Would Ryan never cease to surprise her? She gazed out the window at the brown hills sliding past, the telephone poles flickering in a regular pulse. Grad school sure hadn’t helped her when it came to judging people. Or misjudging them, in this case.
She looked at his strong hands, one steering, one resting on his thigh, and imagined a little boy poring over The Little Prince. She hadn’t thought Ryan could get more attractive, but he’d pulled it off. She swallowed hard.
“As long as we’re confessing stuff, why’d you become a firefighter?”
“Long story. Short version, I set a fire on purpose. Got arrested. I was underage, first offense, so I got sentenced to community service at a firehouse. I got lucky. Captain Brody was filling in for the captain there, who was on paternity leave. Cap liked me, no clue why. I got a serious case of hero worship after that. He took a no-good kid and made him into a fireman.”
Katie got a chill from the tone of his voice, the deep respect and gratitude she heard there. “Sounds like an amazing person.”
“Best man I know. He’s the father I never had. That includes the one you’re about to meet.”
“What’s your father like?”
“Hard to explain.” Ryan shut down then. His jaw tightened, and he looked as stony as Mount Rushmore. Confession time had ended.
Ryan’s plan to tease Katie had taken a left turn along the way. He couldn’t recall telling any of his many girlfriends much about Captain Brody and how much he owed him. For sure, he’d never revealed his dyslexia. She now knew more about him than any woman ever had. Then again, Katie wasn’t a girlfriend. She was a . . . something different. He didn’t quite have a word for it. How did you define someone you really liked being with, had the hots for, and wanted to help, even if it meant shaking your ass on a bar or, a thousand times worse, visiting your father?
He puzzled over that as the sounds of “Redneck Girl” poured out of the radio. Katie started swinging her head up and down to the rhythm. Her hair, which looked somewhere between cinnamon and mahogany in the sun, came loose from her ponytail. She gave him a teasing smile as she yelled out the “hell yeah” the singer asked for. His black mood, brought on by talk of his father, lifted.
Katie was trying to cheer him up. The girl with so many worries and pressures, the girl famous for her scowl, was playing the fool to bring a smile to his face. He wanted to kiss her. Hug her. Lay her on the backseat and lick her up and down . . .
He snapped out of it. His father’s place was only a few turns away. Pretty soon Katie would see where he came from, the lunacy-infested gene pool that had created Ryan Blake. She’d probably call a cab to flee back to San Gabriel.
For now, he watched her rock out, and enjoyed every moment.
At the end of a long dirt road, he pulled up outside a ratty old trailer with a broken lawn chair out front. His father despised trailer parks, preferring to squat on a piece of land belonging to a drug dealer whose dirty secrets he knew.
“This is it. You can stay in the truck if you want.”
Ryan didn’t look at Katie, not wanting to see her disgust. He got out of the Chevy. When he knocked on the door of the trailer, he was almost surprised to find Katie right behind him.
Then again, he should have figured she wouldn’t be scared off by a trailer. The man inside, now . . .
“Get the hell off my property or I’ll shoot you right between the eyes,” came his father’s voice.
Ryan sighed. “Zeke, it’s me.”
A long pause. “I’m lowering the rifle.”
“I got a friend with me. Don’t shoot her either.”
“Not unless she pisses me off.”
“Got that?” He gave Katie a sidelong look. She nodded, looking somewhere between rattled and entertained. “He’s only shot a few of my friends, and they usually deserved it.”
She raised her straight eyebrows, her dark eyes clinging to his. “That’s good to know, but maybe you should go first.”
“Good call.” He stepped inside, into the familiar rank smell of propane, sewage from the toilet that always backed up, and his father’s favorite dinner—fried eggs in a cast-iron pan. A swamp of emotions assaulted him. Fear of his father’s fists, fear for his father’s sanity, rage, despair . . .
Zeke Blake lurked at the battered table like a white-haired spider.
“Zeke, this is Katie. She’s my boss.”
