by Anthology
“The council,” I agreed.
“The whole town. Bash, you built this compound on Parson’s old land—”
“It’s my land now. Has been for about three years.” Since I’d sold the first app. Half the money had gone to the land purchase and the other half had gone to my broker for investments. Four apps later, I wasn’t doing too badly.
“Not the point. We’re what—maybe half a mile away from the ridgeline?” Her voice dropped, and her shoulders sagged. “Why here?”
“Because if I didn’t buy it, developers were going to. Did you want condos up here? Tourists trying to get closer to the slopes? Better us, men just like them, than a bunch of college kids on spring break fucking around on the land our fathers died on.” She wavered, her eyes doing the side-to-side shuffle they did when she was making a decision. God, it needed to be the right one. Getting Emerson to change her mind on anything was impossible. “Help me, Emerson. You know the town, you can help this through.”
Her eyes met mine. “You’re asking this town to bleed again when there’s almost nothing left to give.”
“I’m asking this town to breathe, to live again.”
She turned slowly, taking in every detail of the facility. The huge great room used for everything from meetings to training, to watching football, the offices, the kitchen, the long dining tables, even the stairs that led downstairs to the living quarters for anyone who didn’t want to bunk in town. “I’ll think about it.”
I let out the breath I’d held. That was a maybe. Maybe was good. I could muscle the council, the business owners, anything money could grease, I could handle it. But where emotions were involved, to the town of Legacy, I was an outsider. I’d left, abandoned the town just as she was getting on her feet.
I’d abandoned Emerson.
She wandered to the door, pausing where the pictures of the team ten years ago hung. Eighteen heroes. Eighteen deployed shelters. Eighteen caskets.
Her fingers brushed the smiling photo of her dad, whose arm was looped around my dad. They’d been inseparable, best of friends since grade school. Even their bodies had been found next to each other.
“This is their crew, Emmy. Our dads’, our friends. They loved this team. I’ve never asked you for anything, and I’m asking…” My jaw flexed. “I’m begging you to help me bring the team back.”
She looked up at me, those eyes seeing through every layer of bullshit I’d used as armor since I left Legacy. “What do you know about running a hotshot team, Bash? It’s not something you throw money at and walk away from.”
Shit. Fuck. Damn it.
I took a breath. “I’m working on hiring someone to run the team. Someone I worked with in California.”
“California?” she asked, demanding the truth.
“I’ve been on a hotshot crew for a while now. I know what I’m doing.”
“How long?” She asked, putting it together faster than I’d hoped she would.
“Six years,” I said quietly.
“You left m…” She cut herself off with a shake of her head and an ironic smile. “I eventually knew you were on a crew, Ryker told me, but I never realized when it started. Are you with them? Ryker? Knox?”
“Ryker. Knox is further north,” I replied. “It’s in my blood. It always has been.” I reached for her, needing to keep her close enough to touch, to keep from bolting.
She stepped away, and I didn’t pursue. “You don’t owe me an explanation, Bash. You never have.”
Bite the bullet. Do it. “There’s something else you need to know.”
“Oh?”
“I’m not staying. Once we have the team in place I’m going back to California.”
As if someone had frozen her features, her face became an unreadable mask. “You’re leaving. You waited until you thought I’d be in London…you purposely planned this visit so you didn’t have to see me.”
“Yes.” There was no lying to her. She knew me far too well for that shit. There had never been lies between us. Ugly truths maybe, but never lies, and I wasn’t about to start now.
She nodded twice, then spun on her heel and walked for the door. Fuck. This wasn’t supposed to be so hard. Clean, easy, all of it—that had been the plan. But then she’d sat up in her chair at the council meeting, and I knew I was royally screwed. And not in the good way. “Emerson, please. This is their legacy.”
She paused, her hand on the door. Her shoulders rose and fell twice before she turned back to me. “No, Sebastian. We are their legacy. This is you reconstructing the very thing that killed them.”
