Burns So Bad (Smoke Jumpers) (21 page)

“What Rio’s saying is that facing
down death and drug dealers together has brought us closer together and he’s
considering couples therapy.” Oops. She’d forgotten that not everyone was in on
the drug grow business. Lily’s eyes widened and she was pretty sure Rio’s
mother cursed. Which explained a lot about where her son had acquired his potty
mouth.

“Not quite.” Rio’s growly voice
made it plenty clear that she’d pissed him off. Nothing new there.

She headed for the hangar, because
she was done here. Was this close to lying down on the ground and sneaking in
that nap she was jonesing for. Instead, she slammed into a familiar male chest.
She lurched, landing hard on her ankle, and cursed at the bright lance of pain.
Dear God, that hurt. Arms came around her, steadying her.

Then his mouth came down on hers
and Rio Donovan kissed her right there in front of his whole world. A sweetly
possessive kiss, his hands cupping her head, his thumbs stroking over her
temples as he tipped her face up into his. She loved his kisses. That was the
only reason she stood still, pausing her mad retreat to the hangar. She hadn’t
thought beyond her shower and her nap and getting the hell away from this man
before he could do any more damage to her. To her heart.

Shit
.

And now she was standing here,
letting him—
letting
—kiss
her. She slapped a palm on his chest and shoved. Hard. He put a few inches
between them and smile at her.

God, she was in so much trouble.

She looked over Rio’s shoulder and,
sure enough, here came all the female members of the Donovan can. She liked these women—but she knew
exactly what their happy welcome meant. In their eyes, she was no longer a
jumper. Nope. Now she was a jumper girlfriend. Sure, it would be special to
have a big, tough Donovan male decide she was the center of his
universe—to have all that fierce love and protection behind her. All that
sensual alpha male wrapped around her at night. It wasn’t the nights she
worried about, though—it was the days. After all, she’d seen firsthand
just how stifling love can be.

She’d stand on her own, thank you
very much.

“Touché,” he whispered and swept her up in his arms. “Doctor time.”

So much for talking, she thought, and slugged him in the jaw.

Rio didn’t do waiting.

He also didn’t do sitting back,
relaxing or letting someone else take charge. This was his Gia they were
talking about. He wanted to shield her from the danger of the
grow they’d stumbled upon but, to do that, he had to bring others. Which
was, shit… taking more time than he’d thought it would.

Determined, he turned a steely-eyed
gaze on his present company. The hangar was fucking crowded. Both Jack and Evan
had insisted on being present and the determined looks on their faces said they
had no intention of taking shit from anyone—either the DEA or Rio. As
Jack had pointed out, Gia was part of the team—and that made her theirs
as well.

Today’s new discovery? Rio didn’t
share when it came to Gia.

“We’re all here now.” Jack leveled
a grim stare at the assembled uniforms. “So it run it by us one more time.”

Rio did. He gave them the
blow-by-blow account of finding the hidden grow, the guards’ reaction, and the
chase. He left out exactly how he’d taken down their pursuers and his temporary
acquisition of various unlicensed weapons, because he didn’t need to borrow
that kind of trouble. Besides, his brothers knew him. They’d know exactly what
he’d done out there in the woods.

“So Ms. Jackson got a good look at
at least one suspect?” The DEA agent nodded thoughtfully, clearly already working
out how best to exploit that particular angle.

“She’ll meet with a sketch artist,”
Rio said, not pointing out that they’d already had this conversation. “She
should be able to come up with a decent visual on the guy.”

“I’m more concerned that this guy
saw her,” Evan snapped. “He saw her, they followed you, and then you hooked up
with the hotshot team working on the fire access road. It’s not going to take
them too long to put two and two together that their shot at attempted murder
failed and figure out that you’re firefighters. If they coming gunning for her,
how do we keep her safe?”

“That’s my job,” Rio growled. “No
one gets to Gia.”

The DEA agent picked that moment to
start troubleshooting. “We can move her into witness protection until we’ve got
this case closed.”

Gia would hate that. Not only would
she be off the jump team, but she’d be under lock and
key and close supervision wasn’t her thing. Hell. Their possible unplanned
pregnancy was bad enough and that was his fault.

