by Jill Shalvis
Chance.
All thoughts of sleep vanished, replaced by images of comforting him, holding him close, somehow making him accept the fact that for once, she could help him. Even if that help came only in the form of comfort.
She was just outside his office door before she heard his low, quiet voice say, “Yes, everyone’s safe.”
“And Ally,” came Lucy’s voice from the speakerphone on his desk. “How’s my Ally?”
Chance was leaning on his desk, arms crossed, staring out the windows into the dark night. Every inch of his body looked tense and taut as steel. As if he sensed her, he turned to the door. Their gazes met and locked. “Ally’s okay,” he said, staring at her. Absorbing her.
“And you?” Lucy asked, blissfully unaware of the tension now shimmering in the room. “I know you too damn well, Chance. You’ll be the one out there where it’s not safe.”
Chance didn’t break eye contact with Ally. “I’ll be fine. I have to go, but I’ll call you first thing in the morning, okay?”
“Fine. But Chance?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you, as if you were my own son. I just wanted you to know that.”
CHANCE TURNED AWAY from the window and grabbed the phone. With his throat suddenly tight, so tight he could barely speak much less breathe, he was eternally grateful for the dark room.
“Say it,” Lucy said in his ear. “You don’t have to tell me you love me back, just say you know I love you, and that you believe it.”
His eyes burned, and it wasn’t from inhaling smoke for hours. “Lucy.”
Her voice softened. “Hon, I know damn well you’ve never let your own family close enough to tell you how they feel, so let me tell you tonight of all nights, when things are as bad as they can get. Everyone needs that, needs to know they’re loved.”
He hadn’t ever believed that, until now, but he couldn’t speak past the football-size lump in his throat. He was painfully aware of Ally watching him.
“Chance? I’m going to keep telling you, do you hear me?”
“Hard to miss it,” he managed gruffly. “You’re shouting.”
Although he knew Ally could no longer hear Lucy’s side of the conversation, he saw her smile. It was a bit ragged, as was she from the night’s events, and more than anything, he wanted to hold her. “I’ve really got to go.”
“Okay, you don’t want to talk mushy, I understand. But I meant what I said.” Lucy’s voice was full of warmth and affection. “Goodnight, Chance.”
“Goodnight…and Lucy?” He waited until the last possible second to say it. “I love you, too.”
He hung up and stared at the phone for a long moment before lifting his head. Ally was still there, silhouetted in the dark, open doorway. She was filthy, smelled like smoke, was pale as a ghost, and she’d never looked more beautiful to him. He wanted her, probably more than he’d ever wanted anyone, but that wasn’t what scared him now, as he’d felt that need before, with other women. It was how badly he wanted to bury his face in her hair, wanted her to hold him, while together they rode out this terrible, haunting sense of…aloneness.
That was entirely new.
“You okay?” she asked, her voice soft and somehow comforting in the dark.
“You should be in bed.” Another image he didn’t need, her in a bed, all tangled in the silky sheets, hair spread over the pillow, lips soft and inviting…
“I’m going soon.”
Good. Great. He’d be picturing that for the rest of the night. “Tired of the big, bad wilderness yet?”
“I miss the city,” she admitted. “But I’m not tired of Wyoming.”
Which wouldn’t hold her here. He knew that.
“And to be honest…”
No, don’t be honest, he wanted to say. Don’t open up to me. Don’t make me care any more than I already do.
“In the month before I came…” Her eyes flickered with embarrassment. “I managed to mess things up. I…lost my job when they accused me of stealing.”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“No,” she agreed softly. “I wouldn’t. But Thomas didn’t have such qualms, and—”
“Thomas?”
“My very ex-boyfriend. He stole some classics and let me take the blame. Luckily he’s the one that ended up in prison.”
Chance was surprised at the hot white surge of fury that caused within him. “Doesn’t sound like a good enough punishment to me.”
To his surprise, she laughed. “It worked for me, once I got Lucy’s letter asking me to come to Wyoming.”
He gave in to the curiosity he’d been fighting. “Jo says your family calls a lot. Are you supporting all of them?”
“Does Jo always tell you about other people’s private messages?”
“When she’s worried about a friend.”
Now it was Ally’s turn to grimace. “She doesn’t consider me a friend.”
It surprised him, the look of hurt. And knowing he’d put most of it there made him uncomfortable. “I know that at first the staff wasn’t exactly welcoming, but I also know that’s changed.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Look, you work hard, you’re good to everyone, and you genuinely care about this place and what we’re doing. Any of them would do just about anything for you, you’ve got to know that.”
She stared at him, her eyes suspiciously bright, and he groaned out loud.
But she quickly lifted a hand. “No, I’m okay. Really.” She sniffed and shot him an embarrassed laugh. “But they like me? They really like me?” She swiped at a tear. “I like them, too, very much. And despite not wanting to…” She moved toward him now, oh God, right toward him, with a soft, warm light in her gaze. “I like you, too, Chance. A lot.”
He didn’t want to know this, and yet in a sick way, he did want to know it. Sleep, he decided. He needed sleep. That was all it was, just plain exhaustion.
