with grime and sweat. The fabric sticks to his skin, outlining his chest muscles so clearly he might as well not even be wearing his shirt. I swear I can see the striations in his abdomen. His face is streaked with gray soot, his chiseled jaw clenched.
Olivia squeals again, and it shakes me out of my momentary trance. I turn to open the door to the back seat, but he reaches me first.
"Hey." He speaks the word angrily, and I turn to face him as I pull open the car door to grab Olivia. The man is close to me, only a few inches away, and when I look in his eyes, electricity rushes through my body even though he hasn't so much as laid a finger on me.
There's something both threatening and sexy in the way he stands near me. I'm not sure if he's trying to intimidate me, or if he wants to cover my mouth with his, and the fact that I can’t tell which sends a shiver up my spine. "Is this your place?"
"Yeah. I'm the owner,” I say, looking into his icy blue eyes framed with thick dark lashes. Shit, he's got to be in his twenties. He's young. Too young.
He points back toward the orchard. "I don't know what the hell kind of operation you're running here," he starts.
I bristle immediately at his tone. "Excuse me?"
He points his finger at me, and I nearly reach out and smack it away. This guy might be the hottest thing I've ever seen, but he's clearly the kind of guy who thinks he can get away with anything just because he's gorgeous. "Are you trying to singlehandedly burn down the fucking county, or just get people killed?"
"Who the hell are you?" I ask.
He ignores me, instead continuing with his lecture. "You've got a piece of shit foreman who's fucking drunk on the job, you know that?"
"I don't know anything right now. All I know is that I don't know you. And that you need to quit cussing and back the hell away from me before I slap you."
Olivia howls, “Mama!” and I pull open the car door all the way, half-hoping I smack him with it. Okay, totally hoping I smack him with the door. I've never seen this guy before in my life and he's yelling at me in front of my toddler? Anyone who does that is a total dirtbag.
I slide Olivia out of the seat and turn around with her on my hip, only to find him standing there gaping at me.
"I didn't know you had a… kid."
All I know is that I don't want Olivia around this guy who's clearly an asshole, so I slam the car door and shield her from him as I move toward the other firefighter who’s far more reasonable. “And it’d be fine for you to yell at me if I didn’t have a kid?” I ask. “It’s totally normal to just go around screaming at women?”
I don’t bother to wait for an answer. I don’t need some twenty-year-old kid lecturing me about how to run my own damn property. Hearing about my foreman already hits a nerve with me. He's the third foreman I've had, and I thought I smelled alcohol on his breath the other day, but I wrote it off as just my own paranoia. I don't even know how much of the orchard was destroyed or—holy shit—if anyone got hurt.
"Ma'am," the firefighter I spoke with before greets me.
"No one was – I mean, nothing happened – No one got hurt, right?" Olivia kicks at me, hanging over my arm and trying to get down. "Hang on a second, baby. There's too much going on out here for you to be running around."
The firefighter shakes his head. "Your foreman could have been, though. Ambulance brought him down to the hospital, treated him for smoke inhalation."
"What happened?"
"Foreman passed out. Looks like a lit cigarette started the fire."
"Oh my God."
"He's lucky," the firefighter tells me, "and so are you. He woke up in time. But he apparently tried to put it out himself, which wasn't smart. Probably didn't try to call the fire department because he was drunk. The Saint boy over there was driving by and saw it, jumped in to help. He called us. You're lucky he was going by. This whole place could have gone up in flames, you know. It’s been dry out here, with it being fall and all.”
I'm trying to process what he's saying. All the while, the gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach grows more insistent. At least no one was hurt.
The Saint boy… the firefighter's words echo in my head. That's the asshole who was yelling at me.
That's the guy with the ice-blue eyes, the one who sent a crackle of electricity running through my spine when he stood close to me.
Of course, that was before he opened his big freaking mouth.
Olivia leans over in my arm, and lets out a loud howl, and the firefighter shrugs. "You want to take care of her? All this smoke out here isn’t good for her anyway."
"Thank you." I make my way inside and set Olivia down on the hardwood floor as soon as we get in the house. She toddles forward a few unsteady steps before the screen door even shuts behind me, and I follow her down the hallway, grateful for the silence.
The reprieve is short lived. The knock on the door echoes loudly, and I look over my shoulder, exhaling heavily as soon as I see who it is. "You again? You didn't get enough of an opportunity to yell at me already?"
He stands just outside the door. "Hey," he calls. "I think we got off on the wrong foot."