He kept those details to himself
though. “I’ll watch out for her.”

Jack scowled. “Like you did out
there in the woods?”

DEA wonder boy tapped his fingers
on the table. “With all due respect, Mr. Donovan, what makes you think you’re
capable of acting as Ms. Jackson’s bodyguard?”

Jack and Evan both looked at him.
Fuck
.

“Three tours of duty with Spec
Ops,” he snapped. “That’s what. I’m licensed to carry and Uncle Sam made damn
sure I knew how to infiltrate and how to kill. Anything else you want to know,
you’ll have to get clearance from my former superiors, but let’s just say that
this drug grow isn’t my first dance at the ball. What matters here is keeping
Gia safe, and I’m the man who’s going to do it.”

“So how do we do that?” Evan’s slow
rumble was a welcome distraction. “She’s a smoke jumper, Rio. She goes out in
the field.”

“And she’s a grown woman.” That was
Jack. The bastard knew Rio had been touching where he shouldn’t and know he was
going to make Rio pay. “She’ll be making her own decisions.”

“Not if those decisions jeopardize
her safety.” That was non-negotiable.

Imagining Gia in the hands of a
drug runner made Rio’s blood ran cold. He’d seen firsthand what happened to
drug trade informants and it wasn’t pretty. Nope. Adjectives like brutal,
violent and lethal came to mind. Those men would take a knife, a gun, their
fists and cocks—whatever it took—to get the information they wanted
from Gia and then they’d kill her anyhow. There was no unseeing what she’d
seen.

“So we take the grow out fast.”
Jack sounded positively cheerful at the thought of violence. “And eliminate the
threat there.”

The DEA agent nodded slowly. “We’ve
got the coordinates Mr. Donovan provided and, as soon as the fire is under
control, we’ll get a team airborne to check the site out.”

“If the wind doesn’t shift again,
we’ll have the fire knocked down in another twenty-four, forty-eight hours.”
Jack launched into the fire update, quick, succinct, and to the point. His
steel-toes stretched in front of him, Rio tuned out briefly, wondering how Gia
was doing. He rubbed his jaw and winced. She packed a hell of a right hook.

He’d deserved it too.

After he’d dropped her—which
hadn’t been his plan at all, but her punch had surprised him—she’d calmed
down enough to agree that Nonna could drive her in for a check up. That was
something.

“The bad guys aren’t going to sit
around and wait for your RSVP,” Rio pointed out. “The site’s been compromised
and they know it. They’ll have shut down and moved out. They could be anywhere
by now.”

The DEA agent didn’t look terribly
concerned. More resigned and matter-of-face like this was a common outcome in
his war on drugs. “That product won’t reach the street.”

Shutting down one pipeline wasn’t
enough.

“The site was pretty well
concealed.” Rio had done this before. He knew the drill. Whoever had laid out
that site had made sure the plants had plenty of cover from the air. Otherwise,
someone would have spotted the grow months ago.

The DEA agent leaned forward. Maybe
his nonchalance had been bait in a trap. Mentally, Rio tipped his hat to the
guy. “What do you suggest?”

“If you can’t find the site, I’ll
lead the way in. I’ve got the coordinates and I’ve been there before.”

A
few minutes later, the hangar office emptied out. Checking in on Gia was high
on Rio’s to do list, but he needed to ask Evan something first. Hell. He’d have
asked Jack too, but the man was always first out of a meeting. Jack was long
gone.

Evan
raised a brow when Rio closed the door. “Question?”

“You worry about it?”

Evan eyed him. The look on his
brother’s face said he had no idea where Rio was headed with the question.
Honestly, Rio didn’t know himself. The words had popped out before he could
think about them.

“You’re going to have to be more
specific.”

“About getting married. About not
getting it right with Faye.”

Evan nodded slowly. “All the time,”
he admitted.

“But that’s not stopping you.”

Evan shook his head. “I worry about
fire burning my ass or overrunning my team, but that doesn’t stop me from
jumping out of the plane. Same thing, really.”

