by Nicole Helm
“You’re a pretty little thing working in the ER. Have you ever been afraid?”
She cocked her head as if pondering. “You know… Not really.” She laughed, shaking her head. “That sounds so conceited, but I just… That’s kind of the thing about growing up in a town where your name means something. People don’t really mess with you and then you get this weird sense of…” Her expression changed, less amusement more…defeat. “Infallibility and invincibility, I guess.”
“Somehow you don’t seem too happy about that infallibility and invincibility.”
“The thing about both of those things is that they can be taken away from you pretty quickly.”
She looked sad now and he hated he’d put it there. He liked her smiling and engaged. He liked the way her eyes danced when she was interested in a topic. He liked…her. Which could only serve as a problem.
It was such a shame he was so damn irresistibly attracted to problems.
“Let me buy you another drink,” he offered.
“No. This is really enough. I’m not much of a drinker. In fact, I should probably head home.”
“That’s not fair. You pick my brain. Don’t I get to pick yours now?” He grinned, but inwardly kicked himself for…being stupid. For wanting to talk to her more.
“What would you pick?” she asked, the hint of a smile on her lips.
He took a minute to think about it. If he could ask her anything, what would he ask her? He had a million questions and lines that he would’ve thrown another woman he was attracted to, both outrageously suggestive and foolishly romantic. There were a million questions he could ask to make her laugh or to make her blush. And yet, he found himself inexplicably drawn to the curiosity of who this woman was. “Describe your perfect day.”
She wrinkled her nose. “My perfect day? What is this, some weird online personality test?”
He chuckled. “No. I’m interested. You can tell a lot about someone based on their perfect day.”
“Like what?” she demanded.
So demanding. So…not cowed by anything. Yeah, he liked her way too much.
“How about this? You explain to me your perfect day, and then I will tell you what it means about you.”
She sighed and still seemed extremely suspicious, but finally she said, “all right.” She fiddled with her empty glass. “My perfect day would be… I’m not sure I know what my perfect day would be. I think I’d want to see something beautiful.”
“Something beautiful?”
“Yes… Like… Like going on a hike to see the top of a mountain or a peaceful lake. Beautiful forests. Something like that. I’ve lived in Montana my whole life and I never really enjoyed the outdoors stuff because I was so busy studying and working. I think my perfect day would be… Seeing something beautiful. And having a picnic. With really terrible food my mom never let me have. Like Cheetos and Cheez Whiz on crackers.” She laughed. “That’s so ridiculous. Who would ever want to do that?”
“You’re far too hard on yourself. I think it sounds great.”
She blinked, staring at him with those all too understanding eyes. “Okay, sounds great. What does it tell you about me?”
“It tells me that you’re…solitary.”
“Why am I solitary?” she demanded, clearly offended by his interpretation.
“Your perfect day is being alone.”
“I didn’t say I had to be alone. I just that I’d want to see something beautiful. I could want someone to go with me.”
“Okay, sure, but your perfect day isn’t going to Paris and being surrounded by people. Your perfect day isn’t going to a bar and talking with a dumb smokejumper.”
“You’re not dumb.”
“Don’t flatter me, sweetheart.”
“I think it takes a lot of intelligence to face what you do,” she said, her tone so indignant. Standing up for him to him. How weird. “You’d have to be very quick to learn how to jump out of a plane and how to fight fires. There’s different kinds of knowledge out there. You know, my brother does rodeos. I swear he just knows how to read animals. He touches them and understands them and how to move with them. I think it’s amazing… Not that I’ve ever told him,” she muttered, her eyebrows furrowing. Then she shook her head. “But talking about this is ridiculous.”
“You are not at all what I expected,” he murmured. He wasn’t sure he’d expected anything after he’d left the hospital. He’d just hoped to never see her.
But she was here, and she was funny and sharp, and he…was drawn. It would be a mistake to lean forward and touch her. It would be a mistake to pretend like this could be anything other than this one night of conversation.
And yet leaning forward and brushing his fingertip across her cheek was exactly what he did. She was soft and the delicate pink flush he enjoyed all too much bloomed across her cheeks.
He should say something. He should bow out of this, because he was lying to her. He wasn’t who she thought he was. Or, he was who she thought he was, but he was pretending he wasn’t and…
Whatever it was—he was a liar and she was the threat he’d originally thought she was, only bigger. More potent. Because he liked her. He wanted to know more about her. He wanted…
Damn, but he wanted. But he couldn’t act on that. Couldn’t touch her more. And he definitely couldn’t kiss her.
But it was all he wanted to do.
Chapter Four
Lina found herself holding her breath. She couldn’t possibly inhale or even exhale when Ace’s finger gently stroked over her cheek. Breathing might be an involuntary, bodily function, but apparently her brain had just…lost all activity.
It was a terribly intimate touch for someone she had only just met yesterday. The way she could feel the roughness of the side of his index finger, the way her skin seemed to shiver as if separate from the rest of her. All these little places inside of her that had forever been dormant leapt to life and she wanted…
Well, she wanted. She wanted this intangible, unknowable thing inside of her, and she never wanted intangible, unknowable things. Just like she’d never sat in a bar and talked to a guy companionably before. She’d never learned so much about someone in such a short period of time, so easily, so comfortably.
