Page 222 of Her Reluctant Hero
“I don’t think about it,” he repeated. “It’s bad luck.”
“But surely—you aren’t a kid. You can’t think of doing this forever,” she said, her tone disbelieving.
He spun on her. “Cut it out, Peyton. The minute a Hot Shot starts thinking about getting out, he gets hurt. So we don’t think about it. Period.”
“You’re kidding.” She tucked her thumbs in the straps of her pack and tilted her head, like she was studying some animal in a zoo. “You don’t seem the superstitious type.”
He couldn’t waste his energy on the anger swelling in his throat, so he cut it off like a burning snag. Not an easy job, but necessary. “I’m not. But why take the chance?”
“What are you scared of?” she pressed.
He snorted. “Not a damned thing.”
“Right. You can’t tell me you weren’t scared yesterday.”
“I can tell you all I want.” He headed down the mountain again.
“It just wouldn’t be honest.” She skidded after him. “Come on. I told you about my claustrophobia.”
He chuckled. “Like I hadn’t already figured it out.”
“Why do you love it so much? I mean, you come back year after year, right, so you have to love it.”
As long as he kept her talking, she wouldn’t think about being hot or tired or thirsty. And if he was going to be featured in a national magazine, a good sound bite wouldn’t hurt. Yeah, he was proud. Shoot him. “I like facing the dragon and kicking its ass.”
“The adrenaline,” she said with an ah-ha tone in her voice. “The ultimate man against nature.”
“Yeah, I guess. You walk right up to the fire and think, this is where we stand. Right here.” He held his hands out in front of him like a photographer framing his shot. “You aren’t going any farther because I’m going to stop you. You can’t walk up to a hurricane and say, screw you, you aren’t going to reach the coast. Or a tornado. But a fire, yeah, I can stop it. I know how and I’m good at it.” Suddenly embarrassed at revealing so much, he dropped his hands to his sides and moved on. “You aren’t writing this down.”
“I think I can remember,” she said. “Providing we get off this mountain.”
“Just think of this as an adventure.”
“Let’s hope the adventure part is over.”
He wouldn’t count on that.
Apparently she sensed his discomfort at his revelation because she took over the conversation. As they hiked on, she told him of her various experiences before she became a reporter. He couldn’t picture the woman beside him working as a bartender, a zookeeper. She’d even gone to EMT school. Now her decision to come fight fires made sense. She blew wherever the wind took her. It would carry her off again.
He envied her, in a way. While he’d stayed in one job and gained experience, she’d flitted from place to place and gained experiences. But she’d never be good at one thing. And Gabe liked being the best. He wouldn’t settle for less.
“So why all the different jobs?”
Surprisingly, she shrugged. “I haven’t found anything I was good at. Or liked enough to become good at.”
“You know, you learn how to be good at something by sticking to it.”
“That’s what I’ve heard,” she said lightly. “Nothing ever seemed worth it to me.”
Now that, he didn’t get. Why try something new if you didn’t want to learn from it? And why learn from it if you didn’t want to be good at it? “So when the going got tough—”
“I got going.” Her flip tone was gone, and she moved farther away from him.
“It’s not like you settled on an easy job. How long have you been a reporter?”
And a little farther away. “Almost three years.”
He arched a brow. “Not long to be a journalist before getting on at a national magazine.”
