by Nicole Helm
“I’m also very good at knowing what I want.”
His mouth curved in that cocky flash of a grin that made her stomach do cartwheels. “Oh, I just bet you are.” But he didn’t kiss her again, or touch her again. “You have to work tomorrow?”
The question made no sense, but she shook her head no, finally taking the shirt when he jabbed it at her again.
“Well, doc, since you’re the reason I can’t work tomorrow, you owe me some entertainment.”
“E-Entertainment?” she stammered, feeling off center and confused and…well, irritated he was doing a whole lot more talking than kissing. She didn’t put her shirt on, just held it in front of her.
“Yes, entertainment. You’re going to have to keep me company since I can’t do my job. So, I’ll pick you up about nine.”
“Nine?” What on earth was he talking about?
“Yes. Nine in the morning. Wear shoes fit for hiking and eat a good breakfast.” He got to his feet and grabbed his own shirt, pulling it over his head.
“What are you talking about?” she demanded irritably.
“I’m going to take you on a hike that will give you a beautiful view. I’m going to pack a picnic. I am going to give you your perfect day. And then… If after all of that you still want this… Then we’ll come back here.”
“And if I don’t?” she grumbled, disliking the high-handed way he was taking control of things.
“I’ll take you home. And we’ll go our separate ways.”
“That seems very…rational.” Time to think. Time to regain her senses. Boo.
“Yes, I’m very proud of myself. I’ve never been very good at being rational.”
“It’s all I’ve ever been,” she muttered sullenly.
He came closer again, leaned down so he could trace her cheek with his finger. Something that was becoming like a habit even if they’d only spent a couple hours in each other’s company. “Oh, honey, that was not true tonight.”
She could only stare at him and think about how he was right. She hadn’t done anything remotely rational tonight—from the beginning.
She smiled up at him. “I kinda like it.”
He chuckled, dropping his hand and stepping away again. “Bring that attitude tomorrow.” He stood for a second, his intense blue eyes all but boring into her.
She swallowed. She could all but see the fight in his face. He wanted to stay. He wanted her. Could that really be?
“So, I’ll be back at nine.” Then he was striding to toward the door as if… Part of her thought he couldn’t get away fast enough, but part of her wondered…if he was walking away to keep himself from wanting to stay.
The door swung open and he gave her one last backward glance, muttered something under his breath that sounded like a swear, and then he left and closed the door behind him.
She sat on a couch holding her shirt to her naked chest wondering if she’d just experienced some kind of fugue state. But her nipples were still painfully erect and her heart was still pounding crazily in her chest and…
And she was ridiculously excited for nine tomorrow.
*
Ace drove back to his hole of an apartment far closer to the forestry base than it was to Kalispell. He’d lost his mind. The problem was, he didn’t know which was more mind lost—leaving her or the fact he’d made a date with her tomorrow. Or was it that he couldn’t believe he’d said he’d never felt this before?
He was a tool. Entirely. And overwhelmingly, blindingly, obsessively, intrigued by her.
He knew better than to get attached. He knew better than to let things become things. He knew better than this, and yet something about Lina undid all of that knowledge and all of the certainty and all of the… History. She made him feel like he could be a new man. That he could be the Ace he’d created out of thin air and determination to be something and someone else.
So, yeah, he’d give her the hike. He’d give her that perfect day. Maybe for the next week he’d let himself be ridiculously, hopelessly head over heels for this woman he barely knew. Because once he was cleared to jump again, she’d fade away just like the rest of them.
If her job didn’t make her fade away first.
So, it was fine. Everything regarding what he was doing with Lina was one hundred percent fine.
He drove through a sparkling, Montana night, and tried to work through the strange things going on inside of him. He wasn’t a particularly reflective guy, because that lent itself to all sorts of…regret.
But the past few hours had completely, insanely gotten away from him. He’d never in his life behaved in such a nonsensical way. Sure, his foster parents had sometimes found him puzzling, but he’d had his own reason for acting like he did. Usually being too comfortable, or knowing they were about to send him away anyway.
But from the moment he’d left the bar with Lina, his actions had made zero sense. Except walking away before they’d gone any farther. That had been the best sense he’d employed in a lifetime.
Frustrated with the irritating circular avenue of his thoughts, Ace pulled over to the side of the road. It wasn’t a busy one-lane highway, and he’d probably see maybe one truck pass even if he sat here all night.
He didn’t need to sit here all night. He just needed a little bit of quiet time outside. The clear air he’d always loved, delivering oxygen and hopefully sense to his brain. He needed to be somewhere without walls and a ceiling and to soak up the dazzling sky above him.
He got out of the truck, walked back to the bed and scooted himself onto the edge. He lay back, staring at the velvet dark above him. The crescent moon shone like the beacon he’d always imagined it was, leading him somewhere.
There had been nights when he’d run away that he’d spent dreaming under the moon and stars. Dreaming of a different life. A different person. Ace, the son of a mechanic and a cafeteria worker. A simple childhood in Oregon with a normal, modest family. That was all he’d wanted. Nothing extravagant, nothing over the top or out of reach. He’d just wanted normal. He’d just wanted parents who loved him.
