SmokingHot

by Anne Marsh

  10.Write a novel

  11.Climb a mountain

  12.Swim with sharks

  13.Fire a machine gun

  She tapped the last item and shrugged. “Kade was sixteen when he wrote this.”

  “Wow,” Abbie said, snagging the list. “He had plenty of energy.”

  “Has,” Katie corrected automatically.

  “And a death wish.” Laura stared at the list. “In my professional opinion, you’d better up your health insurance before you tackle this. Or switch to one of those high deductible plans, because you’re going to need a frequent flyer card at the hospital for some of this stuff.”

  “We’ve got the French covered,” she decided. “Or close enough.”

  “We can order croissants,” Abbie pointed out. “And I can read the French washing instructions on my shirt tag. That doesn’t qualify as fluent.”

  “We get points for effort.” So what if Katie wouldn’t be mistaken for a native speaker anytime soon?

  “Uh-huh.” Abbie scanned the list again. “And you’re on your own for number two. That’s definitely no fly territory for me.”

  “Sixteen-year-old boys.” Laura made a face. “We get plenty of calls on them.”

  “I’ll save that one for last.” Katie ignored the way her face burned. Given the current state of her dating life, finding one man was a challenge. Finding two brought to mind phrases like needle in a haystack and once in a blue moon.

  “Really?” Abbie stared at her. “You’d do that just because it’s on Kade’s list? Because that might be taking things a little too far.”

  Well. Yeah. But Kade was coming home before she got to the end of the list. Almost definitely. Probably. That was her plan and she was sticking to it. So what if she felt a little superstitious about the list? She shrugged.

  “What Kade wants…”

  “Kade gets.” Laura finished with a grin.

  “Are you sure?” Abbie looked at her. “Does this really help?”

  Abbie didn’t add bring Kade home, but Katie knew that was only because Abbie honestly believed Kade had already come home. In a box.

  “He wanted to do this,” she said, hating the way her voice went soft and her eyes misted up. Fake engagement or not, she and Kade had been happy. And, when he’d shipped out, she’d still been content. Life was more exciting with Kade around, and life in Strong would never be mistaken for life on a grand scale but it was comfortable. And happy-making. She liked teaching art even if it qualified her for food stamps and a SNAP card.

  “Live your life for you, not for Kade,” Laura said.

  “Or for any man,” chipped in the brand-spanking-new Mrs. Donegan, cheerfully calling the kettle black.

  “Got it,” she said and, conveniently, the street offered up a well-timed distraction. Tye Callahan, the man himself in the flesh, drove up to the firehouse, parked his truck, and lifted a toolbox out of the truck bed. There was nothing sexier than a guy who was good with his hands, she thought with a sigh. He could be fun. He could be hers for a night. Or two. She squinted at him. Maybe seven. Yeah, definitely seven. She had a feeling it would take at least a week to get him out of her system once she’d had a taste of that particular SEAL.

  “Now that’s a fine looking man.” Abbie waved the list in Tye’s direction and Katie snatched the paper back. Just before, you know, something crazy happened like the list flying across the street and plastering itself against Tye’s face.

  “You’re married.” It had nothing to do with how Abbie was ogling Tye Callahan’s butt.

  Abbie shrugged. “I’m not blind. Or dead.”

  Laura grinned wickedly. “I wonder what he’s doing in Strong—and if he’d be up for a ménage?”

  “He served in Kade’s unit.”

  “You’ve met our new hottie?”

  “We ran into each other at the fire station yesterday.” Literally. Sharing that information was unnecessary, Katie decided. Not that Laura and Abbie wouldn’t have a field day with the crotch paint, but she didn’t need to relive the memory. Really. Because she was fairly certain the day was permanently etched into her brain cells anyhow.

  Abbie was riveted. “You should ask him to help you with Kade’s list.”

  Ummm. Yeah. So not going there.

  “Ask him,” Laura demanded. “Do it. You’d have way more fun with him than with us.”

