by Lili Valente
A glance up and down Evergreen Lane, the main street leading through downtown, revealed nothing but locked doors and quietly steaming chimneys. It was too early—and too cold—for even the most hardcore coffee addicts to be headed into their favorite café for a fix. She should be able to get out to the circuit breakers around the left side of the house and back inside without being spotted.
Bracing herself for the chill, Olivia dashed out the door and down the front steps, silently congratulating herself on keeping the walk so nicely shoveled. Her zombie slippers scuffed on the snow-dusted concrete, but her toes stayed cozy and dry as she flicked the switches and hurried back the way she’d come.
She was back on the porch before the last of the lingering bed-warmth had vanished from her flannel pajamas, already imagining how good a cup of lemongrass and ginger tea was going to taste on a chilly morning like this when she realized she had made a serious mistake.
Her fingers curled around the doorknob, but when she twisted, the knob held firm, not budging an inch.
“No.” She tried to spin it a second time.
“No, no, no!” She wrapped both hands around the freezing metal and hauled to the right and then the left, but still the door remained tightly, stubbornly closed.
CHAPTER TWO
Olivia
“Damn it,” Olivia whispered, adding a few more colorful phrases beneath her breath.
She’d forgotten to flip the lock on the doorknob to open before she started down the stairs and now she was locked out of the house.
Locked out in her unicorn-humping pajamas and zombie slippers with no phone, no car keys, and no way to reach her best friend Daisy, the only person in town who had a spare key.
“Score one for you, Old Vic,” she grumbled, resisting the urge to kick the front door.
The house had won the round, but she wasn’t going to let it win the match. There were other ways to get into a building than through the front door, especially when the building in question had been renovated by a woman who had absolutely no concern for her personal safety.
Olivia started around the house, cringing as her slippers sank in snow that reached nearly to her knees, cursing herself for installing window locks on the ground floor yesterday. Kelly had never locked the house or the Curiosity Shoppe in the old carriage house next door, not even when the cash register on the checkout counter was filled with money.
Lover’s Leap, Colorado was one of the safest small towns in the nation—voted a best bet for families with small children four years running—but it still had its share of petty theft.
But Kelly hadn’t worried about things like that.
She hadn’t worried about anything, really. Her sister had floated through her days without a care in the world, leading a charmed life until that morning last March when she’d broken her leg skiing and a blood clot had turned a serious injury into a fatal one.
Olivia, however, was the opposite of charmed, a fact she should have remembered before she decided to climb up the ancient fire escape and sneak in through the bathroom window on the second floor.
But when she jumped up to grab the lowest rung of the fire escape and hooked her leg around the metal tread—sending one zombie slipper flying off to land on the snow bank beneath her—she wasn’t thinking about foul luck or her mother’s warning that she had been born under a bad sign.
She was thinking about hot tea and butter melted on toast and how good it was going to feel to be back inside the only semifreezing house instead of out in the absolutely freezing outdoors.
She was thinking about her new life and her new worldview and sisters doing it for themselves and that she was woman, hear her roar!
And if it hadn’t been for the ice that so often accompanies a snowstorm everything might have been okay. But ice, like doors that lock from the inside, is a fact of life.
Olivia was halfway up the ladder to the second-floor landing when her hands slipped on the icy rails, sending her left leg sliding through the gap between two rungs. She opened her mouth to scream, but before she could make a sound, she lost her balance and arched backward in a reverse swan dive, her skull on a collision course with the ground.
She threw her arms over her head and braced herself for impact, but at the last second, her bulky pajama pants snagged on something above her. The fabric caught and held for a heart-racing moment, slowing her fall long enough for her to yip in fear before the elastic waistband of her pants proved no match for gravity and gave out, sending her slipping out of her britches and tumbling toward the ground.
This time, Olivia had enough time to scream before she landed with a gasp, upside down in a stranger’s arms.
A very strong stranger’s arms, which were attached to equally powerful shoulders that cradled Olivia’s thighs, bringing the stranger’s face into intimate contact with the crotch of her white panties.
Her extra-large, white granny panties with the ripped waistband and the saggy butt.
Olivia closed her eyes, waiting to see if this would be the time that mortification finally killed her.
CHAPTER THREE
Colton
Colton Brody was no innocent.
He’d had his face between the thighs of his fair share of beautiful women, but not usually before eight o’clock in the morning, and never with the woman in question hanging upside down in his arms after being surprised in the middle of breaking and entering.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice muffled and her thighs squirming on either side of his face as she inched the crotch of her cotton panties away from his mouth. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“I’m not the one you should apologize to,” Colton said, trying to ignore the feel of her soft skin against his end-of-shift stubble and the light, feminine scent of her swirling around him.
It had been a long time since he’d been with a woman, but this one wasn’t an option. He was no angel, but he drew the line at hopping into bed with people who were trying to break into an old friend’s house.
