Too Hot to Handle (17 page)

Once on the gravel road, the slower pace wound his gut up in knots, but he finally caught sight of Providence after what felt like eons. There was no gravel dust in the air ahead of his truck, which meant no one had driven through in the past half hour. He tried to make himself see that as a good sign.

And when he pulled into the parking area, he spotted Merry’s car and no others. Another good sign, surely.

“Merry!” he called when he got out of the truck. He slammed the door and heard it echo for miles, but there was no response from Merry.

He called her name again, moving steadily toward the little house she’d claimed for work, but keeping his eyes moving, just in case. He made it all the way to the porch without any sign of her, but when he rushed into the small room, he saw her iPad right away, and his heart froze. She never went anywhere without that damned thing. So where was she?

The saloon. She had to be there, but he rushed over to find that building was deserted, too. What the hell had happened to her? For the first time since Grace had asked for help, Shane’s worry turned to true alarm.

There weren’t too many natural dangers that would cause her to disappear. A mountain lion, maybe, but not in the middle of the afternoon. So could it have been the vandal? Or had she just wandered off?

A thought suddenly freed itself from the fog of erotic memories of last night. When he’d been staring at Merry and wishing he could kiss her, she’d been talking about…something. It must have been Providence; there was no question of that. She’d been excited and babbling and bright with curiosity.

An ice house, she’d said. Somewhere at the start of the canyon.

“Thank God,” he muttered as he took off at a jog. That had to be it. Her phone wouldn’t work up there, and she probably wouldn’t have carried her iPad along. Hopefully she was just caught up in her explorations and wasn’t hurt.

He knew from his childhood that the trail that followed the canyon actually skirted above it, so Shane ignored the packed dirt trail and cut into the narrow canyon itself. At this time of year, the stream was still a fairly healthy flow. In another month it would decrease to a trickle. But at least it wasn’t spring. Merry would have to work pretty hard to be swept away in this water, but during a wet spring, it would be damned hazardous.

“Merry!” he called again. He had to keep a close eye on his footing as the place was strewn with loose rocks and boulders that seemed to have been stacked on top of crumbling slate, but he stopped every dozen yards or so to sweep the area with his gaze.

Finally, about fifty yards up the canyon, he heard a voice. Singing. Shane sucked in a deep breath and sighed with relief. Okay. She was fine.

He rounded an outcropping of rock and found her walking toward him, singing a pop song he recognized from the radio. When she finally glanced up, the song turned into a screech of horror and she stumbled back so quickly she nearly fell on her ass in the narrow stream.

Shane jumped forward to steady her, but she waved him off. “Holy crap, you scared me!”

“Are you okay?”

“Aside from the fact that I almost wet my pants, yes.”

“Grace was worried about you. She said there was some kind of vandalism up here, and then neither of us could get a hold of you.”

“Oh.” She looked guiltily away. “I’m sorry. Yeah. There’s no signal up here. Thank you for coming to check on me.”

“It’s no problem. You’re sure you’re fine?”

“I’m good. In fact…” She brightened up and waved her hands. “Come back with me! I found the ice house! Or what’s left of it. I think. It’s pretty cool.”

He started to demur, but she was already scrambling back up the canyon, so he had no choice but to follow. Plus, he didn’t mind looking at her curvy hips ahead of him. Or the plump ass he’d curved his hand around when he’d kissed her good-night. A mix of relief over her safety and watching her swaying hips combined to cause him a problem he’d never experienced before: hiking with an erection.

“Christ, man,” he muttered. “Get a grip.”

After all, Merry didn’t seem the least bit aware of him as she rushed ahead. She was too busy being excited about the two decaying boards of wood she pointed toward. “Look!”

“Uh,” he responded, doing his best not to tell her it didn’t look anything like an ice house.

“It’s pretty broken down,” she explained unnecessarily.

“Yeah.”

“But look at the flat stones laid out here in this notch. I’m pretty sure this was the floor. See how it’s set down below the level of the dirt? And there’s still a board wedged in here.”

“Very cool.”

