by Lila Ashe
He missed his mostly-built cabin up north so much it sometimes hurt.
But this was where he was. At least until his father didn’t need taking care of anymore.
Caz sat on the bottom step in front of his cottage, his boots splayed out into the dust below. The sunlight was thin but warm. Then he dialed the number Bonnie had insisted he program into his phone.
Bonnie answered on the second ring. “You! If I said I was surprised, that would be an understatement. What’s up?”
“I don’t really want to work with you on the fundraiser.” As an opening statement, it wasn’t the greatest one he’d ever led with, Caz knew. But by then the words were out.
There was a pause. Then Bonnie said, “Look. I was working on my bike. It’s my day off. Do I really have to put up with this today?”
“But we do have to work together on this, and we have to do well. This is important to me. It’s a good cause.” He wouldn’t tell her about his father, about how hard every single day off was.
“Yeah, yeah. Sure. I know. Alzheimer’s. Great cause. Also, I just want to get the chief off our backs. I want him to forget how mad he is at us. It would be even better if he got pissed at someone else. You think we can make that happen? Because I think we can. We just have to come up with some great ideas.” Her voice was so light and cheerful he wanted to crawl through the phone and wrap himself in that sound. What would it be like to feel that way all the time? Sometimes when he passed her in the hallway at work, when her blond hair was still sticking straight up from running her hands through it, her smile was so bright it almost blinded him.
“Let’s meet,” he said. “Tomorrow.” Joyce would be back to watch Dad and he could sneak away for a few hours.
“Meet? On our day off?”
He didn’t answer.
Eventually, she sighed. “Okay, but let’s ride bikes.”
“I’ll be fine in my truck, but you feel free to ride whatever you want.” Save a horse, ride a cowboy. When he was a teenager, he’d had that old bumper sticker on his first beat-up pickup truck.
“No.” There was a laugh in her voice. “I want you to ride a bike, too. That’s the point. You have one, don’t you?”
Somewhere in the barn was his old mountain bike, probably stuck under a tarp, spider webs wrapping the spokes. “I do, but…”
“Ride it. You live out Route 119, don’t you?”
No way was she coming to the ranch. “Look…”
“So we meet halfway. Hold on. I’m going inside the house. Let me look it up.” There was the slam of a door and then the sound of a keyboard clattering. “Oh, perfect. Bud’s Bar out where Lazy Creek joins the main road. Looks like it’s about five miles from both of us.”
“That’s a bar.”
“Give the man his prize! You don’t have to drink, my friend, but I’m telling you, the beers are cold and the burgers are amazing.”
She called him a friend.
They weren’t friends. At least, not that he knew of.
Bonnie went on. “Unless you don’t think you can ride ten miles round trip your first time back out?”
“I can ride ten miles.” Caz sure hoped he could.
“Great. Tomorrow, one o’clock. Don’t forget your sunscreen!” She laughed, a bright jingle of happiness, and then her voice was gone.
Caz held out his cell phone. He looked at it as if he’d never seen it before. Flat, matte black on one side, shiny on the other. Great reception. It was a good phone. A champion of a phone.
In fact, he didn’t think he’d ever had a better phone in his life. He kind of felt like kissing it, but that would officially be the dumbest thing he’d ever done in his life, so he just put it back in his pocket and went around the house to make sure his father was all right.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Bonnie sat at an outdoor picnic table with a beer and her book. It hadn’t been as hilly as she’d thought it was, and she’d made it faster than she’d planned.
That wasn’t a problem—she always packed a paperback in one of her panniers, for exactly this kind of situation. The sun was breaking through a thin layer of fog and it was warm enough on her shoulders. The beer was bold and hoppy. If only she didn’t have dealing with Caz on her list of things to do today, it would be just about perfect.
Speak of the devil.
Caz came into view at the bottom of the dirt driveway that wound through the live oaks and led to the porch at Bud’s Bar. The hill he had to climb was no joke. Bonnie hadn’t had to get off and walk, but she’d come close to it, and she rode her bike every day. He was going to struggle with it.
And she had a ringside seat. Bonnie grinned and settled back, the wood warming her skin through her thin T-shirt.
But good grief.
The man didn’t struggle.
Wearing a blue T-shirt and board shorts, Caz had to stand up on the pedals to make them turn, but he took the hill faster than she had. And the man’s calves…The closer he got, the more impressive they looked. They were solid roped muscle. She could probably cut an apple on the back of his leg. Even his thighs, where she could see them under the shorts, looked strong as the wood he whittled on the patio at work.
When Caz stopped short at her table, fishtailing his bike with a small flourish, she laughed.
“Not too shabby.”
Caz took his helmet off his head with one thumb. “Oh, come on. Admit it. You’re impressed with an old guy like me.”
“How old are you?” She had, in fact, assumed he was older than she was, but only because at the station he acted that way. And there had never been much call for her to examine his calves—those amazing calves, the way his gastrocnemius met his soleus—when they were at work.
“Thirty-four.”
Only three years older than she was. “Oh, yeah, such an old man. That explains the board shorts.”
