Wildfire at Dawn (14 page)

Akbar kept her trapped in the chair on the front porch.

“My cabin?” She pushed at him.

“Hardly even any scorch marks. You did a great job of soaking it down. Though I’ll need to replace the living room window.” Either the blast of the fire or the impact of the helicopter’s water drop had blown the glass inward. But that was the only damage he’d noticed.

She settled back into the chair. “I’m guessing Grayson is dead by his own flame and that’s why you shuffled me over here so fast.”

Grayson? There hadn’t been time to recognize him, only to attack. Damn it! Akbar should have cut the bloody rope on the guy back when he had the chance up on the glacier. Of course if he had, he’d have been in jail for life. But Grayson hadn’t targeted him. Somewhere in his demented reasoning, he’d targeted Laura for refusing him. Well, no regrets here.

“I can see the fire,” Laura was looking over his shoulder. Her voice was still a little disconnected.

He turned to check the woods. Through the trees that they’d dead-limbed, they had a clear view of the forest beyond. The flames had burned their way toward the cabin, but stalled at the line where his crew had done the clean-up. Not enough heat to torch the trees, and not enough dry fuel to continue forward.

High in the morning sky, he could see the helicopters circling above, dropping loads of water down on the leading edge of the fire. Against the backdrop of the flames, he could see his smoke team moving steadily along the forest floor, keeping the flame’s boundary contained. This fire would be out in hours. He’d see to the mop-up himself to make sure there were no hidden hotspots that could reignite, but for now, they didn’t need him.

Mark looked around the corner of the cabin and gave him a thumbs up. The remains of one idiot arsonist were cleaned up and gone. He’d already been beholden to Mark, but now he owed him big time. At least a brew down at the Doghouse.

“They’ve contained the fire,” he reassured Laura. “The fire won’t get near you, or your home.”

She looked back at him. Her expression was no longer dazed. She was studying him intently from beneath the brim of her yellow hardhat.

He brushed a hand over her muddy cheek. Looked again at her char- and mud-stained Nomex to make sure she was uninjured. She was fine. She was so very fine.

“You said some things earlier, Fire Boy.”

He had.

She raised her eyebrows at him rather than speaking, but allowed her smile out to play a bit.

He’d talked about a lifetime together. Behind that simple statement was marriage, kids, and years upon years lit through and through with trust and love.

Akbar was already kneeling at her booted feet. He couldn’t ask for more than this woman was offering. Not ever. It was the best offer of his entire life.

He looked up into those honey-gold eyes alight with the new day and answered with all of his heart.

“Those things I said, Space Ace? I meant every single word.”

About the Author

M. L. Buchman, in
among his career
as
a corporate project manager, he has rebuilt and single-handed a fifty-foot sailboat, both flown and jumped out of airplanes, designed and built two houses, and bicycled solo around the world. His romances have been named NPR and Barnes & Noble “Top 5 Romance of the Year” and
Booklist
“Top 10 Romance of the Year.” He is now making his living full-time as a writer, living on the Oregon Coast. He is constantly amazed at what you can do with a degree in Geophysics. Please keep up with his writing at www.mlbuchman.com.

Where Dreams are Born
the first book of the Angelos Hearth series

Russell locked his door
as the last of the staff finally went home and turned off his camera.

He knew it was good. The images were there, solid. He’d really cap
tured
them.

But something was missing.

The groove ran so clean when he slid into it. The studio faded into the background, then the strobe lights, reflector umbrellas, and blue and green backdrops all became texture and tone.

Image, camera, man became one and they were all that mattered; a single flow of light beginning before time was counted and ending in the printed image. A ray of primordial light traveling forever to glisten off the BMW roadster still parked in one corner of the wood-planked studio. Another ray lost in the dark blackness of the finest leather bucket seats. One more picking out the supermodel’s perfect hand dangling a single, shining, golden key. The image shot just slow enough that they key blurred as it spun, but the logo remained clear.

He couldn’t quite put his finger on it…

Another great ad by Russell Morgan. Russell Morgan, Inc. The client would be knocked dead, and the ad leaving all others standing still as it roared down the passing lane. Might get him another Clio, or even a second Mobius.

But… There wasn’t usually a “but.” The groove had definitely been there, but he hadn’t been in it. That was the problem. It had slid along,
sweeping his staff into their own orchestrated perfection, but he’d re
mained untouched. Not part of that ideal, seamless flow.

“Be honest, boyo, that session sucked,” he told the empty studio. Everything had come together so perfectly for yet another ad for yet another high-end glossy. Man, the Magazine would launch spectacularly in a few weeks, a high-profile mid-December launch, a never before seen twelve page spread by Russell Morgan, Inc. and the rag would probably never pay off the lavish launch party of hope, ice sculptures, and chilled magnums of champagne before disappearing like a thousand before it.

He stowed the last camera he’d been using with the others piled by his computer. At the breaker box he shut off the umbrellas, spots, scoops, and washes. The studio shifted from a stark landscape in hard-edged relief to a nest of curious shadows and rounded forms. The tang of hot metal and deodorant were the only lasting result of the day’s efforts.

“Morose tonight, aren’t we?” he asked his reflection in the darkened window of his Manhattan studio. His reflection was wise enough to not answer back. There wasn’t ever a “down” after a shoot, there had always been an “up.”

Not tonight.

He’d kept everyone late, even though it was Thanksgiving eve, hop
ing for that smooth slide of image, camera, man. It was only when he saw the power of the images he captured that he knew he wasn’t a part of the chain anymore and decided he’d paid enough triple-time expenses.