“Yeah.” She sighed, kneeling down to put her hands to the stones. Half of them were buried in silt from some long ago flood, but Merry didn’t seem to see that. She seemed to see a complete ice house here, newly built by hardworking folk and used as a summer playroom for mischievous children. “So cool,” she whispered. “We can’t make it part of the tour, obviously. It’s too treacherous up here, but I’ve got a lot of pictures. I can make a little display about it, use some quotes from the story I heard.”

“Right.”

She looked up at him with a huge grin, and Shane felt a now familiar rush of warmth fall through him. He knelt next to her.

“See this?”

“Merry.”

When she turned back to him, he kissed her, aware that he always had to draw her attention before he could claim her mouth. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that when his lips touched hers, she always melted into him. She always wanted more.

But why the hell did her greatest passion have to be the one thing he couldn’t support? If it was anything else, he could happily play second fiddle as long as she sighed like this when he touched her. As long as her shy tongue snuck in to taste him and drive him wild.

“Oh,” she said when he finally let her go.

“We should get back. The sun’s setting.”

“Okay.” She sighed, taking his hand when he stood to pull her up.

She followed him, quiet for once, in that way she only seemed to get around him. He liked her shyness around him, but he was happy when she finally spoke.

“Shane?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for coming to check on me.”

“No problem. Just be sure to tell people when you’re heading into the hills, all right? We were worried.”

She got quiet again, and despite the beauty around them, the running water and deep shadows and dancing Aspen leaves, Shane couldn’t take the quiet. He’d gotten used to her voice.

“You okay, Merry?”

“Sure.”

He stopped and pulled her around to look at him. “I feel like I should say something about last night. So you’ll know it wasn’t…”

“I know! I know it wasn’t some big declaration. I’m not your girlfriend. And I’m good with that. I swear. I needed that. Big time.”

He answered her smile, but that hadn’t been what he’d meant. He’d wanted to say… Well, fuck, he’d wanted to say it had meant something, that it hadn’t been just some attempt to get laid. But how could he tell her it had been meaningful without implying that he’d want something more?

“I don’t think I can do the friends with benefits thing if you’re dating around,” she said. “That’s too much for me. But last night? With you? That was so good, Shane.”

“I’m not dating around,” he growled, strangely angry that she might think that. “Look, I’m not the settling down type, but I’m not a player. I’m not sleeping with anyone else.”

“Oh, good!” she said brightly, then a blush climbed her cheeks. “Maybe we could…”

He raised his eyebrows, wondering what she was about to say.

Merry covered her face and took a deep breath, then seemed to brace herself and stand straighter. “Maybe we could do it again? Just once more? Or more than that? I don’t know how these things work. Would that make me a booty call?”

“What? No!” He shook his head and then saw the way her face fell. “I mean,
yes
we can do it again. Christ, Merry.”

She crossed her arms. “What?”

“You’re not a booty call, all right? I want to sleep with you again, but not like that.”

“Okay,” she said cautiously.

“It’s just that you’re nice. I like you. And I don’t know how to say that I want to sleep with you, but I don’t want any…”

“More?” she offered softly.

Jesus. How could he even answer that? What kind of man was he? “It’s not that I wouldn’t want more. You’re a great girl. I like you.”

“I get it,” she said and flashed him a comforting smile. “I feel the same way.”

Her voice wasn’t quite convincing. He studied her carefully.

She covered her eyes. “Stop looking at me. I want to have sex with you, okay? Can we stop talking about this?”

Well, fuck, he couldn’t argue with that. “Okay,” he finally said.

She dropped her hand and smiled. “Just don’t tell Grace.”

“I value my male anatomy way too much for that.”

“Hey, me, too!”

His laughter winged through the narrow canyon, joining up with hers when she laughed, too.

“Seriously,” he said as they began picking their way down loose rock again, “that girl scares me.”

“She should.”

“How did you two meet?”

“Grace was in school to become a makeup artist. She was already amazing, though, she just needed the certificate to get her foot in the door. I had the great idea that I’d learn to do hair, which doesn’t make any sense. I can’t even do my own hair. She came across me practicing layering on a wig and told me to give it up.”

