Expectant Father

Then there was the fact that his father was working on this fire on another crew. Even though his dad had more than twenty years experience, the guy had no legs. You could see the pain on his face with each deliberate step he took. If things got ugly and his crew had to race to safety as Spider’s had, his dad wouldn’t make it. He didn’t know who had let the old man pass his physical last spring, but someone should make him retire.

“This situation isn’t hopeless, just pretty damn depressing,” Golden said with a shake of his head. “Let’s move.”

Hopeless? It didn’t matter that Spider couldn’t find a happy thought at the moment. Nothing was supposed to be that bad.

Spider forced a grin on his face. “Wait. I’ve got an idea.”

“COME ON, BABY,” Becca spoke under her breath. “Move your butt so I can feel my leg.” The baby had shifted and was resting on something that cut off the circulation in her right leg, which now felt as if it were sandbagged as she forced her way uphill.

Sometimes being pregnant was sucky, but it would all be worth it in the end.

Becca didn’t usually let anything slow her down or get in the way of her goals. A planner by nature, she was working toward a fire behavior management position at NIFC’s headquarters in Boise. She’d do just about anything NIFC wanted her to do to be given the job, because there was no way she could chase fires from one forest to another all summer long and raise this baby.

The Boise position meant giving up being in the trenches, crafting attack strategies to make firefighters’ lives safer, but it was a trade-off Becca was willing to make in order to have a child of her own. She’d focused too long on her career, letting the chance for romance, marriage and babies pass her by. To get the job, she had to appear tough and in control for just a few more weeks, in spite of her pregnancy, which slowed her down in ways she hadn’t expected.

The baby sure hadn’t shown any signs of wanting to slow down. It considered her bladder a trampoline and her rib cage a punching bag. Her baby was go-go-go, just like Aiden Rodas.

Becca groaned.

She did not want to think about Aiden—not his smile, not his enthusiasm, not his unique observations on life. He’d actually told her that nothing in life should be harder than checkers. He didn’t realize life required complicated planning.

“Do you want some dried fruit?” Julia asked, dangling a plastic bag filled with the snack toward her.

Becca took an apricot.

“Shouldn’t we have seen them by now?” Julia asked with a crinkle of plastic. She hadn’t wanted to leave base camp and hike out to meet the Silver Bend crew. Julia was a sweet thing until she left her comfort zone.

Ironically, the great out-of-doors seemed beyond Julia’s comfort zone. It was an aspect of Julia’s character that frustrated Becca, yet she felt her assistant would overcome it. After all, there was no way Julia could have assumed a Fire Behavior Analyst would work in a nice air-conditioned office, was there?

“Why don’t we rest here and take a reading?” Becca suggested, ignoring Julia’s question. She slung her lightweight backpack to the ground and dug around until she found her handheld weather meter, grateful to be distracted from thoughts of Aiden.

Ninety-two degrees. Sixty-five percent humidity. Wind speed five. That and the extra pregnancy pounds she carried explained the sheen of sweat covering Becca’s body. She recorded the results in her small notebook, balancing the sheets of paper on her belly, then tucked everything back in her pack.

She bent awkwardly to pick up a handful of spruce needles. “Look at how easily these snap.” She held the needles out to Julia, wanting her to experience the forest fuels firsthand, but Julia looked at the crushed needles as if Becca held a rattlesnake.

Trying not to frown, Becca continued to teach. “Too little rain this past year has left the forest dry and the floor covered in combustible fuels, making it a prime target for a lightning strike. What do you suppose it’s like farther up the mountain?”

“I’m not going to have to find out, am I?” Julia wiped at her eyes.

“Walking the woods brings the topography to life. The more you know of the terrain, the better your predictions.” Disappointed in Julia’s lack of interest, Becca shouldered her pack and continued up the trail. She was determined to find a way to wean Julia’s dependence on computers for fire prediction.

“What makes you think this fire is a sleeper?”

Atta girl. Curiosity led to growth in a job like theirs.

With a small smile, Becca glanced up at what little smoky skyline was visible through the trees. “First, the slopes on these ridges aren’t gradual or smooth. As wind speed picks up, it can really blow in some places and not at all in others.” She paused to catch her breath.

“And second?”

