Ready to Run

by Lauren Layne

  Enough for her to clear her head. Sort of.

  “I should go,” she whispered.

  Translation: We are so not talking about what just happened.

  Luke was apparently in agreement, because he simply nodded and stepped back even farther, giving her the space to retrieve her shoes.

  After she’d hurriedly tied the knot on the second one, she reached for the door handle, wanting nothing more than to run away without having to say a single word.

  Then she remembered she was an adult.

  Jordan fixed a smile on her face and turned back to him. “Thanks for the coffee.”

  The corner of his mouth tilted in amusement. “You’re welcome.”

  There. Perfectly civil, as though they hadn’t just devoured each other.

  Jordan was out the door before she could do what she really wanted to—kiss him all over again and beg him to show her to the bedroom.

  She didn’t look back until she’d reached the running path, but when she did, Luke Elliott was on his deck, leaning on the railing as he watched her.

  She didn’t wave. Neither did he.

  Perhaps because they both knew this was hardly goodbye.

  Chapter 14

  Book club was at Bree’s house, and Jordan was relieved that it was at a home she’d been to before. It somehow made her feel a little less like the outsider crashing the party of friends who’d known one another since childhood.

  Nobody made her feel like an outsider, though.

  From the second she’d been scolded for knocking on the door instead of just entering like everyone else, to the moment a glass of wine had been shoved into her hand, she’d felt welcome.

  Almost as comfortable with these women as she did with her girlfriends back home.

  Not that she wasn’t homesick—she’d spent over an hour that afternoon catching up on social media and replying to text messages she’d neglected.

  She’d chatted with Simon, wanting to get the scoop on the atmosphere around the office. Luckily, nobody thought it strange that she’d stayed in Montana longer than planned. In fact, there was apparently a good-natured bet on how long it would take Jordan to get her man.

  Into bed, or onto the show?

  No. No. She wasn’t even going there.

  The kiss had been a onetime thing, not to be repeated, and…

  “What?” she asked, realizing that Hailey had been talking at her and she hadn’t heard a single word.

  Hailey waved a carrot stick at her. “I was asking how your run was this morning. Did my crayon map help?”

  “Yes!” Jordan said, too loud. “Yes, so much. Thank you.”

  Hailey laughed a little in surprise. “You’re welcome. I suppose I’d be as skinny as you if I was that excited about finding a running path.”

  “It was nice to get some fresh air,” Jordan said. “The lake’s beautiful.”

  Hailey nodded. “It is. Most of the property’s been snatched up as vacation homes for people from the bigger cities, but a couple locals have done well for themselves. Luke actually lives there.”

  “Ah, yeah,” Jordan said, taking a sip of wine. “We crossed paths during our morning run.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Hailey said, stuffing the rest of the carrot in her mouth and reaching for a chip next, as though her vegetable quota was now fulfilled. “I always forget that he was the only guy on the high school football team who even pretended to stay in shape after graduation.”

  “Well, the rest of the firefighters are fit,” Jordan pointed out.

  “Sure.” Hailey waved her chip. “They have to be. But not like Luke.”

  “Which is lucky for you,” Bree said, bumping her hip against Jordan’s and joining the conversation. “It means that he won’t be a complete eyesore in all those hot-tub episodes, right?”

  Jordan couldn’t resist the grumpy grunt. “Let’s just say it’s less and less likely that that’s going to happen.”

  “Oh, don’t give up on him!” Bree said, touching Jordan’s arm.

  Jordan gave the two women a steady look. “Be perfectly honest. Can either of you really see him going along with this?”

  Hailey pursed her lips and rolled her eyes upward, and Bree bit into a buffalo wing and glanced away.

  Jordan laughed. “It’s like I thought. You ladies may be right about him needing to snap out of his post-Gil, post-wedding funk, but I don’t think it’s going to be on national television.”

  The other women exchanged a look. “You know about Gil?”

  “He mentioned it,” Jordan said carefully. “Not the details, just that they were best friends and that Gil died in a fire.”

