Where There's Smoke: inspirational romantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Montana Fire: Summer of Fire Trilogy

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue

  Author's note

  Montana Fire Book Two: Playing With Fire

  Montana Rescue

  Susan May Warren Library

  Montana Fire: Summer of Fire Trilogy

  Book One

  Where’s There’s Smoke

  By

  Susan May Warren

  She’s a smokejumper who’s afraid of fire.

  He’s the partner who can’t forgive himself for loving her.

  Now they must face the flames together if they hope to survive the Summer of Fire.

  About the Book

  Seven years ago, when a fire jump in the forests of Alaska went horribly wrong, smokejumpers Jed Ransom and Kate Burns spent twenty-four terrifying hours saving each other from a wildfire. They had no idea it would light a blaze inside of them that neither of them could forget—a fire they both deny.

  Now a supervisor, Jed commands the Jude County Smokejumpers with a reputation as a calm, level-headed leader.

  Kate is a legendary smokejumper, known for her courage and willingness to risk everything to get the job done.

  When the death of the man who taught them how to jump, along with a raging wildfire in the mountains of Montana, brings them together to train up a new team of jumpers, Kate and Jed have no idea the love they’ve been running from is about to ignite.

  But when an arsonist goes after their team, Kate and Jed must decide between stirring love to flame and fighting the blaze that could destroy them all. In this first book of the Montana Fire: Summer of Fire trilogy, Kate and Jed are about to discover that where there’s smoke, there just might be a happy ending.

  Prologue

  She’d come three thousand miles to burn to death.

  “Kate, if you don’t deploy right now, you’re going to die!”

  Kate Burns could hear Jed, his voice muffling around in the back of her brain, but the roar of the fire simply had her by the throat. Three-hundred-foot flame lengths chewing up the pristine Alaskan wilderness, torching Fraser firs, white pines, black spruce. The blaze candled along the tops of the birch trees, the fire storm churning up its own wind.

  It felt like that hand of God, reaching out to grab her in a paralyzing chokehold. It kept her brain from firing, from reacting to Jed’s words.

  From reaching for her shake-and-bake fire shelter, folded and tucked in the pocket of her jump pants.

  Because, what would it matter? They were in the green, a highly combustible area, and they’d bake to death under the thin tinfoil even if the fire didn’t scurry underneath and scorch them.

  And that vivid picture had her knees buckling.

  Her father would be so angry.

  “Kate!”

  Hands on her shoulders shook her, jerked her around. “Get your shelter on!”

  Kate got a glimpse of Jed a second before he threw her to the ground. Face blackened, his eyes fierce, red bandanna pulled up over his nose. And balancing hard on a makeshift crutch she’d fashioned for him only hours before.

  He looked like she felt—wrung out, broken, and on the edge of unraveling.

  Except, he wasn’t standing still, waiting for the wall of flame to hit him. In fact, he had his shelter out, already unfurled, and now shook it over her. She fell to the ground, an old, dry riverbed, filled with gravel and rock, moss and brush. But, where he pushed her down, mostly sand and dirt.

  “Pin it down! Remember your training.”

  Training. Oh—the three years as a hotshot—a wildland firefighter—and her last six weeks with the Midnight Sun Smokejumpers where, two weeks ago, she’d passed her final exam.

  Don’t die. Her training boss said it as he’d handed her the Midnight Sun patch. Laughter. She’d grinned.

  Jed landed in the dirt next to her, having apparently yanked her shelter from her pocket. He wrestled with it in the superheated winds, his teeth gritted as he yanked it down to the earth. Pinning it there with hands, elbows, knees, feet.

  Except, in a flash that struck her in the heart, she knew the truth.

  She might not die, but Jed Ransom didn’t have a prayer of holding down all four corners, not to mention the edges, of his shelter. Not with his injured leg.

  Not with those bare hands.

  Kate threw off her shelter and, in a second, it caught the wind and flew—no turning back now.

  “What are you doing!”

  She didn’t answer him as she rolled herself under his tinfoil, grabbing a corner, drawing it over her. She clamped down her side with her hand, elbow, and leg.

  He caught on fast. Or maybe not as much as she’d hoped, because even as she nailed down the side with her limbs, he covered her upper body with his, protecting her.

  She felt the length of his body against her, his powerful arms, honed from chopping through the dense forest, digging fire line with his fire ax, aka Pulaski. For a second, her heart just stopped with the sense of it. She’d spent the last decade wishing she might end up right here.

  In Jed Ransom’s arms.

  Hopefully right before he kissed her.

  Except, maybe she’d omit the part where they would bake.

  Jed secured the top of the shelter with his hands, the other side with his elbow, knee, his good leg.

  Then, her helmet crushed next to his, he said in his low baritone, “Dig us a hole to breathe into.”

  Outside, the fire cycloned around them, exploding through the trees into a storm of flame, the sound of it a locomotive ready to drive over them.

  Kate started to shake as she clawed at the ground, scrubbing away pebbles and stone, finding the cool riverbed. She widened the hole for him, and his whiskers brushed her face as he fought to find cooler air.

