Page 28 of Burning Hearts

Logan had figured they would get around to asking him about Jamie sooner or later. He just never thought it would be Orion asking—at least, not outside their shared room. The guy was also a believer, which made them a good match to double up in one of the rooms with twin beds.

Grizz didn’t share with anyone. Neither did Vince, which wasn’t surprising. Saxon and Kane shared a room, and Hammer and his little brother Mack doubled up next door. Mitch, the hotshot boss, lived in an old Airstream on the side of the cabins.

But they still all had to coexist in the open-plan living space. Where they now all started to crowd around. Waiting for the juicy story?

Logan sighed. “Yes, I found her.”

Vince said, “No surprise, since you didn’t show up to help us cut the line.”

He wasn’t quite sure what that dig at his actions meant. Probably just that it had never happened before. “Don’t worry, it won’t happen again.”

He could tell Orion had something he wanted to say. Hopefully the guy would leave it for when no one else was around.

The intercom speaker by the front door buzzed.

Vince headed for the door. “Chow time.”

The rest of them filed out after him, leaving Orion and Logan to cross the runway together. The girls came out of their cabin and headed for the mess hall as well. Logan spotted Jamie among them, chatting with Jade.

That was good. Logan liked Jade and her boyfriend, Crispin, who was always close by. Not that it was easy to find him. Jade and Skye both reminded him a lot of his sister Andi, back in Last Chance County.

Orion said, “Did she find her brother?”

“We had to leave him behind. But the sheriff can locate Tristan and make sure he’s safe.”

“Isn’t that what Jamie came here to do?”

“She should be going back to her life. Tangling with these guys isn’t something she needs to do.” Which he would have told her if she’d let him in on her plan to come up here. In fact, if she’d talked to him at all about finding Tristan, Logan would probably have come up here on his own, just like she had. He’d have offered to find the guy for her.

But they hadn’t spoken to each other in over a year.

Until Bryce told him he’d heard she was coming up here to look for Tristan, Logan had been trying not to even think about her.

“Isn’t going all out for family a good thing?” Orion said. “I mean, who wouldn’t want a woman who never gives up? Never surrenders.”

“Did you just quote a sci-fi movie to me?”

“Yeah, because it’s the best one ever.”

“I thought you were all aboutTrek of the Osprey.” The guys had been binging it in their time off since the locals in the crew here had discovered everyone who’d come up from Montana knew Spenser Storm. They all wanted to invite him up to Alaska for the end-of-season party.

“TV. Movies. Sci-fi is a good distraction from real life.”

“I prefer to stay below the clouds.”

Maybe that was what he’d been enjoying about being single. For the eight months he’d been with Jamie, it had always seemed like he was spinning out. Trying to keep up with her attempts to rescue her family. The first time they’d broken it off, he’d gone to Australia for a while with Macon. After his buddy had persuaded him to come home, there had been all that stuff with the Sosa cartel and his brother-in-law Jude. Things never seemed to calm down before something else kicked off and things went crazy.

Unless he was in the sky with a parachute above him and nothing but air between him and the ground.

When all he could think about was steering in the right direction, and praying God sent the right air currents to help him along.

This morning, God had dropped Logan right in the path of Jamie. He could now say he’d done exactly what he’d come up here to do, and it turned out it had all been so he could figure out it was time to let her go.

Logan said, “Anyway, what’s so bad about your life you need to escape into entertainment?” He hadn’t noticed anything wrong with Orion. Or preoccupying him. “Is something going on?”

Orion shrugged. The guy was young enough he’d only qualified as a smokejumper this year, though he’d gotten a jump on the whole wildland firefighting thing because his mom ran a teens camp in Montana called Wildlands Academy that taught firefighting skills.

Last summer, Orion had met his father for the first time. Charlie, a colleague of Logan’s from the Last Chance County Fire Department, hadn’t even known he had a son. After working with Charlie for a couple of months, Orion had put it together that he was the result of a teenage fling between Charlie and Jayne, his mom.

---