Plain Jane and The Hotshot

“If you mean Nick Kramer’s gaze, believe me, she can have him. I’m not playing the dating game anymore,” Jo said.

“I certainly would be if I were your age,” Hazel assured her. “He’s the bee’s knees, all right.”

“He’s horny, that’s all,” Jo stated bluntly.

“Horny as a funeral in New Orleans, most likely,” Hazel agreed. “So are you, but you won’t admit it.”

Jo flushed.

“Besides,” Hazel went on, “that’s not all. Give the man some credit. He does an incredibly dangerous job that has to be done. He’s not stupid. He knows he can get laid. But I think he actually likes you, Jo.”

“What makes you possibly think that?” Jo asked, incredulous.

“My gosh, hon, it would be obvious to a blind man. The guy’s eyes lit up the moment he saw you.”

“And why not?” Dottie demanded. “A looker like you, he’s just being honest.”

Right, thought Jo, honest—just like Ned Wilson, who praised her looks so much it embarrassed her. But what good was it to be called attractive by men who cared about nothing else but sexual gratification? Men who lied to get what they wanted, then returned to their families or took off for parts unknown? Her answer from now on was always going to be, “No thanks.”

Jo mustered a mechanical smile.

Both older women were only being nice. But no matter how right she knew Hazel was, colorings of insecurity—even of inferiority—often tinged even Jo’s brightest moods.

Plucky but pathetic—that’s how she felt when she tried to act confident. Ever since Ned, trying to start over made her feel like a gunshot victim trying to whistle past a shooting range.

“Well, guess I’ll finish unpacking,” she said, mainly to end the awkward silence. Both older women watched her cross the clearing.

Dottie, who had known Hazel for seven decades, suddenly grinned.

“I’ve seen that look in your eye before, Hazel McCallum. What are you up to now?”

“Who, me?” Hazel feigned the innocence of a cherub. “I’m just happy for Jo, that’s all.”

“Happy! Crying out loud, she’s all upset.”

“She sure is,” Hazel agreed. “And I like seeing her animated like this, even if it’s negative emotion. That girl is too dreamy and unassertive. Sometimes she even comes off like a mouse. But Nick Kramer’s got her all revved up.”

Hazel’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve learned to trust my instincts over the years where love is concerned. And right now they tell me that Jo is all wrong about Nick—sure, he’s a hunk, all right. But the eyes are the windows to the soul, and I saw real depth of character in Nick’s eyes. Despite what Jo may think, he’s not the slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am type.”

Hazel said no more. Her mind was too full of machinations for conversation right now.

Nick Kramer and Jo Lofton struck Hazel as perfect for her master plan. She was on a secret mission that had become the passion of her twilight years: a mission to save her beloved hometown of Mystery, Montana, population four thousand and dwindling. Mystery, and the fertile valley it lay in, had been founded by Hazel’s great-great-grandfather, Jake. But the longtime ranching community was changing rapidly as outside developers moved in, turning it into a summer-tourist mecca. More than anything else, Hazel feared that uncaring strangers would obliterate its original identity, making Mystery just one more indistinguishable hodgepodge of chain stores and trendy boutiques.

It would be a loss too great to be endured.

Sure, change was inevitable, but Hazel wanted it guided by love and vision, not profits.

So the matriarch of Mystery had come up with a plan: pairing natives who loved Mystery, as Jo did, with the kind of outsiders who would bring new life while respecting the old traditions—precisely the kind of unselfish man Hazel sensed Nick Kramer was. Greedy yuppies did not put their lives on the line to save forests and protect strangers. Hazel had a special affection for men who “stood on the wall,” as she described those with dangerous jobs.

While it was too early to know anything for certain where Nick and Jo were concerned, Hazel had developed a sixth sense around romance. She’d become a matchmaker, a second career that so far had produced three wonderful marriages. Her instincts had been instantly alerted the moment Nick and Jo had laid eyes on each other. As the playwrights phrased it, the stage lit up.

And where there’s smoke, the matriarch punned to herself, usually you’ll find some fire, too.

“Okay, you clowns, listen up,” Nick called out as he returned with the canteens to his fire crew’s base camp on Lookout Mountain. “So far it’s been a piece of cake. Right now the crews on both sides of us are ahead of the fire curve. We’ve had enough humidity lately to make the flames lay down nice.”

He tossed the string of canteens down.

“But the barometer is falling, instead of rising like it was predicted, and you know how those flames will roll over if the air gets too dry, especially if the wind kicks up. So tonight we take advantage of a full moon and thin out the green pockets down on the canyon floor.”

“I got a better idea, Nick,” called out his radioman, Jason Baumgarter. “Let’s go up on the summit and do a safety inspection of the cabins—a whole carload of babes is camped up there.”

This suggestion was met with cheers and whistles. Nick’s twelve-man crew were seated around the hearty flames of a campfire, eating supper.

“Our fearless leader,” quipped Nick’s second-in-command, Tom Albers, “has already reconnoitered that situation topside, gentlemen. I saw him walking with a well-endowed blonde earlier, sacrificing himself for the rest of us.”

“Yes, for my sins,” Nick clowned, looking humble.

The fire crew jeered him good-naturedly in return, a familiar ritual. But despite the usual camp routine as the men prepared to go on duty, Nick felt a new distraction this evening, and she wasn’t blond.

Rather, she was a dark-haired, green-eyed beauty with one hell of a chip on her shoulder.

Jo Lofton had intrigued him from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her. But unfortunately, the emotions she stirred within him dredged up other feelings, too, and memories he usually worked hard to quell.

Looking at women like Jo was downright madness for him, because it made him yearn for a lifestyle he wasn’t sure he could live. Many people suffered from what was done to them, but Nick had discovered that his deepest scars were mainly scars of omission—the parents he never knew, the loving home he never had, the lack of any reason for putting down roots.

The one woman he had dared to let himself love, for whom he would have given up this nomadic job of his, did not let him make that choice. Karen had left him. According to her, she’d found something better. And her stubbornness triggered his own.

“Earth calling Nick Kramer,” a voice said loudly, and Nick’s thoughts suddenly scattered.

Tom Albers stood before him in the gathering light, buckling on his utility belt.

He stared down at Nick with a face taut with concern.

“You got a mind for this today? Last thing we need is a preoccupied man getting himself into trouble.”

“I’m all right,” Nick said, his jaw hardening.

Tom nodded. “How do you want us to insert?” he asked again. “Two teams or three?”

“Three,” Nick replied, forcing dangerous thoughts of Jo Lofton out of his mind. “One north of the river, two south. It’s too steep for vehicles, so we’ll have to hike out. Each team leader radios me on the hour.”

“Got it,” Tom affirmed.

But as Nick rigged his ax to his backpack, Jo’s taunting words snapped in his mind like burning twigs: I’m not a challenge—I’m a zero possibility where you’re concerned.

Four

“Let’s go, ladies. Rise and shine!”