The Eleventh Hour. Wendy Etherington
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Bad boy Steve had reformed? Settled down? Good grief.
“Did you get married?” she asked, still stunned enough to wonder what else she’d missed.
“No.”
“Have any kids?”
Leaning toward her, he grinned. “No. Are you volunteering?”
That brought back painful memories. When she’d been young and wide-eyed. When she’d thought she and Steve would get married someday, have a family together. Instead, he’d asked her to move in and made it clear he planned to be a smoke jumper until he was old and gray.
Going back there wouldn’t help, and she really didn’t want to go several rounds with him over the past. “But you are here working on the fires.”
“My old team called me when Tommy died. They asked me to fill in.”
He’d probably left home with skid marks. Settled down? No way. “And it’s great to be back.”
He drank his beer. “Oh, yeah.”
See, nothing had changed, her heart reminded her.
And even though her libido protested, she told herself that was a good thing. She didn’t want to want Steve. She had a job to do. A paycheck to maintain. An aunt to battle.
Still, she couldn’t deny how good it felt to sit next to him again. His wild, mischievous smile and confidence had thrown her for a loop from the beginning, but she’d soon learned there was much more beneath his beautiful face and body. He spoke three languages, had spent several years abroad, had a love of art and culture—and never passed up the opportunity to help little old ladies cross the street.
On top of her conflicting feelings, she was baffled by him flirting with her. Did he really want to pick up where they’d left off?
No way. Not a good idea. Her heart had taken too severe a beating the first time around.
“So you’re just back for the fire?”
“Yeah. My life is in Georgia now.”
“I thought your hometown was pretty small.”
“It is.”
“Not much action for an adventurous guy like yourself.”
“We get our share. Had a serial arsonist running loose last fall. That was pretty exciting.”
Action aplenty, even in rural Georgia. She’d been through wild, dangerous and adventurous with him before and hadn’t enjoyed the results. Now she needed those qualities in him for her assignment. How ironic was that?
“How about dinner tomorrow?” he asked suddenly, leaning close to her.
“Uh…no.”
“No?”
“Look, I’m sure we’ll run into each other over the next few days,” she said, leaning back. “And I’m sorry I kidded you with the fan-club crack earlier, but you have plenty of women lining up, so—”
“There’s no line.”
“Oh, they’ll come. Probably the ones at that table in the back that were glaring at me a few minutes ago.”
“Laine, nobody’s glaring at—”
“Hi, Steve.”
A curvy redhead stood next to him, her hand on her hip, her impressive chest thrown out.
Laine smirked at him before he turned to the other woman.
“Hi, Darla. Laine, do you know Darla?”
“No.” Laine waved and smiled. After all, her point had been made. “Hi.”
Darla smiled weakly in return, then focused on Steve. “Wasn’t dinner great the other night?”
“Yeah. Thanks for going to all that trouble. The guys on the team really appreciate the effort everyone in town has made for us.”
Steve’s neck had turned red. He looked uncomfortable at sharing a drink with one woman while talking to another.
Darla finally drifted away, and Steve turned back to her. “Sorry about that. She and some friends made dinner for our jump team a few nights ago and—”
“Hi, Steve.”
Laine bit her lip to keep from laughing.
This time the woman was a striking brunette with a sultry voice and, again, some impressive curves.
“Hi, Vivian. Do you know Laine?”
Vivian didn’t bother to do more than raise her eyebrows at Laine’s wave.
“We missed you Friday night,” she said to Steve.
“I was exhausted.”
Laine propped her chin on her fist and noticed a petite redhead waving at her from across the bar. Denise?
She had met fun, impulsive Denise the summer she’d lived in Fairfax. Her family lived next door to Aunt Jen. She and Denise had been together the night she’d met Steve in a Redding bar, had become great friends and stayed in touch ever since. Denise had come home to help her parents in case they needed to evacuate and, the night Laine arrived, caught her up on all the gossip over drinks.
She was the perfect escape from Steve.
“Excuse me,” Laine said. “I see somebody I need to speak to. Why don’t you two catch up.”
Steve stood, and Vivian’s eyes lit like sparklers. Clearly, she thought she’d scared Laine off.
As Laine’s feet hit the floor, Steve wrapped his hand around her wrist. “You’re coming back, right?”
Laine resisted the urge to fan herself at the intense, questioning look in his eyes. The man did know how to push her buttons. “I should go. I have to get up early…”
Steve scooped her camera bag off the floor and laid it on her empty stool. “I’ll just hang on to this till you get back.”
Holding her camera hostage? That was a new one. She really didn’t understand his insistence, especially with the likes of Vivian about, but she did want to talk to him about some shots of him and his jump team. Which she would do—briefly—before calling it a night.
“I’ll be back,” she said finally.
Vivian scowled. Steve smiled.
Crossing the bar, she stopped next to Denise, who hugged her tight. “I see the subject research is going well. Nobody else I’d rather see pictures of than Steve Kimball. Any chance of catching him naked?”
“No.”
Her eyes twinkled. “Please?”
Laine was having a hard time resisting the man’s charm when he was clothed. No way was she picturing him naked. “Definitely not. There’s nothing between us anymore.”
She frowned, her dark blue eyes narrowing. “Not even a spark?”
“Mmm…well, I wouldn’t say that. Did you know he’d moved?” She brought Denise up to date on Steve’s switch to hometown guy, who fought fires started by arsonists, rather than jumping from planes on a daily basis.
“All that danger and excitement sounds fun to me.”
“Not when you’re the one left at home wondering if you’ll ever see him again.”
“Good point.” She angled her head, her bright red curls brushing her cheek. “I hadn’t heard he left Fairfax, but then I’d left for graduate school, and I didn’t ask a lot of questions about him after you guys broke up.” She glanced across the bar at the man in question. “He certainly hasn’t lost his touch.”
Laine