Expectant Father. Melinda Curtis
Becca didn’t want to be just another notch on his bedpost.
The baby kicked her belly in Aiden’s direction, a proverbial wave to garner his attention. Becca ran a hand over her tummy, trying to satisfy the urge to shush her little one. There were plenty of reasons why Aiden didn’t need to know of his role in creating this child. But she wouldn’t waste any more time on Aidan. She’d found the Silver Bend Hot Shots and now had the ideal opportunity to figure out what had happened up there on the mountain.
Becca managed to collect herself enough to get down to business. “I hear you saw some excitement today.”
“Man, did we ever,” Doc chuckled. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“And I’d prefer not to see anything like it again,” someone on the boulders above clarified, and received many jibes for their honesty.
Ignoring her wound, her twinging leg and heavy belly, Becca couldn’t contain her curiosity about the runaway fire. “I’d love to hear about it.”
“Is this our debrief?” Aiden asked, a suspicious expression clouding his face. He’d put on the forest-green pants and yellow shirt that was the Hot Shot uniform.
“No,” Becca protested, holding out her scraped elbow to be swabbed with an antiseptic wipe by Doc, unable to keep from making a face when his ministrations stung. “We just happened to bump into each other—”
“Stumbled upon is more like it,” Aiden mumbled, still eyeing her as if she were the enemy.
“—and I’m just naturally curious.”
Aiden wasn’t buying it. He frowned at her before turning away, climbing to the top of the boulder and disappearing on the other side.
“All done here and ready to move.” Doc snapped his first-aid kit shut.
With a sigh of relief, Becca thanked Doc and followed him with ginger steps down the trail, asking about the fire just as carefully. She didn’t see Aiden, but felt his disapproving presence somewhere behind her.
“DO YOU BELIEVE HER?” Spider asked Chainsaw from the back of the single-file line of Hot Shots wending their way the last mile into camp. Ahead of them, he occasionally caught a glimpse of golden hair and a swinging braid through the trees. The two men were lagging behind mostly because Spider was dragging his feet.
“No, as pregnant as she is, I can’t believe she hiked up here. She’s like Super Pregnant Woman or something,” Chainsaw observed.
“That’s not what I meant,” Spider snapped. “She came up here just to interview us personally, before anyone else could.”
“You are so paranoid,” Chainsaw chuckled. “The Fire Behavior team hikes all over the place. They also go on the helicopter and airplane flybys with Incident Command.”
“And it just so happens that we meet her on the trail coming down from nearly getting burned over?” Spider wasn’t buying it.
“Crazier things have happened,” Chainsaw said.
“The trouble with you is, you’re too trusting,” Spider complained. “I bet she missed something in her analysis and she’s trying to cover for it. I think I’ve seen her somewhere before, too.”
“The trouble with you is, you’ve seen too many bad conspiracy movies and now you can’t trust anyone. Come on, she was probably just doing her job. Get over it.”
“You’re a pushover.”
“And you’re jaded beyond belief.”
Despite himself, Spider grinned. He was jaded and suspicious by nature, a product of a father who’d made too many empty promises. His grin faded. He’d met the Fire Behavior Analyst before. Sooner or later, he’d figure out where and when. Until then, he wasn’t trusting her as far as he could throw her…so to speak.
“SO YOU HAD NO WARNING? No wind kicked up?” Carl was trying to probe the crew into saying weather had nothing to do with the dangerous situation they’d found themselves in.
Half of the Silver Bend Hot Shots were crowded into the Medical tent. The other half had already been questioned, examined, observed by a stress counselor and released to the chow line. Becca had been smart to meet the team up on the mountain. The mood in the tent was more like that of an interrogation than a debrief, thanks mostly to Carl.
“We noticed the wind about the time we noticed the flames were riled up,” the broad man they called Chainsaw answered. The rest of the firefighters had grown silent the more Carl questioned them.
“So the wind did blow.” Carl nodded, scribbling something onto his notepad. “And then what happened?”
“We ran like hell was on our heels.” Aiden stood with his arms crossed, only giving Carl half his attention. The other half kept lasering over to Becca.
“And what do you mean by that?” Carl was persistent. Getting on everyone’s nerves, but persistent.
Aiden pushed up his shirt sleeves with sharp movements. “I mean we had no time to stop and take a reading of the wind speed. It was as if someone flipped the toaster switch to on, and we were the toast.”
“You’ll need to head into town for a sonogram and an X ray,” Maxine, the paramedic on duty said softly, staring at Becca over the rim of her bifocals.
Becca avoided acknowledging the ache in her head, avoided looking at Aiden. The way he kept staring at her had her jumpy enough to want to disappear. Her gaze fell upon a woman in Aiden’s Hot Shot crew who had bright red hair and burns on her wrists.
“I fell on my butt, Maxine, not my belly. The only thing bruised is my behind. I’ll pass on the hospital,” Becca whispered back, because other than her head, she did feel fine. That’s all she needed was a trip to the hospital during a fire. She’d be branded as weak and ineffective quicker than she could refresh her parched lips with Chapstick.
Near enough to hear their discussion, the female Hot Shot smiled as if in approval of Becca’s decision. Becca smiled back. The two women shared something unique—both operated in a man’s world where any reminder that they were the weaker sex was unwelcome.
“What about your head?” Maxine snapped off her gloves and put her hands on her hips, no longer quiet now.
It hurt, but Becca would never admit it, or the way her stomach was starting to rumble with hunger.
“It’ll take more than a bonk on a boulder to send me to the hospital in the middle of a fire.” Becca slid off the examining table—almost gracefully—and with a nod in the female Hot Shot’s direction, made to leave. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to work. The evening briefing is in about ninety minutes.”
“I’ll need to run this by Sirus,” Maxine warned, clearly not approving.
“Of course.” Becca understood about liability and, if ordered by the Incident Commander, she’d go to the doctor.
But until then, it was business as usual.
“I’m off as well,” the Hot Shot with the burns on her wrists announced.
“Not much I can do for you anyway. Doc did a good job on your bandages.” Maxine patted Doc on the back as she went to greet a man limping into the tent. “Make sure you wear those gloves properly in the future.”
With a brief thank you to Doc for cleaning her up on the mountainside, Becca was out of there, somehow managing to exit the tent without having to look at Aiden again. Her head pounded, her back ached and her ankles were swollen. She’d gotten much more out of the Hot Shots as they’d escorted her back to camp than Carl was getting from them now. The airflow had come from above them, although some had felt light breezes from the direction of the creek. Almost without warning, the winds had come from over the mountain, driving the fire down on top of them like one big blanket of