James climbed out of the shower and marveled at the difference twenty minutes under steaming-hot water could make in a man. He’d stepped into the shower, weary, filthy, wearing at least three layers of soot and sweat, and his muscles had ached.

All of that was gone now. And while he was still tired and looking forward to his bed, the exhaustion was less intense, now he was drowsier instead of utterly fatigued.

He’d arrived at the base a few hours earlier. However, they’d had to unpack their gear, and then he’d grabbed a sandwich from the cafeteria when his stomach reminded him he hadn’t eaten since the day before.

He was looking forward to climbing beneath the clean sheets on an honest-to-God mattress and sleeping for the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours. Five weeks of roughing it in a tent, trying to rest on the hard ground, surrounded by the sickly-sweet smell of burning wood, hadn’t afforded him more than a few hours’ rest at a time. And even that had been restless when he thought about Ivy’s face as they’d said goodbye, despite his complete physical weariness. He wondered where she was now.

He was ready to make up for the lack of sleep. Dropping down on his bed, he saw a small stack of mail sitting on his nightstand. One of the other guys must have picked it up for him. He reached for it, absentmindedly flipping through the bills and junk mail.

He stopped when he recognized familiar handwriting on a postcard. His heart started to race.

It couldn’t be.

A quick glance at the postmark confirmed it had been posted the day before Jake died. James hadn’t been at camp for more than a few hours since then.

The only good thing about the wildfire was that it had kept James too busy to think about how much he missed Jake. Now, all those feelings crashed back in on him. Losing the man who’d been his mentor his entire life and Ivy all in the same week was going to take him some time to recover from. Time he hadn’t even started the clock on, because he’d emptied it all out, turned himself into a vacant shell as he’d fought the wildfire.

Looked like it was time to pay the piper.

He took a deep breath and read the postcard. It wasn’t the first one he’d gotten from the man. It had actually been James who’d started exchanging them. When he had first arrived in Yellowstone, he’d stopped at a gas station and there had been touristy postcards on the counter. They were three for a dollar, so he had grabbed them, sending one to his parents, another to Sienna and her husband, Daniel, and the last to Jake.

He’d done it as a joke really, using the corny Wish you were here line on all of them. Everyone had gotten a kick out of them, but only Jake had responded, sending him an old Calgary Stampede postcard he admitted to having bought years earlier at the rodeo for someone else, but had never sent. On it, Jake had written a very touching missive that simply said, I’m proud of you.

After that, he’d gotten one postcard each season he was away. James still had all of them. There were only a handful tucked away in his duffel, and none of them packed a punch the way this one did.

I thought about our phone call, and I know what I would have chosen if the choice had been mine. There are a million jobs in the world, son. There was only one Haiwee.

James thought back to the last time he’d spoken to Jake. He had asked for advice about Ivy, about what he should do.

As always, Jake had known the right answer, found a way to put him on the path.

He was going home.

* * *

Dad was standing on the front porch when James pulled up in front of the house on his motorcycle. He stood there watching as James tugged off his helmet and approached him.

“Not September yet.”

The smokejumping season typically lasted from March until September. James was home a month early.

Once he’d made his decision to leave Yellowstone, he’d given in to a good fourteen hours of sleep. Then he’d walked to Roscoe’s office and resigned. He had stayed on until Roscoe was able to secure and train his replacement, something that had taken longer than he’d anticipated. Two months later and James had packed his duffel and climbed on his bike.

He hadn’t called his parents to tell them about his decision, though he wasn’t exactly sure why. Part of him was worried his dad would try to talk him out of it, would tell him he’d made a commitment and he needed to stick it out. God knew that was how James had felt until he’d gone to talk to Roscoe about leaving.

His boss had told him to go, convinced him that staying would offer less help than leaving would. Roscoe could see his mind was made up, and that his heart now resided somewhere else.

Then, Roscoe had blown his mind and told him exactly where Ivy was, and assured him that sticking it out for one more month or even one more jump was like spitting in fate’s face. He’d helped train his replacement, but he hadn’t gone on another call. Fortunately, there hadn’t been any major wildfires during that time.

James had texted Ivy just once, right after he returned from the fire to tell her he was okay, but he hadn’t contacted her since. It wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted to. His finger had hovered over her name in his contacts at least twenty times a day, but he’d never dialed. She’d forbid him to quit his job for her, insisting he would resent her for it somewhere down the road.

She was wrong.

The only thing he would ever regret was letting her go.

“I quit,” James said.

Dad nodded. “Yeah. Figured that much from the full duffel strapped to the back of your bike. Why?”

“Ivy.”

Dad smiled. “Glad to hear it.”

“I’m glad you are, because I’m not sure she will be. She said even if I gave up the job, she wouldn’t go out with me again because I’d come to hate her for that decision.”

“Will you?”

“Hell no. I’m in love with her, but I don’t know how to convince her of that. I’m not sure I’ll be able to persuade her to stick around long enough to listen to me, to know that I’m sincere. I’m afraid she’ll hear what I’ve done and still reject me.”

His father gestured toward the stable. “Walk with me for a minute.”

James fell into step with his dad.

“You’re a lot like me, James. I guess you’ve figured that out by now.”

James grinned. He used to hate it when his mom said that, took it as an insult, though he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why now. His father might have been a strict man, but the rebukes for bad behavior never outweighed the compliments for a job well done. It wasn’t even close.

