SmokingHot

by Anne Marsh

  “Okay,” she gasped out. “I believe you.”

  “About the kink?”

  “About the exercise,” she said firmly. “Although if you require this level of effort from all your partners, I’m making a mental note not to interrupt any exercising you do in the future.”

  “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

  Grinning, he got to his feet and held out a hand. She took it, curling her fingers around his. That felt right too, as did the way she shot up off the ground and into his arms.

  ***

  “I’ll make you a deal.” Katie tilted her back and eyed her companion. Tye hadn’t changed in the last ten minutes. Nope, he was still a big, bad-ass SEAL. Any other time she wouldn’t have complained. Hell, she would have been all over him. But he was hurting, even if it apparently would kill him to admit the truth. Kade would have done the same.

  She didn’t want to leave him like this. Didn’t want to pretend that everything was fine—normal—when it so very clearly was not. Tye needed fixing. She wasn’t entirely sure what she could do, but someone needed to do something.

  And she was here.

  And she wanted to do something…

  Him, if she was being honest. Which she could be to herself. That was okay. The words never had to cross her lips. Plus, she was fairly certain Tye was in no condition to be starting any kind of a relationship. She’d read up on PTSD as soon as Kade had shipped out because unfortunately too many of the military’s finest came home and had to face their demons. Over and over. The fierce look on Tye’s face as he drove his body up and down in a vicious set of gut-wrenching pushups? Yeah. She wasn’t a doctor, but she knew a problem when she saw him.

  And she still wanted him.

  She wasn’t sure what that said about her, but she admired his tenacity and his refusal to give into whatever horrific messages his brain was telegraphing him. He’d worked it out, although she’d never realized a body could do that literally.

  “What kind of a deal?” He let go of her fingers like he suddenly realized he was hanging on. Reaching out, she snagged his hand. She wasn’t ready to let go yet.

  “I’m an art therapist.”

  Three, two, one and—yep—cue the look of frozen horror on Tye’s face.

  “Wow,” he said. “I thought you painted. Murals and stuff. And taught those classes at the veterans’ center.”

  “I do.” It wasn’t all that hard to interpret the new expression on his face. Now he was wondering if she’d correctly connected the dots and realized he was having some kind of flashback or PTSD attack. Followed by the realization that she absolutely had and now she wanted to fix him. In her experience with guys, none of them admitted to having problems or needing solutions. They preferred to pretend that everything was just fine.

  He was precisely the same.

  Okay. Scratch that. In this one instance, he was as pigheaded and stubborn as every other male of her acquaintance. In every other particular, he was stunningly, deliciously different. She groaned and he raised a brow.

  “Problems in the art world?”

  He had no idea.

  “Art can be very therapeutic,” she tried again. “Painting’s a great way to exorcise demons or work through dreams.”

  “I had no idea those were therapy bananas yesterday.” His shuttered expression still said he disagreed with her statement one hundred percent.

  She decided not to elbow him.

  “So I’ll trade you. I’ll give you art lessons in exchange for your help with my bucket list.”

  “Right. The bucket list you won’t let me see. You need to stretch more,” he called after her. “Or you’re going to be sorer than shit tomorrow.”

  She turned and marched back to her car. She’d never admit that the muscles of her ass were already sore from their run. She popped the door and eyed the devastation of her front passenger seat. She should probably excavate the car at some point.

  “You should lock that.” Now he sounded faintly incredulous. Which was, she decided, better than closed down or defensive. Even if it was at her expense.

  “We’re in the middle of nowhere.” If she wasn’t safe here, where was she safe?

  He moved closer, a big, heated body she could feel at her back. Her hormones jumped up and down with glee, since this was the closest they’d been to an attractive man in—she counted—two years.

  “You have no idea who you could run into out here,” he pointed out. His mouth brushed her ear. She wished the accidental caress had lasted longer, because her arousal shouldn’t go zero to sixty from such a small thing.

  “In Strong? Please.” Her voice didn’t shake. It really, really didn’t.

