Thor frowned, and Steve added, "Maggie's afraid that it'll upset her parents and grandmother if they realize that she, um, misrepresented our relationship to them at the grand opening. Now that I'm courting her for real, I just want to avoid any misunderstandings."
Thor nodded. "Okay, fair enough. My lips are sealed."
Well, that was easier than I thought it would be, Steve thought, relieved, as he and Thor parted ways.
He knew he was going to be walking a tightrope for the next week, convincing his teammates that he and Maggie were involved for real now, while avoiding any actual and detectable lies.
When he arrived at the Operations Desk, Pete Brinkley, the team's Base Manager and Operations Coordinator, was in the middle of creating the day's jump list.
The jump list was a list of the smokejumper team's names, attached to a magnetic board. When the alarm sounded for deployment, jumpers went on fire assignments in the order that they appeared on the day's list.
Upon returning from their fire assignment, jumpers would move to the bottom of the list and then rotate back up to the top.
Steve felt a pang as he saw that the magnetic marker printed with his name had been moved to the Out/Unavailable side of the board.
"Morning, Steve. How's the leg?" Pete asked, turning from the board.
He was the sole Ordinary member of the team and also their most experienced smokejumper. He was an extremely fit man in his early fifties, with blue-gray eyes and salt-and-pepper hair in a military-style buzz cut.
"Getting better every day," Steve assure him. "Dr. Chang told me that I might be able to lose the cast and start physical therapy in another ten days. Speaking of which—I'd like to take some time off before then. I'm planning to travel out of town for a four-day weekend starting on Friday the twenty-third."
Pete looked surprised. "Where are you headed?"
"Bearpaw Ridge. The woman I'm courting wants me to meet her family."
Pete grinned. "Wait, are you talking about the same woman you had that hot date with last night? Maggie the bakery lady?"
Steve rolled his eyes in mock dismay. "Jeez, any of you people ever hear of someone having a private life?"
"I heard that last night was your third date." Pete crossed his arms and waited.
"Yeah," Steve confirmed. "Like I said, I'm courting Maggie. She's an old friend of Thor's, and from the same hometown. She was pretty insistent that I meet her family ASAP, and I'm hoping that's a good sign."
Now that both Thor and Pete have the official story, maybe I won't have to tell this story another seven or eight times, he thought.
It was going to be a long week before he saw Maggie again and was able to begin courting her in earnest.
Chapter 10
Home Turf
Bearpaw Ridge, Idaho
Friday, September 23
"What do you say we stop for lunch?" Maggie asked as they approached the turn-off for downtown Bearpaw Ridge. "I'm starving."
More precisely, she didn't want to face the ultra-critical scrutiny of her Tío Eddy, Tía Esperanza, Abuela Inez, and other clan elders on an empty stomach. She would need all of her strength to pull off her weekend-long pretense.
Maggie and Steve had both gotten an early start with their 7:00 a.m. flight from Denver to Missoula.
As a baker, Maggie was used to getting up at Stupid O'Clock, as Manny liked to refer to it, but breakfast had long since worn off during the three-hour drive south across the Montana-Idaho state line, and Bearpaw Springs National Park was still another forty minutes away.
When their plane came in for its landing at the Missoula airport, Steve had joked that this was his first visit to Montana where he didn't have to put on a parachute and deplane at 10,000 feet.
"Sounds good to me," he agreed now.
Maggie took the familiar exit from the highway and drove slowly up Main Street. Things hadn't changed much since the last time she'd visited, three years ago.
Main Street was still lined with old two-story brick buildings with the occasional newer building squeezed in. Big planter baskets of colorful flowers hung from the antique lamp posts, and many of the second-story windows had planter boxes filled with the last few blooming geraniums and petunias as well.
The side streets they passed were lined with tall old trees. Their foliage was already beginning to turn autumn colors. Everything looked as well-tended and peaceful as she remembered.
The biggest change was that Justin Long's new restaurant, Wildcat Springs Texas BBQ, was now open for