Prologue

PICK

You know those how I met your mother stories? Where he looks at her and she looks at him, the birds start warbling Ode to Joy, and Mother Nature lights the whole scene up with a gorgeous fucking sunset?

Ask me how I met Sarah Jo.

Go on. You know you want to.

I’ll give you three guesses.

She was the porn star fielding my 1-900 call, you suggest? Not a chance. I don’t have to pay for sex. Not gonna lie—it’s tempting because then there are no misunderstandings or hurt feelings. I’m just renting hot, wet space and treating my dick to the manly version of a spa day.

Don’t be offended. I’ve never pretended to be a gentleman—or to have a filter. If the thought enters my head, it comes out my mouth. You take the good with the bad, and my super-sized, XXXL dick package and my filter-less mouth have an until-death-do-us-part relationship.

So take your second guess and cut me some slack. Blind date? Please. I’m too busy fighting fires to have time to date, plus there’s a singular lack of attractive, unattached women in Big Bear Lake. In fact, we’re dick central and we could use way more women in this particular part of Northern California. Some enterprising soul could make a fortune delivering mail-order girlfriends to my very horny teammates. Single women get plenty of dating action here. It’s a small town, not a wide selection. No one fixed me up with Sarah Jo. I didn’t take her out for a steak the size of her head or a bottle of not-inexpensive red wine. We didn’t dance, didn’t dine, didn’t exchange an awkward first kiss outside her door when I brought her home.

She tried to bash my head in with a baseball bat.

I’ll let you think about that for a minute.

I meet the girl of my dreams and she takes her best shot at killing me.

Buckle up, sit tight, and hang on for the ride because Sarah Jo and I are about to go lights and sirens. I’m on my way to Baby Bear Lodge to rescue one of my hotshot team members. He’s been sucked into the orbit of this crazy group of chicks who run something called the Break Up Club. For all you guys out there, that means they get together and roast us. Talk over all our shortcomings, compare dick stories, and set shit on fire. Being wiser (if not older) than Hunter, I’ve opted for the local titty bar over the local cabal, but I need another wingman and I’ve nominated Hunter in absentia. He’s relatively new both to town and to the hotshot team, so he may have overlooked the merits of taking the look-but-don’t-touch approach to life. Dragging him with me to watch half-naked girls gyrating on a stage is a kindness.

Not that the bar looks all that exciting from the outside. It’s one more dumpy, run-down building by the highway. The road slows to a meander where it passes through Big Bear Lake, with speeds dropping to a miserly thirty miles per hour. Still, if you blink, you’ll miss Tits Up. Some decorating genius painted it the perfect shade of brown to blend into the landscape, and nothing announces that you’ve just found a man haven. In fact, the only thing Tits Up had going for it is the obvious pair (or pairs) of things. Lots of boobs, lots of shaking and shimmying, and no need to talk.

My team singlehandedly keeps the place in business, officially because it’s the only bar with a full liquor license. The alternative is Drink Up (Big Bear Lake’s founding fathers showed a lamentable lack of creativity in their naming). The bar is only allowed to serve beer, although they bend the rules for those weird beer-margarita hybrids that come in a can. Let’s just say that a pop-top cannot replace the salty goodness of icy cold tequila and leave it at that.

By the time Colt pulls into the driveway at Baby Bear Lodge, however, I’m rethinking my plans for the evening. This is because the man was doing a hundred and twenty not thirty seconds ago. I’ve got whiplash from the slow-down. No ride to the bar is worth this kind of trauma. Colt shoves his cowboy hat back and folds his arms on the steering wheel, laughing like a hyena.

“I coulda gone faster,” he points out. “You need a barf bag?”

Har-de-har-har. Serve him right if I puke into that stupid hat he’s so attached to.

“Fuck you,” I grunt, fumbling for the door handle. I’m sure the ladies love his dimples but right now I just want to punch the shit out of him. If he went any faster, we’d be in fucking orbit right now. I have no idea how Adrian can still be asleep on the backseat.

“Seriously?” The stupid dimples in Colt’s face get deeper. “You ready to take our relationship to the next level?”

I concentrate on sucking in some air. It’s way easier to breathe now I’m not watching the hairpin turns in the mountain highway leap out of the dark at me.

