One Hot Summer (10 page)

She let her attention linger on the firehouse, a tall, boxy brick building dominated by two huge roll-up garage doors. It looked as though the firefighters' residences were behind the garage, in the back of the building, judging by the lights glowing through the windows along the side. In a driveway between the firehouse and the residential cottage next door sat a hulking shiny white truck tricked out with plenty of bells and whistles and with
Ravel County Fire Chief
painted on the side within a fire engine red stripe. Micah Garrity's truck.

A rush of awareness flooded through her. They didn't grow them like that in Los Angeles. Big and tough. Virile in a way that even the stuntmen in her parents' movies couldn't pull off. Every move he made and every word he said was infused with a full-throttle confidence that commanded attention. And while that made him infuriating and domineering in exactly the way she hated men to be, she'd still given his oh-so-ripped body a thorough perusal every chance she'd gotten.

She wasn't the only one sneaking glances, though. There had been no mistaking the heat in his gaze when he'd watched her that first day they met at the river or last Saturday night at the wedding reception. She had no interest in letting an alpha male take over her life, but there was no denying their mutual attraction—an attraction she planned to keep fighting tooth and nail.

She chuckled through a grimace at that realization. It'd been a while since a man had gotten under her skin, and Micah Garrity had done it while chewing on toothpicks and smirking at her from beneath the brim of his cowboy hat.
Go figure.

She indulged in one last look at his truck, then wrenched her gaze away. “Oh, Remedy. You're hopeless. Absolutely hopeless.”

She kept cruising until the downtown area faded into a residential neighborhood. All right, then, she had two dinner options besides the grocery store: the ice-cream shop and Petey's Diner. On the sign next to the carefully carved letters of the diner's name was a painting of a stout white dog with a black circle around one eye smiling out at the street. The dog looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn't place where she'd seen that before.

She parked her car on the street out front and stepped into the heat again, becoming instantly sticky with perspiration. Dodging a massive crack in the sidewalk filled with muddy water that rippled in the breeze, she hustled through the diner door.

The moment she pushed the diner door open, the meaning of the diner's name and the dog painted outside dawned on her. Every square inch of wall was covered with memorabilia from the
Little Rascals
. Petey, she now recalled, was the Little Rascals' dog. She spun a slow circle, taking in the walls of framed magazines and newspaper articles, movie posters and autographed head shots. So much old Hollywood that the diner felt like a sliver of home.

Home. As though Burbank and the Hollywood scene had ever felt like home when she'd lived there. Maybe it had felt like home, after all, but in the thick of the L.A. drama she hadn't recognized its place in her heart. Maybe when she went back someday it'd feel different. Familiar.

Maybe.

But she had no plans of going anywhere anytime soon. Head down, nose to the grindstone, she was going to keep pouring 100 percent of herself into her job at Briscoe Ranch.

The man behind the diner's main counter was freckled, with black hair and a cowlick worthy of Alfalfa. He cast a bored gaze at Remedy as he stacked red plastic food baskets beneath the kitchen pass-through window. “Welcome to Petey's. Sit where you want. I'll send Barbara over.”

A few families and groups of teens were scattered at tables throughout the restaurant. Remedy slid into a chair at a table along the wall, the better to people watch. She plucked a menu from the stack stuffed into the napkin holder, but her attention was caught by the television mounted behind the counter, where a commercial for her dad's new movie was playing. It was an action flick about a kidnapped daughter and had a bland, generic title Remedy couldn't remember.

Her mother liked to grouch that the new flurry of action roles for male actors in their fifties and sixties were pandering to the men of the world's midlife crisis fantasies, but Dad just laughed her off. The movies paid well and Dad was having a blast.

Long after the commercial ended, about the time that Remedy concluded that this Barbara waitress was imaginary, the diner door jingled, opening. The threshold was filled from floor to ceiling with Micah Garrity's silhouette. Remedy's heart did a little skip—like she was a smitten schoolgirl.
Pathetic.

