Back to Eden

Cole.

Without thinking, Rachel clung tighter, pressed closer, until she heard the buzz of a small Cessna’s engine overhead and reality came crashing back.

What was she doing? “Put me down!” Rachel struggled against Cole’s rock-solid chest and her traitorous emotions. “Dammit, Cole. Put. Me. Down.”

Unceremoniously, his arms released her and Rachel stumbled, but somehow managed to regain her balance.

“This guy buggin’ you, Rachel?” Danny asked, a steadying presence at her side, even though his wiry physique was no match for Cole’s.

“No. He’s an old friend,” Rachel admitted after a moment spent unable to avoid looking at Cole. “Why don’t you get back in line, Danny. I’ll catch up with you in a minute.”

Danny moved slowly toward the chow line with a few dark looks for Cole.

Meanwhile, Cole didn’t say a word. He just stood there watching her with bright blue eyes that she’d hardly dared stare into when she was fifteen, much less now. With a linebacker’s build, a square jaw and short blond hair, he carried his age well, probably better than Rachel. He looked at peace, far different from the worried expression Rachel saw in her own reflection.

“You look like hell. I almost didn’t recognize you,” he said finally, handing her the baseball cap. “What are you doing out here?”

Rachel put the hat back on her head. His words shouldn’t hurt, but his tone implied she had no business being at a wildland fire camp miles from civilization. Rachel looked beyond Cole to the smoke-filled horizon. Things were so much easier in the air than on the ground.

“I’m contracted with the Forest Service, working the fire just like you are.” Making good money to tide her over through the lean winter months.

He frowned, taking in her appearance from head to toe. “Hot Shot?” She wasn’t wearing the Hot Shot garb that Cole was—fire-resistant drab-green slacks and a yellow button-down.

Rachel flicked her thick ponytail over her shoulder with a laugh. “Fight fires on the ground with nothing more than a shovel or a chainsaw? I’m not that foolish. I’ll leave that to you, thank you very much.” And she should leave him standing there with the question she knew he was dying to ask—How’s Missy? But Rachel’s boots seemed to have taken root in the dirt.

The disapproving expression didn’t leave his face. After a moment Cole said, “You’re not flying air tankers, are you?”

“Yep.” Rachel squared her shoulders. She was proud of the fact that she was one of the few female tanker pilots, prouder still that she was owner of her own tanker service. She flew a PB4Y2 Privateer, an airplane that had served in at least two wars. Dumping fire retardant on forty-foot-high flames on runs reminiscent of those barnstorming fighter pilots who’d come before her was Rachel’s idea of heaven. Sometimes she couldn’t believe they paid her to do it.

Cole cursed under his breath, taking Rachel by the arm. “Look, kid—”

Kid? Rachel bristled at the word. In the back of her mind, she’d always believed that Cole would approve of what she was doing, would jump at the chance to make a run with her. She’d never imagined he’d treat her as if she were still fifteen and waiting for her first kiss. Rachel shook off his touch, even though part of her trembled with the contact.

“This isn’t a game out here. You’ve always been a risk taker, but…” Cole lowered his voice and leaned closer. “I’m sure you’ve noticed how air tankers have been dropping from the sky lately.”

He was right. A lot of the old beauties weren’t able to take the stress of diving into deep valleys and pulling up to avoid the trees on the opposite side of the basin. But Rachel had rebuilt the Privateer herself and knew that its engines could withstand tremendous stress.

“Maybe there have been a few older models that haven’t held up after fifty or more years of hard service, but my plane is different.” Rachel resisted the inclination to tell him she was one of the most respected pilot mechanics in the business, something she could thank her father for. “I know what I’m doing, Cole. Why can’t you just wish me well?” Instead of making her feel two inches high, which was how she felt anyway, because she wouldn’t tell him about Jenna. And then there was Missy… Rachel had never liked hiding the truth. Yet, that seemed to be all she did nowadays. And Cole was, in part, to blame.

Rachel looked for Danny. She couldn’t last much longer without spilling her guts or losing the facade that she was a fully functioning adult.

Unexpectedly, Cole reached out and removed her sunglasses. “What happened to your freckles?”

Rachel snatched them back and thrust them into place. “I grew out of them.” If only she’d outgrown her feelings for Cole.

