“Whoa!” Rafe came to a crashing stop behind me, his laughter now reverberating down my spine. “I guess I’ll have to do my best to remind you.”
I clenched my jaw tight and squeezed my eyes shut to stop the shiver that threatened to shake my whole body to its core. I couldn’t let it, not when Rafe was sounding all smug and sexy. “That’s not necessary.” I took a careful step forward, refusing to ruin the perfectly haughty tone I had going on. But the mud was slipperier than it looked and my canvas sneakers were no match, my feet scrambled for purchase.
And then Rafe was there. His strong arms banded around my waist, pulling me flush against the hard expanse of his chest. “That’s one way to get back into my arms. Or you could just ask.” His deep voice yanked that previously suppressed shiver violently from me, but I masked it. Or tried to anyway, by squirming to get away. “Be still,” he whispered and took a step forward. “Or should I say stay just like that?”
“Dammit Rafe!” Did he have to say things like that? The same words he’d uttered just before he licked fancy hotel whipped cream off my body. “Put me down. Please.”
“Soon,” he said gently, sloshing through the mud and across my backyard, not stopping until we were on my back porch. “There you are.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
His chuckle pulled my gaze up, and our gazes connected and, dammit, it was just like that night in the hotel all over again.
“See you soon Janey.” He brush a kiss to my forehead and jogged back down the stairs, disappearing from sight like the last hour was nothing more than a dream.
More like a hallucination. With that thought I went inside and worked on forgetting that night. Again.
Rafe
“Some of us have to work this time of morning Rafe.” Reese did her best to sound put out about my call, but I knew better. “Good morning and what’s up? Barbecue emergency?”
I smiled at her attempt at a smart ass reply, wondering how in the hell I became best friends with a girl. A woman. “Not quite. I’m about to do something, possibly stupid and possibly not. What should I do?”
Silence weighed heavy on the other end of the line for about ten seconds, then Reese let out a laugh. “About a woman I presume?”
I looked up at the storefront of Janey’s photo studio with the green and blue awning that gave it that old timey feel, despite the ultra modern logo pressed on the display window and the bright lights shining inside.
“You could say that.”
“Okay. What to do here…,” she mused, more to herself than to me, and I was sure she was in the middle of rolling dough for her delicious honey biscuits, or testing out one of her mouthwatering sauces. “Okay. I’m guessing you’re too far gone to back out, or you wouldn’t have called me. So, go do this possibly stupid thing, and if it goes wrong or right, come back here for barbecue. I’ll add Jack if we’re commiserating, or Maker’s if we’re celebrating. How does that sound?”
I smiled and grabbed the door handle with my free hand. “Like I’m very wise for choosing you as my best friend.”
Reese snorted out a laugh, and I knew she was rolling her eyes at me. “Who says I didn’t choose you pretty boy? Good luck.”
The call was over before I could say anything else, so I shoved the phone in my pocket and went inside Janey’s studio. The place was brightly lit, as expected, but what I didn’t expect was to see so many different types of photos. I mean I knew she was a photographer, but the shots on the wall were good. Really good.
Too good for Tulip, good.
“Take a look around,” she called out. “I’ll be with you shortly.”
Her voice came from the back and I headed that way. Following the clicking sounds and bright flashes until I found a big warehouse style room divided into three different sections.
“Looked a lot different when I did the safety checks on this place.”
I heard the small gasp of breath at the sound of my voice, even if the young couple did not. “Chief Montgomery, to what do we owe the pleasure?”
If she only knew how much I loved that attempt at frosty professional distance, she’d stop it in a heartbeat. “I was hoping for a moment of your time. I’ll wait.”
She wanted to say more, desperately, but she was working. “Fine. As long as Mark and Anna don’t mind? This is their engagement photo shoot after all.” Her tone told me I was intruding on a private moment, and I looked to the couple for confirmation.
“We don’t mind,” Anna said with a wide smile. “Love is in the air and all that.” She flashed a wink which I ignored and turned my gaze back to Janey.
“They don’t mind.”
“Then neither do I.” She shrugged and turned back to her subjects, giving them her full attention while she posed them this way and that.
I watched Janey for another long moment, the same way I watched her in Santa Fe, the way she moved so effortlessly. So unaware of her own appeal, and how it only made her more appealing. She smiled at the couple and asked questions, pulling wide but genuine smiles from them the entire time. She was a hell of a woman.
“I didn’t realize you had such a big portfolio Janey.”
She stiffened at my words, but continued to aim her camera at the couple. “Oh yeah, she did these super hot boudoir photos for my friend Phoebe, and I knew I wanted her. I mean she made Phoebe look like a ten. A ten!”
I flashed a knowing smile at Janey. “Interesting.”
Her skin flushed pink. “I’m a lot of things, Rafe.”
“I’m just curious to learn a few more of them.”
“Aww, that’s so sweet,” Anna added unnecessarily, but I was happy that it served to deepen Janey’s blush. “You guys are cute together.”
“Thanks,” she said stiffly and finished the shoot without another word for me, at least not until Mark and Anna were long gone. She organized the modern living room setting she’d used for the backdrop. Replacing certain items and wiping everything down. Methodically. Carefully. Almost obsessively.
