Ready to Run

by Lauren Layne

  Jordan pushed aside a stab of disappointment. A bar would have been the perfect place to make her initial pitch, but no way was she sticking around until his off-day on Thursday.

  “Thanks for the help,” she said with a smile to Vicky, reaching once more for the suitcase.

  “Anytime, doll. You know Luke?”

  The question was unapologetically nosy, but Jordan didn’t take offense. She knew firsthand that in small towns like this one, there was no such thing as somebody else’s business. Everybody’s business was everybody else’s.

  Still, she hadn’t spent the first eighteen years of her life in a tiny town for nothing. She knew precisely how to evade without ruffling feathers.

  “Not yet,” Jordan said with a saucy wink at Vicky as she backed up. “But I plan to soon.”

  Vicky’s brown eyes lit with friendly curiosity, but Jordan turned away before the older woman could pry further.

  “I’ll bring the name of my hair stuff down in a bit,” Jordan called, wheeling her bag toward the staircase. No elevators in Maeve’s Motel.

  “So what’s the plan?” Simon asked, coming up beside her and nudging her hand away from her suitcase, lifting both of their bags to trudge up the steps. The guy might be lean, but he was diligent about his daily workouts, and it showed.

  “We take five, freshen up, and give you a chance to get your hormones all tamped down and tucked away.”

  “Vicky’s a delight, but she’s not my type,” Simon whispered.

  “We’re not sticking around here,” Jordan explained. “We’re about to storm a firehouse.”

  Simon rested a hand across his chest. “Oh sweet Jesus, I think I might faint. Do you think I could talk one of them into wearing just the suspender things, no shirt?”

  “You talk to whomever your loins want you to,” Jordan said, wheeling her bag toward Room 9. “I’ll only be talking to one elusive Luke Elliott.”

  —

  The rest of the town was every bit as adorable as the motel, like pure Americana perfectly cared for and tied up nice and tidy with a red, white, and blue bow.

  Not that it was brand-new or glamorous, but, then, that was part of the charm. A handful of buildings that had seen better days, and there was no shiny new Starbucks, no fancy frozen-yogurt chain. But even the most tired of buildings were adorned with tidy potted petunias or friendly fuchsias dangling from hanging baskets and clinging to the last bits of summer. The lawns were mowed, the paint fresh, the streets free of litter. There was an American flag in every yard, a welcome mat on nearly every porch.

  Everything about it was lovely and hit Jordan with a wave of homesickness so strong and unexpected that her eyes watered. It had been so long since she’d been in a town where drivers waved and smiled at other drivers instead of honking. A place where residents took simple pleasure in the process of getting somewhere, rather than focusing solely on the destination. A place where people cared enough about something other than themselves to give a curious smile to a newcomer.

  Keaton, or at least what she remembered of her hometown, was a touch less picturesque, maybe a bit less postcard worthy. But the important stuff, the essence of the towns, was the same.

  She’d been trying to avoid this for so long—the familiarity that reminded her of everything that she’d lost. But now that she was here, she didn’t have the sadness she expected. If anything, she had the sense of connecting with a part of herself that had been dormant for a long time.

  Too long?

  Damn it. See, this was why she hadn’t wanted to come here. Jordan and small towns had unfinished business, and she wasn’t at all liking that she was already feeling the pull.

  “You okay?” Simon asked, doing a double take when he saw her expression.

  She forced a smile. “Totally. Just trotting down memory lane.”

  “You know,” he mused, “considering we’re on actual Main Street right now, I wouldn’t be surprised if this town did have a Memory Lane. I feel like I’m on a movie set.”

  Jordan pulled the rental in front of their destination, and Simon gave an extra-dramatic gasp at the firehouse. “You see what I mean? Movie set. That firehouse belongs on Leave It to Beaver.”

  “That’s a TV show.”

  “Whatever, Carpenter. It looks exactly like it should, am I right?”

  He wasn’t wrong. Jordan took in the square brick building, noting the shiny red truck, the American flag waving gently in the breeze. The only thing missing to make it officially like a 1950s postcard was a Dalmatian.