“For the most part, the westerly winds are working for us.” Filling her lungs with air, Becca continued up the slope. “But, I was talking to some of the local kitchen crew yesterday and they say that when the heat breaks at the end of summer it’s because the wind shifts to come from the north. There are a couple of valleys back here that open up onto the highway to the south. With the right northerly wind, there’d be no natural barriers in a fire’s way.”

“Locals?” Julia couldn’t disguise her disbelief. “You asked a local fry cook? You can’t be serious.”

Becca kept the impatience out of her voice because she remembered when she’d been young, immortal and perfect, too. “Locals are a great source of information. And these locals are Native Americans who’ve passed weather knowledge down through the generations.”

Julia tilted her head as she pondered that bit of knowledge, before falling back on what she knew. “Carl will let us know if the wind is about to shift, won’t he?”

“I hope so.” Carl had yet to prove himself worthy of Becca’s trust. Despite the heat, she shivered. Becca didn’t want to think about firefighters in the fire’s path if they didn’t have advance warning.

Julia was silent for a bit, lagging behind, and then she fell into step with Becca, rubbing at her nose. “What if Silver Bend took a shortcut? What if they’ve hitched a ride back to camp?”

Becca heaved a sigh of defeat. Maybe this aversion Julia had to the outdoors wasn’t going to be as easy to beat as she’d thought.

She was sure she’d run into the Silver Bend team on the trail, but just in case, she should have a backup plan. “Why don’t you go back? You can wait for them in Medical in case I’m wrong.”

Julia perked right up, and then had the grace to look embarrassed. “If you’re sure,” she added hesitantly, running a finger underneath one eye and glancing downhill. “I mean, you’ll be alone up here.”

“I’m used to it. You go on.”

“I’ll check the satellite feed and print out a fire update so you can review it when you get back,” Julia said with a wave.

Alone, Becca looked up at the trees towering against a sky blanketed with a thick layer of brownish-gray wood smoke, stroked her belly and took in the grandeur of the forest. Julia didn’t understand what she was missing.

A quarter of a mile later, Becca was puffing, limping and wishing she’d gone back with Julia. She stopped to take a reading.

Eighty-nine degrees. Seventy percent humidity. Wind speed ten. The fire wasn’t affecting the temperature and humidity as much this far from the front. The higher she went, the cooler and more humid the air.

Becca shaded her eyes and scanned as much of the ridge above her as she could see. Her stomach grumbled. Her leg still felt weird. Doubt taunted her tired body. Maybe she had missed the Hot Shots. Maybe she should give up. She glanced back, knowing her stubborn pride wouldn’t let her return just yet. Her mother used to say that pride would one day be Becca’s downfall. That might be true, but willpower and pride had certainly taken Becca far in a field dominated by men.

She started climbing again. It was slow going. The trail steepened and wove through a patch of boulders. She could walk between some and gingerly climb over others where they overlapped or nearly kissed.

Aiden had been a great kisser.

Becca walked faster, despite having to angle her belly this way and that to get through nature’s rock garden. She thought about the baby inside her. Aiden had done his job and they’d both moved on. She’d hardly spared him a thought all these months until she’d seen him on this fire.

Except she often dreamed about him at night.

She shook her head, trying to dispel those unsettling thoughts and concentrate on the task at hand.

A sound on the slope above drew her attention. With images of Aiden still lingering, Becca was startled by a vision of him running over the boulders ahead of her wearing boots and boxers, and carrying his backpack.

And then her foot slipped and her stomach churned with sickening certainty.

She was going to fall.

The baby…

She cocooned her belly with her arms. Her left elbow scraped across a tall boulder as she stumbled cockeyed, and her temple connected with a sickening thud on that same rock.

Becca landed with an air-stealing thump on the ground.

CHAPTER TWO

“WHOA! WHOA! EVERYBODY SLOW UP. Big Mama down.” Spider leaped across a couple of boulders just as a pregnant woman with a long blond braid stood on shaky legs.

“Take it easy, Big Mama.” Spider hopped to the ground next to her.

She took a step back, her blue eyes widening at the sight of him. Or maybe it was at the sound of thundering booted feet on rock as the rest of the Hot Shots approached.

“You’re bleeding.” Without sparing a glance at the crew, he yelled, “Doc, get down here!”