  Much.

  “How long is this bucket list?” he asked suspiciously. His fingers cupped her jaw, the touch so light that she could almost pretend it wasn’t happening.

  He was thinking about it. Squashing a smile, she leaned in and grabbed her tote bag from beneath a stack of design notebooks.

  “Jesus,” he groaned. “Please tell me your wallet isn’t in there.”

  She shrugged. So she wouldn’t tell him.

  “I’ll make you that deal,” she said instead. She turned around, back to the car door and grinned up at him.

  ***

  No kissing Kade’s fiancée. That had to be rule number one.

  But her smile warmed him up in places he hadn’t known were still numb after the bone-chilling cold of mountain nights in Afghanistan, something all the gear in the world couldn’t cure because the problem went so much deeper than the thermometer. Katie looked at him and a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, had dimples digging into her cheeks. She’d have smile lines by the time she was forty, wearing all that happiness on her face. She’d be even more beautiful then than she was now.

  “You have a deal for me.” Talking had to be safer than kissing.

  “You help me. In exchange, I give you art lessons.”

  He didn’t want to paint. Apparently, though, what he wanted didn’t matter here.

  Which he knew already, because for no particular reason, he wanted Katie. Wanted her just because she was Katie.

  “Well?” she prompted, when he didn’t jump on her offer.

  He wondered if she usually had many takers for free art lessons. Probably too many, given the state of her Kia. She needed a job with a paycheck.

  “You don’t need to pay me.” After all, he owed her, even if she didn’t know it.

  She gave him what he was coming to think of as The Look. Kade hadn’t mentioned The Look when he’d talked about Katie, but the man had clearly omitted several key details. Like how stubborn and feisty and determined to do things her way Katie was. And—he glanced in the backseat of her car—the crazy shoe fetish. He’d bet she needed a closet just for her footwear. The backseat held a whole heap of heels in a rainbow of colors.

  “I like to be square,” she said. “If you’re going to do this, I want to do something for you.”

  He could think of all sorts of things she could do for him, starting with running her lips down his neck. “I’m not a cheap date.”

  “Art lessons don’t come cheap.”

  She’d decided to give him the hard sell. He bit back a grin. He’d played poker almost nightly with a dozen of the most bad-ass SEALs around. She wasn’t out-negotiating him.

  “I charge ten dollars a lesson and that’s the group fee. It’s more for private sessions.”

  Deflection time. He snagged the bag from her and dropped it on the trunk. “Is the list in here?”

  She laughed. No more tears—he’d done something right. “Tye—”

  Hearing her laugh was worth everything. Moving swiftly, he popped the snap and shook it open. The inside of her bag was even worse than the backseat of her car. Not only did the bag weigh a good fifteen pounds, but it clearly doubled as a second closet. Or a trash can. He wasn’t really sure which.

  “That’s mine.” H
er hand reached around him, feeling for the bag. “Give it back.”

  “Nuh-uh.” He shook the contents. “I’m going in and you owe me hazard pay.”

  “Don’t malign my bag.” She ducked under his arm, but that move left her sandwiched between him and the Kia’s trunk. Not a whole lot of space, he thought happily, as her backside pressed against his front, making parts of him stand to attention. “That’s Coach.”

  “You name your bag?” He’d named dogs. His unit had adopted an Afghan dog, feeding the animal, watching out for him, and generally loving on him whenever a damp nose nudged their hands. Or their guns, boots, or packs. Stan, so named because of the plethora of Waziristans, Nuristans, and other places ending in -stan on the Afghan map. Kade had wanted to bring the dog home.

  Katie’s finger jabbed the hot pink circle on the bag’s side. Coach. Apparently, that was a brand name. And a good one, too, based on her exasperated huff. He’d know next time. Methodically, he rifled through the contents. Which consisted of completely disorganized layers of crap interspersed with various female bits and pieces. Jesus. And a strip of condoms.

  “I want to see that list.”

