Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“You okay?” Lyndie stared down at Griffin.
He looked down at the food on the plate and his stomach turned. “As okay as I’ll get.” He had the most inexplicable urge to tug her back down next to him, slide his arms around her, and hold on as dawn continued its rise. Always, he’d loved a woman’s touch.
Until this last year, when he’d felt dead inside.
Now he was slowly coming back to life, thanks to Brody’s meddling, and also thanks to his body’s reaction to this woman. She was hot, sexy, smart, tough, independent…the whole package.
Truth was, he was slowly getting used to the idea of being alive when his friends weren’t, and painful as that felt, he couldn’t deny it. He looked into Lyndie’s eyes. Strong and sure and courageous as anyone he’d ever met, she wasn’t anything like anyone he’d ever been with.
And yet, right at this moment, it was Lyndie he wanted, with all his heart.
Her arm and thigh brushed his. Her hair, still damp and spiky in that cut that should have been too masculine but instead seemed so soft and feminine he wanted to sink his fingers into it.
The wanting became an ache, a physical ache…to touch her, kiss her, to have her touch him back, kiss him back…to obliterate anything else churning inside him.
She was so close he could see himself reflected in her green eyes. He could lean in if he wanted and rub his jaw to hers. He could put his mouth right on the corner of those strawberry-glossed lips and start in, nibbling to his heart’s content.
As if suddenly just a little nervous, she tossed the keys to the Jeep up and down in her hand. “You ready or what?”
Was he?
Loaded question if he’d ever heard one. Was he ready to be far, far away? Oh, yeah.
Was he ready to nibble off that distracting gloss? A double resounding oh, yeah. Ready to get in that Jeep and go to the fire? Hell, no.
But neither was he ready to admit it, so he set the plate aside and got to his feet, snatching the keys from her in midair as he did.
“Hey!”
With a little smile on his lips, he headed toward the Jeep, the ground crunching beneath his feet, pretending they didn’t feel like two leaden weights.
Already the day was warm moving toward hot, which wasn’t going to help them any.
He started the engine, revved it until Lyndie planted herself in the passenger seat.
She’d barely shut the door before he hit the gas.
He was sure she made a comment as her spine hit the back of the seat. He saw her lips moving, but the tires spinning kept him from hearing her.
No doubt, that was just as well.
She waited until they were out of the driveway and on the road. “So today you’re in a hurry. Interesting.”
“A hurry to get it over with. If you’d moved any slower getting in, I’d have left without you.”
A laugh choked out of her as she clicked in her seat belt. “Well, I suppose I’d feel the same way. Not sure I’d have admitted it to you though.”
“Yeah, you would have. You’re the most brutally honest person I’ve ever met.”
“Is that right?” She leaned back, made herself far more comfortable than he could have if he’d been the passenger. “Yeah, I guess I am. I’d definitely have told you what was freaking me out by now.”
“I’m not freaking out.”
“Uh-huh.” Completely relaxed, she stretched out, hair whipping in the wind. “Whatever you say, Ace.”
He decided he liked her quiet best. Real quiet. “I’m not freaking out,” he repeated.
“So you said.”
They drove in silence through the town, squinting through the smoke and falling ash, over rough cobblestone streets and past centuries-old architecture.
Griffin had checked the weather meticulously before he’d left the house, with Rosa helping translate the radio news.
The high today was going to be ninety, with forty percent humidity.
Not great—rain would be the only great thing in this situation—but it wasn’t so bad either.
Physically, he was as ready as he could be, which wasn’t saying much.
Mentally…he had no idea. And suddenly he did need to tell someone, to confide in what he’d faced last year, what he was still facing. And not just anyone, but Lyndie. He wanted her to know everything. “Lyndie.”
She had her right arm resting on the door as they began the climb above town, fingers tapping to some tune only she could hear. Her hair blew wildly around her face in the wind. She’d been watching the landscape go by, and when he said her name, her fingers stopped tapping.
“About that freaking-out thing…”
She turned her head to face him.
Shifting into a lower gear for the hill, Griffin concentrated on the road for a moment, which was lined on one side with a rock wall, the other a sheer drop-off back to town the hard way. “The last time I fought a fire…” He drew in a deep breath and kept driving. “It all went bad.”
Everything about her softened. “How bad?”
“Pretty damn bad. People got hurt. People…died—”
“Look out!” she cried, just as a coyote darted out in front of them, followed by another. “Don’t hit them!”
He hit the brakes, hoping like hell the coyotes moved in time because he wasn’t willing to die today.
They turned sideways and began a slide.
Teeth gritted tight, Griffin eyed the jutting rocks on their left, the sheer drop-off on their right. Some choice, but he’d take the jutting rocks over a fall off the cliff any day.
They spun toward the cliff.
Lyndie gripped the dash for all she was worth and remained utterly silent as the coyotes leapt toward the jutting rocks, vanishing out of sight.
The Jeep continued to slip toward a definite messy outcome.
“Griffin—”
Yeah, he knew, he saw. Desperately he worked the wheel, steering into the slide, letting off the brakes, and finally, finally, the Jeep responded to the gentler touch, swerving away from the drop-off, toward the rocks, before slowly righting itself.
Then they came to a dead stop, facing forward as if nothing had happened. Silence reigned. Slowly the dust settled; not a coyote in sight.
Griffin let out a long breath, then looked over at Lyndie. “That was fun.” When she didn’t say a word, just gripped the dashboard for all she was worth, he frowned. “You okay?”
“Dandy.”
He studied her frozen posture for a moment as his heart began to settle. “Because heaven forbid you admit something scared you, right?”
“Plenty of things scare me. Your driving, for one.”
“You’re the one who said not to hit them.”
“Well, you shouldn’t listen to me!”
He stared at her, then laughed. “You’re not going to admit to being ruffled, are you? How about if we’d gone over the cliff, would you have admitted it then?”
“Just because I maintain my cool, doesn’t mean I don’t ever get ruffled. I get ruffled. I get plenty ruffled.”
“Well, let me know when, because that I’d like to see.” He shoved the Jeep back into first gear and started again, slower now.
“Griffin—”
“Not now,” he said, scanning the road for more animal life as they moved over the first hill and into the burning landscape.
He knew what she wanted, to talk about the Idaho fire he’d started to tell her about.
“Apparently I can’t multitask. I’m incapable of driving and angsting at the same time.
” And he drove on. Right into the heart of this fire, the one place on earth he didn’t want to be.