“You don’t like the kissing?”

“Oh, I like the kissing.” Her gazed dropped to his mouth. “Too much.”

“But? I’m sure I sensed one at the end of that sentence.”

“But…we’re different.”

Unable to keep his distance, he stepped even loser. Their thighs bumped. “I tried to tell you that.”

“I’m slow and careful-”

“I wouldn’t say careful exactly,” he interrupted.

“And you’re fast and reckless.”

“I assume we’re not talking about sex.” Chance heard his voice go rough with desire, all the more so when she sucked in a shaky breath. He still didn’t touch her with his hands, though he itched to. Their bodies were straining toward each other, only a whisper apart. He could smell her, could feel her soft breath, and the warmth of her skin. “Because believe me,” he murmured in her ear. “I like it slow and fast. Steady and reckless. I like it any way at all.”

Her eyes sort of glazed over at that, and she licked her lips. “I’m…not talking about that. I meant knowing how different we are, it’s hard to imagine…anything between us. Other than…”

His hands went to her waist, slowly slid around and up her spine. “Sex,” he finished for her.

“Yes, well.” She blushed. “I’m pretty sure that would work just fine.”

It was a mistake, but in spite of smelling like fire, in spite of the grime clinging to both of them, he plowed his fingers through her hair from beneath, holding her head in his palms. He could tell by the way she was staring at him, wide-eyed, lips tremulous and open, that she wanted him to kiss her. He lowered his face. “Let’s find out,” he suggested against her lips.

“I…I-”

He slid the tip of his tongue over the seam of her mouth and she moaned. “I think that would be playing with fire.” She pressed her hands to his chest. “And then there’s all those other women you’re wanting.” Her eyes had gone solemn. “I don’t like to share, Chance.”

She was waiting…hoping, he’d say something more. Maybe even offer her some sort of commitment to go with the sex they both wanted so badly that they were shaking. She was wondering if maybe he could change, change for her, and his heart clenched hard.

He couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

“Chance…” Slowly, eyes on his, she kissed his jaw.

His heart leaped. “Stop.”

She kissed the corner of his mouth.

“If I touch you now,” he said in a voice so thick and grainy he hardly recognized it, putting his hands on her hips to hold her away. “I won’t stop. I won’t stop until I’ve pulled off all our clothes, until I’ve touched and licked and kissed and sucked every inch of you.”

Her mouth fell open.

“I won’t stop until we’re both mindless with it, completely gone, until there’s nothing else. Do you understand what I’m saying, Ally?”

She only blinked and stared at him.

Chance was so turned on by his own images that he’d probably explode with just one kiss. “I’m saying you have to stop looking at me like that or it’s going to happen, no ties or promises attached. I’m saying you should turn and run like hell.”

She stared at her hand on his chest. Slowly she slid it over him, from one side to the other, and with each pass over his heart, the poor sucker doubled its workload. “I don’t want to run.” She lifted her gaze to his, daring. “Why should I? Because you’re too big and tough for me? Well guess what? I’m pretty tough, too.”

“Not tough enough,” he said. Then, because he was close to doing something he’d never done before, because he was close to begging a woman, he turned and walked away. It wasn’t until he was alone in his bed that he realized the truth.

She was tough. Far tougher than he.

9

THE FIRE INSPECTOR found empty soda cans, food wrappings, and a science text book near the origination point of the fire. The book just happened to come from the school Brian attended.

And Brian had been on the mountain yesterday.

He’d also been unsupervised for a great part of the afternoon, not to mention his sullen attitude when Chance tried to talk to him about it.

To Ally’s horrified shock, the boy refused to either defend himself or give them an alibi for his whereabouts.

They sat in the lodge, on the main floor. Ally, Chance, the fire chief, the fire inspector, Jo and the very quiet Brian, all around one of the huge tables they used to feed their lunch crowds.

“Brian, please.” Ally came close to him, put her hand on his arm and tried to reach him. “Please, just tell them you didn’t start the fire.”

His face defined defiance. “And you’ll believe me, right?”

“Yes, I’ll believe you.”

He stared at his feet, stubbornly mute.

“I will. We’ll all believe you.” She looked up into Chance’s eyes, silently begging him for help. “Won’t we?”

