Almost Just Friends

by Jill Shalvis

  Which had turned into a river.

  She’d clearly jumped and fallen to her hands and knees, and didn’t appear to be moving. Cam took a running start and leapt across, landing at her side.

  She startled and gasped as she fell away from him.

  “Just me,” he said, crouching beside her, pulling off his hood so she could see his face. “You okay?”

  “Oh, I’m just great,” she said, wet and muddy and pissed off.

  He rose and helped her to her feet, slipping an arm around her to keep her steady. “Come on, let’s get you home.”

  “I can walk.” She pulled free. “It’s just a storm. Go take care of your dad. Speaking of that, why have you never visited him since he moved here five years ago?”

  “I have. Twice. Both visits were very brief. I’m always gone, it’s hard for me to get enough time to come all the way out west.”

  “Well, you’re here now. So go back over there.”

  “Soon as I see you inside,” he said. “It’s not safe out here.”

  Planting her feet against the wind, she stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. In the glow of his flashlight, he could see the bright green eyes that had so charmed him in the bar were now flashing irritation. Only it was hard to take her seriously since she had mud on her cheek and nose.

  “Maybe you don’t know what the definition of first responder is,” she said.

  He felt his mouth twitch. “Actually, I’m quite familiar with the concept.”

  “So you do realize that I’m usually the one out in this kind of stuff rescuing people, not the other way around.”

  In his world, he was at the top of the food chain, his every command obeyed, his authority never questioned. So it took him a single surprised beat to realize she’d whirled on her heels and was moving away from him, calling out for someone.

  “Who’s missing?” he asked.

  “Sweet Cheeks.”

  “Ah, thanks. Seems a little sudden, but I’m flattered.”

  “Oh my God, not your ass, I’m talking about my stupid sister’s stupid cat. She loves a good storm, but I can hear her crying from somewhere.”

  Cam stilled and listened. Past the wind, past the driving rain, he heard it too, a cat’s plaintive meow. Turning, he headed along the water’s edge and stopped at the base of a huge oak tree doing its best to stand strong against the heavy gusts.

  Thanks to the beam from his flashlight, he could see the cat in the tree, about twenty feet up, huddled miserably against a branch, looking more like a soaked rat than a feline.

  “Oh, for—” Piper had come up to his side and was now swearing rather impressively as she dropped her medical bag to the ground and reached for the trunk of the tree.

  “Stop,” he said. “You can’t climb it, not in this lightning storm, not without risking your neck.”

  “If Winnie finds out I killed her cat, I’m as good as dead anyway.”

  “Stay,” he said, and with an inner sigh, started climbing the tree himself. It’d been a while since he’d done a rescue on land, even longer since the victim hadn’t been human.

  “Just FYI,” Piper called up to him, “I’m only staying down here because there isn’t room for two of us up there, and not because you told me to stay like a dog!”

  He kept climbing.

  “And also, Sweet Cheeks isn’t exactly on the people train, so proceed with caution!” she yelled. “Or at least like you have a healthy fear of cats.”

  “Fear isn’t a productive emotion.”

  He was pretty sure she snorted at that, but he was serious. He climbed for what felt like forever, and when he got to damn near the top of the world, cat and man stared at each other grimly. “Let’s go,” he told her.

  The cat just glared at him, tail swishing back and forth.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not thrilled either, but see that woman down there scowling up at me like I’m a pain in her ass? That’s because I’m a pain in her ass. If I rescue you, maybe she’ll soften a little bit. So what do you say?”

  The cat declined to answer, so he snatched her off the branch. To say she wasn’t pleased with this development was an understatement. She hissed and bit and scratched the shit out of him, nearly causing him to fall out of the tree twice. If his unit could see him now, they’d be rolling on the ground. It wasn’t often he got his ass kicked, especially by a ten-pound, soaking wet feline, but by the time he had them both out of the tree, she’d most definitely won the battle.

