The Promise of Rayne Read online

  “Not a problem.”

  Rayne joined their exchange, her clothes and arms streaked and soiled.

  Jason glanced between the two of them. “Let me clean up and then I’d be happy to show you and your girlfriend around the camp.”

  Levi waited for Rayne to correct the man’s observation.

  She never did.

  A fact that circled Levi’s brain for the next hour.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  After a quick shower, Jason gave them a minitour of camp, tossing them each a turkey sandwich to eat as they walked. Rayne hung back, taking in all the sights and sounds she could. Everything here had a purpose. The tents covering the ground, the septic tank, and the trailer filled with generators in the center. All the pallets of extra hose, fire retardant, and equipment caused her imagination to unravel.

  When another fire crew unloaded and stripped off their gear, Rayne studied them, their bone-deep fatigue notable even from several yards away. Their filthy bodies were covered in dust and debris from head to toe—except for their eyes, which shone like bright goggle-shaped cut-outs. But as she edged closer, she heard no complaints. Instead, she watched their selflessness toward one another on display. Their camaraderie. Their connectedness. One thing was clear above all: They’d chosen this life. To serve. To protect. To sacrifice for the good of others.

  Rayne unloaded boxes of apples, pears, lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers alongside Jason and Levi. He’d asked her to take a break, to rest. But she couldn’t. Not now, not with her adrenaline charged and firing on all cylinders. The opportunity to burn some of this nervous energy with physical exertion had become a necessity.

  She stepped down the ramp, a box of pears wedged between her aching arms. Levi clamped his hands on either side of her cargo and relieved her.

  “That’s the last one,” he said, setting the box on a stack with the other fruit.

  She twisted toward the truck and pointed. “Actually there’s still a few more at the back—”

  He touched her shoulder. “I meant it’s the last one for you. You look ready to drop.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Rayne, please. Just . . . stop, okay? One misstep on that ramp and you’ll end up like Pascal. You’re exhausted.” He raked a hand through his sweat-damp hair and then tugged on the back of his neck. “You’ve helped a lot today, done more than I would have asked if you were one of my employees. Which you’re not.”

  “Then give me something else to do.”

  “Uh . . .” He exhaled and scrubbed at his jaw. “If you want to grab the clipboard under the driver’s seat, you could verify what we’ve unloaded against the invoice. I’ll need to get the delivery signed off before we leave, and I always like to check it myself first.”

  She crossed her shaky arms behind her back. “I can do it.”

  “Thank you.”

  Halfway through her count, Jason joined her inside the tent and downed a full bottle of Gatorade.

  “So where you two from?” he asked.

  She smiled at him. “Shelby Falls.”

  He nodded knowingly. “Beautiful area. I’m only a couple hours south. In Lewiston.”

  “Oh, okay, yes. I’ve driven through there several times on the way to Boise.” She took note of her last box count and let the clipboard rest at her hip. “Have you been out here long, Jason?”

  “At this camp—no. Just a few days so far. But there’ll be about a hundred more joining us tomorrow.”

  A hundred more? She couldn’t even imagine. Were the fires really that bad? “When do you think the fires will be contained?”

  Jason’s expression was distressed at best. “If I knew that . . .” He shook his head, picked up another ice-cold beverage, and downed half of it in a single swig. “Don’t know what the media is reporting, but these winds have created a bit of a pressure inversion. If something doesn’t shift soon, these fires will be headed straight over that ridge.” He pointed toward a mountain she knew all too well.

  “But there’s a town on the other side of that ridge—Bear Canyon.” As if saying the name would make the reality he painted any less true.

  “I know,” he said. “My grandmother lives in Bear Canyon.”

  So did many of Rayne’s acquaintances. Bear Canyon sat just across the river from Shelby Falls.

  He scratched the base of his buzzed scalp. “We’re doing our best, but if you’re the praying type, I’d advise you start praying for rain. Lots of it. Coming off of an unusually mild winter, the drought’s killing us out here.”

