Lucky Kiss

by Melanie Shawn

  Nothing they had thrown at her had seemed to faze her. She had taken it all in stride, kept smiling and working. Hard.

  Just like it amazed Lucky how a girl could switch from seemingly so sweet to batshit crazy in the blink of an eye, the difference between the girl he’d met in the woods and seen in the coffee shop and the firefighter who kicked some serious ass amazed him too.

  One seemed vulnerable and soft. The other seemed tough as nails and unbreakable. To Lucky, the dichotomy was as fascinating as it was intriguing. He had the overwhelming desire to get to know both sides of Deanna’s personality. Intimately.

  As he gazed down at the station, one of the bay doors rolled open. A few seconds later, a truck rolled out slowly. Since he didn’t hear any sirens, he figured that this must not have been an emergency. They must have been taking it out for maintenance or something.

  Scrubbing his hands over his face, he realized he wasn’t going to get anything done standing there, waiting to catch a glimpse of the girl who’d hijacked his entire being. Just as he lowered his hands with every intention to get his ass moving and put some equipment together, he saw a sight that stopped him in his tracks. Toned, tan legs, which were attached to a round, firm ass stepping down from the fire truck.

  He froze.

  Then Deanna’s entire body came into view, and she was wearing a loose, white tank top and navy-blue cut-off sweats that were like the ones she had been wearing when he’d met her. Her ponytail gave him the perfect view of the slender curve of her neck.

  He watched, mesmerized, as she went back inside the station. When she disappeared, he felt like he was at a twenty-five-cent peep show, his time had run out, and the slat had closed. If he could, he would put in a thousand dollars if it meant he could see her again.

  His wish was granted, though, and he didn’t even have to pay out of pocket for it. Deanna reemerged from the garage carrying a hose and two long poles that had mop-looking heads at the end of them.

  When she bent down to a wound-up hose on the ground, Lucky groaned loudly. As much as he felt like a pervert, he just couldn’t help himself. Deanna’s ass was groan-inspiring in a regular standing position, but bent over with the sun highlighting it like a spotlight, it was a masterpiece.

  Straightening, she went back inside and it gave Lucky a second to realize that what he was doing was all kinds of wrong, and might be borderline illegal. Was there a Peeping Tom law in California? Would he be considered a Peeping Tom since he, the peeper, was the one inside and Deanna, the peeped, was outdoors?

  “It doesn’t matter,” Lucky said to himself, his voice echoing in the empty space.

  Just the fact that he had to ask himself those questions meant he was doing something shady. Before he stepped away, he saw water spraying from the hose as Deanna picked it up and pointed it towards the fire engine.

  “Holy shit,” he rasped.

  Wrong or not, he found himself unable to move away from every male’s fantasy playing out in real life in front of him. Well, it would’ve been every male’s fantasy if she’d been wearing a bikini, but this was damn close.

  As she trailed the stream up and down the rig, Lucky noticed the definition of the muscles in her arms. The power in her grip was impressive. Unlike his body’s reaction to Gigi’s bare tits jiggling in front of him—which had been lackluster, to say the least—seeing Deanna fully clothed while washing the fire engine had him standing at full attention.

  A mind is a powerful thing that can play tricks on you. Currently, his was playing the scene before him in slow motion. Droplets of water shimmered in midair and bounced off the side of the rig. Deanna’s ponytail dramatically swayed back and forth as she shook the moisture off. Another moan escaped Lucky’s mouth as she stuck her bottom lip out and blew stray strands of hair out of her face.

  Damn.

  This was like a dream sequence. It was hotter than any beer commercial or music video he’d ever seen. Even though he knew that this was just a trick his mind was playing on him, he was having a hard time (literally) distinguishing between reality and what his brain was registering.

  His phone rang and it startled him out of his dream-like trance. Reaching down, he grabbed it off one of the large boxes that contained the equipment he needed to put together, he answered, “H’lo.”

  “Hey. I was just calling to see how things are going. Did you need some help setting up?” Levi asked.

