Tasting Fire

by Kelsey Browning

  Not for all the Bud Light at the Sack & Snack would he have watched her walk away, but Emmy had no such reluctance. Finally, she looked back at Cash and said, “Wow.”

  Out of desperation, he snatched up a menu and wiped at Chelsea’s lipstick with the back of his hand. “Have you decided what you’d like to eat?”

  “Chelsea obviously wanted a big ol’ plate of you.” Emmy chuckled and used her menu to fan her face. “I think she would’ve shoved me out of my chair if you’d given her the slightest encouragement.”

  He shouldn’t feel as if he needed to explain, but he did. “She moved to town a few years ago. She’s a teller at Highland Bank and Trust. We’ve…dated…a few times.”

  “With dated being a euphemism for hooked up.”

  “I like women.” He shrugged, trying to stay cool about the whole thing. “Always have, always will. Maybe that comes from growing up with two sisters and a mom who don’t take shit from anyone. You gave up the right to comment on my personal life a long time ago.”

  Her amusement wound down. “You’re right. It’s none of my business who you see or how much of them you see.”

  “Emmy—”

  She held out a hand, palm toward him. By now, the band was belting out “This Is How We Roll” at somewhere around the decibel level of a jumbo jet. “This isn’t why we came out tonight. It might’ve been better to discuss TMT business in private, but we’re here and—”

  Suddenly desperate to stretch out their time together for reasons he didn’t want to think about too closely, Cash said, “If you’ll tell me what you want to eat, I’ll let Grady know and we can get down to business.”

  “Steakhouse burger with sweet potato fries.”

  Once their order was in and he brought two more beers back to the table, Cash settled into his chair. “So I was mid sorry-I-was-a-dickhead before Chelsea interrupted.”

  “You’re upset that I’m in charge of the TMT.”

  “Yeah, but I’m a team player, and the team is the most important thing here. Not the past. Hell, not even the present.”

  “So you’re not upset anymore? Not at all?”

  He’d be lying if he said he was completely over his disappointment. “I can still wish things had worked out differently without being a flaming asshole about it. But honestly, why wish for something that I can’t have?” And was he talking about his desire to lead the TMT or about the desire he still harbored for her?

  “Does that mean you’re not planning to quit the team?”

  “That was never my intent. The TMT will fail if we’re not a unit. If I quit or try to undermine you, I’m actively hurting the people we’re supposed to help.” Cash sighed and picked at the red and yellow label on his bottle of Gaelic Ale.

  She sat back and looked at him, really studied him. So long that the tops of his ears went hot and he hoped like hell she couldn’t tell they were pink. “Prove it.”

  “What?”

  “You have to make it clear that you support my leadership completely.”

  Now the back of Cash’s neck was burning and he fought the urge to rub it. By force of will, he shoved back the part of him that was still pissed off.

  “You say you want this team to work.”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then it needs to be cohesive, and we have to trust one another implicitly.”

  “And you think I can get inside people’s heads and make them act a certain way? Believe certain things?”

  “Can’t you?” The soft way she asked the question made him wonder if they’d just taken a sharp detour into the past.

  Grady broke the tense moment by walking up with two plates piled high with fries and burgers. He set them down, and Emmy’s eyes widened at the amount of food in front of her. Grady grinned and said, “To-go boxes are pretty popular around here.”

  “I can see why.”

  Grady made his way back to the bar and by then, whatever tension had hovered around Cash and Emmy had dialed back a notch. She cut into her burger and hefted a half. “No wonder this place is so popular.”

  While they ate, they dropped the discussion about the team. Instead, Cash filled Emmy in on some of the changes the town had undergone in the past few years. “But you probably knew a lot of that. Jonah is nothing if not thorough when he wants something. And you’re smart, so you wouldn’t have taken his offer without all the details.” Which brought them back around to why she was here if the future Mr. Dr. McKay was still up north. “So… When’s he moving down?”

  “Who?”

  Cash wiped his mouth to cover up his frown. “Your fiancé.”

  7

  At Cash’s mention of the massive life mistake she’d almost made, Emmy popped out of her chair. “Excuse me a minute.”

  Unfortunately, the ladies’ room didn’t give her much reprieve seeing as it was wall-to-wall women. The hand dryer was blasting at a billion degrees and someone was spraying what smelled like Aqua Net with a heavy hand.

  The blonde who’d given Cash a tonsillectomy came out of the last stall and touched up her lipstick. “It’s open if you want it,” she said, meeting Emmy’s gaze in the mirror.

  “No, I just need…” What did she need? She walked to the counter and dampened a paper towel. Pressed it to the back of her neck.

  “He has a way of making a woman hot and confused.” Chelsea said with a smile that seemed friendly enough, but it was hard to tell with that dark shade of lipstick.

  “He… I…”

  “Exactly my point.” Chelsea laughed. “But no one catches him. At least no one yet. But I plan to change that.” To Emmy’s surprise, Chelsea slapped her on the butt on her way out the door.

  Had she just been warned away from Cash or invited to a contest?

  When she left the ladies’ room and tried to pay for her portion of dinner, Grady glowered at her. And that man had a powerful glower. She’d talk with Randi and make it clear she wasn’t comfortable being part of the Free Food for Heroes promo she had going on.

