C h a p t e r O n e
Connor MacKenzie slid his rental car into the gravel
driveway behind the old log cabin and was pulling the keys
out of the ignition when the cheap metal key ring scraped
against his palm. He swore as it bit into the bumpy, scarred
flesh, skin that still felt too tight every time he flexed
his hands or made a fist.
Still, today was one of the good days. All through the
flight and the two-hour drive from the airport through
winding back roads heโd been able to feel everything he touched.
The worst days were the ones where the numbness won. Days
when it took everything in him to fight back the angry
roars, when he felt like a wounded lion crammed into a
four-by-four-foot cage in some zoo, just waiting for the
chance to escape and run free again. To be whole and king of
the jungle again.
His hand stung as he pulled off his seat belt and slammed
the driverโs-side door shut. He needed to get out to where
he could see the water, breathe it in. Calm the fuck down.
Get a grip.
This lake, deep in the heart of the thick Adirondack woods,
would set him straight.
It had to.
Heโd come from another lake, from twelve years in
Californiaโs Lake Tahoe fighting wildfires. But he couldnโt
stay there another summer, couldnโt stand to watch his
brother and friends head out to fight fire after fire while
he went to physical therapy and worked with rookies in the
classroom, teaching them from books and trying not to notice
the way they stared at the thick scars running up and down
his arms from his multiple grafts.
Coming to Blue Mountain Lake had been his brotherโs idea.
โDianna and I want to get married at Poplar Cove end of
July,โ Sam had said. Theyโd been planning a big wedding for
late fall, at the end of fire season, but now that Dianna
was pregnant, their schedule had moved up several months.
โAfter all these years, especially with Gram and Gramps down
in Florida full-time, Iโm sure the cabin needs work. Might
be a good project for the next few weeks. Better than
hanging around here, anyway.โ
Connor had wanted to camp outside the Forest Service
headquarters until they agreed to sign his umpteenth round
of appeal papers, the papers that would put him back on his
Tahoe Pines hotshot crew. Heโd been jumping through one
Forest Service hoop after another for two long years,
working like hell to convince the powers that be that he was
readyโboth mentally and physicallyโto resume his duties as a
hotshot. Up until now theyโd said there was too much risk.
They thought it was too likely that heโd freeze, that he
might not only take himself out, but a civilian too.
Bullshit. He was ready. More than ready. And he was sure
this time his appeal would be approved.
But he could see what Sam was saying. Getting at the log
cabin with a saw and hammer and paintbrush, running the
trails around the lake and going for long, cool swims might
do something to settle the agitation that had been running
through his veins for two years.
Things were going to be different here. This summer was
going to be better than the last, a sure bet it would be a
hell of a lot better than the two that heโd spent in a hospital.
This summer the monkey that had latched itself onto his
back, the persistent monster that had been slowly but
steadily strangling Connor, was going to finally hop off and
leave him the fuck alone.
Moving off the gravel driveway, Connor walked past the grass
and through the sand until he was at the waterโs edge. He
looked out at the calm lake, the perfectly still surface
reflecting the thick white clouds and the green mountains
that surrounded it, waiting for the release in his chest,
for the fist to uncoil in his gut.
A cigarette boat whipped out from around the point and into
the bay, creating a huge wake on the silent midday shore,
and the cold water splashed high, up over Connorโs shoes,
soaking him to the knees.
Fuck.
Who was he trying to kid? He wasnโt here for laughs this
summer. He was here to push past the lingering pain in his
hands and arms.
He was here to force himself into peak physical shape, to
prove his worth to the Forest Service when he got back to
California after Samโs wedding.
He was here to renovate his great-grandparentsโ
one-hundred-year-old log cabin, to work such long, hard
hours on it that when he slept he would outrun his
nightmares, the god-awful reminders of the day heโd almost
died on the mountain in Lake Tahoe.
He was here to be alone. Completely alone.
And no matter what he had to do, he was going to find the
inner calm, the control that had always been so effortless,
so innate before the Desolation fire.
Turning away from the water, he stared back at the log
cabin. The words poplar cove were etched on one of the logs,
the name his great-grandparents had given the Adirondack
camp in 1910. He forced himself to look for its flaws, for
everything heโd need to tear down and rebuild this summer.
