The First Time at Firelight Falls

by Julie Anne Long

  It took him about three seconds to get to where she was standing, and still it wasn’t quite fast enough.

  He arrived, and she wanted to tip face forward into his chest and maybe inhale deeply to get a hit of the smell of him.

  She tipped her face up instead.

  His lips were right there.

  He used them to speak.

  “Have I ever fallen in . . . ?” he prompted. Sounding just a little tense.

  “. . . love,” she completed.

  When she could get a word out.

  He cupped his hand to his ear and said, “Sorry?”

  “LOVE,” she all but bellowed.

  Causing heads to swivel.

  “Ah,” he said. “That’s what I thought. Oh yeah, a thousand times.”

  Suddenly, like a cane at a gong show, an arm was looped through his and he was dragged backward by Meredith Blevins.

  “Gabe Caldera, these two fellas want to be involved in next year’s fund-raiser. Come on over and real quick meet Darius and Ray of Canyon Collectibles.”

  He flashed a mischievous look over his shoulder as he went.

  She stood and unabashedly watched him, on fire with curiosity over how he was going to explain that “a thousand times.” She had to hand it to him. He was the least boring principal of a school possibly ever.

  She remained tucked next to the snack table, semi-camouflaged in her black dress, because she didn’t want to talk to anyone else, the way she didn’t want to hear, say, death metal on the heels of “Nights in White Satin.” Not yet.

  When Gabe returned approximately two minutes later, he said, conversationally, “Okay, the first time I fell in love with you was when you stopped to watch a squirrel and a blue jay fight over a french fry. And again when you told me about how your heart broke over and over again for Annelise. And how it had broken for me and my fiancée. And when you told me why you had only one cat. And when you told Jan that some people think that a man’s heart is just as important as his penis. And again when I kissed you for the first time. And again when you whispered my name against my hand because you couldn’t scream, the first time we made love. And when you asked me why I was being a dick. And when a baseball in a pink box was delivered to me this morning. A thousand little earthquakes, all reshaping my heart over and over. How can this be happening? I asked myself. But I fall in love with you over and over, a little deeper, a little harder, every single time.”

  His voice had gotten a little quieter, a little hoarser, and his voice, which had begun with bravado, was now tender, uncertain.

  Holy—!

  Talk about weaponizing strengths!

  Who on earth could withstand that kind of cut-to-the-chaseness without dissolving completely. She never cried in front of anybody if she could possibly help it, and now all her fellow Hellcat Canyon merchants were impressionistic smears.

  He used his fingertips to collect them from her lashes.

  “I’m sorry I hurt you. I was scared to death of losing you, and I didn’t want to admit it to myself or to you.”

  “I figured that out. And I know I wasn’t entirely fair to you, either. I’m sorry, too.” She sniffled.

  A few of the people in the room were copping on to the fact that something momentous was happening between the principal and the florist. Either that, or he was helping her reinstall a contact lens.

  “How about you? Ever been in love?”

  “Only once. With you.” Short words were the only ones she could handle at the moment.

  “Keeping it brief, Ms. Harwood?”

  “Force of habit.”

  “We could make forever our new habit.”

  “Damn. You don’t mess around, do you, Your Excellency?”

  “Nope. Scared yet?”

  “Nope. Never with you.”

  “Huh. I am, a little,” he confessed.

  “Don’t worry, Gabe. I’ll be brave for you.”

  They didn’t know it, but with every word their bodies were moving closer, and closer, and then her arms, magically, looped around his neck, and his arms wrapped around her waist, and just the way, say, even a sudden little fire started in a crowded room would inevitably command your attention, pretty soon they were surrounded by wide eyes and dropped-open mouths and motionless people.

  The only person who wasn’t surprised was Greta. She just smiled knowingly and used that distraction to help herself to the last Rice Krispies treat.

  The music played on but conversation stopped.

  “Best sex you ever had?” he murmured into her ear.

  “Just you wait.”

  He kissed her, right there in the middle of the Chamber of Commerce mixer, a fog-up-the-windows kind of kiss, and a romance didn’t really get much more official than that in Hellcat Canyon.

  Epilogue

  Six months later, eight something (but who cares about the time?) on a Sunday morning . . .

  Eden was still sleeping, her eyelashes shivering against her cheeks, her mouth parted and smushed against her pillow, her hair swirled every which way above her head, as if some guy with a camera shouting “Now sexy! Now pouty!” and an actual wind machine had styled her. One creamy shoulder and just a crescent moon of pink nipple peeked saucily from the sheet.

  She was a side sleeper.

  So was he.

  It made spooning so much easier.

  Not that it would have been a chore.

  Still.

  They were both still conscious of the preciousness of the milliseconds of time they saved getting into snuggle position, which would add up to minutes or even hours over the years, or so they decided, during one meandering, urgency-free conversation, of which they in fact had several over the past few months. Meandering with Eden was as fun as cutting to the chase with her.

  For a second, he wallowed in the still-novel luxury of admiring her flushed and only a little drooling pink and white loveliness, striped in shadow and light from the slightly parted blinds.

