At Last (8 page)

“Brownies,” Grace said without pause. “We’ll meet over brownies.”

Brownies worked.

“Mallory says to prepare yourself,” Grace warned her. “Apparently now that her life is in order, we’re moving onto yours. She says we’re going to be giving you good girl lessons.” She laughed. “I’m sorry.”

“And this is funny why?”

“Well not funny
exactly
,” Grace said, still sounding amused. “A challenge, maybe.”

“Hey, I would make a good good girl.”
If she wanted…

Grace snorted. “Okay. See you tomorrow night, good girl.”

“Maybe I’m busy.”

“Are you?”

Amy hesitated. She wanted to be busy getting back up the mountain to Sierra Meadows, but she wasn’t crazy enough to do it at night. She’d wait for her next day off.

“Amy?”

“I’m free. I just really think our time would be better spent fixing
your
life first. I can totally wait.”

Grace had worked as a financial wizard back East until several months ago. Looking for some happiness, she’d stuck around town, but the employment opportunities
here were pretty limited. “Nice try but you’re up,” Grace said. “Oh, and bee-tee-dub, Facebook says you were getting cozy on the mountain with Ranger Hot Buns.”

“Bee-tee-
what
?”

“
B T W. By the way.
Jeez, don’t you ever surf the ’net?”

Amy sighed. “Brownies. Tomorrow night.”

“We’ll expect the Ranger Hot Buns story.”

Amy hung up and then got a text from Mallory:
Good girl lesson #4: Omitting juicy details to your BFFs is a sin. You slept with him????????

Amy rolled her eyes and typed a response:
Haven’t you heard—good girls don’t tell all. Especially to nosy friends who sneakily set their supposed BFFs up when they don’t want to be set up.
Amy sent the text off, knowing Mallory would stew over that all night. It was a small consolation, because half an hour later, there came a knock at her door. Amy’s entire body went on high alert, especially her nipples, so she knew exactly who it was.

Matt Bowers.

Aka Ranger Hot Buns.

She’d known he’d show up sooner than later. The question was, did she want him to?

He knocked again, a sturdy, confident sort of knock. She looked through the peephole. Yep, one sexy-as-hell, uniformed forest ranger stood at her door, armed, locked, and loaded.

And hot.

Looking her right in the eye, he raised a brow.

Still silent, she bit her lip in rare indecision. Obey the hormones? Or ignore the need humming through her…

“All night,” Matt said. “I can do this all night.”

Blowing out a breath, she opened the door.

He rocked back on his heels, hands in his pockets, perfectly at ease as he took in her appearance. “Pretty,” he said.

She was in her oldest T-shirt and a pair of cutoffs. She looked like a garage sale special, and the worst part was… he most definitely did not. He was looking waaaaay too good. “I’m a mess.”

“Maybe. But you’re a pretty one.”

She narrowed her eyes, and he laughed. “You know, most women like it when a man calls them pretty.”

“I’m not most women.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that.”

“Why are you here, Matt?”

“Get to it?” he asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes. Get to it.”

“All right. Direct. I like that. But you might not. It’s about the kiss.”

Her stomach suddenly had butterflies. “What about it?”

“You’ve been acting weird ever since.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Liar.” He leaned against the doorjamb, settling in, making himself comfortable. “So it’s been making me wonder. “Did I have bad breath?”

Was he kidding? He’d tasted like heaven. “No.”

“Did I kiss like a jackass? A Saint Bernard?”

She actually felt a smile threaten. How did he always do that, make her want to smile? Make her…
want
him, desperately. It was a conundrum, a big one. She really hadn’t had a single intention of getting tangled up in a man, but this man had come from nowhere and blindsided her, and now she could think of little else. “No,” she said. “You didn’t kiss like a jackass or a Saint Bernard.”

“Hmm.” He stepped into her then, crowding her in the doorway.

“What are you doing?”

“Apparently I have something to prove.” He pressed her up against the doorway. Fisting his hands in her hair, he kissed her. And just like that, with a single touch of his mouth to hers, her entire body disconnected from her brain. She kissed him back, too, hungrily pressing closer, as close as she could get.

The thing was, it’d been good the other night in the tent. Real good. But it was even better now—which made no sense. Neither was the way she could almost forget all her problems when he had his mouth on her. And what had begun as an irritating interruption quickly escalated into a heated frenzy, his body colliding with hers in all the right places. She was panting for air when he abruptly broke the kiss with a muttered oath and answered his radio.

She hadn’t even heard the interruption.

“I have to go,” he said, his breathing still a little ragged.

Nodding, she touched her wet mouth. “Yeah.”

His gaze dropped to her lips, and his eyes heated again. He didn’t want to go. He wanted her. Not that he’d ever made a secret of it, but the knowledge gave her a disturbingly warm glow.

“So we’re good?” he asked.

Good covered way too much ground. “You’ve got to go, remember?”

“Amy—”

“Bye.” Stepping backward into her apartment, she shut the door. Then stared at it. He was still standing there on the other side, she could
feel
him.

“I’m going to take that as a yes,” he said through the wood.

She let out a startled laugh, then clapped a hand over her mouth. Hell no, they weren’t good. Not when he’d just proven what she’d already known—they were so far beyond good it was scary. They were
combustible
.

