Buzz looked up at the treetops. “If anyone can fly a chopper in these winds, it’s Flyboy. I’ll know more when I get back.”
She looked as though she wanted to say more, but Buzz didn’t give her the chance. He didn’t like the way he was reacting to her, didn’t like the way he was reacting to Eddie. Most of all, he didn’t like the way he was starting to feel. He didn’t want to feel anything, because he knew in a few days it wouldn’t matter.
“Homer One this is Tango Two Niner, do you read?”
“Homer reads you Tango. What’s up, Buzz?”
Easing his backpack onto his shoulders, Buzz spoke into the radio as he started back down the trail. “I’ve got the missing child. You can call off the search.”
Dispatch let out an ear-splitting whoop. “Hot damn! What’s your twenty?”
“I’m half a mile north of the Panther Creek Blue River fork. What are the chances of getting Eagle out here for a swoop and scoop?”
“Negative. Flyboy got recalled to base. Winds are at fifty knots and we got thermals all over the place.” He paused. “You got injuries?”
“Negative, but we got a tired and hungry four-year-old kid.”
“Winds are supposed to die down overnight.”
Buzz cursed. “What about the fire? They got it contained?”
“Not yet. Smoke jumpers are out in force. A bunch of guys came down from Yellowstone. That makes about two hundred men working on it. Damn winds are feeding it.”
“We’ve got smoke here. Are we going to be all right?”
“You’ll be fine overnight. Flyboy should be able to make it out first light.”
“Tell Flyboy to get on the horn at 0400 with a pick-up point.”
“Roger that, Tango.”
“Over and out.”
Buzz didn’t relish the idea of spending another night in the mountains. He wanted to believe the dread curling through him was because that poor child had had a couple of very tough days and needed to get back home. Or maybe because he himself was tired and cold and hungry and needed a hot meal and his own bed.
But Buzz was honest enough with himself to acknowledge that the primary reason for his dread was because he didn’t want to spend any more time with Kelly. He knew that was selfish—perhaps even cowardly—but until he figured out how he felt about all this, he just didn’t want to get any closer to either of them.
He and Kelly had been so immersed in the search, they hadn’t yet properly discussed what kind of role—if any—Buzz would play in Eddie’s life. He hadn’t had time to think about it; hadn’t had time to sort out his feelings or decide a damn thing.
For the first time since finding out about Eddie, he felt trapped. How in God’s name was he going to handle this?
He couldn’t think of a worse situation for a man like him. A man who didn’t like to feel anything at all suddenly feeling too damn much. Not only for the boy, he realized, but for the woman who’d given him that child.
The situation nagged him as Buzz made his way down the steep trail toward where he’d left Kelly and Eddie. He tried to focus on the dull ache in his back, on the discomfort of being wet and cold and exhausted. Instead, all he could think about were the woman and child waiting for him and the fact that he didn’t have the slightest clue what he was going to do about either of them.
Chapter 11
T hey made camp at dusk in a small clearing at the base of a rocky slope that protected them from the winds driving in from the north. Buzz set to work digging a shallow pit for the fire. Kelly opted to gather some dry kindling. Since Eddie was wearing only her flannel shirt and an extra pair of socks while his clothes hung to dry, he had to stay at camp with Buzz. Of course, her awestruck son wasn’t complaining about that.
Kelly didn’t stray far from where Eddie and Buzz were working on the pit. She’d never considered herself an overprotective mom, but she was having a hard time letting her son out of her sight. Every instinct she possessed screamed for her to gather his forty-two-pound body into her arms, hold him tight and never let him go.
Of course, her son had other ideas.
Eddie liked to talk and wasn’t a bit shy about talking to strangers. Not that the man who’d saved his life was a stranger, exactly; they’d been hiking the trail most of the day. Kelly had watched father and son with an odd mix of pain and amusement. One minute they would have her smiling. The next, the pain, the sense of all the time they had lost was so intense, she nearly doubled over with it.
Early on, Buzz had done his best to ignore the little boy and his nonstop chatter. But as afternoon stretched into evening, Eddie had managed to draft him into several conversations.
“So what happened next?” Eddie asked excitedly about a rescue story Buzz had mentioned.
Buzz made a neat circle of river rock around the perimeter of the shallow pit. “The medic jumped out while the chopper hovered,” he said. “Wind from the rotors kicked up snow and debris, but we winched him down anyway.”
“What’s winched?”