patches of the forest, pulling out brush, felling dead trees—called widow makers by the experienced crew—and hoeing grass, dead pine needles and old leaves off the ground. After an hour, Brandon’s arms ached from wielding the chain saw and his face was streaked with sweat. Beside him, Charlie labored in silence, looking strained. A few of the others, however, joked and laughed, obviously at ease with the work.

  At noon, Coleton showed up, inspected their efforts and informed them they were done. He’d heard the Redmond crew did aerobics to build endurance, and so would they. Fit firefighters better tolerate heat, he informed them. They acclimate faster, work with a lower heart rate and body temperature and don’t become sloppy or careless with fatigue. And, if things got ugly, they had the reserves left for sprinting down the escape route.

  “Before we post up,” Coleton threatened the crew with a scowl, “you will be the fittest hotshot team in this state, or I’ll send Richard Simmons to your house personally.”

  That scared them all into action. At twelve hundred, Charlie and Brandon were in the gym raising their hard-toed boots to the beating rhythm of Jane Fonda’s smiling commands. Lift one, lift two, lift three, lift four, inhale, lift five, lift six, seven, eight . . .

  By the time they showered and ate lunch, even the pros were dragging. Coleton gave them just enough time to down black coffee and high energy bars, then led them to the forestry service’s tiny broom closet classroom to begin the required sixty-four hours of education in Crew Boss, Urban Interface Fires, and Intermediate Fire Behavior. Coleton started with fire behavior, his personal favorite, and they tried to stay awake. It wasn’t easy.

  “A fire is nothing but a chemical reaction called rapid oxidation. For it to happen, three elements—heat, fuel and air—must be present in the right amounts. You want a fire to go away, then you yank an element. Hey, Meese, what are you yawning about?”

  Charlie snapped to attention. “Uh . . .”

  Charlie looked at Brandon. Brandon looked at Coleton. Coleton hunkered his scarred head between his shoulders, creating an extra roll of smooth, shiny skin that wasn’t pleasant to look at. Coleton had lived in Beaverville for twenty years, and young children still refused to walk by his house.

  “Okay, folks, listen up. Here are our two rookies, who obviously don’t think they need to listen. So tell us, freshmen, the team is called into a fire. What do you do?”

  “Follow the lead of the crew boss,” Charlie said weakly.

  Coleton narrowed his sights on Brandon. “What about you, Ferringer? I hear you went to some Ivy League school in downtown Philly. Learn anything good about wildland fires in downtown Philly?”

  “No.”

  “No, huh? Big-shot Wall Street guy, fancy degrees, and all you can say is no?”

  Brandon remained quiet.

  Coleton approached, his black gaze narrowed, his three clumped fingers slapping against his thigh. “You’re a bookworm, aren’t you, Ferringer?”

  “I read.”

  “You read about fire? You look at the textbooks? There are some good ones out there.”

  “I have glanced at a few.”

  “So tell us, rich Brit, what are the factors that influence fire behavior?”

  Brandon kept his gaze pinned on the far wall. He said calmly, “Fuel characteristics, weather conditions and topography.”

  “You got a fire, a slow-moving creeper in a canyon. Midday. Sun is bright red, warm front hovers over the canyon, terrain is a forty-degree incline covered by light fuel. Narrow river runs down the center of the canyon. There is no wind. What do you do?”

  “Call the national forecaster and ask about approaching cold fronts.”

  “You call. One is moving in. What do you do?”

  “Get out.”

  “Get out? What do you mean get out, Ferringer? It’s a slow-moving creeper. Why, I bet you and Meese could take it yourselves. Besides, there’s a town at the end of the canyon. Gonna let all their homes burn? Fine federal employee you are.”

  “There’s a town?” Brandon said. “Then evacuate it.”

  “Evacuate it?”

  “Immediately.”

  Coleton stopped right in front of him. Those mangled fingers thrummed his thigh again and again. No one in the room spoke. No one moved. Abruptly, Coleton bent down. “Well, rich Brit, at least you read the right book.”

  The superintendent straightened and strode to the front of the room. “So tell us, Meese, why does your good buddy Ferringer want out of the canyon so fast?”

  “Blowout,” Charlie said quietly, giving Brandon a look of reluctant admiration. “The cold front will hit the warm front, kick up winds of fifty miles an hour, at least. The oxygen will hit the small grass fire and blow it up.” The scenario was one all hotshots and Smokejumpers knew intimately. If they hadn’t learned it from analyzing Mann Gulch, they’d learned it firsthand from Storm King Mountain.

  “What do you do then?”

  “Drop tools and run for the nearest safe zone.”

  “In that topography, where’s the safe zone?”

  Charlie paused, thinking hard.

  “The other side of the water?” Coleton pressed.

  “No, the wind will jump the fire over the water. The other side of the canyon will go, as well.”

  “What about in the water?”

  “Too hot. You’ll be smack in the middle of several hundred degrees. No good.”

  “Outrun it, over the top?”

  “If you could get over the ridge, you’d be okay, but at that slope, the fire will move uphill at over a hundred miles an hour—not even Michael Johnson could win that race. You’d be overtaken before you were even halfway up.”