You need someone to jump out of a plane into a fire? I’m your guy. Hike twenty miles into a wildfire and then play hide-and-seek with the flames? Again, I’m totally onboard. I’ve been singed with the best of them, have pushed my luck time and time again. Doing a hundred and twenty down the highway, however, isn’t my idea of a good time. Letting Colt volunteer to drive was a rookie mistake. The man’s a former racecar driver and he thinks doing sixty is like sitting in the slow lane with your thumb up your ass. Some people enjoy the backdoor action but it’s not his thing.

On the other hand, we did get here in record time.

So I settle for flipping him the bird and muttering an amiable fuck off as I swing down from his truck. He can’t even drive a normal truck—his is jacked about a million feet into the air on oversized tires that could crush the contents of your average Walmart parking lot and keep right on driving.

“You need a hand extricating our boy?”

I wave a hand and trudge up the drive. In a moment of genius, we decided that Colt would park at the bottom of the driveway so as not to alert Hunter to our presence. Not that the guy has anywhere to run to—the whole driveway’s blocked thanks to Colt’s monster truck. And just in case I really thought the stealth approach was the way to go, Colt gets busy changing the tunes. I wasn’t the only one miserable on the drive over since I made him listen to what he calls my “classical shit.” Colt claims that’s why he had to drive so fast. I claim he has no taste. Now country music blasts from the speakers, some dude whining about how he can’t live without this girl he just spotted in a bar, his bed, his best friend’s bed—I can’t keep track of that shit.

I hoof it to the top of the driveway double-time. The closer I get, the clearer it becomes that keeping my own noise down isn’t necessary. The Break Up Club girls are screeching and screaming at the top of their lungs as they beat the crap out of a piñata with a baseball bat. The enthusiasm they put it into it would be kinda cute if they hadn’t taped pictures of various guys to their target. I don’t need to be a genius to figure out those are the exes and the ladies are in a homicidal mood. As I watch, planning my extraction, the piñata gives up the ghost, flying apart at the seams and launching streamers, bits of photos, and candy into orbit. I pick a Snickers off my boot. Free snacks are the best. This is better than a movie.

Is it better than the titty bar however?

A small, curvy bombshell tears after a tall brunette. The tinier chick is bundled in a pair of men’s sweatpants and a white wife beater. She could find a job at Tits Up easily because she’s skipped the bra and she bounces left and right in a spectacular display of cleavage. A flannel shirt hangs off her waist. I’ve seen Sarah Jo around town a few times and rumor has it she’s about to start working at fire camp as a cook, but she’s always done an awesome impression of a turtle and practically yanked her head inside her oversized clothes to avoid meeting my gaze. But tonight she’s laughing. Fuck me, she’s practically cackling as she tackles the taller, yoga-pants-wearing gal and levels her.

I give her props for the take down, but what comes next is even better. Fucking dinner and a show tonight. I rip open the Snickers and lean against a handy tree. Sarah Jo and the other chick both lunge for the same super-sized licorice rope, tussling and laughing. If God were feeling benevolent, this is when the skies would open up and rain down enough water to turn this wrestling match into a mud fight. That would be fucking awesome.

Since the California drought shows no signs of quitting, however, I enjoy what I’ve got. Sarah Jo is no quitter, but the brunette chick has some crazy talented moves. They roll around, legs going everywhere, asses in the air, and Sarah Jo’s wife-beater climbs steadily toward her tits as she battles for control of the licorice rope. Moments later, she springs to her feet, waving the candy over her head. As if that’s not enough, she dances away, tears open the plastic wrapper, and licks the red tip.

Fuck. Me.

I need a distraction. I need to grab my boy and get the hell out of here. I do not need to start imagining Sarah Jo’s mouth closing around my dick and sucking me deep. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that whatever’s brought Sarah Jo here to Big Bear Lake, she’s got some serious issues and she doesn’t want attention. She wears more clothes than a convention of Mormons.

Lola and Hunter are squabbling about something. I take a step closer, trying to ignore the iron bar in my pants. It’s like a fucking dowsing rod except it’s pointing straight to Sarah Jo. I guess she’s a cool drink of water. She’s certainly cold enough. Despite being one of Big Bear Lake’s few single women, she’s made it plenty clear that dating and when hell freezes over are synonymous in her own personal dictionary. I don’t aim my hose where it hasn’t been invited, so I focus on Hunter and Lola, who’s busy giving him loud crap about his refusal to join in the mad scramble for the piñata’s contents. The woman has three volumes: loud, louder, and loudest.

