Chapter 1
PRESENT DAY
Josh thundered down the stairs from the roof deck, right on Riley’s heels. Sniping at him the whole damn way. For all four floors. Which almost tempted Riley to stop short, duck, and see if his best friend just flew over his head like Wiley Coyote being launched off a cliff.
Of course, that’d be dangerous.
Stupid. And therefore totally out of the question.
No matter how tempting.
“Dude, you can’t leave yet.” If the words hadn’t been coming out of a six-foot-two man who clocked in at a muscled one-ninety and lifted cast-iron frying pans like they were feathers, Riley would’ve said the guy was whining.
But he knew how to pick his battles. Calling Josh a whiner would only lead to a headlock/noogie battle that would make him late for work. Instead, he chose a more annoying weapon than name-calling: the facts.
“I specifically told you last night and again this morning that I’d have to cut out of brunch early.” Riley pulled his black windbreaker—the one with NTSB printed in big yellow letters on the back and sleeves—off the coat rack. Then he thought about how it was the fourth of September here in steamy Washington, D.C. He ducked into the study. Not to get away from Josh—although if it worked, that’d be great—but to check out the shelf of old-school weather forecasting instruments they’d given Griff when he graduated from the Coast Guard Academy.
The twirly anemometer wouldn’t exactly be able to tell him the wind speed from behind the double-paned windows of the old rectory they all shared. And even though he’d been the one to give the lieutenant the nephoscope, measuring the clouds wouldn’t do any good, either.
Josh flopped into the burgundy leather wing chair. “And I specifically told you that leaving early would make you a party pussy.”
“I’d tell you to be sure to spell that correctly on my tombstone, but statistics show that it’s probable I’ll outlive you by a good three-point-seven years.”
“What?” Josh straightened up like Riley had shoved the measuring tape for a coffin down his back. Whipped the plastic lei off his neck and chucked it in the corner. “No way. How do you know?”
“I gave a presentation during the Family Assistance section of the Transportation Disaster Response course this week at the training center.”
“You didn’t say you were giving a speech. Way to go.” Josh rose to give him a double backslap/hug combo. His friends always celebrated his successes, no matter how small. And they knew that every extra assignment or nod from above that Riley got was another step up the ladder to a promotion. Even though they often called him a sucker for volunteering for the crap jobs nobody else wanted.
“Thanks.”
“Hey—I didn’t get a chance to give you my picture-everyone-naked-and-you-won’t-be-nervous pep talk.”
Riley pretended to smooth back his hair like the Fonz. Labor Day Weekend was always good for marathons of old shows. They’d had on the ultra-cheesy Happy Days in the background last night while playing Texas Hold ’Em. “Which is exactly why I didn’t tell you beforehand.”
Squinting his gray eyes into slits, Josh said, “Do I have to disappear for half a year like Logan to make you appreciate my special skills?”
“Nope.” Riley patted his belly through the green polo shirt. “I appreciated them plenty this morning with that bourbon-pecan-cream-cheese–stuffed French toast you made for brunch. Out of this world.”
“Glad you enjoyed it for free,” Josh said, with a heavy emphasis on the last two words. “Starting next week, you can get it for eight-fifty a pop at the Capitol Grilled. If you spread the word about its awesomeness, I’ll make sure to park near the NTSB so you can gorge without going too far.”
“If I spread the word, I expect a price break.” The argument was just for form’s sake. The food Josh produced on his food truck was worth every penny he charged, and then some. The guy was a wizard behind a stove.
“You just told me I’m going to die. You’re lucky I’m not breaking your skull.” Josh rubbed his head where there was still a divot—covered by blond hair, which had many assuming he was Griff’s brother—from the fracture in the Alps ten years ago. “And trust me, that’d hurt.”
“Look, you won’t die tomorrow. After my lecture, I stuck around and went to one on human fatigue factors. It covered fatigue-related issues at the individual, medical, operational, and environmental levels, and how they affect performance, alertness, and safety.”
“You could’ve just been reciting the alphabet in Lithuanian for all it registered. Don’t bore me to death now. Tell me why I’m gonna die before you?”
Funny how freaked out he looked. Or was it just that he looked freaky in the camp shirt covered in psychedelic yellow and green swirls. Josh called it a party shirt. Knox called it a fashion abomination. Riley just called it a headache about to happen. “You don’t sleep enough.”
“Huh?”
“You get up at the crack of dawn to sell breakfast. You work your ass off and then go out and hit the town and don’t go to bed until after midnight. You’ve been running on fumes for about four years straight. Exhaustion makes you sloppy. Dulls the senses. That became a huge factor in figuring your life expectancy.”
