The night before Logan left, she woke up to feel him spooning her, his erection prodding between her legs. She stiffened, but he didn’t seem to notice. He parted her thighs.
She pulled away as revulsion swept over her. “Sorry, I’m way too tired,” she muttered, putting an extra six inches between them.
“But I’m leaving tomorrow. And we haven’t had sex once.”
Anger shimmered through her, anger she hadn’t really known was there. “Look, Logan. You can have your free pass, but you can’t also have sex with me. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way.”
He fell back to his side of the bed, his silence confirming every suspicion she had. “You’re making too big a deal out of that,” he finally muttered. “But whatever.”
A few seconds later she heard him snoring. She rolled onto her back and covered her face with her hands.
She’d just turned down sex with her fiancé, and it wasn’t even hard to do.
The truth was, sex with Logan wasn’t all that exciting. And she liked sex. She’d never been shy about it. But she saw sex as something both people should enjoy if they were going to bother with it. She’d never understood why someone would fake an orgasm—until she’d gone to bed with Logan.
But with Logan, she was willing to ignore so many things. She tried to be understanding of his schedule and his exhaustion level and all the pressure he was under. He was going to be a bigshot lawyer and that was part of the deal. She had to support his brilliant career.
A snore rose from his side of her bed. She scooted a little farther away, relieved to put even more distance between them. She didn’t even want to lie next to him right now. She wanted to flee to the couch in the living room of her little condo. Usually she enjoyed the feeling of his warm body snuggled next to hers. She loved not feeling alone.
What was different now?
Two words: free pass.
She gave a long sigh. The free pass had opened a wide crack between them, and now she wondered if it had always been there. She couldn’t help comparing Logan to Josh. She and Logan definitely didn’t have the kind of chemistry she had with Josh. But chemistry was just a physical fluke—it didn’t mean anything. Being with Josh was also more fun than being with Logan. Josh actually paid attention to her and listened to her.
But there was no point in comparing. Josh was a free spirit with no interest in a family. And she’d insulted him, too. She should just put Josh out of her mind.
Easier said than done. She fell asleep thinking of the hungry way Josh had touched her. She wanted him to do it again. She didn’t trust herself with a free pass around Josh Marshall.
As she was driving Logan back to the airport for his 6 a.m. flight the next morning, she took the bull by the horns. “We need to talk about this free pass idea.”
“Non-negotiable.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m not willing to negotiate on that point.”
“Are you using lawyer language on me? That’s not cool, Logan. Just say it in normal people language.”
He dropped his sunglasses over his eyes, even though it was barely dawn. “Fine. I need the free pass.”
“But what if it’s—”
“I don’t want to feel trapped until I actually am trapped. And that’s all I’m going to say.”
Trapped? Trapped? “You don’t want to feel trapped?” she repeated, stunned.
“I thought you understood that. It didn’t bother you before. What’s going on, are you on your period?”
Oh. No. He. Didn’t.
She took both hands off the steering wheel and ripped off her ring. The car veered toward the shoulder. He reached for the wheel, but she slapped his hand away and grabbed it herself. With the other hand, she dashed her ring to the floorboards on the passenger side. “There you go. You’re officially un-trapped.”
“Suzanne. That ring cost five thousand dollars. Get a grip.” He bent down to retrieve the diamond solitaire. She got a minor twinge of satisfaction over the fact that he had to push aside a crumpled Doritos bag first.
“I just can’t believe you said that. You used the word trapped.” Her nostrils flared the way they always did when she was angry. “You’re the one who proposed to me.”
“I know. I know I did. And I still want to get married, I think.”
“You think?” If she weren’t so angry, she’d be crying right now. Or would she? At the moment, all she felt was hot outrage.
He stared at the ring cradled in the palm of his hand. His look of raw confusion made her think she was seeing the real Logan for the first time all weekend.
“Maybe it’s just the stress, Suzanne. Everything’s happening at once. Exams, interviews, wedding stuff. As soon as my exams are over, we’ll take a little vacation, how’s that? We can go to the wine country or something.”
