“Defense against what?”

“Against having her pride smacked and her trust betrayed. Personally, I think she’s dealt pretty well with being abandoned by her mother as an infant. But I don’t think anybody ever gets all the way over being abandoned. Okay, I’m going to need to use the tweezers to get some of this debris out. Feel free to curse me.”

He said, “Fuck,” then gritted his teeth. “You trust every time you get in the door. The spotter, the pilot, yourself. Hell, you have to trust fate isn’t going to send a speeding bus your way every time you step out of your house. If you can’t take that same leap with another human being, you end up alone.”

“I think she’s always figured she would. She’s got her father, us, a tight pack of people. But a serious, committed one-to-one? She’s not sure she believes in them in general, much less for herself.”

A bit of gravel hit the bowl with a tiny ting. “I’ve worked with Ro a long time. She’s a proactive optimist in general. In that she—or we, depending—will find a way to make this work. In her personal life, she’s a proactive pessimist who has no problem living in the moment because this isn’t going to last anyway.”

“She’s wrong.”

“Nobody’s proven that to her yet.” She glanced up. “Can you?”

“If I don’t bleed to death from this sadistic game of Operation you’re playing.”

“I haven’t hit the buzzer yet. You’re the first guy, in my opinion, who has a shot at proving her wrong. So don’t screw it up. There.” She dropped more grit into the bowl. “I think that’s it. You lost a lot of skin here, Gull,” she began as she applied antiseptic. “Banged up your elbows pretty good, but it could’ve been a hell of a lot worse.”

“Not to knock the results, but I keep wondering why it wasn’t a hell of a lot worse.”

He looked over at the rap on the door frame. As she had earlier, Rowan leaned on the jamb, but now she had two beers hooked in her fingers. “I brought the patient a beer.”

“He could probably use one.” Janis bandaged the gouges around his right elbow. “Any word?”

“The cops have the grounds lit up like Christmas. If they’ve found anything, they’re not sharing it yet.”

“Okay. You’re as done as I can do.” Janis picked up the bowl filled with grit, bloodied cloths and cotton swipes. “Take two ibuprofen and call me in the morning.”

“Thanks, Janis.”

She gave his leg a squeeze as she rose. “None but the brave,” she said, then walked out.

Rowan stepped over, offered a beer. “Do you want to fight?”

Watching her over the bottle, he took a long swallow. “Yeah.”

“Seems like a waste, considering, but fine. Pick your topic.”

“Let’s start with the latest—we can always work back—and how you ran, alone, into the open out there.”

“We’d decided to try for the barracks, so I did.”

“Of the three of us, I’m the fastest—and the one best qualified to draw and evade fire, if there’d been any.”

“I said I like overconfidence, but this idea you can dodge bullets might be taking it too far. I can and do take care of myself, Gull. I do it every day. I’m going to keep doing it.”

He considered himself a patient, reasonable man—mostly. But she’d just about flipped his last switch.

“The fact you can and do take care of yourself is one of the most appealing things about you. You idiot. Handling yourself on a jump, in a fire or in general, no problem. This was different.”

“How?”

“Have you ever been shot at before?”

“No. Have you?”

“First time for both of us, and clearly a situation where you should have trusted me to take care of you.”

“I don’t want anybody to take care of me.”

“You know, that’s just stupid. Janis just took care of me, yet somehow my pride and self-esteem remain unbattered and unbowed.”

“Bandaging somebody up isn’t the same as falling on them like they were a grenade you were going to smother with your own body to save the guys in the trenches. And look at you, Gull. I’ve barely got a scrape because you took the brunt of that roll instead of letting me take my share.”

“I protect what I care about. If you’ve got a problem with that, you’ve got a problem with me.”

“I protect what I care about,” she tossed back at him.

“Were you protecting a fellow smoke jumper, or me?”

“You are a fellow smoke jumper.”

He stepped closer. “Is it what I do, or who I am? And don’t try the ‘you are what you do’ because I’m a hell of a lot more, and less, and dozens of other things. So are you. I care about you, Rowan. The you who’s got a laugh like an Old West saloon girl, the you who picks out constellations in the night sky and smells like peaches. I care about that woman as much as I do the fearless, smart, tireless one who puts her life on the line every time the siren goes off.”

Wariness clouded her eyes. “I don’t know what to say when you talk like that.”

“Is the only thing you see when you look at me another jumper you’ll work with for the season?”

“No.” She let out an unsteady breath. “No, that’s not all, but—”

“Stop at no.” He cupped a hand at the back of her neck. “Do us both a favor and stop at no. That’s enough for now.”

She moved into him, wrapping her arms tight around his waist when their lips met. She felt her equilibrium shift, as if she’d nearly overbalanced on a high ledge. With it came a flutter, under her heart, at the base of her throat. She gripped harder, wanting to find the heat, the buzz, an affirmation that they were both alive and whole.

Nothing more than that, she told herself. It didn’t have to be more than that.

“Getting a room’s not always enough,” Trigger said from the doorway. “Sometimes you gotta close the door.”

“Go ahead,” Gull invited him, then slid back into the kiss.

“Sorry, they want you in the lounge.”

“Who are ‘they’?” Rowan demanded, and gave Gull’s bottom lip a nip.