Jake used to say it was because James was as headstrong as Seth, determined to be his own man, rather than live in his father’s shadow.

“Jake pointed that out to me a time or two. Said I’d shove my head up my own ass just to avoid noticing.”

Dad chuckled. “Sounds like something he’d say. I did the same. My dad was pretty damn close to the greatest man to ever walk on this earth. And I couldn’t wait to get away from him when I was teenager. Wanted to prove that I could make it on my own, and I did. For quite a few years, I worked my ass off in Texas, on your grandpa Tom’s ranch.”

“What made you come home?”

“My father got cancer. He was dying. I’d spent years trying to live my own life away from him, thinking that was what I needed to be free.”

“It wasn’t?”

Dad pulled off his cowboy hat, then grabbed a hankie from his back pocket and used it to wipe away the sweat on his brow. “No. It was. I had to leave this place for a time in order to be able to appreciate it and the people who lived here when I came back.”

James glanced over the training pens to the fields beyond. He’d stood in this very spot a million times before, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever really seen how beautiful it was.

“Compass Ranch is my home.”

Dad nodded. “It is. Always will be. But you don’t have to live here for that to be true.”

“I’m done jumping fires.”

“You sure? From what I hear, you’re damn good at it.”

James didn’t respond for a moment or two. “Yeah. I guess I am.”

“You’re good with the horses too, son. Never seen anyone better in that pen when it comes to training them.”

“Really?”

“It’s not the first time I’ve said so.”

James realized it wasn’t. His dad had called him a horse whisperer since the time he was sixteen, telling him he was a natural, that if he didn’t know better, he’d think he had the spirit of a wild horse rather than a man.

But this was the first time James had ever really listened, really let those words sink in. “I love working with them. It makes me happy too. Maybe even happier than fighting the fires.”

“Then that’s what you should do.”

“How can I convince Ivy that I’ve made this decision for me? That this is where I want to be? With her. By my side. How can I make her see that I don’t need the smokejumping to be happy?”

“Way I see it, there are a lot of different fires, son. And believe me, they’re all gonna burn you. Your mom set me on fire the first time I ever met her. Not sure if you put it together yet, but I fell for the boss’s daughter too.”

James laughed. “Forgot about that.”

“I’ve been ablaze ever since. Took one look at that haughty little thing and knew she was trouble. Resisted her until I couldn’t anymore.”

“She was engaged to someone else,” James reminded him.

Dad rolled his eyes. “So she says. That was just Jody’s way of getting my attention, waking me up.”

James knew the story well, though he’d only ever heard it from Jake, and once from his mom. Dad had never admitted to kidnapping Mom to keep her from marrying another man. “And that was when you stole her away from her bachelorette party?”

His father looked across the ranch with a slight smile that confirmed James’s suspicions. “Your mom tried to get my attention for years and I pushed her away. I think you and I both know that while she’ll forgive and forget, she’ll make you pay first.”

And now they were getting to the good part of the story. Even if his dad’s wooing of Mom was different from where he stood with Ivy.

“She put up a fight, insisted on marrying a man she didn’t love, so I did what any industrious cowboy with some extra rope would do.”

James laughed. “Still can’t believe you did that. Or that Mom let you get away with it. But that doesn’t really help me with Ivy.”

Dad tilted his head, considering that. “You sure?”

James thought for a moment he’d misunderstood his father. “You saying I should kidnap her?”

“Seems to me all you need is some time to get the woman to listen. You don’t have to tie her up, but in my experience, if you do it well, your woman won’t complain.”

James shook his head. “This feels like the kind of conversation I’d be having with Doug or Austin, not my dad!”

Dad laughed. “Me and Silas and Sawyer and Sam were all young once too, son. Not much you boys have done over the years that’s surprised any of us. I’m just glad Jake was there to give you the advice you needed, that you would listen to.”

“You knew everything?”

“Every bit of it. Jake stepped up. Gave you the guidance you didn’t want to hear from me. From what I can see, he did one hell of a job. You’re a good man.” His father’s voice broke a bit.

“I miss him,” James said, his chest suddenly tight. So much had happened since Jake’s death, he was still struggling to process it. Life would go nuts and he’d manage to forget for a few seconds. Then it would creep back in and punch him in the gut.

“I do too, James. More than I can say. Felt like losing JD all over again.”

James had been so wrapped up in his feelings about Jake’s death, he hadn’t considered how his dad might feel. He reached out and put his hand on Dad’s shoulder, noticing the wrinkles around his dad’s eyes, the gray at his temples. “I’m glad I’m home, Dad.”

Dad reached out and pulled him in for a rough man hug that James felt deep in his soul. “I’m glad you’re here too, James. I hear Ivy took a job in Casper.”

James nodded, surprised his dad knew what he’d only just learned from her dad before he’d left base. “How did you—”

“Doc Reynolds told me. He’s friends with the vet she’s working with. Austin drives the rig up there a few times a year, and I’m pretty sure he’s got some connections. Think maybe we should pull a few strings, call in a few favors.”

“Are we still talking about kidnapping?” James asked, more than ready to put whatever plan his dad had into action. He missed Ivy, wanted her, needed her.

His father didn’t answer. Instead, he walked to the barn door. “Let’s get you some rope. Because, son, something tells me life with your Ivy is a fire worth jumping into.”