Caz looked down in surprise. “These are Quiksilver. They’re the bomb.”
“You saying that proves my point.”
“The kids don’t say bomb anymore?”
“I don’t think they ever said it much in the first place.”
“Shoot.” Then he reached for her beer, and without asking, lifted it to his mouth and swallowed. She would have objected, would have yelled at him for not asking first, just the same way she would have at any of the other guys from the station—that was, she would have if she hadn’t been so busy ogling the underside of his jaw. He hadn’t shaved today, and she’d never seen his stubble so thick, even when they had to go out on five a.m. medical runs. He hadn’t shaved this morning at all, it looked like. And the way he swallowed hard, making his Adam’s apple bob—she couldn’t take her eyes off him.
This was Caz.
Her work nemesis. She’d never thought of him as sexy (okay, never that she would admit to herself). Caz was too quiet, too reserved. Too grumpy. She liked men who were loud and irreverent and happy. Her last boyfriend had been an auctioneer and he’d had the pipes to prove it. Mike, while he couldn’t be called a boyfriend—he’d barely seemed to care when she’d canceled on him earlier in the week—talked more than any other guy she’d ever met, about nothing at all. Caz barely spoke.
But right now? His not speaking was okay. She kind of just…wanted to watch.
He plunked the bottle back onto the tabletop. “Thanks. Just what I needed. I’ve got the next round.”
“I’ll say you do. Not even asking first. Sheesh.” But there was no sting in her tone. Bonnie honestly didn’t mind. And when she swigged from the neck, she thought she could taste the salt from his lips on the cool glass.
Silly.
She waved her hand. “I already ordered my burger. You should do the same. Tell Bud we’re together.” The words sounded funny coming out of her mouth. “I mean, that we’re going to eat together…so he can get the food out at the same time…” She was making it worse. “And I’ll take another one of these since you drank half of mine.”
Was that a smil
e on his normally stiff face? She didn’t want to analyze it, and stuck her nose back into her book as he strode off.
When he returned outside minutes later, he held out a new bottle.
“Thanks.”
“You bet,” he said. They clinked bottle necks, and sat back, looking down at the road below. He sat next to her, so they could both watch the view. A swirl of colored leaves that had somehow made it through the winter rains stirred, and a single truck rose a plume of dust as it raced down 119. An unseen bird screeched a raucous love song over their heads.
“You look…” Bonnie paused, tilting her head.
He glanced up at the blue sky. “Sunburned? I forgot the sunscreen you warned me about.”
“I have some in my bag, I’ll give you some before we leave. No, you look…” What was it? Why did he look so different? Was it just because he wasn’t wearing his uniform? That couldn’t make such a difference, could it? She was used to sitting next to Caz. She sat next to him in the rig for hours and hours at a time. What was it?
“Eh. Ranching’ll get you burned just as fast. I’m usually a little browner, but I haven’t been in the fields as much as usual since I took the job at Darling Bay.”
Relaxed. That’s what it was. He looked easy in his skin, not all tight at the eyes like he did at work. “You loved riding here.”
He shook his head. “Nah.”
“You did.”
“It was okay.”
“You loved it.” Bonnie knew that look—she had the same look herself sometimes. “You love being on a bike, too.”
The right side of his face cracked into a smile. “I guess it didn’t suck.”
“I knew it! When was the last time you rode?”
“A long time.”
“How long?”
He sighed and tilted his head back, closing his eyes against the sun. Bonnie had to fight the urge to reach out to see if that stubble was exactly as rough as it looked. “Maybe high school.”
“You’re kidding!” She gazed at the mountain bike. “But that looks so good.”
“Cleaned it. I had to replace both tubes and nothing on it had been oiled since I was seventeen. Bits of old rubber were flying off as I rode, and I bet something goes wrong with the shifter on the way home—it was being a pain on the ride here.”
“It’s your high school bike!”
His smile grew. He was doing a dismal job of hiding it behind the beer bottle.
“What was her name? Your bike?”
“It didn’t have a name.”
“You were a teenager. It totally had a name.”
“Don’t remember.”
“I know you do.”
“If I tell you, will you leave me alone about it?”
“Maybe.”
“Betsy.”
Bonnie choked on her swig of beer. Foam rose behind her teeth. “Oh, my gosh.”
“What? I know it’s stupid, but I was a kid.”
“That’s my bike’s name.”
Caz shook his head. “No, you promised to leave me alone about it. You’re not supposed to razz me about my teenage mistakes.”
“No, really. My bikes have always been named Betsy. Since I was a kid.”
“Why?”
“I have no idea.” She didn’t. The name had just come to her for her first banana-seat bike, and she’d moved the name along with the rear lights whenever she’d upgraded. “What do you call your truck?”
“I don’t.”
A spear of enjoyment shot through Bonnie’s rib cage. This was fun. She hadn’t expected this. “Are you lying to me?”
“I don’t lie.”
“You really don’t have a name for your truck?”
“Sorry to let you down. What do you call your car?”
“I don’t have one.”
