Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [15]
“Georgia?”
“Who else?” He saw her slightly gap-toothed smile as if she were standing beside his bed.
When he didn’t speak for a long moment, she said, “Where are you?” He envisioned the frown that spread across her freckled face, draining the joy from her eyes. His hand slicked with sweat on the receiver.
“In the hospital at Yellowstone. I’m okay. “
“Okay? What are you doing in the hospital?” Her voice went shrill, and Deering thought that she—five-feet-two inches of solid intuition with knowing green eyes—could always read him.
He drew a ragged breath and felt the cold that had taken hours to shake creep back. “I had to ditch the Bell.” He drew the blankets he’d shoved down back toward him.
“When will it be enough?”
“It’s never enough!” All the years they’d been together and she still didn’t get that flying was his life.
“Do you know anything about sitting here alone, knowing you could get killed any time?’
The fight drained out of Deering, and he listened to the static whine of the connection.
Finally, Georgia spoke, small and teary. “Are you hurt bad?”
By instinct Deering reached for the Marlboros he always kept in his breast pocket and encountered the folds of his hospital gown. Damned thing let the breeze up his ass. “I told you I’m okay,” he grated. “I ditched in the fucking freezing lake and they warmed me up.”
“Lake?”
“The chopper’s in West Thumb. Map says it’s three hundred feet deep.”
“I’m glad.” Her voice turned venomous. “I hope they never bring it up.”
Before he knew he was thinking about it, Deering stabbed his finger and disconnected the call. The dial tone hummed harshly while a hot sting flushed his arms and burned his fingertips. Whenever Georgia pushed that particular button, the one that said she would never understand his flying, it shot him up with quick rage. Today, with their livelihood on the bottom of Yellowstone Lake, it damn near blinded him.
“Excuse me.” The voice was low and husky, but the small person in hospital greens was clearly female. “I thought this was Steve Haywood’s room.”
Deering had asked and found out Steve was recuperating in a room down the hall. At least he wouldn’t sue for big medical expenses.
“Not here.” Deering still seethed at his wife as the diminutive woman paused on the threshold. A closer inspection revealed a heart-shaped face accentuated by streaked blond hair. Big eyes of a rich bronze hue seemed suffused with sadness.
“If you like,” a slow smile spread over his face, “you can check under the bed.”
She grinned. It lighted her eyes, and Deering wondered if he had imagined her sorrow.
He considered the storm that roiled in Georgia’s eyes this minute. His wife had been trying to get him to stop flying for years, imagining somehow that renovating the Victorian house she’d inherited into a bed-and-breakfast could give him the kind of rush he was addicted to.
“I’m sorry to disturb you.” The woman in his doorway turned to leave.
All at once, Deering couldn’t stand that Haywood had all the luck this afternoon. “Chris Deering,” he offered. “Everybody calls me just plain Deering. My chopper went down in the lake.”
“Clare Chance.” Her arms crossed over small but well formed breasts that the hospital uniform did not conceal. “With the Houston Fire Department.”
“Say what?”
“The hospital gave me dry clothes. I was out at West Thumb looking for survivors and found Mr. Haywood on the shore.”
“Doctor.”
“Beg pardon?”
“It’s Doctor Steve Haywood, park biologist,” he finished, trying to sound neutral.
Steve Haywood shivered beneath the Lake Hospital’s blankets and wished he weren’t alone. It had been a long time since he’d desired the company of another person.
That made it tough to admit he wished his rescuer hadn’t disappeared when the ambulance unloaded him. He had caught her name when she’d given it to the driver—Clare Chance. With her fingers coiled around his wrist, she’d almost kept him from minding the cold water.
He could still see the concern on