“Good? What’s good about this?”
“Plenty of things,” he replied before returning to his work, hammering nails. The sound echoed across the quiet morning sky. “We’re alive, the birds are singing, and it’s a beautiful day.”
Day? She scowled up at him and crossed over to his yard, standing a few feet from the porch. She watched him drive another nail into the new plywood sheet. “Barely day. Can’t you do this at a decent time?” she snapped, instead of asking him to nail her instead.
“It’s eight-thirty.” Then he glanced down at her. “It’s morning.”
“Some of us like to sleep in the morning. You’re really making a habit of waking me.”
He climbed down the ladder. “Sorry, princess, but there’s a weather prediction for a nasty storm this evening, and I’d like to be prepared. All this beautiful sun is supposed to be gone by noon. And for the record, that last incident was weeks ago. I haven’t disturbed your beauty rest with the mower again since then.”
“You could have chosen any other day to do this. My uncle’s place has survived every other storm this year just fine. Sure, it’s missing a couple shingles—”
“There’s a big-ass water stain in the middle of the bedroom and the ceiling is sagging in the bathroom. I refuse to be laying there in bed when that shit finally caves the fuck in.” He dragged a bottle of water from a cooler on the porch. “Did I really wake you?”
“You really woke me.”
Remorse flooded his face, expression softening. “Sorry. I guess I’m just used to getting up and working when I need at home. We don’t have all this peace and quiet out in—” He cut himself off. “Anyway, we don’t have all this silence there. We got cars and shit drivin’ by, horns honking, noise at all hours of the day.”
“Sounds frustrating.” Maddie couldn’t imagine it. Even the little college town where she’d spent four years earning a useless degree had quiet days and peace in the morning.
“It can be.”
As much as she would have liked more than three hours of sleep, she couldn’t ignore genuine remorse. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not your fault that I was up all night. I’ll take a nap this afternoon. I can’t sleep through your hammering, but I can sure snooze through a rainstorm. There’s nothing more peaceful than the patter of rain against a tin roof and the sound of thunder rumbling.”
Dean smiled. It lit his whole face. “Agreed. Did you have a late night?”
“I work at night,” she admitted. “My best work is at night. It’s cooler and easier to focus.” She raked her fingers through her disheveled hair. “Like I said; it’s not your fault.”
“You’re some kind of artist, right? You said client, but not what kind.”
Maddie blinked. She hadn’t expected him to know that. “I’m a sculptor.”
“Yeah?” Dean’s brown gaze dropped to her hands, lingering on her fingers before returning to her face again. Her cheeks heated instantly. “You must be pretty good with your hands.”
A woman couldn’t be an artist without hearing every kind of sexual innuendo related to using her fingers. The difference between those other moments and now was that for the first time in all her life, Maddie wanted to declare that hands weren’t all she was skilled at using.
“So am I,” he carried on, mischief dancing in eyes the color of honey.
“Yeah?”
His playful smile widened into a cocky grin she was torn between wanting to kiss or slap off his face. “Yep. There are a lot of things a man should be good at doing with his hands. You could say I aspire to be a jack-of-all-trades.”
“Uh huh.” She waited for the dirty, inappropriate, uninvited joke.
“But I gotta say out of all the shit I’ve picked up over the years working here and there, metal work’s my favorite. I fucking love it when the picture in my head translates into a physical piece of art, you know?” And then he whipped out his cell phone and opened his Instagram app to show her a silhouette of a wolf howling at the moon, cut from steel and polished to a glossy shine.
Maddie’s lips flattened. Dammit. He wasn’t supposed to be an artist.
He was supposed to be showing her unsolicited dick pics to match the lecherous way he’d devoured a cream-filled doughnut in front of her.