  “Need-to-know,” she chirped.

  “You made me curious,” he argued, pretending he hadn’t just manhandled her condom stash. “And I think I should know what I’m getting into. There’s a reason why you’re offering to trade these high-priced art lessons for my services. I’d like to know what it is.”

  “Well, I didn’t think you’d take a pair of heels,” she said. “Although I can certainly switch the offer up if you’d prefer shoes.”

  “No shoes,” he agreed.

  “You knew Kade. I think he would have liked this.”

  Kade would have kicked his ass six ways to Sunday and back for what Tye was thinking.

  He filtered another layer of crap, more cautiously this time, and came up with some kind of bright blue leather slipper thing curling up on itself. He had no idea where someone would wear a shoe like that. At least, he thought it was a shoe. Maybe. And then there it was—an eight by fourteen piece of yellow notepad paper folded into thick eighths like some kind of grade school love note. Bingo. He plucked the list out of her bag.

  She made a sound like a distressed bird and twisted in his arms until she faced him, reaching up for the note that he held out of her reach. Which wasn’t hard because Katie wasn’t an overachiever in the height department.

  He waved the paper, shaking out the folds. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

  “That’s private.” She leaned into him, stretching. Apparently, full body contact wasn’t off-limits in her rule book.

  “Not for long,” he grinned at her and started scanning. “I’m not sure you should be allowed near a machine gun.”

  “Says you,” she grumbled, reaching half-heartedly for the list again.

  He gently batted her hand away. “Sharks. A mountain. And an entire novel. Are you sure this list is Kade’s? The man bitched about completing a postcard.”

  “He wrote to me.”

  He didn’t want to think about that, so he went on reading. When he got to the top of the list, he knew precisely what Katie hadn’t wanted him to see. He raised a brow. “You’ve got your work cut out for you. And I think you need to recruit another girl if you’re planning on a proper ménage.”

  And there it was—her blush. He’d hit pay dirt all right. “That’s Kade’s list.”

  He shrugged. “You’re the one who said she planned on checking the items off his bucket list. Every. Single. One.”

  Face still pink, she got back in the game, raising a brow. “I can find another guy.”

  And… point to her, because his reaction to the mere thought of sharing Katie with any one was off the radar. “Since this is Kade’s list, you need to find a girl.”

  “You wish,” she groused.

  She had no idea how badly he wished. “Uh-huh. Count me in.”

  Chapter Six

  “When are you coming home?” Tye’s father sounded the same as ever. “Your mother and me, we’d like to know. We’ll make some plans.”

  Hell.

  The family phone call probably shouldn’t make Tye feel like he had his back to the wall and his weapon up, only to discover that the clip had jammed. Going home for the summer hadn’t been part of his plans. He had Kade’s temporary gig in Strong to fulfill and the man’s fiancée to sort. In other words, his plate was full.

  You don’t want to go home, a little voice said.

  He ignored it.

  “Not this leave,” he said, because clearly once hadn’t been enough.

  “You’ve got two months, right?” His father circled back to the meat of the problem like a shark scenting chum.

  “I’ve got plans.” Cradling his cell phone between his ear and his shoulder, he moved to the RV’s kitchen counter and grabbed the loaf of bread he’d bought in town. Maybe carbs would help. “I signed on for the summer with the Strong smoke jumping team.”

  “Sure,” his dad acknowledged, tiptoeing around the elephant in the room. They both knew Tye was supposed to be taking time off—not moonlighting as a smoke jumper. “But you get time off, right? There’s no reason why you can’t come down for a weekend.”

  And there it was. The son, I’m disappointed in you tone that made Tye feel like he was twelve again. He slapped peanut butter on whole wheat while he considered his answer. He didn’t miss the MREs, but his own cooking wasn’t much of a step up. Thank God for the camp cooks.

  “One weekend,” his dad said, twisting the parental screws just a little tighter. “For your mom. You do what you need to do the other seven, but give her those two days.”