  “Deeper. We need to protect our faces.” He balanced his helmet on the rim of the hole, his breath on her skin as he turned to her. “We’re going to live, Kate, I promise.”

  She longed to believe him.

  The ‘shake and bake’ flapped, the fury of the fire starting to bake them. Sweat dripped down her face, saturated her body under her jumpsuit and turnout jacket.

  And then Jed’s breathing caught. Tiny sounds, a deep groan as the heat began to sear his skin. But she couldn’t lift her head, because suddenly the fire washed over them, a wave of heat and flame and fury that made her press her face to the earth.

  She didn’t know who screamed first.

  Chapter 1

  Seven years later...

  Not until she reached four thousand feet did Kate Burns realize this jump had “epic comeback” written all over it. Except, her father’s memorial service probably wasn’t the right time to show the world that fear couldn’t keep her grounded. And, with Reuben and Conner nearly out the door of the Twin Otter, herself next in line, probably it was too late to pull the plug on their commemorative jump.

  But she could hardly turn down Miles Defoe, her father’s incident commander. Say no to the entire population of Ember Montana on hand to remember the firefighters who died on a mountain last summer.

  Of course she would jump. But she’d keep it safe and easy and channel the fear fisting her chest, pumping
fire into her veins. Not newsworthy. Not spectacular. Not epic.

  Something her father might—if he were watching from heaven—be proud of.

  Over the intercom, Gilly’s voice cut through the thunder of air whipping into the open door and over the drone of the plane. “I’ve reached four thousand!”

  Kate glanced into the cockpit where Gillian Priest, her dark auburn hair looping through the hole in her gimme cap, manned the controls. Gilly glanced over her shoulder, the headphones dwarfing her, and met Kate’s eyes. Grinned. A comrade-in-arms in this male-dominated world of smokejumping.

  A paltry handful of women managed to climb the ranks and earn a spot on one of the fourteen teams around the nation. Despite the tremor in her gut or the acrid taste of bile lining her throat, Kate planned on holding onto hers with the tenacity of any of the wildland fires she’d jumped over the past seven years.

  She swallowed the bile away. At least today’s jump didn’t require her to fly over smoky columns of superheated air. Or to drop into a blackened meadow or dirt-edged moraine just outside the roar of the dragon.

  Today she didn’t have to fear dying under a piece of high-tech tinfoil.

  Instead, adorned with a purple memorial ribbon attached to her pack, she’d drop out of the sky in memory of seven comrades who’d perished doing what they loved.

  Wearing their standard Kevlar jumpsuits and gear packs, fellow jumpers Conner Young and Reuben Marshall edged up to the door. They snapped on their helmets and peered out into the expanse.

  The two men, along with Pete Brooks preparing to jump behind her, were the only survivors of her father’s crew. Guys she planned on getting to know if she hoped to seal the canyon Jock Burn’s death left in her heart.

  She should have been jumping with him on his crew instead of returning home to honor his memory.

  “Coming around for the jump,” Gilly said into the coms.

  Breathe. Again, Kate ran her four-point check—drogue release handle in clear view, Stevens connection attached to the reserve, reserve emergency handle in clear and plain view, and the cutaway clutch, also readily accessible.

  Just stay calm. Jumping was the easy part, right? The part she actually liked. She reached for her helmet, glancing at her jump partner. Pete, his blond hair pulled back in a jaunty knot, blue eyes and a bronze ring of whiskers, grinned at her with a lazy smile that probably knocked the girls silly down at the Hotline Saloon.

  She grinned back, offered a thumbs-up, keeping it friendly, not flirty. After all, she knew better than to fall for firefighters. Especially the make and type of charmer Brooks, with his wide football shoulders, lean torso, powerful jumper-honed legs. Jumpers like him wore danger in their eyes, and the spark that drew them to engage in battle against the demons of nature turned them into men who played hard, wooed with abandon, and lived as if every night might be their last. Until the siren sounded and fifteen minutes later, girded for combat, they disappeared into a boiling sky.

  Besides, the last—and only—jumper she’d fallen for had taken her heart and hadn’t the decency to return it.

  She pulled on her goggles then strapped on her helmet, her vision gridded by the mask over the front. The cool air whistled into her ears.

  “Let’s go!” This from Conner Young a second before he pushed hard out the door, rolling right, away from the plane. Seconds later, Reuben followed.

  She scooted up to take her place at the door, bracing her hands on either side of the opening, glancing out to see Reuben as he dove, spread eagle, flying toward the earth. Reuben seemed more bear than man, quiet, dark, and still harboring open wounds at seeing his crew devastated.

  Survivor’s guilt.

  It had nothing on Estranged Daughter guilt.

  Four thousand feet below, Kate spotted the little town of Ember, population thirteen hundred. A snug collection of ranch houses, restaurants, a few gift shops, a school, police station, courthouse, motel, and huge RV park made up their firefighting community nestled at the edge of the Kootenai National Forest in northwestern Montana. And right in the center of town, the towering spire of the Ember Community Church, where she’d drawn her name in the freshly poured cement of the front steps, played youth group games in the basement, and first learned what it felt like to be part of a town whose very name meant fire.