Blood spurted over the side of her face, but that didn’t seem to shake her. “Did you just call me big?”

“I don’t know,” Spider hedged. His grandmother would tan his hide if she’d heard him disrespect a woman like that. But the woman was big. And carrying…a baby.

She raised her eyebrows at Spider with the disbelieving expression of a school principal, challenging him to tell the truth.

Spider lasted another ten seconds before he crumbled. “Okay, I might have.”

She huffed. “Were you raised by wolves? Never call a pregnant woman big.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it.”

But she was on the offensive now. “Are you so blind that you can’t see a pregnant woman in front of you?”

Spider took a step back. “Hey, these boulders are ten feet tall. I couldn’t see a bear hiding down here.”

“I wasn’t hiding.” She crossed her arms over her large—really large—stomach, which only plumped up her prime-size breasts. “A gentleman wouldn’t knock someone over, call them names and then accuse them of hiding.”

“I never said you were hiding.” Spider kept backpedaling. Pregnant women, as a rule, made him nervous. Sex was supposed to be fun, not result in…in…that. “I’m just trying to make sure you’re okay. Doc!” he yelled again. Sheesh, where were your friends when you needed them?

“I’m fine.”

Dang, she was stubborn. He stared into her ice-blue eyes and almost believed her despite the blood trail on half her face. She wasn’t kidding. She thought she was fine.

He took a finger and ran it over her plump cheek, turning his bloodstained finger in her direction. “That would seem to indicate otherwise.”

Cool as you please, she lifted a hand toward her forehead. He caught her wrist before she could touch the wound.

“Aw-aw-aw. You might have germs on those fingers. Let’s have a medic look at it.” He craned his neck around, reluctantly taking his eyes off her. Most of the guys were standing up on the boulder in their Skivvies, looking down on them with concern. Some were yanking off their boots and pulling on their pants. Arms crossed, Victoria stood apart from the rest in full field gear. She didn’t understand that making a game of racing down to the base-camp showers would ease the tension from the crappy day they’d had.

Doc landed on the ground next to Spider with his pants on. Spider suddenly felt a bit underdressed. Air-conditioned, but definitely underdressed.

Lifting her blond bangs out of the way, Doc examined the cut on the pregnant woman’s temple. “It’s already slowing down on the leakage department, but you’re going to need a stitch or two.”

Blond Mama frowned. At Spider. As if it were his fault.

“I don’t know why you were out here hiking in your condition.” He was compelled to say it, although normally, he’d be a little kinder to a damsel in distress, especially one with a bun in the oven. Yet, there was something about this woman that wouldn’t let him be her hero. “There’s a wildfire raging up there.” Spider pointed behind him. “And it’s not safe for anyone, especially a woman as pregnant as you, to be out here.”

She glared at him in a way that made him wonder how she’d ever gotten pregnant in the first place. He could almost imagine her saying “Oh, you are so dead when I get you alone.”

Really. It was as if he could hear that smooth voice filled with playful disdain, as if he’d heard her say those words before or something like them, although he heard a more loaded, sexy undertone in his head.

Sexy? The Ice Mama?

Ignoring her back-off stare, Spider leaned closer and peered at her in the hopes that he’d figure out who she was. She was almost as tall as Spider, and full of chutzpah, not backing down from his scrutiny. They would have gone on staring at each other all day if Doc hadn’t elbowed him aside.

“Give me some space to work, man,” Doc mumbled as he swabbed her wound with an antiseptic wipe and then applied a butterfly bandage.

She drummed her fingers on the huge rise of her belly. She had long, dexterous fingers. Something in Spider’s memory hiccuped. He knew this woman. “Don’t I—”

“No,” she cut him off emphatically, as if reading his mind.

“Isn’t that the Fire Behavior Analyst?” someone asked from the boulder above them.

Spider looked at her again. In her khaki shorts, white T-shirt and sturdy boots, she looked like your average hiker, except for the baby in her belly. He hadn’t noticed she was pregnant, but he’d only been to one base-camp briefing and he’d been at the back of the throng of teams.

Had he seen her somewhere else? He would have remembered talking to a pregnant woman, right?

Well, not usually.

But there was something naggingly familiar about this one.

