Discover Me & You, A Devil's Kettle Romance: Book 2

by Susan Sey

  He blinked, startled. He hadn’t wanted anything in so long, he barely remembered what wanting felt like, let alone yearning. He wasn’t even sure what he could possibly want. But he felt certain that it had something to do with this small, strange woman and that radical stillness she commanded.

  The room waited breathlessly for her to speak and Eli had to wonder who on earth this woman was that she could bespell Gerte and a potential mob into rapt silence. If he was going to be here for a while — and God help him, it looked like he was — it would definitely pay to find out.

  “How?” Gerte bleated, clearly bewildered. “How did you burn down Davis Place?”

  The woman said, “Addy got this big, fancy espresso machine, and I was helping her figure out how to use it. Evidently, we left a rag over the fan intake when we wiped it down. That plus some wonky wiring she was still having worked on and next thing you know, you’ve got yourself a house fire.” She shrugged. “It happens. But Addy has also settled everything with her insurance company, and there’s no open case with either the fire marshall or the sheriff.” She gave Gerte another beat or two of that uncompromising eye contact. “Which means it’s no business of yours. So why don’t you check your own hands before you go calling other people poison?”

  Willa judged the sidewalk was clear, and since Gerte had stopped talking — and slapping people — she turned and went outside. Besides, she’d said everything she needed to say and she wasn’t in the habit of hanging around once the work was done.

  Her truck was half a block up Main Street, right outside the Devil’s Taproom where her stupid brother was probably tending bar and pretending he liked it, as usual.

  “Hey!” The Wooden Spoon’s door jingled behind her and then boots were thudding up the sidewalk toward her. “Hey, wait!”

  She turned and found the guy Gerte had been whaling on jogging toward her. Eli, she reminded herself. Eli Walker. He was about average height. Maybe average plus an inch or two, she saw as he drew up in front of her, but not tall enough to loom over her. Not that he seemed inclined to loom, having stopped a solid two yards away. He frowned down at her nonetheless, his eyes achingly blue and set wide over broad cheekbones. She frowned back. Those eyes were gorgeous, ridiculously so. Giant, extravagantly lashed and so desperately sad. She wondered if he was aware that sorrow clung to him like a scent.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Willa.”

  “Eli Walker.” He didn’t hold his hand out to shake and she was glad. She didn’t want to touch him. Not yet. Not with that sorrow of his trying to snake its way into her head. She studied him carefully. He wasn’t a handsome man, not exactly, but there was something appealing in the way he was put together — in the sharp planes of his face, the precise angles of his bones. He looked like a marathoner, all lean muscle and long limbs, every move engineered with maximum efficiency in mind.

  “Was that true?” he asked. “What you said back there? About the house fire? The way it started.”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  She gave that a moment and when he didn’t seem inclined to elaborate, she turned and started for her truck again. He fell into step beside her.

  He said, “You didn’t need to lie for me.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “But you lied.”

  It wasn’t a question so she didn’t answer it.

  “I don’t want any favors, Willa. I don’t need anybody to protect me.”

  She reached her truck and crossed to open the driver’s door. She’d left the windows open but even so it was like opening a blast furnace. She hiked herself up on the runner and met his eyes over the top of the cab. “I wasn’t protecting you,” she said.

  “Somebody else, then.”

  Again, no question so she didn’t feel obligated to answer. But Gerte had taken that Dumpster fire damn personally, and she’d already accused Matty of lighting it once. Willa wasn’t about to let her do it again. She got into the truck. The vinyl was like lava under her thighs, burned through her worn jeans like they didn’t exist. She fired up the old engine. Eli put a hand on the open passenger window and leaned in.

  She gazed deliberately at his hand on her truck, then lifted her eyes back to his. Didn’t suck in a breath at the punch of all that deep, sad blue, but it was a near miss.

  He said, “I owe you one anyway.”

  She put the truck in gear and said, “No, you don’t.” And drove off, leaving him on the sidewalk outside her family’s bar, watching her go with those eyes of purest sorrow.