Not that she wanted to see his dick picks. Okay, so she did, a little. But more than that, she just wanted him to do something outrageously offensive so she could point her finger in Ellie’s face and say, “See! He is a douche!” since her friend and every little old lady swan on the street were convinced Dean was an angel sent to Crisis. A new grandmother appeared every evening with a casserole dish for the man, half of them hoping to get dirt on him, the other half genuinely wanting to feed that poor, lonely, unwedded man—and feel him out for their single granddaughters.
“That’s one of my most recent works, but I swear during deer season I get a lot of these,” he carried on, sliding his finger across the screen to show her different forest-themed pieces featuring bucks with big antlers. He had a few Texas longhorns, sharks, cowboys on horses, and other beasts after that.
This was not what she’d expected, but after a few seconds, she couldn’t help but admire his work. He had an eye for color when he did use it, and his metal roses were breathtakingly gorgeous.
Her nipples pebbled. Apparently, her body thought found his artistic qualities sexy. The longer he stood beside her, the more details she picked up about him. It didn’t help that he smelled good for a guy who had been ripping apart a roof in the early morning hours, like deep woods and musk and man. And sometimes, when he turned his head, the sun hit his jaw just right and lit the dark stubble golden-red.
“Maybe I can see your art sometime?” He cocked a brow. “Never worked with clay before, but I wouldn’t mind a lesson if you’re game to teach. I’m always open to learning.”
“Maybe. I really should get inside,” she said, refusing to rise to the bait. If it was bait. If she wasn’t misreading him again.
“Don’t let me keep you.”
Dean flashed her another smile, chugged his water, then returned to the roof.
Maddie trudged inside to brew tea. Only a pot of caffeine could make up for a night without sleep.
And nothing but a long shower with her trusty waterproof vibrator could quench the throbbing need her neighbor had inspired in her core simply by standing in her personal space.
* * *
As predicted, it stormed like a bitch for two days, rain coming down in big silver sheets that slapped against the gravel road and filled the ditches within the first hour.
Of course, Dean had a good feeling for the weather and always felt a little twinge in his spine whenever a storm was coming, on account of how closely the bullet lodged against his vertebrae had come to severing his spinal cord altogether.
Shifters healed from most damage, but even they weren’t resilient enough to come back from paralysis. Some injuries, like death and bullets to the brain, were absolutely irreversible. And Dean had technically been dead for about a minute before the Army combat medic resuscitated him.
He sighed and rubbed the old spot. Really, it had been worth it, saving someone else’s life, but he’d always wonder if he could have taken down Danny Carlisle.
With what, though? His bare hands against a man with a ten-foot clearance and a woman between them? If he’d charged from the closet, Carlisle would have pulled the trigger, killing Sarabeth anyway.
His phone rang with an incoming call from a private number. Warily, Dean hit the accept button and raised it to his ear.
“You alone, bro?”
The tension drained out of him. Pete’s voice was exactly what he wanted to hear. “I am.”
“Good. So, I have some news for you.”
“Yeah? Good or bad?”
“Both. We picked up three of Danny Carlisle’s boys at the border. They definitely intercepted the phony intel we dropped about you crossing into Mexico.”
; “Or were given it.”
His brother’s long sigh confirmed he’d been thinking the same thing. “That too. However, the good news is that if they’re chasing lies about you in Mexico, they have no reason to suspect we’ve stashed you at your current whereabouts. You’re safe.”
“Yep.”
“For now. I have a bone to pick with you.”
In the name of civility, Dean muted the phone before he groaned. He returned to the line with a guarded, “What did I do?”
“What haven’t you done? I hear you’re now the community Handy Danny.”
Dean grunted. “You told me to show some gratitude and do work for Martin.”
“For Martin, not the entire goddamn town. Jesus H. Christ, man! What did I say about keeping a low profile? It’s like you want to be found. Heard you got your own fan club going on down there with little old ladies feeding you every day for replacing their spark plugs and repairing their lawnmowers.”
“Oh, come on. I doubt my Mr. Fix-It skills are part of the description Carlisle is using to find me.”