“Ouch.”

“In a nice way, though. Well, not in a nice way, but I could tell she felt bad about breaking the truth to me like that. I dropped out and went back to work as a waitress, but I stayed in touch with Grace. She let me live with her for a month, and we’ve been best friends ever since, no matter where we lived or what we were doing.”

“Opposites attract, I guess.”

“Yeah. We take care of each other. And we’re more alike than you could know.”

Shane couldn’t see it, but he didn’t argue. Grace was all fists and fire, and Merry was like some sort of funny earth mother, if earth mother types were sexy. But he was smart enough not to say any of that to her.

“Be sure to call Grace as soon as we get out of the canyon. I hope finding that ice house was worth risking her wrath.”

“She’ll be fine. And it was!”

Shane had inadvertently triggered another enthusiastic description of a Providence story she’d heard, but he smiled as he followed her over a pile of boulders, then hopped down to put his hands around her waist and ease her down. She didn’t stop talking.

“These people were so amazing. Can you imagine coming here when it took a whole day on horseback just to run across the closest neighbor? When there were no doctors? No hospitals? They brought their children here and built these houses from scratch.”

“And then they left.”

“Oh, no. It wasn’t that simple.”

“There was a flood and they picked up and scattered. I’m not sure how admirable that is. Practical, yes. I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same.” No, he definitely couldn’t say that.

“No, Shane. You don’t understand. It wasn’t just the flood. Granted, that was catastrophic. Five people in Providence died, including a little girl, and three houses and a granary were destroyed. But they rebuilt. They kept going. But the flood had swept a wall of debris into the canyon. The first year, the stream’s flow was cut in half. They tried to move some of the boulders. One of the founders lost his arm in an accident when rocks shifted onto him. Then the next year, more spring flooding pushed everything farther into a narrow funnel in the rock. The water dried up. Completely. Even then, they kept the town alive for two more years. They dug wells. They tried to redirect the stream farther north. But when a drought hit, they couldn’t sustain themselves. They couldn’t do it.”

They’d finally reached the mouth of the canyon, and she stopped and spread her arms to encompass the town. It lay below them like an Old West model, like a toy.

“This was their home. These people held on as long as they could. They loved this place, and they wanted it, but they couldn’t live here without water. All but one of them moved on. Gideon Bishop’s great-grandfather held out for five more years, then he moved a few miles south near the current Bishop ranch house. There was water there. It was easier. But he never gave up. That’s why the land is still in that family.”

Shane shoved his hands into his pockets and glared at the town. He’d never heard that story before. All he’d ever heard about was the flood. Not that it made a difference. These people really had nothing to do with him. It was still just a dead town his grandfather had funded in a fit of spite. It was nothing more than a two million dollar dollhouse collection for tourists.

“I wish I could have seen what it was like when it was alive,” Merry said softly. “Kids running through the streets. Men and women plowing the fields. The houses whitewashed and flowers planted. Can you imagine?”

He couldn’t, but he could see the beauty of it on her face. The wonder. The possibility of what it could’ve been if tragedy hadn’t struck.

Shane wondered if he looked the same way when he stared at her.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

M
ERRY
WASN
’
T
IN
THE
RIGHT
frame of mind to talk to her mom. She wasn’t even in the right mood to deal with waking up to Grace falling onto the bouncy mattress of the sofa bed. She definitely wasn’t prepared to do a video chat. But here she was.

“Say, ‘Hi, Mom!’” Grace urged, annoyingly chipper at 8:00 a.m.

Merry peeked over the covers. “Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, Mom!” Grace repeated, waving at the screen of Merry’s iPad.

Merry’s mom and Grace began chatting, thank God, because Merry needed a few moments to collect herself. She’d been deep in a dream involving Shane and a horseback ride and a few gymnastic-like moves that were only possible on horseback during REM sleep.

She was so grateful for the minute to collect herself and drag her focus away from that insane sex dream that she couldn’t even be annoyed at the happy chatter occurring five inches from her ear.