Much like her, Ace’s life seemed to be his job, and she understood that. They’d both built themselves from this thing they’d decided to spend a lot of time doing. And they used their personalities like a shield, hiding all those scary vulnerabilities deep below an exterior—his easygoing and charming, hers sharp and spiny.
But it seemed to…work. Because she could see when she hit a vulnerable spot in the way something in his eyes would shift, and she thought maybe he saw the same in her. She thought maybe his charm and her spines…worked.
She thought maybe she…understood him. More than she’d understood most of the people in her life for most of her life. Because it had become clear in the past year she didn’t know much about her family at all. She barely had friends.
But this man, stroking her cheek, staring intently at her… He made sense. He was comfortable. And that didn’t make any sense, but this feeling was eroding all her sense and…
And if he’s Dean?
But he wasn’t. Obviously he wasn’t. He had a story about a father and a mother and a life in Portland, Oregon. Why did she have to be so suspicious? Why should she be suspicious of a man who was sitting there touching her—like he was going to kiss her?
Because that’s not what men want from you.
All of her doubts crashed back into her brain. She blamed the liquor for them ever being gone in the first place. Guys didn’t like her. She wasn’t pretty and she wasn’t nice. It was ridiculous to think… She had to force herself to look up at him, to be strong enough to say, yeah right, this is a scam.
But he was looking at her so intently, as if he could find some answer to some important question in the curve of her eyelashes or the slashes of her too sharp cheekbones.
>
“I…I should go.” Get out of here, let the alcohol leave her system, and find some sense in the little apartment near the hospital she’d rented.
“Let me drive you home,” he murmured, his finger never pausing its unfairly sensual onslaught.
Despite all those voices in her head that told her he couldn’t really be interested, that this had to be some kind of manipulation, she…wanted him to drive her home. She wanted to spend more time with him, and so much more, she wanted him to erase those inches between their mouths and kiss her, damn it.
This was so weird. She never wanted to spend time with a guy, and they certainly hadn’t had much interest in spending time with her unless it was to copy her notes or pick her brain.
So, it made more sense his interest was manufactured. He was Dean, and he was being nice to her and lying to her to throw her off the scent.
Which was…completely illogical, actually. Was she that low on self-esteem when it came to a guy she had to concoct an insane story about him lying about his identity, about him being her best friend’s long, lost brother?
This wasn’t Marietta. Maybe she was attractive to a certain kind of guy—it had just taken leaving her hometown and college circles and her name behind. Maybe she was interesting, and fun to talk to, and… Maybe the move to Kalispell had worked. Maybe she was someone else and she hadn’t realized it yet.
So, maybe she should let him drive her home.
“It’s not that complicated of a question, is it?” he asked, humor curving his full lips, making his blue eyes seem to dance in the dim light of the bar. She’d never really known an ease like that. Her family was straightlaced and possibly a little warped, even Jess, for all her genuine care and softness, wasn’t…easily humored.
Lina wanted to match it. She wanted…fun. “Is that code for something else?” she asked in mock seriousness.
He laughed and she was inordinately pleased she’d amused him. She felt light and jittery and jumbled. That had to be the liquor’s fault because none of this made sense. Not the way she talked to him, not that the loneliness inside of her she’d simply learned to live with had somehow disappeared.
Everything was a confusing, exhilarating mass.
His head moved the tiniest fraction closer, and when his finger swept down her cheek, this time it continued, all the way down her jaw to her chin, lighting a trail of warmth and nerves Lina had never before dreamed of experiencing.
“It’s only code for what you want it to be code for,” he said, not gently exactly, but certain and kind.
“Well, I… Cherrie drove me here. I-I don’t really need to drive home,” she stuttered—for the first time in her entire life. She didn’t even know why she was stuttering. Or why she was making excuses. She didn’t really understand…anything that was going on, above the heavy beating of her heart.
“I didn’t ask if you needed one,” he returned, still so certain and amused and…hot.
God, he was so unfairly hot.
“You want to go home, and I want to spend some more time with you. So, I’m offering you a ride. Where I will likely kiss you before I leave.”
Kiss. He wanted to spend more time with her and kiss her. Kiss. This insanely hot man, who put her at ease but somehow lit her on fire, which was a ridiculous metaphor. She’d seen people burned by fire. It wasn’t pleasant and this…was.
More than pleasant. Exciting, and she kind of wanted to giggle, but she tried to find objections. She tried to find sense. She never did anything without weighing out all the pieces of the equation.
But this wasn’t a math problem she could do to see if this was the right thing, if it made sense, if she should be the one doing it. There was only the ironic curve to Ace’s mouth and his offer.
“You can drive me home,” she said, a little too girlishly breathless. But, it was nice to feel girlish and breathless for once instead of plodding and cutting.
His grin spread across his face and she felt simultaneously like a million bucks and the biggest fool. What on earth was she doing? She didn’t even know how to be kissed.
Ace will know. Yes, she had no doubt.
