On A Night Like This (Callaways #1)

team, but I asked her to hold off on that for now."
    "You don't want to tie her hands too tightly."
    "I want to see if we can get anywhere without involving the other guys."
    "That makes sense." She shifted in her seat, crossing her legs as she looked out the window. Her eyes felt red from all the crying she'd done earlier, and she wished now she'd taken some time to put on a little makeup. She felt a little embarrassed that Aiden had seen her in such an emotional state, but she couldn't do anything about that now. She'd chalk it up to one more time that he hadn't seen her at her best.
    Now that she wasn't feeling so tense, she could appreciate the fact that she was getting to spend more time with him. They were getting to know each other as adults and they were getting along really well. She told herself not to read too much into it. They were both going through some rough personal times and for whatever reason they were able to help each other out, but it was all so very temporary.
    She thought about their earlier conversation, about Aiden's real mother and the loss he'd suffered. She wondered now if his unwillingness to commit to a relationship with a woman had something to do with losing his mom at such a young age. He'd obviously loved his mother deeply, so deeply that even after twenty-something years, he couldn't call his stepmother Mom. Maybe it was habit as he'd said, but she thought the reason might be out of respect for his mom's memory.
    She knew what it was like to lose a mother. It hurt like hell. She'd been destroyed for months after her mom's passing, and she felt the loss now as keenly as she had ten years earlier. She'd been older than Aiden when it happened, but she'd still felt adrift without her mom, her anchor. It must have been doubly worse for Aiden. Maybe it was the memory of that pain that kept him from love.
    Not that he didn't love his family and his friends, but that was a different kind of love. A woman would demand all of him, his heart, his soul, his body, and his mind. If he kept things light and casual, he didn't have to worry about that.
    In some ways, she did the same thing. She went on a lot of dates, but she didn't have long-term relationships. No one was ever quite right. Maybe she should be analyzing herself instead of Aiden. Or maybe she should skip the analysis and just live in the moment.
    Turning to Aiden, she said, "Tell me about Redding, about your home. What should I expect?"
    "Not much," he said dryly. "The city is on the small side, about eighty-thousand people. It sits on the banks of the Sacramento River and it's nestled between several mountain ranges. Lake Shasta is nearby for boating and the redwood forests provide great camping opportunities. The city was bigger back when the lumber industry was booming. Now it's become more of an escape for people looking to get out of the high priced big cities and find more affordable housing. It's a nice community. When I'm on duty during fire season, I sleep in the barracks at the base. The rest of the time I live in a small apartment about five minutes away."
    "So you stay in Redding all year long?"
    He nodded. "I moved up here full time about three years ago."
    "And Kyle did the same?"
    "Yeah. The first year we shared a place. The next year he met Vicky. She moved into our place and I got a smaller apartment upstairs."
    "So you saw a lot of each other."
    "Yes we did. After the baby was born, Vicky started pressuring Kyle to quit smokejumping. She wanted to move back to San Francisco, and she wanted him to work there. He eventually agreed. It wasn't his first choice, but he wanted her to be happy and he knew it wasn't easy for her to be on her own during the fire season. We could be gone for days at a time, and she was stuck in a place where she didn't have friends or family, except a few of the other wives or girlfriends."
    "That does make sense."
    "Perfect sense," he agreed. "I was just sorry that Kyle had to give up on his dream. Everyone thinks that Kyle followed me to Redding, that I was the instigator, but the truth was that smokejumping was his passion. I might have gotten him into firefighting, but he's the one who wanted to smokejump. I followed him. At first, I thought he was nuts. We were running ten miles a day, carrying eighty-pound packs in a hundred degree weather, it was crazy."
    She heard the passion in his voice. "But you loved it."
    "Well, you always said I was crazy," he said, flipping her a smile.
    Her