  Back at the table, Emmy didn’t sit. “Hey, I really need to get back home and—”

  “I’ll walk you.” Pushing back his chair, Cash stood and shrugged into his jacket.

  Couldn’t he see she needed some time alone? Some time to recover from sitting two feet away from him. Some time to figure out how to explain why she’d left Baltimore. Some time to make a plan. “I think I can figure out where I’m going.”

  “It’s dark,” he said as if that explained why he was on her heels as she wove through the restaurant crowd and out into the parking lot.

  “And this is Western North Carolina, not West Baltimore.”

  “I am walking you back to your apartment.” His tone was as cool and sharp as slate. “I can either do that beside you or behind you. Your choice.”

  Fine. This wasn’t a battle one of them had to win. In less than five minutes, she’d be in the apartment, wearing her favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles PJs, a piece of paper and pen in hand, where she could make sense of her thoughts.

  And it was nice to see a few people strolling along the sidewalks, peeking into the windows of the closed shops. Cash pointed across the street toward a boutique named La Belle Style. “That’s Brynne Steele’s place.”

  “She’s Reid’s wife.”

  “Can you believe someone actually married him?”

  With a laugh, she bumped Cash’s shoulder with hers. “Yes, because he’s good looking and funny.”

  Cash grunted. “If you say so.”

  “I do.” She slanted a look at him. “Then again, so are you.”

  “Was that a compliment?”

  “Take it as you will.” But what she really wanted to know before she told him about Oliver was why Cash himself hadn’t married. The hometown girls had to be swarming him if Chelsea’s performance earlier was anything to go on.

  “Because I never asked anyone else.”

  Cash’s words surprised her enough that her feet stopped mov
ing. “What?”

  “That’s what you were really wondering.” He turned around and meandered back to where she was standing. “Why I’m not married.”

  Lovely. It appeared that transparent was this season’s trendy color. “Well… small towns and all that…”

  Even in the waning light, she could see his face tighten. “Because what else would we have to do here besides fight and fuck, right? Maybe drink a little beer, watch a little football, marry a little woman, and make little babies.”

  “Cash, I didn’t mean—”

  “Far be it for people in the mountains of North Carolina to have ambitions or careers that rival yours. Why did you come back here at all?”

  Why was she trying to avoid telling Cash? Because she was embarrassed at the state of her life? Or because she might blurt out that she still had feelings for him?

  Then again, it was past time for a little honesty.

  “I don’t have a fiancé, and I was fired from my job at BaltGen,” she said in a rush.

  “What?” He shook his head as if trying to filter her words through his brain. “But when I asked if you missed him—”

  “I thought you meant my dad.” Which was another topic she wasn’t ready to discuss, with Cash or anyone else.

  “Why were you fired?”

  “Do you want the reason Oliver Amory put in my personnel file or the real one?”

  “I’ve only ever wanted the truth from you.”

  “I’d had a horrible day at work, and he proposed, if you can call it that, right there in the ER. It was like he was doing nothing more important than scheduling a lunch meeting. But when I turned him down, he told me BaltGen no longer needed my services.”

  “So you were forced to crawl back to Steele Ridge.”

  “That’s not fair and you know it. I could’ve had my choice of ER jobs even without a reference from BaltGen’s chief of staff.” They stopped in front of the Murchison building, and she gestured up toward her apartment windows. “I want to be here. I love my hometown.”

  “Which you showed so eloquently by leaving.”

  “Yes, I had to leave to become a doctor, and I won’t apologize for building a successful career, but...”

  “But what?”

  “I wasn’t building the life I really wanted.”

  “You are something else. Never satisfied, are you? And now you think you can find the life you’re looking for here, in Steele Ridge?”

  “Yes.” She risked putting her hand against his cheek, savored the prickly feel of short scruff. Her pulse sped up at the simple contact.

  “At one time, I wanted to build a life with you,” he said, his voice edged with bitterness.

  “We were young. Naive,” Emmy whispered. “But the last thing I wanted to do was hurt you.”

  Cash took a step, moving closer until Emmy was forced to back up. The bricks of the Murchison building caught the fabric of her shirt, the rough texture at her back making her skin ripple. She lifted her hands to his chest, and her fingers curled into the softness of his T-shirt.

  He leaned in, lowering his face until their lips were within breathing distance. “Pain is a helluva teacher. I’ve gotten some smarts since you left, Emmy. But apparently not enough, because I still want to kiss you.”

  Standing right here on Main Street, Emmy had the impulse to loop her arms around Cash’s neck and jump into his arms. Squeeze her thighs around his waist and plaster her front to his. That was the kiss she wanted.

  But that was too much, way too soon.

  Still, she couldn’t resist touching him, so she lifted to her toes and pressed her mouth to his. Their long-overdue kiss was just a touch of lips. A sweet slow slide that was supposed to soothe away his anger. Instead, it yanked the very breath out of Emmy. Every millimeter of her skin was suddenly clamoring for his touch, simply because she was holding back the torrent of need inside her.