The paint was peeling beneath the screened-in porch on the
front where the storms hit hardest. Some of the roofโs
shingles were askew.
But even as he worked to be dispassionate, he mostly saw the
precision detailing his great-grandfather had put into the
cabin a hundred years ago: the perfect logs holding up the
heavy corners of the building, the smaller logs and twigs
that framed the porch almost artistically.
Eighteen summers heโd spent in this cabin. Ten weeks every
summer with Sam and their friends under the watchful but
loving eyes of their grandparents. The only people missing
were his parents. One time heโd asked his mother why they
couldnโt come too, but sheโd gotten that funny, breathless,
watery-eyed look that he hated seeingโthe same look that she
usually got when she was talking to his dad about his long
work hoursโso heโd dropped it.
He couldnโt believe it had been twelve years since heโd
stood here.
After signing up to be a hotshot at eighteen, Connorโs
summers had been full fighting wildfires. Any normal July
1st this past decade would have seen him in a west coast
forest with a 150-pound pack on his back, a chain saw in his
hand, surrounded by his twenty-man, wildland firefighting
crew. But the last couple of years had been anything but normal.
Connor had never thought to see the word disability next to
his name. Seven hundred thirty days after getting caught in
a blowup on Desolation Wilderness and he still couldnโt.
Still, even though he belonged in Tahoe beating back flames,
as he stood on the sand, the humid air making his T-shirt
stick to his chest, he felt in his bones how much heโd
missed Blue Mountain Lake.
Heading back to his car, he grabbed his bag from the truck,
slung it over one shoulder and headed for the steps off the
side of the screened-in porch that stretched from one side
of the house to the other.
Most of his indoor time as a kid had been spent on this
porch, protected from the bugs and the rain, but open to the
breeze. His grandparents had served all their meals on the
porchโs Formica table. He hadnโt cared that his teeth had
chattered on cool mornings in early summer while he downed a
bowl of Cheerios out there. He and Sam had lived in T-shirts
and swim shorts regardless of the cold fronts that
frequently blew in.
One of the porch steps nearly split beneath his foot and he
frowned as he bent down to inspect it. Guilt gnawed at his
gut as he silently acknowledged that his grandparents could
have hurt themselves on these stairs. He should have come
out here in the off-season, should have checked to make sure
everything was okay. But fire had always come first.
Always.
Something grated at him there, so he reminded himself that
the bones of the log cabin were sound. Heโd heard the
stories a hundred times of how his great-grandfather had cut
each one of the logs himself from the thick forest of pine
trees a half mile from the lake. Still, time took its toll
on every building eventually, no matter how well constructed.
Taking the rest of the stairs two at a time, ready now to
see what other problems awaited him inside, Connor reached
for the handle on the screen door.
But instead of turning it, he stopped cold.
What the hell?
A woman was dancing in front of an easel, swinging around
what looked like a paintbrush, white cables dangling from
her ears as she sang in a wildly off-tune voice. Every few
seconds she dipped into her paint and took a swipe at the
oversized canvas.
He couldnโt believe what he was seeing. Some strange
singing, painting woman on his porch was the last thing he
wanted to deal with today.
Still, he couldnโt help but be struck by how pretty she was
as she did a little spin before squirting more paint onto
her easel and sweeping her brush through it. He was close
enough to see that she wasnโt wearing a bra under her red
tank top and when she wiped at the damp skin on her neck and
the deep vee between her breasts with a white rag, his body
immediately responded in a painful reminder that it had been
too long since heโd been with a woman.
He quickly filled in the rest of the sensual, unexpected
picture. Curly hair piled on top of her head and held with
some sort of plastic clip, cutoff jeans, tanned legs, and
bright orange toenails on bare feet.
It took far longer than it should have for him to snap
himself out of the haze of animal lust that was wrapping
itself around his cock. Another time he might have walked in
with a smile and charmed the panties right off her. But he
hadnโt come to the lake to get laid.
A woman had no place in his summer, no matter how well she
filled out every one of the boxes on his checklist.
For whatever reason, the woman was trespassing.
And she had to go.
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