Out of This World
Hi my name is Rachel and I’m officially freaked out, thank you very much. I purposely drew a deep breath and didn’t focus on anything but the intangible. Axel, still missing. Kel and I, still standing here all alone. And, at least in my case, both of us frightened half to death.
Kel squeezed my fingers. “No worries, Rach. We’ll be okay.”
I was trying not to panic but not having much luck. “No worries,” I repeated like a mantra. “No worries…”
“This way,” Kellan said, pointing. Then he pulled off his t-shirt, and even though I’d already peeked, the sight of him left me utterly speechless.
“Um,” I said ever-so-intelligently, my tongue hanging out at the sight of all his well-toned flesh and hard sinew. “What are you doing?”
“Just as you suggested.” He ripped the hemline off with shocking ease, the muscles in his arms rippling, causing more drool. I swallowed hard and tried not to stare at his bared chest or abs, but as has already been established, I have no will power at all.
He tied a strip around a branch, then touched my jaw, oblivious to my lusting. “No worries, right?”
Let’s face it. The men in my life – both the bad boys I tended to collect, and also my brothers – had spent little time coddling me, much less soothing or reassuring me.
Having Kellan do all three felt both foreign, and utterly, shockingly…lovely…
Kel took a moment to look all around us, carefully, as if memorizing landmarks.
Meanwhile, I couldn’t tear my gaze off him. “Kel?”
“Yeah?”
“Why don’t you need your glasses?”
He went still, then lifted his head, those piercing baby blues meeting hers. “I don’t know.”
There was a moment of silence, which I characteristically broke first. “That’s a little freaky, don’t you think?”
He actually went to push his glasses further up his nose, and remembered they weren’t there. They sat in his pocket, unneeded. “A little, yeah.”
“Just so you know, the Twilight Zone theme song is running through my head.”
As long as it’s not the theme song from Psycho.” Taking charge and my hand at the same time, he pulled me onward.
I stared at his sleek, smooth back, damp from either the rain or sweat, it didn’t matter because both appealed. I was dizzy, wet, and confused.
And desperately hungry for cookies.
Kel stopped to tear off a second strip of his shirt and tie it around yet a different branch. “Come on.”
“Right.” This take charge Kellan was new. And incredibly appealing. “You think this is the right way?”
“Yep.”
Confident, too. Double whammy. We made more stops, tying a handful of strips to branches. Kel did the tying, muscles tight, brow furrowed. His jaw was scruffy, his hair its usual rioted mess. His eyes were fierce with concentration, and just looking into them gave me a shiver. The good kind of shiver, the kind that started at the toes, made pit-stops at every erogenous zone, and ended at the roots.
At one of the stops, he lifted his gaze to mine, caught me staring, and some of his intensity cleared but none of the heat.
And just like that, I knew.
I wanted to kiss him.
Shocked by the unexpected need, I shifted closer. Since he was so damn tall I had to tip my head back to see into face, which I did in time just to catch him taking a hard swallow.
“Rach,” he said, suddenly, endearingly, looking uncertain and off-balance again. “What are you-”
“Shh.” I wanted to just look at him forever, but that was weird. In any case, I’d definitely been staring for a beat too long now, and we were verging on awkward.
He swallowed again, and I slid my hands up his bare chest, giving myself another shiver because his skin was warm and tough, and I could feel his heart leap.
I could see it, too, but I didn’t want to accept that, not right now. Right now I wanted oblivion, I wanted comfort, and I wanted his kiss more than I wanted my next breath. “Kellan?”
He gave one unsure shake of his head and touched mine. “You’re hurt.”
“Not so much.” I lifted my hand to cover his on my jaw.
He pulled free and took a step back. “You’re off your axis then.”
But I’d seen it, the hint of something restless and hungry behind the mellowness.
He wanted me, too.
I closed the gap again, just one step, bringing us back within each other’s breathing space. His was such a nice space, I thought.
How was it I’d never seen that?
He had that stubborn lock of wet hair falling into his eyes, dripping onto his nose, and unable to help myself, I pushed it over his forehead, and then there I was, my fingers in his hair, wanting more, so much more.
And given the way his hands went to my hips and squeezed, he felt the same way.