“I know the woman who owns this building,” he continued, shifting his grip, trying to figure out the best way to set his captive down without dropping her head first into the snow. “And I know she’s not you.”
“I can explain.” She giggled as his finger accidentally slipped along her ribs. “Sorry, I’m ticklish. If you’ll please just put me down, I can—”
Her words ended in a squeal as his hands found opposite sides of her waist and he spun her upright. She swayed and sucked a breath in through gritted teeth as her feet sank into the snow, but the strained expression didn’t detract from her beauty.
The woman was stunning, from the glossy brown hair that fell in tangled curls around her shoulders to her heart-shaped face, big brown eyes, and lips the same cotton candy pink as the unicorns on her shirt.
The unicorns on her shirt that were…
Colton’s eyebrows drifted higher on his forehead as he realized exactly what the unicorns on her shirt were doing.
“Oh, geez. It would be you, wouldn’t it,” the woman mumbled, her arms flying to cover her chest before dropping just as quickly to the hem of her shirt and pulling it lower on her thighs. “What are you doing here, Colt?”
“Stopping you from breaking into Kelly Page’s house,” he said with a frown, willing himself not to look down and see if her panties were still visible. “I have no idea who you are. And until I do, I’m not trusting that you belong here.”
The faint smile curving her lips faded and her big eyes grew even bigger. “Me? You have no idea who I am?”
He shrugged uncomfortably, hoping she wasn’t one of the girls he’d taken back to his place right after he was discharged from the marines.
He’d spent a few months mourning the loss of his career—and a piece of himself—like someone had died, self-medicating with too many women and way too much booze. He’d done his part to prove a man didn’t need two legs to fuck his way through half the single female population of Colorado
and if his cousin Seth hadn’t stepped in with an offer to help Colt pass the exams to join the fire department, he might have lingered in the self-pity pit for longer…
And have even more awkward encounters like this one in his future.
“Sorry,” he said as the strained silence stretched on. “Have we met?”
She blinked, her stunned expression growing incredulous. “Have we met? Did you seriously just ask me if we’ve met?”
He lifted his gloved hands at his sides in surrender. She must be one of his forgotten hookups.
Which meant it was time to backtrack. Fast.
“Listen, like I said, I’m sorry,” he said. “I was going through a shitty time last year. I’m not usually an asshole.” He smiled, counting on the Brody charm to save his ass. Long before he was a manwhore or a reformed manwhore, he’d known how to use a wink and a smile to flirt his way out of trouble. “And I normally wouldn’t forget a woman as beautiful as you are.”
She snorted, a dubious sound that brought his attention to her upturned nose. Even her nose was adorable, with a light sprinkling of freckles across the bridge that made him want to conduct a closer inspection of her sinfully soft skin to see where else she might be freckled.
Everything about this woman made him want to get her naked and take a cue from the unicorns on her shirt. No matter how hard he tried to stop the Thought Train to Smut Town, he couldn’t keep from imagining her legs wrapped around his waist while he showed her how good a bad man could make her feel. Hell, he might not remember her name, but by the time he was through with her, she wouldn’t remember it either.
Even in panties big enough to sail a small ship, she was sexy as hell.
It seemed impossible that he could have forgotten spending the night with her, no matter how wasted on whiskey and self-pity he might have been.
“You are a piece of work, Colton Brody,” she said, her teeth beginning to chatter. “And if I weren’t afraid of catching frostbite, I would stay here and call you on your bullshit. But I need to get inside and find some pants, some tea, and about four pairs of socks. So if you’ll excuse me…”
She turned her back on him and jumped into the air, grabbing onto the bottom rung of the fire escape that had almost killed her, bringing it to his attention that she was wearing nothing on one foot and some kind of soggy, monster-faced house shoe on the other.
“You’re outside in the snow in your bare feet?” he growled. “It’s twenty-five degrees, for God’s sake, are you out of your fucking mind?”
“No, I’m locked out of my fucking house,” she said, hooking her leg over the bottom of the ladder. “My house. Where I live. Where I have clothes to put on and tea and there are no big dumb men who can’t remember me.”
Holy shit.
He recognized that bossy little voice now, but he still did a double take. Surely it couldn’t be…
“Olivia?”
CHAPTER FOUR
Colton
“Ding ding ding!” Olivia shot a sarcastic, upside down grin in his direction. “You’ve guessed it. What do we have for him, Johnny?”
She turned back to the ladder, crawling her hands up the railing as she continued in a deeper voice. “We’ve got a one way trip to the front yard! Do not stand there staring while I’m climbing a fire escape in my underwear, do not make any lame apologies, do not attempt to make an excuse for forgetting a girl you’ve known since she was ten years old.”
Despite the anger in her tone, Colton couldn’t help but smile.
Seems prissy Olivia Page had acquired a bite as well as curves that didn’t quit.