  Tye didn’t wash out or ring the bell. He’d survived the hell that was BUD/S training and not once had he been tempted to cross the deck and ring the bell that signaled he was quitting. Instead, he’d rolled with the challenges. Beaten them. Won. But, Jesus, the rulebook didn’t apply to parents.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he said, meaning Please let me hang up the phone.

  “Tye—” His dad huffed out a breath. “You were overseas for ten months. Your mother misses you. I miss you. So level with me. Why can’t you come home?”

  “I have something I need to do here.”

  “And it has to take all summer?”

  Maybe. Hell, he didn’t know. How long did it take a woman to get over her fiancée’s death and get her own life back on track? Katie’s face as she ran had been determined but teary, as spunky as those ridiculous shoes of hers. She wouldn’t let life knock her down for long.

  “I lost a man,” he said, instead of answering his father’s question. “In Afghanistan. His fiancée lives here in Strong.”

  “You can’t live his life for him,” his dad pointed out. “If that’s what you were thinking of doing.”

  “I know that.” He stared out the RV’s open door. A couple of smoke jumpers wandered by, headed for their own temporary shack-ups. Several guys were also batching it in trailers for the summer, while others camped up in the row of rental cabins near the hangar. The place buzzed with easy camaraderie and there were plenty of pizza dinners when camp food got old, followed by a cold beer for the off-duty. It was like summer camp for adults, in some ways, except that when the call came in, these guys would go up and out the plane bay, determined to fight whatever wildland fire needed fighting.

  He understood why Kade Jordan had wanted to come back here. This fight made a hell of a lot more sense than the fights in Afghanistan or the Middle East, where the SEALs had only a piece of the intel picture.

  “Look. Maybe we can come up, okay?” his dad offered.

  “I don’t know when I’ll be on the ground.” Fire was unpredictable. “But that would be great.”

  Not.

  He wasn’t ready to talk about what had happened in Afghanistan and his parents would ask. That was the thing about love: it worried. His mother would want to fix hi
m and his father would get behind her one hundred and ten percent. Dealing with all that concern was just not something he could do right now. So here he was. In Strong.

  And... he spotted incoming.

  Katie Lawson pulled up in front of his RV, precisely fourteen minutes late. Frankly, he was amazed that itty-bitty, too-purple Kia had managed highway speeds. He eyeballed the car, but the sides and fenders seemed good. She hadn’t acquired any more dings since the last time he’d seen her.

  “I have to go,” he said.

  While his father worked his way through the goodbye spiel, Tye watched Katie extricate herself from the car. His eyes went straight to her shoes and he could feel himself smiling. Kade hadn’t mentioned the thing she had for ridiculously feminine shoes. Maybe it was a new thing and the other man hadn’t known.

  He liked that even better, pretending he had a piece of Katie that had been off-limits to Kade.

  ***

  “You’re starting with an easy one.” Hands on her hips, Katie pouted at him. Deliberately. He recognized the look. She’d play him for all she was worth and then she’d reel him in. The catch would be sweet, but he’d be dancing to her tune. Had it worked on Kade?

  “I told you before, no machine guns.” He tapped the end of her nose. “It’s Segway or nothing today.”

  He’d borrowed the Segway from a local police unit where a former SEAL team member was working and the x2 looked pretty bad-ass with oversized treaded tires and plenty of black. There was also an add-on bumper, so no worries if she dumped the Patroller.

  Joey, however, looked like he might not let go of the fender frame. He’d volunteered to help Tye unload the Patroller from the back of Tye’s pickup and Tye was fairly certain it was lust on first sight on Joey’s part.

  “That’s a sweet ride. Are you keeping it all summer?” Yeah. That was naked longing in the other jumper’s voice.

  “Long enough,” he said. “You can ride it later.”

  The get lost was plenty clear in his voice. Katie got the first ride, no matter how many covetous looks the other smoke jumpers tossed her way. He’d share his toys later. Joey finally ambled off with one last lustful look at the Segway and Katie watched him go.