The barometer told him the humidity sat right around fucking miserable. And the colorful glass spheres in the Galileo thermometer showed it to be approximately the same temperature as the devil’s ball sac. So Riley hung the jacket back up in the hallway and grabbed his NTSB ball cap instead.
All the guys made fun of him for wearing it off-duty. Griff didn’t run around the District in his flight suit. Riley, however, made a point of wearing something that identified him as a National Transportation Safety Board agent. Tourists came out here not just to see the monuments, but to be able to go home and brag about seeing the people who make Washington tick. As a local, Ry felt it to be his duty to give them that little thrill. Just like he’d been excited to see a moose—from behind the safety of window glass and locked car doors—when they’d hiked in Yellowstone.
“Fine. While you’re slaving away at work this afternoon, I’ll take a nap. Then we’ll see who lives longer.” Josh backhanded Ry’s cap off and walked away on a laugh.
As Riley bent down to pick it up, he heard a muffled “Shit.” Then Josh loped back over to him in two long steps. “Play nice,” he ordered.
Huh? By the time he stood up, Josh had headed back toward the kitchen. And then the warning became perfectly clear as tinny taps of heels against their wooden floorboards preceded Summer Sheridan’s appearance.
Riley knew the sound. The woman never wore anything besides high heels, despite medical warnings and common sense that said they were bad for feet, knees, and hip alignment. She might as well start pre-ordering her inevitable cane now.
Except…a man would have to be three days in the ground not to notice how smoking hot she looked in them. Riley was great at identifying and compiling facts. The unassailable facts about Summer were that she looked like a gypsy in a wet dream—all long, dark brown hair and mysterious dark eyes that beckoned a man in. That she always looked amazing, no matter how weirdly fashionable an outfit she wore from the boutique she ran. And that she rubbed him the wrong way.
Nah, that wasn’t precise enough. Summer Sheridan irritated the shit out of him. If Riley said “Black,” she said “Ecru.” Ecru, for fuck’s sake!
He’d warned her not to spill her Bloody Mary on the white top that looked like an upside-down handkerchief tied around her neck. Ridiculous-looking—even if it did provide enough flashes of side boob to make him look at her twenty more times than he should have this morning. She’d coolly corrected him that it was ecru. Which annoyed Riley so much he snuck an extra gratuitous stare the next time the wind flapped her excuse for a shirt into revealing more side boob.
With apparently no bra.
Riley’s brain urged him to slip out the door, make a break for it. They’d only argued a couple of times at the noisy gathering on the roof. Probably due to the eight other people who acted as a buffer zone between them. The two of them, alone in a hallway? Not a good idea. Except Riley’s other brain—the one housed in his pressed navy shorts—kept his feet firmly planted and his eyes locked on those swaying hips and tan legs.
“Thought you had a butler to open the door,” Summer said as she tapped her foot, waiting. “Are you being punished for something? Did you lose a bet?”
Right. Like a man couldn’t open his own front door. Deliberately, Riley turned the knob and then swept his arm wide to indicate she should go first. “We do have a butler. A majordomo. Whatever. We haven’t decided on his title.”
“Hasn’t he been with you for years?”
Riley closed the door behind them and followed her down the steps. “Jerry? At least four.”
“It takes you four years to come up with a title for an employee whose work you see every day? Aren’t you just a perfect example of a government employee grinding the wheels of progress to a dead halt.”
Talk about grinding. His teeth were doing it to keep from snarling at her. “It’s complicated.”
“Five grown men having a butler is complicated? All I know about them I learned from Downton Abbey, but I thought butlers were supposed to uncomplicate your life. Is he doing it wrong?”
A mental comparison of the stuffy—and uniformed, for God’s sake!—help his parents employed compared to the easygoing Jerry almost made Riley laugh out loud. “Nobody could run this house better than Jerry.”
“He looks like a linebacker. Like his shoulders would split a morning coat right along the seams. Where did you find him?”
Riley thought about walking away. But that wasn’t an option, thanks to Griffin falling in love with Summer’s best friend, Chloe. She was around all the time now. That being the case, she ought to know Jerry’s story, if for no other reason than to treat him with respect instead of the mocking that had sharpened her tone so far. “Will you drop it if I tell you?”
“Maybe.”
“I met Jerry at the gym. I asked him to spot me one day because, well, like you said, the guy’s enormous. We got to talking. He blew his knee out his rookie year in the NFL. Went through his money less than a year after that. He was hard up. And we needed someone to help clean up after Hurricane Sandy. I offered him some work, he came over…and just stuck around.”