“I’m sorry, Liv,” he said, watching her climb, ready to catch her if she fell again. “Cut me some slack. It’s been ten years. I haven’t seen you since you were fifteen and I don’t think I’ve ever seen your hair out of a ponytail.”
“My face is still my face,” she said, grunting as she tugged her pajama pants free from the brace where they had gotten stuck. She glanced over her shoulder, shooting him an imperious look down her button nose. “And you are still watching me climb a fire escape in my underwear.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, deliberately keeping his gaze glued to her pretty brown eyes. “Forgive me, Olivia.”
“Go away, Colton.”
“I can’t,” he said, crossing his arms at his chest. “Not until I’m sure you can get inside without killing yourself.”
“I’m not going to kill myself.”
“If I hadn’t caught you, you could have broken your neck,” he said, casting a critical glance at her bare foot. “And I don’t like the look of your toes. Why don’t you come down and let me carry you to the firehouse. It’s only a couple of blocks. I just got off shift so I can get you set up with some coffee and a blanket and call the locksmith while you warm up.”
She huffed and continued to climb. “Thank you, but no thank you. I don’t need to be carried anywhere and I’m not going to the firehouse in my humping unicorn pajamas.”
Colton bit back a grin. “Aw, come on. The boys probably won’t even notice.”
“You noticed.”
“I notice everything,” he said, unable to keep from remembering how soft her thighs had felt or the way the flower and herb smell of her skin had flooded through his head, making him feel things no man should feel for his little sister’s best friend.
Shit, if he’d had a few more minutes to imagine fucking her, he would have been hard.
Hard for bossy little Olivia.
The thought was sobering. He wasn’t that person anymore, that man who would stick his dick in any willing woman and not care about the ramifications of his actions. He’d put his dark times behind him and was doing his best to stick to the straight and narrow.
Or at least doing his best not to break any hearts or inspire jealous boyfriends to shoot him before he left town.
It was good to have goals and right now Colton’s were all about proving he was the kind of man who deserved a second chance at a dream. He didn’t have time for distractions.
Olivia paused at the top of the ladder, glancing down at him with an inscrutable look. “Yeah, well…sometimes you notice everything. And sometimes you can’t read the mile-high writing on the wall in front of your face.”
Before he could apologize again, she climbed onto the landing.
He watched her alabaster legs, red toes, and monster house shoe slip out of view, feeling sad to see her go. But it was probably for the best. She was clearly annoyed with him and he was thinking things about sweet Olivia Page that weren’t sweet at all.
Things like how good her skin would taste beneath his lips and how right she had felt in his arms. Things like how much he would like to strip those granny panties down her legs and get her writhing against his mouth.
“I’m in,” she called from above. “You can go now. Thank you.”
Colton blinked, dislodging the inappropriate visions dancing through his head. “Meet me at the front door,” he called back, his voice gruff. “I want to check your toes for frostbite before I go.”
“My toes are fine,” she shouted. “And you’re not my boss.”
“No, but I have EMT training and you’re not losing a toe on my watch,” he said, surprised that the words sent only the tiniest pang of regret vibrating through his chest.
It had been nearly two years since he had lost his leg below the knee, eighteen months since he’d been released from duty in the marines, and ten months since he’d signed on with the Lover’s Leap Fire Department. But today was the first time he’d been able to think about the missing piece of himself without an accompanying burst of rage.
But then, his bad luck was finally turning around. He was on his way to reclaiming the career the crash had stolen from him and nothing was going to stand in his way. He had proven that he had what it took to come back better than ever. He had passed his physical last month with flying colors and delivered the best speech of his life to the advisory board. Now it was j
ust a matter of getting his paperwork cleared through the proper channels and staying away from trouble until then.
Trouble like letting his little sister’s best friend lose a body part because she was pissed at him for not recognizing her at first glance.
“Olivia?” He backed away from the ladder, trying to see if she was still sitting on the landing. “Olivia did you hear me?”
He was answered by the sound of the window slamming shut.
With a sigh of irritation, he started back around the house, prepared to knock the front door down if that’s what it took to get through to her.
Because that’s what you did for friends.
Once Olivia had been almost like family, just another kid running barefoot around the Brody ranch in the summer and camping out around the Christmas tree on New Year’s Eve. But somewhere along the way, between his enlistment in the marines and her getting a job three states away, they’d lost touch.
He hadn’t even called to offer his condolences when her sister had died. He hadn’t had her phone number and had been so caught up in his first month of work at the firehouse he’d barely remembered to shower before he fell into bed. Besides, he hadn’t talked to Olivia in so many years it had seemed acceptable to pass his regrets on through his little sister, Daisy.
But now, it didn’t seem acceptable. And he meant to make that right.
As soon as he made sure Olivia didn’t live to regret running around in the snow in her bare feet. She was off limits, but that didn’t mean a single toe on her pretty foot was any less precious.
Colton and Olivia’s story is
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