by Jessie Evans
He studied her profile, hesitating for a moment, but then deciding he had nothing to lose. “So does that mean you aren’t interested in a date date with me?”
Her eyes widened, but she didn’t look at him again and when she spoke a long moment later her tone was carefully neutral. “You’re leaving soon, Colton. There isn’t time for date dating. Even if I were up for it.”
He nodded, trying not to be too disappointed. He hadn’t wanted to date date anyway. He’d wanted an excuse to get close to her, to touch her and kiss her, and see if he could bring that “take me now” light back into her pretty brown eyes. “You’re probably right.”
“I probably am.”
Neither of them said a word after that. They ran at their established pace while the uncomfortable silence stretched on, broken only by the puff of their exhalations and the thud of their footfalls on the spongy surface of the track.
Colt was about to make a joke and try to convince Phoebe that he’d been teasing—just to make things less awkward if nothing else—when she said—
“But if you are up for something less serious than a date date, I would be interested.”
His brows lifted. “Less serious, like…”
She shrugged loosely, but her eyes remained glued to the track in front of them, making him think she wasn’t as relaxed as she would have him believe. “Like me and you. Having fun. No strings attached, no emotions involved.”
Colt’s pulse leapt. He had a pretty damned good idea what she was talking about, but he didn’t want to assume and make things even more awkward.
He wanted her to spell it out for him in those mile high letters she’d been talking about yesterday. “So you mean…”
“I mean sex, Colt,” she said, her breath rushing out as her cheeks flushed pinker than they’d been before. “Top secret sex and then we go our separate ways and we never talk about it to anyone, ever, not even each other. That’s my final and only offer, take it or leave it, ready, set, go.”
And then she was off, sprinting toward the back gate like a bat out of hell.
Heart skipping a beat, Colton bolted after her, surprised by how easy it was to pour on speed. He’d been in a running rut lately, but now he fairly flew across the ground. Now he wasn’t running just to get into killer shape or to be the fastest man on the track once he got back on base. Now, he was chasing Phoebe Page and whether he won the race or not she had made it clear she intended to let him catch her.
As he trailed her across the fresh snow near the playground and onto the trail leading into the woods, he marveled that this bold, frank, sexually assertive woman was the same bossy little girl who had driven him crazy when she was in high school.
She and Daisy had always been after him to give them a ride to a ball game or to the movies or over to one of their friends’ houses. His parents had been too busy at the ranch to leave work before supper time and all his brothers had been in the service at that point, which meant Colton became the de facto taxi service, shuttling his crazy little sister and her best friend to their social engagements.
Back then, most people thought Phoebe was sweet and shy—the timid foil to his sister’s bubbly, outgoing personality. And yes, when she’d first started hanging out at the Brody house she had barely said two words to Colt. But once she felt comfortable, her shyness had fallen away, revealing a girl who knew her mind, had firm opinions, and wasn’t afraid to share them.
Younger Phoebe had lectured him on the importance of applying for scholarships in case he wasn’t accepted into the officer training program, given him an earful about the stupidity of mountain-biking without a helmet, and extolled the dangers of drinking too many energy drinks, which she was convinced could cause kidney failure.
He’d teased her about being an old woman trapped in a skinny little girl’s body, but had at least pretended to listen to her lectures. Even at eighteen, he’d known she was only bossy because she cared.
And that’s why she had said those things to him today. Because she still cared. After all these years, she cared enough to say what no one in his family had the guts to say.
He sensed Daisy and his cousin Seth, his boss at the fire station, were both of a similar opinion to Phoebe’s. And Colton’s mom got way too quiet every time he talked about the status of his appeal to rejoin the corps. Every one of Sarah Brody’s sons had served or were still serving in one branch of the military or another and she was proud of each and every one of them.
But she was also a mother, and nothing made her happier than to have her boys back home safe.
She had nearly lost Colt once already. He’d ejected from his plane in time and survived the crash, but the new recruit who had lost situational awareness of his own plane and collided with Colt’s had died. That twenty-one-year-old kid had lost his life during a training exercise, no enemy fire required.
Serving your country was dangerous, even when the country wasn’t at war. His mother knew that, but she also knew that Colton was stubborn as hell and nothing could change his mind once he’d made it up. So she had kept her peace and not said a word to try to make him stay.
Phoebe was wrong—he belonged back in the marines for so many reasons—but the fact that she cared about what was best for him more than she cared about making him happy, made her different. Different than any girl he’d dated, let alone any of the girls he’d had casual sex with.
As he and Phoebe turned the last curve in the trail and pushed toward the dock half a mile away, with her ahead by less than a foot he knew he could close with his last hard push, he began to wonder what the hell he was thinking.
It didn’t matter if Phoebe’s friends-with-benefits offer was exactly what he’d had in mind; that wasn’t the kind of girl she was. He had known her too long. She didn’t wear her heart on her sleeve, but beneath her composed, focused exterior beat a heart as big and soft as any he’d known.
He couldn’t imagine her going to bed with a man and keeping that heart boxed away. And he was fooling himself if he thought he could keep his emotional distance from a woman he cared about as much as he cared about Phoebe. If he took his clothes off with her, his armor would be coming off as well, and that’s the one thing he couldn’t risk.