  “I have to go to class,” she announced and shoved off the seat.

  Abbie nodded. “Running.”

  “Yep.” Laura pointed a fry at Tye’s truck. “The question is: to or from?”

  Chapter Three

  Infiltrating Katie’s art class was a no-brainer. Hell, all Tye had had to do was place a quick call to the V.A. and they’d given him the date, time and a freebie coupon. Under normal circumstances, still-life painting ranked near the bottom of his preferred list of activities. Fruit was for eating and the only painting he did was of targets.

  He parked his truck in front of the pink bungalow that housed the V.A. Strong, it seemed, was short on space for art classes. Katie and her students had been shoehorned into the V.A.’s one available room. Close quarters, the guy on the phone had warned, and a definite lack of elbow space.

  No worries.

  That would make keeping an eye on her easy, right?

  It was his fault Kade wasn’t coming home. That was the truth, plain and simple. Command could bullshit all they wanted about the reasons that last mission had headed south into fucked-up territory, but Tye had washed out. He’d failed. Checking up on Katie Lawson was a drop in the atonement bucket, but he had to start somewhere. Giving her his summer was nowhere near enough.

  Plus, he wasn’t the SEAL she wanted anyhow.

  That honor went to Kade.

  He took the steps two at a time, pushed open the front door and got his bearings. Happy chatter floated down the hall from his right. He counted at least two adult females and one adult male, plus the distinct piping whine of a child. Laying in a course for the noise, he moved out.

  Target acquired.

  The well-used piece of poster board taped to the wall beside the open door announced he was in the right place, so he stuck his head in the door. Katie Lawson was there all right, passing out paint and brushes and chatting up her handful of students. That was all good.

  Except she shouldn’t be so… sexy.

  She had on some kind of white sundress with little straps that crisscrossed her shoulders and wrapped around her breasts, showcasing plenty of sun-kissed skin. Her hair had been pulled up in a sassy ponytail that bounced around her shoulders as she bent over a canvas, pointing something out to one of the female students. Tye wanted to see that hair down, spread around her face. Maybe while he threaded his fingers through the silky strands and kissed her good. Or bad. Behaving himself was getting harder and harder to do. Houston, we have a problem.

  “Hey, teach,” he said, dead-ending in the doorway.

  She turned to face him, stepping out from behind the table, and, sure enough, she had another pair of those shoes on. Fuck-me shoes that shot all of his good intentions to hell. Today’s number was a pair of curvy pumps with some kind of red-hot bows curlicueing around the heel. Wherever she shopped, it sure wasn’t Wal-Mart. He’d never seen shoes like that before.

  “Mr. Callahan,” she said, propping her hands on her hips. At least, he thought those were her hips beneath the load of gauzy dress. A man could have plenty of fun hauling that fabric up by the handful.

  Stand down.

  She was Kade Lawson’s fiancé.

  Off-limits.

  And because he couldn’t turn all his thoughts off, he asked the question driving him nuts. “How old are you?”

  Checking couldn’t hurt.

  “That’s none of your business,” she snapped, moving towards him.

  He didn’t back up. Nope, he let her keep right on coming until she about smashed into him. He liked that too. Shit, he needed to work on his people skills. She glare
d up at him because Katie Lawson was short, even wearing those fuck-me pumps she liked so much.

  “Twenty-four,” the old guy parked on the far side of the table hollered. “She had a birthday last month with strawberry cake.”

  “Personal info is need to know,” she shot back. From the way she cranked her volume up, Tye assumed the old guy was deaf, mostly deaf, or getting there fast. “Why are you here?”

  That was a good question and one he’d asked himself a dozen times already today. He’d volunteered to take Kade’s place with the smoke jumping team. That was one answer. He had two months of leave and a burning desire to be anywhere other than home in San Diego. That was another. But, the God’s honest truth was that he didn’t know.

