Read Online Flame (Firefighters of Montana Book 5) by Victoria Purman - Free Book Online Page B

men, who were together fighting the fire up on the mountains above Flathead Lake. Their men, who took their lives into their hands every time they strapped on a parachute. Cady could understand all the joking and laughing going on among the women was their way of avoiding talking about how scared they all were about what they didn’t know might be happening up there. So they talked about happier times, about how they’d all met.
    “It was wolves that brought us together,” Callie laughed. She was a vet and had been trying to evacuate a wildlife sanctuary when fire threatened it this past July. Tyler Dodson had been one of the smokejumpers defending the property.
    “If Ace Clark hadn’t been injured on a jump, our eyes wouldn’t have met across the crowded ER,” Lina said with a warm smile.
    The women laughed at Lina’s happy shrug.
    Cady reached for the wine bottle and filled the empty glasses around the table. She enjoyed the playful and teasing banter. She’d missed having friends like this in the years she’d been away in California and was so grateful to have them around her now. They were her family, since she no longer had one of her own, and with her unsociable baker’s hours, these nights were precious.
    “Ace has a great ass,” Laurel said with a wink. “Objectively speaking, of course.”
    “Vin’s is better,” Jacqui called out, clinking her wine glass against Laurel’s. “He would absolutely, definitely win the Great Glacier Creek best ass challenge!”
    There was more clinking of wine glasses and hoots of laughter. Cady tried to join in, but the more she thought of those other guys’ butts, a pang of frustration welled inside her. She didn’t have a man butt of her own to brag about. She stared into her wine, swirled it around in her glass, hoping the others wouldn’t see the mix of confusion, regret, and sexual frustration in her eyes.
    “Now,” Jacqui announced as she reached across the table for another of Cady’s caramel cupcakes. Silence descended, as if everyone was waiting for an important pronouncement from Jacqui. “Is it just me, ladies, or has anyone else here noticed that our station rookie, Dex McCoy, somehow got hotter when he was away in Missoula.” Jacqui’s eyes twinkled in delight. “Cady? What do you think?”
    “Me?” Cady’s voice came out with a squeak, more reminiscent of a teenage boy in the throes of puberty than a trained pastry chef and small business owner.
    “C’mon, Cady.” Laurel teased. “You must have noticed, because he sure as hell was noticing you at The Drop Zone yesterday after the commemoration ceremony.” Laurel’s eyebrows quirked upwards and there were nods of agreement all around her.
    She liked these women. Hell, she loved these women. But she couldn’t go there.
    “Didn’t you go to school together?” Lina asked, looking confused. “I’m still catching up on how you all know each other.”
    “We all did!” Laurel added. “And until Cady went away to the culinary institute, she’d lived in Glacier Creek her whole life. But Dex moved away pretty much straight out of high school, didn’t he, Cady?”
    “Yep. Right after graduation.”
    “But you’re both back now and I’m guessing it’s pretty hard to avoid each other, right?”
    Cady saw almost the whole population of Glacier Creek each week when they came into her shop, but Dex had made an art out of avoiding her.
    “I’m learning about small towns,” Lina added. “I’m running into half my patients in Cady’s Cakes, or the library, or the post office. Not to mention The Drop Zone.”
    Cady knew she had to give her friends some kind of explanation. “We never hung out in the same crowd or anything like that. He was always a bit… aimless. I had big dreams, even then.” She swallowed the enormous lump in her throat. “Maybe familiarity breeds contempt, or something.”
    “It wasn’t contempt I saw in his eyes,” Laurel said. “I think familiarity might