At Last (22 page)

And all she could do the whole time was soak up every word and marvel that he trusted her, that he enjoyed her company, and that he wanted to be with her. It softened her in a way she hadn’t expected, and she found herself just staring at him.

“What?” he asked, with a small smile.

She shook her head, unable to explain how she felt when she was with him. Like she was on a tightrope without a net. An overdose of adrenaline, terror-filled, excited, and overwhelmed all at once.

“Tell me,” he said.

It was that voice of his, the low, calm, utterly commanding voice that made her do just that. “This has been a really great first first date.”

“First
first
date? As in your first date
ever
?”

She grimaced. “Yeah, sort of.”

He looked at her for a long moment. “Explain.”

She opened her mouth and then closed it again. She shrugged, embarrassed, and spent a moment getting a glass of water. It was hard to believe talking about herself made her feel more naked than actually being naked, but there it was.

“Were you a nun until recently?” he asked.

She laughed. “No.”

“Sheltered?”

She laughed again, this time a little bitterly. “No. It’s no big thing. I’ve obviously been with men. I’ve just never done this, the dressing up and going out thing.”

“Which we never got to,” he said with deep regret.

“It’s okay. It was still really great.”

He took the drink from her hand and drew her out of the kitchen. They dressed, and he drove them to Seattle after all, to a small intimate bar downtown that had a really great band. They danced, talked, and laughed, and then danced some more.

Amy had never once had a guy set an entire evening around her and her needs. It made her feel things, and for once she didn’t mind. She felt special. Cherished. And hours later, when they pulled back up to his cabin, she turned to him and smiled. “Heck of a first date, Ranger Hot Buns.” Leaning in, she kissed him softly. “Thank you,” she whispered against his mouth, which curved gently.

“You’re welcome.” He tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “But it’s not over yet.”

“No?”

He led her inside and to his kitchen, where they shared a three a.m. plate of cookies and mugs of milk, dressed this time. She sat on his counter, and he stood at her side, smiling at her.

“What?” she asked.

“You have a crumb…” He licked the corner of her mouth, then used the excuse to kiss the daylights out of her.

“That was a ploy,” she said when they broke apart for air.

“Uh huh.” He started removing her clothes, until she sat bare assed on his counter, trying not to squeal at the feel of the cold tile beneath her cheeks. “Okay, this can’t be sanitary.”

He smiled and stripped, making her heart stutter in her chest because he was so beautiful. “Nice,” she said.

He pushed her legs open and stepped between them, and she forgot all about being cold or sanitary.

Wrapping his hand in her hair, he gently tugged her head to the side and kissed her neck.

“Again?” she breathed, melting when he opened his mouth and sucked a little patch of skin.

“Oh, yeah, again,” he said. “And then again.”

“We won’t be able to walk.”

He nipped her collarbone and headed south toward her breast. “I’m going to be so good to you, you won’t care.”

Researchers have discovered that chocolate produces some of the same reactions in the brain as marijuana. The researchers also discovered other similarities between the two but can’t remember what they are.

T
hat next morning, Matt’s alarm went off. He was alone. Nothing unusual about that, he told himself, and rose.

Half an hour later, he and Josh were hanging off a cliff together. It was barely dawn, and Josh was tense and bitchy because he’d only gotten three hours of sleep thanks to a long ER shift.

Matt hadn’t gotten even three hours of sleep but he wasn’t tense and bitchy. Maybe a little freaked out. He had no idea what he was doing with Amy. At least not other than making her cry out his name whenever she was naked.
That
, he’d discovered, he was very good at.

“Shut up,” Josh said.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to. Your just-got-laid smile is saying
it all for you. Loudly. Have some sympathy on those of us not getting any.”

Matt slid his longtime friend a look. “You could be getting some. What happened to what’s-her-name? That hot red-headed nurse you were talking about?”

“She told me how she’d been dreaming about marrying a doctor since she was eight.”

Matt winced. “That’ll do it. What about that cute brunette you met when you operated on her brother’s mysterious head injury?”

“Turns out she’s the one who gave him that injury.”

“Ah. Okay, how about that new chick… Grace? The one who’s friends with Amy and Mallory?”

“Hell, no.”

“Why not? She’s pretty.”

“Yeah, but she’s Mallory’s and Amy’s friend,” Josh said.

“So?”

“
So
,” Josh said in the tone that suggested Matt was a complete moron. “Ty fell for Mallory. It might be contagious.”

Matt laughed. “You’re a doctor. Whatever you catch, just give yourself a shot and get over it.”

“Is that what you’re going to do? After you finish falling for Amy, you’re just going to get over it?”

This shut Matt up because he had no clue.

Josh shook his head. “I’ve given up dating for now. It’s just too damn hard anyway, with Toby and Anna.”

“Your son and sister wouldn’t want you to give up your life for them.”

Josh lifted a shoulder. “I’m working seventy-five hours a week. I don’t have time to date.”

“Man, that’s just sad.”

“Says the guy who works the same crazy hours I do. How are you fitting your relationship with Amy into that schedule? You prepared for the pissy girlfriend act when she finds out how you’re always on the job?”

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

Josh snorted. “You haven’t seen Facebook yet today, I take it.”