He knew he was lucky because he’d had Jess. She had loved him more than he deserved. She’d tried to protect him, always—whether from Dad’s fists or an unfeeling foster family. Jess had sacrificed for him, and lost over and over because of him.
He might not be a good sort, but he’d known he couldn’t live with continuing to be the reason why Jess didn’t have a stable home. When the elder Dr. McArthur had sneered the question of if he was related to Jess in the hospital room, Ace had finally and clearly understood what he needed to do to repay her for her loyalty.
So, he’d bolted from the family in Marietta before they could take him back to foster care. Before he could ruin Jess’s life in Marietta, when the McArthurs had taken such an interest in her. When she had such a chance.
Based on everything he knew, he’d made the right choice. Jess had had a happy life in Marietta, and it had ended up being pretty good for him, too. He had this. This life where he got to do a really cool job that actually helped people. He was good at it and, as much as it had been making him a little antsy lately, he’d found a place. He belonged to his team, and when they’d lost their captain last year, it had had a deep effect on him.
As much is it had scared him and made him think about leaving before he sank his feelings and roots into anyone or anything else, he’d stayed. He’d stayed to heal and he’d stayed to be supportive to the rest of the team. He’d stayed for the guys who had made him feel like he finally belonged somewhere, for the captain he’d lost too young.
It was all the evidence he needed to know he’d done the right thing in cutting ties with Jess. They were both in good places in their lives because of it, so he’d absolutely done the right thing.
Now, if only he could figure out if spending time with Lina was the right thing. In the crisp air of this gorgeous summer evening, he knew he shouldn’t. He shouldn’t be messing around with someone Jess knew. He
shouldn’t be risking all he had made.
Yet he knew without a shadow of a doubt, tomorrow morning he would get up and he would take Lina on a hike. He would give her that perfect day. And if she wanted to, he would sleep with her. Because something about her called to some piece of him he didn’t understand. And maybe he had to answer the call to understand.
It was probably wrong to feel like she could be some good thing. It was probably wrong to think he had a chance to give her something good.
But he knew himself better than to think he would find some sense of valor or common sense in the next twelve hours. No, at nine, he would be at Lina’s door with a picnic lunch and a plan.
He should be disgusted with himself. He should be all sorts of things, but all he could manage to feel as he got back into his truck and pulled it back onto the highway, was excitement.
Chapter Seven
Lina couldn’t choke down much for breakfast. She was too excited and giddy. It felt like the first day at a new job. It felt like… Well, she supposed it felt like what it might to know she were about to go on a date.
Not that Ace had used that word, but still. He was taking her on her perfect day. How could that not be a date?
Picking out what she was going to wear had been a difficult exercise. First, because she had very little in the way of clothing that might entice the male species. She’d always viewed clothes as something of a necessity. Certainly not something to get excited about or something to express herself with.
Her wardrobe was jeans and khakis and scrubs and little else. So, she’d found a pair of jeans she thought fit her best, a t-shirt with the lowest V of a neckline she owned. It showed off next to nothing, but she supposed if he’d been attracted to her in a turtleneck last night, this ensemble couldn’t be half bad.
Besides, they were hiking. First.
She groaned aloud because she knew she was being an idiot. And she hated being an idiot. But today was about doing things that weren’t normal for her. Today was about doing something out of character, so idiocy was probably going to have to go along with the good out of character things she was doing as well.
When the knock sounded at the door, her heart jumped and her pulse seemed to pound abnormally hard in her neck. But she got up and she answered the door. When she saw Ace on the other side, some of the nerves ceased. She still felt all weird and fluttery, but smiling at him was easy.
He was just so damn hot. His dark hair was wavy and long enough to run her fingers through, but not too terribly long. His smile was like sin incarnate. Not that she knew much about sinning, but whatever she knew was going to come directly from his mouth, from his arrogantly appealing smile.
“Good morning,” he offered, his voice just as delectable as his smile.
“Good morning,” she replied, all too primly. Before the feeling of sounding so stupid could swamp her, he swooped in and pressed a quick but determined kiss to her mouth. Funny when he did that, she couldn’t muster feeling like an idiot at all.
“Ready?”
“Yes. Are you really going to take me hiking?”
“Absolutely. Why wouldn’t I?”
She grabbed her keys and her purse. “I don’t know. It just seems kind of weird.”
“It’s your perfect day. If anything is odd, it’s you, honey.”
“Well, I’m well aware of that,” she muttered, locking her deadbolt before walking with him down the hall.
His truck was parked out front and he opened the passenger door for her, allowing her to climb in before he closed it.
Strange, she’d been tied in nervous knots all morning, but with his company and his good-natured conversation, it was hard to feel nervous.
She liked talking with him almost as much as she liked being kissed by him, and she wondered how many people felt that way about their significant others.
Not that that was what he was. She just…wondered. Jess and Cole always seemed so easy together, as though they could communicate without even speaking. They obviously enjoyed each other, and her brother always got a kind of dumbstruck look on his face when Jess walked in.
