Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [23]
Steve decided he needed fresh air. His exit was marred by a stumble at the slight step up into the lobby. From the front desk, he heard an elderly woman shrill, “The bath is down the hall?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the clerk said. “The old wing does not have private baths.”
Steve turned right and opened the outside door. The combination of a difficult climate and the drought created earth covered with sparse brown grass and volcanic gravel. Moving away from the building, he inhaled the tang of smoke on the breeze.
In the past twenty-four hours, the North Fork fire had tripled from twenty-five hundred acres to over eight thousand. Although no evacuation had been called, some of the tourists feared getting caught by the fire that was still six miles from the inn.
He guessed people were frightened of things that spoke to them at a visceral level. Some kid who’d accidentally gotten locked in a lightless closet would spend his life sleeping with a nightlight. The very idea of flying turned Steve witless, and ditching in the lake had necessitated the liberal application of alcohol for its anesthetic properties.
Yesterday afternoon, Clare Chance had not been afraid. She’d faced the exposed fangs of the Shoshone . . . and saved his worthless life.
“What’s the word out of Fire Command?” Deering asked.
Clare looked across the Bear Pit table at the sharp-nosed pilot wearing slim fit Wrangler jeans, an open-necked shirt that revealed dark chest hair, and well-worn cowboy boots.
“Not good.” She shook her head and saw his eyes go to the gold hoops at her ears. “We’re in for a long haul.”
She traced a wet spot on the table and checked his sinewy left hand. A flesh-toned bandage there, but no sign of a wedding ring, or even the telltale band of shrunken flesh that said it was in his pocket.
A sip of champagne refreshed her throat that was dry from the high thin air. “Rumor has it we’re about to throw everything we’ve got at the fires.”
A deeper line etched between Deering’s brows. “You don’t sound like that’s a good thing. Most of the firefighters I know like saving the burning forests.”
Clare looked out the window, but rather than the dark shingled side of the inn’s opposite wing, she saw a wall of flame. “Yesterday, I got a close-up of the Shoshone at Grant Village.” She turned her gaze on Deering’s gaunt face, marked by the purpling bruise. “And you lost your helicopter. Before this is over, somebody is going to get killed.”
“Damned right. Haywood and I lucked out when we ditched, but somebody dies every season.” His prominent Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed beer.
Clare paid attention to her stemmed glass to avoid the intensity in Deering that she wasn’t ready for. “I’m going out on the lines west of here in the morning to try to keep the North Fork from burning this place down.”
“That would be a shame. One thing for sure, if it burned, they’d never be able to replace it.” Deering studied his own glass for a moment and then tapped it with a long finger. “If I were going up in the morning, this would be Coke.”
That was good, for she’d caught a glimpse of Steve Haywood looking soused—he’d even tripped going through the door. He was out there now, leaning against the wall of the breezeway between the old and newer wing of the inn. When she looked directly at him, he turned his head away as though she’d caught him staring.
She checked out Deering, comparing the sturdy blond scientist and the tall rugged pilot.
Deering met her eyes in a questioning, no, maybe a questing, way. “I need to get back in the air,” he said with an air of confiding.
Why did it not surprise her that this man was ready to fly again? “I can imagine you’d get antsy being grounded,” she sympathized. “Were you in Vietnam?”
“How’d you know?”
“Lucky guess. The right age . . . You have family?”
He cleared his throat. After a little pause, he said, “Wildfire’s tough on commitment.”
In her peripheral vision, Clare saw Steve reenter the Bear Pit, a man on a mission. “Annabel, I need a Jack,” he barked. “Make it a