Burns So Bad (Smoke Jumpers) Read Online Free PDF Page A

stretched on for a
    minute.
    “I love it,” she said finally,
    because her mother clearly was waiting for some kind of a response.
    “But you love your graduate
    program,” her mother pointed out. “You could work in the lab for the summer. It
    has air-conditioning. You’d get a byline on a journal article. Or,” the
    enthusiasm kicked up a notch in her mother’s voice, “I’m sure you could still
    take that television station up on their internship offer. You could be on TV , Gia.”
    Been there, done that and scored
    the commemorative bumper sticker. Her college internship had been informative.
    Reading the weather on pt. wasn’t a bad gig, but it was safe. Boring. Not how
    she imagined spending the rest of her life. Take your pick.
    “I jumped last summer,” she pointed
    out.
    “Exactly why you should try
    something new this summer!”
    “I loved it,” she continued
    doggedly. “This is what I want to do.”
    Blessed silence filled the air for
    a moment, but Gia knew her mother was simply regrouping. Sure enough, her
    mother went for the big guns.
    “You could get hurt. What happens
    if you have an attack while you’re out there surrounded by fire?”
    “I won’t.”
    “You can’t know that for sure.”
    Unfortunately, her mother was
    right.
    “And I’ve got a special pocket in
    my jumpsuit just for my pills. I jumped last summer and didn’t have any
    problems.”
    “I worried about you every day.”
    Her mother meant it, too. She’d have spent Gia’s dream summer wondering if her
    daughter was gasping for air on a forest floor somewhere, while Gia had been
    jumping head over heels out the plane and into love with the whole job of smoke
    jumping. Last summer, she’d still been a lowly trainee, though, and she’d only
    gotten in a handful of jumps with the Arizona jump team she’d assisted. This
    summer, however, she was on Donovan Brothers’ payroll and summer had already
    started heating up with plenty of jump time for everyone.
    “Please don’t,” she said, knowing
    that two words couldn’t stop her mother from doing what her mother had spent a
    lifetime doing already. There was no cure for that and her mother had the best
    of intentions. It was just that Gia was done with living in her mother’s
    protective cocoon. She was twenty-four. She was an adult. She didn’t need to be
    bubble-wrapped like the glass angels her mother took out of storage precisely
    once a year to be hung carefully on the Christmas out of harm’s way.
    She loved the freedom of the jump
    followed by the deafening roar of the wind in her ears as the forest swung in a
    crazy patchwork quilt of burned-unburned beneath her. The rude jerk of the
    chute snapping open and the slow, slow glide to the ground followed by a
    balls-out fight to slow the flames was her idea of the perfect day.
    Yep.
    She loved that part of her new job and if that made her crazy, so be
    it.
    “Gia—” Her mother sighed and
    there was an ocean of feeling in the sound. Frustration. Love. And, yes, fear.
    Gia couldn’t lie and say her job was safe.
    “I don’t want to read the weather
    on TV,” she said quickly. “Not ever. That’s not what I planned on doing and TV
    station jobs aren’t that easy to score anyhow. I don’t think they’d want me.”
    She wasn’t a hair and makeup girl.
    That was for certain.
    “I love you.” Her mother said those
    three words like they made all the difference. And they did. Gia wanted to
    smack her head against the loft’s wall, but the words were out there. Her
    mother loved her. Her father loved her. The whole family of aunts and uncles,
    nephews and nieces, loved her. And that meant she was supposed to stay home
    where it was safe so none of that love was at risk.
    She’d felt less trapped in a box
    canyon with the winds shifting and the flames licking at her boots.
    “Mom—” She had no idea what
    to say.
    Joey’s head popped up in the loft’s
    entrance. “You coming