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out of his head, but now he could no longer stop the floodgates from opening.

CHAPTER THREE
    Ten years ago …
    IT WAS an early fire season and he’d been sent out to check on a trailer park that bordered state land. An evacuation order had been given, but for one reason or another, people didn’t always leave. Sometimes they foolishly thought they’d be better off guarding their things. Sometimes they were just plain stupid and lazy.
    Sam quickly confirmed that twenty-nine of the thirty beaten-up trailers were empty. Only one was left, a ratty hunk of metal that barely looked habitable.
    The fire was blowing closer, a plume of fresh smoke spiraling up into the sky to the west. He needed to finish evacuations and get back to the station with the sure knowledge that no lives would be at stake if the fire rolled down the hill.
    He parked his truck in front of the trailer and got out, immediately disliking what he saw. Very few vehicles were left in front of the other trailers, but there was an old convertible parked outside this one.
    On his way to the door, he heard a woman’s voice. He couldn’t make out what she was saying, but he could tell she was pleading with someone. He knocked hard.
    “Fire service. I need you to open up.”
    The door didn’t open. He looked into the mountains, knew the flames were moving closer by the minute. He didn’t have the luxury of reasoning with the trailer’s resident. It was go or die.
    “Move away from the door,” he commanded, kicking it hard once, then twice with a heavy steel-toed boot. Using one shoulder for leverage, he leaned his weight into the door until the lock broke open.
    Moments later, he was inside the trailer and saw that the voice he’d heard belonged to a young girl who was trying to drag her mother’s limp body out of a back room and down the dark, narrow hallway to the door.
    Thank God he’d muscled his way inside. The kid needed his help.
    And then she looked up at him, clearly startled by his intrusion, and the air was knocked straight out of his guts.
    She wasn’t a kid at all. Instead, she was the prettiest woman he’d ever seen. Tall and fair, he couldn’t tell much about her body beneath the baggy jeans and T-shirt she had on. But her eyes held him captive, big and green with flecks of gold and purple. He stood and stared at her, the wildfire almost forgotten.
    “I’m sorry we’re not out yet,” she apologized. “As soon as I heard about the mandatory evacuation, I tried to wake her up. But when she’s like this, it’s impossible.”
    She blushed, clearly embarrassed, her high cheekbones highlighted in pink against her pale skin.
    The carpet was ratty, the furniture even worse, but everything was reasonably clean. He suspected the girl, not her mother, was responsible for that.
    He crossed the length of the trailer in a handful of strides. “Let me take over from here. Let me help.”
    In the back room of the trailer with the girl, the smell of body odor and beer was overpowering.
    “It’s horrible in here. You shouldn’t come in.”
    Shit, he hadn’t meant to let his reaction to the rank smell show on his face.
    “I’m not going to judge you. I promise. I just want to help.”
    Moving past her, he bent over and easily shifted her mother’s dead weight over his left shoulder.
    Her beautiful eyes grew wide. “Thank you.”
    He’d been complimented plenty of times during his two years as a hotshot, but somehow praise from this pretty green-eyed woman made him feel like he was walking on water.
    “She doesn’t weigh much,” he replied modestly as he laid her mother in the extended cab of his Forest Service truck, then strapped her lifeless body in with the seat belt as securely as he could.
    “They’ve set up an evacuation station at the high school. Do you know where that is?”
    Her face flamed. “I do, but I can’t take her there.” At his silent question, she said, “I just can’t.”
    Knowing firsthand how rough it was