Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [100]
“Are you driving up to the park tonight?” He leaned against a knotty pine support.
“We’ve got a room at the Antler Inn.” His obvious weariness reminded her that she was still exhausted from yesterday’s brush with death.
Devon knelt on the sidewalk to examine the Cowboy’s woodcarvings of stagecoaches. Clare frowned at the hint of swelling breast that showed at the side of her tank top.
Steve shifted his weight from one foot to another and she wished they might have a few minutes alone. “I’ll head back north.” He pushed off the post.
“Come by the room and call to check on the roads,” Clare suggested.
He agreed. She was glad he put his arm around her shoulders as they walked down the boardwalk. Even at Devon’s dark look, she did not pull away.
The motel room smelled faintly of prior guests’ cigarettes, but was clean and comfortable. Devon flung herself on the bed farthest from the door while Clare removed her boots.
Steve dialed Fire Command and asked for a status report. After hanging up, he said, “It could be tomorrow afternoon or the next day before the south entrance is open.”
Clare leaned against the partition that divided the bedroom from the bath. Bluish shadows beneath Steve’s eyes told her he hadn’t slept worth a damn last night, either.
He moved toward her and put out his un-bandaged right hand. “Come here.”
She let him draw her out onto the second floor balcony. The murmur of traffic and the talk and laughter of tourists walking around town had subsided. Even the air had changed, turning oppressive. Lightning flashed above the manicured ski slopes carved into Snow King Mountain.
With a glance at Devon, Clare pulled the door shut but did not latch it. “You can smell the rain,” she hoped.
Looking up, she realized that the water falling from the clouds was evaporating before it reached the mountaintop. In Yellowstone and the surrounding National Forests, flames swept on through the night. Fueled by the tinder-dry forest and nourished by wind, the lightning of each rainless front spawned more.
“It’s got to end soon.” Steve echoed her thoughts.
“All fires go out.”
Something in Clare’s throaty voice reminded him he was losing the best thing since Susan . . . before it got started. Clare would be going home to Houston and he didn’t know how soon.
With his wife, there had been a slow and gentle progression from friendship to intimacy. Nurtured by the cocooned environment of the university and the long slow semesters, they’d had the luxury of time. This summer he felt like he’d been chasing even an hour with Clare, mostly in vain. When she had flown away with Deering this morning, he’d watched her go with a sense of what could only be called desperation.
Maybe he’d been a fool, as he’d told her, to sit on Mount Washburn and imagine. Maybe he’d been doubly the fool when he’d tossed the cold remains of his coffee in the kitchen sink, packed his kit, and leaped to the wheel of the ancient Park Service truck.
He turned and found her closer than he’d thought, almost against him. With bare feet, she hardly cleared the top of his shoulder. He wished he were drunk, loose enough to slide his hands up her shoulders, then reversed that, fiercely glad he had all his senses to appreciate her.
Her eyes were a little red, but so were everyone’s who’d been on the line. Her lips’ slight chapping moved him more than Revlon red. Did her curve of smile invite, or had it been so long since he’d made the first move that he’d forgotten how?
He decided on the old “nothing ventured, nothing gained” gamble, and bent toward her. She looked up at him and he believed she was receptive.
“Mom,” said Devon, three feet away in the doorway.
Steve stepped back. His face went hot while a flush stained Clare’s cheekbones.
Although physically a woman, Devon studied them with a child’s suspicion. “Have you got the keys? I left my bags in the car.”
Clare fumbled in the pocket of her jeans. The key secured, Devon headed for the staircase.