Heart of the Storm (Triple Diamond Book 4)

by Gemma Snow

  She didn’t even crack a smile. “I was scared,” she repeated, as if only just realizing it herself for the first time.

  Cade couldn’t help himself—he brought his own hand up to caress her cheek this time, fool that he was. The connection was undeniable, the soft heat of her skin making him wonder about all the other soft heat she had to offer.

  “And now?” he asked. Hell, was that his voice? It sounded primal and anticipatory and one thread away from the complete unraveling of his hard-earned self-control.

  “Terrified,” she whispered.

  It was the look in her eyes that broke him. Or maybe the way she clenched his shirt with her strong, delicate fingers and pulled him close. Maybe he pulled her close. Cade honestly didn’t know, and the moment their mouths met, he didn’t give a good goddamn. It was a clash of heat and need, lightning on a rainless night, bursting in sparks and fire all around them, as if it had been building for so very long that there had never been any other option but manic explosion.

  He slid his tongue across the seam of her lips and she yielded to him, opening to his exploring kiss and giving him just a taste more, when he needed her in full, had needed her in full for so very long that he thought he might just explode on the spot. He was going to need one hell of a cold shower when he got home.

  After a long moment, she pulled back, though she remained in the circle of his arms—when had he wrapped himself so fully around her? Her eyes were hooded and her lips swollen—she looked like a woman interrupted in the midst of a good ravishing, and Cade was firmly of the mind that a good ravishing was not to be interrupted.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I’m not acting myself right now. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  Her apology, her uncertainty, were unsettling. Hollie had never been a woman to second-guess herself, never been a woman to shy away from the unknown or the difficult or the complicated. And yet, she was back here, back among her oldest friends after nearly a decade away from them. Of course it was going to be difficult for her.

  “This conversation isn’t over,” Cade told her quietly and stepped back from her embrace to keep from diving in and kissing her all over again. As desperately as he wanted to feel her against him, against every part of him, it was more important that he knew what the hell had caused her to tuck tail and run all those years ago. And he wasn’t going to let her leave without the information—whether Hollie knew it or not.

  “I know,” she said quietly. “And we will have it. Just not yet.” She turned and he followed her around the pathway to the front of the house, stopping only when she pulled up short. She tilted her head and Cade looked over her shoulder to see Cam and Agent Walsh, their heads bent over something on the hood of Hollie’s Jeep.

  “Unexpected,” Hollie murmured, as though her return wasn’t unexpected, as though their kiss in the backyard wasn’t unexpected, as though his body’s reaction to her ass pressed against him wasn’t… Actually no, that was entirely expected.

  “You trust her?” he asked, a sense of protectiveness and honor kicking in that Cade had obviously misplaced when first finding her here.

  “Savannah? Beyond a shadow of a doubt. She’s smart as hell and cares for the people in her life. Comes from good stock. Why?”

  Cade shook his head. “It’s my sworn duty to protect this town,” he said, his voice only a little sardonic. “I can’t have you federal agents coming in and messing up all of our lives.”

  Hollie stiffened and Cade knew he should probably make light, should probably take it back, but he couldn’t soothe over her wounded feelings every time he expressed how he felt. He might have wanted her, might have ached for her like he’d never wanted another woman in his entire fucking life, but she had hurt him bad and he wasn’t ready to put that all in the past.

  “Deputy Flores,” Hollie said, stepping out from behind the rhododendron that had blocked them from view, “so good to see you again. Glad to see you and Savannah working together so closely.”

  There was no denying the blush on Savannah Walsh’s face. He’d dated a redhead or two in his time and they always blushed, but all Cade could think about was the way the flush had pinked Hollie’s cheeks, and how he had been the one to put it there.

  Camilla and Savannah stepped too far apart, in the way people did when they felt guilty for something they hadn’t done yet. Cade could almost relate.