  “Saddest thing,” Hailey said quietly. “The LHFD hadn’t lost a man in decades, and Gil was so young.”

  “And the nicest,” Bree said with a sigh. “Just that guy that everyone liked.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Jordan said. “It sounds like he was a friend.”

  “Gil was everyone’s friend, but…he and Luke were like brothers. They grew up next door to each other. Gil was an only child, and Luke only had a sister—”

  “Um, who’s awesome!” Tawny said from across the room, lifting her white zinfandel to indicate she was hearing every word.

  Bree waved a hand as though to say, yeah, yeah, and turned her attention back to Jordan. “Anyway. It was a crappy time for all of us. Worse for Luke, though. Bad enough to lose a best friend, but to be there—”

  Jordan’s head whipped around. “Luke was there?”

  Bree winced, realizing she’d perhaps said too much. “He didn’t mention it?”

  Jordan shook her head. No wonder he looked so closed off when Gil’s name had come up.

  “He never talks about it,” Bree said, lowering her voice. “I only know the details of what happened because Ryan was there. It was a three-alarm fire. Nothing they hadn’t handled hundreds of times before, but the roof collapse caught everyone off guard.”

  Jordan swallowed.

  Bree was silent for a moment. “Luke and Gil were the only ones who hadn’t gotten out when it happened. The others tried to get to them, but the frame of the front door was crushed; the whole thing was just…unstable.” She sucked in a long breath. “Luke came out with Gil on his back, but it was too late.”

  Jordan felt a prickle of tears in the corners of her eyes and wiped at them, as did Hailey and Bree.

  “Okay, enough of that,” Hailey said, inhaling and fanning her face. “Shall we talk about the terrible book?”

  “You picked the book,” Stacey said, coming around with a bottle of wine and doing top-offs.

  “Which is why I’m allowed to say it was terrible,” Hailey pointed out. “The rest of you have to be polite.”

  “Or not,” Stacey said. “It was sort of terrible.”

  “I liked it,” Isobel insisted.

  “Nerd,” Stacey said, blowing her best friend a kiss.

  Conversation shifted back to the book, most of the group indeed agreeing that it was at least boring if not downright awful.

  Jordan tried to pay attention, but it was hard to care when she hadn’t read the book. Even harder to focus when her mind kept going to Luke Elliott, for reasons that had nothing to do with why she was in Montana in the first place.

  And then, as though the Universe was keeping an eye on her, maybe judging her a little bit, Jordan’s phone buzzed.

  She winced. It was her boss.

  “Excuse me a moment,” she murmured to the group, before walking back toward the front door, where she’d spotted a small office nook.

  “Raven, hi!” she said, answering the phone and injecting enthusiasm into her voice.

  “Hey, babe. Sorry to be bugging you on a weekend night, but it’s been a crazy week; this is the first free minute I’ve gotten.”

  “No prob; what’s up?”

  “So, I tried to get approval on the increased salary for your guy.”

  “And?”

  “No can do. I t
hink they’re open to spending more, but not until they know the guy’s even interested in negotiations, you know? You get him to that point yet?”

  Not even close.

  Jordan blew out a breath and leaned against the desk. Decided to face the music. “Honestly, Raven? No. He hasn’t given me the slightest indication that he’s even considering it. I think he might be a lost cause.”

  “But you think he’s the one?”

  Jordan opened her mouth. Closed it, considered, then answered more carefully. “He’s exactly the type of reluctant sex appeal that could make this a hit.”

  “I hear a but,” her boss said moodily.

  “The problem is, the reluctant part is genuine. He’s got no interest in this. Truly. He’s a simple guy who drives a truck and drinks black coffee from a chipped mug.”

  Expensive coffee, but still.

  “He’s not playing coy when he says he doesn’t want to be on TV,” Jordan continued. “I don’t think there’s a single thing I can say to make the idea appeal to him.”

  “Shit,” Raven muttered. “Thinking. I’m thinking….So he’s a good guy, right?”

