Where There's Smoke: inspirational romantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

cut his voice to low. “Trust me on this—Kate is trouble.”
    “You can’t just fire her—”
    “Yes, I can,” Jed had said, not stopping to have it out with Conner. Not when he couldn’t catch a full breath. “I can’t believe the entire town of Ember applauded her. Do they have any idea what that does to morale? Now every recruit will be dreaming of becoming a daredevil in the sky.”
    He turned then and headed for the smokejumper wing, located right across the hall from the Jude County Wildland Firefighters offices.
    “She’s Jock Burns’s daughter!”
    “I know. Believe me, I know .”
    Their fight echoed in his head as he passed the locker room. Not on my watch. Somebody has to keep you from fulfilling your death wish. Like father, like daughter.
    He shouldn’t have said that—his hurt, his grief emerging in accusation.
    He glanced at Conner, who’d dropped his gear on the floor of the locker room, scrambling behind him.
    “This is Jock’s fault,” Jed said. “He always fed her stories of his crazy jumps and conveniently forgot the parts where he nearly got skewered by a tree or torched by some falling snag or some errant breeze that set him down in the middle of an inferno. She grew up thinking he was invincible.”
    Jed stood for a moment in the middle of the ready room, tasting the rampage of his heart in his throat. Buffalo, moose, and elk heads peered over the expanse, and at the front of the room chairs scattered a loose semicircle in front of a white board, the roster list, a call-out activity board, and eight-by-tens of every Jock Burns Jude County smokejumping crew since the man began the team some twenty years ago.
    Talk about legacy.
    “You can’t fire her for saving Pete’s life.”
    “And I’m not firing her for saving Pete’s life. I’m firing her because...” He shook his head. “Because this town has had enough death.”
    He couldn’t be here.
    Jed took a breath and headed past the rigging area, the four long parachute-folding tables near the back of the room, past the Singer sewing machines and a utility table cluttered with irons, tape, rolls of cord, and material, straight for the three-story tower where they hung the parachutes. He didn’t know why, exactly, standing amid the silky clouds calmed him, but he found himself pacing through the folds of white, creamy fabric.
    Putting himself back together.
    No one but Kate Burns could push him past himself, ignite a side to him he wanted to extinguish.
    He let the silk slide through his hands.
    He shook his head. “I’ve been fighting fires since I was seventeen, and I can’t remember being this rattled.”
    Oh. He didn’t exactly mean to say that out loud, and now glanced behind him, hoping he hadn’t.
    Conner was looking at him, his expression enigmatic.
    “I’ve never lost a firefighter,” Jed said.
    “I know,” Conner said quietly. “That’s why they chose you to take Jock’s place.”
    Jed let go of the silk. “They called Jock Mr. Bad Decision, Good Outcome. Did you know that?”
    Conner made a noise of agreement behind him.
    “I don’t have that kind of luck.”
    Jed closed his eyes, listening to the hammer of his heart, finally slowing, then took a breath and brushed past Conner, heading for the roster board at the front of the room. Just outside, in the lounge, Jed heard laughter, smelled pizza—someone had reheated yesterday’s lunch.
    He wanted to join them, but how could he, with the weight of their futures in his hands?
    Jed stared at the board, first at his slim roster of veterans, then at the twenty-four pictures of every single recruit, along with their names and states of origin tacked on the wall. “I know their names. Their hometowns. How long they’ve been hotshots. I have a pretty good idea of whether they’ll make it or not. But more importantly, I have to keep them alive. Just like Jock did.”
    He walked over to one of the pictures, a crew shot taken nine years ago. He recognized