Jill Shalvis - Just Try Me…

The first book in the Adrenaline Rush series, 2006

WILDLAND FIREFIGHTER Lily Peterson stood on the edge of a cliff, surrounded by a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree vista of what should have been glorious Montana mountains. Instead, the peaks were charred black and still smoking.

She was on mop-up duty. It meant walking and investigating every little plume of smoke rising from the dead mountains; arduous, dirty, exhausting work. She was at the far end of the burn, standing between devastation and new growth. Her job-protect the unscorched areas from a flare-up. No easy feat with the earth beneath her feet still radiating heat.

Both above and below her, the trees were nothing but skeletons. Hundreds and hundreds of years of forest development destroyed because some jerk hadnt put out his campfire properly.

But theyd saved this part of the forest. Itd taken weeks. As a result, she was exhausted, right down to the bone, practically stumbling on her feet with it, but theyd done good.

The sun was just rising. Eyes gritty from lack of sleep, Lily patted her pockets for her sunglasses, but she must have left them back at the barracks. Lifting her head, she shielded her eyes with her hand and looked around for the others. She stepped closer to the edge of the plateau on which she stood, high above the valley by a good hundred feet. Matt and Tony were far below her, at least half a mile away, separated from each other by several football fields, walking east, heads down, doing just as she was.

Watching for flare-ups.

After six straight weeks of firefighting, eating while standing up, grabbing only catnaps when they could, she felt woozy, dead on her feet.

And the sun was killing her.

She turned her back on the valley, and observed the burned area around her. There was so much to keep an eye on, too much. Budgeting and financial cutbacks kept them perpetually understaffed, resulting in too many hours on-site and too few hours off for recuperation, not to mention too few people working at any one time.

When she found herself actually weaving, practically asleep where she stood, she backed up to a tree, slowly sliding down until she sat on the ground, her head resting against the trunk.

She lowered her hand from her face and then couldnt keep her eyes open in the bright glare. So she closed them, just for a moment.

And never saw the new, dark-black plume of smoke rising from a hot spot, only five yards away

LILY LAY FLAT on her back, her physical therapist pushing her leg up over her head as though she were a pretzel, telling her to work it, Lily, stop whining and work it, while pain seared a fiery line from her ass to the very tip of her hair.

Lily would like to work him, all right-right into a bloody pulp.

Instead she gritted her teeth and told herself that this was the price she paid for stupidity.

No self-pity, she decided as she began to sweat like a stuck pig, her tank top sticking to her skin, her leg quivering wildly as she stretched her abused, injured musclesDamn, she hurt.

Maybe retiring wasnt so bad. It wasnt as if it was the first time. From high school, shed gone into expedition guiding, which shed retired from to become a paramedic. And when shed burned out scooping stab victims off the streets of Los Angeles, shed retired again to become a wildland firefighter.

And shed loved it. Thrived on it, actually, moving from fire to fire, exploring Montana, the Dakotas, Idaho, Wyominga perfect fit for her restless spirit.

Until shed screwed up and nearly gotten herself killed.

Nope, there was no sugarcoating this retirement; she was no longer a firefighter-because of injuries, not by choice. She felt weak and insignificant, and at the age of twenty-nine-and-three-quarters, she wasnt ready for either. She wanted to be back out there, damn it, doing her thing, going where she wished, doing something she loved and was good at.

But she couldnt have passed an agility test to save her life. Hell, she couldnt even touch her toes at the moment.

Harder, Lily.

She squeezed her eyes shut and stretched harder, feeling her muscles pull and burn. And yet still, beyond the pain, she also feltitchy. She needed to be on the move, working with adrenaline as her daily friend. It was a pattern in her life, an affliction. It was who she was, what she did.

Or who shed used to be anyway-a terrifying thought becausewho the hell was she now? Damn it, ow, she said to her PT, a gorgeous man who resembled Denzel Washington.

Eric nodded in approval and backed off. Was wondering if you even had a pain threshold there for a minute.

Got it, and we hit it.

He smiled-because it wasnt his muscles they were torturing. Wait here. Im going to get you some ice.

Shed spent a lot of time in and out of the hospital since her Screw-Up. Major, life-threatening injuries did that to a person. But shed still not learned to be a good waiter. In fact, waiting was for sissies who needed a minute, and she absolutely did not. She had things to do, places to go. Rolling over, she pushed up to her hands and knees, still trembling like a damn newborn.

Or a wildland firefighter whod woken up in the middle of a full-blown flare-up, forced backwards by the flames, where shed taken a fall off the cliff, hitting a few burning trees on the way down. Forty feet down. An ex-firefighter now, who couldnt move an inch. She collapsed to her belly, and lay there like a beached whale.

Okay, so maybe she did need a minute.

Around her the PT office buzzed with the low hum of voices, the whir of equipment. More people being pushed to the edge of sanitySomeones cell phone rang. Lily hated cell phones. Truthfully, she wasnt crazy about anything electronic, which she supposed made her an outcast in her own generation.

But give her a wide-open space with nothing marring the sound of a soft breeze any day. Thinking it, yearning, she looked out the window toward the Golden Gate Bridge. Unfortunately, San Francisco didnt have a lot of wide-open spaces. Not the way she liked them anyway, the kind that took three days of walking to get to civilization.

Nearby, something else beeped-someones Blackberry, or a laptop-and she sighed, missing being outside. The mat beneath her smelled like the sweat and tears of all the previous patients Eric had worked over, and she crawled to one of the chairs lining the wall.

All around her were the injured and the hurting, and it depressed her enough to keep to herself. She scanned the stack of magazines. Fashion, gossip ragsthen her gaze snagged on U.S. Weekly Review, and the cover article-Adrenaline Rush.

Huh. Interested in something for the first time in too long, she risked the pain to reach for it. Ow, ow, ow The magazine opened right to the cover article. Beneath the title was a single-line testimonial from the editor of the magazine.

This article changed my life, give it a try!

No article had ever changed Lilys life, and with no small amount of skepticism, she began to read. The author believed life was all about risk-taking, and how too few people actually risked at all, much less lived life to its fullest.

So far, Lily agreed. Hadnt she taken more than a few risks in her life, the latest of which had resulted in her being here right this minute? As for living life to its fullestwell, shed done that, too. In all areas.

Okay, in all areas except maybe one, but she didnt want to think about her love life.

Or lack thereof. Men tended to come in and out of her world like the passing of a tide, no one having made a lasting impression. She knew what it said about her that shed never had a real long-term relationship, and she didnt care. Her life wasnt conducive to long-term anyway, including men.