“Who doesn’t like candy?” she says, hands on hips.

Hunter opens his mouth to disagree, so I step in and save his ass. He can thank me later.

“Better listen to your girl.”

Both Lola and Hunter turn to stare at me like they’re surprised to see me. Do I need an engraved invitation to crash their shenanigans?

“What’s up?” Hunter doesn’t sound thrilled. He starts patting his pocket as if he’s looking for his phone. He probably thinks I’ve come about a fire instead of on a mission of mercy.

“Came to drag you out with us,” I announce.

Did that sound like a threat to you? Because my words definitely get the attention of the two wrestlers. The brunette chick just snorts something under her breath, but Sarah Jo bolts toward us, grabbing the abandoned baseball bat. She goes all watchdog, her fingers tightening on the handle as she raises it like she’s more than ready to take a swing at any shit I toss her way. Hunter tenses. Lola mutters something. Hello, DECFON two.

And Sarah Jo stares at me. She’s got both hands on the bat. She looks downright terrified. I know I’m a big guy. I came out of the dark with no warning. But when she looks at me, I don’t think she sees me at all. She’s watching her past or some really bad memories—and she’s working herself up to take a swing at those demons.

I step out of the shadows and into the light so she can get a good look at me. She’s welcome to hit me if it makes her feel better but I want full credit for any skull-cracking I allow. This also gives me a better view of her face.

I could look at her face for hours. She’s pocket-sized compared to my bulk, a tiny, curvy dynamo biting a pair of lush, pink lips. I’d be happy to do the biting for her, to nibble on her all night. Her top slides down one shoulder and I have to force my eyes to stay put and not detour downward with her shirt. I mentioned she wasn’t wearing a bra, right? So you should pin a fucking medal on me right now. She’d be fucking hot if she didn’t look so scared. I may look like a Neanderthal, but I do have some rules. Consent is one of them. Orgasms and happiness for all is another.

I slide my hands up in the air. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

Sarah Jo doesn’t say anything—and she doesn’t lower the bat. Her breath sort of whistles in and out, like she’s this close to losing her shit. I don’t know what would happen then, but I do know it wouldn’t make her happy. And she looks like the kind of girl who needs and deserves happy. Maybe it’s the pink in her hair. It’s a fucking cheerful color. It’s also still all messed up from her wrestling match, half falling out of the ponytail thing she’s pulled it back in, half bouncing around her face.

“Gotcha,” she mouths and takes a step backward. She lowers the bat but doesn’t let go of it.

“Brought company with me.” I nod toward the truck at the bottom of the driveway. If this girl gets any more scared, she might come apart at the seams. Someone picks this moment to open the truck’s door, light spilling into the cab. Looks like Adrian’s finally woken up and is in search of a tree for a pee break. Awesome. His free-swinging dick can finish the job of terrifying Sarah Jo. While she takes in the truck’s occupants, I inventory the surrounding carnage. The body count includes the dead piñata, a shit-ton of candy, and a half-dozen empty ice cream cartons. Clearly, no one here is lactose-intolerant.

“Busy night,” I say out loud.

Hunter eyes me. He’s given up looking for his phone. “What’s up?”

I lift a shoulder and check to make sure Sarah Jo isn’t sneaking up on me with her bat. “We’re headed to the bar.” I lean in and whisper-shout the next part just to give him shit. “The titty bar. You in?”

Hunter grunts less than enthusiastically. “I’m busy.”

“I can see that.” I smirk. “You and your girl are having one hell of a date night.”

Not my business if he wants to ménage a trois it with these ladies, although it’s downright selfish to hog all the single ladies. The man should learn to share his toys.

“We’re—” Hunter’s gaze slides to Lola, dips over her, and then moves on to the other ladies. He looks like he wished the words titty bar had never come out of my mouth.

“You’re seeing each other.” I drop down onto one of the logs by the fire and stretch my legs toward the flames. My seat’s not Barcalounger material, but I’ve parked it on worse out in the field. “You made her a cute little fire of her own and now you’re spending quality time together. I get it. Congratulations, man.”