  “Thanks for sharing the emergency routes with me,” Savannah said, gathering up the files they had been looking at. “Feel free to call me with any additional information.” She climbed into the Jeep and Hollie shot him one last wary glance and nod before she pulled the Jeep back down the dirt road and out of sight.

  “So, Savannah Walsh,” he said to Camilla, when they climbed into the truck. She raised a dark eyebrow at him.

  “So, Hollie Callihan,” she said in reply.

  So Hollie Callihan, indeed.

  Chapter Six

  “What can I get you guys?” Maddy Hollis asked the group gathered in the dining room of the Triple Diamond B&B. Across one wall hung a map of the region with several pinpoints and flags highlighting expected emergency areas, and the large table in the center of the room was covered in stacks of folders and files, with no fewer than six cups of coffee between them.

  “I think we’re okay,” Hollie said, standing up straight to stretch. Her back released with an audible pop. “Savannah went to grab some pizzas, so why don’t you guys stay and eat with us?”

  It had been nearly a full week since she had shared a disastrous, decadent kiss with both Sawyer and Cade on the same day—not that she had any intention of telling either of them about the other—and Hollie had been doing her best to ensure she was never alone in the same room as one or both of them. Yes, they deserved an explanation, there was no doubt of that. But she wasn’t just a little worried about how they would respond when she finally shared that unseemly truth, and she wasn’t about to trust herself alone with either man, not given what had happened the last time.

  There was also the whole matter of the daggers she couldn’t help but notice them shooting at each other. Cade and Sawyer hadn’t exactly been friends, certainly not the way she had been friends with both of them growing up, but there had been nothing to indicate such a potent dislike either. They’d been passing acquaintances, friendly enough, surviving the common, growing-up-poor circumstances each in their own ways—Sawyer with his fists and fury, Cade with his head down and determination sharp.

  Hollie, well, she wasn’t entirely sure what her coping mechanisms had been, but though they’d lived on the wrong side of town, especially for those oh-so-cruel kids, the sons and daughters of wealthy ranch owners and farmers, she’d had her grandmother and she’d had Wes. Simple dinners and hand-me-down clothes hadn’t seemed like a heartache, not with the love she’d had in her life.

  But no matter what their relationship had been, the two men—and they were oh-so-deliciously men—seemed to spark with anger and genuine hate when she saw them together. She had noticed it the first day, when striding across the lawn toward the fire engine—bickering, hushed voices, antagonism. And she’d noticed it since, in curt replies, angry expressions, jerky movements. She’d been away so long and so much had changed.

  And yet, so much hadn’t. And that truly was the reason she couldn’t be alone with either of these men and far, far more couldn’t be alone with both of them. Because she’d run, tail tucked, from Wolf Creek, terrified of the one thing she had been truly afraid of in her life, and those feelings, those desperate imaginings, hadn’t gone away with time. In fact, they were stronger now than they had ever been before. She had two prime examples of how those kinds of relationships weren’t just fantasy, weren’t just the depraved dreams of a stupid, foolish girl.

  And God, she wished she didn’t.

  “I’d love that,” Maddy said, settling into the chair beside Hollie. “Christian’s working on something out in the field and Ryder is down at the statio
n with Cade, but they’ll both be back soon.”

  Hollie couldn’t help the pounding of her heart when Maddy said Cade’s name. It was hard to forget the sensation of his body pressed against her own, the way she responded to his touch with animal instinct, how softly and sweetly he had wrapped his fingers into her hand and they had silently traveled down memory lane together.

  If only it was that easy.

  Because if had just been about Cade, if it had been just about the boy who lived a hundred feet behind her grandmother’s house, the boy she’d learned to climb trees with and stayed under a blanket of stars beside until the morning light crept over the Black Reef Mountains, Hollie probably wouldn’t have left in the first place—at least, she wouldn’t have left alone. But it wasn’t just Cade, and the memory of Cade’s mouth on her own didn’t come alone either, followed harsh and swift by the way Sawyer had tasted—spicy, like cinnamon whisky, rough and demanding in a way that even now, days later, still set her body alight.