  CHAPTER 4

  IT WAS AFTER midnight when Willa’s phone rang. Late night phone calls were rarely a good thing but in Willa’s line of work, they weren’t unusual. In fact, they weren’t even bad news. Not for her, anyway. The caller was almost certainly having a bad night but to Willa that ringing phone was like money knocking on her door. And she wasn’t rich enough to ever wish it would knock on somebody else’s.

  She snatched the phone off her nightstand and shoved her hair out of her face. “Zinc Pest Control.”

  “Hey, my name is Eli Walker. I’m staying out at the state forest campground just north of town, Cabin 6. There’s a snake in my toilet and I’m hoping like hell you can send somebody out to deal with it because I honestly didn’t think you grew snakes this big this far north.”

  Eli Walker. Her mind supplied a pair of achingly blue eyes and the sound of Gerte’s open palm connecting with a sharp cheekbone. Guy was having himself one hell of a visit. “We can grow a sizable snake on the North Shore, Mr. Walker, but we keep the venomous ones down state.”

  “Yeah, well, this one shook its tail at me, so maybe your guy can discuss it with the snake when he gets here.”

  Willa suppressed a sigh. New customers always assumed they were speaking with the receptionist. Doing battle with entrenched sexism wasn’t really her job, though. The snake in the toilet was.

  “We’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” she said.

  “Thank you, Jesus.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Willa was on state forest land. She pulled up to a glorified toolshed with an extremely questionable veranda tacked to the front and the number six painted beside the screen door. It was cute and rustic, she supposed, with that sharply peaked roof and a gingerbread-house-shaped bird feeder hanging from the eaves. But between the seed the feeder leaked and the foundational cracks she could see in the dark, it was no wonder the guy had snakes. She wouldn’t be surprised if he had wolves, honestly. Moose, too, except they wouldn’t fit. She eyed the warped shingles. He almost certainly would have rain if they ever got any, which they hadn’t. Not all summer.

  She killed the engine, dug the necessary equipment from the lockbox in the truck bed and considered the porch steps. There were only two but they looked more questionable than the veranda. She doubted she’d die if she busted through but a broken ankle wasn’t on her agenda tonight. Not now that the DNR had finally agreed to audit her and approve her license.

  The screen door flew open while she was still considering her options and suddenly Eli Walker was there, framed in a rectangle of light. He was wearing a pair of ratty cargo shorts that had clearly seen better days if better days was code for crawling around in a blast zone. They hung low on narrow hips, the plaid boxers he’d probably been sleeping in showing plainly through a rip in the thigh. He was still pulling on a t-shirt as he opened the door, and Willa found herself eyeballing a torso that was exactly what she might’ve imagined, had she spent any time imagining Eli Walker’s torso.

  Which she hadn’t. She wasn’t an eye candy kind of woman. She preferred her men fully clothed, actually, and at least six feet away. Ten was better. But all that lean, efficient muscle shifting under skin the sun had kissed deeply gold? Willa stared, a little mesmerized, while something warm and interested uncurled inside her tense belly.

  Eli’s head finally appeared and he said, “You’re here for the snake?”

  Will
a closed her mouth. She’d been gaping, she realized, disgusted with herself. “Here for the snake,” she confirmed and mounted the iffy steps. They creaked but held and Eli stepped back to allow her into the cabin’s bright kitchen.

  He froze. “Willa?”

  Good for him. He not only noticed she was a girl but recognized her from earlier. Remembered her name, even. He didn’t smile, though. He only blinked those big sad eyes at her in surprise.

  “Mr. Walker.” She didn’t smile either.

  “Eli. You’re Zinc Pest Control?”

  “Owner, operator.”

  “Huh. Fancy that.”

  Her smile took her by surprise. Who said things like fancy that anymore?

