Wildfire. Sandra Field
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represented. He had been accepted. He was now one of the crew. ‘Thanks,’ he said, nodding at Steve.
The beer slid down his throat, loosening the tension in his muscles. Joe started telling a very funny story about a fire-fighter and a porcupine, then Steve described a moose in rutting season who had kept him in the branches of a pine tree for over eight hours. Simon, feeling he had to keep his end up, told them about a bad-tempered stag he had come across when he was sketching in the Scottish highlands, and finished his beer. Declining Charlie’s offer of a second, he asked if anyone wanted a drive back to the base. ‘We’re gonna finish up the beer before we head back,’ Joe said. ‘Brad don’t like us to drink in the bunkhouse. See you later, Simon.’
There was a chorus of grunts and goodbyes. Feeling as though he had won a major victory, Simon got in the truck and drove away from the lake. His headlights bounced on the ruts and potholes; the only other light came from the dull red glow of the fire on the horizon, and the far-away glitter of the stars. The trees that crowded to the ditch were blacker than the sky, he thought absently, easing the truck over a ridge of dirt baked hard as stone, and enjoying the cool air on his bare chest. He’d left his shirt and towel behind, he realised ruefully. Maybe Everett would bring them back for him. Then again, maybe he wouldn’t.
His foot suddenly found the brakes, his eyes peering through the dusty windscreen into the woods. He’d seen a flicker of white move through the trees, he’d swear he had.
It must have been a deer. They had white tails.
But the brief image Simon had glimpsed from the corner of his eye did not fit that of a deer. He let the truck jounce down the hill and round the next corner, and then came to a halt and turned off the engine. After opening the door very quietly, he slid to the ground, and pushed it shut without letting the catch click. Keeping to the grass verge, letting his eyes adjust to the dark, he rounded the corner and began creeping back up the hill the way he had come.
His trainers rustled in the grass. A bough brushed his shoulder, and a mosquito whined in his ear. The stars were dazzlingly bright. Maybe he’d imagined that flicker of movement, he thought. The fight with Everett had got his adrenalin going and his imagination had done the rest.
He stopped in the shadow of a fir tree, inhaling the tang of its resin, his fingers brushing the living green of its needles. He had seen too many dead trees the last few days, smelled too much smoke...
To his left a branch cracked and footsteps came towards him through the trees. Footsteps that were making no effort at concealment.
All the hairs rose on his neck. He stood still as a statue, scarcely breathing, and saw a slim figure emerge from the trees. It scrambled down the ditch, up the other side, and on to the road.
‘Hello, Shea,’ he said.
She gave a shriek of terror and whirled to face him. She was wearing a white shirt, a small haversack slung over one shoulder.
Quickly Simon stepped out on the road. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I didn’t mean to scare you. I saw you from the truck—or at least I saw something, I didn’t know it was you.’
‘Do you always creep up on people like that?’ she said shakily.
He came closer to her. Her eyes were wide-held and the pulse was racing at the base of her throat. ‘You were hiding in the woods,’ he said. ‘Why?’
‘No, I wasn’t!’
‘Come on, Shea.’
She swallowed, and tried again. ‘OK, so I was. I wanted to walk back to the base, that’s all. By myself.’
‘You were swimming?’ Simon asked, thinking furiously.
‘Yes. Steve gave me a ride up to the far end of the lake, but I told him I’d find my own way home.’ She looked straight at him, her eyes black like the sky. ‘I really want to be alone, Simon...it’s only a ten-minute walk.’
He said quietly, ‘You overheard Everett.’
‘No!’ She caught herself, but not quickly enough. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Are you angry with me because I interfered?’
Her eyes dropped from his face to his chest, with its tangle of dark hair over muscles hard as boards, then skidded upwards again. ‘Don’t you have a shirt?’ she said fretfully.
‘I couldn’t hold my towel, my shirt and Everett all at once,’ he said. ‘And in the excitement of the moment I left the shirt back there on the bank. Don’t change the subject.’
She shoved her hands in the pockets of her jeans, hunching her shoulders and staring past him into the dark woods. ‘Yes, I heard him.’
‘He’d had a couple of beers too many, Shea.’
‘So is that supposed to excuse him?’ she retorted.
‘Nothing excuses what he said.’
In such a low voice that he had to strain to hear her, she said, ‘He made me feel dirty all over.’
She looked heart-stoppingly vulnerable, a side of her he had never seen before. As gently as if she were a fawn he might startle with his touch, he slid his hands down her arms, cupped her elbows in his palms, and discovered that she was shivering. ‘You’re cold,’ he said, concern for her overriding the urgent need to pull her in his arms and hold her. ‘Let’s go to the truck. I’m pretty sure Jim left his jacket on the seat.’
She was now staring at his chin, and he was not sure she had even heard him. ‘I love my job!’ she burst out. ‘I already told you that—I can’t imagine doing anything else. But do you have any idea how hard it is to be the only woman in a world of men—day after day, night after night? I’m the only female pilot in the province. And you saw how many women there are in the ground crew—none. I get so sick of men sometimes!’
‘Sick of men like Everett. Joe and Brad and Steve—they wouldn’t lay a finger on you.’
‘I know that, of course I do.’ She bent her head. ‘Everett stood next to me at breakfast this morning—he looked at me as though he was undressing me; it was horrible.’
She suddenly pulled away from him, scrubbing at her eyes with her fists. ‘I loathe weepy women,’ she gulped.
‘Oh, hell,’ Simon said violently. Forgetting restraint, he took her by the shoulders, drew her to his chest and held her, rocking her back and forth. ‘I’m sorry you overheard Everett, Shea, and I swear he’ll never look at you again like that. Not if I’m anywhere in range.’
‘You did sound fairly convincing,’ she muttered.
He could feel the tiny warm puffs of her breath on his skin. Fighting to keep his head, aware through every nerve in his body how beautifully she fitted into his arms, he said, ‘And I’m more than sorry about that stupid mistake I made at the helicopter the first time I met you.’
She raised her head, looking full at him, and suddenly smiled, her mouth a generous curve. ‘I think you redeemed yourself tonight—thanks.’
His breath caught in his throat. She had smiled at him, and he wanted to kiss her so badly, he ached with the need. He said huskily, ‘You’re beautiful when you smile, Shea—it was worth waiting for.’
Her palms were resting flat on his chest, the imprint of each of her fingers burning into his skin. Her smile faded, and she suddenly pushed back from him. ‘This is crazy,’ she said breathlessly; ‘I don’t even like you!’
It was as if she had taken a knife and thrust it in his belly. His lashes flickered. She added incoherently, ‘Don’t look like that, Simon! I—’
He didn’t want her to know that she had hurt him. That he was vulnerable to a woman he scarcely knew. A woman, moreover, who could not by any stretch of the imagination be accused of leading him on. ‘Come on, I’ll drive you back to the base,’ he said,