Light My Fire: A Loveswept Classic Romance Read online

  She squinted and peered into the inky depths of the covered porch that extended along the front and wrapped around the side of the house. It was too dark to see anything. She debated what to do.

  She knew T.J. was likely trying to find a way into the house. She didn’t care if he smashed a window at this point. She’d pay for it. Surely no one would begrudge them shelter after the day they’d had. She also knew that he wouldn’t leave her in the truck once he’d accomplished his task.

  Which left her two options: wait for him, or get out and try to help him. She wasn’t sure how much help she could be, but waiting in the truck didn’t sit well with her. Another possibility hit her, eliciting a groan as she sat up straighter and inadvertently pushed her foot against the floorboards. What she wouldn’t do for a warm bath, an ice pack, and a bottle of aspirin. But her mind returned immediately to her other thought. What if T.J. couldn’t come back for her?

  The more she thought about it, the more she realized how probable the chances were. His knee was shot. It had been hard for him to make it to the truck, and that was after they’d cut Bob loose, freeing up a wide opening in the fence he could walk through. He’d kept it clamped down, but she’d known the pain he’d endured while removing the brace and getting into the truck. It was very likely he was out there somewhere, lying on the cold ground, unable to get up. Her hand hit the door handle as images of his big body sprawled on the ground, frozen and in considerable pain, assaulted her. Adrenaline pumped into her ragged system, making her almost dizzy.

  Just as she shoved the door open a light inside the house blinked on, followed by the front porchlight.

  She jerked her head up, then sagged back against the seat as the black shadow of a body emerged at the stop of the wide porch stairs. Backlit, there was no way to make out the face, but that overlarge rugged frame could belong to only one man. “T.J.,” she said on a sigh of relief. Then she realized he was going to try to negotiate the stairs and moved quickly to poke her head out of the door.

  “Don’t you dare come down those stairs,” she called out. “You’ll end up busting your other knee. Are you crazy?”

  “I must be to think about rescuing a stubborn woman like you from a night spent in a broken-down truck in freezing temperatures.” It could have been midnight, and she’d still have seen the gleam of his grin.

  Her own mouth twitched, but she kept her tone stern. “And how many times do I have to tell you I don’t need rescuing?” Even as she spoke she moved to get out. She wasn’t chancing him attempting those stairs. She faltered when she put her weight on her good leg and her knee refused to support her.

  “Jenna!”

  She gripped at the door frame and leaned against the seat, then swiveled her head toward him. “Stay there!” she puffed out as she waited for the blood flow to finish stabbing her leg and foot with hot prickly needles. She refused even to think about her hands. They’d been beyond pain for some time now. When she could finally balance, she stood, then, holding the edge of the truck bed, took a test hop, then another. She retrieved her crutches, but as she placed them in front of her she froze. Suddenly the thought of propping the rough, busted branch nubs under her arms and leaning her body weight on the tender bruised flesh there was simply too much. She’d endured racking, mind-numbing pain. In comparison, another couple feet or so on the crutches should have been nothing. But in that instant it was everything.

  She’d hit the wall. Hot tears humiliated her further by stinging the corners of her eyes.

  “Jenna?”

  Her throat burned with the effort to stop the threatening tears from flowing. If she spoke at all, he’d hear them in her voice. She didn’t dare look at him. She stared helplessly at her crutches. She was less than a dozen yards from shelter, and she simply couldn’t do it. Anger, pride, humiliation, embarrassment, even hope didn’t rush in to save her one last time. She stood there, shaking, knowing it was time to ask for help but unable to find the words. He needed help too. It wasn’t fair of her to ask.

  Her throat, ravaged from constriction, finally could stand it no more. As it relaxed its chokehold tears coursed down her cheeks. Her leg shook so hard, she dropped the crutches and slumped against the open truck door, hitching her arm through the open window to keep from falling.