  Jordan blinked. “Yeah. Definitely.” Annoyingly stubborn but good. Good kisser…

  “Then what happened with the three brides? Good guys don’t leave one woman at the altar, much less three.”

  “Ah—”

  Raven groaned. “Jordan. Tell me you got the scoop there.”

  She ran a hand over her hair, not wanting to say out loud that she hadn’t gotten the scoop, because she was finding she liked these people too much to pry.

  “Jordie,” Raven said, sounding exasperated. “Find out. There’s got to be dirt there.”

  “I’m not going to blackmail Luke,” Jordan said.

  “Nobody’s asking you to. But get this: The network’s so excited about Jilted, they’re already thinking it’ll have spin-off potential. This Luke guy might not come around and want to be a contestant, but there’s still a story. Maybe one of his exes could be a potential for spin-off. A second chance for people ditched at the altar, or whatever.”

  Jordan felt a sudden wave of distaste. Not at Raven so much—her boss was just doing her job—but for the whole business of reality TV, the way people were treated as though they had ratings tattooed across their foreheads.

  “Look, babe, just see what you can do,” Raven said. “Give it another week, do some digging. If there’s nothing there, there’s nothing there, and we’ll bring you back to New York, get a decent cocktail in you, and rinse out all the Montana, okay?”

  “All right,” Jordan said, putting far more enthusiasm in her voice than she felt. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Who knows,” Raven said cheerfully. “Maybe hearing that he might be outshined by his ex is exactly the kick in the ass Luke Elliott needs to sign that contract. I mean, the guy’s got to care about something, right?”

  Sure, in theory.

  Trouble was, Jordan was getting the distinct impression that Luke Elliott thought everything worth caring about in life had long since slipped away.

  Blowing out a breath, she pulled up the Reminders app on her phone and entered her next To Dos:

  Find brides one and three without Luke knowing you’re doing it.

  Chapter 15

  Luke looked up from the hose he’d been checking as part of routine maintenance. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Vicky Saunders ignored his ire as she pulled a tube of lipstick out of her enormous purse and applied it expertly without looking in a mirror, as though applying makeup inside a firehouse was completely commonplace.

  She pursed her lips. “New color. You like it?”

  He rolled his eyes. Vicky was one of his mother’s closest friends, and practically an aunt. He’d grown up being asked his thoughts on her new lipstick colors, and, somewhere around the age of fourteen, he’d learned better than to actually express an opinion.

  “I’m not doing it,” he said, turning his attention back to the hose.

  Vicky huffed, her expansive bosom quivering in dramatic disappointment. “Your mother warned me you’d act like this.”

  “And by act like this, you mean declining to participate in a kissing booth at the county fair.”

  She held up a finger. “Not just any fair. The centennial fair! Did you know that?”

  “Yes, I knew that,” he said, still keeping his eyes on the hose. “You know how? Because there probably hasn’t been a kissing booth since that first fair a hundred years ago.”

  She shook her head matter-of-factly. “Nope. Untrue. There was a kissing booth when I was a girl.”

  “So. Seventy-five years ago?”

  She swatted the side of his head. Or tried to—she was too short to do much more than brush his ear. “Mind your tongue. I don’t see why you’re being so difficult about this.”

  “Have Ryan do it. He’s better looking.”

  “Can’t,” Ryan called, not even trying to pretend that he hadn’t been eavesdropping as he checked the tanks. “Married.”

  “So?”

  “Bree’s not good at sharing. She’s been known to bite. Although I’ve been known to like it, if you know what I mean.”

  “Oh, I do know what you mean!” Vicky said, lighting up. “I once had a one-night stand with this drifter—”

  Luke held up his hand. “No. Just no. How about Charlie? Make him do the kissing booth.”

  “He said he has mono.”

  “He doesn’t—damn it. Charlie!” Luke bellowed, knowing his friend was on kitchen duty.

  Charlie’s red head poked out of the kitchen door. “ ’Sup?”

  “Why are you trying to get out of the kissing booth? This seems exactly like one of your creepy fantasies.”

