Two of a Kind (3 page)

“Yes. You have an unusual skill set. Your time with the military has given you experience at dealing with a bureaucracy. While I like to think we’re more nimble than most city governments, the truth is we still move very slowly and there’s a form for everything. Logistics are your gift, and the festivals are all about logistics. You’ll bring a fresh set of eyes to what we’ve been doing.”

Mayor Marsha paused to smile at Pia. “Not that you haven’t been brilliant.”

Pia laughed. “Don’t worry about hurting my feelings. Felicia can be better than me. If she is, I won’t have to feel guilty.”

“I don’t understand,” Felicia whispered. “You want me to be in charge of the festivals?”

“Yes,” the mayor said firmly.

“But they’re important to the town. I know you have other industries, but I would guess that tourism is your main source of income. The university and the hospital would be the largest employers, but the visitors are the real money.”

“You’re right,” Pia said. “Don’t get me started on how much per person, because I can tell you within a couple of dollars.”

Felicia thought about mentioning she was the sort of person who enjoyed math, then told herself it wasn’t pertinent to the subject at hand.

“Why would you trust me with the festivals?” she asked, knowing it was the only question that mattered.

“Because you’ll make sure they’re done right,” Mayor Marsha told her. “You’ll stand up for what you believe in. But mostly because you’ll care as much as we do.”

“You can’t know that,” Felicia told her.

The mayor smiled. “Of course I can, dear.”

CHAPTER TWO

FELICIA DROVE UP the mountain. She’d left town a couple miles back and was now on a two-lane road with a gentle grade and wide shoulders. She took the curves slowly, not wanting to find herself grill-to-nose with any wildlife out foraging in the warm summer night. Overhead the sky was a mass of stars with the moon only partially visible through a canopy of leaves.

It was after two in the morning. She’d gone to bed at her usual time, but had been unable to sleep. She’d been restless much of the day. Actually since her meeting, she thought. She still couldn’t wrap her mind around what the mayor and Pia had suggested. That
she
run the festivals.

Her usual response to a difficult problem was to brainstorm solutions. Only this wasn’t that kind of problem. This was about people and tradition and an intangible she couldn’t identify. She was both excited by the opportunity and frightened. She had never shied away from responsibility before, but this was different, and she didn’t know what to do.

The result of which was her drive up the mountain.

She turned down a small, paved road that was marked as private. A quarter mile later, she saw the house set back in the trees. Gideon’s house.

She hadn’t known who else to talk to. She had started to make friends in town, women who tried to understand her and appreciate the effort she made to bond. Funny, charming women who all had a connection with the town. And that was the problem. The town. She needed an outside opinion.

Normally she would have gone to Justice, but he had recently gotten engaged to Patience. Felicia wasn’t clear on all the dynamics that went into falling in love, but she was pretty sure keeping secrets broke a major rule. Which meant Justice would tell Patience what Felicia said, bringing her back to needing an outside opinion.

She parked in the wide, circular driveway and got out of her car. There was a long front porch and big windows that would allow in plenty of light. She would guess that light and sky would be important to a man like Gideon.

She walked to the porch and sat on the steps to wait. His shift ended at two, so she would expect him to arrive shortly. He didn’t strike her as the type to stop in a bar on the way home. Not that she could say how she knew that about him.

The little information she had on Gideon was sketchy at best. Their time together four years ago had been more physical than conversational. She knew that he was former military, that he’d been assigned to covert ops and that his work had taken him places no man should have to go. She knew that he and his team had been taken prisoner for nearly two years. That had happened before they’d met.

She’d never discovered any details on his captivity, mostly because the information had been classified beyond her pay grade. Technically she could have gotten into the file, but Felicia was less concerned about if she could do something than if she should. What she did know was that Gideon had been involved in the kind of missions that were so exciting in movies but deadly in real life. The kind that if the operative got caught—no one was coming after him. Because of that, Gideon had spent twenty-two months in the hands of the Taliban. She assumed he’d been tortured and abused until death had seemed like the best possible outcome. Then he’d been rescued. The other men with him hadn’t made it out.

Headlights appeared through the bushes. She watched Gideon’s truck pull up behind her car. He turned off the engine, then got out and walked toward her.

He was tall, with broad shoulders. In the starlight there were no details—just the silhouette of the man. A shiver raced through her. Not apprehension, she thought. Anticipation. Her body remembered what Gideon had done, how he’d touched her with a combination of tenderness and desperation. His hunger had chased away any nerves.

While she’d studied the subject of sexual intimacy, knowing in her head and experiencing in person were two different things. Reading about the states of arousal had been nothing like experiencing them. Intellectual knowledge of why a tongue stroke on a nipple might feel good hadn’t prepared her for the wet heat of his mouth on her breast. And knowing the progression of an orgasm hadn’t come close to actually feeling the shuddering release that had claimed her.

“You’re unexpected,” he said, pausing at the foot of the stairs.

In the starlight, she couldn’t read his expression. She couldn’t see if he was remembering, too. “I need to talk to someone,” she admitted. “You came to mind.”

His eyebrows rose. “Okay. That’s a new one. I haven’t seen you in four years and you thought of me?”

“Technically you saw me in the warehouse.”

One corner of his mouth twitched. “Yes, and it was meaningful for me, too.” The almost-smile faded. “What do you want to talk about?”

“It’s work related, but if you don’t want to have a conversation, I can leave.”

He studied her for a few seconds. “Come on in. I’m too wired to sleep after I work. I usually do Tai Chi to relax, but having a conversation works, too.”

