Page 220 of Her Reluctant Hero
She picked up her pace till she was in front of him and could look back up at him. He swerved to go around her, but if he thought that would deter her, he had another think coming. “Come on, Cooper, what you do is amazing. People are fascinated by it.”
“I thought your story was about the job.”
“The job, and the people who do it.” She skidded, bumped her butt against the side of the mountain, but was on her feet again before he could turn to help her. “Will you just tell me if you’re a full-time Forest Service employee?”
“You’ll just keep asking questions.”
“That’s my job.” But she fought back a smile. How she had missed this since Dan died, the quick-witted exchanges, the low sexual hum beneath. She’d just have to watch out that she kept Gabe in focus and didn’t overlap Dan’s face over his in her article.
He took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders. “Nah. I don’t work for the Forest Service year round.”
“No?” There was a surprise, part that he answered, and part at the answer. “What do you do?”
“I’m an EMT.”
That only surprised her a little. Another high-risk, intense job. While she couldn’t imagine him sitting behind a desk during the winter, or flipping burgers, she couldn’t imagine him working in a one-on-one situation with real live people. He kept so much to himself. “That’s convenient to have those skills on this job. Where?”
“Albuquerque.”
A country apart from her home in Chicago. Not that it mattered. “So why don’t you work for the Forest Service all year? You’ve been a Hot Shot for a lot of years, right?”
He continued forward, eyes ahead. “Yeah. I’m not much for the indoors and I hate the Park Ranger hats, so I go home to Albuquerque.”
“And come back to the mountains every summer.” “Yep.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m good at it.”
A slice of familiar envy went through her, but she battled it. “Are you good at being an EMT?”
“Yep.”
Like he was going to shock her by being modest. “Is there anything you aren’t good at?”
He looked at her then. “Conversation.”
She laughed as he passed her on his way down the mountain.
*****
Gabe had always depended on his instincts. They’d never failed him. A good thing in his line of work but a bad thing now. He was leading Peyton into danger and he wasn’t sure how to avoid it.
They’d left the black a few miles back, in favor of easier terrain, gently sloping, grassy, with young trees. The barren black challenged them, without shade, with so much ash in the air and no water to wash it from their throats. He’d fooled himself into complacency with the knowledge that the fire burned past them last night, but now he regretted his decision.
Behind him, she was uneasy and the distraction made him irritable. Okay, he’d be honest and admit it wasn’t her uneasiness distracting him. It wasn’t that she was a reporter.
It was that she was a woman.
He’d gotten through the previous day by thinking of her as just another one of his crew, like Mike or Howard. That had mostly worked.
But in the tent last night, he’d been glad as hell she wasn’t one of the men. She’d been so soft against him once she relaxed, so female. And when he’d awakened to find his mouth pressed against the skin of her throat and her bottom cradled against his erection, well, any thoughts of her as one of the guys was gone for good.
The last time he’d let thoughts of a woman distract him on the fire line, he’d ended up in the hospital for three days. He didn’t want to land there again.
So he had to remind himself what he didn’t like about her and quit wondering what she looked like under all those clothes. Especially when he’d woken up with a hard-on pressed against her gorgeous butt.
He wasn’t lying; he stank at conversation, which was why he lived alone. But he wanted to keep Peyton’s mind off the lack of water and the long hike back.