“You don’t have time for women, but you have time for Facebook?”

“My office manager has it as my homepage,” Josh said. “Thinks she’s amusing. But it was very amusing today. You went out with Amy, a date that ended with you being a fucking action hero.”

Matt stared at him. “How the hell did
that
get out?”

“Lucille was at the station when Sawyer brought the guys in. She’d just bailed out Mrs. Burland for running over her neighbor’s foot—twice.” Josh raised a brow. “Nice start to a date, playing Superman. How did that work out for you?”

Pretty good. He could still remember every breathy pant, every soft moan, every hungry “oh, please, Matt” that Amy had whispered in his ear. Not wanting to go there with Josh, Matt ignored the question and kept moving.

“Wow, evading,” Josh said. “Subtle.”

“Why don’t I climb with Ty?” Matt wondered out loud. “He doesn’t ask stupid questions.”

“Because he’s too pussy to climb.”

Matt laughed. Ty wasn’t “pussy” about much. Except heights.

They were halfway down when something caught
Matt’s attention across the long, broad chasm at Widow’s Peak, the cliff three hundred feet across the way. Climbers. They were at the midpoint plateau of Widow Peak’s face, which he knew they’d had to have gotten to by way of a closed-off trail. He knew this because he’d closed off the trail himself.

The climbers were whooping and hollering it up, and Matt shook his head. “Shit.”

“Kids?” Josh asked.

“Can’t tell.”

“Isn’t that entire area closed off?”

“Yeah,” Matt said grimly, scrambling down. “I closed it because of rock slide problems. It’s not safe.”

Josh hit the ground only three beats behind him, squinting through the sun, shading his eyes with a hand. “Looks like a total of four idiots. Nope, five.”

Matt pulled binoculars from his pack and took in the sight of the climbers passing something between them. Tension gathered in a ball at the base of his spine. “They’re getting high first,” he said, shoving the binoculars at Josh, then gathering his gear.

“We going to go scare them off?”

“Hell, yeah.”

They moved to Matt’s truck, where he replaced his climbing gear with a utility belt, including weapons.

“Do I get one of those?” Josh asked.

“No.”

“But I get to look all scary and intimidating, right?”

Matt looked Josh over. Out of his scrubs, Josh didn’t look much like a doctor. He looked like a six-foot-four NFL linebacker. “I don’t know,” Matt said, baiting him. “Can you do scary and intimidating?”

Josh narrowed his eyes. “If I hadn’t taken an oath to
save
lives, not take them, I’d show
you
scary and intimidating right now.”

“Save it for the idiots.”

Fifteen minutes later, Matt parked at the trailhead to Widow’s Peak. “Hell.”

“What?” Josh asked.

“The gate’s open.” And he’d locked it personally. “The
CLOSED
sign is missing.”

“That’s not good.”

“Nope.” Matt drove through the gate, taking the fire road that would bring them to the same midpoint plateau that the climbers were on. They had to park about a quarter of a mile from the area, where they found another truck—the climbers’ vehicle, no doubt. Matt and Josh hiked the rest of the way in, startling the guys just as they were getting ready to take a go at the peak.

“This area is closed,” Matt told them.

The climbers were in their late teens. Three of the four of them took one look at Josh and Matt and just about shit their pants. Not their ringleader, whom Matt recognized as Trevor Wright, the teenage son of Allen Wright, a very successful builder who thought he was God’s gift to the entire county. With a cocky grin, Trevor held his ground. “Who’re you, the climbing police?”

“Yeah, I’m the climbing police.” Matt badged him. “And you’re not supposed to be here.”

“Public property, dude.”

Matt shook his head. This was the problem with the Wrights in general. They thought they owned Lucky Harbor, and everything around it. They also thought the laws didn’t apply to them. All four boys smelled like weed.
Hell, there was practically a cloud of it around Trevor’s head. “The gate was shut and locked,” Matt said mildly. “And there was a
CLOSED
sign.”

“Sorry, man. That gate was wide open, and I didn’t see no sign. And you’re hassling us for no reason. We haven’t done nothing wrong.”

Trevor’s friends weren’t looking so comfortable anymore and had started to back up. “Come on, Trev,” one of them said. “Let’s hit it.”

Trevor widened his tough-guy stance. “They can’t do anything to us,” he said, smiling right at Matt. “They’re only rangers. They know the names of the flowers and how to start a fire.”

“Luckily I know how to do a little more than that,” Matt said. “And if you’re carrying drugs, I’ll arrest you.”

Trevor shrugged out of his backpack and tossed it over the cliff, where it promptly vanished into thin air, careening off the rocks as it fell to the valley floor hundreds of feet below. “I’m not carrying anything.”

“Jesus, Trevor,” one of his friends said. “You’re crazy.”

“Yeah,” another said. “We’re outta here.” He and the others took off.

Trevor stood there posturing for a long beat and then started after his friends, shoulder checking Matt hard as he did. “You see that?” the little dickwad said to Josh. “Your partner
pushed
me.” He pointed at Matt. “Not cool, man.”

Josh waited until Trevor vanished down the trail after the others. “Okay, so why didn’t we crack some heads, specifically his?”

Matt slid him a look. “You have a contact high. You
save
lives, remember?”