About Picking Daisies

by Julia Talbot
13 pages / 3500 words
Ebook zipped file contains - html, lit, Adobe and Sony optimized pdf, prc, epub

When smokejumper Lane comes down from Oregon to fill a gap on a firefighting team in Colorado, all he seems to do is trip over team leader Dave Calhoun. This is a problem because Dave doesn’t seem to like him much. Can he stop falling for the man in time, or will it be too late before they even get started?

Sample

My mom used to have this expression. "There I was, picking daisies on the railroad track…" That was how I felt when I fell for Dave Calhoun. Like a train blindsided me.

We were on a call out of the jump center in Grand Junction over in Western Colorado. Big Eli Marshall had called me down from Oregon to work as an alternate, so I was on a team who all knew one another but didn't know me. Eli's my damned hero, so I would never tell him, but that was rough. No one wants to jinx their team by making nice with the new guy.

They had dropped us on a ridgeline up in Glenwood canyon, and we were digging a fireline, trying to keep the fire from cresting the ridge and barreling down toward the highway. It was a losing effort thanks to the wind, which was hot and dry, pure Colorado in July.

It had been seventy-two degrees when I left Bend, Oregon, three days before. I was about to die just from humping my gear and wearing the fire suit I had on. I was sucking down my water ration at an alarming rate when I heard the whomp.

I didn't have time to react for shit. I knew that sound, I'd heard it in Oregon, on a mountain I can't remember as anything more than blisters and smoke inhalation. I had about two seconds to look around and assess the situation. There was nowhere to go, and there were two guys still below me on the ridge.

One of them was a rookie. One was Dave Calhoun, a thirteen year veteran.

I ran for the rookie, who clearly didn't know what that sound was. I pulled out my fire blanket on the run, screaming like a banshee for him to get his out and get down. With any luck the fire would jump right over us and barely singe anything. I didn't really believe it, but there it was.

Two feet from the rookie, something hit me so hard that my feet went one way and my head went the other. Bang. I went down, the rookie went down next to me, and before the rain of hellfire came down on us, three fire blankets came down over us.

Dave.