But she knew the power of it now, she assured herself. And it was okay because all she had to do was stay clear.

Which was going to be a little bit like trying to keep a moth from the flame.

Chocolate is not a matter of life and death—it’s more important than that.

M
att spent a few mornings a week in the gym, usually in the ring with Ty Garrison. This morning they were doing their usual beat-the-shit-out-of-each-other routine. He ducked Ty’s left hook, feeling pretty damn smug for one solid beat—until Ty snuck a right uppercut to his gut.

Matt hit the floor with a wheeze, and then it was Ty’s turn to be smug. “Gotcha.”

Hell, no. They’d been at it for thirty minutes, and Matt was exhausted to the bone, but the last one down had to buy breakfast. Kicking out, he knocked Ty’s feet from beneath him. Then it was Ty’s turn to land with a satisfying thud.

“Jesus,” Josh muttered from the weight bench.

Josh was also a good friend, but he didn’t know much about having fun. He was a doctor, which left his taste for occasional recreational violence greatly diminished.

“You keep going at each other like that,” Josh said, “and you’ll end up in my ER.”

Breathless, Matt rolled to his back. “Sorry, I only play doctor with the ladies.”

Josh snorted and kept lifting. In Josh’s opinion, weights were much more civilized.

Matt swiped the sweat off his forehead with his arm, keeping a close eye on Ty, a formidable opponent, as Matt knew all too well. They’d been in the Navy together. Matt had left after four years of service and gone to Chicago.

Ty had gone on to the SEALs. He wasn’t someone to mess with lightly so Matt stayed back and gave him a careful nudge with his foot. Actually, it might have been more of a kick, but he knew better than to turn his back.

Josh stopped lifting. “At least check him for a pulse.”

Matt poked Ty again. “Not falling for the dead possum shit, man.”

“I’ve got an adrenaline pin I can stick him with,” Josh said mildly. “Hurts like hell going in, but it should wake him right up.”

“Come near me with a needle,” Ty grumbled, “and you’ll be the one who needs medical attention.” He groaned and rolled over, eyeing Matt. “And that was a total pussy move.”

“Yeah? Who’s flat on his back?”

Ty swore and laid an arm over his eyes, still breathing heavily.

Matt collapsed back to the ground himself. He felt like he’d been hit by a bus, but at least his brain was too busy concentrating on the pain rather than on what his next move should be with Amy. If he didn’t come up with something good soon, those few kisses would be all he’d ever get, and they hadn’t been enough.

Not even close.

Ty staggered to his feet. “Another round.”

Ty liked to push himself. Matt didn’t mind doing the same, but he’d prefer to move onto something else—say a big plate of food. “I’m starving.”

“Yeah,” Ty said. “Because you skipped dinner last night. Loved getting stood up, by the way. I could have been with Mallory, and dinner with Mallory includes things you’ve never offered to do for me.”

Matt laughed. He’d have pegged Ty as the
last
guy on the planet to hook up with the same woman more than once, much less commit to her, but that’s exactly what Ty had done. He’d gotten serious with Mallory Quinn, Lucky Harbor’s sweetheart. “Told you,” Matt said. “Something came up.”

“Like…?”

Like kissing Amy. “Had to see someone. About a work thing.”

“A work thing? Since when do you work at night?”

“There was a lost hiker, and some follow-up.” There. That was at least half the truth. Okay, maybe a quarter of the truth.

Ty flashed Matt a full-on smile. “You do remember I’m sleeping with the woman that Amy called first that day, right?”

Well, hell. “Fine, so I was visiting the lost hiker, who turned out to be Amy.”

“Interesting,” Ty said.

“What?”

“That you only go to the diner when Amy’s working. And now you’re finding excuses to ‘visit’ her.”

Suddenly Matt was ready for round two after all. He pushed to his feet and gave Ty the “come here” gesture.

Ty, who’d never met a challenge he wasn’t up for, grinned and came at him, but Josh whistled sharply through his fingers and stopped the action cold. He gestured to Matt’s cell phone, which was buzzing on the floor.

“It’s work,” Josh said, tossing Matt the phone.

Ty sank back to the mat. “Handy, since I was going to hand you your own ass.”

“Fuck if you were,” Matt said, wisely stepping out of Ty’s arm range before answering the phone.

Thirty minutes later, Matt was showered and on his way to Squaw Flats. A group of hikers had called in to report a theft from their day camp.

Matt parked at the trailhead and hiked up to the area. He took a report for the missing gear: a camera, an iPod touch, a smartphone, and a Swiss Army Knife. The campers hadn’t bothered to lock up any of their stuff—a situation that Matt had seen a hundred times. He liked to call it the Mary Poppins Syndrome. People left the big, bad city for the mountains and figured they were safe because apparently the bad guys all stayed in the city.

The fact was that National Park Service Law Enforcement Rangers suffered the highest number of felonious assaults, as well as the highest number of homicides of
all
federal law enforcement officers. People never believed Matt when he spouted that fact, but it was true.

After taking the report, he spent a few hours in the area, a visible presence to deter any further felony mischief. He had four park rangers who worked beneath him, each assigned to a quadrant of the North District, and they patrolled daily, but the quadrants covered far too much area for them to be 100 percent effective.

Budget cuts sucked.