Page 228 of Her Reluctant Hero
“Gabe,” Peyton chided, and he scowled, not needing her to remind him of his manners. She moved toward Doug again. “I’m sorry.” At first, Gabe thought she was apologizing for him and he spun around in fury. Then she said, “But do you have any water?”
“Yeah, yeah, of course.” Doug dug into his pack and presented two bottles, condensation dripping from them and making Gabe salivate at the thought of cool water. Doug held one to each of them. Gabe ignored the offering, so Peyton took them both. “Don’t drink too fast now,” Doug warned.
Peyton waved aside his warning, feeling like an old pro after her brush with death, though adrenaline still raced through her blood. And yeah, a little lust accompanied it. What would have happened if the smokejumper crew hadn’t shown up?
Gabe returned with one pack, his. “Yours is toasted. Sorry, Peyton.”
She shrugged like it didn’t matter, though a shudder ran through her. Danger had been imminent, but knowing her pack was gone when she’d dropped it only a few yards back turned her guts to ice.
“We cut it close, huh?” she said with a shaky laugh, wanting to collapse against him.
He turned his back on the jumpers and squeezed her arm. Something akin to tenderness was in his eyes when he said, “But we made it.”
They had, and the kiss celebrating their survival still had her quivering. She hadn’t kissed a man since Dan and she’d been ready to tear off her clothes in broad daylight for Gabe Cooper. The sex would have been incredible. She’d never felt so alive as she did after her brush with death.
Good Lord. She almost had to die before she understood why her husband had done what he did. The rush of beating death, of outwitting a force larger than herself was intense, almost sexual. To live through something like this once was incredible. To go to work every day knowing your life could be put on the line and you could beat it—yeah, it could be addictive. The realization stunned her, and humbled her, but didn’t dim the excitement still coursing through her.
She wondered how long the thrill would last.
Doug left his crew punching line around the slurry-dampened fire and the three of them headed through the healthy forest to the black. From there it was smooth sailing. They’d been so close, Peyton realized, and almost hadn’t made it.
Gabe again protested the need for Doug’s escort, but Doug insisted he had orders. Peyton sensed there was more going on. The tension between the two men was more stifling than the heat. She thought Doug might want to say something, but Gabe’s sullenness prevented him from doing so.
She glanced from Doug to Gabe. What was she missing here? A rivalry of some kind, but over what? A Hot Shot-smokejumper animosity? The two men seemed to know each other. Gabe was downright hostile, and she didn’t think it was because Doug had interrupted their kiss.
Gabe could almost see the questions hovering on her tongue. She was going to ask about him and Doug. He was actually impressed with her restraint so far as she hiked between the two of them. They’d cleared the trees and the view was open, sloping terrain leading down to the camp. Fire couldn’t creep up on them now. They’d see it coming.
Doug seemed to have something he wanted to say. Good Lord. It was like being on frickin’ Oprah. Not for the first time Gabe wished he was the hell alone. He walked ahead, leaving Peyton with Doug, hoping to discourage her curiosity, but kept his ear tuned to the conversation.
“So what’s going on here?” Peyton asked, and Gabe envisioned a bundle of dynamite having its fuse pulled in the nick of time. She’d been bursting with the question since she’d laid eyes on Doug.
“You know Jen?”
Gabe hadn’t expected Doug to be quite so forthcoming. He heard an understanding tone in Peyton’s response.
“The incident commander?”
“I’m married to her.”
“And—oh.”
Gabe slowed, let them catch up as anger boiled in him, as violent as the fire they’d just walked away from. “Maybe you’d like to tell her how you ended up married to her.”
“I don’t think...” She looked from one man to the other.
Hell, no. He wasn’t letting her off easy. She’d started this. He took a step toward her, and a small part of him was glad she didn’t step back. He didn’t want to pull any punches, and if she could stand up to him, more power to her. “You mean you don’t want to hear about how the three of us were always together? Best friends? How Doug was the best man at our wedding?” The questions rolled out of him, one after another, and he didn’t take his eyes from her face.
Peyton sucked in a breath and broke eye contact. Doug had stopped too.
“I was a smokejumper for a few years when I first came out here, before I got sick of jumping out of planes. The best of the best, Jen called them. She wanted me to leave the Hot Shots to go back to it, and when I wouldn’t, she turned to my best friend.” Saying it aloud for the first time threatened to choke him but he went on. “You don’t want to know that on our fourth wedding anniversary she told me she’d fallen in love with Doug and wanted a divorce?”
“Gabe, I—” She tried to stem the flow with an ineffective raised hand, but he waved it off. Her questions felt like a betrayal after their night on the mountain. Why had he expected anything different? Doug inspired betrayal.
“No, you wanted to know. You ask questions, that’s what you do.”
He had to walk away before his temper took an uglier turn. She reached out but he shook her off, putting distance between them again.
“And then he decided he’d show her. He went up with another crew and jumped one more time, damn near killed himself on the mountain,” Doug said. “Landed in a tree. He was in the hospital for three days.”
