"Yeah? Good. Because this ranch-sharing arrangement is not working."
"So where does that leave me and Andy?"
"Buy it from him. He'd probably sell it to you cheap."
"He can't sell it cheap because he wants to move to Austin and houses are expensive there. Besides, he thinks I'm in league with the devil. You know, Mom."
Josh closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Even at such a distance, the toxic atmosphere of the Marshall family drama filtered through the phone. "I don't know what to tell you, Chad. You have to get out and find some other kind of life for yourself. Forget the ranch. They're going to drive it into the ground anyway. There won't be anything left when they're done throwing the dishes at each other."
"It's easy for you to say. You wanted to leave. You never wanted to stay in the first place."
The three brothers had been very close. But he was the youngest and the only one still at home when all hell had broken loose. His brothers had both been deployed, while he'd been stuck at the ranch, collateral damage from the worst divorce in Texas.
He'd left as soon as he could, and he hadn't been back since, not even for holidays. He didn't understand why his brothers stuck around. "Why don't you come out to California and get a break from that crap."
"Nah, I got too much work to do here. Cindy's pregnant."
"Really, man? Congratulations."
"Yeah. Thanks." Chad sounded happy, but Josh had to wonder. This poor kid would have grandparents who had once gotten into an armed standoff that required the sheriff's intervention. Was that the right family to bring a child into?
"Listen, I gotta go," Josh told him. "We just got back from a big-ass fire. I have a ton of catch-up to do."
Chad grunted. "Some days, I think a wildfire would be a cakewalk compared to this. Later, man."
Josh hung up. He agreed with that statement one hundred percent. He'd rather risk his life in a wildfire any day than suffer through one more bitter fight between the two people who had given him life.
He stepped inside the mess hall to ditch his phone.
"All good?" Rollo asked as he palmed a muffin from an open box on the table. He was looking slightly more human, now that he'd consumed an entire thermos full of coffee.
"Sure. Peachy."
Rollo tossed him a pager. "Take this with you. Apparently the entire interior of Alaska is up in flames."
Josh groaned and pocketed the pager. "Seriously? Someone better tell Boise that I need my beauty sleep." Boise was where the National Wildfire Coordination Center was located. They were the ones who decided where each hotshot crew would be sent.
"You sure do. Can't fight a wildfire looking like that." Rollo stretched out his long legs and propped his stockinged feet on the mess hall table. Where they ate dinner-rarely, since they were mostly out in the field. Josh decided not to pick a fight about it.
"Where'd you get off to with Suzanne last night?"
"We made out in the ladies' restroom. She took off all her clothes, but she left her spiky heels on. It was freaking hot."
Rollo released one of those rolling-thunder laughs that seemed to come right from his gut. "You're hilarious."
Josh winked, just to make sure Rollo took it as a joke.
But the joke was at least partially on him, because now that damn image was implanted in his brain again. Suzanne rocking those boy shorts that showed off all her long, lean muscles. As he launched himself up Heart Attack Hill, he lingered on that memory. Then another one took its place. In this one, she wore that vulnerable, heartfelt expression while she told him that Logan never kissed her "like that."
To chase that image from his head, he focused on the narrow trail that wound uphill through groves of pine and birch trees. He gratefully drew clean air into his lungs. The air in Jupiter Point was always so fresh and clear-it was one of the reasons the stargazing was exceptional here. Just one of the things he liked about this place.
Another one being the girl who'd been wrapped around him last night.
What kind of man was Suzanne engaged to, anyway? What did she see in him? All he knew about Logan Rossi was that he was going to be a lawyer and that he'd suggested that he and Suzanne get a free pass to make out with other people.
So far, he didn't like the guy at all. Suzanne deserved better. But what the hell could he do about it? He couldn't exactly offer her an alternative. Given the Twilight Zone that was the Marshall family, no one would ever expect him to follow that path.