Burning Up

by Susan Andersen

  Grace pushed back from the table.

  Jack said her name and reached for her wrist, but she whipped it out of range and dodged between the tightly packed tables, just wanting to get away.

  Once she’d put enough distance between herself and Jack, however, she hesitated, unsure where to go. She could head for the Ladies’ but that was bound to be packed with women gossiping and freshening makeup. Shannon had driven, which was just as well, since she was probably in no condition to climb behind the wheel, anyhow. That’s all she’d need to round out her night—to end up in a jail cell for driving under the influence.

  “Crap,” she whispered and made her way to the front entrance, where she let herself out.

  The noise level decreased dramatically as the Red Dog’s front door closed behind her. The night air had cooled a good twenty degrees from the day’s high eighties, and she picked her way across the crowded blacktop, weaving between tightly packed pickup trucks, American-made sedans and the occasional foreign car to the edge of the lot. It was dark and quiet and she wrapped her arms around herself, leaned against the trunk of a misshapen alder tree and stared out at the stars and a neon slice of moon.

  She didn’t know how long she stood there. Occasionally she’d hear laughter and music as the bar door opened, but then it would fade as it closed again, until the only sound left was the crickets in the wheat fields stretching out behind the Red Dog.

  The soft slide of a shoe whispered against the blacktop behind her, and she whirled, thinking that seeking out the darkest, most isolated section of the lot maybe wasn’t the brightest move she could have made.

  But it wasn’t some drunk looking to relieve himself or the Mad Rapist. It was Jack.

  Which, come to think, wasn’t a huge improvement. She pressed her back harder against the tree trunk.

  He walked straight up to her, not stopping until he was less than a foot away. Gripping an overhead branch with both hands, he considered her, his usual easy smile missing.

  “I only meant to tease you, Grace. Nothing I said was intended to mock or ridicule you.” The densely patterned tattoos on his right arm were briefly illuminated in the meager moonlight as he lowered his hand as if to touch her. But if that was his intention, he changed his mind, for he reached back up to grip the branch again.

  She blew out a sigh, because, really, this guy was so far out of her sphere it was just stupid to get all bent out of shape over not being Playboy material in a world where tens of thousands of women were. “You don’t have to try to make me feel better,” she said without heat. “I get that I’m not your type.”

  “Do you, now? And what would my type be?”

  “Girls who yank down their tops so you can autograph their boobs.”

  “Are you daft?” Pushing off the branch, he took a step back, shoving his hands in his jeans pockets. “Birds like that are a dime a dozen—there ain’t feck-all unique about ’em. I wasn’t kidding when I said I go for you Peter Pan–collar girls. Women with conversation to them, not just a set of tits on display.”

  A little throb pulsed deep inside and being a half glass of wine less circumspect than usual she said, “Congratulations. You have the distinction of being the only man to have ever said ‘tits’ to me.”

  “I’m sorr—” Looking at her, he cut himself off. And gave her a crooked smile. “You like it.”

  She raised her chin. “I do not.”

  “Yeah, you do. I’m thinking blokes treat you like Royal Tara fine bone and maybe you’re a little tired of it.”

  She licked her lips. “Maybe.”

  “I know a whole raft of nasty words, both American and Irish. Want me to whisper a few in your ear?”

  A laugh burbled out of her throat. “No.”

  “Probably just as well. I don’t poach other men’s preserves.”

  “Ignoring for the moment your charming chauvinism—other men’s preserves, my fanny—”

  A huge guffaw exploded from his throat and she gave him a narrow-eyed look. “What’s so darn funny.”

  He grinned. “In Ireland, a fanny—”

  “Yeah, yeah, is a butt. Big deal. I do know that word.”

  “Uh, not exactly. In my country a fanny is a bit farther forward.”

  “What the heck are you talking about, farther forw—oh. Oh! You mean—?”

  “Uh-huh.” He seemed to get a huge kick out of the way that flustered her but then sobered a bit and said, “So, my chauvinism aside, what?”

  “Huh?” She was still hung up on the differences in American and Irish slang. Then she caught herself. “Oh. Gabe and I broke it off.”

