by Gemma Snow
But before she had the chance to give in to any of the cracked and very unlike-her desires currently heating her blood, his phone beeped alarmingly in his back pocket. His face contorted and he shot her an apologetic smile, before glancing down at the alarm.
“Aw, shit, is it nearly eight already?” He sighed. “I have to go teach a rescue crash course at the police department a few towns over and I’m already late.” Because in addition to all the rest, he taught classes to police officers. For fuck’s sake. “Let’s go find Micah. He can show you where you might want to start your fieldwork today.”
Right, great idea. Nothing like two overwhelming, attractive men in her face in the amount of time it took to swallow a cup of coffee. She’d be just fine. Right.
* * * *
He’d just finished the chapter when he heard footsteps coming out onto the porch and Micah turned to see Lily Hollis standing near the door. Her dark brown hair caught the breeze and she gave him a shy smile before thrusting out one of the two cups of coffee she held in her hands.
“Dec saddled me off on you,” she said. “Said something about going off to play teacher and that he’s taking Rosie and if you need any help with the invoices to figure it out yourself.”
Micah snorted. He accepted the coffee and indicated for her to sit beside him on the deck that overlooked the mountainside. Life wasn’t bad, not by a long stretch, though his mind flitted with worry at just how often Dec had been working jobs, even the teaching jobs, alone. Last year, Micah wouldn’t have thought twice about that. They both worked jobs alone all the time. But ever since March and the whole fiasco with Aubrey—well, he’d known Dec long enough to recognize the signs of working too hard to avoid thinking too hard.
But since he’d much rather be talking to the striking near-stranger sitting beside him, Micah momentarily pushed his fears about Dec to the back of his mind and turned to Lily.
“I certainly don’t consider it being saddled,” he said. “We don’t get a lot of company up this way when the training is out of session and it’s nice to have someone to share the morning with.” He’d meant it as an easy, off-the-cuff comment, but, incredibly, he found that the words landed rough in his stomach, far truer than he had thought when saying them. Or maybe it was just her, with those deep green eyes, like the forest in the spring, that made him feel so terribly off-kilter. Him, a man who’d been able to find true north with nothing but a stick or the light of the stars since he’d been seven years old.
In a somewhat desperate need to add humor to the moment, he said, “The best good morning kiss I’ve had in a while came from this mutt right here.” He stroked Axel’s fur and the dog rolled onto his back, silently demanding more belly rubs. Micah complied. He was weak where the dogs where concerned. And some women, apparently.
“I know the feeling,” Lily said. “I haven’t shared a morning in a very, very long time.” Her voice wasn’t wistful. It wasn’t even sad. It was…resigned. Very nearly accepting, as if she’d gotten her lot in life and she wasn’t going to complain about it.
“Who did you used to share them with?” he asked. “Let me guess—did you marry some French artist who stole your heart then your savings and disappeared in the night?”
She laughed like the wind in the trees, like the soft light from the early sun catching the dew, and Micah found himself watching her, just watching her.
Which was…unusual. Of the two of them, Dec was the one known for his charming, flirtatious, playboy lifestyle. He never brought women back to the cabin, instead choosing to spend the night at their places in town, and Micah, if no one else in Wolf Creek, knew that, in truth, Dec hadn’t done anything befitting his reputation for the better part of two years, not since he’d met Aubrey, and not in the eight months since…. Well, since.
Micah didn’t do casual sex. Sure, he appreciated a beautiful woman as much as the next hot-blooded man, but getting his jollies and leaving had sour connotations to it that he just couldn’t shake. Everything from the book sitting on the table beside him to the fairly isolated life that he kept in this cabin in the mountains somehow came back to that, to a desperate need to reconcile a decision he still believed in. It was who he was and how he lived his life, and had been for the last nearly twelve years.
And yet, this Lily Hollis, with her soft, freckled cheeks and easy smile, smelling of sunshine and crisp morning air, she caught his attention. Perhaps a little too much.