  Someday, maybe, she’d go back to that little white church, find the faith her father had tried to embed in her.

  To the north of town, she located their landing spot, the meadow just south of the practice towers of Ember Fire Base, home of the Jude County Wildland Firefighters.

  Beyond that, in a curve of a ledge rock set at the far edge of the fire base, stood a copper likeness of a lone firefighter leaning on his Pulaski, hard hat pushed back, bedraggled, solemn, his gaze directed to the jagged, black backbone of Glacier National Park.

  The Jock Burns Memorial.

  She couldn’t see them, but she knew the faces of the people who assembled on folding chairs around the memorial. Fresh recruits and veterans dressed in the green fire-retardant pants, the bright yellow shirts, hard hats perched on their knees, and hundreds of locals—fathers and mothers, wives and girlfriends—who understood too acutely the cost of fighting wildland fires in the West.

  At the podium would be Incident Commander Miles Dafoe, eulogizing the lost, embellishing the legends. Offering condolences, stories, and, most of all, avoiding the woefully feeble attempts to answer the lingering, brutal questions of what happened that horrific night in Eureka Canyon.

  How could seven able-bodied men not see the fire charging behind them, not run, not even deploy their fire shelters?

  Worse, how could legendary strike team commander, smokejumping squad leader, and Ember Base Incident Commander Jock Burns, a man who could read fire as if it burned inside him, have led them to their deaths?

  The tragedy still seemed incomprehensible. Even now, nearly ten months later, the town still reeled, a murmur of disbelief behind every conversation.

  And underlying it all, rumblings about the wisdom of starting up another smokejumping team.

  Kate refused to let her father’s legacy die just because he had. Not when she could come home and keep the dream alive.

  No matter how much the fear might reach up and try to strangle her.

  This one’s for you, Dad. She gulped a long breath, forced her stomach back down her throat. An over-the-shoulder look at Pete. He gave her a go-ahead nod, so she pulled hard out the door and flung herself into the deep.

  The breath of heaven engulfed her, and as usual she longed to scream, part joy, part bone-ripping terror.

  And then, the fear dropped away and she was just...flying.

  Soaring above the earth, her face to the wind, her arms flung out in a wild embrace.

  For seven long seconds she outran her regrets, her tomorrows full and rich with fresh starts.

  Two seconds out of the plane, she started the count—Jump Thousand.

  Wind, roaring in her ears. She rolled right, saw Pete frame the door.

  Look Thousand—and look she did, despite the tilted horizon, the world whirling beneath her. A blur of splendor woven from the great troughs of the rich green Douglas fir forest trenched out by ancient glaciers. She spotted the cobalt-blue lakes tucked into hidden highland crannies and ran her gaze along the bony spine of the Great Rocky Mountains of Glacier National Park rutting up to reef the dome of the sky.

  Reach Thousand. She flung her right hand back, used muscle memory to latch onto the rip cord. The other hand she stretched out, a last grasp of firmament.

  Wait Thousand. One more second to soar over the grasslands of the moraine valley, pinioned by towering ponderosa pine and dissected by highways and stale brown pastures that evidenced the bone-dry spring.

  Then a quick glance again to locate Pete, soaring twenty feet away. He flashed her a thumbs-up.

  Pull Thousand. A final, unfettered cool gulp of stratosphere. Then she yanked, hard.

  He
r fall arrested with a jerk, her heart caught as the chute sailed her into the yonder. She flung her head back, watching the canopy billow out, a rectangular red cloud.

  The surreal, abrupt silence rang in her ears. She checked the rear corners of the chute then reached for her steering toggles to come around into the wind.

  Her gaze fell again on the red-striped plane as it disappeared into the wink of the sun.

  Below, she spotted Conner and Reuben’s canopies already engorged, sailing along the wind currents toward the drop zone.

  Maybe she’d give the crowd a little show, come in fast, roll hard, spring back to her feet, lithe and graceful, a move her father had perfected.

  A trickle of color caught her peripheral vision.

  No.

  Pete Brooks was falling from the sky.

  His pilot chute trailed, an impotent bubble flapping in the wind, unable to disgorge the main chute from its lodging.

  “Pull your reserve!”

  Her words died long before they reached him. But Pete had logged more than fifty jumps over the past two years under Jock Burn’s judicious eye and, without needing her words in his ear, he deployed his reserve.

  The canopy whistled up past the balloon, filled, and with a snap, Pete fluttered up into the blue, safe.

  Never leave your partner.

  Jed Ransom’s voice in her head, the man breaking the ban to never again haunt her. His deep baritone had crawled into her head a week ago and lodged there, like he belonged.

  And before she could protest, along came the memories.

  Jed, holding the toggles in his strong hands, his dark hair curly out of the back of his helmet, circling her like a hawk to check her positions. Jed, those smoky blue eyes on her, following her all the way to the drop zone, shouting instructions to assist her landing. Jed, his whisper against her neck as he found her at Grizzly’s.

  I didn’t leave you, Jed. You left me.

  The familiar argument flickered, then died just as she heard the shout.

  Pete wrestled with his fresh canopy, pulling at the tangled lines of two canopies, flapping, twisting, flattening.