Heart on Fire Page 5

  “Brad!” she called to the young athlete moving through the rows of restacked canned goods with his clipboard and pencil in hand. “Why don’t you call it a night, since we both have to get up with the chickens tomorrow?”

  “Right!” He appeared from between the tins of green and lima beans. He spotted Chad and flashed a wide well what do we have here grin. “Hi, Chad! Long time no see. I thought for sure you’d be in bed by now.”

  “I don’t have to get up nearly as early as the two of you,” Chad reminded. He and Janine watched while Brad performed a none-too-hurried exit.

  “He thinks we have something going on between us,” Janine said lightly. Her voice seemed to come out downright strange whenever she was with Chad.

  “We do have something going on between us. A proposed walk. Right?”

  “It’s a bit late for strolling bear-infested forest, isn’t it? It might be smarter if the two of us skipped the walk and went to bed.”

  Immediately, she realized how that came out sounding. Nor was the usually gentlemanly Chad gentlemanly enough to let it pass. “Shouldn’t we at least go out on a date first?”

  “You know exactly what I meant.” Janine blushed. She’d done an awfully lot of blushing since first meeting Chad.

  “Damn, and I was just about to accept your invitation to bed, no questions asked.”

  Janine blushed deeper and was furious at the telltale redness she just knew was obvious as hell even through her dark complexion and her summer tan. She couldn’t imagine why a few words from Chad continually converted her into a giddy schoolgirl. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had a lot of practice deflecting passes from men more aggressive than Chad, because she had. She’d gone to WSU where she’d come across more than her fair share of wannabe Don Juans who weren’t at all shy about letting their intentions be known. She’d successfully fended them off, without turning all beet red, each step of the way. She wasn’t at all pleased that she seemed unable to exert the same control around Chad.

  “It is such a beautiful night outside,” Chad enticed. “The majority of the dust has settled, but there’s still enough of it in the air to make the moon look rusty-red. Nothing like a bit of night air, either, to make you really fall asleep once your head hits the pillow.”

  “I doubt either of us will have trouble sleeping tonight,” she prophesied.

  “Is that a no, then?” He sounded genuinely disappointed.

  If nothing else, he was persuasive.

  She did like his company. She was flattered to be asked by him out into the moonlight. Of all the men on this project, Chad was by far the most handsome. A leisurely walk, with him, at close of day, did sound inviting. So what if a bear had almost taken an arm off the previous cook only a couple of weeks before? If that bear had been hunted down and killed by park rangers (which it had), that didn’t mean it didn’t have a brother, sister, mother, father, uncle or aunt, or cousins, out there somewhere, ready to take revenge on these two-legged interlopers into bear territory.

  “Bears?” She thought that as good an argument as any against walking the night.

  “I’ll protect you, promise.”

  “With your bum leg or with your bum arm?” She smiled wryly.

  “Any bear would eat slow-mo me, you getting away Scot-free.”

  “Mmmmmmmm.”

  “You really don’t think I’m asking you out to take advantage of you behind some pine tree, do you?”

  There were some men she was suspicious of from the minute they entered a room. Chad wasn’t one of them.

  “On the other hand,” he continued, “if you’re genuinely not up to walking because you’re just dead tired….”

  Okay, she was tempted by Chad, by the supposedly rusty-red moonlight, and by walking in the presence of both.

  There was no sense denying that she was attracted to Chad. She’d liked his looks even before she’d seen him stripped to his Jockey shorts and putting his until-then hidden physical perfection on naked display. Not that it was just his handsome face and marvelous body that attracted her. After all, he wasn’t the only handsome hunk to whom she’d been exposed in her lifetime. However, he did come off one of the few who seemed to hold out promise of something more to offer a woman besides just an attractive façade. Trying to define that something more was something else again.

  “Okay, I’d love to take a walk with you,” she conceded.

  “Good.”

