She unhooked his belt, thrilled to touch and be touched, to remember all the things a body felt when it desired, and was desired. The pants it had taken her twenty minutes to decide on after he’d called slid to the floor. Then her heart simply soared as he lifted her into his arms.

“Lucas.” Overcome, she dropped her head to his shoulder. “My whole life I’ve wanted someone to do that. To just sweep me up. You’re the first who has.”

He looked into her dazzled eyes, and felt like a king as he carried her to bed.

In the half-light, they touched and tasted. They remembered, and discovered. Rounded curves, hard angles, with all the points of pleasure to be savored.

When he filled her, she breathed his name—the sweetest music. Moving inside her, each long, slow stroke struck his heart, hammer to anvil. She met him, matched him, her fingers digging into his hips to urge him on.

The king became a stallion, rearing over his mate.

When she cried out, fisting around him in climax, his blood beat in triumph. And letting himself go, he rode that triumph over the edge.

“Well, God,” she said after several moments where they both lay in stunned, sated silence. “I have all these applicable clichés, like it is just like riding a bike, or it just gets better with age like wine and cheese. But it’s probably enough to simply say: Wow.”

He drew her over where she obligingly curled at his side, her head on his shoulder. “Wow covers it. Everything about you is wow to me.”

“Lucas.” She turned her face into the side of his throat. “I swear, you make my heart skip. Nobody’s ever said those kind of things to me.”

“Then a lot of men are just stupid.” He twirled her hair around his finger, delighted he could. “I’d write a poem to your hair, if I knew how to write one.”

She laughed and had to blink back tears at the same time. “You are the sweetest, sweetest man.” She pushed up to kiss him. “I’m going to make you the best pasta you’ve ever eaten.”

“You don’t have to go to all that trouble. We could just make sandwiches or something.”

“Pasta,” she said, “with fresh Roma tomatoes and basil out of my garden. You’re going to need the fuel, for later.”

As her eyes twinkled into his, he patted her bare butt. “In that case, we’d better get down there and start cooking.”

13

As her father slept the sleep of the righteously exhausted in Ella’s bed, Rowan headed into her eighth hour of the battle. They’d had the fire cornered, and nearly under control, when a chain of spot fires ignited over the line from a rocket shower of firebrands. In a heartbeat, the crew found itself caught between the main fire and the fresh, spreading spots.

Like hail from hell, embers ripped through the haze, battering helmets, searing exposed skin. With a bellowing roar, a ponderosa torched, whipping flame through clouds of eye-stinging smoke. Catapulted by the wind the fire created, burning coal flew over the disintegrating line, turning near victory into a new, desperate battle.

On the shouted orders, Rowan broke away with half the crew, hauling gear at a run toward the new active blaze.

“Escape route’s back down the ridge,” she called out, knowing they’d be trapped if the shifting flank fed into the head. “If we have to go, drop the gear and run like hell.”

“We’re going to catch her. We’re going to kill her,” Cards yelled back, his face fervent with dragon fever.

They knocked down spots as they went, beating, digging, sawing.

“There’s a stream about fifty yards over,” Gull said, jogging beside her.

“I know it.” But she was surprised he did. “We’ll get the pump in, get the hoses going and build a wet line. We’ll drown the sister.”

“Nearly had her back there.”

“Gibbons and the rest will knock the head down.” She looked at him, his face glowing in the reflection of the fire while hoarse shouts and wild laughter tangled with the animal growl of the fire.

Dragon fever, she knew, could spread like a virus—for good or ill. It pumped in her own blood now, because make or break was coming.

“If they don’t, Fast Feet, grab what gear you can, haul it as far as you can. The way you run, you ought to be able to outrace the dragon.”

“You got it.”

They worked with demonic speed, dumping gear to set up the pump, run the hose, while others cut a quick saw line.

“Let her rip!” Rowan shouted, planting her feet, bracing her body as she gripped the hose. When it filled, punched out its powerful stream, she let out a crazed whoop.

Her arms, already taxed with the effort of hours of hard, physical work, vibrated. But her lips peeled back in a fierce grin. “Drink this!”

She glanced back over at Gull, laughed like a loon. “Just another lazy, hazy summer night. Look.” She jerked her chin. “She’s going down. The head’s dying. That’s a beautiful sight.”

An hour shy of dawn, the wildfire surrendered. Rather than pack out, the weary crew coyote’d by the stream, heads pillowed on packs to catch a couple hours’ sleep before the mop-up. Rowan didn’t object when Gull plopped down beside her, especially when he offered her a swig of his beer.

“Where’d you get this?”

“I have my ways.”

She drank deep, then lay back to watch the stars break through the thinning haze of smoke.

This, she thought, was the best—the timeless moment between night and day—the hush of forest, mountain and sky. No one who hadn’t fought the war could ever feel such intense satisfaction in winning it.

“A good night’s work should always be followed by beer and starlight,” she decided.

“Now who’s the romantic?”

“That’s just because I’m dazed by the smoke, like a honeybee.”

“I dated a beekeeper once.”

“Seriously?”

“Katherine Anne Westfield.” He gave a little sigh of remembrance. “Long-legged brunette with eyes like melted chocolate. I had the hots enough to help her out with the hives for a while. But it didn’t work out.”

“You got stung.”

“Ha. The thing was, she insisted on being called Katherine Anne. Not Katherine, not Kathy or Kate or Kat, not K.A. It had to be the full shot. Got to be too much trouble.”