Page 1 of The Heat is On

One

Skye Doyle was going to get everyone killed.

Including herself, but that would be small consolation to the horrific burning death of her smokejumping teammates.

Throw it, Skye! Throw it!

She could still smell it...the acrid smoke, the growl of the fire, the whoosh of flames as they splashed into the brush around her. Riley’s gloved hand around hers, grabbing the drip torch…

“Skye, what are you doing? Throw the dart!”

She stood frozen, her hand poised at the dart board. Shaking.

Oh wow. Talk about killing her teammate. Handsome, dark-blond-haired Romeo stood a mere foot from the target.

Around her, the crowd of smokejumpers unwound in the Midnight Sun Saloon, a local Copper Mountain, Alaska, grill and pub, drinking beer, consuming wings and pizza, and generally trying to slough off the residue of ten days of a back-breaking, grimy, firefighting battle alongside the Midnight Sun smokejumpers out of Fairbanks. Victory. The blaze had tried—and failed—to consume a resort nestled near Chelatna Lake, some fifty miles west of town.

“I think I’m done for the night,” Skye said, handing her darts to Seth, their blond, Norwegian lumberjack. She went over to her booth and slid in, her hands shaking around her sweaty glass of Coke.

If she wasn’t more careful, she—and maybe the rest of her team—would be shipped home in body bags back to their home base of Ember, Montana.

She fisted her hands. Blew out a breath. Let in the beat of the song on the juke box—“The Boys Are Back in Town”—and stirred her Coke, one eye on her waitress now carrying chili fries to—shoot. Not her booth.

She nearly followed the fries to the table of flannel-clad locals. Her gaze fell on Tucker, her trainer, seated alone at the bar with a glass of what looked like ginger ale and a basket of wings. At the other end of the bar, Riley, one of the only other seasoned jumpers at the bar, flirted shamelessly with pretty blonde Larke Kingston from Sky King ranch. Their current base camp was a sprawling hunting and bush pilot headquarters where the team was hunkering down during their callout to Alaska.

If Riley hadn’t taken the defective fire torch from her hand and thrown it into the fire…

Skye had panicked. Just an all-out, frozen,What-do-I-do-nowreaction to having her drip torch flare over, turn into a freakin’ rocket in her hand.

Not that Riley—or any of her team—had mentioned the fiasco. In fact, they’d invited her to sit with them at least twice. Good guys, all of them. Seth and Romeo from Minnesota and a couple Zulies—Hanes and Eric—who’d transferred from the Missoula team.

She scrubbed her hands—still grimy despite repeated washings—down her sunburned face. The edges of her blonde hair were curled and fried off and maybe her nose hairs too, given the acrid odor of creosote that had her gut churning.

She just wanted to sleep. She would have been happy staying home tonight, collapsing in her bunk at Sky King ranch. Not terrible digs for the team—she was used to sleeping in a grubby tent.

Or under the stars. Except there were no stars out here in Alaska. Not this time of year, at least. The sky was on fire twenty-four/seven which meant her adrenaline never died. She never stopped feeling on edge, never shut down the sense that something was going to go horribly, terribly wrong. And it would be her fault.

Because she’d frozen at the moment when she needed to think. Toact.

But that was what she did when life got overwhelming. Froze. Denied. Ignored. Sometimes ran the other direction, toward the next great adventure.

Except now, here in the backwoods of Alaska, she had nowhere to run.

She leaned against the booth, drank in the smells of fried food, beer, and not a little Alaskan history—and conceded that she might be in over her head.

“Ease back there, bro. Give her some room.”

Her head popped up, and she glanced over at Tucker at the bar.

Uh oh. She caught the whiff of trouble happening at his end. Tucker had gotten off his stool and stood in front of a brunette, apparently appointing himself as her keeper. The woman stood a foot shorter than Tucker, with shimmery dark brown hair, dressed in a leather jacket, black T-shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots and glanced at Tucker as if surprised at his intervention.

Yeah, well, Tucker pretty much thought the entire world was under his watch.

The “bro” in question was an oversized Alaskan tough guy who bore a littlemake-mein his expression as he stepped up, eye to eye with Tucker.

Skye glanced at the table of smokejumping teammates. Yes, they were watching, the room’s conversation dying just a little. Enough for her to hear Tucker add, “Hey, man, just…give the woman some respect.”

And Tucker was all about respect. Following the rules of society. Which was a little weird since she’d seen him on the slopes—he was a rule breaker to the core on a snowboard, taking the hill with a speed and skill, balanced on the fine edge of reckless, that stole her breath. Fact was, she was drawn to the bold, the strong, the brave.

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