Olivia is babbling as she makes her way down the hall away from me, and I say, "No kidding," under my breath as I go after her. I don't have time to stand here and socialize at the front door, not with this kid on the move. I follow Olivia into the living room where she heads straight for her favorite toy, a bouncer she used to love to sit inside. Now she just likes to stand beside it, hanging on with one hand for balance, while she spins the toys lining the top.
He clears his throat, and when I turn around, he's standing there with his palms in the air. "I'm not a creep or anything.”
"You mean, just because you yelled at me in front of my toddler and then followed me into my house?" I ask, a hand on my hip. I'm keeping my voice calm so I don't startle Olivia, but really, isn't this the beginning of an episode of one of those true crime shows?
"You turned around and walked away," he accuses me.
"Most people would wait to be invited inside." There’s just something about this guy. He’s so damn… arrogant. I've never met anyone I immediately disliked so much at first sight.
"Most people would thank the person who saved their fucking–"
"Stop swearing in front of my kid!"
"Shit." His face colors. "Lady, I just saved your damn orchard. You should be thanking me, not giving me grief."
"Yeah, excuse me if I don’t express my gratitude for you barging into my house and yelling at me.”
"I'm not yelling." He lets out a heavy exhale, then looks down at the ground before he runs his hand through his hair. "Fuck."
I groan. "You’re purposely trying to make me angry, right?"
He looks up at me with those blue eyes of his, and a shiver runs up my spine. "I'm not trying," he insists. And then he gives me this crooked, cocky-as-hell grin. "But I'll admit that it's an extra perk. You're kind of cute angry."
"Are you trying to flirt with me?"
He laughs. "I said kind of cute. Not bowl-me-over hot."
"You're kind of a dick." The words come out before I even think to censor myself. Damn it.
Now he laughs harder, and looks at me with one eyebrow raised. "Five minutes after meeting me, and you’re already talking about my D – I – C – K?" He spells it out, obviously for Olivia's benefit.
"That is not what I'm talking about." Of course, as soon as he mentions it, I can't not think about it. What the hell is wrong with me?
But he just laughs and holds out his hand. "Luke Saint," he says. "At your service."
3
Luke
She looks at my hand and, for a second, I think she's not going to shake it. Damn, this chick is wound tight. She's also hot as hell. I wasn't kidding when I said she’s cute when she’s angry, except "cute" isn't exactly the word for it. She's definitely not cute.
The fiery red hair that tumbles down her shoulders fits her personality just right.
I have a sudden impulse to reach out and run my hands through it, but something tells me she'd probably kick me in the nuts if I did. I think she'd be wild in bed.
She's not wearing a wedding band – that's the first thing I check, out of instinct. The way she's wound so tight tells me she hasn't been laid in a while either.
Too bad about the kid. I don't get mixed up with moms, that's for sure. I might think MILFs are hot, but I'm a look-and-don't-touch kind of guy when it comes to them. Single moms have baggage. They're clingers. They'll say they want a fling, but they don't. They want a relationship. And then you're stuck.
And I'm not a relationship kind of guy. One night is all I need. So this chick is off the table, which is really too bad because I bet she's great in the sack.
"Stop staring at me," she says, huffing.
"You're awful full of yourself."
"You're looking at me like someone who just got out of prison and hasn't seen a girl in ten years," she complains. "Oh my God, did you just get out of prison?"
I hold up my hands. "Guilty as charged. I just got released from prison, came straight to West Bend, and put out a fire in your orchard. You're the first woman I've laid eyes on and I must have you right now."
She narrows her eyes. "Don't be a jackass."
"Swearing?" I glance over at her kid who's hanging onto the side of this giant plastic thing with toys all over it. I don't know what the hell it is.
Or if the kid can understand what we're saying. Do kids understand words at that age? Hell, I don't even know how old the kid is. It's a girl. She has red hair though, like her mom, curly on top. She's kind of cute, I guess. I mean, kids generally seem like a giant pain in the ass, but she seems happy enough, batting around her toys like some kind of cat.
"Oh, whatever," she groans.
"That's very mature of you."
"Did you follow me in here just to harass me, or what?"
"No, I followed you in here to tell you that you need a new foreman." Shit, this girl has a bug up her ass. She needs to mellow the hell out. "Your foreman is a deadbeat. Not just because he lit your orchard on fire in the middle of harvest."
She practically bristles at my words. "If you came in here to give me a lecture, you can turn your rear end around and leave now," she says. "I'm not some stupid little city girl who doesn't know anything about running an orchard."
