Firestorm Read online

  Synopsis

  Firefighter paramedic Mallory “Ice” James commands a crew of smokejumpers—twenty women and men who eat together, sleep together, and parachute into the face of raging forest fires together—and she has thirty days to whip the rookies into shape. Discipline and teamwork mean the difference between life and death on the line, and she’s earned her reputation as cool and controlled in the face of danger. Mallory isn’t happy when “Hotshot” Jac Russo shows up unannounced for boot camp along with a reputation for being trouble. Jac is none too pleased about her cold reception, even if the new boss is drop-dead gorgeous and hotter than the blazes they’re supposed to be dousing. Mallory and Jac may not like each other much, but lust isn’t something either can control—and they soon discover ice burns as fiercely as flame.

  A First Responders Novel

  Firestorm

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  eBooks from Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  eBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.

  Please respect the rights of the author and do not file share.

  By Radclyffe

  Romances

  Innocent Hearts

  Promising Hearts

  Love’s Melody Lost

  Love’s Tender Warriors

  Tomorrow’s Promise

  Love’s Masquerade

  shadowland

  Passion’s Bright Fury

  Fated Love

  Turn Back Time

  When Dreams Tremble

  The Lonely Hearts Club

  Night Call

  Secrets in the Stone

  Desire by Starlight

  Honor Series

  Above All, Honor

  Honor Bound

  Love & Honor

  Honor Guards

  Honor Reclaimed

  Honor Under Siege

  Word of Honor

  Justice Series

  A Matter of Trust (prequel)

  Shield of Justice

  In Pursuit of Justice

  Justice in the Shadows

  Justice Served

  Justice For All

  The Provincetown Tales

  Safe Harbor

  Beyond the Breakwater

  Distant Shores, Silent Thunder

  Storms of Change

  Winds of Fortune

  Returning Tides

  First Responders Novels

  Trauma Alert

  Firestorm

  Short Fiction

  Collected Stories by Radclyffe

  Erotic Interludes: Change of Pace

  Radical Encounters

  Edited by Radclyffe

  Best Lesbian Romance 2009-2011

  Stacia Seaman and Radclyffe, eds.

  Erotic Interludes 2: Stolen Moments

  Erotic Interludes 3: Lessons in Love

  Erotic Interludes 4: Extreme Passions

  Erotic Interludes 5: Road Games

  Romantic Interludes 1: Discovery

  Romantic Interludes 2: Secrets

  Breathless: Tales of Celebration

  By L.L. Raand

  Midnight Hunters

  The Midnight Hunt

  Blood Hunt

  Firestorm

  © 2011 By Radclyffe. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-527-7

  This Electronic Book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.,

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, New York 12185

  First Edition: July 2011

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editors: Ruth Sternglantz and Stacia Seaman

  Production Design: Stacia Seaman

  Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])

  Acknowledgments

  This book is dedicated to the men and women who risk their lives to keep our homes, our land, and our wildlife safe. The wilderness that remains preserves the free spirit of us all.

  Someone recently asked why I decided to write a series about first responders. Heroes come in many forms, from those who fight on the home front to raise and protect our families to those on the front lines who do battle for our freedom. I’ve always been fascinated by individuals who give of themselves for the benefit of others, whether they are medical professionals, law enforcement agents, soldiers, search and rescue workers, firefighters, or all the others who protect our waters, our shores, our wilderness, and our lives. The dedication to duty and the cost to the individual are common themes in my work and this series seemed a natural extension of that exploration. In addition, it’s just fun to write high-impact, adventurous, exciting stories that also create a perfect backdrop for romance. While the books in the First Responder Series are not connected by character arcs, they are connected by theme, and the possibilities are limitless. As always, my deep appreciation to the readers who take the journey with me.

  A special thanks to my incomparable Admin, Sandy Lowe, who understands me and my work, and whose diligent research has infused authenticity into this story. All the errors, omissions, and inaccuracies belong solely to me. Also my thanks go to editors extraordinaire, Ruth Sternglantz and Stacia Seaman; to first readers Connie, Eva, Jenny, Paula, and Tina for suggestions and support; to Nell Stark for her discerning comments from an author’s viewpoint; to Sheri, who knows what I want in a cover before I do; and to Cindy, who gets the work out month after month; and never last—to all the readers who stand by me.

  And always, gratitude to my own personal tour guide and fellow adventurer in life, Lee. Amo te.

  To Lee, every day is an adventure

  Chapter One

  Mallory rolled out of the rack at 0445—a good half hour before anyone else was likely to be up. She wanted to beat the guys who slept in the barracks across the yard to the showers before hot water became a premium. Then a nice quiet, solitary breakfast. Fifteen minutes of privacy was worth a lot when she’d be spending the next four weeks with them twenty-four/seven. Assuming all four rookies made the cut. Odds were they would—she’d handpicked them over the winter, combing through the applications for just the right fit. When you lived with a person for six months and put your life in their hands every day, fit mattered. They were all experienced wildland firefighters, each had a critical secondary skill, and she’d gotten good personal references. Still, things could change in the off-season. One broke his leg skiing over the winter, and she’d been lucky to get a qualified last-minute replacement. Another had suddenly transferred to a station closer to his home just the week before, so she was still a man down to start.

