Wildfire - Honey Palomino Page 0,10

the bushes, landing in a heap at Jesse’s feet.

“It’s a deer!” I gasped.

“Dammit,” Jesse muttered, falling to his knees beside the injured animal. She was beautiful, but her big brown eyes stared up at us in fear. She was breathing hard, her chest rising and falling rapidly. “I think her leg is broken.”

Sure enough, her leg was bent at an odd angle, patches of the skin seared off.

“And burned,” I said. “Poor thing.”

Jesse reached down and stroked the deer’s face. “Shh, we’re going to take care of you, sweetie.” His voice was soft and gentle. I sank to my knees next to him.

“Maybe we can carry her down to the MOB station.”

“We’ve got to get her out of here first,” he said, gesturing to the quickly growing flames around us.

“And us,” I said.

“She’s not going to take too well to me carrying her,” he said.

“Let’s put a blanket over her to calm her,” I said, pulling a small fire blanket out of my backpack and placing it over the deer’s head. She writhed around, panicked, and I reached out a hand and placed it on her neck. “It’s okay, don’t move,” I whispered, gently.

Jesse stood up, then reached down and picked her up gently. She moved around quite a bit at first but he managed not to drop her and once she realized she was being taken away from the fire, she calmed in his arms.

By the time we reached the others, her head was snuggled into his chest.

Maybe he wasn’t made of pure steel after all, I thought.

Chapter 11

Jesse

The damn deer was hard as hell to hold onto, but we made it down to the ranger’s station and handed her off to one of the wildlife vets.

Fiona’s gentle voice soothed her as we hurried down the mountain, and now that we were headed back, her soft voice was echoing in my head and sending shocks of electricity into places that had no business being energized right now.

“Good job,” I muttered, as we marched side by side.

“You, too,” she said. I looked over at her and my heart swelled. She was a little scuffed up now, with streaks of soot on her cheeks and chin, her neat ponytail now slightly disheveled. But somehow, that only made her that much more attractive to me.

Her hand brushed against mine briefly and I pulled away like I’d touched a flame. She looked over at me in surprise at my reaction.

“Never touched a girl before?” she teased, winking.

I ignored her question, grunting instead like a damned neanderthal. This woman was getting under my skin quickly, and I needed to shut down to keep that from happening.

Luckily, the blaze tearing up the mountain made for a damned good distraction.

“Let’s get back to work,” I said, speeding up my pace, leaving her to follow behind silently.

Chapter 12

Fiona

For someone who liked to play with fire, this guy sure could be cold as ice.

One minute, he was playing gentle caregiver to a doe, and the next he was leaving me all alone to fend for myself in a wall of flames.

To say that I was intrigued would be an understatement.

We worked side by side the rest of the day, and by the end of it, after eight hours of grueling labor, we were all too exhausted to talk as we made our way back to the MOB for the night.

As our group ate dinner together, I contemplated where I was going to sleep that evening. I didn’t want any more trouble out of Charlie, or anyone else for that matter, but I was pretty sure my actions last night had hopefully shown him that trying to get anywhere near me again would be a mistake.

And I didn’t really like the optics of me staying in the medic’s tent again.

I wanted to show Max, and all the other higher-ups, that I was good at my job and being a part of the team. Needing my own private sleeping quarters was not the way to do that.

So, after dinner, I marched back into the tent and threw my backpack on my bunk again, claiming it, so there were no further questions. Charlie wasn’t there, which I was grateful for, because I’d had enough of his apologetic puppy-dog eyes that had been following me around all day.

Unfortunately, Jesse was the only one there.

“Decided to join us again?” he quipped.

“I’ve been assigned to this bunk, remember?”

“Oh, I remember, all right,” he said.

“You just going to tease me forever or what?”

“Nah,” he said,