Colt chooses this moment to make his grand appearance. Adrian has either gotten lost taking an epic piss or he’s crashed in the truck again. He pulled a late shift yesterday and he’s punch-drunk tired. He’ll be a lot of fun once I get a beer or six into him.

“Our boy coming with?” Colt asks.

I smirk. “Nope. He’s got a date with Lola, so we’re flying solo tonight.”

Colt looks over at Lola and his face lights up, dimples working overtime. It’s amazing the guy ever managed to win any races in his former life given how much time he devotes to thinking about girls. “He’s dating Lola Miller?”

I think he’s gearing up to offer himself as a substitute if Hunter’s not, so I jump in. Besides, if we wait for Hunter to find his words, we’ll still be here tomorrow. Hunter makes an iceberg look chatty. “Yeah.”

“Wow.” Colt whistles. “She doesn’t seem like his type.”

“I know, right?” I lean back. “She’s a class four rapid and he’s a really deep, really still pool of water.”

“Stagnating,” Colt adds.

“We’re not seeing each other,” Hunter protests. The poor sucker might even think he means it.

“Right.” My smirk gets deeper. He’s deciding where to punch me first. I can tell.

Or maybe he’s just coming up with stupid crap to say because the next words out of his mouth are: “Can you imagine anything less likely than Lola and I?”

“Oil and water,” Colt grins. “Yeah. We can see that. But sometimes that’s fun.”

Colt would know. The man’s an equal opportunity dater.

“Lola and I are not having fun together,” Hunter insists.

And… we have lift off.

Lola raises her phone and snaps a picture of Hunter. “I’m buying a new piñata.”

“Not dating, huh?” I knew Hunter was lying.

“No,” he snaps.

“You suck,” Lola announces. She stomps toward her truck. Colt, being a smart man, hightails it down the driveway to move his own truck out of her way. From the look of extreme displeasure on Lola’s face, she’d happily run our ride over if it got in her way.

“Not dating anymore,” I say helpfully. “You totally fucked that up.”

I finish my Snickers bar while Hunter holds some painful-looking internal debate with himself. I’m not much for monologuing myself.

“You ready to hit Tits Up?” I ask more to help him along. The look on his face is downright constipated. Whatever he’s contemplating, it’s not making him happy. A beer can only help, but he’s clearly not open to suggestions at the moment.

Hunter grumps something in my direction that might or might not be words and then strides off. Seconds later I hear the growl of a truck engine.

“Hope to fuck that’s not my ride,” I say to the rapidly emptying fire circle. I don’t think Colt would leave me stranded, but it’s been a weird night.

Sarah Jo makes a peeping sound from where she’s hovering on the edge of the action. Frankly, I’m surprised she hasn’t hightailed it back into the cabins and barricaded her door. Guess she really is hiding a backbone under all those clothes.

“Oscar the Grouch,” she says quietly.

“Excuse me?” I give up trying to play it cool so as not to crowd her or scare her. She could have ignored me or slunk away but she stuck around. Now she gets to talk with me. My dick perks right back up.

“That’s what everyone calls him, right? He’s just acting in character.” She shrugs, like it’s no big deal. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe she’s used to polite, gentlemanly, suit-wearing guys and some kind of Zen-like quiet zone shit in her personal life. Maybe that’s why I freaked her out so badly, coming out of the dark like a caveman as I did.

I don’t want to scare her. I should get up, go, give her her space. Instead, I keep right on talking.

“You gonna hit me with that?” I nod at the bat she’s still clutching. The brunette seems to have disappeared, and we’re alone with the fire someone needs to put out. Sarah Jo’s eyes dip to the bat in her hand. She looks sort of surprised, like she’s not sure how she ended up armed and dangerous. I’m sure plenty of criminal careers have started that way.

She mumbles something and tosses the bat onto the ground. Not too far away, I can’t help but notice. But then she lays in a course for me and comes right on over. She even offers me a handful of candy. The stuff’s probably been on the ground and beaten to a pulp by her bat. Piñatas have never struck me as terribly hygienic, but I snag her offering and tear open a package of mini M&Ms. The fire camp’s down a cook—again—and it was slim pickings in the cafeteria earlier tonight. The girls who cook for us can’t keep up with the demand. Sarah Jo sinks down on the edge of the log.

