Authors: Lindsay McKenna
Pepper propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands. "Do you realize how delicious you look right now?" she asked huskily.
Jim glanced over his shoulder at her as he stood at the sink, refilling the old copper teakettle. "No." He grinned and looked down at his bare feet sticking out from beneath his Levi's. "Somehow, I don't think this uniform of the day would make it most places."
"It only has to make it here."
Jim's heart mushroomed with joy at her heartfelt comment as he set the kettle on the stove. He realized that, in his sleepy state, he'd zipped up his jeans, but neglected to button them, leaving his navel revealed. "There's a difference between you and Diana," he teased mischievously, buttoning up. "She was a virgin and refused to let any man touch her."
"I wouldn't like to be Diana," Pepper said decidedly.
Sauntering over to her, Jim stood behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders. "No," he rasped, "I wouldn't like it, either."
Leaning back against him, Pepper gazed up into his shadowed face, its strong planes accentuated by a slight growth of beard. "Am I dreaming? Are you really here? Is this real?" she asked, only half joking.
Jim heard the quaver in Pepper's voice. He squeezed her shoulders and came around and knelt at her side. Facing her, he slid one hand behind her waist and held her hands with his other one. "I'm real. This is real. What we have is real," he said quietly, holding her luminous gaze.
"I'm scared, Jim.
Scared as hell."
"I know you are. So am I."
"I worry…." Pepper shrugged. "I mean…I've never felt like I do when I'm with you."
He cocked his head. "What do you mean?" He ran his thumb across the top of her clasped hands. Her skin was firm and soft.
Inviting.
An ache began building in him again, her mere closeness fueling his desire.
"Something about you touches me so deeply—on such a primal level—that I stand in awe of it," Pepper admitted shakily. "John never touched me in the same way. It was different. With you, I feel your intensity, and you arouse an answering intensity in me. This may sound silly—maybe you'll laugh—but I feel as if you're my wolf mate—the one my soul has been searching for all these years." She gave him a shy look and realized from his expression that he wasn't taking her words lightly.
"Wolves mate for life." He pursed his lips, then lifted her hand and placed a small kiss on it. Raising his chin, he held her gaze. "I think we deserve to spend some time together, don't you?"
His voice was dark, velvety. Pepper struggled against her long-ago promise to herself not to get involved. "Yes…"
Jim smiled a little. "We've had a lot of hurdles to overcome to get this far, sweetheart."
She sat very still. His hands felt almost hot
against her own
. She saw the commitment in his eyes, heard it in his voice. "How much time do we have?"
"I'm due back in seven days, shortly after Christmas. If Jason isn't in
Maui
, we'll have to start the search for him all over again. But by that time, this new team, if they get lucky, will probably know one way or another."
"I see…." Pepper knew she'd made a personal commitment to Jim simply by loving him. She'd already broken her promise to herself, she admitted. In fact, her heart had ignored that promise from the beginning when it came to him, she thought wryly. Yet Jim hadn't said he loved her. But in fairness to him, she hadn't said it, either. Did she dare call it love? How could she not? Fear warred with her instinctive inner knowing.
Jim got up and embraced her gently. The teakettle was whistling on the stove. "I know your relationship with John taught you a lot of good things and bad things, sweetheart. In a way, we have all the time in the world—but I know that hasn't been your experience. You have to trust me on this, Pepper—we've got time. Hang
on,
I'll get you a cup of tea."
Amazed that he seemed able to read her thoughts, Pepper watched him putter around her kitchen. Jim belonged, there was no doubt. He looked totally at home here. And she had to admit that she'd never seen him as relaxed as he was now with her. The tea made, he held out his hand and led her into the living room, where they sat down on the large merino rug in front of the stove.
Jim maneuvered Pepper around so that he could lean against the end of the couch and still have her nestled in his arms. The fire crackled in front of them. "Better?" he whispered near her ear.
"Much." Pepper sipped the tea carefully as they sat in the early afternoon silence, the glow of red-orange flames dancing around the cabin's cozy interior. Outside, it was snowing again, and the windowpanes were frosted with a thick coating of snow. Setting the teacup on her robed thigh, Pepper sighed and leaned back against him.
"So you can stay for a week?"
"Yes."
"I just never dreamed you'd come back into my life, Jim."
"I never stopped dreaming of you coming into mine."
His voice was filled with irony, and she twisted to look up at him. "Nothing has ever felt
so
right to me as this," she said.
"Me, either."
Jim inhaled the fragrance of Pepper's hair and enjoyed the feel of her, supple in his embrace.
Her robe had slipped off her leg, revealing the length of her calf. He frowned and leaned forward, running his hand across its smooth expanse. "Is that an old injury?" he asked, indicating a ten-inch scar that ran nearly the length of her calf.
"Hmm?
Oh, that."
"How did it happen?"
"On the Crown King fire in
Arizona
a couple of years ago." She shrugged. "If you're a smoke jumper you can expect all kinds of injuries, Jim. That's why I'm glad I met Michaela, with her homeopathic practice. Without her, I'd have been laid up a lot more and a lot longer."
"Where did you get this other one?" He pointed to a scar on her other knee.
Pepper heard the concern in his voice. Setting the tea aside, she turned around and crossed her legs, her knees pressing against his. "What is this? Are we going to compare our war wounds?" she teased with a smile, trying to dispel the worry in his eyes.