  “T.J., I can’t do this,” she finally admitted, her shaky confession barely reaching her own ears. “I … I need help.”

  Strong arms snaked around her waist from behind. “I’ve got you, Jenna.”

  If she hadn’t already been crying, she would have wept, whether in relief or shame she wasn’t entirely sure. “I thought I told you to stay on the porch,” she said, but the choking retort had no sting, and when he leaned against the truck and turned her around, she went willingly into his embrace. “I shouldn’t have asked. I tried to make it … but I couldn’t.”

  He cupped the back of her head, and she didn’t hesitate to burrow her face against his flannel-covered chest. In some distant part of her mind she realized he must have found a shirt in the house.

  “Shh,” T.J. whispered against her hair as he stroked his fingers down her back. “I’ve been there, Jenna. Pushed beyond the limit. You’re tapped out. Most people couldn’t have held out this long.”

  There was no censure in his tone. He wouldn’t tell her she shouldn’t have taken care of Bob or criticize any of her other decisions because he respected her choices. He would be there no matter what. She also realized something else. He’d respect her decisions, but his respect for her extended to believing she’d ask for help when she needed it.

  As if he’d read her mind, he said, “Everyone needs help at some point. There is no shame in asking.”

  Her tears subsided as quickly as they’d come, but they left her feeling even more wrung out, something she hadn’t thought possible. “You need help too,” she said thickly.

  “If there had been anyone else to ask, you would have. At that moment I had one more straw left than you.”

  His arm tightened around her as she lifted her head to look at him. “Asking for help is hard for me, harder than it should be. You have an incredible way of making it okay.” She thought of her dream-free nap in the truck. “You’ve made a lot of things okay for me. When I woke up this morning, all I knew was that I had to get out. I thought that by leaving Paradise I was taking back control of my life. But I was just looking for another place to hide.” She reached up and kissed him softly on the lips. “Thank you for not letting me hide, T.J.”

  He held her so tightly, she would have thought he’d pushed himself beyond his remaining strength, but she was close enough to see his eyes. What she saw there made her shiver.

  He lowered his mouth and kissed her, starting out gently but taking it deeper as she responded. She had no words for what he made her feel. Even love didn’t do it justice. So she poured all of it into her kiss. He answered her with all that and more.

  When he finally lifted his head, she thought they both might simply float into the house.

  T.J. stared into her eyes, then carefully drew her battered hands up between them. “It was inside you all along. You’re an incredible woman, Jenna. I want you in ways I never thought I’d want anyone.”

  “I … I feel the same way,” she said, almost breathless with the wonder of that truth.

  He dropped another soft kiss on her lips and a small groan escaped his lips when she started to respond, but he lifted his mouth from hers. “We’re both busted up, and yet it’s all I can do not to take you right to the ground, right here.”

  She swallowed hard, a new ache spreading, tightening deep within her. This pain was delicious, especially since her body already knew what the cure felt like. Busted up or not … “I can’t think of a better way to escape pain,” she said. “Why don’t we get inside and—”

  He shushed her with a quick kiss and shook his head. “I would in a heartbeat if I could. But there’s not much time, and there are things I need to tell you.”
/>   She pulled her hands from his. “What? I don’t understand.”

  “I work for the government, or at least I did when I came here. For the last ten years I’ve been part of a team that specialized in handling problems no other authorized organization could—”

  “When you said you rescued people, I thought you were an emergency technician or something.” She stared at him. “You’re telling me you’re a … a secret agent?”

  He searched her eyes as if trying to discover how she felt about his confession, but finally scraped together a tired version of his killer grin. “That’s me. Secret agent man.”

  Why he was telling her now? She was admittedly intrigued. Secret agent? She wanted to know everything about the man she was falling in love with. But something about his urgency was ringing warning bells in her head. “Who … whom—whatever—do you rescue?”