Since she looks a little hesitant, I try to be helpful. “I only eat little girls on Wednesdays and Thursdays, so you’re safe.”

“Until next week.” She sighs with mock seriousness. “Duly noted, Mister Hotshot.”

“You gonna give me shit if I stay here?” I drag my palm over my head. Fucking need to get a haircut sometime soon or I’ll look like Colt with his stupid, stubby man bun.

“You want to hang out here?” She sounds vaguely horrified.

Do I?

“Might be hazardous.” I rub my hand over my chin and give her my best mock-thoughtful look. “Seeing as how folks here like to wander around armed and dangerous.”

She snorts. Win.

Colt picks this minute to prove he’s waiting for me after all. The man starts honking up a storm. The cocksucker thinks he’s got musical talent because he varies the beeps and lengths like he’s playing me a symphony of hurry-the-fuck-ups. I get that sitting around in the dark waiting on my ass isn’t his idea of a good time, but I’d like to know that Sarah Jo’s okay. That’s what you do when you accidentally scare the shit out of someone. On the other hand, if she says she’s not fine, I’m not sure what I’ll do. Colt won’t wait all night for me and the only fix-it solutions I have are duct tape or kissing it better.

But I have to ask. “Are you okay?”

The question has her looking at me like I’m an idiot. “Fine.”

I gesture toward the bat. “You sure?”

“Yes.” She blows out her breath in a big huff, making her bangs dance around her face. I’m not sure how she got just parts pink, but it’s a talent.

“So you’re totally, completely good.”

She holds up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

And as if that’s not bad enough, seeing her tuck her pinky finger into her thumb and make the perfect space for my dick to play slip-and-slide, she sticks her tongue out at me. Hell yeah, my dick bellows. My inner caveman demands we toss her over our shoulder and find a mattress stat.

Time to go.

“You’re safe up here.” I have no idea where the fuck those words come from. They sort of slip out and I can practically see them hanging in the air between us. They also translate nicely into you fucking idiot. Sarah Jo’s fuckhot and more than a little sweet, but she’s made her disinterest in me—in any part of me, enormous hose included—perfectly clear and I have a hands-off, eyes-only date with a dancer named Candy Jones anyhow.

Sarah Jo blinks at me and chews on her lower lip as she processes my promise. She’s got a streak of caramel on her lower lip; she must have stolen the last Twix. I’m not sure how it happens, but my thumb swipes gently at the sticky spot. I’d rather lick her clean—and then lick her dirty for good measure. Too much? Yeah. I think so, too. She’s barely met me.

“You want to come with us?” I’m not sure where that idea came from. It’s not like there’s some kind of hard-and-fast rule that tit owners dance on stage and non-possessors-of-tits cool their junk in the audience, but I can’t remember ever seeing a girl watching the show. But maybe Sarah Jo’s the kind of person who likes breaking barriers. Maybe watching some girl shake her stuff is exactly what she likes to be doing best.

“To Tits Up?” She’s not scared anymore. Nope. She’s fucking shaking with laughter. Good to know I’m no longer the big, bad wolf.

“We can hit the place up.” I grin at her. Fuck, she’s kind of fun when she’s not hiding in her clothes. “Grab a beer. See the show. My treat.”

“Pass.” She makes a face. “If I want to see boobs, I can look down the front of my shirt.”

“You could pretend to be disappointed,” I point out. “You know, you’re rough on a guy’s ego. First you scream and point when you see me, and now you won’t even let me buy you a beer.”

“At a strip club.” She gets busy untying her flannel shirt from her waist and covering up. Guess she’s definitely remembered that I have a dick.

“Huh.” I stand up as Colt lays on the horn again. If he abandons me here, it’s a long walk back to fire camp. “Well in the spirit of fairness, we could look at tits tonight and then next weekend we could ride over to Sacramento. Find the Chippendales or something so we can look at dick packages.”

And then she giggles. She looks me straight in the eye, her face lights up, and she makes this fantastically dorky, wonderful high-pitched heehaw of sound that’s better than a million porn moans of do me harder, big guy.

“You have a good night,” she says.

I already am.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I met the mother of my children. She didn’t know it yet, but Sarah Jo was about to become mine.