“Janey.”
That was all it took for her to turn on me, fire burning in her green eyes. “That was completely and totally unprofessional! What were you thinking?” She was working herself up into a good rage, without any help from me. But I was nothing if not a helpful kind of guy.
“I was thinking that you’re really hot when you’re mad.”
She growled form somewhere deep, and I felt the sound wash over my skin, even though I knew she was upset. Really upset. “Stop saying things like that,” she snarled, and I took a step forward.
She glared at me until I stepped aside. “It’s true, but I’m sorry if saying so annoys you.” Most women appreciated being called beautiful, got all giggly and girly about it.
“It doesn’t annoy me,” she growled and carefully put away her camera, so at odds with the tone of her voice. She shoved the cushioned bag into a locker and whirled on me. “It’s disingenuous. That annoys me.”
I frowned, and shook my head. “I’ve known some confusing women Janey, but you take the cake. I don’t say things I don’t mean, but I’m happy to show you how much I mean it. If that’s what you need.”
Heat and fear flared in her eyes at once, even as she tried to shake off the effect my words had on her. “You can’t just stop by and try to knock me off my game like that,” she insisted, fidgeting with the edge of her blouse before stilling her hands and walking around me, anything to keep from being too close to me. Or looking at me.
I smiled and gave her a few feet of distance before I followed her back to the studio. “I did knock you off your game, didn’t I? Wonder why that is?” She pretended to have no reaction to me, but that one hot night told me what a lie that was.
But still, she pretended. “Because you are ridiculously good looking, and you know that. Everyone knows that.”
If not for the fact that she sounded so upset by it, I might have been offended. It was true, the combination of my parents’ genetics resulted in my
own good looks. That’s not ego or arrogance, that’s a lifetime of observing people’s reaction to me. It got old by the time I was sixteen. But it took much longer to come to terms with the feeling of insecurity blanket compliments from people who didn’t even know me as a person gave me.
“That’s the only reason?”
“Of course,” she said, her voice all prissy. “What else would it be?”
“You have a point,” I told her and pressed my body into her personal space without actually touching her. “I guess there is no other reason.” I was close enough that her vanilla and bergamot scent swirled into my nose and buried itself in that part of my brain that would forever associate that scent with Janey. “None at all,” I told her and pressed her against the soft blue wall of the bedroom set.
“Nope,” she stammered. “None. At all.” Her voice was breathy and the words came out choppy. Short.
“Funny, because now I’m remembering something else,” I told her honestly and Janey looked up at me, eager to hear what I had to say, but stubbornly refusing to ask.
“Rafe,” she pleaded.
“Yes Janey?”
“Please.”
“Please tell you what I remembered?” Heat and annoyance flared in her eyes and I grinned, sifting thick strands of her hair through my fingers while keeping an eye on that beating pulse at the base of her throat. “Okay. I remembered the way you bit down on your bottom lip in pleasure, and the way it made this dimple pop.”
“It’s just a dimple. I’ve had it my whole life.”
And now that I’ve seen it, I wanted to see how many other ways I could make that dimple pop. “I like it.”
She snorted.
“I do, and I’m getting real sick of you telling me what I mean and don’t mean.” It was one thing to be unaware of your own appeal, but this was ridiculous. “Janey.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” I growled and bent low to capture her soft, quivering lips with mine. They were plump and sweet, the same way I remember and Janey was as pliant and responsive as I remembered. Thinking of how innocent she really was, I deepened the kiss, eager to see how she would react to my passion.
Her arms crept around my shoulders and her fingers slipped into my hair, tugging gently as she moaned into my mouth. I held her close, cupping my hands around her hips and fusing our bodies together while I made her squirm with need. We stayed that way for what seemed like ages, stopping only when the bell sounded, indicating someone had come into the shop.
Janey pushed at my chest with one hand, keeping me close with the other. “Be with you in a second! Take a look around!” She cringed and looked up at me. “How breathy did that sound?”
“This breathy,” I told her and held her close enough to feel the effect she had on me.
I groaned and my grip tightened on her. “Janey.”
“Rafe,” she said. “I’m at work.”
Work. Right. I took a step back and then another step. “Right. Sorry. Until next time,” I told her and brushed a soft kiss across her lips before exiting the shop. Quickly. Before I changed my mind.
Janey. I couldn’t believe it.
And neither would Reese.
Janey
“You look different.” Hope examined me with a careful eye while I set up lights on two different sets inside my studio. I kept my gaze on the floor or on my equipment, unwilling to give her anything that might come back and bite me in the ass. “Seriously. Something is going on with you.” Hope had finally turned away from the models wearing her latest lingerie designs to worry about the important things in life, like my fictional love life.
“I finally cut off my split ends,” I told her. “Got one of those avocado mayo hair treatments too. Okay well I did it at home, but still. That’s all.” I was rambling and we both knew it, so I turned back to my lights and my camera. Fiddling with the settings while praying Hope was distracted by something else. Something more interesting.
“Your hair looks great, but it always does. No this is something else, like a glow of some…oh my god!” Her face dropped into a comical trio of ‘O’s with her eyes and mouth formed into perfect circles of surprise. “You got laid.”