IT WAS HIM.

Black hair and intense black eyes. All five foot ten inches of sculpted, sexy man.

Not only was it him, but Aiden Rodas had looked her in the eye as if she were some irresponsible, idiotic woman who had caused her own accident. He had filled her nights with pleasurable memories that came pressing back on her now, heating her from the inside out. And he…

Didn’t even recognize her.

While the man they called Doc applied a bandage to her temple, Becca’s foolish pride steamed. Aiden didn’t recognize her. Had he really been that drunk when they’d met? She hadn’t thought so. She should be grateful he didn’t recognize her. It made everything that much easier.

Still, Becca didn’t want to be just another notch on his bedpost.

The baby kicked her belly in Aiden’s direction, a proverbial wave to garner his attention. Becca ran a hand over her tummy, trying to satisfy the urge to shush her little one. There were plenty of reasons why Aiden didn’t need to know of his role in creating this child. But she wouldn’t waste any more time on Aidan. She’d found the Silver Bend Hot Shots and now had the ideal opportunity to figure out what had happened up there on the mountain.

Becca managed to collect herself enough to get down to business. “I hear you saw some excitement today.”

“Man, did we ever,” Doc chuckled. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“And I’d prefer not to see anything like it again,” someone on the boulders above clarified, and received many jibes for their honesty.

Ignoring her wound, her twinging leg and heavy belly, Becca couldn’t contain her curiosity about the runaway fire. “I’d love to hear about it.”

“Is this our debrief?” Aiden asked, a suspicious expression clouding his face. He’d put on the forest-green pants and yellow shirt that was the Hot Shot uniform.

“No,” Becca protested, holding out her scraped elbow to be swabbed with an antiseptic wipe by Doc, unable to keep from making a face when his ministrations stung. “We just happened to bump into each other—”

“Stumbled upon is more like it,” Aiden mumbled, still eyeing her as if she were the enemy.

“—and I’m just naturally curious.”

Aiden wasn’t buying it. He frowned at her before turning away, climbing to the top of the boulder and disappearing on the other side.

“All done here and ready to move.” Doc snapped his first-aid kit shut.

With a sigh of relief, Becca thanked Doc and followed him with ginger steps down the trail, asking about the fire just as carefully. She didn’t see Aiden, but felt his disapproving presence somewhere behind her.

“DO YOU BELIEVE HER?” Spider asked Chainsaw from the back of the single-file line of Hot Shots wending their way the last mile into camp. Ahead of them, he occasionally caught a glimpse of golden hair and a swinging braid through the trees. The two men were lagging behind mostly because Spider was dragging his feet.

“No, as pregnant as she is, I can’t believe she hiked up here. She’s like Super Pregnant Woman or something,” Chainsaw observed.

“That’s not what I meant,” Spider snapped. “She came up here just to interview us personally, before anyone else could.”

“You are so paranoid,” Chainsaw chuckled. “The Fire Behavior team hikes all over the place. They also go on the helicopter and airplane flybys with Incident Command.”

“And it just so happens that we meet her on the trail coming down from nearly getting burned over?” Spider wasn’t buying it.

“Crazier things have happened,” Chainsaw said.

“The trouble with you is, you’re too trusting,” Spider complained. “I bet she missed something in her analysis and she’s trying to cover for it. I think I’ve seen her somewhere before, too.”

“The trouble with you is, you’ve seen too many bad conspiracy movies and now you can’t trust anyone. Come on, she was probably just doing her job. Get over it.”

“You’re a pushover.”

“And you’re jaded beyond belief.”

Despite himself, Spider grinned. He was jaded and suspicious by nature, a product of a father who’d made too many empty promises. His grin faded. He’d met the Fire Behavior Analyst before. Sooner or later, he’d figure out where and when. Until then, he wasn’t trusting her as far as he could throw her…so to speak.

“SO YOU HAD NO WARNING? No wind kicked up?” Carl was trying to probe the crew into saying weather had nothing to do with the dangerous situation they’d found themselves in.

Half of the Silver Bend Hot Shots were crowded into the Medical tent. The other half had already been questioned, examined, observed by a stress counselor and released to the chow line. Becca had been smart to meet the team up on the mountain. The mood in the tent was more like that of an interrogation than a debrief, thanks mostly to Carl.