“Did you just ask me if I was married?” Her voice tinkled like the wind in the chimes they kept hanging off the barn door. “To a French artist? You have quite the imagination, Mountain Man.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Mountain Man?”
She squared her chin, which made her look young and defiant all at the same time. Damn, he didn’t even know how old she was. She had said something about leaving her master’s program five years earlier, but she looked too young for that and he figured it wasn’t enough to go on.
“You don’t really need me to explain that one,” she said, before taking a long sip of from her coffee cup. Nope, not coffee. Chai tea, with hints of cinnamon.
“If I’m Mountain Man, what does that make you?” he asked, unable to keep the amused smile from his lips. She had that effect on people. He’d seen it the night before at the party. “And tell me you didn’t find tea in this house.”
Apparently the tone of his voice had been that incredulous, because she laughed, more of that same, floating chime that sounded a hell of a lot like freedom.
“I promise your masculinity hasn’t been compromised,” she said. “I bring a stock of tea with me wherever I go. I’m a bit of a caffeine nut, to tell the truth. And as for my nickname….” She rolled her eyes, thinking. “Mads used to call me Wild Flower when we were growing up. The flower part—well I guess that’s pretty obvious, but I did use to be a bit of a wild thing. Drove her crazy, with all her spreadsheets and to-do lists and everything. She couldn’t understand how I could ever just pick up and leave for a weekend without planning every stop on the trip, ya know?”
She looked back up at him, her green, slightly almond-shaped eyes sparkling with a hint of humor and just a little bit of danger. Micah couldn’t explain the feeling, but he somehow knew that she hadn’t sparkled like that in a long time. Well, Wolf Creek had that effect on people.
“Come on,” she said. “You promised me flowers and I want flowers, so lead the way, Mountain Man.”
He had to resist the urge to pick her up and toss her over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold at the nickname she’d given him.
“You’re a menace,” he replied, swallowing the last dregs of coffee before grabbing his book and leading them back into the house. “I have the feeling we’ll know exactly how you got your nickname before too long.”
And yet, the wild fire within this woman, one that seemed to be kindling before his very eyes, didn’t scare him, didn’t make him want to turn tail and run in the other direction, the way he had wanted to in the past, when other lovers caught his attention. Sure, he’d had a handful of relationships over the years and the fact that he kept ending up back at the cabin, licking his wounds, well, that spoke volumes about how they had all ended, didn’t it?
But not so with her. And maybe that he found himself glad Dec had invited her to crash at their place, or that he was happy to show her around the grounds, or that he wanted to see more of her smiling face, when she discovered something or teased him—maybe that was the most dangerous of all.
She followed him through the kitchen and he took their two coffee mugs to the sink while she ran to get her fieldwork kit. Then he led her out of the cabin and down past the barn, following a worn dirt path he’d taken ten thousand times in the nearly six years he and Dec had lived in the cabin. Though neither of them spoke, the quiet was comfortable and easy and when Micah turned around to see if she was still following him, he caught sight of her wide-eyed, dazed expression as she turned in every direction, gaze following the tree lin
es and slashes of mountain views that cut through the fall foliage. He was lucky, living out here. He took the sights for granted, but, of course, she came from the concrete jungle and all that.
“Why’d you stay in the city?” he asked, when the path widened enough for the two of them to walk side-by-side.
She didn’t pretend not to understand. “It’s a long story. A sad story. Suffice to say, I’m already feeling revitalized by being out here. I mean, how lucky are you guys, living in this paradise?”
He let the change of subject pass without comment and nodded. “Wolf Creek is a good place to call home. Up ahead, just there, that’s where we’ll find your flowers. Down there is one of our camping spots.”
Her eyes lit and Micah couldn’t help but find the contrast amusing. She was a wild flower, blossoming as she wanted, blowing in the wind, smelling of nature and sunshine. But she was also a successful business owner and a scientist getting her master’s degree, which required hard work and discipline and determination, and that was one hell of a combination.