  When his boots hit the ground, Piper reached out for the she-devil masquerading as a cat. The she-devil who . . . stopped hissing and clawing him and melted into her.

  Piper lifted her gaze with a “thank you” on her lips, but broke it off with a gasp as her gaze locked on his hand, which he’d used to rub his chest through his soaked rain jacket. His fingers were streaked with his own blood.

  “Oh my God, you’re hurt.”

  “I’m fine.” How was it that a cat scratch hurt more than a bullet? “Get inside. Unless there’s another wild animal you need to rescue.”

  She didn’t say anything to this, just tucked the now complacent cat under one arm and grabbed his hand, tugging him with her to run across the property toward her house, skidding to a halt twice in shock as lightning hit far too close.

  Cam had been to war zones that were less hazardous than this hundred-yard dash.

  Finally, Piper shoved open her front door and they stumbled inside. Kicking the door shut behind them, she set down the cat, who meandered off without so much as a thank-you glance.

  “Ingrate,” he muttered as Piper moved off as well.

  She was back in less than a minute with a lantern that wasn’t dead. Pushing a bunch of mail and an empty pizza box to one end of a coffee table, she set it down. “Should’ve cleaned up,” she muttered. “It’s on my list.”

  The lantern illuminated the room. Curious, he took a good look around. The Victorian had been built what had to be close to a hundred years ago. The ceiling was high, the moldings original to the time period, the wood floor scarred but gorgeous. The furnishings were comfy and clearly well lived in, and plants thrived throughout the room. The bookshelves were filled, and there was just enough clutter and mess to give off the sense that this house had earned the right to be called a home. He didn’t know why, but he loved that she was . . . well, messy. “Nice place. You live alone?”

  “I grew up here with my brother and sister, but at the moment, Gavin’s working in Phoenix, and Winnie’s in school at UCSB.”

  “They didn’t come for your party?”

  She shrugged. “It’s expensive for them to get home, and anyway, Winnie needs to spend the time studying.”

  “You need to start a fire. It’s freezing in here. You’ll never be able to sleep.” He moved to the huge wood stove to do it for her, but she stopped him, her expression dialed to grim as she took in the blood seeping through his clothes. “I’ve got this.” Hunkering low in front of the stove, she lit a match. In less than sixty seconds she had a fire going from what clearly had been a pre-prepped fire stack.

  “Impressive,” he said, insanely curious about this tough woman who, according to both his dad and the guarded look she wore like a cloak, had been through hell in her life.

  He wanted to know more.

  “Not my first time,” she said. Rising, she came back to him, looking him over carefully. “She got you good.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”

  She lifted a hand and touched his jaw, which was also burning now that he thought of it.

  “Take off the jacket,” she said.

  “What, no dinner first?”

  “Off,” she said, not charmed, and then lent her hands to the cause, tugging at it until he took over and let it hit the wood floor with a wet thwap. They both looked down at his torso. Yep. Blood was seeping through his shirt in several places, on his neck, arms, chest. And not that he was about to tell her, but his right thigh too.

 
; “Dammit,” she muttered and grabbed her medical bag, which she dropped at his feet. “Strip.”

  Chapter 4

  “I’ve been called worse.”

  The last time a woman had ordered Cam to strip had been a very different scene altogether, and it’d been a while. Generally speaking, he liked to be behind the wheel in most situations, but he’d never had any complaints about a woman driving in his bed. “Interesting bedside manner.”

  “Okay,” she said. “How about strip, please.”

  He laughed, and he realized that until tonight, it’d been a damn long time for that too. “Well, since you asked so nicely . . .” But still he hesitated.

  “Trust me, I’ve seen it all before.”

  He pulled off his shirt, wincing when the cotton stuck to the deepest slice across his chest.

  Piper blinked, and for the first time all night, appeared short of words.

  It was pretty damn cute, especially with the mud on her nose. “Thought you’ve seen it all before.” She bit her lower lip, eyes suddenly hooded, and he couldn’t resist teasing her. “So, how do I stack up?”