  She always hoped the new guys would make the grade. Usually, rookies flunked out of basic training because of poor conditioning. They all thought they were in great shape coming in—but one or two always discovered differently after a few days of lugging an eighty-five-pound pack over dense mountain terrain. She’d find out soon enough. Boot camp started at 0600.

  The loft was chilly verging on frigid, and she quickly pulled on jeans and shrugged into a heavy sweatshirt with a United States Forest Service emblem on the chest over the thermals she’d worn to bed. Unlike the seasonal guys, she was a year-round forest ranger, wildland firefighter, and smokejumper. Most of the year, this station was her home. Impatiently she freed the thick waves caught in the hood at the base of her neck. Damn it, she needed a haircut, and when was she supposed to find time to do that? Not that her appearance was going to matter to
anyone, but she hated when her hair got in her way when she was working, and it was getting too long to pull back in the short ponytail she usually wore. Something else to put on her endless to-do list.

  Grabbing her shower gear, she headed for the ladder at the far end of her sleeping loft over the hangar deck that housed the twin-engine C-23 Sherpa jump ship. The minute she climbed down, the colder air in the cavernous space practically frosted her lungs. Probably in the thirties outside. The Montana mountains were still snow-covered in early May. Her breath hung in clouds as she hustled across the gravel yard toward the standby shack, a low-slung, metal-sided building with haphazardly arranged extensions that housed the sleeping quarters, mess hall, equipment and locker rooms. No one stirred around the barracks. Guys were still sleeping. Oh joy.

  “Mallory,” a gruff male voice called. “Hey, Ice! See you a minute?”

  So much for the leisurely shower. Mallory hadn’t counted on Sully being up so early, but she should have. He was as much a workaholic as she was—although she preferred to think of her work ethic as thorough, rather than obsessed.

  “Yo, Sully. On my way.” Abandoning her visions of hot steam and suds, Mallory reversed course back to the ops room next to the hangar and stopped in the doorway. Her immediate superior, Chuck Sullivan, was bent over the desk in his cramped one-window office, his arms braced on either side of a haphazard pile of papers and file folders. A huge bulletin board covered with aerial and terrain maps occupied the far wall. A rickety stand in one corner held a Pyrex coffeepot in a dingy white coffeemaker. The room smelled of burnt coffee. He’d been there a while.

  Mallory suppressed a twinge of guilt. She knew what this was about—she’d been dragging her feet sorting through all the paperwork that went along with her new job as ops manager of the Yellowrock interagency smokejumping unit. It wasn’t like she hadn’t told Sully she was terrible at desk work when he asked her to take the position suddenly vacated when Tom Reynolds couldn’t jump anymore. A bad landing had ended Tom up in the hospital with a crushed lumbar disc. She had seniority after eight years spending May through November fighting wildfires with the USFS, and she had plenty of experience directing activities as incident commander in the field, but ask her to fill out a timesheet—she’d rather spend two weeks sleeping on the ground during the height of mosquito season. “Look, Sully, if this is about filling that last position, I read through the applications last night. I think there are a couple of good candidates—”

  “Yeah, about that,” Sully said, looking up. His smoke-gray eyes were hooded, the furrows extending out from the corners paler than the rest of his tanned skin, even though summer was still more than a month away. Something in his look made her stomach tighten.

  “What?” Mallory said, leaning her shoulder against the doorjamb.

  “The last position has been filled.”

  “That’s interesting. How come I don’t know about it? I thought the training manager chose the crew.” Mallory clamped a lid on her temper. Something was off, but whatever it was, Sully wasn’t likely to be responsible, so venting at him wasn’t going to help. Sully had been supervisor at the Yellowrock station for fifteen years, and they got along well. Never had any problem communicating. Now he was uneasy and had made a decision that directly affected her for the next half a year without consulting her. She didn’t like surprises. Anticipation was her holy grail—she planned, studied, considered contingencies. Orderly, well-thought-out plans brought the team home whole. Fire was unpredictable. Fickle and frivolous. She couldn’t afford to be. Not when lives were at stake. “What’s going on, Sully?”

  “We’ve been assigned a transfer from Grangeville to fill that vacancy.”

  “A hotshot?” Mallory tried not to grind her teeth. Hotshots usually worked as part of wildland fire suppression teams on large, long-term fires. They were used to performing as units and often had difficulty making the transition from field-based firefighting to the rapid deployment into remote areas that was the daily fare of smokejumpers. “Geez, Sully. How come I’m just hearing about this?”

  Sully straightened and jammed his hands in the pockets of his khaki work pants. His jaw worked like he was still chewing the tobacco he’d given up the year before. Yeah, he was definitely unhappy. “Because I’m just hearing about it myself. I got a call from regional headquarters informing me of the posting. The whole thing was handled a couple levels above my pay grade.”