  “Fancy that,” she returned. The cabin was about twelve feet by twelve feet, a tiny kitchenette with a two-burner stove against the front wall and a twin-sized bed shoved up against the back. A stingy little peninsula counter poked out of the wall to her left, separating the stove from the bed, and a cheap accordion door stretched across an opening in the back wall. She nodded toward it.

  “The bathroom, I assume?”

  “If you can call it that.” Eli shoved both hands through hair buzzed so brutally short it was more like a five o’clock shadow than hair. “There’s a toilet in there but if you want to sit down on it, you’ll have to leave the door open to account for your knees being six inches into the bedroom.”

  Willa eyed him. “Did you try to sit down on it?”

  “I don’t have a snake bite on my ass, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “I was more concerned about the snake than your ass, but good for both of you.”

  Eli’s hand dropped protectively to one butt cheek and he tipped his head to study her. “I hadn’t considered it from the snake’s point of view, but you’re right. Good for both of us.”

  Willa rounded the stubby counter and unlatched the accordion door. It retracted with a sullen snap and sure enough, there was an ancient toilet in harvest gold, a cast iron dutch oven sitting on the closed lid. She raised a brow at Eli.

  “It was the heaviest thing I could find,” he said.

  “Good thinking.”

  A rueful smile ghosted over his face. “I now feel compelled to admit that I had already done a few laps around the cabin with my shorts around my knees screaming like a little girl before the thinking started.”

  An answering smile tugged at Willa’s lips. “You’re not a snake guy?”

  “Nope.” He admitted it easily. “Just call me Indiana Jones.”

  “Snakes,” she said solemnly. “Why did it have to be snakes?”

  He blinked at her. “That movie was old when I was born.”

  “It’s a classic for a reason.” She shrugged. “Now tell me what’s happening in your toilet.”

  “There’s a snake in it.” He blinked again. “What else do you need to know?”

  “What did it look like?”

  “Big.”

  “Color? Markings?”

  “Uh, dark? Maybe some stripes?”

  “Horizontal or vertical?”

  “Hang on, I have to think past the horror.” He dragged a hand down his face, blew out a breath. Opened his eyes and said, “Okay, yellow stripes running from head to tail. Which it shook at me. Did I mention the tail shaking?”

  “Yeah.” Willa kept her face solemn. “Many snakes do that, Mr. Walker, not just rattlers. Think of it as a friendly warning.”

  “Eli,” he said again. “And I’m from Colorado. When a snake shakes its tail at you in Colorado, it’s not friendly.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “So what do you think it is?”

  Willa’s money was on a harmless little garter snake, but based on the nerves still jittering all over Eli’s face she doubted he’d welcome the news. “Why don’t we have a look?”

  “I already did, thanks. My heart may never recover.” He sat on the edge of the bed, which creaked mournfully. “You go ahead, though.”

  “Okay.” She reached into her bag and pulled out an old pillowcase. She flapped it open and draped it in the tiny sink beside the toilet. She pulled out her snake tongs next, a telescoping pole with a pincers on one end and a grip on the other that controlled the pincers.

  She could feel Eli’s eyes on her as she moved, and it was strangely unsettling. It wasn’t that he was watching her work. People often hung around while she dealt with whatever wild thing had invaded their home. They might not want her there but they all wanted to be damn sure her services were rendered.

  Eli’s gaze didn’t feel like that, though. It touched down gently, almost curiously, like butterflies landing all over her. Hair, hands, wrists, throat. It should disturb her that he seemed to see through the cloak of invisibility she thought she’d perfected. But those deep, sad eyes of his wandered over her body without any of the nasty appetite she’d learned to fear. This felt more like an animal sniffing at an unfamiliar scent — no malice, no aggression, just wary curiosity. It made her want to stand still and let him learn whatever there was to learn from the sight of her.

  Instead, she put one boot on the toilet lid and slid the dutch oven to the floor. She glanced back at Eli, found him staring at the lid under her boot with a tense implacability.

  She said, “Ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be.” He stood up. “What should I do?”