And so as they reached the final fifty-yard stretch, he backed off, letting her pull ahead. He would let her win, and once they had caught their breath, he would explain why he couldn’t take her up on her offer, no matter how much he wanted to.
It would be embarrassing for both of them, but hopefully, he could make her understand without hurting her feelings.
He was busy composing something charming, but self-deprecating, to say to her when he hit a patch of black ice on the side of the trail. If he’d hit with his prosthetic, he might have found enough traction to stay on his feet. His prosthetic had an all-terrain grip that dug deep, but his running shoe was six weeks old and as much as he’d been running lately, worn flat.
What was left of the tread slipped on the ice; a second later he was flying through the air. Cursing his lost focus, Colt braced himself for what he expected would be a bruising impact with the frozen ground, and the ice on the side of the trail did not disappoint. He groaned as he hit—right shoulder first, sending a flash of pain through his chest—and curled into a ball, expecting to come to a stop in the snow.
But the frozen runoff and the incline leading down to the lake kept him on the move until he picked up speed, sliding faster toward the water at the base of the hill. By the time he slid past Phoebe, he was moving so fast she was just a blur of purple and black in his peripheral vision.
Realizing he was about to skid across the semifrozen lake, Colt threw his arms out to the sides, trying to find something to grab onto to slow himself down. But there was nothing but lightly packed snow and gravel and the withered remains of last summer’s weeds rotting in the mud beneath the ice.
As a man who had survived an emergency ejection at ten thousand feet with shrapnel in his leg and enough
blood flowing from his wounds to make sure he was unconscious before he hit the ground, Colt wasn’t easily frightened. But Lake Delores was too big to be frozen solid this early in the winter and the water near the dock got deep fast. If he ended up on the ice, he was going through.
What happened next would be a matter of luck.
If he were lucky, he would be able to pull himself out and get to the hospital before he had a heart attack and died of exposure. If he were unlucky, he would end up trapped beneath the ice, trying to find the place where he’d fallen through while Phoebe watched him die.
She won’t watch you die. She’ll try to save you and end up in the water with you.
The thought made Colton even more frantic. Curling his hands into claws, he dug his fingers into the mud, ignoring the sting as one of his fingernails tore and his joints began to ache. The action slowed him down, but not enough. He was too close and moving too fast. There was nothing that could stop him from going in now except an act of God.
He had resigned himself to the inevitable and was mentally preparing to remain calm when he went under the freezing water when Phoebe’s warm, fleece-covered body landed on his thighs, knocking them both into the snow beside the run off. They rolled to a stop a foot from the shoreline, close enough for Colt to hear the ice crackling in the silence that followed Phoebe’s save.
“Shit,” he finally said, his breath coming fast as he lay staring up at the white winter sky through the bare trees, grateful for the cold ground beneath him. “Thank you, Phoebe. You might have just saved my life.”
Phoebe sat up, her hair wild around her face and snow dusting her clothes.
“Seriously,” he said when she didn’t respond. “Thank you. That was amazing.”
She turned to him with wide eyes and patted one hand to her throat.
“What’s wrong?” He sat up, coming onto his knees in the snow beside her. “Are you hurt? Do you—”
She shook her head and gestured more frantically to her throat before shaking her hands at her sides and looking around where they sat, a panicked light in her eyes.
“Did you get the breath knocked out of you when you fell?” he asked, only to be answered with another frantic shake of her head. “Are you—”
She tried to stand, but slipped on the ice and fell back into the snow. This time, both of her hands came to encircle her throat, her fingers clawing at the pale skin above her purple fleece jacket.
“Fuck, the gum!” Colt grabbed her around the waist, pulling her in front of him. A moment later, he had his fist positioned just below her rib cage and his other hand forced it in and up.
On his second contraction, Phoebe’s breath rushed out with a huff and the pink lump of gum shot from between her lips to land on the snow several feet away.
She sagged back against him, breathing fast. “Oh my God,” she gasped. “Thank you. I thought I was going to pass out.”
Colton cursed as he sat back into the snow, pulling Phoebe onto his lap. “Why didn’t you give the universal sign for choking in the first place?”
“I wasn’t thinking about the universal sign for choking,” she said with a cough that turned into a sniff. “I was thinking about being murdered by a piece of cherry bubble gum.”
“You shouldn’t chew gum while you run,” he snapped even as he hugged her closer, needing to make sure she stayed out of trouble for at least a few minutes. “What if you’d been alone? What would you have done?”
“Not choked because I wouldn’t have been diving and rolling and trying to save your life,” she snapped back, her eyes beginning to shine. “I was so scared, you stupid jerk.” She slapped his chest, but there was no anger behind it. “I thought you were going to go through the ice.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice gentling. “I didn’t mean to yell at you. I was scared, too.”
“You should have been. You almost died.” Phoebe sniffed harder. “And then I almost died.”
“You’re right,” he said, a smile curving his lips for some insane reason. “We both almost died. Within about sixty seconds of each other.”
“That has to be some kind of record,” she said, with a breathy laugh.