Halfway convinced, he straightened away from the desk, but all that did was bring him into closer contact with the woman he couldn’t get out of his head.
Sweet and fiery. Shy yet sexy. Smart as hell, but somewhat naive. Adventurous. Ally was all those things, and every one of them drove him crazy.
“You know all about me,” she whispered, lifting a hand to his jaw. “But you never talk about yourself.”
Her touch set his body on fire. “Not everyone is an open book.”
She didn’t take the bait and back off. Antsy Ally was learning to stand up for herself, and damn if that wasn’t arousing all in itself.
“You’re not afraid of a little conversation, are you?” she murmured, dancing her fingers across his skin.
He might have laughed at that open dare, but she was still watching him so intently. Curiously. She really wanted to know about him.
“Tell me about you, about your family,” she pressed.
“I have one,” he said.
“Ooh, three whole words about yourself.”
“Very funny.” He grabbed her hand so she couldn’t touch him. “You already know everything. My parents are world travelers. They live in Las Vegas now. And I have two older brothers. Remember?”
“Yes… So you’re the baby of the family.” She smiled at that. “Hard to imagine. Do you see them often?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Are you sure you’re not tired? Because you look tired.”
“Why not?” she repeated patiently.
“They’re busy.”
“Would you be there for them if they needed you?”
“You mean would I send them money for a summer wardrobe?” He laughed when she rolled her eyes. “No. But yeah, I’d be there if they needed me.”
“And what about the friend who died? Were you married to her?”
“No.” When she continued to look at him questioningly, without censure or morbid curiosity, just a genuine need to know about him, he sighed. “Tina and I were young and stupid, and thought we wer
e in love.”
“She…loved you.” The words were softly spoken, so softly he had to lean close to hear. A strand of her hair clung to the stubble on his jaw. “And you loved her.”
“Yes,” he said, then hesitated. “At least I thought so at the time, though I never told her. But now…” Now the truth was, he wasn’t so certain. Tina had been sweet and lovely, but so damn needy and vulnerable, despite her efforts to prove otherwise. Now he couldn’t imagine loving the woman she’d been, and it made him sad. “I don’t know,” he said quietly.
“I understand,” she whispered, putting her hand on his chest again. “I’ve been fooled by my heart.”
“Thomas.”
“Yes.”
“He hurt you.”
“And you’ve been hurt, too.”
“Yes,” he admitted, then shook his head. “I have no idea what it is about you that makes me tell you things.”
“Because it’s nice to be talking instead of circling each other, or—” She bit her lower lip and looked at him from beneath her lashes.
“Or…?”
“Kissing,” she whispered.
“You don’t like the kissing?”
“Oh, I like the kissing.” Her gazed dropped to his mouth. “Too much.”
“But? I’m sure I sensed one at the end of that sentence.”
“But…we’re different.”
Unable to keep his distance, he stepped even loser. Their thighs bumped. “I tried to tell you that.”
“I’m slow and careful—”
“I wouldn’t say careful exactly,” he interrupted.
“And you’re fast and reckless.”
“I assume we’re not talking about sex.” Chance heard his voice go rough with desire, all the more so when she sucked in a shaky breath. He still didn’t touch her with his hands, though he itched to. Their bodies were straining toward each other, only a whisper apart. He could smell her, could feel her soft breath, and the warmth of her skin. “Because believe me,” he murmured in her ear. “I like it slow and fast. Steady and reckless. I like it any way at all.”
Her eyes sort of glazed over at that, and she licked her lips. “I’m…not talking about that. I meant knowing how different we are, it’s hard to imagine…anything between us. Other than…”
His hands went to her waist, slowly slid around and up her spine. “Sex,” he finished for her.
“Yes, well.” She blushed. “I’m pretty sure that would work just fine.”
It was a mistake, but in spite of smelling like fire, in spite of the grime clinging to both of them, he plowed his fingers through her hair from beneath, holding her head in his palms. He could tell by the way she was staring at him, wide-eyed, lips tremulous and open, that she wanted him to kiss her. He lowered his face. “Let’s find out,” he suggested against her lips.
“I…I—”
He slid the tip of his tongue over the seam of her mouth and she moaned. “I think that would be playing with fire.” She pressed her hands to his chest. “And then there’s all those other women you’re wanting.” Her eyes had gone solemn. “I don’t like to share, Chance.”
She was waiting…hoping, he’d say something more. Maybe even offer her some sort of commitment to go with the sex they both wanted so badly that they were shaking. She was wondering if maybe he could change, change for her, and his heart clenched hard.
He couldn’t. Wouldn’t.
“Chance…” Slowly, eyes on his, she kissed his jaw.
His heart leaped. “Stop.”
She kissed the corner of his mouth.
“If I touch you now,” he said in a voice so thick and grainy he hardly recognized it, putting his hands on her hips to hold her away. “I won’t stop. I won’t stop until I’ve pulled off all our clothes, until I’ve touched and licked and kissed and sucked every inch of you.”
Her mouth fell open.
“I won’t stop until we’re both mindless with it, completely gone, until there’s nothing else. Do you understand what I’m saying, Ally?”
She only blinked and stared at him.