  What a shame it would be to wake her up.

  Gabe leaned over and licked her nipple.

  And very quickly lay flat again and closed his eyes.

  There was a rustle from the next pillow over.

  He cracked an eye.

  She opened one eye, and then the other.

  She smiled sleepily and stretched her arms up over her head like a wanton, letting the sheet slip down.

  His head went light. Boy, that view never got old. “Just how I like my women. Sunny side up.”

  She rolled over and pressed all that warm nude lusciousness up against him. “Mmm. That’s funny. I like my men over easy.”

  “Oh, what a pity. I’m afraid the only thing on the menu this morning is over hard,” he said with great, solicitous regret.

  They were shamelessly dorky.

  Her hand slipped down under the sheets to investigate the veracity of this.

  He sucked in a breath as her hand languidly stroked.

  “I might be open to substitutions,” she decided musingly as he stirred, and swelled, beneath her clever fingers that now knew him so well and yet found ways to surprise him.

  She burrowed her face in his throat. “You smell better than toast.”

  “Yes, but how do I taste?” he said gravely.

  She kissed him. Slow, slow. The sheer decadence of being leisurely was still erotic as hell. And she kept up the handiwork under the covers so that mad hunger took over both of them, and it was an effort to pace themselves.

  Annelise had spent the night at Caitlynn Pennington’s house, and they were picking her up at ten.

  They could do this for the next two hours.

  So that’s exactly what they did.

  At about nine forty-five they were just about to head to the door to pick up Annelise at Caitlynn Pennington’s when Eden laughed and touched his arm. “Gabe, look . . .”

  She pointed to the whiteboard.

  Which was crowded with even more doodles and abbreviations than before. F
unny thing, though: somehow life itself seemed infinitely roomier. Love somehow expanded the depth and breadth of every day.

  But in a square three weeks from the square representing today, heretofore occupied only by a little drawing of a wedding bell, were pink words in Annelise’s handwriting.

  Mr. Caldera is my dad!!!!

  With an arrow stretching on into infinity, through all the squares.

  He’d be Mr. Caldera at school. Right now, he was “Gabe” at home.

  He’d be “Dad” forever after that.

  This they’d all decided, after a confab, and because Annelise had a sense of ceremony, his new title would go into effect right after they both said “I do” and not sooner.

  After which the whole Harwood household, whiteboard, Peace and Love and the Barbies and Annelise’s guitar, everything, would move into Gabe’s big yellow house with the tire swing and room for a horse.

  One square per week on the whiteboard featured a sketch that was basically a little circle with a smile and a snarl of hair on top.

  That was their symbol for Jasper.

  Annelise Skyped with him once a week since he’d left, for a half hour or an hour or so, whatever the two of them could spare, and Jasper had been surprisingly diligent about it. Eden always hovered nearby. Or Gabe. Their relationship had settled into a sort of goofy rhythm. Jasper was a lot like a big kid, and he liked to show her stuff on the guitar, and the songs she wrote seemed to just slay him. He genuinely got a kick out of Annelise, naturally, because Annelise was awesome.

  Word that Jasper Townes had a daughter still hadn’t reached any gossip sites.

  And it was fine. Good, even. Eden genuinely hoped they grew to love each other in the safety of a quiet relationship. More love in the world was better than less.

  “I think my dad Jasper is going to be kind of like Snuffleupagus,” Annelise had told Eden thoughtfully.

  “From Sesame Street? That big furry elephant-type beast?”

  “Yeah. Only Big Bird can see him. And he’s kind of funny looking, and hairy, but he’s nice, you don’t see him very often, but when you do it’s fun. And then he’s gone again.”

  Sesame Street was indeed educational programming.

  She was pretty sure Jasper’s role in their lives would get a little more complicated than that as Annelise got older.

  For now, it suited all of them. And Jasper was clearly pretty wary of getting on the wrong side of Gabe, so there was that.

  So for the past several months, happiness wasn’t an emotional state so much as it was the weather they moved through every day of their lives.

  An hour or so later the three of them were heading up to Firelight Falls for that long delayed, longed-for picnic, a backpack loaded with a picnic lunch.

  Annelise was taking the opportunity to pretend to be a horse. She galloped ahead of them, tossing her head and whinnying, pausing to pretend to eat a thistle.

  “Baby, you might want to pace yourself. It’s about a forty-five minute hike.”

  Little did Annelise know, but Gabe and Eden had already looked into getting a horse for her eleventh birthday. A patient one, with a few years on it.

  “Hey, Leesy, you know how you can get the best view of the canyon from here?” Gabe asked.

  “Stand on your toes?” Leesy asked.

  “Guess again.”

  “Go up to the tippy top of Whiplash Peak?”

  “Nope. Liiiiiiike . . . this.”

  Annelise gave a happy little shriek when he swooped down, scooped her up, and planted her atop his shoulders.

  “Don’t kick or grab my ears and we’ll be good.”

  Eden laughed at them. If she were to make a totem pole of the loves of her life, it would look a lot like that one.