“Jesus, Phoebe,” he said, his shoulders beginning to shake. “I think you’re the unluckiest person I’ve ever met.”
She giggled. “Yeah, well you’re luck hasn’t been the best lately, either.”
“No, it hasn’t,” he said, fresh laughter bubbling up from a joyously relieved place inside of him. “It really hasn’t.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and giggled harder while he tightened his grip on her back and hip and hung on tight. They laughed until Colton’s head hurt, his throat ached, and his abdominal muscles felt bruised, but he couldn’t seem to stop. Every time he sucked in a breath, determined to regain control, Phoebe would suffer a fresh attack of the giggles and they would both be off on another round of hysterical laughter.
By the time they finally collapsed back onto the ground, panting for breath, Colton felt wrung out and peaceful and so happy to be alive he wasn’t thinking about anything except how good it felt to be lying in the snow with Phoebe’s gloved hand in his.
“Hey, Phoebe?” he asked, rolling his head her way.
“Yes, Colton,” she said, the expression on her face as exhausted and blissed out as he felt.
“Can we skip weights and go straight to brunch?”
She smiled wider. “I think we have to. After the events of this morning, I’m afraid to handle heavy objects. Though I would love a shower before pancakes and coffee.”
“Only if you promise to shower carefully and meet me at the Fish and Bicycle as soon as you’re finished,” he said, squeezing her hand. “And to text me a couple of times between leaving the parking lot and stepping out of your front door to let me know you’re still alive.”
She snorted. “Surely we’ve got all of the bad luck out of the way for the day.”
“Best not to tempt fate.” He stood, drawing her up beside him. “You should order iced coffee with your pancakes, too, just in case. They serve it hot there.”
She swayed on her feet before leaning in and hugging him tight enough to make him grunt. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“You too,” he said, folding her into his arms. “Thanks for having my back.”
“Anytime.” She sighed as she melted against his chest. “Anytime.”
Colt closed his eyes, savoring the feel of her warm against him. He didn’t know what he was going to do with this woman, but he was glad he didn’t have to do it without her.
Chapter 7
Phoebe
An hour later, Phoebe was showered, blow-dried, and dressed in her own dark wash jeans and a fluffy red sweater of Kelly’s with tinsel threaded through the weave. Her suitcases had finally been delivered, but she was enjoying wearing her sister’s clothes. They made her feel like a different woman, a wild, less predictable woman, who could only be expected to do the unexpected.
Deciding she could use some fresh air, she walked the five blocks down to the busier end of Evergreen Lane and pushed inside The Fish and Bicycle brew pub. Immediately, she was engulfed by a wave of warmth from the giant stone fireplace and the smells of baked goods, bacon, and freshly ground coffee. She pulled in a breath, letting the homey smells take her to her happy place as she stood on tiptoe, searching for a glimpse of Colt’s tousled hair in the crowd.
The Fish and Bicycle was always busy, but near festival time, when the town was flooded with tourists coming to join in the silly games, beer tasting, and other Frozen Dead Dude events, it was a mad house. If Daisy hadn’t made a reservation, there was no way she and Colton would have been able to get a table before noon, let alone prime placement near the fireplace.
She spotted Colton in one of the leather couches drawn up close to the fire and waved. When their gazes connected, his eyes lit up and a big smile spread across his face. She swallowed hard and let her own giddy grin linger as
she began to weave her way through the crowded restaurant.
She wasn’t going to stress or overthink things. This brunch was about celebrating survival and good friends, that’s it. No need to think too much about the things she’d said to Colton before they started their race or wonder what he thought of her invitation.
Yeah, best not to think about the fact that you propositioned your best friend’s brother for sex. Blatantly. Openly.
Insanely.
Phoebe pressed a palm to her fluttering stomach. She’d been so overwhelmed by this morning’s dramatic turn of events she hadn’t thought about the crazy, out of character thing she’d done until she was at home in the shower, her skin prickling beneath the warm water and her thoughts drifting to how good it had felt to sit on Colt’s lap and laugh until her bones were sore.
But now she was thinking about it.
And blushing about it. And fighting the urge to fidget as Colton stood and pulled her in for a hug before moving over to make room for her on the couch.
She shivered as she sat down, even that swift embrace enough to make her nerve endings prickle.
“Cold?” He rubbed his hand up and down her back, transforming the prickle to a full-body tingle. “Do you want my coat?”
She shook her head and edged a few inches away, hoping it would help her focus. “No, I’ll be fine now that I’m by the fire.” She glanced around, noticing how the couch sheltered them from being observed by the larger dining room behind them while providing the most romantic, fireside view in the house. Daisy didn’t miss a trick, but Phoebe had expected no less. “Looks like Daisy hooked us up with some prime real estate.”
“She did.” Colton leaned forward, snagging one of the menus from the wooden coffee table in front of them. “But I doubt she had to call in too many favors. The owner is crazy about her.”
Intrigued, Phoebe shifted in her seat, turning to face him. “You’re kidding. Matty O’Sullivan is crazy about Daisy?” He nodded and she clapped her hands in a flutter of excitement for her friend. “Why didn’t she tell me they’re dating? He’s such a cutie.”