Her face turned bright red. âYes,â she said through gritted teeth.
Lexie had slept with someone else. The room tilted. Lexie had slept with another man.
âIâm sorry you had to learn about it this way,â Lexie said. âI wasnât sure how to tell you.â
âHow could you do this to me?â Heâd be the laughingstock of his Hot Shot crew, of every crew and support group from Montana to Arizonaâif he wasnât already. Had Lexie left him for this guy?
âI didnât mean for this to happen, but it doesnât change anything between us.â
âYouâve been walking around likeâ¦likeâ¦that for months, havenât you? And everyone in town knows youâre pregnant.â
âProbably.â
Jackson rubbed his sleep-deprived eyes. âWho is he, Lex? Who did this to us?â
Lexieâs mouth dropped open, then she narrowed her eyes at him and said, âYou did, you idiot.â
Dear Reader,
This year I will celebrate twenty years of marriage to the same man. But donât look to me for marital advice. Sometimes I wonder how we made it, given several cross-country moves, job changes, financial challenges, kids, kittens and puppies. One thing I do knowâweâre not the same two people who held hands and recited vows so long ago. Weâve grown and weâve changed.
Lexie and Jackson Garrett are high school sweethearts who marry young. Jackson chases his dream of becoming a Hot Shot firemanâfighting wildland fires from Alaska to Florida. Holding down the home front alone for months at a time, Lexie faces a different set of challenges. Itâs not life or death, but itâs still survival. Despite loving Jackson deeply, Lexie canât handle facing another family crisis alone. Unwilling to settle for a relationship that is less than what she deserves, Lexie asks for a divorce.
When Jackson realizes heâs not immortal, when he understands what heâs lost, when he finally starts to change, he heads straight home to Lexie with one goal in mindâ¦getting married again.
I hope you like Lexie and Jacksonâs story. Iâd love to hear from you. You can contact me at P.O. Box 150, Denair, CA 95316 or through my Web site at www.MelindaCurtis.com. Enjoy!
Melinda Curtis
With much love and thanks toâ¦
My husband and kids, who have learned this yearâthrough trial and errorâhow to work the toaster, microwave and iron.
Michael Rhodes, Nicki Amburn and Rick Priest, for sharing Hot Shot and base camp stories, maps, nicknames and information. Any mistakes are mine alone.
Those who keep the home fires burning while their loved ones are away putting out firesâwhether out on a fire line or away at the office.
And finally, to the brave men and women who fight wildland fires, who risk their lives to âface the dragonâ without much more in return than personal satisfaction and a paycheck as they protect our homes and national treasures. You are an inspiration.
Those who have fallen will not be forgotten.
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
EPILOGUE
DRIVEN BY THE WHIPPING WIND, roaring flames made torches of the drought-dry trees on the ridge. Jackson Garrett could feel the heat increase as a wall of fire advanced toward him. Embers shot into the air like Fourth of July rockets, blossoming into flame as they hit the earth.
Ignoring the sweat trickling down his face, Jackson turned to watch the progress of the ground fire, which crept slowly up the steep slope in the direction of him and his crew. The panicked voices on the hand-held radio crackled in his ear over the building snarl of the fire. The words were in Russian and, although heâd been in Russia for nearly half a year, they were speaking too fast for Jackson to understand. Except he did understand.
They were dead.
Not yet, but it was only a matter of time. Ivan, Levka, Potenka, Breniv and Alek. Men heâd trained these past few months to fight forest fires the American way. Men heâd become fond of despite the language barrier and their reluctance to learn a method some bureaucrat figured would help the Russians stem their annual forest fire devastation.
What a joke. You needed equipment to fight firesâreliable equipment that wasnât salvaged from some war fought fifty or more years agoâand well-trained, well-conditioned men. His Russian team was shaping up, but they had little experience. The men worked sluggishly on the mountainside in the one-hundred-and-ten-degree heat of the fire. They fought without the fire-resistant protective gear that Jackson had taken for granted in the States. As for equipment, in this area of Siberia it included garden-variety shovels, a relic of an airplane that was supposed to be used to drop retardant on the fireâexcept that after months of fighting wildland fires there was no fire retardant leftâand an antique fire truck with only two working gears, reverse and firstânot much use in the mountains.