But her parents…they were their own, strange, icy thing. And Carter and Sierra had been having quite the rough patch and…
Why are you thinking about them?
She had no idea. She tried to focus on the road. Ace drove them out of town and into the mountains. She hadn’t explored much outside of Kalispell, all that had really mattered to her was the hospital and her apartment building, but now she realized that had been a mistake. She should have gone out exploring. She should have used the move here to give her an excuse to spread her life outside of a hospital setting.
Well, now she was.
Ace pulled the truck into a parking lot. There was a little sign about Gabriel Falls, which was where the trail apparently led. He got out of the truck and so did she, meeting him at the back where he was pulling a backpack and a cooler out of the bed of the truck.
“Are you going to carry all that?”
He grinned at her. “This is nothing compared to what I have to carry in my pack when I’m jumping.”
“Oh, well, sure, but why would you want to spend your time off carrying around something heavy when that’s what you do at work?”
“I can’t jump for a week, can’t fight fire for a week. If I walk into base, I’ll get roped into paperwork or cleaning or crap like that. Trust me, honey, this is much preferred to any of those things.”
She watched as he tossed a couple bottles of water from the cooler to the backpack, followed by a bag she assumed was full of food. He added a Swiss army knife and some matches.
“Are we going to be gone that long?”
“You like to ask a lot of questions,” he replied, zipping the bag up.
“I am going hiking with someone I barely know. I should probably ask a few more questions.”
He laughed, but he didn’t seem offended. “You’re probably right. What else should you be asking me?”
She thought about it, but really all that seemed to matter was he was easy to talk to, easy to kiss, and she liked him. She supposed if he ended up being some sort of psycho then she deserved whatever she got but, for the time being, she was going to enjoy yourself.
“Well, I guess the most important thing would be what kind of food you brought.”
He laughed again, this time it held a hint of surprise. She liked a little bit too much that she could surprise him so easily.
“I packed an assortment of sandwiches and chips.”
“But what kind of chips?” Lina pressed. “You can tell a lot about a person based on the kind of chips they pack.”
He flashed a grin that made her heart flutter oddly. “So I can tell a lot about a person by their perfect day, and you can tell a lot about a person based on their chip preference?”
“Oh, yes,” she returned with mock seriousness.
“There’s a bag of Cheetos and a bag of pretzels. What does that tell you about me?”
“Well, that depends.”
“On what?”
“On which ones you plan on eating.”
He laughed again, shaking his head at her as he locked up the truck. “I plan on eating the Cheetos. I packed the pretzels in case you were some health nut.”
“Correct answer.”
“So, I’m going to have to fight you for the Cheetos then?”
Lina pretended to think about it. “Well, what size bag did you bring?”
“What if I brought one of those little single serving packages?”
“I guess you’d have to get ready to eat pretzels with your lunch then.”
He grinned and without warning swooped down and kissed her. Not the easy brush of lips like this morning. This was…intense. His mouth and tongue probed hers and she just melted against him.
The hardness of his chest, the scrape of his whiskers, everything about him seemed to envelop her and intrigue her. She forgot momentarily where she was or w
hy she was here, because he was kissing her and that was all that seemed to matter.
Slowly and with what seemed like great effort, Ace pulled away. There was his too intense gaze again and today she was surprised to find she liked it. She wanted to keep seeing it. Over and over and over again. Because no one had ever been intense when it came to her, and she was more than a little excited he might be.
“You said your perfect day included Cheetos and Cheez whiz, if you recall.”
Her throat tightened uncomfortably. He’d listened… Remembered. It shouldn’t mean anything, but somehow it meant quite a bit.
“Ready to hike?” he asked, his voice infused with a rasp that hadn’t been there earlier.
“Sure.” Hike. Yeah that was what she was ready for.
*
Ace traversed the trail up to the top of Gabriel Falls. It was a trail he’d hiked a lot of times since moving to Kalispell. He wasn’t the kind of guy who was good at sitting still and alone. He needed movement or noise, something to keep his mind occupied so it didn’t…dwell.
So even in the winter months when there was no smokejumping to be done, but it was frigid and covered in snow up to his knees, he would find himself needing to move, needing to see something beautiful and awe-inspiring. Besides, it had been good practice for joining the winter search and rescue crew—for making his settling into Kalispell permanent.
“Are we almost there?” Lina asked.
He had to bite back a grin at how out of breath she sounded. He supposed a different man would be feeling sorry for her, but he knew she could handle this. She was in too good of shape, and too stubborn-minded, not to handle it.
“Almost,” he replied good-naturedly. As they ascended the hardest part of the trail, he made an effort to help her up over a couple boulders that led to the top where they would be able to overlook the entire waterfall.
A few times she shook off his outstretched hand, determined to do it herself and he liked that about her, too. He kept looking for flaws, things that would drive him nuts about her, but he kept…coming up empty.
They’d had some good rain and snowmelt at the higher altitudes the past few weeks, so he could already hear the rushing water falling to the lake below. He glanced back at Lina as she scrambled over the last big rock. Her cheeks were flushed from exertion and she was definitely panting.