For once, his expression was free of teasing humor or that contagious wild heat, but instead, filled with everything he was feeling, fear leading the way.

Big, bad, wild man T. J. Chance was afraid.

And all Ally could do was tuck her hands in her pockets, because this wasn’t her problem, her fight. She wasn’t supposed to care.

But she did, so very much.

“Just tell the truth, Brian.” Chance’s voice was quiet and direct. “That’s all we’re asking.”

“But you already know where I was yesterday. On the mountain. Remember? You were annoyed to see me. Just like you always are.”

Chance closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they were filled with regret. “Do you know why you annoy me?”

“Yeah. I’m always in your way.”

“Because you remind me of myself when I was young and looking for trouble.”

Ally watched, heart in her throat. She knew Chance now, whether he liked it or not. She understood the wanderlust ways of his childhood. Understood the pain that the lifestyle had brought him later on with Tina, and the loss. He’d ended up here, and this was his home now. He’d learned, if not to love again, then at least that life didn’t have to be all loneliness.

But how to explain that to a teenager who’d never known anything else?

“It’s not annoyance I feel when I look at you,”

Chance told him. “And I’m sorry I let you think it. It’s remorse. Worry.”

Brian stared at Chance. “You…worry? About me?”

“More than you’ll ever know.”

Brian absorbed that for a moment. “But you had a billion other punks out there on the mountain yesterday. You’re not bugging any of them about the fire. It’s because you think I started the last one, and I didn’t.” His voice lowered to a mere whisper. “I really didn’t.”

A muscle jerked in Chance’s jaw as he rose and walked around the table to Brian. He brushed past Ally and sat next to the boy then took Brian’s shoulders in his hands and looked at him eye to eye. “I believe you, Brian. And you know what else? Everyone here that’s worked with you? Everyone you’ve spoken to or done something for? We know you now, we see how happy you are here, and we know you wouldn’t do this.” Chance’s gaze didn’t leave Brian’s as he clearly tried to convey the seriousness of the situation, tried to convince Brian to cooperate. “But the inspector doesn’t know you, only your reputation, which is going to haunt you for a while yet, no matter how you’ve changed.”

With heartbreaking intensity, Brian soaked up every word. “I have changed.”

“I know. I know, Slick. So help us out. Help us help you.”

Brian’s gaze revealed his fear, his insecurity, and Ally wanted to cry. How many times in his life had someone stood behind him? Promised to back him up? And meant it?

Probably never.

In comparison, her life had been a piece of cake. But not Chance’s. No matter how he tried to keep his distance, she could see the truth, could see that he looked into that boy’s eyes and saw a kindred spirit that broke his heart.

It was another crack in to the wild man image, another insight into the complicated man that was T. J. Chance.

“Please, Brian,” Chance urged softly.

Brian swallowed hard and in that moment, Ally was so certain he hadn’t started that fire, either fire, that she would’ve staked her very life on it. He loved this place as much as she did, and probably for many of the same reasons. Here, unlike any other place on earth, he’d found he belonged. He was wanted, needed.

Here, he was home.

She waited for him to tell everyone that very thing.

“Tell the inspector,” Chance said into the tense, silent room. “Tell him you didn’t do it so we can get on with our day. We have to get out there on the hill and patrol the morbidly curious today, I know how much you want to help me do that.”

But Brian’s eyes shuttered, and Ally knew before he even spoke that he wouldn’t defend himself.

“I have nothing to say,” he said, not meeting anyone’s gaze, especially Chance’s. “Nothing.”


BRIAN WASN’T CHARGED. There was no evidence, and while there might never be, Ally decided she couldn’t take that chance.

She was going to take matters into her own hands.

She got herself a small backpack and filled it with snacks and water, more determined than she’d ever been.

“Where are you going?” Jo asked in surprise when they passed each other in the office hallway.

Where was she going? To completely override her own personal goals, apparently. She’d fallen into her old trap of saving the world, and she didn’t care. Not when Brian needed her, not when she cared so much about him. Not when Chance needed her, too, though she doubted he would ever think so. But just looking at him, seeing his agony as he watched Brian, tore at her.

She’d mistakenly thought she needed him, that she needed his expertise, his strength. She’d been wrong about that, because here on this mountain, she’d found her own strength.