“We need more than an alias and a box of hair dye to keep you flying under the radar. Word travels. We may be in Texas, but it’s a small world, and all it takes is one slip of the tongue from some grateful little old lady to her gangbanger grandson, and then everybody in Carlisle’s gang will be swarming into Crisis. The guy has a hit out on you.”
“I know, Pete—”
“I should have relocated you somewhere north. Massachusetts, maybe.”
“Pete—”
“Then maybe you’d have kept out of trouble. Bad enough you’re still in this state and too close to home for my liking.”
“I’m sorry, all right? I never meant to make your job more difficult.”
A heavy sigh whistled through the line, and Dean pictured his older brother pacing the office while holding the phone to his ear in one hand, squeezing the bridge of his nose with the other. “I know. I know it’s boring there, bro. I promise, we’ll catch this bastard and bring you home soon. Shouldn’t be more than a few weeks. We’re trying to cut a deal with one of his boys.”
“I know.”
They spoke for a few minutes longer, then Pete ended the call. Once again, Dean was alone and left with the isolation of being without family, friends, or even a little entertainment. The cable man hadn’t come to install internet service yet, restricting him to watching the same handful of DVDs in his collection. Damn, he regretted moving to a digital library.
As the rain lightened, he considered making a visit to town and hitting up the Redbox for a rental.
Just as he opened the rickety front door, Madeleine burst outside into her yard and dashed into the street barefoot, pursued by a small child. Emma laughed and giggled, giving chase, a water balloon in her small hand and many more clutched against her in an apron.
She must have been babysitting. Rain pelted them while balloons flew in an epic battle, and their laughter carried to him despite the storm, through warm summer rain and mist.
And he watched, wondering what it would be like to join them.
7
Maddie had big plans for her business. It occurred to her that she could sell more than the mass-produced cups and mugs that Ani and Daughters wanted for their posh little cafe. While cute, they weren’t particularly unique.
Only two weeks prior, Uncle Martin called to say he’d pulled strings to get Maddie into a meeting to pitch her ideas to Charlotte Montgomery, one of the wealthiest businesswomen in Texas. How he pulled it off, she didn’t know, but she wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
For two weeks, Maddie had been on pins and needles.
For two weeks, she’d also devoted an excessive amount of time to watching the neighbor performing home improvement rituals—shamefully distracting when she had limited time to put together a fabulous pitch with graphs, charts, and a five-year plan to turn her idea into a booming business.
Of course, on the day of that big meeting, moments after loading her trunk with beautiful goods fresh from the kiln, Maddie’s disobedient Ford Escort refused to start. She tried the ignition three times. She raised the hood and looked at the rusty, dusty insides. If she were a mechanic or had an ounce of skill with automobiles, she’d go inside, get a toolbox, and fix it on her own.
But because she wasn’t a mechanic and didn’t know the first thing about what she was doing, she slid into the driver’s seat and tried the key again. It choked once more.
“Fuck!”
She had all of an hour to make it to her meeting, and she loathed the idea of canceling at the last minute and wasting Ms. Montgomery’s valuable time. Nothing guaranteed Maddie would have the opportunity again to make her big pitch.
“Come on!” Maddie shouted, slapping the steering wheel. When that failed to start the car—not that she thought it would work—she called her uncle to make a desperate plea, hoping he had a loaner for her.
“Sorry, sweetheart. I’m working today,” Martin replied after she described the situation and her car’s noises. “Can’t do much for you right now from Dallas.”
She bit back a swear. “I’ll send the twins over later. Just tell Charlotte you ran into a snag. She’ll be all right with it.”
Later was bound to be sometime late at night, when one of the boys stumbled up to her car half-drunk and reeking of Budweiser. Ew.
“Can I get this thing moving with a jump?”
“Well, you could, but I wouldn’t rec—”
“Great! Thank you, Uncle Martin.”