“Guess that means you have a job. Working for the man. Or the girl.” He took in Katie. “Little thing, aren’cha?”
“Five feet, two and a half inches.” Katie didn’t look cowed by his father at all. With her yellow skirt and bright eyes, she lit up the trailer like a firecracker.
“You don’t fool me. The corporate empire uses girls like you to disguise their money-grubbing greed.”
“Zeke is a little down on civilization,” explained Ryan. “He’s a fan of anarchy, except when it comes to getting his propane refilled.”
Zeke’s veiny cheeks turned redder. Ryan’s fists twitched, his reflexes kicking into gear. Fight or flight. From an early age, he’d picked fight.
Katie met his father scowl for scowl. “You shouldn’t jump to conclusions. A corporation tried to buy us out once. My father kicked the guy out. He said he’d rot in hell before letting the bar become a Foot Locker.”
Zeke’s jaw worked, then he threw back his head and let out a guffaw.
“So why are you here, Ryan?” Zeke asked. He got up and hulked over to the tiny, cluttered sink. At six foot five, he had to stoop inside his trailer, a habit that had transformed his posture over the years.
“Someone came into the . . . place where we work.” He felt Katie’s sharp, surprised glance. He hadn’t told her the purpose of this visit. “I thought I knew him. But I can’t put a name to the face. Or a rap sheet to the face, more like.”
Zeke cackled as he poured himself a glass of water from the tap. Ryan had set up the water system himself at the age of fourteen. “He must be a friend of mine, is that it?”
“I remember him coming here. About fifty, on the chunky side, wears aviator glasses, balding.”
“Not much of a description.”
“I think the glasses are the same. They rang a bell. He drinks Guinness.”
“And why should I rat him out to you?”
Zeke came back to the table, holding on to each piece of furniture he passed. Years ago, he’d gotten an infection in his leg, and had refused to get any medical help for it. Stubborn old man was paying the price now. Ryan reached a hand to help him.
Zeke swatted it away as if it were a fly.
The rage of a million such swats rushed through Ryan. His body clenched. Blood sang in his ears. Every nerve pulsed with the need to strike out. Fast. Hard. Now.
But something tugging at his arm wouldn’t let him. He turned on whatever was holding him back.
Katie flinched from the blind fury in Ryan’s eyes but refused to let go of his arm. He couldn’t hit his father, he just couldn’t. The force of his rage felt like a hurricane in the rickety trailer. She screwed up her face, squeezed her eyes shut, and held on to his arm for dear life.
Nothing. When she opened her eyes to peer at Ryan, he looked appalled. Horrified. He grabbed her other hand and swung her toward the door.
“Call me if you remember,” he told his father through clenched teeth.
“Bye, Zeke,” Katie tossed over her shoulder. The man was scary, but she’d told Ryan she’d be nice. “I’ll watch out for those evil corporations.”
“Don’t talk to him,” hissed Ryan. “We’re outta here.”
Katie stopped talking while Ryan whisked her outside. He stalked to the truck, dragging her after him. She tried to pull her hand out of his grasp. “Let go, would you?”
Instantly, he dropped her hand. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll be in the truck. Take your time.”
She stood on the trash-strewn crabgrass while Ryan strode to the truck. She needed a minute. He probably needed a min
ute too. It was a lot to take in. How had someone like Ryan come from a place like this, from a father like that? She’d seen the demons surface when he wheeled on her, and it made her look at him in a whole new light.
Not as a gorgeous dreamboat out of her league. But as a man with struggles of his own. Serious struggles.
Slowly, she got into the truck. Ryan already had the key in the ignition and a hand on the steering wheel. “I want you to know,” he said without looking at her, “that I’ve never hit a woman. I never would. Since the age of sixteen, I’ve never hit anyone when it wasn’t a fair fight. Maybe it looked like I was going to, but I wouldn’t have.”
She nodded. “I didn’t think you were going to.”
“You didn’t?”
“Of course not. I didn’t want you to hit him.”