  Janine gave a final check of the dough in the refrigerator. Since it was obvious it hadn’t gone anywhere since she’d put it in there, she suspected she was merely indulging another stall. Assured the dough was in place, she decided any reason for dragging her feet was foolish. He’d only asked her for a walk, not proposed marriage. She was too busy making more of the harmless invitation than was really there. She had only known Chad for a few short hours and vice versa. Nothing happened between two people in that short of time, no matter what the romance books said to the contrary.

  “Think I’ll need a sweater?” She switched off the kitchen lights behind them. Suddenly, she was standing in shadow with him. It was likely even darker outside, and.…

  “I doubt you’ll need a sweater.”

  Mention of her sweater, though, did remind her that she still had unpacking to do. Chad had earlier carried her bags to the room Janine would be sharing with Lou, but Janine hadn’t even yet seen the room; she hoped she could find it when the time came. Lou wouldn’t have unpacked for her, either, because Lou was still in the dispensary under Hank’s care. By rights, Janine should be in the dispensary, checking up on the well-being of her friend, instead of off on a moonlight stroll. Except, it was late and, even if Lou weren’t asleep, Hank wasn’t likely to look too kindly on Janine disturbing him or his patient.

  It was downright balmy outside even with Janine having spent most of her day in an overheated kitchen.

  “Nice,” she confessed, aware of the way the moonlight, definitely rusty-red, enhanced Chad’s good looks and the landscape. The light caught in his tousled blond hair and held there. He looked like a Botticelli angel slightly too close to hellish flames.

  “That way is the easiest slope to climb.” He pointed to their left. “There’s, also, a pretty good view of the valley from there.”

  They started off, side by side, but not touching.

  “Hard to imagine there’s now such a drastic difference between this side of the mountain and the other, isn’t it?” He pulled back the branch of a low-growing pine so it wouldn’t whip Janine’s face on her way by.

  The May 1980 explosion had devastated 200 square miles when the North Face had bulged and then exploded. Trees still stood here but, up and over the mountain, similar timberland had been toppled like matchsticks. Plant and animal life still thrived here but, up and over the mountain, similar wildlife had been burned to a crisp before and after being suffocated by hot dust and gases, as well as buried beneath huge avalanches of viscous mud. The team camp was erected on the South Slope because volcanic activity continued to be seemingly centered on the other side.

  Like everyone, Janine had seen the newspaper photos and TV coverage of the May 1980 blow. A jet flight from Seattle to Spokane had shown her a distance-distorted view of the blasted side of the mountain, but it was still hard for her to grasp just how much damage had been done is so short a time. Here, it seemed so deceptively blissful, nothing insinuating they walked atop a potential powder keg that had already gone off with one big bang, no guarantees that it wouldn’t go off again, taking all of this and them with it. It made Janine acutely aware of her mortality.

  “You’d never know there’d been an earthquake this morning.” She allowed Chad to help her over a step-way of rock on the trail.

  His hand was sensuously rough with calluses against her decidedly softer palm. Working at Marine World, unlike working in the field, hadn’t found her frequently scrambling over volcanic barriers to test for aquatic life in super-heated stream remains.

 
She freed her hand, albeit reluctantly, from his.

  “It’s not much farther to the view,” he promised.

  Janine realized she was actually short of breath. It had really been way too long since she’d gotten out and given herself the physical exercise she needed to stay in shape. It was becoming increasingly doubtful that Chad would appreciate her body, stripped down, as much as she’d appreciated her peek at his well-toned perfection.

  “Here we are.” He helped her up on an exposed lip of basalt that proclaimed the mountain’s violent construction, even on this benign side of the boiling cauldron.

  He sat down and patted a place beside him.

  Janine joined him.

  “I really must get more exercise,” she promised, more for her hearing than for his.

  The footpath shouldn’t have been nearly as demanding. There was a time she could have taken it on like a mountain goat took on steep crags. Now, she merely found herself envious that Chad wasn’t even breathing a little heavily, despite his still-evident limp.