  “So what do you do, Meese, say your prayers?”

  “Find the black. You’ll always be okay if you keep a foot in the black.”

  “Finally,” Coleton growled and flung his hands into the air. “This is what fifty years of firefighting has taught us hotshots. You can predict fire, you can manipulate fire, but some days, you won’t get it right. And then . . . you find the black, a burned-over area. It has no more fuel to feed a fire, so there you’ll be safe. If you can’t find one, start one. Light a cross fire, and as soon as a patch is burned, drop down, pull your fire shield over yourself tightly and weather the storm. When all else fails, find the black. Are we clear?”

  Everyone was clear. Traditionally, wildland firefighting wasn’t that dangerous. Deaths were more likely to happen from helicopter or plane crashes on the way to sites than on the ground. But then there were the incidents such as Mann Gulch or Storm King Mountain, when the fire got
out of control too fast. When whole crews lost their lives and whole communities mourned.

  Those lessons were not forgotten.

  “Okay, so let’s talk fuel,” Coleton snapped. “And let me show you all the lovely charts you get to memorize . . . before Meese falls asleep.’’

  * * *

  Thursday night, Brandon didn’t crawl back to the Lady Luck Ranch until almost nine o’clock. He stood in the back of the stables, staring at the shower with longing. Yesterday, they’d started weight training. Brandon had never lifted before. Now his pectorals hurt, his deltoids hurt, his quads hurt, his biceps, his triceps, his glutes and his calves. If he had it, it ached.

  And his mind swam with such stimulating charts as “Dead Fuel Moisture—Time Lag Relationship to Fuel Size,” “Fuel Flammability by Time of Day and Aspect” and “Relationship Between Air Temperature, Fuel Moisture, Relative Humidity and Time of Day.” He was trying to remember how fast different fuel types burned, the differences between northern and southern exposure and the impact on fire behavior as the day moved from morning to noon to night.

  People who thought hotshots were empty-headed thrill seekers had never glanced at the textbooks. The information was detailed, technical and precise, and the price for forgetting was high.

  Brandon kept thinking it shouldn’t be a problem for his analytic mind. If he could compute bond prices for purchasing after issue and selling before maturity, he ought to be able to handle fuel considerations and topography charts. No such luck.

  Four days into training, he wanted to crawl under his bed, curl into a ball and sleep for a week. He hadn’t felt so fatigued or overwhelmed since Everest, and at least then he could blame it on a mountain.

  “Wow, you look like hell.” With effort, Brandon twisted his exhausted body from the shower and discovered Victoria standing in the aisle. She was leaning against one of the stalls, wearing blue jeans, a ratty gray sweatshirt and a grin. He hadn’t seen her or Randy since Sunday night. He’d told himself he didn’t mind. He’d lied.

  “At least you’re still standing,” Victoria continued conversationally when Brandon remained too shell-shocked to speak. “Mom says Charlie comes home every night, wolfs down three servings of everything and keels over face-first onto his empty plate.”

  Brandon said, “I’m standing?”

  Victoria laughed and moved closer. He caught a whiff of apple shampoo, and something tightened in his chest. Her hair was in a ponytail, swept from her face. He wanted to pull out the rubber band and feel the silky strands wave over his sore, bruised palms.

  “So tell me, hotshot, how is it?” She stopped right in front of him. He swore he could feel the breath from her words whisper across his windburned cheeks.

  “I killed my whole team,” he blurted.

  She merely cocked a brow, her eyes gleaming with gentle humor. “Not bad for a day’s work.”

  “I keep forgetting they’re there,” he continued like an idiot.

  “Want to start at the beginning?”

  “Coleton Smith—the superintendent—”

  “I know Coleton.”

  “He’s split us into crews of four to five and given us various drills. To pass, everyone on your crew must succeed. We’re learning teamwork, you see. Today, we had to clear brush, dig a fire trail. Then he shouted, ‘Blowout,’ and we had to run to the safety zone. I cleared. I dug. I ran. I made it to the safety zone. Everyone else fried.”

  Victoria winced. “Ouch.”

  “My teammates stopped talking to me. Then Coleton yelled at them that they had no choice—a team was a team was a team. Then they certainly started talking, but I won’t repeat what they said.” He ran a hand tiredly through his hair. Bits of pine needles rained down, and he grimaced. “What a mess. Coleton thinks I’ve spent too much time in New York and I might as well give up now. This evening, he had me clear a quarter-acre patch of forest alone so I would learn to appreciate my team members. Rather like beating erasers after class, but more painful. Bloody hell.” He sighed.

  Coleton must have stayed late, too, because as the sun set and the world grew dark with dusk, Brandon became aware of someone’s gaze pinned upon his back. It had been a lonely, eerie feeling in the middle of the rapidly darkening forest. He’d set up more lanterns than necessary and had still been so frazzled he hadn’t inspected the chain saw before turning it on. The chain had been half off, and the starter motor ripped it from the gears with violent force, flinging it left and by the grace of God embedding it in a tree trunk instead of Brandon’s leg. His hands had shaken for a long time after that. He’d waited for Coleton to materialize and lecture him, but Brandon had remained alone in the lanterns’ glow, his shoulders hunched warily and his gaze uncertain.