He walked past her. She rose and followed him inside.

The house was big and open, with plenty of wood and high ceilings. Gideon flipped on lights as he moved through a great room with a fireplace at one end. There were floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto the darkness. While she couldn’t make out details of the view, she had a sense of vastness beyond.

“Is the house on the edge of a canyon?” she asked.

“Side of a mountain.”

He went into the kitchen. There were plenty of cabinets, lots of granite countertops and stainless appliances. He pulled two beers out of the refrigerator and handed her one.

“I thought you were avoiding me,” he said.

“I was, but now that we’ve spoken there didn’t seem to be any need to continue.”

“Huh.”

His dark gaze was steady but unreadable. She had no idea what he was thinking. His voice was appealing, but that was more about physiology than any interest in her. Gideon had one of those low, rumbly voices that sounded so good on the radio. He could make a detergent sound sexy if he put any effort into it.

He flipped off the kitchen lights. She blinked in the sudden darkness, then heard more than saw him walk across the room and open a sliding glass door. Moonlight illuminated the shadow of him disappearing onto what would be the back deck of the house. She followed.

There were a few lounge chairs and a couple of small tables. Forest stretched out beyond the railing. The trees angled down—Gideon hadn’t been kidding about the house being on the side of a mountain.

She settled in a chair close to his, with one of the tables between them. She rested her head against the cushions and stared up at the star-filled sky. The half-moon had nearly cleared the mountain, illuminating the quiet forest and still mountain.

The air was cool, but not cold. In the distance she heard the faint hoot of an owl. An occasional leaf rustled.

“I can see why you like it here,” she said, reaching for her beer. “It’s restful. You’re close enough to town to get to the station but far enough away to not have to deal with too many unexpected visitors.” She smiled. “Excluding me, of course.”

“I like it.”

“Do you get snowed in during the winter?”

“I didn’t last year. We hardly had any snow. But it’s going to happen.” He shrugged. “I’m prepared.”

He would be, she thought, because of his military training. She’d noticed that she and Justice often came at a problem from different angles but with the same objective. And speaking of her friend...

“I couldn’t talk to Justice about this,” she said.

Gideon raised his eyebrows. “All right.”

“I thought you’d want to know why. Because he and I are like family.” She turned on the lounge chair, angling herself toward him.

He was in silhouette again. A powerful man momentarily tamed. Her gaze drifted to his hands. She was tall, but with Gideon she’d felt delicate. For a few hours in his bed, she hadn’t been frighteningly brilliant or freakishly organized. She’d been a woman—just like everyone else.

“So what’s the problem?”

For a second she thought he was referring to her study of his hands, and the resulting memories. “It’s the town.”

“You don’t like it here?”

“I like it very much.” She drew in a breath. “The mayor has asked me to take over running the festivals. Pia Moreno had been doing it for several years, but she already has three kids and is pregnant with a fourth. It’s too much for her.”

Gideon shrugged. “You’d be perfect for the job.”

“On the surface. The logistics would be easy enough, but that’s not the point. It’s the significance.”

“Of the festivals?”

She nodded. “They are the heartbeat of the town. Time is measured by the festivals. When I go out with my friends, they often talk about festivals from the past, or what’s coming up. Why is Mayor Marsha willing to trust them to me?”

“Because she thinks you’ll do a good job.”

“Of course I’ll do the work. It’s more than that.”

“You’re scared.”

Felicia drew in a breath. “I wouldn’t say scared.”

He took a drink of his beer. “You can pick some big word if you want, but you mean scared. You don’t want to let them down and you’re afraid you’re going to.”

“I thought
I
was the most direct person in any conversation,” she murmured.

* * *

GIDEON LEANED BACK in his chair and closed his eyes. It was safer than looking at Felicia, especially in moonlight. With her big green eyes and flame-red hair, she was a classic beauty. How would she describe herself? Ethereal, maybe. He smiled.

“This isn’t funny,” she told him.

“It kind of is.” But not for the reason she thought. His situation was more ironic.

He’d built his house and designed his life so that he chose if and when he interacted with anyone. Last night Ford had been his surprise guest. Tonight it was Felicia. The difference was he’d been comfortable around his friend. Not so much with the woman sitting only a few feet away.

It wasn’t that he was
uncomfortable,
it was that he was aware. Of the soft sound of her breathing. Of the way her hair tumbled over her shoulders. Of how she occasionally looked at him like she was remembering them naked together.

Wanting stirred. It had been dormant so long that the physical act of blood rushing to his groin was painful. Thinking pure thoughts didn’t help, mostly because he didn’t have any where she was concerned. Of course now he was left with a hard-on and nowhere to put it, so to speak.

He glanced at Felicia and wondered what she would say if he told her he wanted her. Any other woman would be flustered or embarrassed. A few might start taking off their clothes as a way to say yes. But what about Felicia?

He figured there was a fifty-fifty chance she would discuss the biological process of arousal and an erection in such scientific terms that the blood would retreat in self-defense, thereby solving the problem. On the other hand, she could do what she’d done when they’d met in Thailand—look him directly in the eye and ask if he wanted to have sex with her.

“You were the most beautiful woman in that bar,” he told her. “I was surprised when you came over to talk to me.”

“You seemed nice.”

“No one’s said that about me in a long time.”

She smiled. “I was still in the military at the time and working with guys in Special Forces. I was comfortable being around dangerous men. I can’t explain why I picked you, though. I found you appealing, of course. I suppose I also had a chemical reaction. Perhaps to your pheromones. Attraction isn’t an exact science.”