  “Buff eye candy, here I come,” Simon said, climbing out of the car.

  And Luke Elliott, here I come.

  Neither of them got their wish.

  While there was no shortage of good-looking men at the firehouse, none seemed inclined to take his shirt off.

  And none of them was Luke Elliott.

  “You sure I can’t help you with something, Miss…?”

  “Carpenter,” Jordan said.

  “I’m Simon Nash,” Simon butted in, even though he’d already introduced himself. Twice.

  Jordan nearly rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t blame Simon for his crush. The firefighter in front of them held plenty of appeal. Square jaw, friendly smile, and the way his broad shoulders stretched the navy LHFD T-shirt across a sculpted chest didn’t hurt either.

  Not that it mattered for Jordan or Simon. Ryan Henderson wore a simple gold wedding band.

  “You know when Luke will be back?” she asked.

  The man’s eyes narrowed just slightly, hands finding his hips as he studied her. “What’d you say you wanted him for?”

  I didn’t.

  Still, the man’s caution improved her impression of him. It signaled that he was a friend first, gossip second.

  “I’d prefer to discuss my business with Mr. Elliott directly,” she said. “I can wait until he returns.”

  Ryan gave her another once-over, his eyes lingering on the high heels that she already knew were out of place in a small town where cowboy boots and tennis shoes were more the norm.

  He finally relented. “Might be a while,” he said. “He’s got a thing down at the school. Fire safety day.”

  “Elementary school? High school?”

  Ryan scratched his cheek and looked thoughtfully at both of them. “Luke’s a friend. Been a friend since we were kids. Can’t say I’ve ever been in the habit of selling him out to two fancy city slickers who won’t say what they want.”

  “City slickers? Really?” Simon muttered under his breath.

  “I get it,” Jordan said, meeting Ryan’s gaze. “I’m from a small town myself. We protect our own. But I’m going to find Luke Elliott with or without your help.”

  Simon shot her a quick glance, probably surprised by her admission. He’d just found out about her small-town roots today, and here she was letting a stranger in on the secret. It had to be done, though. Small-town residents tended to instinctively distrust “city folk.” If she wanted to break in, she needed to establish herself as one of them, just for a while.

  Her ploy didn’t work.

  Ryan’s smile was wide and just slightly unfriendly. “It’ll have to be without my help, then.”

  Fine.

  Jordan smiled pleasantly at Ryan, even as she turned on her heel to head back to the rental. “No problem!”

  She’d find Luke on her own. It couldn’t be hard to locate a school in a town this tiny.

  Jordan was halfway to the car when she heard Simon open his big mouth. “We’re from CBC. We’re hoping for your boy to be the star of a new show.”

  Jordan spun around. “Simon!”

  Ryan gave an incredulous laugh, then stilled as he looked at the two of them again. “Wait, seriously?”

  Jordan shrugged in confirmation. He’d find out eventually.

  “Well, hell,” he muttered. “What kind of show?”

  Simon glanced at Jordan expectantly, and she sighed. “We want Mr. Elliott to consider bei
ng a candidate on a show called Jilted. Basically, The Bachelor but for runaway grooms.”

  “Runaway grooms,” Ryan repeated skeptically.

  “Three failed weddings? I’d say he qualifies,” she said, daring him to argue with the facts.

  Ryan’s arms were crossed, his expression intent, and she braced herself for a scathing get the hell out of my town lecture.

  Instead, he surprised her with a wide and genuine smile. “Oh man, this I’ve got to see.”

  She blinked. “You’ll tell us where he is?”

  Ryan smiled wider. “Better. I’ll take you there myself.”

  Chapter 3

  “All right, kids, any questions?” Luke Elliott asked, surveying the twenty or so first-graders staring up at him.

  A tiny girl in a pink dress and a crooked ponytail shot her hand in the air.

  He nodded and pointed at her, prepping to go over the nuances of stop, drop, and roll. Again. “Let’s hear it.”

  The girl’s hand fell and she opened her mouth. “Can I pet the dog?”