Unbelievably, everything around us seemed to sort of fade away, and I found myself lost in something new his heated eyes.
“Rach. You’re sending off a weird vibe here, and-”
I nudged my body up against his, and in response he let out a rough, ragged breath.
Not so Zen-like now, was he?
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Just Try Me
Reaching out, Jared slid his hand along her jaw, lifting her face, which he then frowned into, his gaze locked on her cheekbone.
“What?” She slapped his hand away.
His lips curved slightly. “You just also have a…”
“What?”
He waggled a finger, pointing to her face, then reaching in–
“I’m fine.”
“Yeah, and on that, I’m completely one hundred percent in agreement, but you have a little . . .” Looking into her eyes, smiling, he pulled something off her cheek. A leaf, probably stuck there with dirt as well.
She swiped at her face, groaning when his smile widened. “I just smeared dirt around, right?”
“If it helps, you look extremely cute with it on your face.”
Extremely cute? She didn’t know quite how to take that. Hell, she didn’t know how to take him. Half the time he made her want to smile, the other half of the time he made her yearn and burn for some nameless thing . . . Ack, the man made her crazy, and she began walking again.
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Bad Boys Southern Style
Janie Mills had done a lot of things in her life, not all of which she was proud of, but killing a guy…
Yeah, that was a new one, even for her.
She stood holding the murder weapon in the darkened library where she worked, listening to the sizzling summer storm rage outside, her breath hitching, trying to talk herself out of a panic attack.
Not so easy to do with her heart in her throat, blocking the air passage.
Lightning burst, and for one brief instant, her world lit up in the blue flash, followed by a CRACK of thunder that nearly had her jumping right out of her skin.
Just breathe, she told herself, digging her damp palms into the Concise Oxford English dictionary she held. The thing weighed a bazillion pounds, and had swung with ease‹
Right against Clayton’s head, killing him.
Or so she assumed given the terribly still way he lay at her feet.
Just breathe…
But no calming technique was going to help her at the moment, not a single one.
Someone was breathing ridiculously hard. Oh, wait. That was her. Great, now she was hyperventilating. And sweating.
Damn it.
She dropped the dictionary to the floor. It hit with a heavy thunk that echoed into the darkness, reminding her of how it¹d sounded against Clayton’s skull.
Oh, God. She doubted she’d ever be able to forget the sound of his brain cells clacking together, or forget the sickening thud he’d made as he’d hit the floor like a wrecking ball unchecked.
Good job, Janie. Now she could add murder to the long list of things she shouldn’t have done in her lifetime.
Sorry, mom . . .
If only she’d closed the library on time. If only she hadn’t let Clayton Wyatt, town banker, all-around hottie and first-class heel inside when he’d asked. If only the wicked storm hadn’t wiped out the electricity.
If only, if only, if only . . . she had a bunch of those, didn’t she.
It was called karma, coming around to bite her on the ass. But she’d mistakenly assumed that by changing her name, her livelihood, and moving 2,000 miles across the country to the small Southern town of Grace, Georgia, things would have to improve.
Ding, ding, ding – wrong.
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Aussie Rules
Finished with the tie-down, she straightened, patted the sleek side of the airplane just for the pleasure of touching it, and blew a stray strand of hair out of her face, wishing she had put on an extra layer of insulation beneath her coveralls because despite it being summer, the early morning wind off the Pacific cut right through her.
From the other side of the aircraft, the door opened. A set of stairs released. A moment later, two long legs emerged, clad in dark blue trousers, clean work boots, and topped by a most excellent ass. Not adverse to enjoying a good view, Mel stayed in place, watching as the rest of the man became revealed. White button down shirt, sleeves shoved up above his
elbows, tawny hair past his collar, blowing in the wind.
Yep, there were a few perks to this job, one of them catering right to Mel’s soft spot.
Pilots. This one looked more like a movie star pretending to be a pilot, but you wouldn¹t hear her complaining. And just like that, from the inside out, she began to warm up nicely.
The man held a clipboard, which he was looking at as he turned, ducking beneath the nose of the plane to come toe to toe with her, a lock of tawny hair falling carelessly over his forehead, his eyes shaded behind aviator sunglasses.