“I just have to tell Cherrie that you’re going to take me home. I mean, to my home. My apartment. Drive. That.” Oh, God, she was flustered and babbling and she wanted to laugh at herself or be swallowed up by the earth or just lean forward and get the damn kiss over with.
Instead she slid off the stool on shaky legs and walked over to Cherrie.
“You want to go?” Cherrie asked, looking wistfully at the man who she’d been talking to. He grinned down at her, not even bothering to glance at Lina.
“Actually, Ace offered me a ride.”
Cherrie made a considering noise.
“Is it crazy to let him?”
“Let him what exactly?” Cherrie asked, lowering her voice so the guy next to her couldn’t hear.
“Drive me home! That’s it.” Lina swallowed, looking back nervously—afraid Ace might have come to his senses and disappeared, but there he was. Exactly where she’d left him. Watching her.
Her breath caught. “Mostly,” she amended.
Cherrie’s laugh was low and comforting. “I’d do a lot more than mostly with that man, but if mostly is what you’re after, go for it. But text me when you’re home safe. Promise?”
“Promise. You too? You’ll text me?”
Cherrie grinned. “You got it, sister.”
So, she had a friend. And a guy to drive her home. And kiss her. He hadn’t said maybe or that he’d ask or try, he’d simply said, with all the confidence in the world, that he’d likely kiss her.
She should find that intimidating or obnoxious or…something, but the truth was she liked it. When she turned to face him, his eyes still on her, his smile still easy, she hoped it’d be a lot more than a peck on the cheek type kiss.
*
Ace couldn’t take his gaze off of her, even when Jake made some snide ass comment. Ace didn’t care. He couldn’t seem to get his brain to engage beyond the sweet anticipation of sliding his mouth against Lina McArthur’s.
Don’t forget that last name.
But he wanted to. He wanted to forget where she came from and focus on the fascinating woman walking back to him without an ounce of sway to her hips, without one, sexy feminine glance. Just a cool, bullet-to-its-mark efficiency in every movement.
He was still getting uncomfortably aroused. She wasn’t…an act. Even though he was—his every day was an act of being someone else—he craved a kind of truth with the last woman he could give it to.
No one had ever claimed he was smart.
She came to a stop in front of him, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth…the little play of nerves somehow endearing.
Endearing? Seriously, that blow to the head has messed with your brain.
“So, um…” Her eyebrows drew together and she frowned down at him. She wasn’t tall, which was surprising. In the exam room he’d had this impression of her being…bigger. Such was the effect of her personality, he supposed.
Why did he have to be inexplicably drawn to women with big personality? Why did he have to admire a kind of ruthless efficiency, a straightforward snark? Those were exactly the kind of women who would cut through all of his bullshit in seconds flat.
But that was exactly what he wanted. “Ready to head out then?” he asked, sliding from the stool.
She nodded, clasping her hands together in front of her, turning toward the door as he fell into stride next to her. His hands itched to do something crazy like touch the silky strands of her hair that swung in the ponytail. Or maybe drag his fingertip down the delicate curve of her neck, just as he’d done to her cheek.
He should probably keep his hands to himself, but he couldn’t quite manage it. The graze of her cheek under his fingertip wasn’t enough. Nothing about Lina was quite…enough.
So, he placed a hand to the small of her back, smiling too easily when she jumped at the contact. But
she didn’t jump away and she didn’t stop walking for the door. She did slant him a sideways glance.
Something lurked in that all too shrewd expression, something he wanted to know more about. Something he wanted to unravel.
As they stepped outside, he tried to take a breath of the clean, warm, night air and find some kind of clarity in it. Some kind of sanity. He was really going to risk years of keeping Jess as far away from the poison that was him just because this woman intrigued him?
Jess is miles away. Miles and miles. He’d made it this far and this long, what threat would this really pose? It wasn’t as though he had time to foster some kind of relationship during fire season. He’d given up trying that long ago. So, at most, this was a roll in the hay, at least, a night of flirtation.
What was he risking?
“Here we are,” he said, gesturing to his truck. He’d finally saved up enough to buy a new one last year and it wasn’t the fanciest truck on the lot, but it was the first big purchase he’d ever made. He’d earned this thing in front of him with sheer determination and hard work. A “screw you” to the father who told him he’d amount to nothing.
The surprising thing had been the sense of accomplishment, not just in thumbing his nose at dear, old dad, but in working hard for something and earning a reward. He had an apartment, a truck, a job he loved. He’d built a life.
It felt good, even if he wasn’t who he told people he was.
Lina turned to face him, and she had to tip her head back to meet his gaze. He didn’t mind she had to do that, considering he figured this woman he barely knew already had more power over him than she ought to.
“How’s your head, really?” she asked, something of that cool doctor tone seeping into her voice.
He raised an eyebrow, but she didn’t even wilt. She raised her own to match it when he didn’t answer.
“I’m a doctor. I have a sixth sense about these things.”
“Bullshit,” he returned.
He was rewarded by her laughing. “Tell me,” she said, and there was a soft note to her voice he didn’t think was very common for her, because she blinked and shifted, suddenly uncomfortable.