  A dozen other kids nodded enthusiastically, and Luke heard his partner give a snort behind him.

  Luke’s gaze lifted over the top of the kids’ heads to their teacher, a pretty blonde who’d been a year behind him in school and had married one of his old football buddies.

  Millie Taylor rolled her eyes good-naturedly and nodded.

  Luke looked back at the kids before gesturing to where the station dog sat obediently next to the fire truck. “Sure, yeah. Oreo loves the attention.”

  “I love Oreos!” one of the kids shouted as they moved as a mob toward the dog.

  “Hey, hey, don’t crowd him!” Millie said, charging forward and taking control of her class as dozens of little hands reached out to pet the eager-for-attention Dalmatian.

  Charlie Bander clamped a hand on Luke’s shoulder. “Nice work there, bro. Clearly they really picked up the important parts of your speech.”

  “Didn’t see you chiming in,” Luke said, rubbing the back of his neck.

  “Hey, I did the stop, drop, and roll demonstration. You owe me,” Charlie said, pulling out a stick of his ever-present bubble gum, unwrapping and folding a piece into his mouth. “And, look, don’t take it personally. Oreo always steals the show at these things.”

  Too true.

  “I think Deb Bryant is checking me out,” Charlie said around a bubble. “Verify.”

  Luke rolled his eyes but scanned over his friend’s shoulder. The pretty third-grade teacher had brought her flock out to recess, and, sure enough, her attention seemed to be on Charlie’s backside.

  “You angling for short ginger kids?” Luke asked.

  The petite redheaded teacher’s bright hair matched Charlie’s almost exactly.

  “Hell yes,” Charlie said, blowing a bubble. “We’ll be taking over the world someday. And I’m short only compared to a giant like yourself.”

  Luke grunted as he began picking up the gear he’d brought out to show the kids. At six feet tall he was hardly a giant, but he definitely had a couple of inches and a bit of brawn over Charlie’s wiry five-foot-eight frame.

  “You wanna go strike out with the teacher?” Luke asked, hauling a tank onto his shoulder. “I can clean up while you crash and burn.”

  “Hold that thought,” Charlie said. “Looks like Henderson’s bringing us a hot blonde instead.”

  Luke turned, intrigued. Not because Charlie had dubbed someone hot—he thought anyone with breasts and legs qualified—but because it was an unidentified blonde that his friend didn’t know by name.

  Lucky Hollow had lots of things. Newcomers weren’t often one of them.

  A little girl broke free of the group surrounding Oreo, flinging herself at Ryan Henderson’s legs. “Daddy!”

  Luke’s fellow firefighter and lifelong friend scooped up his daughter and gave her a smacking kiss on both cheeks.

  It was a familiar scene, and Luke absorbed it all in his peripheral vision even as most of his attention went to the unfamiliar.

  Damn. Charlie hadn’t been lying about the hot blonde.

  The woman walking straight toward him was all tight jeans, high heels, and confidence. And hot. Very, very hot.

  Charlie muttered something admiring under his breath, and Luke’s gaze flicked to the man beside the woman. Tried to place him. Couldn’t.

  Not too many guys around here wore light-purple shirts and white pants with the same easy comfort that Lucky Hollow residents wore jeans and flannel.

  No doubt about it—neither was from around here. Not by a long shot.

  The man was a half step behind the woman, and Luke assessed that the woman was calling the shots.

  His eyes narrowed as he realized that she hadn’t once wavered in her approach.

  She knew what she was after:

  Him.

  She got closer and Luke saw that the face matched the body. Wide blue eyes, full lips, sassy shoulder-length blond hair that was just tousled enough to make a man wonder how it had gotten that way—and to want to be the one to muss it.

  Her gaze flicked over him, and Charlie whistled and muttered under his breath. “She just checked you out, man.”

  She had indeed, but Luke was far from flattered. It hadn’t been the assessment of a woman checking out a man so much as a predator evaluating its prey.

  As though she was evaluating him for…something.

  Blondie stopped in front of him, and the second her blue eyes locked on his, Luke felt a little jolt of attraction and was irrationally annoyed. It had been a long time since he’d been quite so aware of a woman.