  Victoria was speaking. “Well, do you think you’ll remember your team members next time?”

  Brandon hesitated. He’d been wrestling with that question since the incident without coming to an acceptable conclusion. He confessed quietly, “I don’t know.”

  Her expression grew curious. “Why do you say that?”

  “I . . . I grew up as a single child, Victoria, from the stoic, British upper class. I’m better at math than most mathematicians. In school, I was the chap who enjoyed algebra. People like me . . . Well, I wasn’t generally invited to play in other people’s circles.”

  “You play with Randy nice enough.”

  “He’s Randy.”

  “You volunteered to help him with his homework. You did the dishes. You helped Randy with his homework again on Sunday night. I don’t know, Ferringer, but so far you seem appallingly well-adjusted and just all around nice to me.” She shrugged. “But that’s just my opinion.”

  “Oh.” He looked away. He was blushing, definitely blushing. The more he tried not to, the darker he grew. He wasn’t accustomed to being characterized as the nice guy. C.J. was nice. Maggie was sweet. Brandon was . . . smart. This nice business, however, felt good.

  “How’s Randy’s math?” he asked.

  Victoria grimaced and shrugged. “I wish I had your mathematical mind. Well, with a bit of luck, we may both pass grade school yet.”

  “And the foals? Have you started training?”

  “Not yet. We’re still in the getting-them-accustomed-to-people phase. I may start them both on a lunge line soon, see how that goes. That’s about it for Randy and me. Frankly, your last four days have been more exciting than ours.”

  “Routine’s not a bad thing.”

  “Funny comment, coming from you.”

  His lips twisted wryly. “I suppose it is.”

  She leaned forward abruptly. It caught him off guard and he didn’t know what to do. He was unbearably aware of her scent—apple shampoo and alfalfa, spring air and horses. Her face was clear tonight, no smudges of dust to mar her pale, perfect complexion. And her eyes bored into his, frank, honest, clear. That was the thing about Victoria. Her gaze was always direct, never coy, never manipulative, never sly.

  She stared him straight in the eye, and Brandon felt it like a one-two punch. He sucked in his belly, stopped breathing and thought she looked so beautiful and so pure and he was standing there covered with sixteen hours of mud and sweat.

  “I’m filthy,” he exclaimed without thinking.

  She laughed. “I like you tired and worn-out, Ferringer. It makes you blunt.”

  “I need to shower. I can’t figure out how to raise my arm to turn the damn thing on.”

  Her smile grew. “So maybe you need a little help?”

  “Maybe.” He was breathless, staring into her cornflower blue eyes.

  She moved slowly, each motion deliberate, her gaze never looking away. She lifted her arm—he saw her breasts, high, nicely rounded, shift and press closer. She reached above his shoulder—he felt the soft, worn cotton of her sweatshirt brush against his cheek. She leaned over—he wat
ched her lips approach, part slightly and moisten.

  She turned on the shower behind him, and fringes of spray dusted his hair. He stood there unmoving. This close, there was no denying it. The spark between them was real, deep, earnest. He was thinking back to that moment in her kitchen, that first night, when he’d almost kissed her simply because it seemed so right.

  And now her lips were parted, and once more he felt the pull.

  He wanted to hear his name on her lips: Ferringer. No one called him Ferringer, but he liked the way she said it, as if it were a challenge.

  “Why do we keep doing this?” she whispered.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Ferringer . . .” she whispered.

  He came undone.

  He yanked her against his body, hard. One moment for her to protest, then his lips were upon hers. Fierce. Raw. Yearning.

  Victoria dug her fingers into his scalp and held on for dear life. She was a big girl and she knew better, but at this minute she didn’t care. She’d been thinking about Brandon Ferringer for six long nights, staring at his cabin window, watching the light go out and imagining him stripping down to smooth, rippling bare skin and lean hard muscle. She’d been picturing him crawling between worn cotton sheets buck naked. She’d been contemplating the feel of those sheets sliding over his long, sinewy form and, Lord, she was tired of being sensible.

  He thrust his leg between hers, suckled on her lower lip, and she thought of singing hallelujah! and ripping the flannel from his back.

  His cheeks rasped against hers, roughened by twenty-four hours of beard and the great outdoors. His tongue snaked over her lips, delving boldly in the corner, then sneaking its way back up, until she groaned, parted her lips and angled her neck for more. He plunged in and consumed her.

  From far away, she heard someone moan. Then a soft sigh, a needy gasp. She was rubbing her pelvis shamelessly against his hard thigh, feeling his hands smooth over her lithe build. He palmed her bottom, and she bracketed his collarbone hard enough to welt his skin.

  It wasn’t enough. She should’ve realized that with this man, it would never be enough. His hands were rough, callused, bold. They would feel divine against her naked skin, squeezing her nipples, slipping between her thighs. Oh, Lord . . .