He met her eyes, and Bonnie felt a jolt that had nothing to do with the way the wind shifted at that moment. “Seriously?”
“Have you ever seen me roll up in one?”
Caz shook his head.
“Why would I need one?”
“I don’t know. People just…need cars. Everyone knows that.”
“I drive all the time at work,” Bonnie said. “You know that. On my days off, I don’t need to. I can do everything on my bike.” She couldn’t help adding proudly, “I even once moved apartments on my bike. Box by box.”
“What about your couch? Your bed?”
Bonnie scratched the sweating beer label lightly. “Movers. I make a decent wage. I can afford to hire them when I need them.”
“That’s just weird. I never knew a Californian without a car.”
She shrugged. The conversation was so surprisingly enjoyable that she felt she should change the subject, get back on solid footing with him. “Now you do. What are we doing about this fundraiser?”
Bud, a tiny man with a high bush of white hair, brought out their burgers, grumbling about the walk outside he had to make to bring them. “Shouldn’t a put out these tables, more work than they’re worth…”
Bonnie watched him retreat and then laughed. “I felt like apologizing, but he did go and put these out here for customers—he just hates when we use them.”
Caz bit into the burger, and again, Bonnie was surprised with how enjoyable it was to watch him. Maybe she’d been averting her eyes at work when she should have been taking in the show. The muscles in the side of his jaw worked steadily, rhythmically. Something in her heart jumped.
“What?” he said.
“What what?” Bonnie reached for a fry. Okay, five fries. She jammed them into her mouth like it was a contest.
“Why are you staring at me?”
“You’re a messy eater.” She didn’t live with eight men two days a week for nothing. “You’re kind of a slob, in fact.”
He looked surprised, his dark eyebrows jumping toward his hairline. “I am?”
Bonnie reached forward and used her thumb to wipe an imaginary stain from his chin. “Yep. Big slob. Mustard.” She didn’t expect the jolt of electricity she felt as she touched his skin. It almost hurt.
Caz reached up and grasped her hand. He peered at the thumb that had just touched his cheek.
Bonnie wanted to draw back, and at the same time, she wanted to see exactly what he was going to do next.
“I don’t see mustard here.”
“Well…”
His gaze met hers. Something made the air thick between them. “Some might say you just wanted to touch me.”
“I—” Bonnie couldn’t find the words she needed. It was usually so easy for her to mouth off to anyone. She barely had to try. But with this guy, right now… she had nothing.
“Not that I would say that,” he went on. “You obviously don’t want to touch me. And I don’t want to do this.” He released her hand and raised his own. He touched her neck and then slid his fingers behind her neck. “And you sure as hell don’t want me to do this.”
Then Caz, her work partner, the man she wasn’t even sure if she liked as a person, kissed her full on the mouth.
CHAPTER NINE
He was losing his mind. That was the only explanation for what drove Caz to kiss Bonnie, of all people. She was his coworker. Even worse, she was nothing like him. She couldn’t understand him if he drew her a map.
But the skin at the back of her neck was as smooth as sanded mahogany, and her mouth was perfect under his. She gave a sharp, electric gasp that sent a jolt all the way through him, right down to his toes. But she didn’t draw away. She kissed him back, raising her hand to grasp his wrist. If she’d wanted to, she could have pushed him away with that hand. Instead, she drew him closer to her, meeting his mouth with so much heat Caz wondered if it were possible for him to burst into flame out here in the spring sun.
Her taste was sweet—dill and hops and something else that he wanted more of—so much more. What started out sweet moved to erotic almost instantly. What was hot went solar. Her tongue met his, matching him, and raising him
. The harder he kissed her, the harder she wound her fingers in her hair. He wasn’t even sure how it had happened—had he dragged her to him? Had she jumped?—but she was in his lap, one leg hooked over his, and he knew that she’d be able to feel exactly how steamed up he was getting.
A motorcycle roared up the dirt driveway, and was then followed by another, then three more. They kept coming until the small parking lot was full of guys wearing black leather.
Bonnie pulled back with another one of those sharp gasps, the sound that cut right through him, as if she were dragging a finger down his spine. She wriggled off his lap and back to her seat next to him. In the sunlight, Caz shivered.
Two of the men whooped as a woman rode up the driveway. Bonnie touched her bottom lip—wet from his own mouth—and stared at the riders. “Saved by the…gang, I suppose.”
Caz cast a quick look at the interlopers, hating them for riding up right when it was getting good. “I think those are lawyers.”
“No.”
“Look at the way that one guy’s hair is cut.” He pointed, but carefully, so the man wouldn’t notice. They probably were a gang of lawyers, but hey, there was no reason to tick off any kind of gang, especially the litigious kind.
“That is a nice haircut.”
He smiled at her, refusing to think about the way his insides felt—as if there were something flapping around inside his gut that wasn’t just the burger and beer. “Dare you to tell him that.”
Bonnie laughed but didn’t meet his eyes. “Oh, no. Never dare me to do anything.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ll do it.”
“Good to know.”
“No, no. Uh-uh. That’s not for you to use. I told you that as a friend. Not for you to use at work.”