A Burn To Bear (Fire Bear Shifters Book 3) Read Free Page B

couldn’t fit anything more on the card’s small surface. Luke flagged down the bartender and handed him back his pen.
    “Hey, man, I was supposed to be meeting a girl here, and I had a work emergency come up. Can you give these flowers to her when she gets here? She’s tall, with dark hair and beautiful blue-gray eyes. She wears some edgy-looking glasses, too. Her name’s River.”
    “Sure, no problem,” the bartender said. The Tuesday night crowd was pretty thin, so it wouldn’t be too hard to figure out who River was when she walked into the bar.
    Luke thanked the bartender, then got up to leave the bar. He felt awful about leaving River behind on what should have been their first date, but he didn’t have a choice. The wildfire season was winding down, but it wasn’t over yet. Duty called, and Luke had a plane to go jump out of and fire to fight. He could only hope that River would understand.

Chapter Three
    Early the next morning, as dawn’s first light cracked over Northern California, the Burning Claws Smokejumpers stood in the large door of a skyvan, waiting on their alpha’s signal to jump. Despite the chilly October morning air, Luke could feel sweat trickling down his back. In his heavy jumpsuit, loaded down with a parachute and nearly a hundred pounds of gear, it didn’t take much to overheat.
    Luke glanced down, watching the forest below them pass by as the plane sped ahead. He suddenly remembered that he hadn’t double-checked his gear, and he quickly ran through his checklist: Leg straps, secure. Chest strap, secure. Main parachute handle, clear and accessible. Reserve parachute handle, clear and accessible. Helmet, secure.
    During smokejumper training, veteran jumpers had warned Luke that the day would come when he would start forgetting to check his gear. At the time, the idea of jumping out of a plane without triple or quadruple checking everything had seemed preposterous. Luke had been more nervous than he cared to admit every time he stood in the jump plane’s door. But, as time marched forward and Luke accumulated several jumps, he found that the veteran jumpers had been right. Jumping from a plane seemed normal. Luke didn’t feel nervous at all, and he had to remind himself to perform all of the proper gear checks that now felt redundant and unnecessary.
    Besides, how could Luke be expected to think about safety procedures when his mind could only focus on the lovely River Bennett, whom he hoped wasn’t raving mad at him right now. He couldn’t even check to see whether she’d tried to call him, since cell phones had to be left back at base camp. Maybe he should have found a way to leave her a longer note and explain things, but it was too late now to do anything except get on with the job at hand and cross his fingers that River would still want to talk to him when he returned.
    Luke took a deep breath as he saw Ian nodded affirmatively at his clan, giving them the signal to start jumping. The smokejumpers started exiting the plane in rapid succession, led by Charlotte, who was Ian’s lifemate and the only female on the crew. Zach, the loud-mouthed second in command of the crew, jumped next, followed by Hunter and then Trevor. Luke jumped right before Ian, launching himself into the open air and letting muscle memory take over as he arched his back and stabilized his body. He pulled the handle to open his parachute, and the blue and white canopy unfurled smoothly above him, abruptly slowing him from a rapid freefall to a gentle, floating descent.
    Luke loved the three or four minutes of time spent under an open parachute on every jump. After the noisy rush of freefall, he relished the time of quiet, peaceful solitude. Today, as he drifted slowly toward the earth, he thought about River. He imagined her lively smile, and went over her sexy curves in his mind’s eye. He felt his agitated bear stirring within him, and he tried in vain to push away the churning, clawing beast. Luke had