  “Maybe it’s the view that’s taken your breath away,” he gave her a suitable alternative.

  His cheeks dimpled in the flattering moonlight. His hair continued to look like it held the vestiges of a fire-reflecting halo. His eyes were more gold than gold. How many Biblical saints had been tempted by just such wondrously perfect visions and succumbed to them?

  Janine shook her head to clear it. She really should have gone straight to bed, what with the silliness of her suddenly equating herself with Biblical saints, when the only saint around here was the Mt. Saint Helens they were sitting on.

  Quite suddenly, she realized she was so occupied with Chad’s handsomeness that the view provided by Mother Nature had completely escaped her. Consciously, she made an effort to concentrate on what was laid out before her.

  “That’s Cougar, over there.” Chad pointed to flickering pinpoints of light in the distant southwest. “I suspect Troutdale is somewhere through there.” He moved his arm slightly east. “Probably not visible because of the trees.”

  Immediately behind them, the buildings of the camp were mainly dark, a light here and there signifying that a few others might still be up and about.

  When Janine felt Chad’s arm suddenly around her, like a comforting warm blanket, she turned—like a robot—to meet his lips with hers.

  None too quickly, she pulled away, embarrassed for letting things go so far so fast with a man she hardly knew. She was even more embarrassed in knowing that she had shamelessly enjoyed each and every second of it.

  “Now, you’re sorry you let that happen.” Chad was stating fact, not asking a question.

  “Nonsense,” she denied, although he’d read her mind—for not the first time, either.

  It would have been downright ridiculous to accuse him of taking unfair advantage. Janine wasn’t some silly ninny straight out of grade school who’d never been French kissed.

  “I do, however, think we should get back,” she appended. She needed to mull over the kissed-him, kissed-her consequences of her simultaneous exposure to wondrous moonlight and a wondrous Dr. Chad Samuels.

  They got up and headed back.

  She maneuvered the natural rock stairway, this time, on her own, without accepting the offer of his helpful hand.

  When he stopped suddenly, she stopped with him. Hers was a purely reflexive response, an automation instigated by being so in sync with him and his movements.

  “Well, I’m not sorry I kissed you,” he said. “I’ve wanted to kiss you from the first moment I saw you, and that peck on the cheek I managed to steal over that glass of milk and hot rolls only made me more determined to sample the real thing.”

  “So, for the moment, let’s just leave it at that, yes?” she suggested. “We’ll have more of our wits about us after a night’s rest, and we can move on from there.”

  Snake or bear lurking in the shadows, she left Chad standing where he was. Her heart was beating so hard and so fast that, when she finally reached her and Lou’s room, she was thankful Lou wasn’t there to ask what the loud and speedy drum-beat was all about.

  Janine didn’t even try to tell herself that something hadn’t definitely changed in her life, although she wasn’t yet prepared to put any engraved-in-steel definition as to what that certain something actually was.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “LOU!” JANINE EXCLAIMED, looking up from the chocolate-chip cookies that had come out less satisfactory than she’d been hoping. She suspected the problem was to do with stale shortening; she should have opened a new can.

  “Smells good,” her friend said and came deeper into the room. She weaved through the tables until she reached the one closest to Janine behind the counter. She laid her notebook on the table and sat down.

  Janine joined her. The last pan of cookies had come out five minutes ago and, less-than-perfect or not, would have to do. They’d probably be hardened into bricks—the likes of which had built many a real tollhouse (thus, their name?)—but that would take until morning. By today’s lunch, they’d still be edible. With a group that hadn’t had dessert all that often, over the last two weeks, the cookies would undoubtedly disappear before their to-brick-status conversions.

  “Still having double vision?” Janine sat across from her friend.

  “Comes and goes; mostly goes. Hank predicts it’ll be completely cleared in a couple more days, and I can get back into the full swing of things, then.”

  Janine felt guilty for not having dropped by the dispensary as often as she’d intended.

  “So?” Lou asked. “Is this a good time for you, between breakfast and lunch, or should I drop by later?”