Her eyes melted like Hershey’s Kisses left out in the sun. Dark and sweet and rich. “You saved him.”
“The saving was completely mutual.”
“You could’ve hired a real contractor. You gave him a shot instead. Who would’ve thought that the buttoned-up Riley Ness had a heart beneath all that starched cotton?”
How come her praise felt like it was covered in tiny insult spikes? “Jerry’s great. We didn’t know we needed him. But all of our lives run better with him at the helm.” Things could be crazy at the old rectory Knox had bought with his first gajillion dollars, for them all to share.
Knox would disappear on a whim to go skiing in Vail or buy a company in New Mexico. Logan disappeared for months at a time at disaster sites around the world. Griff used to have odd hours as a Coast Guard rescue pilot before he’d recently been promoted. Josh worked and partied too hard to even notice if his shirts were clean. Yeah, they all needed Jerry’s help to keep them on track.
Those annoyingly beautiful eyes glared at him in accusation. “Why’d you leave your own party early?”
“I have to work.” Not that Riley owed Summer any damn explanation.
“You work for the NTSB. They don’t strike me as an impress-the-boss-by-putting-in-weekend-time-and-you’ll-make-partner kind of place.”
There she went. Dismissing the import of his job…just like he always dismissed the import of hers. “You’ve never seen a highway accident on a Sunday?”
She rolled her eyes. “If there was an accident, you would’ve peeled out of here at the speed of light, not being all polite and holding the door.”
Riley reminded himself that she was Chloe’s best friend. That he couldn’t just flip her the bird, tell her to mind her own damn business, and walk away. Griff would definitely owe him big for having to politely limp through this conversation. It had to be worth at least a bottle of Johnnie Walker Green. “I have to spend some time on HR stuff. There’s no way to get to it during the week.”
“It figures that you’re in charge of people.” Summer sniffed. Fucking sniffed at him. Like he was a dog who’d fallen into a sewer. “What with being all stiff and always telling people what to do.”
The part of him that lived in a house with his best friends from high school? That made dirty jokes and fart noises with his armpit when Josh was in the hot tub? That part wanted to tell Summer exactly how stiff he could be.
But he didn’t. No point in going there. Instead, to keep at the polite small talk since they were still headed the same way on the sidewalk, Riley asked, “Why did you leave the brunch early?”
“Work.”
“Big folding emergency at your store?” Riley wasn’t proud of the dig. But Summer annoyed him. Their Labor Day Weekend brunch was a tradition. Their roof deck had a terrific view of the District, Josh’s food was amazing, and a lot of women would kill to be invited. How could she just abandon her best friend like that?
The fact that he’d left early for the very same reason? That he’d left behind his four best friends, drinking and telling stories in a way that still felt new all over again with Logan finally back?
Not the point.
Not his point, anyway.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Summer lifted her voice, as she was now several steps away.
Flakey. Her brain flaked off in more directions than when he’d bit into an almond croissant this morning. Another reason she drove him nuts. Nothing about her was reasoned or orderly. Especially not the dark hair that the breeze blew across her breasts. “I’m crossing the street.”
“Me, too.” She extended an arm to indicate the low, curved white wall a block away. “The Dupont Circle Metro station’s right over there.”
“I know that.”
“Oh my God.” Her hand flew to cover her mouth. It did not prevent a giggle from escaping. “Are you seriously walking an extra ten steps just to use the crosswalk?”
Riley could not believe they were even having this conversation. That they were yelling at each other across five cracked squares of cement because neither one of them would give in an inch, conversationally or directionally. “Of course.”
“How old are you?”
He should just walk away. But Riley truly liked Chloe, and Griffin truly loved her. Which meant putting up with her nutcase friend. On a sigh, he said, “Twenty-eight.”
“Have you ever jaywalked?”
“Of course not.” Had she lost her mind? “I’m the investigator-in-charge for the Office of Highway Safety in the National Transportation Safety Board. I’ve seen vehicular accidents, on streets no busier than this one, that would make you lose your lunch.”
This time Summer clutched her stomach as she bent in half, laughter rolling out of her mouth in annoyingly musical waves. “From jaywalking?”
Actually, no. But he damn well wouldn’t clarify that point now. Instead, he crossed his arms over his chest. “Respecting the rules of the road keeps everyone safe.”
“Don’t you ever take risks?”