  Then Cash skimmed the tip of his tongue along her bottom lip. Thank goodness the wall was at her back or her knees might’ve been in trouble.

  She grasped for his waistband to steady herself and hooked two fingers inside, against his hot skin. But when she tugged, he didn’t budge, just slowly heated up the kiss, degree by degree.

  Good Lord, he’d learned a thing or two since the last time they kissed. And he’d been a knock-her-socks-off kisser then.

  When Cash finally opened his mouth over hers and took the kiss to tongues, hot breath, and heaving chests, Emmy’s brain stopped thinking and turned everything over to her body.

  This. This was the passion and yearning and need that had been missing from her life. She’d been without it for so long that she hadn’t realized what she was missing until the night Oliver had executed his clinical proposal.

  Go away, Oliver.

  One hand in Cash’s waistband, she grabbed hold of his hair with the other and yanked. Oh, God. A brick wall at her back and a hard man at her front.

  The perfect kind of trapped.

  Cash obviously thought so, too, because his erection was hot against her stomach even through the fabric of their clothes. Sure, they’d done it a few times when they were dating their senior year, but those had been quick, furtive encounters the few times they could find privacy.

  Not easy in a small town.

  Once down at Deadman’s Creek in the front seat of the truck he’d driven back then.

  Once on her couch when her mom had taken Kris to see a play in Asheville.

  They’d had plans, though, for sharing an apartment one day. Sleeping and loving together in their own bed. But she’d rejected all that.

  Cash’s hands came up and framed her hips, pulling her up the wall and tilting her pelvis against his. It made Emmy want to claw at him, tear at their clothes until they were skin to skin and he could slide inside her. Fill up the places she’d recently discovered were so empty.

  She even went so far as to flip open the top button of his jeans, but before she could shove her hand fully inside his pants, something whooshed past them and crashed through one of the Murchison building’s plate glass windows.

  Cash’s head came up, and he dropped Emmy back to her feet. “What the fuck?”

  He spun around, giving her a view of Main Street. A truck was screeching away like a bat out of hell. The brake lights blinked once and disappeared as the vehicle hung a right onto a cross street.

  With unsteady hands, Emmy dug into her bag for the building’s keys. But Cash didn’t wait for her to retrieve them. He simply put a boot heel against the glass clinging around the window frame and kicked it in. Then he stepped through the yawning jaws of jagged remnants.

  “Dammit, Cash!”

  She made to follow him, but he looked back at her and barked, “Don’t you dare.”

  Bossy butthead.

  Unbelievably, her hands were no longer shaking, and she fit the key in the front door lock on the first try. Inside, the main floor was a mess of broken glass, but Cash was stomping across it toward the staircase leading upstairs. He hunkered down, pulled his jacket cuffs over his hands, and picked up something.

  Emmy hurried toward him and leaned over his shoulder to get a look at what had interrupted their very public, very hot kiss. One that she’d been completely steeped in. “What is it?”

  “Something heavy enough to go through plate glass.” His hands still covered by his jacket, Cash fumbled with the heavy-duty rubber band until it popped off. The paper that had been wrapped around a brick—red and unremarkable—floated to the ground.

  It was simple. White copy paper. Black magic marker. Only four words.

  Go home, Dr. McBitch.

  * * *

  Cash stared at the piece of crumpled paper that had fallen to the floor. Inside him, the blood that Emmy had already heated with their kiss outside upgraded to a bubbling boil that quickly advanced to a raging torrent.

  He jumped to his feet and started for the door. “Call Maggie and tell her what happened. She’ll be over in a flash.
Until then, I want you to go upstairs and lock yourself inside the apartment.”

  “What?” Emmy caught him by the elbow. “Where are you going?”

  “To find the jackwad who threw that brick.”

  “They’d already turned off Main before we came inside. They’re probably a mile or more away now.”

  “I’ll find them.” Because letting them get away with this was not an option. Maybe it had been a wakeup call, reminding him that kissing Emmy was probably a shitty idea, but she could’ve been hurt. And even though she’d once hurt him, he never wanted to see her in pain.

  “By yourself? Not happening. If you’re going after them, I’m coming with you.” The stubborn line of her mouth told him that it would be hard to convince her to stand down. “Besides, I saw what kind of truck it was.”

  “What about the license plate?”

  “That I didn’t get. But there was a Ford symbol in the middle of the tailgate.”

  Just fucking excellent. There were probably thousands of Ford trucks in Haywood County alone, and every second Cash stood here arguing with Emmy meant the brick thrower was farther away. “Let’s go.”

  He ushered her out the door, and she turned to lock it. “That won’t do much good. Is the upstairs apartment locked?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Let’s go.” With his thumb, he pushed the clicker to unlock his truck. As soon as Emmy closed her door, he jammed the truck in reverse and peeled out of the parking space. A pissed-off honk behind him reminded Cash that he hadn’t bothered to check his rearview. He sure didn’t need to slow their pursuit down with an accident. With a wave of his hand, he apologized to whoever he’d cut off.

  Then he shifted into Drive and accelerated down Main. He took the corner where the truck had disappeared too fast and his tires protested. The side street was deserted. Not even a leaf blowing down it.