“And Missy?” Cole finally asked the question she’d been dreading. “How is Missy?”

Rachel’s throat closed as she recognized the expression in Cole’s blue eyes—hope. She’d thought she’d loved this man at one time. Later, she’d realized it had been a foolish teenager’s crush. But it was clear that he was still in love with Missy, the woman he’d slept with just hours before her marriage to another man, and then left alone to face the consequences. And then there was what he’d done five years ago.

Rachel was such a sentimental fool.

“She’s dead,” Rachel managed to tell him, holding her heart together by willpower alone as she waited for Cole to say he’d wondered why Missy hadn’t shown up on his doorstep five years ago, waited for him to explain why he’d never called to see what had become of her.

Instead Cole swayed as if he might be felled by the heartbreaking news that Rachel had been living with for what seemed like an eternity.

Rachel frowned.

“I had no idea.” His gaze wandered around, from the latrines to the chow line to the trucks rumbling out of camp. Then his attention swung back to her. “When?”

Rachel tried to hide her confusion. How could Cole have forgotten? He had to have known. “Five years ago.” Although the vibrant spark that had once been Missy had been extinguished on her wedding day and none of Rachel’s efforts had rekindled that flame. “Car accident. We lost her.” Rachel’s voice sounded distant, as if someone else was speaking, someone who hadn’t known Missy and somehow failed her.

Rachel wouldn’t fail Missy now. She wouldn’t tell Cole the secrets pressing at the back of her throat, the most pressing of which was that he’d created a beautiful little girl on the eve of Missy’s wedding to Lyle.

Rachel had made her sister a promise, and she was sticking to it.

“IF YOU LOVED ME, you’d stay with me here in Eden. I can’t leave Rachel.” Missy’s voice had been filled with an aching sadness, as if she’d known her fate was sealed if Cole left her.

What had Cole done?

“Chainsaw, you look like you’ve just seen a ghost,” Jackson observed as he parked his booted feet near Cole’s.

Cole squinted up into the sunset to find Jackson and Logan regarding him.

After hearing the devastating news, Cole had staggered over to the latrines where he’d tried to decide if he was going to puke or not. Minutes later, with his friends standing in front of him, Cole still wasn’t sure.

Missy was dead.

He wiped a hand over his face. He’d always believed she was The One—the woman he was meant to be with. All she’d had to do was touch him and he’d combusted. She’d given him an ultimatum that last morning he’d seen her, either settle down in Eden or leave her be. There was nothing for him in Eden—no family since his had moved to Idaho, and there sure as hell weren’t any jobs in the dying town. In the heat of anger, he’d told Missy he’d wait for her through her foolish marriage. He’d told Missy he’d wait until she grew up and realized they were destined to be together.

And he had waited, living as if he’d had a marriage vow to honor, knowing she’d come back to him someday.

Only to find out Missy was dead.

“I, uh…” Cole struggled to find the words to tell his friends what had blindsided him. “I just heard that…Missy is dead.”

Without a word they sat on either side of him on the hard-packed Montana earth.

Jackson put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. How did you hear?”

“Her little sister told me a few minutes ago.” Rachel had looked just the same as the picture he carried in his wallet—a stubborn lift to her chin, wisps of long black hair escaping from her ponytail, slender as a reed, wearing cowboy boots, scruffy blue jeans and a T-shirt. If it wasn’t for the way she filled out her T-shirt, she’d have tomboy written all over her.

What Rachel didn’t have written all over her was grief, because she’d had five years to come to terms with her sister’s death. All Cole’s dreams—

“Missy’s sister?” Logan broke into Cole’s thoughts, leaning forward and looking at Jackson, then at Cole. “The little girl who rebuilt your truck engine before she had a license to drive it? The one who beat you in a bareback horse race?”

“Logan.” Jackson held up a hand in Logan’s direction.

“Yeah. She’s a tanker pilot. I should have known she’d end up doing something crazy, especially with Missy gone….” Cole stared down at his boots. Rachel was no longer a little girl. She was a woman who’d never outgrown the daredevil spirit that he’d been sure Missy would temper as they aged. Crap. He still couldn’t believe Missy was long dead. “I don’t want to talk about it.”