He wore a dark ball cap pulled low over his eyes and a snug-fitting navy blue T-shirt, the stretched cotton molding over his muscles. From beneath his dark jeans a pair of black boots jutted out. No sir, they definitely did not grow them like that in Los Angeles. He was a pure Texas male to his core.

The man behind the bar broke out in a huge smile. “Chief, hey! Welcome. Let me get Barbara to show you to our best table.”

He tipped the brim of his ball cap. “Much obliged, Petey, but I can find it myself.”

Then he ambled to the counter—which was the only word to describe the slow shift of his hips as he moved—and stuck his hand out for Alfalfa, er, Petey, to shake. Remedy might have hummed, just a little, in the back of her throat, at the fine view Micah gave her by leaning over the counter.

When he turned in Remedy's direction, she sank behind her menu. Despite her efforts, she felt his eyes on her as he walked to a table across the room from where she sat. He took a chair facing her, and when she dared raise her head to look at him straight on she watched a smile touch his lips as he used his tongue to shift a toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other. Stupid toothpick, always drawing her attention to his mouth like that.

She raised her menu to block him out again.

“You're still holding your menu. Barbara hasn't taken your order yet?” That deep drawl, on top of everything else about his look tonight, was too much. How was this guy even real?

Remedy summoned her courage and lowered her menu to the table. “I was starting to believe Barbara is a figment of Petey's imagination.”

Micah absentmindedly picked up his butter knife, then tapped the edge against the table. “Good guess. But I'm thinking that she probably took one look at your ID badge and headed in the opposite direction. A lot of folks around here aren't big fans of Briscoe Ranch.”

Remedy's hand went to her chest, her fingers closing around the ID badge clipped to her shirt collar and that she'd been unaware of until he'd mentioned it. She tore it off and stuffed it in her purse.

So Barbara was real and she wasn't a fan of Briscoe Ranch, which didn't make any sense but matched the muted hostility Remedy had felt from other Dulcet citizens—and from Micah—since the moment she'd arrived in town.

Before she could think better of the idea, she pushed out of her chair, grabbed her purse, and stomped to Micah's table. He didn't bother sitting up straighter and his bemused expression never wavered.

She dropped her purse on the table, then sat in the chair across from his. “I don't get it.”

“Get what?”

“Why the people of Dulcet wouldn't be fans of Briscoe Ranch. The resort brings in tons of revenue and tourists all year long. Not to mention how many townspeople it employs. You'd think they'd be grateful for the extra business the resort brings in.”

With a flicker of his eyebrows, he took his toothpick out and tossed it on the table, then tipped his chair back onto two legs. “Here's a tip. Don't ever launch into corporate justification that begins with ‘you'd think they'd be grateful.'”

“But—”

He slammed the chair legs back to the floor. “You want to survive in this town or not?”

She locked eyes with him. “I do. Badly.”

His hard glare softened, but he didn't look away, so she didn't, either. Such long lashes he had. She'd noticed that at the wedding reception the previous weekend. Long lashes framing dark, soulful eyes set in a perfect, rugged face. If only he wasn't such a righteous alpha jerk—the thorn in her side, the perfect descriptor that Alex used.

“All right,” Micah said. “I'll answer your question. The shops in town that cater to the tourists are doing well, for the most part, but all those tourists you mentioned have transformed our main street into a series of trinket shops and tourist diners, which has divided the town into those who are drinking the resort's Kool-Aid and those who aren't so impressed with having their home invaded by a steady stream of entitled snobs.” He busied himself lining it up perfectly with the fork and spoon. “And then there's the faction of people who will never forget that Briscoe Ranch was indirectly responsible for the worst fire this part of Texas has ever seen.”

Something about the twitch of his facial muscles and the way his eyes turned distant gave her the sinking suspicion that Micah fell into that third faction. “When was that?”

“Twenty-four years ago.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Not so long, not to the people who were affected.”

A jingle of keys distracted them both. They turned toward the sound.