  “I am, the praying type, I mean.” Or at least she had been. She’d believed in God all her life, had attended private schools and church services, but lately she’d found herself wondering . . . “I’ll pray.” A promise she would keep. To pray for these men and women. And for rain. The very least she could do.

  “God’s firefighting is a heck of a lot better than what we can do out here any day of the week. With conditions this dry, we’re really only one lightning strike away from disaster.” He tossed his empty bottle into the recycle bin. “I gave your boyfriend my contact info. Don’t hesitate to call if there’s ever something I can do for either of you.”

  Her brain stumbled over his assumption and landed on a new trail of thought. It shouldn’t be Jason offering to do something more for them—not when he and the rest of his crew were the ones sacrificing their time, their health, their very lives to protect people who hadn’t a clue what their job, or service, entailed. Before today, she hadn’t had a clue either. Not until she took the tour, saw the sooty faces, shouldered a sliver of their daily, burdensome gear.

  Whatever problems she thought she had this morning in dealing with Celeste had long disintegrated. No longer would she see the smoke clouds hovering over the lodge as an annoying irritant or even as a loss of potential business clientele during the height of tourist season. Smoke was a symptom of a danger she’d chosen not to see.

  Levi wiped his face and neck with a towel as he strode into the tent.

  He tossed her a water bottle. “You doing okay in here?”

  “Jason was giving me an update on the fires.”

  “Pretty grim, isn’t it?” The worry lines on his face confirmed what she’d been told.

  “I need to catch some shut-eye before the burnout tonight. We’re supporting the hotshot crew.” Jason started toward the exit. “It’s been good meeting you both.”

  He was only a few paces outside the tent when Rayne called out to him. She jogged back to the truck, retrieved her wallet, and circled back to hand him her business card. “If you’re ever up north and in need of a place to stay, we’d welcome you. Free of charge.”

  He scrutinized the card before connecting the dots. “You’re Rayne Shelby as in the Shelby Lodge?”

  Sweat dampened her palms. “Yes, that’s right.”

  “You have tea with my grandmother once a month. Vilma Albright.”

  A laugh bubbled up her throat. “No way! Vilma’s your grandmother? I love her.”

  “I’m pretty partial to her too.”

  “Oh my goodness! You’re Jason, her firefighter grandson. Wow. She’s talked about you a lot—and all your siblings and your oldest sister’s triplets.”

  He laughed. “Yes, the Albrights are quite a topic for conversation.”

  She hadn’t heard him approach, but she didn’t miss Levi’s hand on the small of her back, or the way he’d leaned ever so slightly into her as Jason continued speaking. Her mind became a whirlwind of half-processed information.

  “Idaho’s a small world,” she said in reply to Jason, hoping he hadn’t asked a question in the last thirty seconds.

  Jason lifted the card and dipped his chin to her and Levi before turning to leave. “You both take care now.”

  Levi’s gaze heated her face, his hand still searing through the back of her cotton T-shirt.

  “How’s Celeste gonna feel about you giving away free night stays?”

  Just hearin
g her cousin’s name put a sour taste in her mouth. “Celeste might manage my schedule, but she’ll never control my conscience.” There were limits to how far Rayne would compromise.

  Even for the lodge.

  Levi inclined his head to his truck. “Come on, it’s been a long day in the heat. Let’s head out.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Rayne’s introspective quiet invited a quiet of his own as he steered through the maze of forest roads. When the tires finally met pavement, Levi’s gaze flicked to the left automatically, the way it did every time he drove by the Sandy Shores trailer park off Highway 95. And like always, he tried to ignore the early eighties brown-and-tan Skyline parked kitty-corner to the dumpster. But trailer forty-seven, the one with the duct-taped kitchen window and the slashed screen door, could have doubled as the last home he had lived in with his deadbeat dad.