“Can I drink all the wine? I think I’ll need it.” She pulled up outside the terminal. “You’re here. Better get out while you can. I might trap you here until your plane leaves.” She was so furious she wanted to push him out the door.
“Suzanne, relax. Come on. Give me a break here.”
She flung her arms to the sides. “But how can I relax when I have this poor helpless man in my trap?”
“Can you just let it go?”
“Can you just be real with me for a minute?” she shot back. “What’s going on, Logan? First you want a free pass, now you think I’m a trap. I just want the truth. The one thing I can’t handle is a bunch of lies.” So true. All the lies leading up to her father’s financial collapse had made everything a hundred times worse.
Logan adjusted his messenger bag over his button-down shirt. His metrosexual look used to appeal to her, but now it struck her as too slick.
“Let’s keep the dialogue open,” he told her as he slid out the passenger door. He put the ring on the seat. “This is yours, whether you wear it or not.”
She blew out a long breath and turned her little Miata back to the highway toward Jupiter Point. Keep the dialogue open?
What did that even mean? Was that a legal phrase or an “I have no idea what else to say” phrase?
She needed a hazelnut latte. And one of the Venus and Mars Café’s legendary sticky buns, the ones drenched in caramel sauce and studded with pecans.
9
Josh lay flat on the ground, face-down inside a flimsy sheet of a tent. Only a thin layer of aluminum shielded him from the inferno consuming the entire world. A blast furnace raged outside. He was going to die. If he so much as lifted one elbow, the shelter would flip up and leave him completely exposed. The fire would melt his flesh from his bones and suck the air from his lungs.
Don’t do it. Do it. Don’t do it. Do it.
He fought the reckless compulsion to try it out—just see what happened—how bad could it be?
Do it.
Then the tent was being ripped away and he was completely exposed to the elements, so he curled up in a ball and rolled under the bed. Voices peppered the air with accusations and jabs, louder and meaner and…Stop. Stop it.
Josh woke up gasping, drenched in sweat. He swung his legs over the side of his cot and buried his head in his hands.
Fuck. He hated these dreams, and they were coming every few nights now.
“You okay, man?” Tim Peavy stood in the doorway. He wore workout clothes and held a free weight in one hand. “Heard you shouting.”
“What was I shouting?”
“Something about ‘stop, stop.’” Tim flexed his biceps for a forearm lift.
Josh released a long breath. “Weird dream. I get them a lot ever since the burnover.”
“I get it. I had a few nightmares after Afghanistan.”
Josh nodded, swiping a hand through his hair. He looked closer at Tim and noticed shadows under his eyes. Tim was married to his high school sweetheart, and they had a baby due in a couple of months. Maybe the stress was getting to him. “Did you have one last night? What are you doing here so early?”
<
br /> “Came out to get a workout in before Rosario wakes up. You up for it?”
“You’re on.” He got out of bed and pulled on a t-shirt. The two of them went outside into the gray light of dawn. A hint of pink glowed over the hills behind the base. Once again, Josh was struck by the sheer beauty of this territory. One last star still shimmered in the achingly clear sky.
“That’s Venus.” Tim dropped into pushup position in the wet grass.
“How do you know that?”
“My dad’s a fisherman. We used to watch the stars out on the boat.”
Josh rolled his shoulders to stretch out. “Nice place to grow up, huh?”
“I used to think it was boring as hell. I couldn’t wait to get out. But it’s not bad being back. Home is home, you know?”
“Right.” He took a spot next to Tim and planted himself on his knuckles. Maybe that was true for someone like Tim, who grew up watching the stars on a boat with his dad. For Josh, home was not home. Home was wherever he woke up that morning. “Ready?”
“Born ready.”
“And…go.”
They both launched into a rapid-fire sequence of pushups. Hotshots were required to be able to do twenty-four pushups in under a minute, but since they were all competitive alpha types, the crew liked to push the limits.