  He looked around the room. The walls were decorated with construction paper cutouts from local school kids and apparently left over from Veteran’s Day. The hand-drawn messages included plenty of lopsided thank yous and black sticks spewing orange flames. Once upon a time, he’d been a kid like that, drawing pictures of battles and peppering vets with questions about what it was like, out there in the field. Crayons and imagination were no preparation for real life, no more natural than the mountain of fruit strategically piled in the center of the table.

  “Tye?” Katie’s voice pulled him back to the business at hand. At least she’d dropped the Mr. He scanned the room one more time, taking in the canvasses propped on table-top easels and the two women who had shoehorned their baby strollers along one side of the table, completely blocking the left side of the room. He winced and went with the simplest answer.

  “I’m looking out for you.”

  She poked him in the chest. “You were serious about that?”

  Deadly serious.

  He snagged her finger, wrapping his hand around it. “I’m always serious.”

  She waved a hand toward the door. “Off-duty, sailor. I can take care of myself.”

  Probably, but she didn’t have to. She had him. Instead of following her directions, he made for the empty side of the table, picked a seat, and dropped into it.

  “I never said you couldn’t,” he said.

  She followed him and stood over him, her skirts brushing his knee. He fought the urge to wrap a hand around the back of her thigh and pull her down onto his lap.

  “I’m teaching,” she announced. “This is an art class.”

  “Okay.” He crossed his arms over his chest and met her gaze. The metal folding chair poked him in the ass, but damned if he let her know he was uncomfortable. “I’m in.”

  “You want to paint a still life?” She looked skeptical and he couldn’t blame her.

  “Can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be.” Which was a lie, of course. He could already feel the walls closing in, and there were definitely too many people crammed into the small space, but forty-five minutes of staring at her had to be worth the close quarters.

  She shook her head, giving him a look he couldn’t interpret before heading to the front of the room to start the class. That apparently took the form of announcing the class fee—ten bucks—and passing a battered basket decorated with red curlicue ribbons that matched her damn shoes. Tye did a quick count when the basket hit him. Most of the class had stiffed her and the old guy’s coupon was expired. He opened his mouth to say something—she caught his eye and frowned. So… oookay.

  He dropped ten dollars into the basket. He didn’t need the V.A.’s coupon. While Katie got going, passing out paints and drawing their attention to the mound of slightly past its prime fruit heaped up in the center of the table, he kicked back and tried to pretend art classes at the V.A. were precisely how he spent his weekday afternoons. Problem was, looking at the old guy daubing orange onto his canvas square, it was all too easy to imagine this being his life fifty years down the road, when he’d finally cashed out. Hanging at the senior center, pretending oranges were an artistic statement when what he was really after was the company.

  Hell.

  He and the old guy weren’t that far apart after all.

  ***

  By the time her class finished, Katie’s nerves were shot. Usually, she’d cram the painting materials back into her stack of milk crates and lug the lot over to the closet the V.A. had loaned her. The two young mothers had been the first to leave—baby number two was showing definite signs of waking up in his stroller and neither woman liked nursing in class—and then Billy’s dad had swung by to pick the five year-old up. Mr. Rickerson was dozing in his chair, which was par for the course. Tye, however, showed no signs of leaving.

  He’d watched her intently while she went over the proper brushstroke techniques, like she was debriefing him on the best way to defuse a nuclear warhead or clear a terrorist compound. Then she’d passed out the jar of brushes, dropped a load of paint tubes on the table, and stood back as the noise volume in the room shot through the roof. The two new moms chattered away, comparing colic and teething stories while they grabbed paint haphazardly and started daubing away. Mr. Rickerson demanded she read every label because he’d forgotten his glasses. Again. She suspected the eyewear was just an excuse to lean into her and probably stare down her dress but, hey, the man was over ninety and enjoying his afternoon until Tye’s death glare had him averting his eyes.

  The new moms were easy enough. They just needed an excuse to get out of the house and a place where schlepping a newborn in a baby carriage was okay. Katie was fine with that. She went over brushstrokes with them, encouraging them to go crazy with their colors and enjoying the way the tension leaked out of their shoulders. Painting was therapeutic.