Chance was so turned on by his own images that he’d probably explode with just one kiss. “I’m saying you have to stop looking at me like that or it’s going to happen, no ties or promises attached. I’m saying you should turn and run like hell.”
She stared at her hand on his chest. Slowly she slid it over him, from one side to the other, and with each pass over his heart, the poor sucker doubled its workload. “I don’t want to run.” She lifted her gaze to his, daring. “Why should I? Because you’re too big and tough for me? Well guess what? I’m pretty tough, too.”
“Not tough enough,” he said. Then, because he was close to doing something he’d never done before, because he was close to begging a woman, he turned and walked away. It wasn’t until he was alone in his bed that he realized the truth.
She was tough. Far tougher than he.
9
THE FIRE INSPECTOR found empty soda cans, food wrappings, and a science text book near the origination point of the fire. The book just happened to come from the school Brian attended.
And Brian had been on the mountain yesterday.
He’d also been unsupervised for a great part of the afternoon, not to mention his sullen attitude when Chance tried to talk to him about it.
To Ally’s horrified shock, the boy refused to either defend himself or give them an alibi for his whereabouts.
They sat in the lodge, on the main floor. Ally, Chance, the fire chief, the fire inspector, Jo and the very quiet Brian, all around one of the huge tables they used to feed their lunch crowds.
“Brian, please.” Ally came close to him, put her hand on his arm and tried to reach him. “Please, just tell them you didn’t start the fire.”
His face defined defiance. “And you’ll believe me, right?”
“Yes, I’ll believe you.”
He stared at his feet, stubbornly mute.
“I will. We’ll all believe you.” She looked up into Chance’s eyes, silently begging him for help. “Won’t we?”
For once, his expression was free of teasing humor or that contagious wild heat, but instead, filled with everything he was feeling, fear leading the way.
Big, bad, wild man T. J. Chance was afraid.
And all Ally could do was tuck her hands in her pockets, because this wasn’t her problem, her fight. She wasn’t supposed to care.
But she did, so very much.
“Just tell the truth, Brian.” Chance’s voice was quiet and direct. “That’s all we’re asking.”
“But you already know where I was yesterday. On the mountain. Remember? You were annoyed to see me. Just like you always are.”
Chance closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they were filled with regret. “Do you know why you annoy me?”
“Yeah. I’m always in your way.”
“Because you remind me of myself when I was young and looking for trouble.”
Ally watched, heart in her throat. She knew Chance now, whether he liked it or not. She understood the wanderlust ways of his childhood. Understood the pain that the lifestyle had brought him later on with Tina, and the loss. He’d ended up here, and this was his home now. He’d learned, if not to love again, then at least that life didn’t have to be all loneliness.
But how to explain that to a teenager who’d never known anything else?
“It’s not annoyance I feel when I look at you,”
Chance told him. “And I’m sorry I let you think it. It’s remorse. Worry.”
Brian stared at Chance. “You…worry? About me?”
“More than you’ll ever know.”
Brian absorbed that for a moment. “But you had a billion other punks out there on the mountain yesterday. You’re not bugging any of them about the fire. It’s because you think I started the last one, and I didn’t.” His voice lowered to a mere whisper. “I really didn’t.”
A muscle jerked in Chance’s jaw
as he rose and walked around the table to Brian. He brushed past Ally and sat next to the boy then took Brian’s shoulders in his hands and looked at him eye to eye. “I believe you, Brian. And you know what else? Everyone here that’s worked with you? Everyone you’ve spoken to or done something for? We know you now, we see how happy you are here, and we know you wouldn’t do this.” Chance’s gaze didn’t leave Brian’s as he clearly tried to convey the seriousness of the situation, tried to convince Brian to cooperate. “But the inspector doesn’t know you, only your reputation, which is going to haunt you for a while yet, no matter how you’ve changed.”
With heartbreaking intensity, Brian soaked up every word. “I have changed.”
“I know. I know, Slick. So help us out. Help us help you.”
Brian’s gaze revealed his fear, his insecurity, and Ally wanted to cry. How many times in his life had someone stood behind him? Promised to back him up? And meant it?
Probably never.
In comparison, her life had been a piece of cake. But not Chance’s. No matter how he tried to keep his distance, she could see the truth, could see that he looked into that boy’s eyes and saw a kindred spirit that broke his heart.
It was another crack in to the wild man image, another insight into the complicated man that was T. J. Chance.
“Please, Brian,” Chance urged softly.
Brian swallowed hard and in that moment, Ally was so certain he hadn’t started that fire, either fire, that she would’ve staked her very life on it. He loved this place as much as she did, and probably for many of the same reasons. Here, unlike any other place on earth, he’d found he belonged. He was wanted, needed.
Here, he was home.
She waited for him to tell everyone that very thing.
“Tell the inspector,” Chance said into the tense, silent room. “Tell him you didn’t do it so we can get on with our day. We have to get out there on the hill and patrol the morbidly curious today, I know how much you want to help me do that.”
But Brian’s eyes shuttered, and Ally knew before he even spoke that he wouldn’t defend himself.
“I have nothing to say,” he said, not meeting anyone’s gaze, especially Chance’s. “Nothing.”