Josh felt his lungs start to expand, his blood pump faster. “Fifty,” he shouted as they reached that number. “Tired yet?”
“Not even breathing hard,” Tim gasped.
They kept going in synchronized rhythm. Oxygen flooded Josh’s brain. He sucked in the fresh morning air, feeling alive and energized.
Something soft and wet stroked the back of his calf. Grass, maybe? He shook out his leg and the thing disappeared. “Sixty!”
“Keep going.”
Up and down, up and down. The sensation of soft and wet came back again, this time on his other calf. “What the fuck?” He glanced over his shoulder and caught a furry face looking back at him.
A dog? It was a floppy beast of a dog, with raggedy ears pointed straight up and a pattern of brown splotches on his white coat. Not so white at the moment, it was more of a dirty gray.
The dog nuzzled his lower back and nipped at him. “Hey! Stop that.”
But the dog seemed to think Josh was playing. He gave a little jump of excitement and rolled onto his back. He arched his back and squirmed in ecstasy against the wet grass. Then he flopped himself onto his belly and crawled under Josh, blocking his pushup motion.
“I call interference.” Josh came up on his knees and glared at the dog, who somehow managed to look both mischievous and guilty.
Tim collapsed on the ground, practically crying with laughter. “You should see your face right now.”
Josh addressed the pup. “Are you working for my opponent? How much did he pay you? I’ll double it if you go bite him on the ass.”
The dog inched closer to him, ears perking up.
“You got a new fan.” Tim shook out his arms and wrists. “And don’t blame him; you would have lost for sure.”
Josh scratched the dog between his ears. Its eyes closed in bliss. “Whose dog is this? I’ve never seen it before. He doesn’t have a collar. Or maybe it’s a she?”
“It is a she.” Tim pointed to the area that made it obvious. “Figures. You get all the girls.”
“Well, I don’t want this one. What should we do?”
“Hey, not my problem.” Tim grinned at him. “She’s in love with you, not me. But there’s a good vet in town. I’ll take you if you buy the coffee.”
Josh tickled the pooch under the chin. She cocked her head to the side, her bright eyes fixed on him. “Where’d you come from, pup? Do you have an owner somewhere?” He turned to Tim. “Is there a shelter in town? We can see if someone’s been looking for her.”
“Yeah, there’s a shelter. But it looks to me like she’s been wandering for a while. She looks hungry.”
Josh examined her sides, where ribs showed through her dirty coat. “Yeah, she does. I think I have some beef jerky in my pack.”
When he tried to go inside, the dog followed close at his heels. “Pooch,” he told her. “I’ll be right back. Stay.” At that command, the dog sat reluctantly. At least she had some training. That meant she probably had an owner somewhere. Maybe he reminded her of her owner. He jogged into the dorms and found a package of beef jerky. He also pulled on some jeans and grabbed his wallet. When he got back out, Tim was snapping his fingers at the dog, trying to get her to follow him.
She wouldn’t budge until Josh stepped onto the grass, when she actually leaped into the air in a dolphin-like spiral. Tim shook his head. “You are so screwed, Marsh. You got yourself a dog.”
“No, I don’t. No dog.”
“You can’t say no to that face, can you?”
Josh looked at the dog’s jaunty mixture of white and brown patches, the white areas dirty from whatever mysterious wanderings she’d been on. His heart gave a twinge. Saying no would definitely be a challenge. But it had to be done. How the hell could he keep a dog? Where would he keep a dog? Most of the time the base was empty. Most of the year he wouldn’t even be in California.
“Tell you what,” he told the dog. “If you can change yourself into something small, like a snail, I can keep you. Or maybe something useful, like a flashlight.”
“That’s just wrong, Marsh. I’d take her home with me but my wife’s allergic. There’s a chance the baby is too, so I can’t even risk it.”
“Ain’t that convenient?” Josh drawled. “The old ‘wife and baby’ excuse. Didn’t know it would come in so handy, did you?”