As they neared the location she might use for her research, something starkly close to nerves quivered at the back of Micah’s neck. Because he knew that if the plant, whatever the hell Latin name she’d called it by, was the right one, then she’d be staying at their cabin for a lot longer than one night. If it was the wrong one, though…
They reached the large patch of flowers, similar to the one she had shown them on her phone the night before. He watched her intently, watched her eyes and the smooth, pale planes of her cheeks, watched the fidgeting motion of her fingers against her legs—then, it stopped. Just like that. Every twitch of her body, of her fingers, of her eyes, just stopped. And all started up again in a whirlwind, when she dropped the research case and halfway sprinted to the mess of orange and white flowers sprouting in wild chaos from the ground. She sniffed, she touched, she got down on her hands and knees to look at them from the bottom up, her whole body a mess of limbs and untethered excitement.
“This is amazing!” she said. “Wait until I tell my research advisor. God, Micah, thank you.” And, without warning, she caught him in a strong embrace. He stiffened, but only for a moment, before embracing her back. Oh, yeah, he knew what Dec and Christian and Ryder would have to say about that, about him hugging this beautiful woman over a patch of wild flowers. But with her arms wrapped around his waist and her head just below his chin, Micah didn’t give a good goddamn.
Chapter Five
She had dirt under her nails, in her braids and packed between her teeth. Her feet ached in the heavy hiking boots and her back burned in protest, having been bent and twisted for most of the day. She wasn’t even twenty-seven and yet, with all of her joints aching—why on earth did her elbow hurt?—and her muscles screaming from abuse, Lily felt about seventy-seven instead. And, Christ on a chrysanthemum, she hadn’t been this freaking happy in a long time.
She climbed the stairs to Dec and Micah’s cabin and stomped caked mud off her boots, before slipping them off her feet one at a time and dropping them on a large rubber mat near the door. On second thought, she peeled her muddied, disgusting, no longer white or dry socks off her feet, too, and dropped them on top of her boots to be dealt with later.
The door squeaked as she pushed it open and she immediately met the delicious scents of dinner—fresh chicken and herbs, rosemary, thyme, cilantro. Her stomach growled and she realized that more than eight hours had passed since she’d eaten anything other than the granola bar she had stuffed in her bag.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Dec said from across the kitchen counter. He had a dishrag over one shoulder and wore an apron slung low over his hips. “I hope you’re hungry, Indiana Jones. Micah is with the pups now, but he’ll be back in a few.”
She blinked, not quite sure how to reconcile the charming, admittedly sexy, rugged lumberjack type with the fact that he was cooking. Chicken. With spices.
“You can cook…”
“Twenty-first century, honey. I can cook and you can work and ain’t that the dream?” He was teasing her, of course, but it had been so long since she’d thought about a relationship like that, a relationship of equals, one where she came home to someone who wanted to hear about her day and maybe even make it a little easier, that the idea took her off-guard.
“Aw, shit, you’re not a vegetarian, are you?” Dec asked, misinterpreting her expression. “I know how you hippie types are.”
“Hippie types?” she asked, a little dumbfounded. “And no, definitely not. It’s just…unexpected, is all.”
“You’re definitely a hippie type,” he said. “I bet you have pot brownies in your research kit.” The statement was just dumb enough to unstick her face, and she coughed out a laugh.
“I do not.”
He shot her that grin, the one that made her stomach feel a little hot and her face flush. “Only because you couldn’t get them on the plane. Now, go wash up the entire mountain-worth of dirt off your body so I have something to fantasize about while I finish up dinner.”
Coming from any other man, the statement would have been wildly offensive. But Dec McCormick had a way about him where she felt like she was in on the joke, and the depths she’d seen in those hazel eyes just that morning gave Lily all the proof she needed that he used humor as a way to deflect the sadness buried below. Still, she was covered in eight hours’ worth of dirt, and she could feel it beginning to crust over on her skin, so she rolled her eyes and headed for the bathroom, and almost ran head first into Micah who was coming in through the back door.
