“You’re not my boss,” she said, but then Peter stumbled and the jolt snapped Neva’s jaw shut. She gave his order serious consideration.
When they arrived at his house, she was surprised when he didn’t head inside the front door. Instead, with her still in his arms, Peter continued along the wide wrap-around porch to the backyard.
There, a flower garden stood alongside a small vegetable patch. A low hanging willow tree spanned the distance between the veggies and a green pond. A large built-in barbecue stood next to a wide wooden picnic table bracketed by mismatched chairs, and a hot tub gurgled off to the side, set in a deep bed of dark grey pea gravel. How pretty, she thought.
“Hold your breath,” Peter said, right before he dumped her, muddy clothes and all, straight into the hot tub.
She had enough sense not to shriek like Carla would, and instead gulped a huge breath before she went all the way under.
Soooo good, Neva thought, her skin heating as she gladly sank lower into the bubbles and the oh-so-needed warmth. The hot water caressed her skin, her flesh, down to her bones.
By the time she came up for air, her body had ceased its jerking shivers and her teeth no longer chattered. She exhaled, opened her eyes, and saw Peter staring down at her, his grey eyes dark and broody like the clouds covering the sky.
She gave him a small smile even as rain pelted her face. “Ah…after the swim in the canal, this is heaven. Next time, though, a little warning might be helpful.”
“Words would have been wasteful.”
She didn’t respond. Why bother? Peter was nothing if not logical. Two could play that game, though.
“Why are you covered in dirt?” she asked.
Peter’s gaze flickered away from hers and a small muscle on the side of his jaw flickered before he answered. “It’s not dirt. It’s soot.”
“From a campfire?” she asked. When he shook his head, a heaviness enter her chest as her mind processed the soot and Peter’s father’s career. Soot meant fires. Fires meant firefighters. And if Peter was a firefighter...
After all the work the two of them had done together to support each other on a path created to bring them out of the misery that was their lives in high school, he’d gone and given up by pursuing the one career he’d sworn he’d never do.
“You became a firefighter,” she said dully. “Just like your father.”
He jerked his gaze back to hers. His eyes narrowed and a groove formed in his brow. He took a breath and blew it out slowly. “I’m glad it was you in that canal.”
She wasn’t sure what to make of that comment, so she tipped her chin to the side and waited for him to continue.
“You look good,” he said.
“You called me firewood,” she reminded him. Then she gave him a rueful grin. “Truthfully, I look like a drowned rat.”
He inhaled deeply. “You smell good, too.”
Her belly fluttered, but she shook her head. “I smell like a river otter.”
A rather rakish smile covered his face. “River otters must smell amazing, then.”
Heat rushed to her cheeks. Was Peter flirting? No. He couldn’t be. Peter Leary did not flirt. And he certainly never flirted with her. Not in a million years.
He gave her a side-glance. “Want to go out sometime?”
Her mouth dropped open. He had been flirting. Wow. Where on earth had that come from? Unless she’d misunderstood… “Wait—what? Like, on a date?”
His gaze latched onto hers, and he nodded.
“With you?” she asked, still in disbelief.
He nodded again, but his lips tightened.
“Of course not,” she sputtered. Yes, her libido had reacted when he’d scooped her up in his arms, but that was only because he was a hot male and it had been quite some time since her last boyfriend (and therefore quite some time since she’d had sex with anything that didn’t have batteries). Peter may be attractive, but he was Peter. The guy who’d let her down.
“Why not?”
“Peter.” She tried to sound firm. Factual. His high school crush on her sister made her stomach knot. “We’ve never been more than friends. You wanted my sister, remember? If we dated, which is an absurd thought after all these years, you’d only be thinking of Carla.”
A muscle flickered at the corner of his mouth. His eyes grew hooded. “I disagree.”