And right then and there, every single lust-filled thought drained out of Mel’s head to make room for one hollow, horror-filled one.
No.
It couldn’t be. After all this time, he wouldn’t dare show his face.
His only concession to the surprise was a raised a brow as he lifted his sunglasses, his sea green gaze taking its sweet time, touching over her own battered work boots, the dirty coveralls, the fiery, uncontrollable red
hair she’d piled on top of her head without thought to her appearance. “Look at you,” he murmured. “All grown up. G’day, Mel.”
Yeah, he’d grown up, too. He was bigger, broader, and taller than the last time she’d seen him, but she couldn’t mistake the smile  made up of pure devilish wicked trouble.
Australian accent, check.
Heart-stopping green eyes and long lashes to match the long, thick tumble of light brown hair falling in said eyes…check and check.
Curved mouth that could invoke huge waves of passion or fury…CHECK. “Bo Black,” she whispered, getting cold all over again.
Cocking his head, he let out a slow smile. “In the flesh, darlin’. Miss me?”
Miss him? Yeah, she’d missed him. Like one might miss a close call with a hand grenade.
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Room Service
A man stepped into the elevator. He wore black Levi’s and battered boots, and a black long sleeved shirt with the pink HUSH logo on his pec.
His eyes were covered with mirrored aviator sunglasses, and when he shoved them to the top of his head and looked at Em, her heart stopped. Not because he was drop-dead gorgeous, no that description felt too neat, too pat, too . . . GQ. In fact, he was the furthest thing from GQ as she’d ever seen..
He was tall, probably six four, all tough and rangy and hard-muscled. His hair was cropped extremely short, and was as dark as his fathomless
eyes, set in a face that could encourage the iciest of women to ache. And in that face she saw a full life, as if maybe he’d lived every single of one his years as fast and hard as he could.
Which wasn’t to say he wasn’t appealing. In truth, she couldn’t tear her eyes off him. But she could tell he was the kind of man who would worry a mother, the kind of man a father sat on his porch holding a shot gun for. He seemed . . . street, tough as nails, edgy, possibly even dangerous.
And then he smiled.
Yeah, big and rough, and most definitely bad ass. This was a man who’d seen and done things, the sort of man who could walk through a brawl, give as good as he got, and come out unscathed.
A warrior.
Em would have sworn her heart gave one last little flutter before it stopped all together.
But the most surprisingly thing was what he said.
“Good, you’re here.”
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Her Sexiest Mistake
Advertising extraordinaire, Prada shopaholic, and all around tough-as-steel LA executive Mia Appleby could put a good spin on anything, but waking up in the bed of the man whom she’d only meant to admire his motorcycle wasn’t one of those things.
Apparently, you could take the girl out of the trailer park, but you couldn’t take the trailer park out of the girl. She hated that but she’d long ago accepted it  in her avid appreciation of the male species, she was apparently her mother’s daughter.
Never a dip-her-head-in-the-sand type of woman, she faced the music. She opened her eyes, took in the pale pink June dawn streaking across the skylight above her and blinked, which turned into an involuntary squeak of surprise when the view was suddenly hampered by a head.
A male head.
A gorgeously rumpled male head with light caramel, sleepy, heavy-lidded eyes and a slow smile that had all sorts of wicked, naughty trouble in it.
God, she was a sucker for wicked, and with that bad-boy motorcycle of his, and those let-me-do-you eyes, this man so fit the bill.
“Hey,” he said in a morning-rough voice that went with the dark stubbled jaw and bed-hair as he slid his body over hers. He pinned her to the mattress with his warm, hard torso and mile-long legs, which spread hers.
In spite of herself, her body tightened. No doubt, he was stop-the-presses hot. He had a body for sinning, of which they’d done plenty of last night.
All night.
Oh boy.
He’d moved into the neighborhood two days ago…
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The Night Before Christmas
The next morning she went into her office early, and to protect herself, put a sign on her door that said, “stay out or die.”
But apparently the new mayor couldn’t read because half an hour later, Matt stuck his head in, wearing one of those wicked smiles that had always annoyed her in the past but now inexplicably scraped at a spot low in her belly.
“Hey,” he said. “Busy?”
