Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [158]
Steve followed her into what rapidly became a fast-falling whirl. She leaped tree trunks in the downed forest, hurrying to the top of a rise and spreading her arms wide. By the time he caught up with her, her sweetly ragged hair was starred with white.
“This will go a long way toward bringing the dragon to its knees,” Steve said.
“Look at that.” She pointed.
Embers still smouldered in the heart of a log nearly three feet in diameter, while a sugary dusting frosted the exterior. “It’s not over by a long shot,” she said. “These fires will burn on and the mopping up will take months.”
Steve nodded. “Twenty years from now people will still be questioning whether ‘let-burn’ was a disaster, or if a hundred years of playing Smoky Bear set the stage for an inferno.”
Clare shivered in the swirling white wind. Steve must have noticed, for he reached his arm around her and drew her under the shelter of his jacket. The way he wordlessly knew what she wanted gave her chest an aching feeling.
They had made love, but neither had spoken of the future.
How many times had she been set in her ways, only to have change upset her delicate balance? For a time Jay Chance had been solid earth. His leaving had produced a pattern of shattered fault lines. Walled alone behind defenses, she’d guarded her heart until the man beside her had broken through.
Clare swallowed her fears and leaned on Steve. “I don’t want to leave.”
“It gets to you, doesn’t it?” He waved his free hand at the slopes and mountains out there somewhere in the driving snow. “Even burned, I wouldn’t trade this place for blue water and white sand.”
She knew how he felt even as she planned her own return. The barren expanse of ash-covered earth was not without its own ethereal sort of beauty. “It casts a spell. You want to come back, and you haven’t left yet, but . . . “ she tightened her arm around him, “I wasn’t talking about missing a place.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.” He pulled her to the nearest snow-dusted log and sat down facing her, both her hands in his. “I don’t want this to be the end.”
She met his eyes and took a steadying breath. “I don’t either.” The loving look in his eyes made it easy to tell him. “I’m planning on either moving to Boise to work with Garrett, or applying to take over the Fire Cache at Mammoth when Ben Mallory retires this winter.”
Her cold hands felt him grip harder. She marveled that his were warm. “God, Clare, I do want you with me. That’s what I stopped here to tell you . . . “ A shadow crossed his face. “But there’s something else. When you leave, I’m afraid I might start drinking again.”
Her heart sank as she grappled with his words. His problem was very real, but as she gazed into his gray eyes, she knew she’d love him in bad times, too.
“I’ve decided to tell Shad Dugan that I’ll go for treatment. I never used to drink before Susan and Christa died. I’m serious about staying off the booze. “
They were both getting soaked by the early season snow, but she dared not move for fear of breaking the surreal isolation created by opaque light. In this private world, she could believe that Steve’s determination could defeat any adversary.
“You can do it,” she told him.
“I will do it . . . for me.” He bent and pressed a warm kiss to her chilled cheek. “And for us.”
Not since she was young and Jay had declared himself had she known a surge of joy like this one. In the lost and lonely years between, she’d begun to believe that promise was for others.
“I’ve got a confession to make,” Steve went on. “When you asked if there was anyone in my life and I said no, I didn’t exactly tell the truth.”
She waited.
“Ever since the crash in July when I fought my way through that freezing lake . . . realizing with every stroke that even though I’d been dead inside for years . . . I did want to live . . . ever since I dragged myself onto that shore . . . from the moment I opened my eyes, there’s been you.”
The snow that was ending the summer of fire blurred