Free Playing With Fire: inspirational romantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 2) by Susan May Warren

what to expect. Then he plopped a helmet on her head, they’d climbed into the belly of Gilly’s little red-and-white airplane. He’d strapped on parachute pack, then attached her to him by her tandem harness.
    They took off, and Liza felt pretty sure she’d lost her brains.
    They’d definitely dislodged an hour ago when she’d spied a man standing on the stoop of Vitae’s front entry. It took her a full five seconds for her brain to recognize him.
    Conner?
    Lean and wide-shouldered, he wore a navy T-shirt and cargo shorts, hiking sandals, his blond hair short and tousled by the wind.
    For a second, her heart had hiccupped. But no, it couldn’t be.
    And then he’d turned to stare at the vista, his hands on his hips, and she knew she’d seen that pose before.
    On a beach in Minnesota as he considered the sunrise.
    It took her a heartbeat for the realization to emerge. After a year of silence, their last conversation just before she left for Arizona, when she felt sure that their friendship had simply run its course, Conner Young had tracked her down.
    She’d probably fallen painfully, irrevocably in love with him somewhere between “ I missed you ” and “ I was thinking about that time ...”
    Oh, who was she kidding. It was long before that.
    But the idea that he thought about her enough to miss her…
    She didn’t want to consider further than that, or the fact that he’d actually not been in the area but had flown down with Gilly from Montana ...
    No. Not for her.
    Because that would mean, to use Raina’s words, that he was into her, too.
    Liza should simply hold on and have fun with her adventurous, hot, brave, muscled just friend . With beautiful blue eyes and a smile that, when he directed it her way, made her feel beautiful.
    Oh, she was so playing with fire to have agreed to be locked in his arms, even if it was to jump from a plane, her life in his hands.
    This was really going to hurt.
     
     
    #
     
     
    “You’re still flying, aren’t you?” Conner said a couple of hours later as he came to the car carrying two coffees. He handed her one. “That happens after a jump—you sort of relive it over and over, experiencing those endorphins.”
    Oh, those were the source of her endorphins? She wanted to attribute it to the sense of his arms around her, his voice in her ear as they’d drifted down like a cloud, locked together.
    “Yeah,” she said, sipping the coffee, thankful for the bracing effect that might put her feet back on the ground. “Except I’ll bet it doesn’t feel like that when you’re jumping into a fire.”
    He put on his sunglasses, aviators. “No. You’re just hoping you don’t get blown into the flames, or caught on a tree, or land in a river, or even twist your ankle on the landing. Because then that means you’ve put your entire team at risk. Someone might have to hike out with you, and for sure, you don’t do your job as well.”
    He put his coffee in the holder, pulled out of the lot.
    They stopped in Oak Creek Canyon on the way back, and he found an ice-cream stand, treated her to a double-chocolate mint.
    Now, with the afternoon late, the sun heavy on the horizon, she could admit she didn’t want their ‘date’ to end. She couldn’t remember having so much fun. Laughing at Conner’s stories about mishaps on the fire line, the rookie hotshots. “I still can’t believe that Tucker Newman joined the team.”
    “He’s working for Jed on the hotshot crew. He has the look of a smokejumper in his eyes. I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried out for the team next year.”
    “Clearly you made an impact on him.”
    She looked away before he could see it her eyes—that he’d made an impact on her, too.
    “That summer in Deep Haven was...it was impactful for everyone,” he said cryptically.
    Then, just as she hoped he might elaborate, he fell silent as they closed in on Sedona. He said nothing even as they pulled up to Vitae. He put the car in park, and she