  “Hey, I’m taller than you now, Mom,” Annelise called down.

  “Well, that was bound to happen sooner or later.”

  “HIYA, Thunder! Giddyup!” Leesy commanded.

  “I am so calling you Thunder from now on,” Eden told Gabe.

  He shot her a quick smoldery glance that told her he was actually kind of looking forward to the circumstances under which that might occur.

  “Pretend I’m more like a plow horse, Leesy,” Gabe said. “The sturdy kind. Maybe a little hard of hearing. I’m gonna plod. Don’t kick. We’ll get there.”

  She settled in happily.

  And as they made their way up the trail to the falls, Gabe steadied Annelise with one hand and reached for Eden’s hand with the other.

  And for a few moments all was just sun, and trees, and rightness, and Annelise pivoting her head to and fro, gulping in the view, awestruck. “Wow, Mom, I can totally see forever!”

  Eden and Gabe exchanged a glance that was pure contentment, happily possessive, all passion and promise.

  “Me, too, baby,” she said.

  Acknowledgments

  My gratitude to my editor, May Chen, because her delight in the story, her humor, and her sharp wits make working with her such a pleasure; to the brilliant staff at Avon who work so hard to make sure the books you love find their way into your hands, and have beautiful covers and well-proofed insides, to boot; to my agent, Steve Axelrod; and to every lovely reader who reads this book.

  The Hellcat Canyon Series

  Don’t miss any of Julie Anne Long’s acclaimed Hellcat Canyon romances!

  HOT IN HELLCAT CANYON

  A broken truck, a broken career, and a breakup heard around the world land superstar John Tennessee McCord in Hellcat Canyon. Legend has it that hearts come in two colors there: gold or black. And that you can find whatever you’re looking for, whether it’s love . . . or trouble. J. T. may have found both in waitress Britt Langley.

  His looks might cause whiplash and weak knees, but Britt sees past J. T.’s rough edge and sexy drawl to a person a lot like her: in need of the kind of comfort best given hot and quick, with clothes off and the lights out.

  Her wit is sharp but her eyes and heart—not to mention the rest of her—are soft, and J. T. is falling hard. But Britt has a secret as dark as the hills, and J. T.’s past is poised to invade their present. It’s up to the people of Hellcat Canyon to help make sure their future includes a happily ever after.

  WILD AT WHISKEY CREEK

  Everyone knows the Greenleaf family puts the “Hell” in Hellcat Canyon—legend has it the only way they ever leave is in a cop car or a casket. But Glory Greenleaf has a different getaway vehicle in mind: her guitar. She has a Texas-sized talent and the ambition (and attitude) to match, but only two people have ever believed in her: her brother, who’s in jail, and his best friend . . . who put him there.

  Sheriff Eli Barlow has secretly been in love with Glory since he was twelve years old. Which is how he knows her head is as hard as her heart is soft—and why she can’t forgive him for fracturing her family . . . or forget that night they surrendered to an explosive, long-simmering passion. But when a betrayal threatens Glory’s big break, Eli will risk everything to make it right . . . because the best way to love the girl from Whiskey Creek might mean setting her free forever.

  DIRTY DANCING AT DEVIL’S LEAP

  As Avalon Harwood’s fortunes soared, Maximilian “Mac” Coltrane’s plummeted, and he had to fight his way back to where they both began: Hellcat Canyon. Now Mac and Avalon will play dirty—in more ways than one—to get what they each want: the glorious old abandoned Coltrane mansion. But when Avalon snaps the house up at auction, she discovers there’s something awfully familiar about the extremely hot caretaker . . .

  Mac might have a heart of stone, and the abs to match, but Avalon—the dazzling girl whose heart was always too big and too reckless for her own good—was always his Kryptonite. And just like that, the stakes change: suddenly they’re fighting not just for a house, but for a magic they tasted only once before and never since—long ago, with each other, at Devil’s Leap.

  About the Author

  USA Today bestselling author JULIE ANNE LONG orig
inally set out to be a rock star when she grew up (and she has the guitars and fringed clothing stuffed in the back of her closet to prove it), but writing was always her first love. Since Julie hung up her guitar for the computer keyboard, her books frequently top reader and critic polls and have been nominated for numerous awards, including the RITA®, Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice, and the Quill, and reviewers have been known to use words like “dazzling,” “brilliant,” and “impossible to put down” when describing them. Julie lives in Northern California.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers and more, at hc.com.

  By Julie Anne Long

  The First Time at Firelight Falls

  Dirty Dancing at Devil’s Leap

  Wild at Whiskey Creek

  Hot in Hellcat Canyon

  The Legend of Lyon Redmond

  It Started with a Scandal

  Between the Devil and Ian Eversea

  It Happened One Midnight

  A Notorious Countess Confesses

  How the Marquess Was Won

  What I Did for a Duke

  I Kissed an Earl

  Since the Surrender

  Like No Other Lover

  The Perils of Pleasure

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  the first time at firelight falls. Copyright © 2018 by Julie Anne Long. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers. For information, address HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007.