“Whoa.” Humor lit those mysterious eyes. “You leave any dirt at the research site or…”
“It’s not that bad,” she tried to defend herself. In the early months of her master’s, she’d spent weeks out in the field, with only the occasional sponge bath. Micah cocked his head to the side and lifted one of those large, dark hands to her face, brushing a smudge of dirt off her cheek, his touch so, so gentle.
Her breath caught at the contact and for a moment they both stood frozen there, the touch between them barely a whisper and yet…oh my.
Then the silence was shattered by the unmistakable yelp of a tiny puppy that Micah had apparently been holding inside his flannel jacket, something she hadn’t noticed because she’d been too busy craving more of that touch.
“Had to bring one of the little ones in,” he said, breaking their contact as quickly as if he’d been burned and turning toward Dec in the kitchen. “Her back leg seems to be bothering her and I wanted to keep a closer eye. If it gets any worse, I’ll talk to Ryder about it.”
It was only because the puppy was so freaking cute, with those giant paws and floppy ears, and not because Lily wanted to focus on anything in the world other than the way Micah’s touch still lingered on her skin, that she cooed over the pup.
“What’s her name?” she asked, her voice a tad too high for comfort.
“Doesn’t have one yet.” Micah shrugged, not quite meeting her gaze. Funny that, how a man as powerful and capable and strong as this one would shy away from looking at her over a simple touch. And yet…maybe that just meant he’d felt the same insane heat she had?
“Can I name her?” Lily asked, forcing her attention away from Micah.
“As long as we have right of first refusal,” Dec called from the kitchen. “I swear, if you name her Fluffy or Princess or some other ridiculous name…”
“I would never!” Lily looked the puppy in the eyes and the dog seemed to smile at her, one ear tossed over her head, making her just about the freaking cutest thing she’d seen in her life. “Isn’t that right, Cupcake?”
Micah laughed. “God, no.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said. “Now, before I permanently become Dirt Woman, I’m off to shower. Or maybe I should just go hose off. I don’t want to clog the drains.”
“As much as I’d love the chance to hose you off,” Dec teased, “the plumbing’s all new. We come back from jobs pr
etty covered in nature most of the time, so don’t worry about it.”
She wasn’t worried about it. What she was a little worried about was that Dec’s words, meant as a joke though they had been, made her face flush a little. What she was worried about was that she couldn’t get the lingering, featherlight touch of Micah’s fingers off her skin. What she was worried about was that if anything were to happen, if she were to finally give in to a desire she hadn’t felt in so many years, for any man, she was going to need to pick which one. And how on earth could she do that?
The shower was warm and inviting and she wondered about staying under the spray forever, never leaving the comfort and relative safety of the bathroom, which even smelled like the two men, like campfires and whiskey and strong coffee. Because this was complicated. Because Dec was out there cooking them dinner and Micah looked even more masculine while cradling a tiny puppy. Maybe it was just that being away from the shop, being back at work in the field, had opened something inside her, allowed the guilt and longing and memories to take a back seat, instead of driving her every choice and decision? Maybe it was the anniversary of Daniel’s death, the simple passing of time, that had made all of this madness come to a head all at once? Maybe it was just Wolf Creek, because apparently wanting two men was pretty much par for the freaking course around here?
Or, more realistically, far more dangerously, it was these specific two men. It was Dec’s humor and charm and hidden depths. It was Micah’s mystery and quiet amusement and clear sense of morals. It was how they both made her feel, each in their own way, comfortable, safe. Aroused. She glanced up at the showerhead and sighed. That was the safer option than trying to sort out all her tangled emotions and desires right now.
She leaned back against the wall of the shower, a dark, slatted wood that smelled like nature incarnate and fresh air and freedom, and Lily let her fingers slide across her stomach, one hand going up to cup her small breast and one hand going down, to part her wet folds and slide her hand between to brush her straining clit. It wasn’t smart. It wasn’t a good idea to get herself off imagining the touch and feel and taste of the two men just down the hall. She shouldn’t be imagining either, let alone both, but of course it was smarter, safer, to rid herself of the coiling tension that streaked every interaction she shared with them, either of them. Both of them.
