Page 10 of Burnin' For You
Sadly, that meant she would be relegated to the machine shop for the winter. Or worse...
Roped into making cupcakes. Her gaze fell on the large bakery box of chocolate cupcakes decorated with the Ember Fire base emblem, sent over by the Hot Cakes Bakery.
She just wanted to roll her eyes.
How embarrassing to have her sisters involved in something that made them look like stereotypical women... Soft, sweet, and silly.
She would never,everbe one of those girls who swooned in a man’s arms and let him carry her off into the sunset.
She could carry herself into the sunset, thanks.
“Dispatch, Lolo One here. Our pickup has arrived.” The radio lit up, and Gilly confirmed their position, updated the map, and surrendered her chair for the evening shift.
She grabbed her shoulder bag and headed outside into the balmy late afternoon, the smell of pine and loam in the air, roused by last night’s rain.
They could use a lot more of it. The hills around Ember still bore evidence of the parched summer, the pastures brown, the trees dark and dry, some turning to bronze. They’d fought over a dozen fires just in the upper northwest alone—a few that the National Interagency Fire Center out of Boise suggested might be arson.
They’d nearly arrested Conner Young, one of the Jude County Smokejumpers, as a suspect. As if. The thought of one of their own—oranyonewho knew firsthand how a fire could kill a person, their lungs boiling, their skin peeling off, or worse, literally roasting to death under their fire shelter—deliberately setting a fire, destroying a forest, wildlife, and threatening lives was—
Well, simply unthinkable.
Thankfully, it seemed they weren’t being chased by an arsonist anymore. Conner had been exonerated when the NIFC determined that he hadn’t been responsible for any possible blazes caused by his experimental firefighting drones. And then the so-called arsonist had vanished.
They didn’t need an arsonist around to increase the risk to their lives.
Gilly headed for her car, the classic red Mustang with the brown ragtop, shiny under the sun like a beacon of joy in the parking lot. So what that she spent more time fine-tuning it than she should—at least it was dependable. And a sweet ride with the top down on a sunny summer day.
A girl who’d spent most of her high school years restoring a car would never spend her life baking cupcakes.
She opened the door, tossed in her satchel, then walked to the hangar.
The massive garage door stood open, an old Douglas DC-6 in for a repair on the left outboard engine. A red Snap-on tool chest was rolled up under the wing, a ladder extending to the double wasp, radial engine.
She only saw the gray coveralls of the mechanic and took a guess. “Patrick?”
“Sorry, Gil.” Hudson Rich, one of their full-timers, leaned down from his perch. “Patrick finished up the airframe on the Annie and took off for the weekend, the lucky dog.”
“He finished repairing the wing?”
“Worked all week on it.” He gestured to the plane parked outside the hangar, beyond the lot. “It’s been inspected—no test run yet—but he patched up the wing, remounted the struts, and riveted her back together. He did a good job.”
“Of course.” She waved at him and headed outside to where the Annie sat in the shadow of the giant hangar. Fresh rivets banded the new main strut with the bracing wires also taut and re-attached. The wing looked reconstructed, patched, although still not painted, the metal bare and shiny in the fading sun.
Gilly ran her hand over the wing. “Good job, Annie. Thanks for holding together.” And for a second, she was back in the sky, feeling the world shake apart.
She shook her head. Nope. She wasn’t the kind to go back, relive her near misses. If she did, she’d probably end up on the ground in the fetal position.
“Gilly!”
The voice made her turn, and she spotted Kate waving to her from the back of Jed’s motorcycle, her hand on Jed’s shoulder.
Jed and Kate’s budding romance had roared to full flame over the summer, and Jed had put a ring on her best friend’s finger a couple of weeks ago.
Gilly tried not to be jealous—but it must be nice to trust someone enough…
No. She certainly didn’t need a man to wrap her arms around or to lay her head against a strong chest and sway to music on the dance floor.
She didn’tneeda man at all.