Free Rain of Fire by Linda Jacobs Page A

1890s as a long time ago. When your focus measured geologic time, man’s tenure in the park seemed the blink of an eye.
    Watching the sun sink over the trees behind the hotel, Kyle reflected that the period after sunset and before dark always fascinated her. It was as though each evening presented a dare, to watch the light fade minute by minute and see how long she could remain indifferent.
    Using the excuse that she was getting chilled without the parka she’d left dripping over the shower rod in her bath, she walked briskly through twilight toward her cabin.
    Once there, she unlocked the door and entered the spare and chilly room. Some fiddling with the electric heater set in the wall revealed it was on a fifteen-minute timer so she anticipated a fitful night of sleeping and waking to reset the dial.
    Kyle undressed, took a hot shower, and donned a soft flannel shirt to keep her warmer. Then she lay back on the too-short bed. With her rangy build, she felt the polar opposite of Alicia with her full breasts and rounded behind. Thank God, she’d always been comfortable with the way she looked and at ease with her own company, like having dinner alone in the dining room.
    She had been fine with Wyatt staying with his girl… the yearning centered in her chest tonight was not for him. It was much more basic.
    Being reminded of a world designed for couples made her ache for her own vanished youth and the man she had loved and lost.

    Twenty-year-old Kyle rode shotgun in Nick Darden’s Chevy as he pulled away from the Calico Palace Pizza Parlor in Jackson, Wyoming. A typical Wednesday evening at geology field camp, except for the miraculous fact that Kyle had Nick to herself.
    Back in June, the students had assembled at a 4-H camp near Alpine, forty miles south of Jackson. For the first three nights, the food was okay, wholesome and filling, if not exciting. Roast beef, mashed potatoes, and green beans; then chicken, rice, and salad; followed by ham, slaw, and red Jell-O. On the fourth day, the kids they shared camp with changed and the cycle began again.
    Kyle and some of the others had fallen into the habit of driving up the Snake River Canyon to Jackson for dinner, never mind that the monotonous camp fare had been paid for. Somehow, tonight she and Nick had been the only ones who wanted to go.
    It was funny. The first time Kyle had seen him, she’d not been impressed. With sun-streaked brown hair about the same color as his eyes and summer tan, he looked monochrome. Then he smiled and the gimlet glint of his irises suggested she was included in an excellent joke.
    Evenings, Nick played his guitar in the barracks and the students sang along. The high point of camp so far had been his performance at The Golden Horseshoe Bar in Alpine. Before an eclectic mix of RV campers, sheepherders from surrounding ranches, and geologists, Nick took the stage almost shyly, situating himself with care on a bar stool. He made it all the way through the first verse and half the refrain before the assembled company realized he was singing the praises of “Charlotte the Harlot, the Cow-punchers’ Whore.”
    This evening, Nick drove through the town of Jackson and south. Mountains loomed on either side of the road, made visible by a full August moon. Kyle tried to ignore its baleful eye and focused on their approach to Astoria Hot Springs, an ancient resort with tourist cabins separated from the main highway by a bridge across the Snake River. The camp was the last outpost of light before they headed into the steep-walled canyon.
    Watching the ragged outcrops of limestone, Kyle told herself that going to dinner with Nick didn’t mean anything. He treated everybody in camp to the same brand of disrespectful banter that made him seem a friend until she realized it kept him at a distance.
    She studied his profile in the dash lights. His nose wasn’t large, but it had a little bump as though he’d broken it. It gave him a little boy quality