The single perfect leg wrapped in thigh-high red-leather boots visible in the driver’s seat. The sensual juxtaposition of woman and sleek machine. An ad designed to wrap every person with even a hint of a Y-chromosome around its little finger. And those with only X-chromosomes would simply
want to be her. A perfect combo of sex for the guys and power for the
women.

Russell had become no more than the observer, the technician be
hind the camera. Now that he faced it, months, maybe even a year had passed since he’d been yanked all the way into the light-image-camera-man slipstream. Tonight was the first time he hadn’t even trailed in the churned up wake.

“You’re just a creative cog in the advertising photography machine.” Ouch! That one stung, but it didn’t turn aside the relentless steamroller of his thoughts speeding down some empty, godforsaken autobahn.

His career was roaring ahead, his business fast and smooth, but, now that he considered it, he really didn’t give a damn.

His life looked perfect, but—“Don’t think it!” —but his autobahn mind finished, “it wasn’t.”

Russell left his silent reflection to its own thoughts and went through the back door that led to his apartment, closing it tightly on the perfect
BMW, the perfect rose on the seat, and somewhere, lost among a hun
dred other props from dozens of other shoots, the long pair of perfect red-leather Chanel boots that had been wrapped around the most expensive legs in Manhattan. He didn’t care if he never walked back through that
door again. He’d been doing his art by rote, and how God-awful sad was
that?

And he shot commercial art. He’d never had the patience to do art for art’s sake. No draw for him. No fire. He left the apartment dark, only
a soft glow from the blind-covered windows revealing the vaguest out
lines of the framed art on the wall. Even that almost overwhelmed him.

He didn’t want to see the huge prints by the art artists: autographed
Goldsworthy, Liebowitz, and Joseph Francis’ photomosaics for the mod
erns. A hundred and fifty more rare, even one of a kind prints, all the way back through Bourke-White to his prize, an original Daguerre.
The collection that the Museum of Modern Art kept begging to bor
row for a show. He bypassed the circle of chairs and sofas that could be a
playpen for two or a party for twenty. He cracked the fridge in the stain
less steel and black kitchen searching for something other than his usual beer.

A bottle of Krug.

Maybe he was just being grouchy after a long day’s work.

Milk.

No. He’d run his enthusiasm into the ground but good.

Juice even.

Would he miss the camera if he never picked it up again?

No reaction.

Nothing.

Not even a twinge.

That was an emptiness he did not want to face. Alone, in his apart
ment, in the middle of the world’s most vibrant city.

Russell turned away, and just as the door swung closed, the last sliver of light, the relentless cold blue-white of the refrigerator bulb, shone across his bed. A quick grab snagged the edge of the door
and left the narrow beam illuminating a long pale form on his black
bedspread.

The Chanel boots weren’t in the studio. They were still wrapped around those three thousand dollar-an-hour legs. The only clothing on a perfect body, five foot-eleven of intensely toned female anatomy, right down to her exquisitely stair-mastered behind. Her long, white-blond hair, a perfect Godiva over the tanned breasts. Except for their too exact symmetry, even the closest inspection didn’t reveal the work done there. One leg raised just ever so slightly to hide what was meant to be revealed later. Discovered.

Melanie.

By the steady rise and fall of her flat stomach, he knew she’d fallen asleep, waiting for him to finish in the studio.

How long had they been an item? Two months? Three?

She’d made him feel alive. At least when he was with her. The
image of the supermodel in his bed. On his arm at yet another SoHo
gallery opening, dazzling New York’s finest at another three-star restau
rant, wooing another gathering of upscale people with her ever so soft, so sensual, so studied French accent. Together they were wired into the heart of the in-crowd.

But that wasn’t him, was it? It didn’t sound anything like the Russell he once
knew.

Perhaps “they” were about how he looked on her arm?

Did she know tomorrow was the annual Thanksgiving ordeal at his
parents? That he’d rather die than attend? Any number of eligible wom
an floating about who’d finagled an invitation in hopes of snaring one of People Magazine’s “100 Most Eligible.” Heir to a billion or some such, but wealthy enough on his own, by his own sweat. Number twenty-four this year, up from forty-seven the year before despite Tom Cruise being available yet again.

No.

Not Melanie. It wasn’t the money that drew her. She wanted him. But more, she wanted the life that came with him, wrapped in the man package. She wanted The Life. The one that People Magazine readers dreamed about between glossy pages.

His fingertips were growing cold where they held the refrigerator door cracked open.

If he woke her there’d be amazing sex. Or a great party to go to. Or…

Did he want “Or”? Did he want more from her? Sex. Companionship. An energy, a vivacity, a thirst he feared that he lacked. Yes.

But where hid that smooth synchronicity like light-image-camera-man? Where lurked that perfect flow from one person to another? Did she feel it? Could he… ever again?

“More?” he whispered into the darkness to test the sound.

The door slid shut, escaped from numb fingers, plunging the apart
ment back into darkness, taking Melanie along with it.

His breath echoed in the vast darkness. Proof that he was alive, if nothing more.

Time to close the studio. Time to be done with Russell Incorporated.

Then what?

Maybe Angelo would know what to do. He always claimed he did. Maybe this time Russell would actually listen to his almost-brother, though he knew from the experience of being himself for the last thirty years that was unlikely. Seattle. Damn! He’d have to go to bloody Seattle to find his best friend.

He could guarantee that wouldn’t be a big hit with Melanie.

Now if he only knew if that was a good thing or bad.