  “Once upon a time, yes.”

  “Once upon what time, like yesterday?” Luke asked his playboy friend incredulously. “What’s your deal?”

  “He’s boinking the kindergarten teacher,” Ryan said, pulling a protein bar out of his back pocket and tearing the wrapper with his teeth.

  “Third grade,” Charlie corrected, disappearing into the kitchen once more.

  Ryan lifted a shoulder. “Guess he’s out.”

  “You’re the only single firefighter,” Vicky said sympathetically. “Under fifty,” she added quickly, lest Luke try to submit Ivan Gash as a candidate, which Luke wouldn’t because Ivan chronically smelled like onion, and Luke wouldn’t wish that kissing situation on anyone.

  “So bug the PD.”

  “Firefighters are hotter,” Vicky whined, sounding closer to seventeen than her actual age of sixty-something.

  Ryan wandered over, leaning against the back of the fire truck as he nodded. “We are. Everyone knows this.”

  Luke finally got to the end of the hose and, finding no issues, began to wind it back up again. “No way,” he told Vicky. “Final answer.”

  “Luke Elliott, don’t make me call your mother.”

  He winced. It wasn’t an idle threat. He’d spoken with his mother just yesterday, and she’d launched into a fifteen-minute description of an article she’d read about how men’s reproductive systems age just like women’s and if he was going to give her grandchildren, he’d better get on it.

  He’d claimed a fire emergency before she could describe what or whom exactly he was supposed to get on.

  There hadn’t been a fire, but he didn’t feel even remotely guilty about the lie.

  “Hello? Am I interrupting?”

  Luke froze at the familiar voice. One he hadn’t heard in three days. Not since he’d heard it whispering and moaning against his lips. The very memory of the kiss made his entire body come to life, but that wasn’t even the part that pissed him off. What pissed him off was that he’d missed her—missed the way she provoked him and made him feel the most alive he had in years. He missed the ways she could coax a smile from him, the way she’d befriended his damn cat….

  “Jordan!” Vicky said, beckonin
g the younger woman for what Luke knew would be an air kiss, heavy side of floral perfume. “Don’t you just look pretty as a picture. I haven’t been able to wear sexy shoes like that since I got my first bunion.”

  Jordan made a wise, noncommittal murmur of acknowledgment as she accepted her hug.

  Vicky’s warm welcome of Jordan, Luke could see. The woman had a knack for taking anyone and anything under her wing.

  What Luke absolutely did not expect was for Ryan to wrap an arm around Jordan’s neck, planting a brotherly kiss on the side of her head. “Jordo. Good to see you again. The drill I gave you do the trick on that bathroom shelf, or you want me to swing by after work, take a look?”

  Jordo?

  And exactly when had they been discussing Jordo’s bathroom shelves?

  “No, it worked great!” she said, beaming up at Ryan as though they were old friends. “Thanks so much. That’s actually why I’m here—I was passing by, realized I had the drill in my trunk, and thought I’d see if you were here so I could give it back.”

  What.

  The.

  Hell.

  Not only had Jordan never once glanced his way, but she was here to see Ryan?

  Before Luke could wrap his head around it, she and Ryan were headed back out toward her car, laughing like the best of friends.

  “Oh, Jordan, sweetheart,” Vicky called out, her eyes lighting in the way of the suddenly inspired. “How long are you going to be in Lucky Hollow, dear?”

  “Still deciding,” Jordan said, her smile just slightly tense, although nobody but Luke seemed to notice.

  “But through the weekend, at least?”

  “Yeah, I expect so.”

  Vicky clasped her hands in delight. “Oh, wonderful. I’m sure you’ve heard it’s the county fair? I volunteer every year, and I’ve been tasked with staffing the kissing booth. I need one boy and one girl.”

  Jordan laughed. “Call me a girl, and I’ll do just about anything you want. The men in your town have been ma’am-ing me, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.”

  “Wait, so you’ll do it?” Vicky asked, looking stunned but pleased.