  That got her, and she rolled her eyes. “Like you don’t know. Sit.”

  The couch seemed too . . . personal, so he sat on her coffee table. She dropped to her knees at his side and doctored up first the cut on his left palm from where he’d nicked himself in his dad’s kitchen, and then the two slices on his left biceps, and then the biggest one across his chest, during which time he did his best to ignore the feel of her soft breath on his skin and failed.

  When she’d finished, she looked down at his cargoes and saw the blood seeping through from his thigh. Rising to her feet, she stepped back, gesturing for him to lose the pants too.

  “Seriously,” he said. “Doesn’t even have to be dinner. An appetizer would work.”

  “If you’re real good, I’ll give you a sticker.”

  “How about letting me look at your secret secret bucket list instead?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “How about we stop talking now?”

  “Wait.” He cocked his head. “Does this mean you also have a secret bucket list? And possibly a not-so-secret bucket list?”

  She had hands on hips; a fresh, clean gauze in one hand, antibiotic ointment in the other, her expression dialed to Not Feeling Playful.

  With a rough laugh, he stood and took the gauze and ointment from her. “I got this one, Doc.” And then he gestured for her to turn around.

  She did with a smirk, and then spoke over her shoulder. “Didn’t peg you for the shy type.”

  “Oh, I’m not shy.” He shoved his icy, muddy, wet cargoes to his thighs, and yeah, the cat had come within two inches of de-manning him. “Just didn’t want to have to fight you off.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I always get verbal consent first. And I bet you didn’t want me to see your tighty-whities.”

  He gritted his teeth as he cleaned out the cut. Son of a bitch, that cat had gone deep. “They’re not tight and they’re not white.”

  “Batman undies?”

  “Commando,” he said, and that shut her up. When he’d finished and pulled his pants back up, he lifted his head and found her facing him. His brows went up. “See anything you like?”

  Instead of answering, she blushed. And he grinned because, yeah. She’d definitely seen something she liked.

  Snatching the gauze and tube of ointment from his hands, she vanished into the kitchen.

  A minute later, a burst of lightning lit up the living room like daylight, immediately followed by a thundering boom that shook the house and rattled the windows and actually changed the rhythm of his heartbeat.

  From the kitchen came a cry and a crash, and he went running.

  Piper was at the sink staring out the window, both hands on her mouth, a broken glass at her feet, eyes wide and unseeing on the storm outside. There was a tree branch brushing against the window and he moved toward her, intending to pull her away in case it broke. But the moment he set his hands on her shoulders, she jerked and whipped around, catching him with a surprise roundhouse kick to the gut.

  “Oh my God,” he heard her gasp as he straightened gingerly. “I’m so sorry!”

  “No problem,” he said on a rough exhale, rubbing his abs as he eyed her. “And here I was worried about not sparring with my team while I was here. Maybe we should hit the mats together sometime.”

  She didn’t smile. Her eyes were still huge and haunted, hollow in a way he understood better than he wanted to.

  “Hey,” he said. “It’s okay. You didn’t hurt me.”

  Closing her eyes, she nodded and turned away again, only to jump at the next flash of lightning and the immediate, earsplitting boom of thunder.

  She was terrified of the storm. “Piper.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I know,” he murmured, gently turning her to face him. Slowly she opened those slay-me eyes of hers and leveled him with all the emotion swimming in them. “Bad memory?”

  She hesitated and then gave a barely there shoulder lift. “The thunder gets me. Reminds me of the bombs.”

  Bombs? She was shaking almost violently now, and he ran his hands up and down her arms, realizing she wasn’t all the way back with him, but somewhere else, somewhere far away. “You’re cold and wet. Let’s—”

  “If you say get naked so we don’t die of hypothermia, I might kick you again.”

  Feisty, even when she was down. He liked that, very much. “Actually, it’d be only fair since you’ve already seen me naked.”

  “Keep dreaming.”