  A funny rush of tenderness tightened her throat. She could all but smell the fear on him but he’d stood up, grimly prepared to do whatever she told him.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I just wanted to make sure you were braced for this. I didn’t want to surprise you into running around the cabin with your shorts around your knees again.”

  “Oh. Sure.” He heaved out a hugely relieved sigh and sat back down. “Once a night is my limit on that kind of thing, but thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said and opened the toilet lid.

  Suddenly, he was right there behind her, peering over her shoulder into the toilet bowl. The tang of his fear mixed now with the clean scent of grown man, and the warmth of his body reached out to touch her bare neck. She wished, fleetingly and for possibly the first time in her adult life, that she’d worn her hair down. His body heat on her nape felt dangerously intimate. But he was afraid, she reminded herself, not her. At least when it came to snakes.

  Willa took a moment to focus and sure enough, there was a garter snake curled up in Eli Walker’s toilet bowl. It lifted its tail from the water, gave it a weary shake.

  “Yeah, I hear you,” Willa murmured. “Not your night, either.”

  “Why is it doing that?” Eli asked, his voice like rough velvet against her vulnerable nape. She itched to scoot forward, to put a few more inches between them but there was nowhere to go. The only way out was through. “Why is it shaking its tail?”

  She considered the time this snake had probably spent in the state forest’s ancient plumbing system. “I imagine he’s had a crappy night.”

  “There’s a three-foot-long snake in my toilet, I’m sweating bullets here and you’re making poop jokes?” He let out a soft huff of laughter. “I don’t know whether to fire you or propose marriage.”

  A bolt of uncertain awareness shot from her nape to low in her belly and smoldered there. “Two and a half feet, tops,” she said briskly and snapped her snake tongs out to an appropriate length. Put her elbow in his gut while she was at it. It was hard to breathe with the scent of him — all cool pines and warm earth shot through with that bright, metallic fear — wrapping around her. “Sorry.”

  He stepped back. “No, that was me. I’m crowding you. Sorry. But that beast is at least eighteen feet long.”

  “If that’s how you want to tell it, I won’t contradict you.”

  A pause. “I’m leaning toward marriage. Just FYI.”

  Willa eased her tongs into the bowl. The snake flickered its tongue at her, tasting the air, testing her intentions. Willa concentrated on exuding calm, peace, strength. She
brought an image to mind of the secret little clearing deep in the forest where she intended to release the snake. She didn’t necessarily believe in the power of visualization, and had no ambitions to speak to the animals Dr. Doolittle style, but she did believe deeply and strongly in non-verbal communication. Animals understood scent, movement, sound, and depended on them to intuit strangers’ intentions, animal or human. It only made sense, then, that putting her intentions in the forefront of her mind while picking up a frightened animal would help her send the right signals.

  The snake seemed to agree because it didn’t move as she eased the pincer around its body just behind its head. It seemed relieved, actually, and Willa didn’t blame it. The state forest plumbing system was ancient but well used. This snake couldn’t have had a good couple of hours. She lifted it gently from the toilet bowl, let it hang there a minute, dripping. She sent Eli a look over her shoulder.

  “You want to measure it?”

  “Twenty feet,” he breathed, his face caught somewhere between fascination and revulsion. “Easy. Maybe thirty.”

  She chuckled. “Try thirty inches.”

  “I’ll tell it my way, you tell it yours.”

  “Deal.” She moved the tongs to the sink and lowered the snake into the waiting pillowcase. It curled into the bottom with what she’d have sworn was a sigh of relief. She concentrated on her favorite clearing again and twisted the top of the case shut, fastening it with a length of twine she pulled from her pocket. She hefted the case and eased it over her shoulder so the poor snake could at least enjoy her body heat until it was free again.

  “So that’s it?” Eli said. “I’m alone in my cabin again?”

  She eyed him. “You do know what snakes eat?”

  “Ah, hell. Mice.” He palmed his face, scrubbed the stubble on his scalp. “I must have one hell of a mouse population if a snake was willing to crawl through miles of shit to get at it.”