Without another word she walked out of the front door, closing it softly and taking my only chance of success with her.
Chapter Three
Emerson
“This is such bullshit,” Harper agreed over the thrum of conversation in the bar. Wicked was the most popular bar in town, mostly because it was the only bar in Legacy. We’d been lucky to snag a couple of stools for a Friday night.
Then again with Harper’s looks, she could have talked any of the guys out of their seats. I’d seen that blonde hair and those blue eyes work their magic more than once.
“It is what it is,” I said with a shrug, popping a spearmint Tic Tac.
“He hasn’t said anything else? Talked to you? Anything?”
I spun my empty shot glass and caught it. “Nope. Just asked me to help him and I haven’t seen him since. I still haven’t made up my mind about what to do.”
“I can’t believe he’s actually here. Ryker didn’t say anything, I swear.”
I gave her a reassuring smile. “You’ve been my best friend for over twenty years, Harper. I know you would have told me.”
Her shoulders drooped. “I feel like shit that I didn’t notice. Ry isn’t home often, and I was honestly just trying to enjoy having the asshat around.” She leaned over the bar, “Mike! We need two more!” she shouted, lifting her shot glass for him to see.
“Probably more than that,” I muttered as he nodded.
“Looking good, Harper,” one of the local guys shouted from directly behind us, where he had a front-row seat to the show her ass was putting on.
I hooked my fingers in Harper’s belt and yanked her back down to her seat. She immediately pivoted, her finger already wagging. “Knock your shit off, Alex. I’m your kid’s preschool teacher for fuck’s sake.”
“Hey, I was just paying you a compliment. Not that you don’t look great too, Emerson,” Alex said with a deceptively sweet smile.
“Uh huh,” Harper replied with more than a little venom.
“Thank you, Alex,” I replied at the same time, tugging the edges of my asymmetrical sweater over my red v-neck tank top.
“So Vargas is home, huh?” He wiggled his eyebrows.
Life in a small town. “He’s just visiting.”
“That’s right, trying to restart your daddy’s team, isn’t he? Like that’s going to happen.”
My fingers tightened on the glass, but I couldn’t tell if it was the cavalier mention of the team, or his stupid assumption that Bash couldn’t do it. Maybe it’s something that needs to be done.
“Greg, get your boy under control,” Harper ordered as he appeared from the bar.
“Yeah, and then I’ll fix global warming,” he answered. “But for what it’s worth, I think Bash has the right idea.” He gave me a wink before joining his friends at their table.
I plopped my head in my hands, more than ready for another shot. “Why can’t I just be attracted to him?” I asked Harper quietly. She leaned in, more than aware that ears were everywhere in a tiny town. “He’d be good for me, right? He’s funny, kind, stable. Good looking, even!”
“Greg’s a good guy,” she admitted. “You could always try a date or two, just to see what develops…”
“But?” I asked, knowing there was more.
“But if you guys don’t have that I-need-to-fuck-you-against-the-wall kind of chemistry, it’s going to be hard for
you.” She quieted when Mike delivered two more lemon drop shots. He departed with a head-nod.
“Why? A lot of people are happy without raging hormones getting involved. Maybe it’s the whole slow-and-steady-wins-the-race philosophy.”
She rolled her eyes. “Look at Greg again,” she challenged.
I turned in my seat and saw Carrie Cook perched at Greg’s shoulder, her thumb absently stroking the seam of his shirt. “Okay?” I asked Harper.
“Are you pissed? Really think about it.”
I took full stock of my feelings, noting the way the slightly older girl flirted with him and the sound of his laugh. “Nope,” I answered. “I’m curious, kind of wondering where they’ll take that, but I’m not angry at all. I really like Carrie. She’s ridiculously nice.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to work for you,” she scoffed, spinning her seat again to face our drinks.
I spun too, catching myself on the bar. “Hey, it could. I’ve dated guys that I’m not insanely lustful over before.”