  “Occasionally, our missions include liberating people from situations that no one else is authorized to handle.” He paused, but when she said nothing, he quickly went on. “But what I wanted to tell you is that I’m thinking about retiring. Actually, I guess I’ve already decided. I just have to tell Scottie. She’s my boss. An amazing woman, she’s—” He stopped and smiled. “I’ll just say that you two would love each other.”

  Information was coming too fast for her to make sense of it all. “Retire? Your boss is a woman? Named Scottie?”

  He didn’t give her a chance to catch up. “I’m pretty sure this knee injury has ruled out fieldwork for me. I can’t see myself behind a desk, and I’d make a lousy instructor.”

  “I think you’d be a wonderful teacher,” she said, then shook her head in confusion. “But why is it so important that you tell me all of this now?”

  A distant siren wail echoed across the valley.

  “That’s why.”

  “The sirens?”

  “They’re for us. I figure we have about ten minutes before they get here.”

  TWELVE

  “But how—?”

  “No phone in the house,” T.J. said. “But the house is wired. I figured we needed help sooner rather than later, so I tripped the security alarm. It’s silent. No one to hear it out here anyway.”

  “You tripped the alarm,” she repeated. “But not until after you’d checked the house out.”

  He lifted his good shoulder in a half shrug. “An occupational skill. Never know when stuff like that will come in handy.”

  She stared at him.

  T.J. could feel time slip away like a tangible thing. He grew serious. He had to make sure she didn’t slip away from him. “I know this is all coming at you from left field, but I wanted to tell you up front what kind of man you’d be dealing with.”

  “I know what kind of man I’m dealing with,” she said. “Your occupation or lack of it makes no difference.”

  “I don’t want to lose you, Jenna. Not when I just found you. I have to go back to Denver and take care of all of this. Then I want to come back here. I’m not sure what I want to do, but I’m in good shape moneywise. I’ll have time to figure that out. I do know who I’d like to spend time figuring it out with.”

  Her confusion cleared, and she held his gaze solemnly, with what almost looked like … regret in her eyes. “I don’t know if I’ll be here,” she said.

  T.J. felt as if someone had punched him in the heart. The siren wail grew steadily louder. “Jenna, I—”

  “There are things you don’t know about me either,” she said seriously.

  “Nothing that would stop me from wanting to see you again.” From wanting to spend the rest of my life with you.

  “Earlier, when I commented on the fires here, you didn’t ask me any questions. Why?”

  “I didn’t think you wanted to go through any more at that moment. I figured you’d tell me in time.”

  “Well, it doesn’t look like I’ll have that luxury now.”

  T.J.’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t seem angry. Her tone was even, resigned almost, rather than angry. “I wanted more time too, but we need help, Jenna. I—”

  “I know, I know. I understand.” She paused, then said, “You remember I told you I had a partner named Toby.”

  He nodded, his muscles tightening in painful anxiety as the sirens drew closer. He wished now he’d gone to get her before alerting the damn security people.

  “I am—was—a smoke jumper for the Forest Service. I fought forest fires.”

  T.J. had spent some time wondering what had put her in Paradise Canyon, but he hadn’t come close to guessing correctly. One look in her eyes told him the whole story. “Jonny,” he said quietly.

  She nodded, knowing he understood. “Toby died trying to save me in a monster gobbler early last summer. A tree fell on my ankle, shattered it. But that was no excuse for what happened. I couldn’t get my gear out in time. He shouldn’t have—” She stopped abruptly and shook her head. “I’m not going to go into all of that here.” She looked at him squarely. “The bottom line is I won’t be going back to work either.”

  “I don’t know much about smoke jumpers. I didn’t think any of them were women.”

  “Not many. A few.”

  “Pretty tough job requirements, I’ll bet.”

  “I held my own.”

  T.J. considered that along with the slight tilt to her chin. He smiled and dropped a quick kiss on it, right beneath her lips. “I bet you gave them hell.”