Irritation rushes through me. "I didn't say you were ‘some stupid little city girl’, lady, so don't get your panties ruffled. Hell, obviously you're not. I can hear the drawl in your voice." Drawl, hell. The girl sounds more southern than fried chicken. I just can't tell what part of the south she's from. But I definitely didn't get the impression that she was some city slicker.
Her face reddens like she's embarrassed to be mistaken for a country girl. I don't know what she has to be embarrassed about, though. That drawl of hers is pure sex. "Well, thanks for your advice," she says, "but I don't need a lecture from some… surfer dude."
"Surfer dude? What the hell do I–"
The knock on the door interrupts me. She looks at the door and then back at her kid. She obviously doesn't want to answer the door and leave me alone in the same room with her child.
"Don't worry about it,” I assure her. “I'll get it. And I'll show myself out."
One of the volunteer firefighters is at the front door. I used to know him in high school, and he raises his eyebrows when he looks at me.
"Don't even start," I mumble as I push past him.
"I didn't say a word," says Roger, putting his hands up as he chuckles.
"She's not my type."
"Huh. I thought every girl was your type."
"Shit." I shake my head. "Definitely not that one, man. Uptight is not my type."
He clears his throat and I glance behind me to see her with her kid balanced on her hip and walking up to us. I know she just overheard me. My cheeks feel red at the thought, but I shake it off.
Fuck it. What the hell do I care what this chick thinks anyway?
"Nice work out there, Luke," Roger calls, and I wave him off as I head back toward my truck, yelling for Lucy, my Labrador retriever. She jumps up in the front seat and I drive away from the orchard.
It's only after I'm down the road that I realize I never even got the redhead's name.
"Come on, Lucy, get off me." I push her over on the bed and she jumps back on top of me, her paws digging into my chest. "What time is it?" I'm groggy and tired and sore, the product of going out and climbing yesterday for four hours before it got dark. I needed to do something to get the redhead off my mind.
I get up to let Lucy outside. "Girl, you should be just as tired as I am." Lucy goes out with me when I climb and roams around the mountain trails. It usually exhausts her. Clearly, that's not the case today.
She's outside for fifteen minutes or so before I start wondering what the hell she's up to. In the mornings, she's usually back pretty quickly, scratching at the door to be let back inside.
Instead, when I pull the door open, I see Lucy outside with the redhead from yesterday. The dog rubs up on her leg like she's a magic lamp or something.
Traitor dog.
The redhead looks at me. "You're not easy to find, you know."
I take a long sip of my coffee. "You ever think that there's a reason for that?" I ask. "Maybe I don't want to be found. What the hell are you doing here, anyway? Or are you just in the habit of chasing down strange men you just met and following them out to their houses?"
"Oh, is that what that thing is, then?" she asks, rubbing on Lucy's ears. Lucy is practically melting into a puddle of goo at her feet.
I glance behind me at my trailer. I don't need a damn house, don't need to put down roots when all I do is travel, contract work chasing fires during the summer, snowboarding, and fucking snow bunnies in the winter – not in West Bend, though. I avoid this place like the plague.
Now I'm back here, on account of what happened to my mother.
"Did you come here to insult me?" I ask. "That thing is my house, as a matter of fact."
"I didn't mean to insult you," she insists. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. "It's a nice place."
"Where's your kid?"
"She's with her nanny." The nanny. Well, la-de-fucking-dah. Her kid's too good for a regular babysitter, I guess. "Didn't think I should drag her out here with me, chasing down some strange man I just met."
"No shit. I could be a psycho or something. Or you could be. I mean, at least I didn't show up at your house like an obsessed stalker."
She cocks her head to the side. "You kind of did, actually, but that's beside the point. I forgive your boorish behavior and –"
"Wait a fucking second. You forgive me?"
"Of course," she says. "For yelling at me in front of my child and following me into my house and cursing in front of her and –"
"Hold up." I put my hand out, ready to stop this conversation. This chick might be hot, but she's obviously a lunatic. "I saved your ass and your damn orchard, despite your best efforts to burn it the hell down. So maybe you want to stop with the holier-than-thou lecture about yelling at you in front of your kid, and calm your tits down a smidge."
"Calm my tits?" She walks toward me. Are her nostrils flaring? I think they are. She looks mad. It's been a while since I've been around a girl who would get mad about that phrase.
Shit, it's been a while since I've spoken to a girl this much outside of the bedroom. Usually they're getting angry on the way out the door. I'm not like my stupid brother in that regard. Shit, Elias meets a fucking movie star and he's suddenly a family man. Relationships and I are not meant to be.
The Girl With No Name stands in front of me, her breath short.