She assessed his receding backside. Nodding approval, she doubled down and sped up. He sprinted fast—but running was her deal. Didn’t take long to catch him. She pulled the buds from her ears and let them dangle.
He slowed to a jog; a red bandana tied around sun-tinted hair. He’d tucked some behind his ears and she liked how the tiny flips poked out under his lobes. His sleeveless tee revealed muscle true to what she’d envisaged after hours of studying him in class.
“Morning.” He grinned, a bounce to his step. Way too hyper for this early.
Tara figured there ought to be a law against it. “Are you always this depressed in the morning?”
“Generally, yeah.”
Wow, those dimples. A competitive mood grabbed her. “So, are you up for a race? One lap and finish here.” She tapped her toe where they stood.
“Think you can take me?”
“Caught you just now, didn’t I?”
“Wait a minute. Let’s catch our breath.” He studied his watch, then glanced up. “Ready go.” He shot off like the roadrunner being chased by Wile E. Coyote.
“Hey, that wasn’t a full minute!” she protested, tearing after him.
They pounded around the track as if escaping a charging moose. She knew how hard smokejumpers worked out; she used to race Travis. Annoyed at herself for thinking of her ex, she sped up near the end of their lap. Once alongside Ryan, she pushed hard to keep up. He lunged ahead a few yards before the finish.
He circled back to her, his chest heaving and his shoulders glistening. “Not bad.”
“You jumped the start.” Puffing hard, she bent, hands on thighs. Her lungs ached.
“Yesterday you mentioned winning track meets.” He wiped his forehead with a short towel around his neck.
“I won a few races. But mostly worked out with my dad. He was a hot-shotter.”
“Firefighting runs in your family, I take it. Hotshots are animals when it comes to workouts.” Ryan paused to catch his breath.
“So are smokejumpers.” She shook out her arms, checking him out from behind her shades, hating that this vision was turning her on. “And that makes you an animal.”
His brows lifted above his sunglasses. “You’re talking about workouts, right?”
“What else would I be referring to?” She stretched her calves, knowing full well the gamut of things ‘animal’ could imply.
“Not touching that one,” he chortled, pressing an arm across his chest to stretch it.
He pointed at a hill on the other side of the river. “If you hike up there you can see Denali. There’s a footbridge across the river. Want to check it out?”
“Do we have time?”
“The way you cover ground, yeah.” He took off running toward the river and she followed.
He slowed at the footbridge. “As I was saying last night…” He paused.
She waited for a wisecrack about wandering the halls in her skivvies.
“I can help with your aviophobia.”
“My what?”
“Fear of flying. On the flight up here, you said you hated flying.”
“You remembered that?”
“You grabbed my leg.”
“Oh, right. Forgot about that,” she lied, her face heating. She recalled the firmness of his thigh muscle. “You fell asleep on my shoulder, so we’re even.”
“Hm, right. I did.” He gave her a broad grin. “Normally I don’t sleep on the shoulders of strangers.”
Had she known then he’d be her training instructor, she would have concealed her unease about flying. Firefighters were not in the habit of voicing fears. About anything.
She turned to him with hands on her hips. “Hating to fly doesn’t equate to a fear of flying. Technically speaking.”
“Same thing.”
“No, it isn’t. You can hate something without fearing it—just as you can fear something without hating it. I fear grizzlies, but I don’t hate them. And I don’t fear flying.”
He nodded slowly. “Interesting logic. Never thought of it like that.”
“Thanks for your keep-calm-and-fly chat on the flight to Fairbanks. You seem relaxed on planes.”
“When I’m not jumping from them, I fly them. Got my private pilot’s license a few years ago. One of the reasons I transferred to the Alaska Smokejumper Base.”
They crossed the bridge running side-by-side, their feet tapping the wood. He led her up a gentle slope that opened to a treeless mountain plateau.
He stopped and Tara nearly bumped into him as she gaped at a monolith jutting into the air like a skyscraper. “Is that Denali?” She pulled off her sunglasses.
“Affirmative.” He stood next to her, breathing hard.
Warmth flushed through her. Caused by Denali or Ryan? She wasn’t sure. Maybe both. “Now that’s a mountain. Looks like a giant snow cone.” She took in the white majesty, dappled with vertical, jagged shadows.
“I can fly you up close and personal since you’ve assured me you don’t have aviophobia.” He slid his gaze from Denali to her. “You’d see what the average person never gets the chance to. I’d even throw in a glacier landing.”
Her eyes widened. “You land on glaciers? How does that work?”
“The plane I fly has wheeled skis. I can take you to where time stands still. Are you up for it?”
His words hung in the air as she stared at Denali, processing his question. Should she go? She couldn’t wimp out, no matter how terrified she was of flying in a plane that could fall out of the sky into a narrow chasm of blue ice and be lost forever. Don’t let him know you’re scared.
“When are you going?”
“Today after class. I promised Gunnar I’d fly him into Denali Park. Only takes a few hours.”
“Today?” She gulped. Flying up to America’s tallest peak in a small plane? It’d be scary enough in a big plane, let alone a small one. This was insane.
He checked his watch. “We’d better go. I’ll jog back with you, unless you’re worried people will think you’re hitting on the training instructor.”
“Yeah, right,” she snorted, attempting to prove she thought nothing of the sort.
They jogged steadily and slowed their pace as they approached the