Just looking at him reminded her of last night. Of his bone melting, heart stopping kiss. Of how he’d held her as if he could do nothing else. How he’d gotten hard and rocked her hips to his. She’d dreamt about that part in particular, damn it, and remembering brought the heat to her face.
She shouldn’t be picturing the mayor with a hard-on. She especially shouldn’t get hard nipples at picturing the mayor with a hard-on. “If I say yes I’m busy will you go far, far away?”
His grin spread.
Good God, could the guy be any more gorgeous? Or annoying? Or sexier? Now it wasn’t just her nipples going happy but things were happening between her thighs too. “Didn’t you read the sign?”
“Yes.” He pulled a pen out of his pocket. Clicked it on. Eyed her with a mischievous lecherousness.
“Don’t even think about it,” she warned, gritting her teeth when he underlined the “stay out” part. Then shut the door — with him on the wrong side.
He smiled.
She did not. But she wanted to, damn him, so she got up, walked around her desk and re-opened the door, silently inviting him to leave.
“Ah,” he said. “Someone forgot to eat their Wheaties this morning.”
“And someone forgot he was an ass…
“Still mad.” He nodded as if this was perfectly acceptable to him. “How long do you plan on pouting?”
She gaped. “I am not pouting. I never pout.”
“Then what’s this?” He rubbed his thumb over her lower lip, which was indeed thrust out petulantly.
The touch electrified her, and she struggled with her reaction. If his expression went smug, she was going to have to kill him.
But he didn’t look smug at all, he looked as shocked as she felt.
In the startled silence, a woman walked by her office. Danielle was a city clerk but looked like a stripper, and when she saw Matt, she stopped and smiled. “Hey there, big guy. Nice dancing with you last night.” She made some promises with her bedroom eyes and body language, before moving on.
“Big Guy?” Cami shook her head. “Never mind, I don’t want to know. Please just go away.”
“Yeah.” He looked at her for a long moment. “But only because I have three meetings, all scheduled at the same time.”
“I’m in two of them with you. Oh, and I hope you ate your Wheaties because at the first one, for the proposed amendments to the town plan?
I’m planning on nailing you.”
His eyes heated. “Promise?”
She felt her insides quiver at his expression. “Get out.”
“Okay but first I wanted to talk to you about last night.”
“No. No way.”
“I had some trouble sleeping,” he said, all kidding aside. “œI was thinking maybe you did too.”
“Slept like a baby.” Yeah, if babies had wet dreams.
“You slept like a baby,” he repeated.
“You betcha.”
He didn’t believe her. “Then why are you in such a big hurry to get rid of me?”
“Because I don’t like you.”
He grinned. “Liar.”
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Get a Clue
Breanne pushed up to her elbows and stared at the body she’d tripped over. “Oh my God! Are you okay?”
It was a man. He lay flat on his back, arms and legs sprawled, not moving. There was a gash on his forehead, the blood dried.
Surging up to her knees, she put her hands on his shoulder. “Can you hear me?”
When he didn’t budge, a very bad feeling snaked through her. The thick, icky air seemed to close in around her as she stared at him, heart pounding in her throat. Who was he? Nicely dressed, he wore dark trousers and a dark long-sleeved shirt. He was missing a shoe, she thought inanely. “Can you hear me?”
Nothing. Less than nothing. “I was really hoping you’d blink,” she whispered. “Or moan. Anything.”
He didn’t blink or moan.
Or anything.
Oh God. She got down low and tried to peer into his face. Please be okay, please be okay . . . Could she see a pulse in the base of his neck? As she leaned in, her hand slipped from his shoulder to his chest, which felt . . . stiff.
She pulled her hand back and stared at him in horror. “Oh my God. You’re not unconscious. You’re…”
Dead.
Her entire body went as stiff as his. Her stomach sank, everything sank, weighing her down so she couldn’t seem to move.
Dead.
The knowledge sort of seeped into her brain in slow motion, and when it finally landed and was processed, she did what any sensible city girl stuck in the mountains in a snow storm without luggage, who’d found a naked guy and a dead guy within a few hours of each other would do.
She scrunched up her eyes and screamed.