  “I’ve never heard of the higher-ups getting involved in something as basic as hiring a crew member.”

  “Well, she’s not just any crew member.”

  “She?” Mallory raised an eyebrow.

  Sully laughed. “What? You think you and Sarah are the only women capable of doing the job?”

  “I know we’re not. Except I know all the other female jumpers, and most of the women on the field crews too. None of them said anything to me about wanting to come on board. What’s her name?”

  “Jac Russo.”

  Mallory frowned. “Why do I know that name?”

  “Maybe because her father is Franklin Russo?”

  Mallory stiffened. “Oh, you gotta be kidding me. The right-wing senator from Idaho? The right-to-life, anti-gay, anti-affirmative-everything guy?”

  “That’s the one. The rumor mill says he’s going to give Powell a run for his money for the White House come election time next year.”

  “Just gets better and better,” Mallory said.

  Sully smiled a little grimly. “Never knew you were political.”

  “I’m not. Usually.” Mallory shook her head. Sully knew she was a lesbian—so did everybody else she worked with. She didn’t make an issue of it, she didn’t hide it. She was who she was. In the air, in the wilderness digging a line or setting a burnout, no one cared who you slept with. All they cared about was how well you did your job and looked after your buddies. Most of the time she was too busy working to think about what bureaucrats were doing, but she couldn’t turn on the television or pick up a magazine or read the news without hearing something about Russo and his campaign to turn the country back to a time when straight white men held all the power. And his vitriol turned her stomach. “This posting is politics, right? Somebody owes somebody a favor and we get to pick up the tab?” She raked her hand through her hair. Her too-damn-long hair. “Does she even know anything about firefighting? This is crazy. I don’t want some pampered politician’s daughter, who probably thinks spending six months in the mountains with a bunch of men will be fun and look good on her résumé, on my team. Hell, if she doesn’t get herself killed, she’ll get one of us killed.”

  “Slow down, Ice. She’s not a rookie. Not quite. She worked part of a season with a Bureau of Land Management hotshot team in Idaho.” He fished around on his desk and came up with a dog-eared file folder. He flipped it open, turned it around, and held it out to her. “Besides, real-life experience is an acceptable substitute for the usual field training, and she’s got that covered.”

  “She’s still a rookie as far as I’m concerned.” Mallory regarded the folder as if it were a rattler coiled in the brush trailside, waiting to strike. There couldn’t be anything good inside that file. Smokejumpers returned year after year to the same crew; vacancies were few, and the waiting list long. She hadn’t seen Russo’s name on any applications, but somehow, Russo had managed to leapfrog to the head of the list, and that could only mean someone had pulled strings. Anyone qualified for the job didn’t need to do that. “Come on, Sully. You know this doesn’t make any sense. If she’s already on a crew, why move her over to ours? We’ll have to train her to jump—”

  “You’d have to train whoever joined us to jump, Ice.”

  “Still, I don’t get it.”

  “Neither do I.” Sully gave her a wry shrug and waggled the folder. “I wasn’t given the option. She’ll be here this morning. You might as well look at this.”

  Reluctantly Mallory took the folder and glanced at the typed application and
the color photo clipped to the top of the page. Jac Russo. Twenty-seven—well, at least she had a couple of years on Russo in age and quite a few more in experience. At just thirty, she was young to captain a jump crew and wouldn’t have wanted to start out the season breaking in a hotshot who discounted her authority because she was younger or less experienced. The photo was a good one. Even the Polaroid head shot couldn’t dampen the appeal of bittersweet-chocolate eyes and thick black wavy hair—true black, not dark brown like her own—and also unlike hers, neatly trimmed above her collar. Russo’s face was a little too strong to be pretty, with bold cheekbones and an angular jaw. A decent face, nothing out of the ordinary, really. Mallory got caught in the dark eyes that almost leapt out of the glossy surface of the photo—intense, unsmiling, penetrating eyes. Eyes that held secrets and dared you to reveal yours. Okay, so maybe she was a little bit good-looking. The guys would probably be happy to have her around as long as she had even marginal skills. Mallory didn’t agree. She couldn’t afford to have anyone jumping who couldn’t carry her own weight. No one was coming out of the mountains on a litter on her watch. Not this year. Not ever again.

  “I’m telling you right now,” Mallory said, flipping a page to look at the work experience Russo had listed, “if she can’t cut it, I’m not putting her up in the air. I’m not going to let her endanger my team. I don’t care whose daughter she is.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to,” someone said in a husky alto from right behind her.

  Mallory spun around and went nose to nose with a woman about her height, their bodies colliding hard enough for her to feel firm breasts and a muscled torso press against her front. Molding to her—except that had to be her imagination. She pulled back, and the black-haired stranger took her in with a slow up-and-down perusal and an expression that was half-arrogant, half-amused. Her lips were full and sensuous and unsmiling—like in the photo.