"That's a big scar, Pepper."
"So?" She made her eyes large. "You should see the one under my left arm. It's a puncture wound I received at the Patterson fire, just outside of
Phillipsburg
, as a matter of fact. You remember the
Storm King
Mountain
fire in
Glenwood
,
Colorado
, which took the lives of fourteen smoke jumpers?"
He scowled. Who could forget that tragic fire, which had taken so many dedicated and courageous lives? "Yes, I remember it."
"We had a similar situation in the Patterson fire," Pepper said. "It was a hot day—a red-flag day, warning us of high winds. My team and I were moving down into a valley similar to the one in the Storm King fire, and we had a blowout. I had run back down to warn another Hotshot team, because not all of them had radios, when the fire exploded all around us. I got to them and helped them because I knew the woods in this area so well. When a tree fell over, one of the branches gored me. If it weren't for Susan, my fire-team partner, I'd have been dead," she said matter-of-factly. "We were running for it when a burning pine fell across our planned escape route." She raised her arm and pointed to her upper rib cage. "The branch punctured my left lung. I had so much blood in my
lungs,
I nearly suffocated on the
helo
ride to the hospital."
Jim captured her graceful hands in his. "I never realized how dangerous your job was," he murmured.
"As if being a Recon isn't twenty times more dangerous, Jim Woodward! And don't give me that pained expression, either. I hope we're not going to have our first fight over our respective careers."
He grinned. "Not a chance, sweetheart. I see enough fighting in my line of work at the Pentagon. I don't want home to be a battleground, too."
Pepper caressed his cheek. "Michaela saved my life when I got that lung puncture. Because we were so close to
Phillipsburg
, the Forest Service called and asked for her assistance as emergency backup. On the way to the hospital, in the ambulance, she gave me a remedy that stopped most of the hemorrhaging. So you see
,
I have a homeopathic guardian angel. Too bad you don't!"
Laughing, Jim surrendered to her logic. "Remind me to thank Michaela for giving you the remedy that helped my arm."
"Talk about scars," Pepper murmured, sliding her hands up his newly healed arm. "That was a terrible cut, Jim."
"I had a great nurse—a woman who stole my heart, then took care of it for me. How could I not get well under her care?"
Pepper digested the sincerity of his tone. "I still think you're a figment of my lonely, overworked imagination."
"Finish your tea," Jim coaxed. "Dreams can't make love. I'll take you back to bed and we'll see if I'm a dream or not.
Deal?"
Her lips curved tenderly.
"Deal."
There was desire in his eyes—and in his touch as he moved his hand slowly up and down her thigh beneath her robe. A new joy, a thread of real hope moved through her. In three days, she would take him home with her to Anaconda for Christmas. What would her parents think of Jim? Her whole family would be there. Suddenly, Pepper felt a wave of happiness like she'd never experienced—and she knew it was because of the man who held her in his arms.
Jim sat with a cup of freshly made hot chocolate in his hand. Pepper was in her mother's very busy kitchen, preparing the Christmas Eve meal. He looked down and noted the whipped cream and cinnamon sprinkles on his chocolate—a thoughtful touch. A strong burst of love washed through him. From where he sat, he could see Pepper standing at the sink, preparing the stuffing for the huge, twenty-five-pound turkey.
To her right stood her aristocratic-looking mother, Mary Sinclair.
Though in her fifties, she was almost as tall as Pepper, her short black hair sprinkled with gray. Their laughter was nearly identical, and Jim now knew who Pepper took most strongly after. To Pepper's left stood Molly Sinclair,
Cam
's wife, who looked tiny in comparison to the other two. Molly was blond and delicately boned; it was tough to imagine that at one time she'd been a navy test engineer on the most modern fighter planes. All three women were laughing and chatting amiably as they worked. Unfortunately, Pepper's grandfather had the flu, so they wouldn't be visiting for the holiday.
Jim smiled and took another sip of the rich, warm chocolate. Happiness seemed to ring through the Sinclair household nonstop. At the moment, Warren Sinclair, Pepper's father, was having a serious talk with
Cam
by the fireplace.
Warren
was tall and spare, his hands long and artistic—like Pepper's. He was in his mid-fifties and wore a white cotton shirt topped by a brightly striped red-and-white sweater.
Cam
was a few inches shorter than his father, lean and obviously fit from his military duties. The navy test pilot had his elbow resting on the mantel, his brow furrowed, eyes intense. Jim smiled to himself. Yes,
Cam
needed someone like Molly, who was like a cheerful patch of sunlight, to counterbalance his intensity and seriousness.
Molly and
Cam
's two children, three-year-old Jennifer and one-year-old Scott, played happily around Jim's feet. He leaned over and made sure that blond-haired Jennifer, who decidedly took after Molly, had the coloring book and crayons nearby so she could continue her exploration of creativity on paper. Scott, on the other hand, was the spitting image of Cam, his hair thick and black and his eyes clear, pale blue with a startling intensity to them—just like his father's.
Jim glanced at his watch. It was 1100, and two more families, friends of Molly and
Cam
, were still due to arrive to spend Christmas with them. Dana and
Griff
Turcotte
were flying in from
Pensacola
,
Florida
, where they both worked as instructor pilots. From Miramar Naval Air Station near
San Diego
, Lieutenant Commander Maggie Donovan-Bishop and her civilian pilot husband, Wes Bishop, were flying in, too.