  “Look who I found,” Savannah called, backing into the dining hall with a stack of pizza boxes in her hand. Camilla Flores followed behind, then the man himself, because why the fuck wouldn’t he be here? He glanced at her, and Hollie forced herself to look away from his gaze, from the way those deep brown eyes reminded her of things she was so much better off forgetting.

  A ding on her phone was a welcome distraction, until she glanced at the name on the screen.

  Headed your way to discuss projection updates. Need anything?

  Yeah, to get her head screwed on tight, but there was nothing Hollie could do about that right now.

  We’re set here. Walsh just grabbed pizza, so double time and you can eat.

  She placed the phone face down on the desk and closed her eyes for the briefest moment, letting the world around, the noise and chatter, fade away. She was here for a job, here to do projections and emergency response, a job she had fallen into ass backward and truly loved. She was not here to return to a darkened past that had left her as battered and bruised as the two people she had once cared so much for, the two people she had been trying to protect.

  “Is there something between you and the sheriff?” Maddy asked, pulling Hollie from the sweet respite of peace behind her closed eyes. She turned to glance at Maddy, who had folded her legs over the side of her chair and was peering intently up at her. “I’m not from around here, so forgive me for prying. But he’s got the wildest expression in his eyes when he looks at you and… I thought I might ask if everything was okay.”

  Maddy and her sister were good stock. Hollie had decided that from the get-go. Even if they hadn’t tamed two of Wolf Creek’s most notorious troublemakers and wrangled true love out of her old friends respectively, she would have believed that. They looked out for the people in their lives and genuinely cared about the answer to the question are you okay?

  Where to begin?

  “It’s complicated,” Hollie said simply. “I haven’t been back here in Wolf Creek in a long time.”

  “Well, I’m an expert at running away from my problems,” Maddy said with a wink. “Want a stranger’s advice on anything?”

  Hollie grinned. “Lily already offered,” she said. “And I’m not about to traipse off after two men—not that there’s any judgment. But I’m here to do a job.”

  Maddy raised a shapely eyebrow and glanced over Hollie’s shoulder. “Are you sure they know that?” she asked. “Because Fire Captain Matthews looks about ready to shoot daggers.”

  Hollie swung around in her chair so fast she nearly fell out of it, but she still couldn’t ignore the soft chuckles from Maddy’s direction.

  “Those boys have been at each other’s throats since the day I arrived in Wolf Creek,” she said. “Ryder and Christian said it’s been a lot longer than that.”

  Hollie managed to tear her gaze away from the sight of Sawyer in a black and red flannel jacket that, coupled with the long red beard and hair and the fierce wildness in his eyes, made him look like some mountain lumberjack returned to civilization.

  “How long?” she asked, a sneaking suspicion climbing up her back with the soothing sensation of a tarantula crossing her skin. Maddy just shrugged.

  “They didn’t say exactly. I think Ryder mentioned that something happened a while back to make ’em dislike each other so much. He says he barely remembers them talking when they were in high school, but Ryder and Christian are a bit older, so what would they even know, right?”

  “Right.” The bite of pizza Hollie had just taken tasted a little like ash, but there wasn’t much she could do about it right now. Two Hollis sisters, four Hollis sisters’—lovers? Partners? Boyfriends?—Savannah, Camilla Flores and two guys from the fire station were spread out around the room and chatting wildly. There was no way she could have this all-important conversation with an audience. Even an audience who would probably understand better than anyone else ever would.

  So not the point.

  The point was—she was going to have to talk to them. And she was going to have to do it tonight. Together. She hadn’t actually planned to tell either of them the truth, not when Sawyer had asked for an explanation, nor when Cade had made it clear he wanted one. She’d been stalling, terrified, unsure. Now, she was all those things—and also determined to set matters straight, no matter how painful it was.

  As if on cue, a crack of lightning burst outside the window, followed by the ominous rumbling of thunder not so far in the distance. Yeah, seems about right.