  “No shite?” Stepping forward, he gripped the branch again and leaned into her. “Then you sure you don’t want to hear some dirty words?” His breath, lightly scented with beer, wafted against her lips. “I know some bleedin’ deadly ones.”

  “You know words that will kill me?”

  She felt rather than saw him smile. “No, luv. Brilliant, that means. I could impress you, dazzle you, even, with my fine grasp of smut speak.”

  “Maybe I’ll say some more to you.”

  “Ah, no.” He closed the gap between them to press a gentle kiss on her lips. Pulling back, he whispered, “This mouth is much too sweet to pollute with filthy talk.” Then he grinned at her. “At least on the first date.”

  He might be playing her, but with her heart banging in her chest and lips throbbing, she decided she didn’t care. Sublimating her natural inclination toward sexual shyness, she tentatively unleashed her inner hottie. She wrapped her hands around his neck, hauled herself up onto her tiptoes and kissed him.

  And apparently did a decent job of it, because Jack made a sound deep in his throat and took control, his hands hauling her against his body, his mouth growing hard, avid, against hers. This was no she’s-a-lady kiss he laid on her. This was let’s-get-down-and-dirty, all tongue and teeth and Jack’s-in-command.

  She went up in flames. Climbing him like a kid on a Big Toy, she wrapped her legs around his waist and tangled tongues with him, letting loose her inner slut for real.

  He backed her up against the trunk of the tree, his body as it pressed her breasts, her hips, her belly, every bit as hard as the bark against her back. A needy moan escaped her.

  “Step away from her, Savage.”

  Shock jolted through Grace at the sound of Gabe’s voice, and she stared into Jack’s eyes as he lifted his mouth from hers and stared down at her. He didn’t look happy.

  “I thought you said you and Donovan were through.”

  “We are!”

  It bugged her that he looked to Gabe for confirmation, but to be fair she supposed a man in his position might hear a lot of lies.

  Gabe nodded. “We are,” he agreed. “But she’s put away more wine than she’s used to tonight and I won’t let anyone take advantage of that.”

  Jack looked at her. “That true, darlin’? You fluthered?”

  “No!” Then honesty compelled her to admit, “Well, maybe.” She held up her hand, showing him her thumb and index finger held so infinitesimally apart you’d be lucky to fit a cat’s whisker between them. “A tiny bit.”

  “Damn.” He stepped back. Running his fingers over his buzz cut, he regarded her. “Go on home, Gracie. We’ll try this again when you’re sober.”

  She was frustrated, embarrassed and feeling downright sulky. “Maybe I won’t be in the mood then.”

  He just regarded her silently for a protracted moment, then nodded. “That’s what I’m afraid of, luv. But come see me if you are.”

  And turning on his heel, he strode off across the lot.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “SONOFA—!”

  Gabe’s sudden chopped-off expletive in the midst of dinner made Macy jerk in surprise—then slap splayed fingers to her chest as he exploded from his seat, sending the solid-oak chair tumbling to the floor with a resounding crash. All around the table, the boarders, like her, similarly flinched, yelped or leape
d to their feet.

  But Uncle Bud’s uncharacteristic blasphemy as he, too, got up, sliced through the racket. He tossed his napkin toward his plate and didn’t notice when it fluttered to the floor. “Fire!” he barked, jabbing a thick finger toward the dining room window behind her.

  “What?” Shock had her recoiling all over again. “Where?” Then, swinging around, she saw what Gabe and her uncle had seen: a thin, oily column of smoke rising from the adjoining property on the other side of the small rise. “Is that the Driscolls’ place?” she demanded as she rose, but her voice was merely one in a cacophony of exclamations and questions.

  Gabe ignored them all. Already thumbing his cell, he was halfway to the door, but paused to look over his shoulder at Bud. “Do you know where I’ll find water over there?”

  Bud shook his head. “From the color of that smoke, I’m guessing it’s the shed Driscoll keeps his roofing supplies in, but I’m not sure where his water connection is in relation to it. There’s a creek running through his property that might not be too far away, though.” He trained a steady gaze on the younger man. “Tell me what I can do to help.”