“We’re not doing this. I have no interest in dating you and never have,” she flat-out lied, but she wasn’t about to confess her brief youthful desire. “Besides, you’re leaving in what, two weeks? Clearly, there’s no potential here. Why waste our time? Leave it alone, and leave me alone.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Seriously. Let’s make this easy on ourselves and stick to being neighbors.” To avoid any further discussion of the matter, and because she was so very completely confounded by the conversation and her reactions to someone she’d never thought she’d see again, she gulped in a deep breath and sank underwater.
A moment later, she popped back up to the surface. Peter had sat down on the side of the hot tub, one hand drifting in the water, rain dripping off his hair and creating rivulets on his still-bared chest. Did the man not believe in ever buttoning his shirt?
“How’s your mom?” he asked.
“She died.”
He started.
“It was her heart condition,” Neva explained. “Left us two years after Dad died. It wasn’t completely unexpected, just more sudden that we’d expected.”
“I’m so sorry. That’s a lot, losing both parents so close together.”
“Thanks.”
“So Carla’s living here, too?” he asked.
A thought struck her. Had he only asked her out because she now looked like Carla, with her hair long instead of short? Her chest went tight at the thought. Didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to date Peter, anyway. “My sister is either in Monte Carlo, gambling with her sixty-year-old rich as Croesus fiancé, or she’s in Vegas, gambling with her fifty-year-old rich as Croesus soon-to-be ex-fiancé. I’m not quite sure where she is in her cycle of sugar daddies. We don’t exactly talk.”
A pang hit her chest as an image of her own ex-fiancé came to mind. Do not go there. No thinking about Joel right now. Or what Carla had done to him. To her.
Peter swirled the water, sending ripples through the surface. Steam followed the path his hand made. Neva shifted, but the action sent her off-balance and she swayed forward, overcompensating. Underwater, her breast accidentally brushed against his hand and she gasped. He quickly flicked his gaze to meet hers. Heat radiated from his eyes.
She adjusted her body weight in the water so she was no longer close enough to touch him. Back to safety.
“Too bad. It would have been good to see her again,” Peter said. “Think she’ll come see you anytime soon?”
Disappointment settled in her belly and she frowned. She’d been right—Peter had asked her out because she reminded him of her sister. If she’d accepted his date, Peter would have spent the time thinking of Carla. “Most definitely my sister will have no plans to visit Meadowview.”
“Why not?”
She wasn’t about to tell him she actually had no idea where her sister was. Shrugging, she said, “She’d ruin her manicure. Or mar her alabaster skin with a mosquito bite. Or actually have to step on dirt, the horror.”
“Doesn’t sound like Carla.”
“It sounds exactly like my twin. Besides, what would you know? She barely spoke to you in all the years when you and I were friends.”
The line in his forehead deepened. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then snapped it shut and flicked his gaze off hers and away, staring at something out in the distance.
Regret surged through her. She’d been caustic, and he hadn’t deserved that. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“Next time you talk to her, tell her I said hi. Let her know that if she ever does come to Meadowview, my door is open.�
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“Of course it is,” Neva said under her breath.
“What does that mean?”
“Never mind. I think the hot tub did its trick—my teeth stopped chattering. Do you have a towel?”
Peter sat for a while, still staring at her, while the rain pounded down around them, making large plops in the steaming water of the hot tub.
“Um, Peter? Not to be a rude rescuee, but I think I’m done with being wet for one day. And you’re soaking wet and the rain is cold. I’d hate for you to get sick after playing the hero.”
He jolted and tore his gaze away from hers. In seconds, he’d pulled two large beach towels from a storage unit next to the barbeque. After slinging a towel over his shoulders, he brought one over to her.
“Turn your back?” she asked.
“I’ve already seen you in your bra and panties.”
“Just do it, okay?”
“For you, anything.” He turned his back, though, and held the towel out behind him for her to grab.
She made her way to the edge of the hot tub and pulled herself to standing. Rain pelted her skin, but steam rose around her and she felt only warmth. Reaching out, she snagged the towel from Peter’s outstretched hand, stepped out of the hot tub, and wrapped herself and into the dry cocoon the beach towel made.