  Looking around, he was tempted to take his big bro up on his offer. Not only could he use an extra hand, he also wouldn’t mind getting Levi’s take on what was going on with him. Although he’d really been enjoying getting to know his old man, Levi was much more of a father figure to Lucky.

  But the knowledge that Levi had two businesses to run and a new wife stopped him from taking him up on it. “I’ve got things under control here, but you gonna be around tonight? I was thinking of stopping by the Roadhouse for a drink.”

  “I’ll be here,” Levi answered.

  “Okay. See ya tonight.” Lucky hung up and ran his hand through his hair as he scanned the warehouse space that was currently filled with unopened boxes.

  Alder, who’d been Lucky’s trainer his entire career, would be there in two days. If he didn’t have his shit together by then, he would never hear the end of it. Glancing back out the window, he saw that Deanna had moved on to the soap-and-scrub portion of the wash.

  Damn.

  It honestly felt to Lucky like the picture window was a television and he was watching a real-time reality show starring a green-eyed, brown-haired girl unlike any woman he’d ever met.

  Focus was the main component of successful training. Distractions were everywhere—friends, women, partying, family. The key was to block all of that out as if he were wearing noise-canceling headphones. Lucky feared that, if he didn’t black this window out, this distraction would be too tempting to resist.

  *

  “Did you hear Lucky Dorsey’s in town, training?” Chris kicked his feet up on the table as they waited for the chief to start the crew meeting.

  “Yeah, and he rented the old Wilson warehouse for his training. Man, I’d love to see it.” Casey, who was usually calm, cool, and collected, sounded like a kid who wanted to go to Disneyland.

  Deanna tried to keep her face as neutral as possible as the guys discussed the man she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about. It had been bad enough when she hadn’t known what or who Lucky was. But, after she’d typed his name into the search engine and fallen down the rabbit hole that was Google, she couldn’t seem to go one full minute, not sixty seconds, without thinking about him.

  Especially since she now knew what he looked like shirtless—gotta love that Google Images function.

  No. He was off-limits. She’d determined that before she had known what he did for a living. But that little tidbit had just put the final nail in that no-way-no-how-no-go coffin.

  Deanna didn’t live her life by a bunch of rules. Growing up, her mother had been a perfectionist whose standards were impossible to live up to. Her childhood had been stifled and limited by rules. So, as an adult, she had determined that, although she would live a disciplined life so she could be successful, she was going to be free.

  It was true that her biggest rebellion thus far had been having pancakes for dinner, which had been strictly prohibited in her childhood home. Not that she and her mother had had pancakes all that often for breakfast, and even when they had, Deanna had not been permitted to have syrup or butter on them because of the calories. She had been allowed to top them with fruit, but that had not been particularly exciting as a kid.

  The rules had not stopped at her dietary restrictions. She’d had an eight p.m. bedtime until she’d graduated high school. Her room had to be spotless. Her mother also had an approved list of friends she was allowed to socialize with. None of whom she’d liked. Every minute of every day had been scheduled.

  Needless to say, she’d lived for the summertime. That was her dad’s ti
me. But, because of his career, he was gone more than he was home. Because of that, she got to stay at her aunt and uncle’s house, and they had four boys and no rules. Plus, Mackenzie Sutton had lived next door. She’d been Deanna’s best friend growing up. Okay, Kenzie had been her only friend.

  The one time she had stayed with her Dad all summer, she was fourteen. He’d said that he wanted to bond with her. The truth, she later found out, was that his partying ways were reflecting badly on the team and the manager thought that having her around would give him a more “family-friendly” image. His image might’ve been boosted but there hadn’t been anything family or friendly about her time with him. In that one summer, she’d seen enough womanizing and cheating to last a lifetime.

  Which was why she’d put one firm rule into place. She absolutely did not date athletes. She’d seen too much—too many groupies, too much betrayal and infidelity.

  The one and only time she’d decided to take a flight on the athlete plane, the skies had not been friendly. It had turned into a complete and utter disaster—crash and burn.