  “You can—” Gabe turned away to growl instructions into his phone. Snapping it shut a moment later, he looked back at Bud. “One of my men is already on his way to the fire truck and another will meet us on the property.” His glance encompassed everyone milling around. “All of you grab as many containers as you can find and meet me over there. If we can find a faucet or if that creek is near enough, maybe we can do some damage control until the truck gets there.”

  They scattered in all directions in search of buckets and dishpans. Macy corralled Ty and Charlie and went with Jack out to his trailer, where they emptied it of anything that would hold liquid. They threw their finds into the bed of his truck, loaded up the boys, climbed in and roared off, Macy providing terse directions to the neighbor’s driveway.

  Pulling up behind Gabriel’s vehicle moments later, they saw old man Driscoll frantically aiming a garden hose emitting a stream of water that looked woefully puny at the burning outbuilding. Gabe was hastily pulling on bulky beige pants with neon-yellow stripes circling the hems, then catching their dangling suspenders and hauling the padded straps up over his shoulders. He stamped his feet into big boots, then shoved his arms into a jacket that matched the pants as he strode over to relieve Driscoll of the hose. Macy jumped out of the truck in time to hear him instructing the farmer to wheel his irrigation sprinkler over.

  Other vehicles rolled in, and the Experimental boys arrived on foot, having raced across the field. Gabe turned to the gathering. “Driscoll tells me the creek is over that rise about seventy-five feet.” He pointed to Bud. “Organize a bucket brigade—let’s get as much water up here as we can until my truck gets here.”

  They did as directed, Tyler squatting in the creek, scooping water into containers that Charlie then took and passed to Lenore who passed it to Bud and on up the line. It seemed to Macy that she twisted, grabbed, turned and passed for a long time as choking smoke filled the air around them. It was probably less than ten minutes, however, before they heard the dissonant horn of the pumper truck sounding from the highway. Then it was there, wheeling into the Driscoll property.

  Gabe was at its side even as it rocked to a stop, and she watched him pull a hose from its berth as a pump switched on. It pulsed from flat and inanimate to round and alive in his hands. One of his firemen swung out of the cab of the truck at the same time another screeched into the yard, threw his vehicle into Park and leaped out. They started unfolding two additional hoses.

  Macy knew the rest of them were no longer needed. Realizing as well that Ty and Charlie were bound to be overly excited and that Janna, left behind at the boardinghouse, was equally likely to be beside herself with anxiety and curiosity, she went to collect the boys to take them home. But she turned, walking backward as she watched Gabriel wield the hose.

  He was standing close enough to the fire to singe his eyebrows, sucking smoke and handling a hose that would probably send her whipping around like an out-of-control buckaroo—and a big grin shone white in his increasingly sooty face. With an odd little start, she realized he had been…amazing tonight. Clear and concise. Focused and in charge.

  She watched as he disappeared inside the shed. God. Not to mention that. There was something mind-blowing about seeing someone voluntarily enter a burning building when everyone else’s instinct was to flee as far from it as they could get. It was hard to tear her gaze away.

  But she did so, because the last thing she needed was to develop a thing for Gabriel Donovan. She had a lousy track record when it came to men. She had yet to pick herself a winner, and there was sure as hell no reason to think her ability in that arena had suddenly improved.

  So she shoved the fire chief right out of her head and, whirling, went to find Jack and her family. From now on, she was back to playing it smart.

  She was giving Gabe the widest berth she could devise.

  “OH, EXCELLENT TIMING, sweetheart,” Lenore said a few days later when Macy strolled into the kitchen. “You’re the answer to my prayer. Here.” The older woman thrust a small cooler at her. “I need you to deliver this for me.”

  Macy took it before its rounded corner could poke her in the chest. “Deliver where? What is it?”

  “Gabe’s lunch. He’s working on his house out near Buzzard Canyon, at the end of Coulee Road. Take it to him.”

  “What? No.” She tried to hand it back, but Lenore turned away.

  Her aunt did deign to direct a gaze over her shoulder, however, as she picked up a cleaver and whipped a raw chicken onto the chopping board without so much as glancing down at it. “Why?” she demanded. “You have plans with Tyler?”