“You are wearing cute panties,” he commented.
She knew Peter. That wasn’t a pick-up line. “Um, thanks?” She tightened the towel around her and took a few ginger steps forward, but the pea gravel surrounding the hot tub bit at her bare feet. “Ouch.”
“Your undies look like that polka-dot dress you wore all junior year.”
“You remember my dress?” She took another step, then winced when her heel hit a rather large pebble.
“Of course,” he said, surprising her by picking her up and holding her in his arms once again. “Positive events experienced in the teen years have a long shelf life in people’s memories,” he added, then strode forward, toward his house, as if she weighed as much as a cat. Or firewood, apparently.
“My dress was a positive memory?” she asked, clinging tightly to his neck.
“Hanging out with you was. Best days of my life.”
She ignored the sudden beating of her heart and how his scent—a delicious mix of sweat, ash, and Peter—wafted over her, and refrained from reminding him that during those best days he referred to, he’d been mooning over her twin sister. Carla, in turn, had done her utter best to ignore Peter, the King o’ the Geeks.
He carried her inside and carefully placed her down on the couch before rummaging around in a hall closet.
“My aunt left some of her clothes and shoes behind,” he said. “You can change into something dry of hers in the living room. The keys are on the front seat of my truck out front. Drive yourself home. I’ll walk over in the morning and collect the truck.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Shower. Fall into bed. Go to sleep.”
“And you want me to just take your truck? After you accused me of stealing your water?” she teased.
He turned back to face her and sagged against the door. For the first time since he poked his head over the berm, she noticed how haggard he looked. Exhausted, really. His hands even shook.
She sobered. “How bad was the fire?”
“Over five thousand acres. Took us three days to get it contained. We gave everything we had to make sure the fire path stayed downstream. In the Maidu River Canyon, if the fire had turned direction, well…no more Meadowview.”
“I’m sorry.”
He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the door. “I got home minutes before I saw you. I was headed to the shower and then bed.”
“But I was a fool and you had to come rescue me.”
The corner of his mouth tipped up. “A good-smelling fool.”
Her tummy danced. “I was lucky you were there. Thank you for helping me.”
“Yanking you out was simply a neighborly thing to do, whether or not you wanted the help.”
She nodded, but for some reason it bothered her that he would’ve rescued just about anybody. “You need to go take care of yourself now. And Peter? I owe you.”
He opened his eyes and grinned at her. The same bright-eyed, slightly self-assuming grin that had once lit up her life. “You don’t…but if you’re offering, I’m sure I can think of something.”
Even bone-tired, he waited where he was, but did turn his back as she slipped into his aunt’s clothes. Then he staggered to the front door and held it open for her, even as he could barely hold open his eyes.
“I’ll see you soon, Farmer Girl,” he murmured, and dropped a light kiss on the top of her head. She could tell he watched as she made her way down the gravel pathway to his truck. Only when she cranked the truck’s engine did he lift his hand in a wave, turn, and head inside.
She’d repay him, all right. Only not in the way she really wanted. And what she really wanted with Peter Leary confused the heck out of her. Thank god he’d no longer be her neighbor in fourteen days. Because she wasn’t sure she could trust herself not to throw herself at him if he’d stuck around.
The morning sun glistened on drops of rain clinging to pine needles and oak leaves and warmed the now-clean air, all of which couldn’t take the stress off Peter as he strode down Granite Street, headed toward the fire station. He’d told himself he’d double-check that he hadn’t left anything in his locker at the station, but really, he needed a distraction to get Neva Tipton out of his mind.
Rescuing Neva yesterday had confused the bejesus out of him. Not the rescuing part—saving lives was his job. At least, it had been his job until yesterday. The fire he’d fought over the last few days would be his last. No, what had his mind in a twist was being reminded of how much he’d missed Neva after she’d arbitrarily cut off their friendship, and how seeing her brought back all the memories of having a huge crush on Carla and getting publically rejected over and over again.
