“That’s right.” Her gaze dropped to my mouth, a subtle shift that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention.
My pulse quickened. Christ, she was pretty. I admit, now that she was no longer talking to me like I was a simpleton, I was having a lot of trouble focusing on the conversation. Got to love the irony.
“Really? Care to share what you learned?”
She shook her head, her long hair bouncing around her shoulders and settling on her chest along the swell of her breasts, her lips saying, “No,” with an enchanting velvet cadence, making it sound like a yes.
I blinked.
Well, hell.
She was good at this.
Really good at this.
Like recognizes like, and what I had on my hands here was a professional charmer. This revelation was as shocking as finding moonshine in Reverend Seymour’s Sunday punchbowl, because her earlier appearance of honesty and awkwardness had been downright disarming. Whereas now she had me wondering if it had been an act.
Impossibly long eyelashes lowered to half mast. An alluring smirk that hinted at devilish dimples played over her lips. Her eyes had changed from a rich mahogany to a dark Peruvian walnut . . . Excuse the clumsy comparison, but I’m a man who knows and loves my wood.
I waited to see what she’d do next, enjoying the building and thickening tension, impressed with her game. Yeah, this girl had game in spades.
At length, her smile grew and she sighed. It sounded whimsical. “This is fun.”
“What’s that?”
“Flirting with a national park ranger.”
My eyes widened because I was both surprised and delighted by her candor. Perhaps the honesty hadn’t been an act after all.
Hell . . . I liked this girl.
“Is that what we’re doing, Miss Sarah?” I was sure to say her name in a low rumble, making it sound like a dirty word.
She gave me a teasingly reproachful look and unfastened her seatbelt. “Come now, Ranger. None of that. We’re all adults here. Plus, I can’t sit in this car all day with a full bladder, otherwise I’m going to pee on your upholstery. And just think of the headlines.”
She gripped the handle and was moving to disembark. Remembering myself, I quickly popped open my door and jumped out, jogging around to her side just as she’d pushed her door open. I held it and reached a hand out to help her out.
Her attention darted between my offered hand and my face with a quizzical look. Shooting me a suspicious stare, she accepted help down from the cab.
Now, something odd happened just then. Odd because she’d grabbed my arm back on the mountain road and I’d felt nothing in particular. Perhaps it was merely a residual after-effect of our recent flirting, or perhaps it was the dry mountain air—or perhaps it was the five years flying solo—but an unexpected shock of warmth traveled up my arm as her palm slid against mine. Her expression didn’t change. Whereas for me, the earth tilted, time slowed, and I was momentarily caught.
When I didn’t release her straight away, she gazed up at me with round eyes. “What? What is it?”
I held her stare and her fingers for another beat, searching. She seemed oblivious, so I dropped her hand.
“Uh, nothing.” I couldn’t quite swallow. “Look for a key under the rug. Let me grab your bags.” My words coming out gruff, I stepped around her and moved to the bed of the truck.
Combating the lingering and uncomfortable sense that something significant just happened, I shook my head to clear it and lifted her luggage from the truck. Just as I had all the bags lowered to the ground, my phone buzzed in my back pocket.
I glanced at the screen before accepting the call and raising it to my ear. “Hello, Cletus.”
“Jethro,” came his typical greeting. Cletus was number three in the family, by far the smartest, and the oddest. “You need to head over to Jeanie’s right now.”
“I do?” I glanced at the phone again, making note of the time and returning it to my ear; it was just past four, too early for beer and line dancing at Jeanie’s place. “Why’s that?”
“Claire needs rescuing.”
My head cleared at the mention of Claire and habit had me mapping out the quickest route to Jeanie’s. Claire McClure was my former best friend’s widow. For the last five years her welfare had been my primary focus, the reason for every good decision I’d made.
“Claire never needs rescuing,” I responded.
And she didn’t. As much as I’d felt it my place to see to her well-being since Ben McClure’s death in Afghanistan, she saw things differently. Recently—and more and more—I got the sense she was merely putting up with my meddling. I did my best to look after her, stop by her house to see if anything required attention, but that woman was tough as nails and as capable as a honey badger. More often than not, she’d give me a beer, let me hang a picture or fiddle with her gutters, then send me on my way.