“I wouldn’t have done that either.” He glanced at her sideways, with a kind of wonder. “I can’t believe you put yourself between me and my father. He’s bloodied grown men for doing that.”
She wasn’t sure what to say to that. The lost, pained look in his eyes made her want to wrap her arms around him. But he was still vibrating with tension, so she didn’t quite dare.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, looking away from her. “Sorry you saw that.” He turned the key in the ignition and backed out of Zeke’s front yard, which was little more than a bare patch of ground.
She wasn’t sorry. But she didn’t know quite how to tell him that. “It’s not your fault your father’s kind of . . . harsh.”
He hunched a shoulder. “Didn’t say it was. I always figured I took after my mother. But she left early on and I don’t remember her.”
Katie’s heart ached for him. Her own complaints about her family seemed so trivial suddenly.
In silence, they drove down the dirt road to the highway. When they’d reached the town limits, the tension in the truck finally seemed to ease. Katie glanced over at Ryan.
“You hungry?” she asked. “I could use some pancakes.”
“Pancakes?”
“Or waffles. I skipped breakfast. Now my blood sugar’s getting low. And there’s a good chance I’ll be crabby if it gets much lower.”
He slanted a funny kind of smile at her. “You want to eat pancakes with me? Even though . . .”
She frowned, puzzled. “Even though what?”
His eyes stayed on her, direct and bluer than the smoggy sky outside.
“Hey,” she warned him, indicating the road.
“Right. Hang on.” He spun the wheel to the side and the Chevy hurtled toward the shoulder. It stopped in a roostertail of gravel. Dusty greenish-brown fields spread out from either side of the highway. Cars whizzed past in a hypnotic whir. Katie looked into Ryan’s eyes, grave, blue, questioning. She had the sense she’d never really seen him before.
“I figured something out,” he said.
She made a question with her face, since her voice had decided to make itself scarce.
He leaned toward her, easing himself around the gearshift. “I figured out . . .”
She caught her breath at his nearness. Her eyes dropped to his strong throat. Mesmerized, she watched his Adam’s apple move.
“. . . that you do something to me. Something good. I like it.”
She made a little face. For some reason, that word “like” didn’t make her feel good. “We’re friends, after all. Kind of.”
“Maybe we are. But that’s not what I’m talking about.” He lifted her chin so she couldn’t avoid his look. “I think about you a lot, you know.”
Vibrations shot from her scalp to her toes. “You do?”
“Oh yeah. And I don’t mean in the what-crazy-thing-is-she-going-to-do-to-the-bar-now kind of way. I mean in the I-want-you way. The under-my-skin way.”
The movement of his lips, so close to hers, drove her crazy. His sweet breath drifted over her face. His eyes were so blue, so clear, so beckoning. If she didn’t do something soon, she’d die. But the first time they’d kissed, she’d thrown herself at him. This time she stayed still, letting him decide what to do.
He brushed his lips against hers.
She sighed. Her lips opened of their own accord. His tongue flicked them open further, lighting little sparks around the circle of her mouth. He took her lower lip between his teeth and nibbled.
Fire erupted in her veins. She tossed aside her determined stillness and pulled him toward her. He met her with equal force, gripping her with an intensity that shook her to the bone. His kiss, deep and long and burning, rattled her even more. He tasted so good, like heat and hope and sun. She melted against him. When he pulled away, she nearly whimpered.
“What’s wrong?”
“I have to make sure,” he said in a harsh whisper. “You still want me, after what you saw? Where I come from?”
Her eyes snapped open, in utter shock. “Is that a serious question?”
He didn’t answer, but he looked pretty serious, even though his hair stood up and his breathing came ragged.
She frowned at him in a scolding way. “I’m going to let it slide this one time. But if you ever imply, ever again, that I give a crap where you come from, I’ll have to go for my baseball bat, and you know how that—”
She couldn’t finish, because he crushed her against him in a grip of iron. It might have hurt, except it got her closer to him, which was all she wanted in this world. They dove together into another world-shattering kiss. Then she felt his warm hand on her breast.