  “I’d say we broke about even.” A ghost of a smile flickered around her mouth, but she remained serious. “During the off-season I worked for the Bureau of Land Management and at the jumper training school in Missoula.”

  T.J. regarded her for a moment. “You don’t want to be a teacher either, do you?” It wasn’t a question. “Have you thought about being a pilot? Jump planes or helicopters?”

  She shook her head. “That’s not something I’ve ever been interested in. And even if I wanted to teach, I couldn’t. Instructors need to be in as good a shape as the trainees. I’ll never be able to jump on this ankle again.”

  In that quietly spoken sentence, T.J. heard her real regret. He held her tighter, pressed her face to his chest, and nuzzled her neck. “You did this for Jonny, but you really loved it, didn’t you, Jenna?”

  She nodded silently. They remained that way for several seconds. The sirens were loud enough now that it was clear their time was up.

  T.J. drew back and tilted her head up. “Will you go back to Paradise to work on your ankle again?”

  She shook her head. “Will you for your knee?”

  He shook his head. “I’ll take care of that while I’m in Denver this time. Since I’m not going back to the Dozen, I won’t push the rehab quite so hard this time.”

  “The Dozen?”

  “My team. Long story.” He couldn’t will a grin to his face. Instead he pulled her tightly against him, not caring if he was tearing every remaining ligament in his shoulder. “I want to tell it to you, Jenna. I want to share everything with you. I don’t want it to end here.”

  “Me either,” she said, the words muffled against his chest.

  His mouth sought hers at the same moment as she lifted her face to his. He took her hard and fast into the kiss, trying to communicate to her everything he had no time left to say. She responded with equal fervor, not lifting her mouth from his until the red flashing lights washed over them as two security cruisers swerved to a stop several feet away.

  “I won’t lose you, Jenna,” he vowed against her lips. He pulled back and looked into her eyes, holding her gaze steadily even as the sound of car doors slamming and questioning voices intruded. “Don’t lose me, either.”

  She wasn’t given the chance to answer him. His only assurance as they separated was the promise he swore he saw in her eyes.

  T.J. paced Scottie Giardi’s Denver office, not even pausing to notice the magnificent view of the snowcapped Rockies the huge picture windows afforded. Actually, paced was a relative term. With the knee brace he
had on, hobbled was probably more accurate.

  The tall woman behind the desk regarded him steadily. “Will you please sit down? It hurts me to watch you.”

  T.J. ignored her request. Again. “How hard can it be to track down one woman?”

  “We’re trying, Delahaye.”

  “They own a huge ranch, for crying out loud.”

  “Which they put up for sale two weeks ago. Right before they packed up and left town.”

  “Hasn’t anyone been able to locate them yet?”

  “The report should come in sometime today.”

  T.J. swore under his breath; the frustration that had built up for the last month had reached critical mass.

  The last he’d seen of Jenna had been from the rear window of the security cruiser as he’d been taken to the closest hospital some sixty miles away. She’d stayed behind.

  After they explained the situation to the men who’d responded to the alarm, it had been quickly decided that T.J. required medical treatment well beyond the capabilities of Paradise Canyon. Jenna had argued against going to both the hospital and Paradise, but in the end had agreed to return to Paradise. And that had come only after she’d thoroughly satisfied herself that Bob would be taken care of.

  She agreed to fill Paradise in on what had happened and to get X rays of her ankle and have her hands attended to. He’d managed to extract a promise that she’d go to the hospital if the Paradise staff recommended it. He’d also asked that if a hospital stay wasn’t necessary, she wait long enough for him to contact her. She’d agreed.

  As it turned out, he hadn’t been able to make that call until the following morning. He’d made it through a hellish night of examinations and probing and eventually rushed surgery, and through it all he’d focused on one thing: hearing her smoky voice on the telephone as soon as it was over. Telling her he loved her. Still groggy from the sedatives, he’d demanded a phone. He reached Paradise, but not Jenna.