  As she’d pointed out to Tye when he hadn’t touched his canvas.

  “If you want to stay, you paint,” she said, using her sternest teacher voice.

  One of the new moms giggled and the five-year old wriggled around to stare. She should have insisted that one of Billy’s parents stick around with the kid, but she had her suspicions about what his parents were using their forty-five minutes of free time for.

  Tye gave her a long, level look. “Is that so?”

  She shrugged. “I’m the teacher. That makes me in charge.”

  “Is that so?” His dark eyes met hers and she wondered what he was thinking. That small grin tugged at the corner of his mouth again.

  “You bet.” She nudged a tube of paint towards him. “So get cracking.”

  “Yes ma’am.” He gave her a two-fingered salute, before snagging a brush from the nearest jar. He was humoring her. How many times had Kade given her that same look?

  Ten minutes before class ended, Billy succumbed to his five-year old instincts and started flinging paint. Before Katie could move in, Tye was already in motion, crouching down beside the kid to whisper something in his ear and redirect him with an apple from the mountain in the middle of the table.

  “Hey.” Mr. Rickerson shot him a look. “I was painting that.”

  “Banana,” Tye suggested, nudging Katie’s afternoon snack towards the vet. “Paint that instead. Sir.”

  When he flashed the older guy a salute and a grin, something inside her threatened to melt. She wanted to lean into him and kiss him. Drag him down the hallway, find a supply closet, and hole up for the afternoon. She’d known him for—she did the math in her head—less than forty-eight hours and apparently that was all she needed to know that Tye Callahan was bedroom material. And, quite possibly, keeper material.

  Merde.

  She stared at Tye as the classroom finally emptied out, willing him to haul his fine ass out of the chair and get a move on. The way those BDUs stretched over his thighs should be illegal. The faded seams had her imagining all sorts of delicious possibilities. She still didn’t know what he was doing here. He’d fed her that line about watching out for her and he’d certainly done plenty of staring, but she was dead certain he wasn’t here for painting lessons, even though he clearly needed help in that department. He’d methodically painted his entire canvas blue and then drawn a red smiley face
in the center.

  He was art-challenged.

  She should ask him out.

  Or maybe just jump his bones.

  She eyed the table, assessing. Nope. She’d take a mattress over Formica any day.

  “We done here?” he asked and her heart sped up just a little at his use of the word we. The pronoun didn’t mean anything. She knew that. But it suggested a relationship between the two of them that she was happy to fantasize about.

  “Until next Tuesday,” she agreed. Tye nodded and then began methodically screwing on caps and washing out brushes. Unasked. Usually, she was on her own for cleanup detail. Mr. Rickerson stuck around like he always did. The old guy was lonely and she enjoyed his company. The others, though, always got going, because they had families waiting and things to do. Tye, apparently, didn’t.

  Today’s T-shirt was gray, with not a wrinkle in sight despite the way the cotton stretched over his shoulders. He’d hooked his sunglasses into the neck of his shirt and, when he bent to snag an AWOL brush from underneath the table—Billy’s handiwork—she caught a glimpse of metal dog tags.

  God.

  He was drop-dead gorgeous.

  “That was—” he paused. “Interesting.”

  “Was this your first art class?” she asked.

  He looked at her and that small grin tugged at the corner of his mouth once again. “I was five once. This wasn’t my first encounter with paint.”

  “And there was yesterday,” she agreed, feeling a blush fire her face. Way to go, reminding him you molested him.

  “My best painting memory ever.” He held up two fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

  “You don’t paint a lot.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve done my fair share of houses. And targets.”

  She didn’t want to know. “That doesn’t count.”

  He shrugged again. “Paint is paint.”

  Really? The man needed help. “Then why are you here?”

  Ignoring her question, he tucked her jar of clean brushes into the topmost milk crate and lifted the lot. She enjoyed the way the muscles in his arms bunched. So she was shallow. Sue her.