This time, she flat-out laughed. “Right. And none of them worked out. Why? Because you’ve had that lust-filled want, that scratching, clawing, biting need to rip someone’s clothes off, and not just because they’re fine as hell, but because you’ve loved that man. You’re not going to be happy with anything less than that chemistry.” She saluted me with her shot.
Just the thought of Bash nearly pressed up against me on the pool table the other day sent a shot of heat down my limbs. The way his lips had parted, his gaze had dropped to mine. We. Happened.
“He ruined me,” I said with an ironic smile, lifting my shot.
“He gave you higher standards; that’s all. Now, let’s…oh, shit.” She sighed.
I followed her line of sight in the mirror above the bar. “Oh shit,” I repeated in a whisper.
We both turned in our seats, our shots held midair. Carrie wasn’t touching Greg anymore. Oh no, she had her perfectly painted pink nails toying with a button on a light blue shirt stretched across a body I knew all too well. The sleeves were rolled, revealing the band of tattoos on his right arm that I knew stretched up his shoulder and across his back. Bash.
He looked up as if I’d called his name, and our eyes locked across the twenty feet or so that separated us. I-need-to-fuck-you-against-the-wall chemistry, indeed. God help me, I did. I wanted to test the strength of his bigger muscles. I needed to feel his mouth on mine. I craved that sweet loss of control that only Bash had ever given me. In fact, there was a neat little outcropping on the wall right there that he could brace my ass on while sliding these jeans off. My body had forgotten the last six years and time-warped back to when I was eighteen, immediately recognizing that its master was in the room.
Master? What the hell. No way. I promptly ordered my panties to remain safely at hip-level and tried to shut off my sex-drive. Of course, it had chosen this exact week to reappear.
His eyes heated the longer he stared at me, and I wet my lips out of pure instinct. He moved toward me, but Carried tugged on his shirt and gave him a cute grin. Bitch.
“Have you mentally fucked him, yet? Because holy eye-sex going on over there.” Harper noted, the shot waiting patiently in her hand.
“Oh, probably twice,” I admitted with a grimace.
We tapped our glasses together in commiseration, and I met Bash’s gaze when I threw back the lemon-drop, then licked the sugar from the rim. His fingers flexed against the bottle in his hand. At least you still get to him. I spun on my stool and slammed the glass down.
“Stop looking at me like that, Emmy.” Bash growled in my left ear, his voice unmistakable and low. “I’m trying my best to give you space, but if I see that little pink tongue one more time, I’m sucking it into my mouth.” I hated the chill that slid down my spine almost as much as I loved the streak of fire that followed it.
“You worry about your own tongue,” I quipped back, my voice a hell of a lot stronger than I felt.
“How’s going, Harpy?” He teased Harper like we were back in high school. Like he hadn’t skipped out to go fight wildfires and left me naked in his bed. Like I hadn’t had to sneak out before his mom found me…like I was just another girl on his rotating calendar.
“Pretty good until you got here, Bash-tard,” she answered in kind.
There was not enough alcohol in the world for this flashback. “Mike?” I asked, lifting my shot glass.
“How many have you had?” Bash asked, sliding in next to me and leaning against the bar. The bottle he put down in front of me was still full.
“That was my second.”
“And your last,” he said, throwing Mike a throat-cut hand signal.
“You’ve missed out on a few things.” I glared up at him. “I grew up while you were gone, and that comes with the ability to drink as much as I damn well please. You’re not my master.” Fuck my brain. Fuckity fuck.
His eyebrows lifted. “Master, huh? We can play that game.”
“The hell we can,” I snapped, sliding off my barstool. My breath sucked in reflexively when he tugged my waistband, pulling my back to his very big, very warm front. “Bash,” I warned.
His stubble-roughened cheeks grazed my ear. “First, believe me, I’m well aware that you are a grown woman. Second, I need you sober, because I need to talk to you.”
I battled my eyelids not to slide shut, not to give in and relax into the security of his body. Did he have to smell so damn good? All cedar and forest? “And third?” There was always a third with him.