“But . . . Logan . . .”
“What about her?” His hand stilled.
“Aren’t you and her, you know . . .”
“Never happened.” His hoarse voice sent a mass of shivers across her skin. “All I could think about was you. I think you cursed me worse than old Virgil with the Bachelor Curse.”
Her last scrap of inhibition fled into the ether. She pushed herself against his hand, wanting more of his touch. It felt even better than she’d fantasized all those nights. He ran his fingers across her collarbones and slid her spaghetti straps down her shoulders.
Oh my God, were they actually doing this? Katie’s head swam. It felt like a dream. But if it was a dream, would his muscular arms feel so solid under her hands? Would the ridges on his back make her feel so safe and yet so wild? Would the bulge in his pants harden under her fingers, so she felt drunk with possibility?
She moaned as he slid her top all the way down, baring her breasts. She knew how hard her nipples were, how they ached for him. He skimmed his palms across them. The thrill shot straight to her sex. She squirmed, trying to press against his crotch.
“Wait,” he panted. “We can’t do this here. Where can we go?”
“What’s wrong with here?” Her desire made her sound cranky. “What are you waiting for, a hotel to magically appear? A random phone booth?”
“Oh Katie.” He wrenched himself away, pulled up her top, and started the truck. “Hang on.” She held on to her seat, vibrating like a wind-up doll. A frantic rhythm pounded through her.
He drove on the shoulder until the first turnoff, a deserted-looking farm road. At the first grove of trees, he pulled over. White blossoms drifted through the air from the trees overhead. Cicadas murmured. He turned to her, eyes blue as heaven. “This okay?”
Chapter Eighteen
“Perfect,” Katie breathed. She swung her legs up on the seat, ripped off her seat belt, and dove into his arms. For a long moment he simply held her, drinking in the scent of her hair, the soft, vibrant warmth of her body against his. He could have stayed that way for a long time, except an urgent beat drummed in his veins—the need to see more, feel more. He flicked the straps back off her shoulders and drew down her top.
He sucked in a deep breath at the sight of her beautifully small, high breasts. Her nipples had so much personality. They rose up to meet his touch with the same direct feistiness Katie had. He hadn’t gotten a good view the first time. Now he looked his fill while she sat, trembling.
He couldn’t keep his hands off her tender flesh another second. He cupped her breasts, their skin as soft as feathery down. Her nipples swelled to a dark rose color that drew his mouth as if she were sweet candy. He helped himself, drawing those pert points into his mouth, rolling them with his tongue until she moaned.
“Katie,” he whispered as he ran his palms across the pale flesh of her belly. The lower edge of her skirt rode up on her thighs, and the glimpse of skin made him see stars. “I want you. So bad, you have no idea.”
“Oh yes, I do,” she said in a fervent voice. “I want you just as bad. More.” She reached for his zipper. “It’s been on my mind, if you want to know.”
He laughed, a sound made ragged by the way her little hands took charge of the front of his jeans. When she’d gotten them down his thighs, he kicked them off the rest of the way. “Now we’ve got to get rid of that skirt that’s been driving me crazy.”
“Is that thing still on?”
“Yep, and it’s cramping my style.”
He put his hands on the small of her back and flipped her so she lay on her back on the seat. He braced himself over her, one leg on the seat, the other jammed in between the floorboards and the door. Her surprised gasp only lasted a second, then she put her hands to the back of her waist, raising her butt off the seat. This had the effect of pressing her pelvis against his arousal, which threatened to tear his boxers in two. He let out a heartfelt groan.
“You’re killing me, just so you know.”
“Don’t die yet. Hang on a little longer.” Her eyes danced as she smiled up at him and unzipped her skirt.
“With so much to live for, how could I not?”
She shimmied her skirt down her legs. He circled her hips with his hands and drank in the sight of her. Everything about her was exquisite, her glowing skin, her fine-boned build, her graceful curves. Even her underwear was perfect. Black cotton undies with a white imprint of a one-eyed pirate.
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