Tim cackled and pointed him toward a black Jeep Cherokee. Since Tim lived in Jupiter Point, he got to sleep at home and use his own vehicle to get back and forth. He opened the door for the dog, who hopped in and took one of the backseats as if she’d done it a million times.
From Josh’s comprehensive investigations, he knew the Venus and Mars Café made the best coffee in town. The base was a few miles outside of Jupiter Point, and by the time they made it downtown, the café was just opening up.
Since it was still too early for the shelter or the vet’s office, they decided to pop in for coffee first. Tim used a ratchet strap to fashion a dog leash for the pup.
“Sorry about this,” Josh explained to her. “You’ll have to wait patiently on the outdoor patio and pretend you aren’t grungy and stinky.”
“She’s the perfect hotshot dog, if you think about it,” Tim said as he looped the leash around one of the fence posts. “No one’s grungier or stinkier than a wildland firefighter coming off the lines.”
“You got that right. Maybe we should have washed her first.” He looked dubiously at the dog. She would probably be cute once she was clean.
“No one’s going to be here this early. We’ll be in and out.”
“Stay…um, doggie.” Josh used the voice of command he used to use with livestock at the ranch, but the word doggie definitely detracted from the effect. “She needs a name too.”
“That’s easy. Stinky?”
“Filthy?”
“Hairy?”
Josh was still laughing, looking over at his shoulder at the plaintively whimpering dog, when he collided with a woman coming out of the Venus and Mars.
She squeaked and lifted her to-go cup high away from her body, but it was too late for the massive chunk of cinnamon roll that was now smeared across her shirt. Her blond hair draped in long strands across her shoulders as she stared down at her chest.
“Oh shi— Suzanne?” He grabbed her by the elbow to steady her. “Damn, I’m sorry about that. I wasn’t looking. I—”
Suzanne looked up at him, but instead of the irritation he’d expected, her eyes were dark with tears.
“Are you okay?”
“No.” The tears brimmed over, spilling down her cheeks. “I’m not okay. I needed that sticky bun. You have no idea how much.”
“I’ll get you
a new one. Come on.” With his hand still on her elbow, he steered her back to the counter. But instead she veered for the little hallway where the ladies’ room was located.
“I’ll just be here, ordering you a new pastry,” he called after her.
“Okay,” she said faintly as she disappeared around the corner.
The dreadlocked barista handed him a paper plate with what looked like a small mountain of caramel and nuts. “You better do something, man. She’s been crying ever since she walked in here.”
“But I’m not…she’s not…I don’t know what’s—”
Tim gave him a shove. “I’ll take care of Snowball. You watch out for Suzanne.”
“Snowball? What makes her a Snowball?”
“She’s got no balls.” Tim snickered, as if he was making the most brilliant point in the world.
“Okay, then.” On that note, Josh went after Suzanne.
She hadn’t gotten far. The back screen door of the café was half open. Suzanne leaned against the wall, wiping wet paper towels across her blue boho-embroidered top. Tears were trickling down her face.
“Uh…I got you a new one.” He held out the sticky bun, but she waved him off.
“Give me a second. Honestly, when I’m anywhere near you, I should just take off my top. Pre-emptively.”
“Not going to argue with that plan. And really, why stop with the shirt?”
She wrinkled her nose at him. “You think you’re cute, don’t you?”
“No. Nope. Not at all. I think I’m studly as fuck.”
Finally she laughed. “Nope. I think ‘cute’ is more like it. What are you doing here? I thought you were up north.”
For some reason it pleased him that she was keeping tabs on his location. Or maybe it was because of Sean. “We got back yesterday. But thanks for noticing.”
“Well, I called you. I wanted to…um…apologize for my rudeness the other night. I had no reason to speak to you like that.”
Right now, he was a lot more worried about the tracks of tears down her cheeks than her attitude toward him. “Don’t worry about it. You aren’t the first woman to have a problem with my footloose ways. Of course, I was sleeping with the others, so it made more sense, but—”
Burn So Bright Page 8