  She said this utterly without heat, and he got even more worried. “Piper. What can I do to help?”

  “I’m—”

  “Fine. Yeah, yeah, I know. But maybe I’m not.”

  She stared at him, and then slowly stepped into him so that their bodies brushed together. Offering him comfort, he realized, going still at the shock of human contact. He’d been burying emotions for so long, he’d almost forgotten how to access them. Or how much he loved the feel of a woman. Almost. He closed his arms around her, remembering he hadn’t put his shirt back on only when her chilled hands clutched his bare back. Allowing himself this, the contact he’d mostly shut himself off from, he let himself get lost in it.

  When her phone buzzed between them, she pulled away and tugged the thing from her pocket, breaking eye contact to read her text. “Your dad says that according to the police radio, there’s been a mudslide that wiped out access to our street, and that the creek is now a raging river of mud. He doesn’t think you should try to get back until daylight.”

  That had better be true and not some misguided sense of matchmaking.

  Clearly on the same page, Piper looked at him. “If he’s playing Cupid, I’ll kick his diabetic ass.”

  “I’ll help.”

  “Good. So we’re in agreement.”

  Cam knew he could get back to his dad’s with no problem. He could get just about anywhere under any conditions. It was what he did. But, even though Piper was clearly capable of handling herself, he hesitated to leave her alone.

  She led them back to the living room and pulled up the top of the coffee table, revealing a compartment that held blankets and pillows. She threw one of each at him and gestured to the couch.

  He’d slept on far worse.

  “Meow.”

  They both turned to look at Sweet Cheeks.

  “The couch is his tonight,” Piper told the cat. “You’re with me.”

  Ten minutes later, Cam was lying on the couch, his feet hanging off one end, staring up at the ceiling wondering how one simple hug had felt like so much more. In the matter of a single evening, Piper had turned him around and upside down, taking him completely off mission. At the thought of that mission and what had precipitated it, he braced for the now-familiar pain. It hit on cue, slicing through his chest, making the cat’s scratches feel like a caress.

  He’d gotten way off mission tonight. H
e’d come to make sure his dad was okay after Rowan’s death. Because God knew, Cam wasn’t. Not even close. But the other part of his mission related to a promise he’d made to Rowan. Cam intended to fulfill that promise no matter what, at any cost. Just thinking about it, remembering he was never going to see Rowan again, his chest got so tight that he couldn’t breathe for a long, torturous moment. When his lungs finally released, he sucked in air for a few beats. He was still concentrating on that when another crack of lightning and an ensuing boom of thunder hit, rocking the house on its foundation.

  He heard running footsteps, down a hall, down the stairs. Bare feet . . . and then incoming, which was a woman landing right on him.

  Burrowing in tight, Piper pressed her face to his throat.

  Drawing her in as close as he could, he pulled her under the blanket with him, wrapping her icy form up tight, reminding himself that this was about comfort and absolutely not about her sweet, warm, curvy bod plastered to his. She was clutching something in her hand—her journal. “You sleep with that thing?” he asked.

  “I was making a shopping list.” Her voice was muffled against his skin, and he smiled.

  “In the dark?”

  “My phone’s got a flashlight.”

  “Your phone also has a notes app,” he said.

  “I like to write by hand. It soothes me.”

  He’d laugh, but every time either of them shifted even a little bit, he could feel every inch of her against him. “How’s that working for you tonight?”

  “Clearly not so well. I’m . . . not a fan of these violent storms.”

  He was getting that. “Did something happen to you in a storm like this?”

  Silence.

  A tactic he’d used often enough, so he got it. “Storms used to freak me out too.”

  She lifted her face to look at him.

  He was guessing she hadn’t looked in the mirror because she still had mud on her nose and cheek.

  “What did you do? To get . . . not freaked out?” she asked.

  “My mom and I used to hide in the cellar. In hindsight, my fear probably came from her anxiety, but at the time I didn’t know that. I just knew I was five years old and terrified because my mom was.”