In what might have been an eternity or only a moment later, footsteps sounded above her. Cooper appeared. “Breanne?” He took the stairs two at a time, those always-aware eyes narrowing in on the body at her feet.
While Breanne’s eyes narrowed in on the object in Cooper’s hand.
A gun.
A gun.
It was hard to wrap her mind around much in the condition she was in, but facts were facts. She’d screamed and he’d come running, ready to slay a dragon for her.
“What the hell happened?” Cooper demanded.
“I don’t know.”
He hunkered down and put his fingers to the man’s neck, then looked up at her, slowly shaking his head.
Breanne slapped a hand over her mouth to hold in another scream.
Rising, Cooper stuffed his gun in the waistband of his jeans low at his back and took her arms in his hands. “You okay?”
A few moments ago, he’d had her up against a wall, skirt shoved up to her belly button, hands in her panties, his fingers driving her straight to oblivion, and now . . . now he was this intense, cool, calm and collected man.
With a gun.
“Breanne. Are you okay?”
She stared at him. He had his shirt loose and draped over the bulge of his gun. He looked rough and tumble. Badass.
Damn it, she had a serious weakness for badass.
“Breanne?”
“P…pretty sure I’m n…not okay.” Her teeth were chattering again though she wasn’t cold. Or maybe she was and she couldn’t tell because she’d gone numb.
With a low sound of empathy, he pulled her close, a protective gesture that felt amazingly seductive for its sweetness, so much so that she felt herself want to cling. Just for a moment, she told herself, and did just that, wrapped her arms around his neck and absorbed his strength, his heat.
How was she going to resist this? Him?
Didn’t matter, she’d find a way. She’d promised herself a break from bad decisions, and anything she did here, while out of her element and scared and hurt, would be bad. Very bad.
Probably she should stay out of cellars too.
Cooper pulled back, and leaving his hands on her arms, and looked into her eyes. “Tell me why you’re standing over a dead body.”
“I got lost. I tripped over him.”
“He was here when you got here? Like this?”
“Well I didn’t put him here!”
“Okay.” He stroked his hands up and down her arms. “Damn. A dead body. I hate it when that happens.”
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Velvet, Leather and Lace
“The pizza was excellent,” Jake agreed. “And the beer. And so is the company.”
She looked into his eyes, prepared to roll hers at his obvious line, but he appeared nothing but genuine. Reaching out, he wrapped his finger in a lock of her hair, tugging very lightly, reeling her in enough to bring her face extremely close to his. “Let’s do it again when you can manage,” he said softly. “Another evening of no work and fun.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “What exactly did you have in mind?”
His smile went positively wicked. “I’ll think of something,” he murmured. “Or you can. Date?”
She stared at him for a long moment, at the strand of hair eternally falling over his forehead and into his eyes, at the mischievous sparkle in said eyes, at the day’s rough growth on his jaw. Damn, he had a quality of irresistibility. “I don’t know–”
“Just say ‘yes, Jake’.”
“It’s not that simple.”
Very quietly he made the sound of a chicken, and she had to laugh. “Fine,” she said, caving. “But it’s your fault then if…”
“If what? What’s the worst thing that could happen? I fall for you? Done. You fall for me? I can only hope.”
Before she could say a word to that  and good God, what would she say! — he stood and pulled her up, too.
She stared up at him, into his eyes, at his mouth. She realized he was looking at her mouth too, and something deep inside tingled. Surely he wasn’t thinking about kissing her…No.
But she was thinking about it.
And then proving her wrong, he brushed his lips to hers in a short, quick kiss that was over so fast she blinked in confusion  even as she wanted more.
He’d not only thought about it, he’d done it!
“Night,” he said with an expression that said he knew she wanted another kiss, an expression that said ‘Gotcha, you’re already mine’, an expression that said he knew she was in way over her head.
And standing there, lips tingling, she knew it, too.
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Beach Blanket Bad Boys – Captivated
Chapter One
She’d really screwed up this time, even more so than usual, and that was saying something. Ella Scott shifted to swipe the hair out of her eyes, but her right wrist caught on the handcuff, rattling the steel, jerking on the tile towel rod that she was cuffed to. With a sigh, she lifted her head and surveyed the situation.Having worked the past straight month without a day off, she’d come to her Baja cottage for a desperately needed weekend to herself. But thanks to her surprise goons, she now stood between the shower and the toilet, handcuffed at chest level to the towel rack, wearing only the towel she’d managed to wrap around herself one-handed, with no key to get free, nothing within reach at all that could help her.