  “Everything is well in hand.” Janine knew Lou’s timing couldn’t have been better. Jenny had showed up bright and early that morning with Brad, obviously embarrassed that her earthquake-provoked hysteria had seen the doctor keep her tranquilized for over twenty-four hours. If Jenny was the horrible cook people accused her of being, she was competent enough on the jobs Janine had assigned her; breakfast had proceeded far smoother than if just Janine and Brad had managed it.

  Janine had seen Chad at breakfast, but she’d successfully avoided any eye contact.

  “We’re having sauerkraut and wieners for lunch.” Janine settled in. “Jenny and Brad have everything in control.”

  “So,” Lou said with an emphasizing sigh in final punctuation. Her bed rest had done her a world of good. She looked fresh and cheerful. Her chestnut-colored hair was fluffy but not flyaway from its morning wash. “Do you want to go over this first….” She tapped the notebook on the table. “…or shall we have you lead off by giving me the behind-the-scenes royal tour of the kitchen?”

  Janine couldn’t imagine why Lou would want to see more of the kitchen than she already could see from out front.

  Lou eyed Janine curiously. “These, my dear,” she said and tapped the notebook, “are my notes from the experiments I’ve ongoing on the North Face. Are we carrying on the same conversation, or did my knock on the head do more than double my vision?”

  Janine was confused and looked it.

  “Let me guess,” Lou said. “Roger hasn’t talked to you, yet, this morning?”

  As if conjured by incantation, Roger picked that particular moment to make his appearance. “Ah!” he greeted from the kitchen doorway.

  “A little late, aren’t we, Roger?” Lou scolded. “I’ve arrived with my notes, and Janine is wondering what possible interest I could have in sauerkraut and wienies, besides eating them.”

  “I’m afraid I got tied up looking at the readouts Simmons pulled out of the crater this morning,” Roger apologized and joined them.

  “Increased dome buildup, the way I hear it,” Lou commented knowledgeably.

  “Definitely, but with no corresponding visible magma extrusions,” Roger confirmed. “You know the pattern. Same-o, same-o. Ho-hum, earthquake or no.”

  As far as research on volcanic activity had p
rogressed in the last hundred years, everyone at the table knew there were still unknown nuances to be explored. The intensity of the May 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens had taken everyone by surprise—even with all the scientific paraphernalia monitoring the mountain at the time.

  “Anyway, have you two talked over the temporary exchange?” Roger asked the two of them.

  “What exchange?” Janine’s response made it obvious that Lou and she had discussed nothing of the sort.

  “It’ll only be for a couple of days,” Lou promised. “Actually, after….” She lowered her voice to a whisper that wouldn’t carry to Jenny and Brad who were busy in the space behind the counter. “…Jenny and Brad’s disastrous turn at the culinary helm, I doubt anyone around here will willingly leave me in charge for longer than two days. It’ll soon enough become evident that either of the two kids is actually a better cook than I am. Roger is merely intent upon presenting the temporary illusion that we’re not really regressing as far as the kitchen is concerned.”

  “Let’s move back and pick this up from the beginning, shall we?” Roger suggested.

  “Yes, please.” Janine remained confused.

  “Lou has some experiments on the North Face that need monitoring,” Roger said, “but Hank would rather his patient, one Lou, stay put for a couple more days, until Hank is sure everything is okay in that beautiful Lou-Lou head. We know you hired on as head of kitchen, but we also know that you’re a qualified biologist, and Chad suggested….”

  “Chad suggested,” Janine echoed. She hadn’t slept at all well after their walk (and kiss) last night. If the night air was supposed to have made her sleepy, she’d managed only tossing and turning into the wee hours.

  “Initially, Chad volunteered to make the readings himself,” Lou confessed, “but he has his own stuff to look after. His taking on mine, too, might prove a bit much, even for him. I mean, I’m not saying he isn’t competent enough to get his and my work right, but why take the chance, especially with you here?”