  Once, he’d enjoyed the feeling—sexual chemistry was almost the perfect combination of pain and pleasure. A subtle punch in the gut that you wanted to experience again and again.

  These days, though, he was having a hard time getting past the pain part. The shitty parts had outweighed the good parts just one time too many. Now he mostly settled for casual hookups with a divorcée a few towns over who was even less interested in commitment than Luke was.

  He had zero use for attraction to a pretty, bold woman in high heels.

  Luke noticed that for a sheer moment she had a slightly off-balance look, as though she too had felt the annoying zip of arousal when their eyes met, but she recovered quickly.

  Pasting a sunny, generic smile on her face, she stuck out her right hand. “Luke Elliott. I’m Jordan Carpenter. This is my colleague, Simon Nash.”

  Good manners had him setting down his equipment and extending his own right hand toward hers even as his brain caught on her name. Familiar, and…

  Shit. Shit!

  He managed to stop from jerking his hand back, but just barely. Instead, he gritted his teeth, gave her hand a perfunctory shake, and then fixed her with a glare. “You’re wasting your time, Ms. Carpenter. And mine.”

  Blue eyes narrowed. “Aha. So you did get my emails.”

  Those. The voicemails. The letters.

  “Sure,” he said with a nod, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Just like I suspect you got the message that I didn’t want to be a part of your show.”

  Charlie looked from the woman to Luke and back again. “Show?”

  Ryan ambled over, his shit-eating grin telling Luke that this damn woman had already spilled the beans on why she was here. “Luke’s gonna be a national heartthrob.”

  “International,” said the blond guy in the purple shirt.

  Jordan Carpenter didn’t look at her companion, but all three firefighters did.

  The other man gave the sort of easy smile that probably had him making friends easily. Luke didn’t want a new friend.

  Especially not one who wanted to use his shitty romantic past for the sake of TV ratings.

  The fancy blond guy smiled. “CBC’s big time, and they’re putting all their resources behind Jilted. It’ll be in international markets.”

  “Oh, well, in that case,” Luke grumbled sarcastically.

  Jordan
hadn’t looked away from him. Not once. “There’s money. Not a lot to start, but enough.”

  “Not interested.” He picked up one of the oxygen tanks to take it back to the truck. “Save your money.”

  “You could give the money away,” she said, her voice stopping him. “You may not want or need it, but what about the firehouse? The school? Surely someone in your town could benefit from the check.”

  He gave her an incredulous look. “Is this how they do things in New York? Using charity as a bargaining tool?”

  She had the decency to flinch. “All I’m saying is hear me out. You’re saying no without knowing any of the details.”

  “Someone want to tell me what’s going on?” Charlie asked.

  Luke just shook his head and walked away. The kids’ interest in the dog had waned, their attention shifting to their teacher, who was promising snack time of apple slices and string cheese.

  Millie caught Luke’s eye and directed the kids’ attention to him. “Okay, guys, let’s say thank you to Firefighter Elliott and Firefighter Bander!”

  “Thank you, Firefighter Elliott. Thank you, Firefighter Bander,” they chorused obediently.

  Luke ruffled the hair of a pint-size blond—Joey, the youngest son of the town vet. “Anytime, kids.”

  “Can I ride in the truck with the siren on?” Joey asked, looking up at him.

  “Maybe next time.” Luke held up his hand, and Joey’s much smaller palm slapped his. “Awesome.”

  Luke started to load up the gear and, realizing he was doing it alone, glanced over his shoulder to see where the hell his partner was.

  Unsurprisingly, his friend was chatting up City Girl. Neither Charlie nor Ryan seemed to mind in the least that these two fancy-pants had swooped into their town to capitalize on Luke’s past.

  What was more surprising was that Jordan Carpenter was chatting right back, her smile seemingly genuine, her laugh real.

  Luke ground his teeth.

  He couldn’t say he’d put much thought into the woman behind the name as he’d unceremoniously deleted her emails and voice messages, but if forced to assume, he’d have guessed aggressive shrew.