Such was the life of the incurably curious. She’d actually managed to parlay that lifelong curiosity into a career, not as a criminal as her mother had feared, but as an insurance investigator. Except that now, for the umpteenth time, she’d dipped her nosy nose in where it hadn’t been welcome, and here she stood in her least favorite position — that being completely helpless.
She’d been cautioned. Threatened, actually. Told time and time again that if she kept at this case, she wouldn’t like the consequences. Having been warned too many times to remember by other, more unsavory types before, she hadn’t given it a single thought.
Seems maybe she’d been a little premature in that.
But damn, it should have been so easy, a few days off. Some R and R. She’d arrived via plane, then rental car, and had taken a nice swim in the warm Mexican Pacific waves until her muscles quivered before hopping into the shower.
After that she’d planned to lie on the deck and watch the sun set over the ocean and contemplate why when she’d finally found a job she enjoyed that it didn’t satisfy her the way she’d thought it would.
But it’d all been interrupted by two beefy morons who’d hauled her naked and slippery and screaming out of the shower. Luckily for her, they hadn’t been interested in her body, hadn’t been interested in anything other than handcuffing her to the shower rod, still dripping wet. And even then, they’d only cuffed the one hand, promising her to send someone in a few days to free her.
And that’s when she’d known. They weren’t rapists or murderers, but thieves. They’d been from the yacht company she’d been investigating for suspicious loss of property. Two separate multi-million dollar boats had been sunk in the past sixteen months. Her company had found nothing suspicious with the first downed ship, and the insurance had been forced to pay out. Just two weeks ago, in fact.
Then the second boat had gone down for the count in Santa Barbara, and now Ella was closing in on why. Bad drug deals, and a greedy yacht owner wanting it all. She’d been watching their third yacht, the Valeska, all week but had been unable to get aboard because there’d been activity on it.
Now she was due to present her suspicions to the D.A.’s office, soon as she made one more trip to Santa Barbara, where she was going to get on the Valeska come hell or high water.
Clearly the suspects didn’t want her to get to the D.A.’s office, at least not before they skipped town with the money from the insurance from the first boat and any physical evidence. Chances were that had already happened, and they were long gone.
Ella shook her head. She should have taken that job at Target out of college like her mother had wanted. Sure, she looked awful in red, but she’d be willing to bet no one would bother to break and enter her place because of that job, or handcuff her naked to her own tile towel rack.
Unless she wanted them to.
A slight breeze blew in the opened window, breaking the brutal summer heat as the sun sank. Oh God, the sun was sinking, and the severity of her situation sank in. It was Saturday evening. Next week was a long time away. God knew she wouldn’t starve, not with the five extra pounds she’d been carrying around since puberty – okay, ten, damn it. Still, the amount of time looming ahead felt long, and never having been big on self discipline, she was already hungry.
She could reach the shower and the toilet. The sink was across from her, a leg’s length away. Above it was the mirror that assured her she was as frightening looking as she’d imagined, her hair air-dried and a complete frizz bomb, her face not wearing a lick of make-up. Ack. She decided not to look at herself again.
Beneath the toilet was a cabinet, which if she stretched, she could just toe open. A box of tampons, two extra rolls of toilet paper, and a tube of toothpaste. Gee, yum.
She looked out the window. The cottage was isolated, down a long, sinuous stretch of highway surrounded by bush-lined high desert hills, punctuated by dense groves of date palms and citrus trees and little else.
The sunk sank away, the daylight faded, and Ella felt anxiety pit in her stomach. But even stretching her leg out to bionic contortions, she couldn’t reach the light switch.
And the dark came.
She’d spent a good amount of her childhood chasing after her three older brothers, and feeling invincible because of them. She’d wear her blankie as a cape and pretend she was a super hero who could fly through wind and sleet and snow who could do anything.
She didn’t feel so invincible now.