Maddie hung up and called Ellie even though the old cob was still rambling automotive nonsense she didn’t understand. Five minutes later, she was rumbling down the road and leaving Swan Lake behind. She blew through town then punched the accelerator to seventy-five miles an hour, despite the fuel gauge warning her she had a quarter tank of gas. She’d make it. Barely, but she would. She knew her car. Her baby had never let her down. One jump had put the trusty little Ford Escort into commission again.
Fifteen miles away from home, the radio died, followed by dash lights dimming and her fuel gauge going dark. Less than twenty miles away from Crisis, the entire thing shut down and the steering wheel resisted her effort to turn it.
Panic quickened her pulse as a ton of metal inevitably slowed. She barely guided the car to the side of the road and out of the way of the traffic riding on her ass. The driver of the vehicle to her rear laid on the horn then blew past her.
“Fuck you too, man!”
On top of everything else gone wrong with her day, it was another scorching afternoon in Texas, though every day in Texas was hot after April. This day, however? Exceptionally miserable, the kind of unbearable heat that would have resulted in her floating around Swan Lake in an inner tube and her favorite bikini if she had free time on her hands.
Turning the key made a feeble little click. A useless noise, and then it was altogether silent.
Torn between sobbing and raging over her poor luck, Maddie slumped down in the seat and stared out the windshield as a big logging truck breezed by, rocking her treacherous car. She’d had the thing since high school and probably should have traded it in years ago for a newer model. But it was paid off, and a monthly car note was yet another bill she couldn’t afford to add to her growing mountain of debt.
So, she’d had the boys work on it from time to time, replacing parts here and there, keeping the car moving even after a sensible person with disposable cash would have surrendered and hit up their nearest Ford dealership.
“This is so much bull…”
What residual cool air she’d had from the air conditioner heated rapidly. She fanned herself with a few envelopes that always lay forgotten in the passenger seat.
“What now?”
Her makeup was going to melt—not that she’d worn much—her hair would frizz, and she’d smell like sweat even if she did miraculously find someone else to give her a jump on the busy interstate.
As she pondere
d this, a motorcycle pulled up and parked just before her vehicle. Skillfully depicted flames in red and gold crawled over the side in an exquisite paint job, tipping her off to the rider right away.
Let me die now.
Dean McAvoy wore a black leather jacket with a trio of red foxes dancing on the back, the perfect companion to the fitted jeans that snugly held his ass. He lifted the helmet off his head and smiled, approaching her. “Need a lift?”
“Your arrival is way too convenient to be coincidence.”
His smile didn’t fade. “It is,” he admitted. “Your uncle phoned me and asked if I’d ‘go rescue that fool niece from alongside the road’ since he thought for sure your alternator was trashed and it wouldn’t make it as far as Huntsville.”
“Ugggggh!” Maddie groaned. “Why didn’t he say that?”
“You hung up on him too fast.”
“Oh.”
“So, the way I see it, we can do this two ways. I can take you back home and you miss whatever it is that has you dressed up like that…”
She waited for the “or”, dreading the unspoken alternative.
“Or I can give you a ride there. Which will it be?”
“I’m not getting on a motorcycle in a skirt.” Aside from that, it was sweltering out, and she tried to imagine the hour-long drive to Conroe with her legs exposed for everyone to see.
With her body hugged against his back, her breasts against the taut muscles.
“Why not?”
“It’s…Everyone would see my legs. It wouldn’t be decent.”
“Who says it wouldn’t be?”
“I say!”
His gaze swept over her lower body. “Shame. Well. Goodbye then.”
“Wait! You’re leaving?”
He paused, casting her a glance over his shoulder. “What else am I supposed to do here if you won’t come with me?”
“Fix my car?”
“Nah, baby. You got a failing alternator, if that shit isn’t already dead as dirt.”
“But—”
“You see tools on me?”
Maddie sucked her lower lip between her teeth. “No.”
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