How was it the same thing? Fire was
an act of nature. You jumped. You kicked its ass. Or you didn’t, but you went
in armed with Pulaskis and water and with your guys at your back. So he stared
back at Evan, waiting for the explanation.

Nothing scared Evan. Rio wished to
God his brother could teach him that trick.

“You just got to trust your
instincts,” he said finally. “Got to love what you do. And then you jump.”

The sudden warmth in his brother’s
eyes said Evan loved what he did with Faye a whole lot. Christ. “So sex is the
answer?”

Evan looked at him. “You really
want to talk about this?”

Hell, no. “Is it?”

“Fuck.” Evan scrubbed a hand over
his forehead, leaving behind a streak of soot from an early morning training
exercise. “This had better be for a personal reason, Rio. Sometimes,
sure. Sex helps a whole lot. But Faye and I talk, too. In bed. Out of bed.”

Evan had never been much of a
talker, so clearly Faye had worked miracles.

“I love her,” Evan said, “and
that’s what makes the difference.”

“Between?”

Evan winced. “Between having sex
and having a relationship, okay? Why don’t you ask Jack about Lily? Why me?”

“You’re here.” He paused. “You
don’t worry that you’re going to screw it up?”

“I do.” Evan didn’t sound horribly
concerned.

“Badly?”

“There are some things I’m not
telling you but, yeah. On a scale of one to ten, I’ve hit all the numbers. We
work it out. Is this about Gia?”

Was it? He flattened his hand on
the desk. Yeah. Probably. But he
was worried he’d pull a ten on Evan’s scale. Do something, say something worthy of the stepdads yammering away in his head.

“We didn’t get the best start in
life,” he said instead, because Evan’s question about Gia was a landmine.

Evan just looked at him. “You think
we’re going to repeat those mistakes?”

Well.

Yeah.

Not on purpose and maybe not as
badly, but what experience did he have with being a family guy, the kind of guy
who stuck? Not much at all.

“Huh,” Evan said.

“What?”

Evan slapped him on the back.
“You’re going to figure it out just fine.”

After his meet-and-greet with the
DEA wound up, Rio knocked on Gia’s cabin door. Knocking felt wrong, but so did
opening the door without an invitation. After making love to her in the back of
her truck and then out in the woods, he should have felt comfortable entering
her place. But he didn’t. Not without her saying the words. So he stood there
on her porch, waiting for her to answer the door like he was selling newspapers
or wrapping paper.

He didn’t know what he wanted.

That was the problem.

Sex. Or something else.

Something
more
.

His head and his dick—and
maybe something halfway between the two—kept tugging him in two opposing
directions. Gia opened the door, yawning as she leaned on her crutches. She’d
probably been catching up on her sleep and he’d woken her up. Good going.

“Hey.” She blinked up at him like
he was the last person she’d expected to see on her porch. She’d get used to
having him around. He planned on sticking real close.

She was dressed for bed in a faded
T-shirt that made her bra-less state perfectly clear and a pair of shorts that
clung to her in all the right places. He immediately lost his train of thought.
Hell, all thinking went straight off the tracks and right into fantasyland. Gia
was all long, bare legs and his head reminded his dick what those legs of hers
felt like wrapped around his hips. His shoulders. The sweet, slick feel of her
when he touched her. Kissed her…

Jesus Christ.

He braced an arm against her
doorframe. Maybe he should have brought flowers. Or asked his brothers’
fiancées for advice. Lily and Faye clearly had plenty of experience of dealing
with Donovans. Maybe they could have helped him out here because showing up
without a game plan suddenly seemed like a recipe for disaster.

“Can I come in?”

She actually looked like she was
considering saying no. He took a step closer, ready to shove his foot in the
door because he wasn’t letting her shut him out.

“Fine,” she said finally, turning and
limping away from the door.

He followed her inside, shutting the
screen door carefully behind him. The cabins were pretty much standard issue.
One main room with a fireplace, a sleeping loft, and a bathroom. Gia had put
her own stamp on the place, decorating with stacks of books and some little
fluffy throw pillows. She flopped down on the couch, dropping the crutches and pulling
the fleece blanket around her even though it was summer, and stared expectantly
at him.

Her eyes went to the faint purple
bruise on his jaw and winced.