The key jingling was coming from the key ring hooked to the belt loop of a thin brunette of about fifty, give or take, wearing a long-sleeved black T-shirt with Petey the dog silk-screened on the front and with the sleeves pushed up to her elbows. She stopped at their table. “What can I get you, Chief? We've got your favorite tonight. Cherry pie.”

“Good evening, Barbara. I'll take a slice of that and a glass of milk, thanks.”

A grown man ordering milk like he was wholesome incarnate.
Unbelievable.

Remedy opened her mouth to order, but Barbara had already turned away.

“Hey, Barbara. Just a sec,” Micah said. “My pie can wait until you take Ms. Lane's order. She's liable to blow a gasket if she doesn't get taken care of like the special snowflake she is. California princesses don't like to be kept waiting, or so the rumor goes.”

Remedy raised her hands and wrung an invisible neck.

In response, he had the audacity to wink at her, his cheek muscle tugging as though he was fighting a grin.

This man was driving her crazy. She should get up and walk away. She should go to the grocery store and buy some ready-to-eat food and be done with Barbara's lousy service and Micah's teasing and this town that didn't want her.

“I'll get to her after I serve your pie,” Barbara said, turning toward the kitchen again.

“Barbara, please. Will you get the lady a chicken salad first? If she expires out of hunger, then I'd have to be the one to revive her, and I'm not keen on getting so close to such a prickly creature.”

Did he really order for her? Exhibit A of why she didn't mess with alpha men. “You haven't seen prickly yet.”

Heat and amusement warred in his eyes. “Something to look forward to,” he crooned in that drawl, low enough that Barbara couldn't hear.

“Why did you order for me?”

“I was trying to save you.”

Oh, please.
She shot her hand into the air, wiggling her fingers. “I've got to get Barbara back here. If you're going to criticize my diet, then I'm going to make it a double cheeseburger, because my new favorite hobby is ticking you off.”

“How's that, in any way, logical? You need me, and I'm not just talking about tonight.”

He was right. She did need him—in a professional capacity. And she was going to keep on needing him on her side if she hoped to keep her job. A fire marshal with a vendetta could make a wedding planner's life a living hell—Remedy had seen it happen a time or two—but having him flaunt his power over her like that made her see red. Mister Big Shot was about to learn that he might be king of Ravel County, but not every citizen there was his royal subject.

“You think there's no way for me to do my job without your support? Challenge accepted,” she muttered from behind gritted teeth.

Then Barbara was back, her pad of paper and a pen in hand. “You need something else, ma'am?”

Ma'am?
Ouch. “Barbara, would you please cancel that chicken salad. I'll have a Double Spanky Burger, extra bacon.”

Micah made a choking sound in his throat. And was that a discreet shake of his head?

Barbara gave Remedy a long, quizzical look, then grinned. “If you say so.”

What was with these people, judging her for ordering a burger instead of a salad? “It's like I'm back home in Hollywood, where salad eating is practically a religion.”

“I didn't think people actually lived in Hollywood.”

They didn't. “I meant the real Hollywood. Burbank. Where most of the actual moviemaking takes place.”

“No kidding, huh? I had no idea.”

A lot of people didn't. “Ergo why I simply say I grew up in Hollywood.”

And that was all she was willing to say about her youth and Hollywood. One of the things she liked best about Dulcet was that she felt normal for the first time. She was simply Remedy, not Virginia Hartley and Preston Lane's daughter or the wedding planner who wrecked Zannity's impending nuptials. A lot of good Remedy's newfound anonymity would do her if she started blabbing about her Hollywood roots.

He frowned. “Back to your earlier statement. I wasn't trying to goad you into accepting a challenge. I was stating a fact. You need me, even if you're too foolhardy to admit it. It's not going to be long before you come to grips with what every other event planner at Briscoe Ranch Resort has learned either the hard way or the easy way, Alex Rowe included. Carina Briscoe, too. Not a single special event in a public venue takes place in this town that doesn't get my seal of approval first.”

Remedy's throat tightened. She'd thought their feud was personal, fun even, but he really did hold her future at Briscoe Ranch Resort in his hands. “Are you threatening me?”