Wild Heat (Hot Shots: Men of Fire #1)(10)
Author: Bella Andre

She decided not to mention that his very vocal opposition to the new retirement packages for wildland firefighters, however noble, didn’t help his case one bit. Until she’d gathered more evidence, she’d keep that information in her back pocket.

Surprise registered on his face a split second before he said, “You haven’t answered my question. Do you think I could have lit a fire that could kill my crew? You were up on the mountain. Did you see Connor? Did you happen to notice his hands?”

He held his out in front of her, but all she could see was the skin bubbling and oozing on the other hotshot’s fingers.

“He may never fight a fire again,” Logan said in a low, hard voice. “I would never take that away from one of my men. Never.”

His anguish over his friend’s burns was genuine—and sent strong flickers of doubt regarding his guilt through her—but none of that changed what she had to do. She laid out the facts.

“With no lightning strikes during that same time frame, all signs point to a man-made fire.” She paused before slamming in the final nail. “All signs point to you.”

Something flashed in Logan’s eyes and her chest squeezed. She wanted to find the arsonist as quickly as possible, but she didn’t want it to be a hotshot.

She didn’t want the arsonist to be him.

“You’re actually suspending me because some hikers saw me putting out a campfire? Because someone thought it would be funny to call the tip line and give them my name?”

She answered his questions with a question. “Did you put out the campfires?”

“Yes.”

“Did you light the campfires?”

He looked at her hard before answering. “No. They were already burning.”

She wanted to believe him, but was that because her gut told her he was telling the truth? Or was it simply her hormones talking again?

“Okay then,” she said. “If you didn’t light them, who did?”

“If I knew that,” he said in a hard voice, “I would have already tracked the arsonist down and turned him in. And then you wouldn’t be here right now, would you?”

“The hikers wouldn’t have reported you to the ranger if the situation looked normal. And as a rule, anonymous tip lines are very useful tools. But you’ve been in this business a long time,” she added, openly challenging him, “so you already know that, don’t you?”

He advanced on her. Within seconds, he had her pinned against the wall. The heat of his body scorched her even though there was a good ten inches between them. Silently, he dared her to remember all the ways he’d kissed her, touched her.

“You think these hands are capable of such destruction?”

She shivered as vivid memories came rushing back of him touching her so intimately. He had incredible hands. Big. Strong. Warm. And capable of giving exquisite pleasure.

“I saw how selfless you were today.”

She hesitated for a split second, until she realized that her wavering wasn’t going to get them any closer to finding the arsonist.

“You could have died saving your crew. But that doesn’t negate the evidence. Right now, all signs point to you.”

She squared her shoulders and took a step forward, into his hard, well-trained body, refusing to be intimidated even as she hated her body’s instinctive sensual response to his nearness.

“And until your name is cleared, I have to put you on suspension. Starting now.”

CHAPTER FOUR

DISBELIEF FOUGHT with fury in Logan’s gut. Tahoe Pines had been his hotshot crew for fifteen years, and after watching Connor head off in an ambulance, these guys desperately needed his leadership.

Most of his men had been fighting fire long enough to understand the risks. Injury—and death—went hand in hand with wildland firefighting. Every hotshot knew how to wall his emotions off long enough to put the fire out; forever, sometimes, if he’d lost a close friend or a buddy he’d joined up with. But sometimes it was harder to watch a live man burn than it was to mourn a dead one.

Any one of them could have been caught on the mountain this morning with nowhere left to run, surrounded by fire.

A fire this woman thought he’d started.

The same fire that he thought Joseph might have started. And if Joseph had, even if it had happened when he’d disappeared into one of his brain-fogs and had no idea what he was doing, once there were injuries—or, God forbid, deaths—he’d be in a whole hell of a lot of trouble. Joseph wasn’t strong enough to withstand weeks or months of questioning, fines, or even imprisonment.

Logan’s resolve hardened. He needed to protect Joseph no matter what. Even if it meant taking the heat himself.

His fists were clenched on the wall behind Maya’s head as he forced himself to step away. While Superintendent McCurdy was sitting in his comfortable, air-conditioned office in the Forest Service headquarters, a beautiful woman was facing Logan down, and she was a messenger of doom who looked a hundred times hotter than he’d remembered.

Which was saying a lot, considering how good she’d looked six months ago.

Hell yes, he remembered that afternoon in Eddie’s bar well. Too well. In his line of work, girlfriends came and girlfriends went, but none of the women he’d been with had stuck around in his brain like she had.

Now here she was, back in his life again from out of the blue.

No doubt about it, out of the blue was her M.O. But this time she wasn’t grasping at his shirt, wasn’t diving onto him, wasn’t jamming her tongue down his throat.

This time around she was accusing him of arson. And she wanted to bench him while a wildfire raged.

But there was no way he could let that happen. He needed to be out there keeping an eye on his crew. Which meant getting back out on the mountain in full gear, wielding his chainsaw and Pulaski in the thick brush within the hour.

“Look, I know it’s your job to track down arsonists. The Forest Service sent you here to investigate. I get that. But you and I both know I didn’t light this fire. And I’ve got to get back out there and put it out. So why don’t you run along to look for the real arsonist and let me get back to my job?”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible, Mr. Cain.”

Maya’s expression remained neutral. She wasn’t angry. Or nervous. Instead, she seemed cold. Frigid, even.

She had all the same curves in all the same places, but she sure as hell wasn’t the wild woman he’d met in his friend’s bar. If anything, she was standing there, her full br**sts and sweet ass outlined to perfection in her goddamned suit, looking down on him for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and winding up an arson suspect in a fire that had nearly killed one of his men.