Radclyffe - Firestorm

Jac groaned. “Oh man, I could use a shower.”

“Same here.” Mallory skimmed her hand over Jac’s thigh and squeezed lightly. “It’s looking to be a mighty fine morning, all things considered.”

“Yeah,” Jac murmured, her whole leg tingling from the fleeting touch. “Fine for sure.”

*

“I’m her partner,” Mallory said when the ER tech told her to wait outside the treatment area. “I’m coming.”

The young Hispanic man raised an eyebrow at Jac. “Up to you.”

“It’s fine,” Jac said.

He led them to a treatment cubicle, pulled the striped cotton curtain back a few feet, and gestured to the narrow, sheet-covered stretcher in the middle of the small space. “Everything off to the waist. There’s a gown on the end of the bed. Take a seat and someone will be in in a minute.” He dropped the clipboard with Jac’s intake information on it into a plastic bin on the wall and walked away.

When Jac looked around the room as if uncertain what to do next, Mallory said, “You need some help getting out of your jacket and shirt?”

Jac blushed, suddenly looking a decade younger, and Mallory’s heart swelled. She stepped behind Jac and gently grasped the shoulders of Jac’s flight jacket. “Here. I’ve got this. Just ease your arm out of the sleeve.”

“It doesn’t hurt unless I try raising it,” Jac muttered.

“Sounds like your rotator cuff,” Mallory said. “Shouldn’t have let you carry the damn stretcher out there.”

“It felt fine then,” Jac said, a stubborn note in her voice.

“Uh-huh.” Mallory understood the macho routine. She would have been the same way. Injuries were part of the job. Unless you couldn’t move, you didn’t let them get in the way of doing what needed to be done. All the same, the idea of Jac being in pain made her stomach clench. She draped the jacket over a metal folding chair, the only furniture in the room besides the stretcher, and plucked up the standard hospital-issue gown. She opened it and held it out to Jac. “Here you go.”

Jac unbuttoned her shirt, shrugged her good arm out of the sleeve, and pulled the other side down her arm without raising her shoulder. She tossed the shirt on the chair, repeated the maneuver with the T-shirt she’d worn underneath, and turned with one hand out for the gown. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Mallory said hoarsely, unable to prevent her eyes from sweeping down Jac’s torso. Jac’s nipples tightened and her stomach hollowed, as if Mallory’s gaze had been a caress. Mallory would have sworn the image of Jac naked had been burned indelibly in her mind after her first glimpse in the locker room, but she’d failed somehow to register just how incredibly beautiful she was. Tired, rumpled, hurt, Jac was still magnificent.

Jac’s breathing picked up, her breasts rose and fell more quickly, and Mallory had to clutch the thin cotton fabric to keep from touching her. “Put this on, it’s freezing in here.”

“Right.” Jac slid her arms through the sleeves.

“Turn around, I’ll tie you up.”

Jac turned, her naked back to Mallory. Tendrils of Jac’s hair lay in dark swirls against her neck, and when Mallory brushed them aside to secure the cotton ties on the back of the gown, Jac shuddered. Mallory rested her fingertips gently on the bare crests of Jac’s shoulders and closed her eyes. An inch of air so thick and hot they might’ve been standing over an open fire was all that separated them. If she applied the slightest bit of pressure, Jac would be in her arms.

“Mallory,” Jac whispered, leaning back until she settled into the curve of Mallory’s body.

Mallory rested her forehead against Jac’s hair. “Jac, I—”

“Hello, hello,” a robust male voice announced as the curtain swung back. A very large, very jovial, shaggy-haired redhead in scrubs and a wrinkled white coat stepped into the room. “I’m Dr. Hurley. I hear someone’s got a bum shoulder.”

“That would be me.” Jac pivoted to face the doctor. Her eyes were a little hazy, and she sounded slightly dazed. “But I think it’s just a little ding.”

“Well, let’s have a look,” he said.

Mallory stepped back, her hands falling to her sides. Her heart thudded in her chest, and her legs quivered so badly she had to rest her butt against the stretcher to get her balance. When her head stopped spinning, she edged farther around the bottom of the stretcher so Jac could climb up onto it. “I’ll wait outside.”

Jac shot her a surprised look but Mallory slipped out and leaned against the wall. She had just come dangerously close to crossing a line she’d already moved more than she should have. She didn’t trust herself to recognize her own boundaries anymore, and that was ten times more terrifying than any wildfire she’d ever faced.

Chapter Twenty-five

“Good news,” Dr. Hurley said with a face-splitting grin. “You really banged up your shoulder, but you didn’t tear anything. Your MRI looks great—your rotator cuff is intact, there’s no fluid in the joint, just a little soft tissue swelling.” He waggled his hand. “Well, maybe a bit more than a little swelling, but a couple of days of rest and anti-inflammatories and you ought to be good as new.”

Jac glanced at Mallory when she edged around the curtain and into the cubicle, then back at the ER physician. “I guess I’m going to have to ask. Define ‘good as new.’ I’m a wilderness firefighter. I need to climb, I need to carry a pack, I need to work with heavy equipment.”

His expression grew solemn. “I know what you do. I know what you both did out there in the last couple of days. You’re heroes around here.” He rubbed his hands together and grinned again. “Seventy-two hours of rest, ibuprofen three times a day, and if you have full range of motion in your shoulder at that point—and, if you’re as tough as everyone says you are—”

“She is,” Mallory muttered.

“You can work without restriction,” Hurley finished.

Jac breathed out a sigh of relief and shifted on the stretcher to face Mallory, who seemed to be looking anywhere but at her. Even though it’d taken almost two hours to get the emergency MRI, to wait for a radiologist who could read it on a Sunday, and then for the ER doctor to review the findings, Mallory had somehow managed to always be busy. After talking on the phone to Sully for a while, she went outside to wait for the rental service to deliver the Jeep—even though it was thirty degrees and already lightly snowing. Jac knew when she was being avoided, and after the feel of Mallory’s hands on her, the press of Mallory’s breasts against her shoulder, and the whisper of Mallory’s breath against her ear, her absence cut deep.

Mallory had pulled away, and Jac didn’t know how to reach her. Mallory didn’t trust her, and she didn’t know how to convince her she wouldn’t hurt her. She would have waited with her hand outstretched, urging her to believe, if waiting was what it took. Somehow she did not think time alone would be enough—even though she really had nothing but time.

The firefighting season stretched ahead and hopefully, if she passed boot camp, she would have work to occupy her, but she didn’t have anyone expecting her to return at the end of the season to a life that included intimacy and affection. She hadn’t really thought ahead to what she would do in the fall. If her father received his party’s nomination, which everyone thought was going to happen, she was probably going to be more of a liability in his eyes than she already was—too visible, too controversial, and too at odds with his stance on just about everything. She wondered where he would want her to disappear to next. She was young and healthy, and wars still raged. Maybe it was time to make her reserve status permanent and go active. War she knew. Those enemies she understood. And the bombs, her singular, particular enemy, she did not fear.