  By the time he was ten, he’d inhabited a dozen round-the-clock pit stops for junkies and dealers. He’d been used to falling asleep to the sound of breaking glass and intoxicated voices. He’d been used to waking up to the smell of smoke and sweat and sin. What he hadn’t been used to was all the attention he’d received after his father was carted off to prison.

  No matter what his social worker told him, he hadn’t wanted a forever family. There was too much liability in a permanent placement. Too much responsibility. Too much accountability.

  By sixteen, he’d passed his GED, reading every college textbook he could get his hands on, determined to be better than his old man. But when he’d given the one-finger salute to his last group home, he hadn’t planned on spending the next three months in a broken-down Buick.

  But he also hadn’t planned on Ford Winslow.

  He slid another glance at Rayne. Her sleepy gaze remained transfixed on nothing he could easily identify. Perhaps a more selfless person would encourage her to use the last of their time together to rest, especially since her next shift started a mere nine hours from now. Only he couldn’t imagine dropping her off at the lodge as if today hadn’t meant something.

  Because it had.

  He just needed a bit more time to figure out what exactly.

  “Feel up for a little detour?”

  Her attention strayed to the road and then to him. “Sure.”

  After another couple of miles he pulled off the highway.

  “The Falls,” she said on a breath.

  He parked to the side of the horseshoe turnabout that led to the trail at the base of the Falls. On a clear day, tourists stood behind the guardrailed precipice and tried to capture the panoramic view in a postcard snapshot. But some things couldn’t be captured through a lens. Not the things worth living for anyway.

  The community of Bear Canyon peeked above them, while a cascade of icy water snaked into the river below. Despite the smoky cloud cover and the low water level of summer, the Falls didn’t fail to impress.

  He rounded the front of the truck and opened her door.

  “I could use a walk.” His gaze tracked over her front. “Might also be a good place to wash the soot from your hands and arms. Afraid your shirt’s beyond repair, though.”

  She pulled the fabric of her yellow cotton T-shirt away from her torso. “Oh, it’s nothing I’m worried about.” She shrugged. “I still look a heck of a lot cleaner than everybody at the fire camp.”

  True statement.

  He led them to the boulder steps, the déjà vu of the moment tampering with his ability to form linear thoughts.

  “I’ve always wondered how it would feel to have a waterfall named after my family.” Or an entire town, for that matter.

  Rayne navigated the sloped stretch of land, arms extended for balance. He remained only a half step behind her, at the ready to grip her arm, but she maneuvered over the shifting ground without misstep.

  “Hmm. I guess I don’t really think about it that way. I mean, sure, I’ve circled the Falls a thousand times on the maps we provide for our guests at the lodge, but . . .” She let her words trail off until she neared the bottom of the descending path. “I don’t come out here enough to make that kind of connection, I suppose.”

  He said nothing as her statement clanged inside him.

  His boots tromped over the mixed terrain, part river rocks, part ropey weeds. “Watch your step here.”

  “Got it.” She lunged over a mossy tree stump.

  They stood just a few feet out from the shore, the sound of the Falls around the bend beckoning them farther, but the slow-moving current seemed to stall their momentum, as if neither of them could keep going until they’d dealt with what they’d left behind.

  Levi retrieved a flat stone near his boot, popped it into his palm, and then offered it to Rayne. The same way he’d done nine years ago. “Ladies first.”

  She took the chalky stone without argument, flexing her wrist side to side before twisting her hips. Her short flick and release skipped the stone three times on the water’s surface.

  “Not too shabby, Shelby.”

  “I’m pretty rusty. I haven’t done this for . . . a while.”

  Levi gave her a sideways glance and picked up another stone for himself. “Three’s better than a lot of people can do. What’s your magic number?”

  “Nine. But that was years ago.” Rayne bent at the knees and scooped up a handful of stones, sorting them the way he picked through a handful of jelly beans. Tossing out the greens and whites and keeping the blacks, reds, and oranges.

  Levi cocked his shoulder back and chucked the stone into the river. Seven skips.