His lips skimmed the shell of my ear, and my lips parted on their own. “I can’t kiss you if you don’t stop. You make bad choices after two shots.”
Stay put! I ordered my panties, which were begging to be relieved of their position. “Well, you’re always a bad choice, so I’m not sure what another shot would have to with it. Second, if you think I’m putting out any kind of ‘kiss me’ signal, you’re mistaken,” I said quietly, not that we could be heard above the random grunge-rock that spewed from the jukebox.
“Your pulse is elevated,” he said, his fingers lightly pressing my wrist. “Your breathing is heavy, and you’re shifting your weight, none of which happened until you noticed I was here. You need to be kissed, badly.”
I broke away before my traitorous body could give out any more signals. “Well, if that’s the case, I know someone a hell of a lot safer to take care of it.” I made it within about three feet of Greg before I found myself spun and lifted over Bash’s shoulder. “Sebastian!” I squeaked.
The small crowd clapped, and even Harper gave me a thumbs up as Bash carried me out of the bar, gesturing with her hand and mouthing, “against the wall!”
Oh. My. God. Maybe if I woke up now, I could avoid the part of the nightmare where I showed up naked to work. “Put me down!” I shouted.
A brand new Chevy pulled into the parking lot, Ryker behind the wheel.
“Now, damn it!” This was absolutely unacceptable.
“Uhh, Emerson, are you okay?” Ryker asked as he unfolded his tall frame from the pickup, flickering his attention to Bash.
“She’s fine,” Bash answered for me.
“I sure as hell am not!” I answered. “Are you going to stand there while this caveman carries me off?” Bash’s hand tightened across my ass in response.
Ryker tilted his head and sighed. “Fuck my life, you two. You’re not in the same town for a week and you’re already at each other. Bash, are you going to hurt her? Rape her? Lock her away in a cave?”
“Don’t be a pain in my ass, Ryker. Of course not.”
“Emerson, are you honestly scared of Bash?”
“What? No. He’s just an asshole! Put me down!” I kicked my foot and Bash grunted. Good.
“Okay, well you two kids have a nice night and work your shit out. Emmy, give him hell.” He waved us off and went into the bar where his sister waited.
“Looks like it’s just us, Emmy.”
“You have to be kid
ding me,” I groaned.
Chapter Four
Emerson
Bash lowered me carefully, so slowly that I felt every hard plane of his body against mine on the trip down, which nearly elicited a second groan.
The door of his black Range Rover swung open next to me. “Get in.”
My eyes narrowed. “Why?”
The muscle in his jaw ticked. “Because you’ve been drinking, so I’m taking you home. Now get in the fucking car.”
“You’ve been drinking too,” I countered.
“Nope. I barely cracked the bottle. Want to taste my breath to make sure?” His eyes sparked, the gold flecks in the hazel catching in the street light.
“You mean smell?” I folded my arms over my chest.
“No, I said what I meant,” he smirked. “Get in,” his voice dropped to a quieter demand.
“Don’t do that,” I whispered.
“What?” He braced one of his hands above my shoulder and leaned, his face a handful of inches from mine.
“Don’t act like you’re still the guy I grew up with. Like I should still know you on some deep level when we both know it’s not true. It messes with my head, and I don’t like it.” I hated it. And the worst part was that my heart couldn’t seem to tell the difference. It started burning with that achy, bright feeling I’d always had when he was around, like it couldn’t remember the years it spent licking wounds and knitting itself back together.
His eyes widened at my honesty, and he stepped back, moving his hand. “Please get in. Let me take you home.”
I climbed into the SUV, and Bash shut my door, coming around to the driver’s side and taking his seat. The motor thrummed to life, and we pulled out. If I closed my eyes, it could almost be high school again. Except the material things in his life, from the clothes he wore, the car he drove, even the street we traveled on—they had never been this nice. But I would trade them all for the honesty, the clarity of the emotions we’d had back then.