  Freshman year of college, her first boyfriend—her first everything—was the quarterback of the football team. The night after she’d lost her virginity, she walked in on him telling his frat brothers that he was just banging Deanna so she’d take him home for the holidays and he could meet and hook up with Victoria Lane. She’d cried for a week. Been utterly devastated. Once she’d picked herself up, dusted her heartbreak off, and mended her wounded pride, she vowed to never make that mistake again.

  “Bishop, did you hear that Lucky Dorsey is in town?” Chris asked Eli, posing the same question he’d asked everyone as they sat down at the table.

  “Yep. I did,” her cousin said slowly as he sank into the chair beside her.

  Eli’s stare was boring into the side of her face, but she didn’t acknowledge it. Her eyes remained on the hallway that led to the chief’s office as she willed him to appear and start this meeting. The last thing she wanted was to discuss Lucky Dorsey—which was all anyone seemed to want to talk about—in front of her cousin.

  Once this meeting was over, so was her seventy-two-hour shift. She’d be off for the next four days, and she hoped she’d be able to clear her head in that time. Sleep and reset.

  “What about you, DeDe? Did you know that Lucky Dorsey was in town?”

  Uh oh.

  Eli had called her DeDe. He knew she hated that nickname, and he hadn’t used it since she was in high school. Her mother had started calling her that when she’d hit puberty and put on a few pounds, citing that Deanna sounded like someone who was slim and DeDe had a much more robust feeling to it.

  Her eyes shot to his as the guys all chimed in their versions of the same question, all now calling her DeDe.

  The worst thing she could do was let them see how the name really affected her. That every time she heard it, it was like nails on a chalkboard. So, as nonchalantly as humanly possible, she nodded, feigning boredom.

  “Yeah.”

  Not to toot her own horn, but toot-toot. She couldn’t have sold that any better if she’d added a yawn to it.

  Despite her Oscar-worthy portrayal of Girl Who Couldn’t Care Less, Eli persisted. “Vivien said you and Lucky know each other.”

  Seriously!?

  That little redheaded barista was about to get on Deanna’s last nerve. Why was she even talking about her at all? As irritated as she was, though, she didn’t let it show. Any crack in her blasé cover and her cousin would sniff it out like the overprotective, bloodhound he was.

  As all the guys jumped on the how-do-you-know-Lucky train and bombarded her with questions, she remained calm.

  “I don’t know him. I met him the other day when I was walking this guy.”

  Reaching down, Deanna patted Lucky (the dog) on his big, goofy head. Despite a rocky start to their relationship, the four-legged pup had become her best friend over the last three days. He never left her side. She’d actually started calling him Sidekick—partly because he was always beside her and partly (mainly!) because she didn’t need the constant reminder of the man she couldn’t seem to stop thinking about.

  The guys all started laughing and recounting how they’d been waiting for her with a stopwatch when she’d gotten back from her dog-walking adventure. Turns out the “you don’t need a leash” warning was part of her rookie initiation. And her time of forty-five minutes was a record. No other rookie had gotten Lucky back in under an hour. He was notorious for taking off for the river the second he hit the trail.

  Before the subject could round back to Lucky (the man she absolutely did not want to discuss), the chief, Jake Maguire, entered the room and everyone quieted down.

  After going over some procedural changes during shift crossovers, he lifted a piece of paper up. “Okay, so, as most of you know, the annual Hometown Heroes Ball is coming up. This year, instead of the traditional auction, we’re going to have a silent auction.”

  The guys laughed, and a few patted Eli on the back. She gave him a questioning look.

  “Thanks to this guy. Man, I thought Kelly was going to tear that poor girl’s hair out.” Chris chuckled as he tilted back in his chair.

  Eli shrugged with a half grin on his face. Then it all came back to her. She remembered her aunt telling her that a couple of girls had gotten into a bidding war for Eli at the last auction. It had ended with the two of them rolling around on the floor. If memory served, her cousin had yielded the highest amount for the night, which had raised money for both the police and fire departments.

