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.She looked glorious.Hotter than any fantasy woman he’d ever conjured.Maybe she’d pushed too hard.“I should make you drop and give me twenty.”She grimaced.“Be kind.”That was also not like his Gia.She pushed herself—and she’d gut any man who tried to cut her any slack because she was a girl or tired or even plain having a bad day.Gia didn’t do excuses.Before she could stop him, he reached out and pressed two fingers against the pulse beating in her throat.“Jesus, Jackson.”Her resting rate had to be pushing two hundred beats per minute.She shoved his hand away.“I’m fine.I pushed too hard at the end.”That was possible.But Gia had run that trail dozens of times.She’d trained in the off-season.If she’d been middle-aged and out-of-shape, he’d have bought the excuse she was selling.But she wasn’t.And he didn’t.“Gia—”She ignored him, dropping to the ground to stretch out her calves.He crouched beside her.She didn’t want to admit that she had a problem, and yet she clearly did.He didn’t know how or why, but something was up.“I ran too hard,” she repeated.Her eyes flashed, demanding he back the hell off.And that was the thing, wasn’t it? He might be her jump partner, but that was all he was.He didn’t have the right to hound her about how she felt unless it impacted the team.And her brown eyes were looking daggers at him, promising instant death if he didn’t drop the topic.Maybe she had run too fast.He hesitated.She sighed and held her wrist out.“Check me now.”He wrapped his hand around her wrist, tracing the soft skin with the pads of his fingers.Finding the vulnerable patch where the pulse that beat in her wrist almost undid him.He pressed two fingers against the vein and forced himself to focus.Her heart still raced, but the mad jackhammer beat had slowed.“See?” she said.“I’m fine.”No, she probably had a bridge somewhere that she wanted to sell him, but he couldn’t make her talk if she didn’t want to.If she said she was fine, he had to believe her.And it was possible she’d simply had a bad run.While he weighed that possibility, is pager buzzed madly.“We’ve got incoming,” he said.Gia’s head came up.“Fire?”She sounded like he’d offered her favorite flavor of ice cream.He nodded.“Jack just called the whole team in.It’s a big one.”“Can’t wait.” Gia hopped off the picnic table.“I’ll race you back to base.”###The DC-3 reached the jump site thirty minutes after takeoff.The plane’s interior was no luxury limo ride; the team sprawled haphazardly on the floor of the stripped down interior.Seats were for pansies, Jack had ruled, and no one had disagreed.Without the seats, there was more room for cargo—and a clear path to the door.That worked for Rio.Today’s fire call was a bad one, with the incident commander calling in Strong’s jump team as backup for a team that had been on the ground forty-eight hours and counting.More hands were clearly called for, along with fresh supplies.Sure enough, as the plane circled, Rio got his first look out the open door and, no shit, the caller hadn’t exaggerated.One big ass fire was chewing up the wildland beneath the plane.Fifty, sixty acres and the weather forecast called for the wind to pick up, which would only push the fire further faster.Right now, though, the smoke was a dark column punching up into the blue sky.Mack was the day’s spotter and he’d picked out the landing zone from earlier aerials.Fortunately, the drop site was a clearing right on the edge of the fire, a mercifully big tree-free area, reducing the risk of snags and hang-ups.Unfortunately, the site was parked at the top of a steep gulch.That was never good news.While Rio craned his neck, mentally marking visible hotspots, Mack conferred on his headset with the pilot and then aimed the drift streamers out the door.Mack flipped a bird towards the ground.“Bombs away.”Mack’s face revealed no trace of humor, but he seemed to have his shit together, so Rio wouldn’t hassle him.Today.He was fairly certain though that Mack was nursing a big-time case of PTSD.Silently, the two of them watched the streamers go down.Nice and straight, which meant there was no crosswind to worry about at the moment, although the wind could and did shift like a bitch.Even at fifteen hundred feet, the flames chewed up the mountainside in an audible welcoming choir.Whatever Spotted Dick, the pilot, said must have gotten the mental thumbs-up from Mack, because he motioned for Rio and Gia to take their positions in the door.Gia bounded over as the plane banked hard, coming back around for the jump pass.Mack eyed the two of them; the jump list had spelled out the first pair in the air, but not the individual jump order.“Ladies first,” he decided.Rio and Gia would be first on the scene, radioing the ground conditions back up to the rest of the team.They’d make the call whether it was safe for the rest of the jumpers or not.Gia stuck her tongue out at him and promptly swung into the open door, arms and legs braced, before he could retaliate.He’d watched her jump dozens of times, he reminded himself.This was just another day in the office, so his heart had no business kicking his heartbeat up a notch when she leaned her head out the door and eyeballed all that open space.As soon as Mack slapped his hand on her shoulder, she launched herself out the door with a whoop.At least this time Mack didn’t follow with bombs away.Rio got himself into the open door fast.It was fifteen hundred feet to the ground and she wasn’t landing without him.Or that was his plan at any rate [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]