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know—”
    “I don’t hate to be social,” Lyndie said through her teeth, which Griffin thought was interesting.
    She didn’t want to help any more than he did. After the plane had landed, she’d put her hand on him to soothe. The urge to return the favor shocked him.
    “Then you won’t mind helping us out,” Tom said smoothly.
    Lyndie put her hands on her hips and glared at Tom, who pretended not to notice.
    “Into the Jeep, now,” he said to no one in particular, putting a hand on Lyndie’s back and trying to push her toward the vehicle.
    “I can’t stay,” she insisted, notably less forcefully this time. “I have…”
    “Yes?” Tom smiled sweetly, his warm eyes guileless. “You have something more important?”
    Lyndie stared at him, then suddenly her shoulders sagged. “No. Damn it. Of course not.”
    “There you are,” Tom opened the beat-up door and patted her arm. “You know it’s okay to admit you have a home here,” he said gently.
    “I do not.”
    “You feel at home here,” Tom said.
    “My home is the sky—which I should be up in right now, thank you very much.”
    “Whatever you say, Lyn.”
    She let out a low, unintelligible reply that sounded like a growl.
    Griffin had never known a woman who could snarl so convincingly, as if she might launch herself at the source of her aggravation. He wondered if he touched her now if she’d snap at him. He put a hand on her shoulder.
    Whipping around to face him, she stared at him.
    Unbelievably, he nearly smiled.
    “It’s all settled then.” Tom nodded approvingly. “I’ll make sure your plane is properly tied down and cared for, and that Rosa knows you’ll be staying for the weekend. Get in now, darlin’.”
    And to Griffin’s amazement, the strong-headed, temperamental, free-spirited Lyndie merely sighed and climbed up into the waiting Jeep.
    In the front seat, naturally.
    Leaving the back to him.

3
    W hy had he touched her back there? Lyndie couldn’t figure it out so she stopped trying and looked around. They made their way toward the fire on a narrow, rutted road that wound around the hills in a meandering fashion. If they could get there as a crow flew, they’d have arrived in two minutes flat, but the roads here in the Barranca del Cobre were few and far between. Just outside the airport, they crossed a set of railroad tracks that nearly rattled the teeth out of Lyndie’s head.
    “That’s where the train comes through,” Tom explained to Griffin. “Which is the only way to travel this area. It’s not really safe any other way. Too many deep, dark canyons where one can fall to their death; too many wild animals, including hungry bears. Too many damn places to get lost and never get found again.”
    Griffin didn’t look happy at that knowledge.
    After the tracks came a creek. They used the one and only rickety old bridge to cross, which Lyndie tried not to think too much about as it creaked and groaned with their weight. She glanced back at Griffin to see how he took it, but he just sat there, immobile, face utterly unreadable.
    Halfway across, the Jeep stalled. “Damn,” Tom said.
    The bridge swung with their weight and Lyndie gulped. “Tom.”
    “On it.” He tried to restart the temperamental Jeep while they all hung there in the balance on the wobbly bridge with the fire ravaging the hills around them.
    The Jeep didn’t turn over.
    The bridge shuddered.
    “Just give it a sec,” Tom said calmly, and cranked the engine again. Finally it turned over, and they began to move.
    And still no reaction at all from Griffin.
    So he wasn’t easy to ruffle, she thought, with just a little bit of admiration. She appreciated that in a volunteer. In anyone.
    The road widened a bit after that, crossing through the low-lying hills beneath the hot day, the sun trying to beat down on them through the thick smoke. Breathing became a challenge as they came into San Puebla. The sandstone and brick facades of the buildings lined