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I've got my dream assignment at my dream job, but it came with my nightmare co-worker.
Osprey
Meadow Diaz still hates my guts and apparently there's nothing I can do to change that.
Which is a damn shame because even with nearly ten years between now and the day she had my best friend beat the shit out of me, she's still the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.
Mom's old romance novels were supposed to be a peace offering. I thought I was doing Red a favor. After all, I'm not the one stuck up here in this tower for the next few months.
Those steps are steep, more ladder than stairs. Sixty feet in the air and no, there ain't no fucking elevator. I sure as hell wouldn't have lugged a box of paperbacks up here for anyone else.
"Don't you have something to go inspect, Inspector?"
There's something I'd like to inspect, all right; the forestry ranger with the wild red hair pulled into a pony tail and the mouth-watering curves that make that uniform look downright X-rated while she stares at me like she wants to throw me off the tower.
"Checked on Placer Canyon on my way up," I mutter, grabbing a seat at the desk that's not as close to her as I'd like and probably not as far from her as she'd like.
I was lucky to get into the wildland inspector position that covers the wilderness right outside of my hometown of Moonshine Ridge, without having to get a fancy, four-year degree. All I needed was a couple classes at the community college in Slow River Valley, my experience with the Moonshine Ridge volunteer fire crew-- and a good word to the right people from Mrs. Hart.
"Mesa says they've got it almost completely contained now."
Red's voice is civil, but her eyes are glued to the smoke rising over the mountain range in the near distance.
Her brother's name brings back memories. Memories of us all being kids together, back when Mesa was my best buddy and his little sister was just a bossy whirl-wind of wild red curls that didn't confuse the hell of me when she walked into the room.
By the time she got into high school with us she'd filled out in ways most of the other girls never would-- had my dick so hard my whole senior year, it's a wonder I never passed out from lack of blood to my brain.
She was too young and having all those feeling for her bubbling all of a sudden was weird as hell for me after knowing her practically our whole lives.
I did what any self-respecting bone-headed teenage boy in love with his best friend's sister would do-- I treated her like dirt.
"That's not going to last."
Breaking myself out of those thoughts, I grab at the chance to have a polite conversation with her.
"All it's going to take is the slightest shift in the wind and they're gonna lose it. It'll go ripping up the canyon and then all we'll be able to do is hope we can keep it from jumping to the next ridge before we get more rain."
I've been arguing with headquarters for years over their fire management strategy. Hell, everybody on the mountain has been telling them we need to clear more of the dead trees out after the bark beetle problem we had a few years. We have too much dry timber standing in these narrow canyons and once flames get past the service roads, the hotshot crews are the only ones that can get on the ground up there.
"What the heck?"
Red grabs a pair of binoculars off the counter and trains them on a van that's heading up the old forest road toward the tower.
We both watch the van as it rolls right past the clearing next to the base of the tower and past the sign that clearly says it's the trail-head. As in, no motor vehicles beyond that point.
They stop when the road narrows too much for the vehicle, throw it in reverse and pull in near my truck.
Both me and Red head out to the catwalk that runs the perimeter of the cab so we can see who's in the van.
The driver's and the passenger's doors open, as well as the big sliding door on the side. Five kids that don't look old enough to be out of high school yet climb out and start pulling back packs and some sort of cases out of the van.
"What is this? A band gig?" One case looks a lot like the case for the trumpet my mom wanted me to play for band when I was maybe ten. That did not last long.
"I gotta go talk to them," she mumbles, setting down the binoculars and pushing her regulation ranger hat over all those curls that still make me crazy.
2
MEADOW