  “Whoa! You’re really good!”

  “I’ve had lots of practice.”

  “Guess I should have asked about your magic number?”

  “Seventeen. Just once.”

  Her eyes widened. “Seventeen? And was anybody besides God a witness to such a phenomenon?”

  Levi selected a rock from the pile in her hand. “Not a soul.” The way he’d once preferred it. Up until recently anyway.

  When they’d depleted her collection of stones, Rayne trailed to the river’s edge. Balancing on her haunches, she dipped her arm into the water and washed the ashy streak marks away. Even as he watched her, he knew committing the sight to memory wouldn’t be enough. Rayne’s allure encompassed more than the beautiful line of her body or the effortless way she moved. Her appeal wasn’t limited to the physical. There was so much more—the way she spoke, the way she listened, the way she cared for others without thought or complaint. In a matter of weeks, she’d recaptured his full attention and reclaimed something he’d left at the river nearly a decade ago. Hope.

  She stretched her neck side to side and stood upright, tiny droplets of water dripping from the ends of her fingertips. As she moved toward him, a ribbon of hair slipped from behind her ear.

  “I came back.” The words escaped him without permission and her steps paused.

  “I came back here. Every night. For weeks. Hoping you’d be here, like you promised you would.”

  She said nothing with her mouth, but her eyes couldn’t be silenced.

  “At first, I convinced myself I’d messed up, like maybe my own jacked-up view of reality had misinterpreted our interaction, made it into something more than it was. But then later, after I’d shed my new-kid status and learned the ways of this town, I had no choice but to accept the truth.” He stepped toward her. “The reason you didn’t show up wasn’t because of who I was, it was because of who I worked for. Where I lived.”

  Her neck strained on a swallow.

  “There’s just one thing, though . . .” He was an arm’s reach away.

  “What?” A wavering question that sounded more uncertain than she looked.

  “While you were a stranger to me that night—a nameless girl in a brand-new town—I couldn’t have been a stranger to you.” The Shelbys made it their business to know the happenings in their town, especially the happenings of their neighbor to the west. “You had to have known who I was that night, Rayne. And y
et, you followed me anyway.”

  “Yes, I knew.” Her eyes turned molten, a blaze of liquid fire that heated him through. “I just wanted to believe it didn’t matter.”

  “It doesn’t have to matter.” He reached for her waist and tugged her against him. A sweet sigh grazed his lips and triggered the end of his patience.

  Nine years had been long enough.

  He captured her mouth in his.

  Their kiss was fueled by instinct and impulse. By ragged breaths and erratic heartbeats. By nine years of forbidden curiosity and guarded freedom.

  Desire urged him closer. His hands roved her back and inched up her spine to brace her head. Raven-colored hair spilled through his open fingers, and all at once, the tension in her neck and shoulders released. She was either giving in or giving up. He wasn’t sure which, but he could taste the abandon in her kiss.

  She explored the ridges of his back and then the planes of his chest as his lips dipped from her mouth to the base of her ear to her throat.

  On the end of a soft whimper she tipped her chin back. “This is not what friends do.”

  “I know,” he said between kisses. “But just so we’re clear, friends was your idea, not mine.”

  “I know,” she whispered. “But we need to—”

  He kissed the words away, certain more words could wait another few minutes.

  Unfortunately, Rayne wasn’t as certain.

  She pushed against his chest and he pulled back just enough to see her pink cheeks and wild hair—the exact opposite of what he needed to cool off.

  And then he saw the worry on her face.

  “We’ll never see each other,” she said.

  “We’re seeing each other now, aren’t we?”

  Amazingly, his astute logic didn’t convince her.

  “You know this can’t work, Levi.”

  He bracketed her face between his palms. “And you know this thing between us is something. It’s been something since the first time we met.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  At the sound of her throaty reply, he cupped a hand behind her neck and kissed her soundly, but again, she stopped him.

  Rayne stepped back, her expression pained and panicked. “This is too risky.”