The model snickered and I glared at her, and then at Hope. “No, I didn’t.”
“You totally did. Only a woman who’s gotten laid recently could so easily deny it, right Casey?”
Casey, the model clad in see through pink lace, gave a non-committal shrug and turned to her reflection in the mirror. “Kind of, yeah. And you do have that sex glow going on.”
I shook my head, knowing it wasn’t possible. It had been almost two months since Rafe and I were together. “You’re both projecting.”
Hope snorted and shook her head, standing at my side as Casey took her spot and posed for a few test shots. “We’re projecting? I’m getting laid all the time. All of the time,” she repeated a little bit louder. “Casey is a hot young model in cowboy country, she has all the sex she wants. That covers us, how about you?”
“Who ever said you were nice and bubbly?”
Hope flashed a wide smile and shrugged. “It’s a rumor I started.”
“There’s nothing going on with me. Period.”
“See,” she said to Casey, “people lie.”
The model snickered again and left the room in search of fresh air, or just a little less insanity. “What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing. I’m just trying to find out who’s making your skin glow like that,” she said breezily. “That, and wondering if we could double date some time?”
“Whoa! You’re getting way ahead of yourself, woman.” I shook my head in disbelief. “No one said anything about dating, single, double or otherwise.
“Ha! So, there is somebody. I knew it!”
Dammit, my shoulders sank inward at her glee. “Are you vying for a spot for the Biggest Mouth in Tulip?”
“Not the biggest, just one of the biggest,” she clarified with more attitude than a woman her size should be capable of. “Tell me. It’s you and Rafe, isn’t it?”
“What? No!” I shook my head back and forth with more energy than the move required. By the time I stopped, I wondered if I was in an alternate universe, because standing there in the middle of a half put together living room scene, was the matchmakers. All four of the women stared with a disapproving eye, for me or the lingerie, I wasn’t sure. “What can I do for you ladies?”
“Oh nothing,” Eddy said, doing her level best to look anything other than suspicious and failing miserably. “We can wait until you’re done if you don’t mind an audience?”
I looked to Casey and Hope for confirmation and when they gave it, I nodded for the women to stay. “Just don’t interfere. Please.”
Eddy pretended to zip her lip along with Betty and Helens. Elizabeth arched her brows and rolled her eyes. Figuring it was the best answer I would get, I shrugged and turned back to the photo shoot.
“I wonder if Rafe is seeing anyone,” Helen pondered aloud, on purpose I was sure.
“Probably, he’s been walking around with a smile lately,” Betty said with a sly smile. “We should find out who she is.”
That was the last thing they should do, but I kept my mouth tightly shut. “She has to be well dressed, well traveled and brilliant. A woman to keep that handsome devil on his toes,” Elizabeth Vargas added in an admonishing tone that said she was regretting their impromptu trip. “She needs to be gorgeous and exciting too.”
The woman they described sounded incredible, even to me, and if they ever found her, I would stand a less than zero chance with Rafe. Not that I wanted a chance with him, I didn’t.
At least I didn’t think I wanted that.
Hell, I didn’t honestly know, but this little game of his was physically and mentally draining. And besides all that, nothing the matchmakers said was wrong. Rafe did need, and probably wanted all those things in a woman. And I wasn’t that woman.
“There might not be a
nyone like that in town who’s not already taken,” Helen Landon said in her signature gruff voice, but I’m sure we’ll find her by casting a wider net.”
A wider net, like he needed help reeling in women! “That’s just rude,” Betty interjected, and all four women started bickering but it slowly faded along with the sun. Just like that, they were gone.
“Don’t listen to them,” Hope insisted, sympathy in her eyes. “Despite what they think, those women have very little to do with the love matches in town. Sure, they manipulated to help them spend more time together, but the feelings are either there or they aren’t. There’s nothing those old girls can do about the love part.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I told her, though I wasn’t sure I believed it. Not yet. Maybe the matchmakers had just gotten lucky, and chose people who were close to falling already. No one really knew, and no one really seemed inclined to question it. Maybe all of that was true, but they weren’t wrong about Rafe. I wasn’t the kind of woman he needed, not by a long shot. I didn’t dress up unless it was absolutely necessary, and even then, I volunteered to photograph events just to get out of dressing up. I didn’t like being the center of attention and preferred to keep the camera as a barrier between me and most of the world. “But, it doesn’t matter to me, Rafe and I are barely friends.”
Hope snorted very indelicately and rolled her eyes as she shifted the model under the lights. “Arch your back just a bit more, we want them to thing nonstop sex. Perfect,” she turned to me. “You’re more than friends, and you know it. Those looks between you guys. The heat.” Hope shook her head, pink and blond hair tumbling around her shoulders. “Plus, I saw him come in here the other day. Alone.”
“I didn’t say we weren’t friends at all, I said we were barely friends. The matchmakers roped him into helping me scout a location, that’s all.”
“If that’s what you choose to believe,” she snorted mostly under her breath, and I chose to ignore her.
That Hot Night: A Firefighter Romance Page 4