“We noticed the wind about the time we noticed the flames were riled up,” the broad man they called Chainsaw answered. The rest of the firefighters had grown silent the more Carl questioned them.

“So the wind did blow.” Carl nodded, scribbling something onto his notepad. “And then what happened?”

“We ran like hell was on our heels.” Aiden stood with his arms crossed, only giving Carl half his attention. The other half kept lasering over to Becca.

“And what do you mean by that?” Carl was persistent. Getting on everyone’s nerves, but persistent.

Aiden pushed up his shirt sleeves with sharp movements. “I mean we had no time to stop and take a reading of the wind speed. It was as if someone flipped the toaster switch to on, and we were the toast.”

“You’ll need to head into town for a sonogram and an X ray,” Maxine, the paramedic on duty said softly, staring at Becca over the rim of her bifocals.

Becca avoided acknowledging the ache in her head, avoided looking at Aiden. The way he kept staring at her had her jumpy enough to want to disappear. Her gaze fell upon a woman in Aiden’s Hot Shot crew who had bright red hair and burns on her wrists.

“I fell on my butt, Maxine, not my belly. The only thing bruised is my behind. I’ll pass on the hospital,” Becca whispered back, because other than her head, she did feel fine. That’s all she needed was a trip to the hospital during a fire. She’d be branded as weak and ineffective quicker than she could refresh her parched lips with Chapstick.

Near enough to hear their discussion, the female Hot Shot smiled as if in approval of Becca’s decision. Becca smiled back. The two women shared something unique—both operated in a man’s world where any reminder that they were the weaker sex was unwelcome.

“What about your head?” Maxine snapped off her gloves and put her hands on her hips, no longer quiet now.

It hurt, but Becca would never admit it, or the way her stomach was starting to rumble with hunger.

“It’ll take more than a bonk on a boulder to send me to the hospital in the middle of a fire.” Becca slid off the examining table—almost gracefully—and with a nod in the female Hot Shot’s direction, made to leave. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to work. The evening briefing is in about ninety minutes.”

“I’ll need to run this by Sirus,” Maxine warned, clearly not approving.

“Of course.” Becca understood about liability and, if ordered by the Incident Commander, she’d go to the doctor.

But until then, it was business as usual.

“I’m off as well,” the Hot Shot with the burns on her wrists announced.

“Not much I can do for you anyway. Doc did a good job on your bandages.” Maxine patted Doc on the back as she went to greet a man limping into the tent. “Make sure you wear those gloves properly in the future.”

With a brief thank you to Doc for cleaning her up on the mountainside, Becca was out of there, somehow managing to exit the tent without having to look at Aiden again. Her head pounded, her back ached and her ankles were swollen. She’d gotten much more out of the Hot Shots as they’d escorted her back to camp than Carl was getting from them now. The airflow had come from above them, although some had felt light breezes from the direction of the creek. Almost without warning, the winds had come from over the mountain, driving the fire down on top of them like one big blanket of flame.

Becca shivered, despite the oppressive mountain heat. They’d been lucky to have Jackson Garrett as their leader. The Hot Shots nicknamed him Golden because of his knack for reading fire situations before they became deadly. According to Golden, he’d felt the pressure change and the winds stir around him, and watched the flames leap up then retreat in an area above them. He’d given the order to pull back just as the fire had roared to life at their backs.

Becca saw some of the Incident Command team grouping down by the chow line. She’d still have time to check the weather satellite one more time and start a draft of her report on what had happened to Silver Bend before the briefing.

“Excuse me.”

Becca’s shoulders tensed. There was still plenty to do and by now the rest of Incident Command would have heard of her accident, so she had to prove that the pregnant Fire Behavior Analyst was as tough as any man. A bump on her noggin? Wouldn’t slow Becca down. But the interruption came from someone she couldn’t easily ignore.

Becca turned around to see what the female Hot Shot wanted.

“What you did back there in Medical was…great. You made taking control look so simple.” The Hot Shot shifted her feet and jiggled her fire helmet with one hand as if she were nervous. “My name is Victoria… The Queen.” Self-consciously, she touched her red hair. “Would you like to have some dinner? I could use the company.”