High school had stunk, just about as a bad as a porcupine.
Although truthfully, high school stunk for most kids, even the popular ones. He knew that for a fact. The most popular girl in school had told him this while crying on his shoulder. He’d learned from a sobbing Carla that popularity was but a façade—underneath, she lived with deep pain. At least people had liked her outward appearance, which had made life somewhat more bearable for her. But for someone like him, who never, but ever, said the right thing, those four years had been tough.
Only Neva had understood him. And oddly enough, in the end, Carla had, too. So much that she’d trusted him with a huge secret—one she’d never shared with anyone, not even her sister. A secret he’d kept and would continue to keep. He’d given his word.
He knew he’d shocked Neva when he’d asked her out—shocked himself, to tell the truth. But she’d been so open…vulnerable…beautiful…just like the girl he used to know. Only now she was a woman, and his body had responded instantly, flooding him with desire. The words had flown out of his mouth before he knew he was even considering asking her out.
Years before, they’d been best friends until he’d said something wrong and ruined their friendship. What he’d said, he had no clue. Neva never told him. But he always said the wrong thing. The fault had to have been with him.
He wanted to change all that. Make things right again before he left. Somehow.
Apparently, though, asking Neva out on a date hadn’t been the correct path. She’d turned him down flat. Although he completely disagreed with her justification. He wouldn’t be thinking of Carla if he went on a date with Neva. No way. Good luck convincing Neva of that, though.
Because for three years and eight months, all he’d done was crush on her sister. And he’d never told Neva when he’d stopped. And he’d never told her he’d stopped crushing on Carla because of Neva. He’d held off at first, scared to ruin their friendship. Then, the night of the Senior Party when she’d pr
etended to be Carla and he’d kissed her, she proved his worst fears right by running away and never speaking to him again. Didn’t take an idiot to see all she’d ever wanted from him was friendship, and he’d screwed that all up.
But they hadn’t been friends in years, so why not act on his desires now?
His cell phone rang and he pulled it out of his pocket, noticing an international number on the screen. He pressed the Accept button and held the phone up to his ear. “Maude?”
“Peter! It’s polite to call an old lady back when she leaves a message,” his aunt said, her voice warm, betraying a tenderness even through the chiding words. The line crackled—wherever she was, the cell reception was crappy.
“Great to finally hear your voice, Maude. I called the number you left, but the guy who answered spoke in Portuguese. Do you still need me to pick you up at the bus station in Meadowview?” he asked. “Thirteen days from today, right? The noon bus?”
“I need to tell you something important. First, though, call your father. He wants to—”
A series of loud pops crackled in his ear. Maude’s voice sounded in staccato. He couldn’t make out what she was saying, and he definitely didn’t want to talk about his father. “Maude? You there? Want to call me back when you have better reception?”
More pops and stutters, then the line went dead. He rolled his eyes. If only his aunt would learn how to text, but like many her age, she considered a phone to be for speaking vocally and refused to learn the communication of texting. Whatever it was she wanted to tell him, it would have to wait until her reception improved.
And he wasn’t calling his father.
The heady scent of baking bread filled the air. At the far end of Main Street, a light shone through the plate glass window of Swinton’s Bakery. Jenna Swinton, the fourth generation of Swintons to own the bakery, was busy kneading bread. The loaves would be coming out of the oven in a couple of hours, ready for delivery to Camden and Dillard’s, the two grocery stores in town, as well as to some of the local restaurants. He crossed Granite Street to see a faded blue sedan heading down Market Street. Miss Ethel, one Maude’s elderly friends, was white-knuckling the thin steering wheel. She gave him a quick wave when she noticed him, the set her hand back on the wheel and focused ahead.
Charming the One: (Meadowview Heroes # 3) (The Meadowview Series Book 7) Page 3