  The chief continued. “Yeah, it got pretty ugly last year. So, this year, we’re going to have envelopes with your names and the dates you’re available. At the end of the night, your time will go to the highest bidder. Remember, this is G-rated. No funny stuff.”

  She also remembered that, when her cousin had shown up at Kelly’s house to escort her to dinner, she’d greeted him naked as a jaybird. In the version of the story she’d heard, Eli had not capitalized on the situation and waited in Kelly’s front room like a perfect gentleman while she got dressed. But, of course, she’d heard this from her aunt, so she took it with a grain of salt.

  As the meeting continued, the auction sign-up sheet was passed around. When it came to her, she signed up for two dates a week apart, both on her fourth day off. The four-hour dates could consist of whatever the winning bidder bid you to do within the G-rated parameters. Last night at dinner, a few of the guys had been talking about what some of them had to do. It was everything from cleaning gutters and retiling a bathroom to watching a movie.

  Whatever it was, she was up for it. She might just get to know her new town and the people who lived in it a little better.

  Optimism flooded her as she passed the sign-up sheet to her cousin.

  Then the chief announced, “And I just got a call from Lucky Dorsey. He will have his equipment up and running within the next few days, and he’s graciously offered to open his doors for both the police and fire departments to utilize it.”

  And just like that, her optimism balloon was popped.

  As the room erupted in cheers and hell yeahs, Deanna slumped in her chair. This was bad. Really bad.

  Chapter 5

  ‡

  “Lucky!” A few pool-playing patrons at the bar lifted their beer mugs a la Cheers as Lucky walked into the Roadhouse.

  “Hey.” He nodded and smiled as he made his way to a barstool in the back corner.

  As much as he enjoyed his life basically being a Cheers episode—everyone knew his name—it could sometimes get exhausting. Actually, it’d only gotten tiresome these past few months. Before that, he’d eaten the attention up. But that was when everything in his life had made sense.

  His career had been on fire. He’d been training like a madman and dating like one too. Now, he felt lost.

  Before his ass even hit the barstool, his brother had a beer waiting for him.

  “You look like you could use this
,” Levi observed.

  After taking a considerable gulp, he set the mug down. He needed to pace himself. His self-imposed two-drinks-once-a-week limit was due to having seen too many guys blow it in the cage because of partying.

  “So, what’s up?” His brother lifted one eyebrow.

  “Just got a lot on my mind.”

  He wanted to talk to his brother, he just didn’t really know where to start.

  He’d never voiced out loud, to anyone, the discontent that he’d been feeling. Somehow, that would make it real.

  Levi followed up with, “Like what?”

  Whether it made it more real or not, Lucky did need a sounding board. And no one was better for the job than his big brother.

  “It’s just…” Lucky struggled to find the right words.

  “Hey, Shelbs,” Levi called across the bar to his wife. “I’m going to head in the back for a minute.”

  Shelby gave him a thumbs-up, and Levi stepped out from behind the bar, motioning for Lucky to follow him. After making their way through the kitchen, they stepped out the back screen door.

  As the screen door slammed shut, Levi crossed his arms over his chest. “What’s going on?”

  Once he’d taken a deep breath, Lucky explained the best way he knew how. “Since my last fight, I’ve just… I just haven’t… I don’t have the same drive, the same focus, the same fire. No matter what I do, I can’t seem to get it back. Fighting used to be what I went to bed thinking about and the first thing on my mind when I woke up.”

  His brother smirked. “I thought that honor belonged to women.”

  He knew his brother was teasing, but his comment hit a raw nerve.

  “That’s the other thing: women aren’t even holding my interest anymore. Seriously. I just… I don’t know. Maybe I need to have my testosterone levels checked or something. Maybe there really is something wrong with me.”

  A small voice in the back of his head pointed out that his testosterone had been just fine earlier today when Deanna had been washing the rig. Just thinking about it now had a lot more than his testosterone rising.