Heating Up Paradise by Lizbeth Selvig

Author:Lizbeth Selvig
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lizbeth Selvig
Published: 2021-01-21T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

THE MORNING WAS cool and slightly overcast with a mild threat of showers when he and Kelly rode out of the ranch yard the next morning. Grand Teton in the distance wore a hat of sulky gray clouds, but Damien believed they’d dodge the rain. He’d gotten pretty good at sensing the weather. Nobody could read it a hundred percent of the time, but when a fire crew had to choose a direction in which to concentrate efforts, the wind, the temperature, the clouds, the smoke all played a part in telling them what was coming. This morning he’d staked his semi-decent prognostication reputation on declaring the sun would shine by noon.

He'd worried the atmosphere with her would be awkward after the previous night, but Kelly proved she wasn’t a person who dwelled on the awkward. She’d greeted him with a happy smile and though she didn’t mention the kiss, she moved around him with the comfort of an old friend. They readied the horses, joking and teasing, and in the ease, Damien felt as much joy as relief. It had been a long time since mornings had brought happiness. Better yet, when they were underway, he felt no guilt this time at admiring her swaying riding style or the well-worn, fitted jeans with the hole next to the right back pocket. Even the gentle up-and-down motion of her feet, so easy in the stirrups, was sexy, and the frayed hems of her jeans resting over the tops of her cowboy boots—a faded turquoise-green—attractive. She had on some kind of red-plaid jacket with a short fleece collar, stopping just above her rocking hips, and she’d topped everything off with a brown cowboy hat that was as well-loved as the rest of her outfit. To Damien, the whole picture was perfect, and sexy enough for a fashion magazine.

“You promise we’re not going to get wet?” she asked as they rounded the base of the mountain that led to Ancestor Canyon and faced a looming thunderhead that hadn’t been visible before.

He studied the thick-bellied clouds and nodded.

“It’s all moving southeast,” he said, and then pointed to the right. “Look. Watch the thinning clouds over there. Another hour and a half or so and the sun is going to win out. The front is pushing all that in our direction long before the storm clouds are ready to burst.”

But as he studied the moving clouds, he stopped and his heart lurched in concern. Behind the thinning clouds he’d just been admiring hung a gray-yellow haze. It was barely noticeable to anyone who hadn’t seen that warning sign a hundred times.

“He’s a rider, he’s a fireman, he’s a cook, he’s a weather dude… What? Do you see something else? Are you wrong?”

“The color of the clearing area,” he said simply. “What does it look like to you?”

“Like hope.” She grinned. “I packed a rain poncho, but I don’t want to use it.”

“I’m serious. Can you see the color—the way the light is yellowish?”

“I guess.

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