Page 63 of Fire Fight

He shifted away, only far enough to bring his face in front of mine, our lips nearly pressing together, more the suggestion of touch than actual contact, his breath fanning over my mouth when he spoke.

“One day,” he said, his words a sensual promise that skittered across my skin. “One day you’ll give in.”

And then he pushed off the wall and disappeared, leaving me with a swirling mind and wet panties.

Only to return a moment later.

“Before you distracted me,” he said, leaning in the door frame with those beefy arms folded over his chest and legscrossed at the ankle, “I was coming to invite you to dinner at my mom’s house.”

My heart rate kicked up for an entirely different reason.

Poorly, I attempted to play it off, to act like a hoard of butterflies hadn’t taken up residence in my stomach.

“You want me to meet the family? Moving awfully fast, hotshot.”

Crew smirked, those blue eyes flaring, the tension from before bleeding away, only to be replaced with a different sort of charged energy between us.

Vague talk of sex was one thing. Introducing me to his family inanysort of capacity was entirely different.

“My mom was in school with Vicky and Roger,” he explained. “Lane and I thought it might be a good idea to pick her brain about them and their friends and everything else going on around town when they died.”

“That’s…genius.”

“I do have good ideas on occasion,” he said. “We do family dinner once a week, and this week’s is tomorrow night. We’ll leave about five thirty, so make sure you’re ready by then.”

I gave him a mock salute, and he left me to my own devices.

“So what exactly should I expect?”I asked from the passenger seat of Crew’s truck the next day.

The thing was so large, I had to use the running boards and leverage myself with the oh shit handle to get inside. I hissed through my teeth as the strain pulled on my burn marks. They bothered me a lot less lately, but the skin wasn’t anywhere near fully healed.

My face heated as my mind flashed back to the last time I’d been in it, when Crew made me drive it home. I could still feel the ghosts of his hands on my hips, the way adrenaline hadspiked my bloodstream at his touch. Everything about the man elicited a reaction from me on some chemical level I couldn’t control if I tried. Simply sitting beside him now, with only the center console separating us, had my internal temperature rising. His scent filled the cab, masculine and fire smoke, until I couldn’t take a breath of Crew-free air.

God, I was in a bad way. Maybe the attraction wouldn’t be so strong if I had been laid sometime in the last five years.

Having forgotten I’d asked a question, lost in a thousand-yard stare locked on his gorgeous, broad hands, his voice startled me.

“Well, my whole family will be there. Mom always makes an impressive spread, despite the fact that she cooks breakfast for the ranch hands every day. We always tell her she doesn’t have to go through the trouble, but she says she likes doing it because it gives us an excuse to all be together, and because then she knows we’re at least getting one home-cooked meal a week.”

“That’s sweet,” I said absently, mind turning to my own family as endless fields passed by the window. We sped down a gravel road, rolling right up to the foothills of the mountain range that bracketed the town.

I hadn’t heard either of my parents’ voices since the call the day I got out of the hospital. Surprisingly, my mother had respected my wishes for space. Dad, on the other hand, had taken to texting me periodically, something he’dneverdone before. Telling me he loved me, he missed me, and he hoped I was doing okay. I assured him I was but didn’t go any deeper than that. I wasn’t about to put him in the middle of my shit with Mom.

Now that I’d had a little time to cool off, I could—grudgingly—see where she’d been coming from, and I could understand their desire to want to take some of the burden off my shoulders after everything I’d been through. But maybe this reckoning was the best thing to happen for us. Maybe now, she’d give up her quest to dictate my life and bring me back to Chicago.

I hadn’t been back for years, with good reason. There were too many memories there for me, and not only the ones that featured my big sister.

Even growing up, though, with only the four of us, and seven years between me and Lola, we rarely had consistent, sit-down family meals. We were at very different stages of our lives, Lola with her school extracurriculars and me devoting myself entirely to making a career out of dancing.

That all changed the day she died, and I hadn’t danced since. After her loss, I couldn’t bring myself to do the things that had once brought me joy any longer, not when she’d never get that chance for herself again.

Maybe, in a way, I’d been punishing myself.

Maybe I still was. Leading this quiet, solitary existence was my way of atoning for living when she hadn’t.

Thoughts of the past floated away on the breeze when Crew rolled the windows down as we approached a gate leading down a long gravel drive. Two logs as big around as telephone poles stood sentinel on either side while another rested across them, a dangling, shiny metal sign that read “Lawless Rescue & Dude Ranch” swaying in the wind.

“A rescueanddude ranch?” I asked. “How is that even possible?”