  Hollie chatted with Maddy and her husbands—husbands!— for a few more minutes about the effects of flash flooding on agriculture and the expected yield for their crops this early in the season. Christian Harlow was covered in ink and wearing a loose Jack Daniel’s tank top that showed a hint of curving, powerful muscle from behind a leather jacket. He hardly seemed the type to grow animated over the return on legumes, but his eyes actually did sparkle when discussing the year’s crop rotation.

  Lily joined them and soon the whole room was engaged in a round table of stories and conversations that started up and left off, finished and repeated. It reminded her of the early years, living with grandma and Wes, back when it had been the three of them, three orphans in their own ways, against the world.

  Traveling had been fundamental to her as a person—the next adventure, the next jump, the next climb, the next rescue mission or new destination. They had all helped to make Hollie into who she was. But they had also prevented her from making those lasting connections, from having a dinner table she could return to after late nights, from banter forged after years of love and care and shared experiences.

  And I’ve missed it.

  Damn, if that wasn’t a dangerous thing to admit, especially when two of the men who had both spent so many nights at her dinner table were just over there and she didn’t know which eyes were more dangerous to catch, which mouth was curved into a more enticing and troublesome smirk, which strong fingers across folded arms or laid flat on the table were calling to her baser instincts with more misplaced lust.

  The room slowly began to empty of people. Lily gave her a long hug and Dec and Micah both stopped by to bid their goodnights. Their Search and Rescue camp just up the mountain from the Triple Diamond Ranch would prove indispensable if predictions surrounding the flood runoffs came to fruition.

  “Can we get you guys anything else for the night?” Maddy asked. She, Ryder and Christian began gathering the trash from dinner. “Looks like you’ll be burning the midnight oil for a while.” She indicated the stack of papers that Hollie had placed on the table behind her.

  Hollie smiled. “I think we’re okay. I have a few more emergency preparations I’d like to go over, but we can all see to ourselves. You guys have been great, truly.” Maddy had a lovely smile and she bestowed it upon Hollie now, before handing a stack of pizza boxes to Christian.

  “You’re lucky you have a great ass,” Hollie heard him murmur, but the expression on his face showed that
he had no problem at all with spending his life working by her side. Ryder didn’t even try to hide his love for Maddy Hollis, not as he bid them all goodnight, wrapped his arm around her waist and headed out into the fresh spring air.

  “It’s going to rain,” Hollie said, when the door shut behind them, partially because it was going to rain—the sky had been cracking with distant lightning and the wind was thick with moisture—and partially because she wasn’t sure what to say next. Savannah and Camilla were still in the room with them and no part of Hollie want to ask them to leave. She did actually have work to go over with all of them and the conversation she would eventually have to share with Sawyer and Cade had no promises of being an easy one.

  “Fits our climate models,” Savannah put in. “If the storms start today, we can expect the dams to reach capacity within forty-eight hours.”

  The small group of them had gathered at the end of the long table, and even in her state of constant awareness of the two men in the room, Hollie couldn’t deny that Savannah was sitting closer to Camilla Flores than was strictly necessary.

  Good for her. We don’t all have to give up dreams of love and acceptance.

  “Sav’s right.” Hollie stood from the table and walked over the map of Lewis and Clark County. “The Wolf Creek Bridge is priority, since we’re going to need a quick evacuation route if it comes to that. Cade, I want you to take point on bridge management.” She turned to face him, which was a mistake. He had taken off his regulation jacket on first arriving, but Hollie hadn’t allowed herself to enjoy the way his dark green Henley pulled across those muscles, muscles she had felt under her fingertips, muscles that she wanted to taste, to touch to caress from when she had first understood what if meant to feel those things. This Cade was not a young man still in his early adulthood. He was pure and masculine and full of strength, and she couldn’t deny how much it called to her, how much she wanted to do more than stand in her backyard and hold hands.