“No.” Riley could state that categorically and truthfully. He’d spent his whole life mitigating risk. Educating himself to prevent any possible risk from occurring. He knew how to escape a car if it plunged underwater. How to start a fire in any condition. How to rock climb without ropes. He’d even learned Spanish and French, and was contemplating taking up Chinese. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Come on, do something risky.” Straightening up, she crooked a finger and slid him a sultry look of invitation from beneath half-lowered lids. Christ. A woman should not be able to look that sexy at noon on a Sunday in broad daylight. “Jaywalk with me. It’ll be good for you. You’re too serious, Riley.”
“This, coming from the girl who just plays with dresses all day?” He snorted. What did she ever risk? Getting a paper cut from a price tag? “In my world, people can die from a car trying to outrun a train. Someone checks their Instagram feed a little too long while they’re behind the wheel, and people die. If I use the crosswalk, I cut my chances by more than seventy percent of accidentally being mowed down.”
“Living forever’s only fun if you truly live.”
That jab stung. Because it was the same riff the guys threw at him over and over again. “I live. I’m not agoraphobic. I just follow the rules. Obey the speed limit. Turn off my phone before the plane starts to taxi.”
Summer tossed her cloud of hair back. Gave him a knowing look. No, a knowing smirk. “Oh, I get it now.”
“What?”
“You’re not uptight. You’re chicken.”
The woman had crossed a line. He’d gone through wilderness training and survival training. He’d climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. Become a black belt in tae kwon do. He’d pushed himself to physical and mental limits most men wouldn’t be able to attain. Being sensible? In no fucking way was it comparable to being scared.
Riley’s long strides ate up the distance between them. Furious, he spat out, “You want me to try something risky?”
“Yes. Just once. But I don’t think you’ve got the balls,” she taunted.
Riley grabbed her face with both hands. Her lips parted in surprise. And he swooped right onto them.
Her lips were soft. So soft and pliable it almost deterred him. But then…they were so soft and pliable that he couldn’t possibly stop. Instead of holding her still, his hands curved to cup the back of her head, his thumbs caressing those impossibly high cheekbones that gave her the look of someone made to walk a runway.
Riley nipped at her wide bottom lip. Soothed it with a stroke of his tongue that savored the sweet, lingering tang of the orange cream cheese icing on the cinnamon rolls from brunch. He wanted to keep going. To nip and bite and lick down her neck, over the side of the breasts she’d flashed at him all day. To gobble down her sweetness and spice just like he had those rolls.
Her moan refocused him. This wasn’t just following through on a dare anymore. This was a real kiss. A real moment of pure, physical pleasure. So he dropped his hands to the small of her back and hauled Summer tightly against him.
Thanks to her ridiculous—and ridiculously sexy—high heels, everything lined up right. The notch between her thighs ground right against his dick behind the suddenly too-tight fly of his shorts. Breasts plumped into his chest. Breasts he was pretty sure he could fit entirely into his mouth…since he might have pictured it a time or ten since meeting her in the spring. Tight nipples insistently poked at his pecs.
The kiss kept going. Ry slipped his tongue in as she let out a kittenish purr. God, it was the sexiest sound he’d ever heard. The soft, tiny mewl fired through his blood. Fired him up. His tongue tangled with hers. Like they were two swords, fencing for the win. Because there would damn sure be a winner. The way they were both grappling at each other? It wasn’t just fun. It was about proving something.
Her mouth—made for kissing. And more. His tongue slid deep. Felt her wetness. And Riley couldn’t help imagining how all that warm wetness would feel locked around another part of his body. Summer’s hands came up to fist in his shirt. Shit. For a second, he worried she’d push him away. But then those fists pulled him even closer. One smooth calf twined around his. He wanted to walk her back ten steps to the nearest tree and just sink into her.
Which was crazy. Riley didn’t even like this woman. He’d kissed her to save his pride. Defend his honor. Get her off his back. And now he wanted to put Summer on hers, spread her thighs, and—
That was it. Riley let go. Let go of the sweet ass he didn’t even remember moving his hands down to squeeze. Let go of those luscious lips. Yanked his head back and deliberately stepped out of the semicircle of her curved leg.
“You and I both know that was the riskiest damn thing I could possibly do today.” Riley looked at her still unfocused eyes, her kiss-swollen lips. Proof that she’d enjoyed it every bit as much as he had. “Oh, and you also know now that I’ve got the balls. I’ve got the whole package.”
Then he forced his hands to unclench and took off for the Metro stop. Took the escalator down to the subway two steps at a time. And didn’t bother to look back for her even once.