Seeing Red Read online

  He let out a muttered response to that, but he didn’t understand. Flying was her life. Some women her age had husbands, or kids.

  She had this.

  Up here she controlled her destiny; up here she was free as a bird, and just as content in all this wide open space, no matter what the challenge. This would be a difficult and unwelcome challenge, but she wasn’t in over her head—yet. She made a sharp bank to the right to accommodate the stunning landscape beneath her—and for one quick moment, visibility deserted her entirely. Nothing but dark, thick, choking gray smoke in every direction. She blinked rapidly but didn’t see even a crack in the smoke. She let out a long breath and carefully checked her instruments, decreasing their altitude.

  “We’re going down?”

  One way or another, but, concentrating on her instruments—all she had at the moment—she didn’t answer. Still no visibility. She dropped them even lower in a last-minute attempt on her part to clear the smoke. “Damn.”

  “What?”

  “The wind’s picked up to thirty knots.”

  “Too high?”

  Well twenty would have been mildly challenging, forty would have been deadly. “Hopefully we’ll miss any crosswinds, so really, it could be worse.” Again she had to adjust their altitude, this time going higher to miss the craggy, sharp mountain she knew was there even if she couldn’t see it. The rocky turbulence threw them around for a moment but she fought for control and maintained it, barely. Even her stomach pitched.

  Only a few more minutes.

  Another rough drop but her hands and eyes remained steady, as did her heart, though her palms had grown damp.

  Behind her she heard the slap of a sweaty hand on an armrest. Heard the low, muttered curse.

  In her mirror, their eyes locked and held. “We’re okay,” she said.

  “Don’t waste your breath coddling me, just get us there.”

  She dropped altitude again.

  At the abrupt shift, she heard another sharp intake of breath. She took one herself, then let it out slowly, using all her strength to guide them in.

  Blind. “Hang on.” Thrusting the throttle forward, she executed a sharp climb to miss the crest that was leaping with flames, banking sharply to the right, swinging back around for another shot at the landing.

  And again lost all visibility.

  “Pull up again,” he said. “Take your time.”

  She glanced down at her gauges. “No can do.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Not enough fuel.”

  Their eyes locked. A trickle of sweat ran down his temple. Her own skin was damp. “Hang on,” she said again, and with another drastic maneuver brought them back around, slightly to the west this time, and over fire-free land. “Ready?”

  “Shit.” He closed his eyes. Then opened them with a grim determination that took her by surprise. “Ready.”

  Ready. And she took them directly into the remote, dizzying, dangerous, and definitely rough-around-the-edges Mexican mountains, flames and smoke and all.

  Leah is a brilliant pastry chef—who’s somehow botched all her opportunities for success.

  Jack is an ex-hotshot wildfire fighter who’s back to taming the fires of a small town.

  When these old friends reunite in Lucky Harbor, can they handle the heat?

  Please see the next page for a preview of Always on My Mind.

  Chapter 1

  Saying that she went to the annual Firefighter’s Charity Breakfast for pancakes was like saying she watched baseball for the game—when everyone knew that you watched baseball for the guys in tight uniform pants.

  But this time Leah Sullivan really did want pancakes. She also wanted her grandma to live forever, world peace, and hey, while she was making wishes, she wouldn’t object to being sweet-talked out of her clothes sometime this year.

  But those were all issues for another day. Mid-August was hinting at an Indian summer for the Pacific Northwest. The morning was warm and heading toward hot as she walked to the already crowded pier. The people of Lucky Harbor loved a get-together, and if there was food involved—and cute firefighters to boot—well, that was just a bonus.

  Leah accepted a short stack of pancakes from Tim Denison, a firefighter from Station #24. He was a rookie, fresh from the academy and at least five years younger than her, but that didn’t stop him from sending her a wink. She took in his beachy, I-belong-on-a-Gap-ad-campaign appearance and waited for her good parts to flutter.

  They didn’t.

  For reasons unknown, her good parts were on vacation and had been for months.

  Okay, so not for reasons unknown. But not wanting to go there, not today, she blew out a breath and continued down the length of the pier.

  Picnic tables had been set up, most of them full of other Lucky Harbor locals supporting the firefighters’ annual breakfast. Leah’s friend Ali Winters was halfway through a huge stack of pancakes, eyeing the food line as if considering getting more.

  Leah plopped down beside her. “You eating for two already?”

  “Bite your tongue.” Ali aimed her fork at her along with a pointed don’t mess with me look. “I’ve only been with Luke for two months. Pregnancy isn’t anywhere on the to-do list yet. I’m just doing my part to support the community.”

  “By eating two hundred pancakes?”

  “Hey, the money goes to the senior center.”

  There was a salty breeze making a mess of Leah’s and Ali’s hair, but it didn’t dare disturb the woman sitting on the other side of Ali. Nothing much disturbed the cool-as-a-cucumber Aubrey.

  “I bet sex is on your to-do list,” Aubrey said, joining their conversation.

  Ali gave a secret smile.

  Aubrey narrowed her eyes. “I could really hate you for that smile.”

  “You should hate me for this smile.”

  “Luke’s that good, huh?”

  Ali sighed dreamily. “He’s magic.”

  “Magic’s just an illusion.” Aubrey licked the syrup off her fork while managing to somehow look both beautifully sophisticated and graceful.

  Back in their school days, Aubrey had been untouchable, tough as nails, and Leah hadn’t been anywhere in the vicinity of her league. Nothing much had changed there. She looked down at herself and sucked in her stomach.

  “There’s no illusion when it comes to Luke,” Ali told Aubrey. “He’s one-hundred-percent real. And all mine.”

  “Well, now you’re just being mean,” Aubrey said. “And that’s my area. Leah, what’s with the expensive shoes and cheap haircut?”

  Leah put a hand to her choppy auburn layers, and Aubrey smiled at Ali, like See? That’s how you do mean…

  Most of Leah’s money went toward her school loans and helping to keep her grandma afloat, but she did have one vice. Okay, two, but being addicted to Pinterest wasn’t technically a vice. Her love of shoes most definitely was. She’d gotten today’s strappy leather wedges from Paris, and they’d been totally worth having to eat apples and peanut butter for a week. “They were on sale,” she said, clicking them together as if she were Dorothy in Oz. “They’re knockoffs,” she admitted.

  Aubrey sighed. “You’re not supposed to say that last part. It’s not as fun to be mean when you’re nice.”

  “But I am nice,” Leah said.

  “I know,” Aubrey said. “And I’m trying to like you anyway.”

  The three of them were an extremely unlikely trio, connected by a cute, quirky Victorian building in downtown Lucky Harbor. The building was older than God, currently owned by Aubrey’s great-uncle, and divided into three shops. There was Ali’s floral shop, Leah’s grandma’s bakery, and a neglected bookstore that Aubrey had been making noises about taking over since her job at Town Hall had gone south a few weeks back.

  Neither Ali nor Leah was sure yet if having Aubrey in the building every day would be fun or a nightmare. But regardless, Aubrey knew her path. So did Ali.

  Leah admired the