Free Chasing Fire by Nora Roberts Page B

him. “Women can’t resist a wounded warrior, right, Lib?”
    “Damn right. In fact, I’m holding myself back from jumping you right now, Stovic.”
    He gave her a twisted grin. “We beat it, didn’t we, Swede?”
    “Yeah, we did.” She patted his knee, then got to her feet. Leaving Libby tending him, she walked apart to contact Gibbons and arrange for Stovic to be littered out.
    Eighteen hours after jumping the fire, Rowan climbed back onto the plane for the short flight back to base.
    Using her pack as a pillow, she stretched out on the floor, shut her eyes. “Steak,” she said, “medium rare. A football-size baked potato drowning in butter, a mountain of candied carrots, followed by a slab of chocolate cake the size of Utah smothered in half a gallon of ice cream.”
    “Meat loaf.” Yangtree dropped down beside her while somebody else—or a couple of somebody elses by the stereophonics—snored like buzz saws. “An entire meat loaf, and I’ll take my mountain in mashed potatoes with a vat of gravy. Apple pie, and make that a gallon of ice cream.”
    Rowan slid open her eyes to see Matt watching her with a sleepy smile. “What’s your pick, Matt?”
    “My ma’s chicken and dumplings. Best ever. Just pour it in a fivegallon bucket so I can stick my head in and chow it down. Cherry cobbler and homemade whipped cream.”
    “Everybody knows whipped cream comes in a can.”
    “Not at my ma’s house. But I’m hungry enough to eat five-day-old pizza, and the box it came in.”
    “Pizza,” Libby moaned, then tried to find a more comfortable curl on her seat. “I never thought I could be this empty and live.”
    “Eighteen hours on the line’ll do it.” Rowan yawned, rolled over, and let the voices, the snoring, the engines lull her toward sleep.
    “Gonna hit the kitchen when we get back, Ro?” Matt asked her.
    “Mmm. Gotta eat. Gotta shower off the stink first.”
    The next thing she knew they were down. She staggered off the plane through a fog of exhaustion. Once she’d dumped her gear she stumbled to her room, ripped the wrapper off a candy bar. She all but inhaled it while she stripped off her filthy clothes. Barely awake, she aimed for the shower, whimpered a little as the warm water slid over her. Through blurry eyes she watched it run dingy gray into the drain.
    She lathered up, hair, body, face, inhaling the scent of peaches that apparently tripped Gull’s trigger. Rinse and repeat, she ordered herself. Rinse and repeat. And when, at last, the water ran clear, she made a halfhearted attempt to dry off.
    Then fell onto the bed wrapped in the damp towel.
     
     
    THE DREAM crept up on her in the twilight layer of sleep, as her mind began to float back from the deep pit of exhaustion.
    Thundering engines, the whip of wind, the heady leap into the sky. The thrill turning to panic—the pound, pound, pound of heart against ribs as she watched, helplessly, Jim plunge toward the burning ground.
    “Hey. Hey. You need to wake up.”
    The voice cutting through the scream in her head, the rough shake on her shoulder, had her bolting up in bed.
    “What? The siren? What?” She stared into Gull’s face, rubbing one hand over her own.
    “No. You were having a nightmare.”
    She breathed in, breathed out, slitting her eyes a little. It was morning—or maybe later—she could tell that much. And Gulliver Curry was in her room, without her permission.
    “What the hell are you doing in here?”
    “Maybe you want to hitch that towel up some? Not that I mind the view. And, in fact, could probably spend the rest of the day admiring it.”
    She glanced down, saw she was naked to the waist, and the towel that had slipped down wasn’t covering much below either. Baring her teeth, she yanked it up and around. “Answer the question before I kick your ass.”
    “You missed breakfast, and you were heading toward missing lunch.”
    “We worked the fire for eighteen hours. I didn’t get to bed till about