Then came a noise. The front door closing. When had it opened? Heart in her throat, she froze. Or rather her body froze. Her towel did not. It slipped yet again. She grabbed it with her left hand and hastily tucked the corner back between her breasts, her heart tattooing a crazy beat against her ribs.
No other sound, but she could feel someone on the other side of the door.
Listening.
Breathing.
Oh, God. She couldn’t scream, couldn’t even draw air into her lungs.
The handle on the bathroom door began to turn.
Ella stared at it, her life flashing before her eyes. She hadn’t watered her plants. She hadn’t tried sky-diving. She hadn’t reconciled her checking account!
The door creaked open.
She stuffed her uncuffed hand against her mouth to hold back her panicked whimper at what was about to happen to her. What would they tell her family? No one had even known she was coming here, not her parents, her brothers, not even…
“Ella?”
At that low, husky, almost unbearably familiar voice, she squinted into the shadows of the opened door, thinking oh no. No, no, no, no, no.
But indeed, the form was tall, wide in the shoulders, narrow in the hip, the body built like the long distance swimmer he used to be. “James?”
The shadow stepped into the bathroom and came to an abrupt halt. Not a shadow at all but the one man she hadn’t wanted to see her like this, the one man she hadn’t wanted to see period.
Her mouth-watering, sexy, break-her-heart-and-stomp-on-it husband.
Make that almost ex-husband.
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Seeing Red
Needing to keep moving, needing to get away from here, Summer headed toward the fire truck. The driver’s door was opened, so she came around and peeked in, and hello, found another fire official. This one sat behind the wheel, shirtless, his coveralls shoved low on his hips, holes torn in each knee, a tube of antiseptic in one hand and a fistful of band-aids in the other, eyeing Socks with a healthy mistrust.
From her perch on the passenger seat, Socks eyed him back.
Then the man craned his neck toward Summer and said the oddest thing. “Are you okay?” he asked in such an intimately low voice suggesting such intimacy and familiarity, that she blinked. “Sure,” she said, and shrugged.
He just watched her. She couldn’t help but watch him back. He was filthy, but he had an extremely nice chest. Sinewy, tanned, with a spattering of hair from pec to pec that wasn’t too light, wasn’t too thick, but juuuust right. The Goldilocks in her wanted to smile. After all, she loved men, all shapes and sizes, but this man . . . yum.
Unfortunately, all that extremely decent male flesh also sported a series of deep, nasty-looking scratches that appeared to be Sock’s doing. “Ouch,” she said in sympathy.
His light, light brown eyes, with the impossibly long, dark lashes met hers with . . . amused cynicism?
She went still. Wait. Wait. She knew that slashing scar above his eyebrow. She knew that dimple on the right side of his mouth. She knew that wry, slow smile, it had always made her day. “Oh my God. No.”
He just kept looking at her.
She took closer stock. Shaggy sun-kissed brown hair, still apparently untamable in thick waves framing his face. Light stubble over his lean jaw – lean jaw. That’s what was so different, besides the years that had turned him from boy to man.
He’d lost his softness, every single bit of it, coming out with a rangy, leanly muscled build that spoke of long days in physical labor. He looked liked he’d lived each of the twelve years that had passed, every single one of them, well and hard. There were fine laugh lines fanning out from his eyes, and laugh lines around his mouth too. The thought made her heart leap. He’d smiled, laughed, and often. Oh I’m so glad, she thought, and felt the grin split her face.
“Joe Walker.”
“So you do remember.”
“Of course I do.” She laughed, because just looking at him made her feel young and carefree, but the smile faded away when he didn’t do the same. “I can’t believe it’s you.”
“In the flesh.” Twisting around, he reached for a dark blue t-shirt hanging over the back of the passenger seat.
“Don’t you want to treat the scratches first?” she asked.
“Later.”
“But…” She thought of the herbal cream she always carried for blisters, cuts, and any other nasty surprises she encountered on a regular basis out on a trek, and reached for the little purse hanging off her shoulder. “I have…
“I’m good.” He pulled the shirt over his head, the muscles in his biceps flexing, his hard, ridged belly revealing a nice six pack as he sat up straighter to pull the material down to cover his torso. A firefighter patch now covered his pec, making him look official. Grown up. And then it hit her. He looked right at home here. He’d lost the haunted, hollow look that had plagued him all his childhood, and had found something for himself, a place he belonged.
