Page 43 of Burnin' For You

“So, now what?” she asked, already scrutinizing the cliff. As she looked over the edge, her hands began to sweat.

“We’ll have to climb down,” Reuben said.

Oh no.

She rubbed her sweaty palms on her pants. She could do this. Really.

“My letdown rope and descender are in my bag,” he said. “You go first, and I’ll belay you.”

“You don’t have to belay me.” Her voice contained more confidence than it should.

“It’s a far drop.”

She glanced up at him and affected a frown, ignoring the silent scream of terror inside. “I can descend without help, Rube.”

He raised a hand. “Down, girl. I’m just...are you a rock climber?”

And there it was—the noose that she’d stuck her head into. She shook her head. “I...I trained to be a smokejumper.”

He just blinked at her.

“A few years ago—about a year after Kate spent the summer in Alaska. I was a hotshot and wanted more.” She shrugged. “It didn’t work out.”

Understatement of the decade, but he didn’t have to know the details.

Like her irrational, insane fear of heights.

A fear that didn’t seem to touch her behind the controls of a plane. But get her in a parachute, about to jump out… Or on a sixty-foot ledge.

For the team. She could do this. Would do this.

She reached for the rope he’d pulled out of his bag. “I’ll find a tree.

His hand on hers stopped her. “I didn’t know you wanted to be a smokejumper,” he said quietly.

“Yeah, well, it’s not—”

“Easy. If I hadn’t just seen you do it, I wouldn’t have imagined someone your size could pass the requisite 90 minute, 110-pound pack test. That’s tough.”

She glanced at him. “I made it through the pack test just fine. It just...wasn’t for me.”

Her throat burned with the lie, and she turned away, hating that she’d nearly let him see—well, too much.

She rooted through the gear bag, found webbing, and secured it around a nearby, sturdy cottonwood. Then she connected the carabiner and fitted the rope through it.

He came over to her. “Throw down enough line to hit the bottom. I’ll set up a retrievable system.”

She threaded out enough line to touch the river, then handed him the slack. He clipped it into the carabiner and set up the belay system so they could retrieve their rope once they reached the bottom.

He tucked the rope slack into the letdown bag. “We’ll throw this down, and when we reach the bottom, we’ll simply tug on it and the knot will release.”

“Nifty,” she said, still eyeing the drop. She wiped her palms on her pants again.

Reuben made a loop, fitted the descender into it, tested the tension.

Then he handed her the harness. “You go first.”

“No.” She shook her head, trying to keep her voice cool. “I got this. You go first.”