  “Noooo,” Macy admitted. “He’s at Charlie’s today.”

  “Janna need you?”

  “You know she’s at PT until four-thirty.”

  “Are you and Jack working on that video thing?”

  She shook her head. “Not right this minute.”

  “Then haul your skinny behind over to Gabe’s property and deliver that lunch. I told him I’d send it over, and no one else is around right now to take it.” Her voice went cool, developing that neutral tone it only got when she was displeased with or disappointed in someone. “Unless you’re too important to run a simple errand for me.”

  Macy hated having that tone directed at her. “No, ma’am. I’ll get right on it.” She slammed out the door, missing the crooked little grin her aunt directed at the chicken carcass.

  She was tempted to tool around the back roads for a while instead of heading straight over to Gabe’s place. Blowing out a breath, however, she decided to act like the grown-up she liked to pretend she was. It wasn’t his fault, she supposed, that she had this stupid fascination, or whatever the heck it was, for him. So she’d just drop off his lunch, then jet.

  Easy peasy.

  And perhaps her luck had turned for the better, she thought as she drove up the approach to a close-to-finished house and didn’t see another vehicle. Maybe Gabriel had run into Jacob’s Hardware to get something for his job here. Whoo-hoo. She grabbed the cooler and climbed from the ’Vet, slamming the door behind her. She’d just leave this for him on the front porch and be on her way.

  “Yo! Around back.”

  Crap. Well, there was no dodging her obligation now. She stalked around the side of the house, heading in the direction of Gabe’s voice.

  Rounding the back, she caught sight of him, standing on a scaffold rigged between two sawhorses, putting up siding on an enclosed porch, and stopped dead. Hell, hell, hell.

  He was stripped to the waist, all sweat-sheened skin, hard shoulders and long silky spine, a leather tool belt riding his hips. He lifted a long narrow board and fitted it beneath others of its kind atop a weatherization wrap. The overhead position made the muscles in his arms and shoulders bunch and flex and afforded her a glimpse of black armpit hair and a white stripe
of skin where the small of his back lifted out of his waistband. Holding the board in place with one hand, he reached for a nail gun atop a nearby step ladder and—thwack! thwack, thwack, thwack!—the board was tacked in place. He walked the length of the scaffold, adding nails to finish securing it.

  Setting the gun back atop the ladder, he wiped his hands on the worn seat of his jeans. “Is it beer break time already?”

  “No, it’s lunchtime.” She walked up and set the cooler on the sawhorse opposite from where he stood. “I’ll just leave this here.”

  Gabe whipped around so fast one foot swept space, his heel barely regaining its purchase on the edge of the plank. The sudden swoop his gut took, however, owed nothing to the misstep. “I thought you were Johnny.”

  She regarded him without her usual flirtatious smile. “As you can see, I’m not.”

  No shit. Oh, she wasn’t all sassed up for once, no lipstick—or makeup of any kind that he could tell, for that matter—and her amber-ale hair was piled atop her head in a haphazard knot. Her skinny-rib yellow tank and navy rubber flip-flops looked Wal-Mart ordinary, and her cutoffs were a mess of raggedy strings straggling down her thighs. But there was no mistaking her for the deputy. And, unaccountably, it was a look that made him hotter than those fuck-me costumes she usually favored.

  She waved a hand at the cooler in a gesture strangely elegant. “So, there’s your lunch, courtesy of Auntie L,” she said. “Enjoy.” She turned away.

  “Not so fast.” Let her go let her go. But he didn’t want to. He was tired of pretending he didn’t look at her and want to slide her shorts down her long legs, thumb aside the crotch of her panties and bury himself hard and deep inside of her.

  And why shouldn’t he do just that, if she was similarly inclined? He was a long way from seventeen. For years he’d been careful to stay away from anything smacking of excess passion, and it had given him the restraint, the discipline, he’d so sorely needed at the time. But the truth was, slipping-the-leash sex wasn’t going to turn him into the angry, foulmouthed kid he’d been back then. Hell, he’d now been a hardworking, responsible adult for as many years as he’d been alive at the time he’d decided on the course that had turned his life around.