So had she. Far away from here. Unfortunately, her basis for that distance had been a single tragic event, not a strong enough foundation she’d discovered. She’d lived free as a bird, yes, and had loved it, but a very small part of her knew she’d missed something by walking away from everyone and anyone who’d ever cared about her.
She just didn’t know what exactly.
And yet standing here, looking at the warehouse, seeing Joe, it was like a high speed internet connection to the single most traumatic event of her life, and without warning, her vision wavered. Oh, damn. The third and final warning.
“Summer?”
She blinked into Joe’s eyes. He had her wrist in a firm grip.
“Here.” He stood, then pressed her to the driver’s seat. “Sit.”
“I’m okay.” She went for a smile but couldn’t quite stick the landing as she continued to suck air into her lungs too fast. “It’s just . . . hard to be here.” She waved a hand in front of her face to fan it and gulped air like water.
“Yeah,” he said, watching her carefully. “And it’s going to get worse. You probably shouldn’t hang around for longer than necessary.”
“No.” Keep breathing, Summer. It took a few minutes to even it out, to gain control. Humiliating.
His mouth was grim as he waited, his eyes blazing with emotion. This was hard on him too, incredibly so, and yet she could still hardly believe it was him sitting there. “You look good, Joe.”
He laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
It was a shock that she couldn’t read him, not at all. “You used to wear your emotions on your sleeve.”
“Yeah, well, that never really worked out for me.”
She nodded and stood on legs she told herself were steady now. “Look, I’m sorry. I know I left things badly. I never said good-bye. I…”
“It doesn’t matter.”
He sounded as weary as she felt. Just yesterday she’d been in San Francisco, planning and organizing a hiking trip for a large group of businesswomen through the Sierras. Then her mother had called at two in the morning. An oddity in itself because in all these years Camille had been extremely cognizant of the fact Summer didn’t like to come back to Ocean Beach, and had never asked her to.
As a result, Summer’d had an amazing freedom to do as she pleased. And what had pleased her was to roam, far and wide.
But her mother needed her now, an event shocking enough that Summer had hopped in her car and driven seven straight hours to get here. She’d had no sleep and it was catching up with her. But looking into Joe’s eyes she could see that he’d had a long night, too. And probably an even longer morning. “I’m sorry,” she said again. After a hesitation, she reached past him for Socks. “Here, kitty, kitty.”
“Watch out, she’s still skittish.”
“I’ll be careful.” Her shoulder brushed his. Beneath his shirt, he was warm and hard with strength, but that wasn’t what struck her with an almost unbearable familiarity as she found herself in such close proximity to him. No, his scent did that because he smelled the same, and it took everything she had not to throw herself at him for a desperately needed hug.
But he sucked in a breath and stepped back.
To avoid her touch.
She stared at him, the hurt sneaking in and squeezing her heart. She wrapped her hands around the fat, scared cat, who came compliantly, even happily, pressing her furry face into the crook of Summer’s neck affectionately. “Mew.”
She hugged Socks close, feeling unusually awkward and out of her element. He didn’t want her here. Didn’t want to see her. “Did you fight the fire?” she asked.
“No, I’m a fire marshal.”
“So . . . you’re investigating?”
“Yes.”
That was somehow both unsettling and comforting. “It was an accidental last time. A terrible accident.”
His face softened. “I know.”
“Is it this time?”
“I’ll find out.”
He sounded so sure, so confident. So unlike the Joe she remembered. His radio squawked, and he reached for it, talking into it with a shocking, easy authority.
He bewildered her, this the man who felt both familiar and so much like a stranger. There was a lot to say to him, and yet nothing to say at all. Cuddling Socks, she turned away, giving him privacy, and taking a moment for herself as well.
The knowledge that the warehouse was probably a total loss dragged at her, fatiguing her all the more. She wondered if her mother and Aunt Tina would rebuild for a second time, and glanced back at Joe.
He was still talking into his radio, and didn’t appear to notice she’d left.
So she kept walking, surrounded by people and still somehow more alone than she’d felt in years. Utterly, completely alone.