Chapter Sixteen
“You think he’s doing something?” Abbi asked when they were both in her car driving over.
“I have no idea what he thinks he could do,” Tyler said. “We can’t even say for sure that it’s him. But I do know one thing. Russ isn’t a man who knows what to do when he hears the word no.”
Abbi sighed. “And I guess I’ve been saying it a lot to him recently.”
But it wasn’t like they had any proof. When they got to the nature center, no one had more information about who could have been up there, or why. And Abbi couldn’t bring herself to call Russ and force yet another confrontation.
So every day, they waited.
She knew she should be worried—about Russ. The firebreak. That fine line between being in enough of a relationship to not seem like a hot mess whose disaster of a personal life was spilling over into the workplace…but not in so much of a relationship as to be stumbling in late with just-fucked hair and drooling over her boyfriend-who-wasn’t when she was supposed to be securing this promotion and covering her ass.
But as the week passed and Tyler spent every night in her bed, it was hard not to feel something settling over her. A feeling almost like calm, as though every ounce of doubt and uncertainty vanished when she was in his arms.
She should have known it was too good to last. The nature center got three more messages that week about someone hanging around in the woods past Ridge Line Road. As the police kept saying, there wasn’t anything wrong with doing that. But that didn’t change the fact that more than one person thought it strange enough to bring up.
Abbi was at work when the third caller rang, and it put her even more on edge. The woman wasn’t just worried about someone creeping around. The first thing she said was that she’d seen someone smoking in the woods.
“I know that’s not illegal,” she added before Abbi could interrupt. “The police already told me there’s nothing they can do. But even with that little bit of rain we got the woods have been so dry, and all we’ve been hearing about in town is the wildfire threat. It might not be a cigarette, could be a lighter or something. But, well, I thought someone should know. Seems awfully foolish,” she went on. “If it’s illegal to light a campfire then it should be illegal to light anything out there.”
“It’s illegal if the cigarette isn’t disposed of properly,” Abbi explained. “But unfortunately there’s not much anyone can do about someone walking.”
“The fire department said it could be someone going to check out the firebreak.” The woman said it reassuringly, like that would make it okay. But that was exactly what Abbi was afraid of. That “someone” meant Russ. And “checking out the firebreak” meant… She couldn’t even begin to figure out what.
“Did you see a vehicle, by any chance?” Abbi asked.
“No, I don’t know. My house looks toward the ridge, but I can’t see the road from where I am.”
“That’s okay,” Abbi said. “I was just wondering.”
“Hope we get that firebreak soon,” the woman said. “I live so close to the woods, it makes me nervous thinking about what might happen.”
Well, maybe you should have thought about that before you built your house up there, Abbi wanted to say. But she bit her tongue and thanked the woman for calling. “If you see evidence of a campfire, call the police. They can try to track the person down.”
She hung up the phone with a grumble and went to knock on Tyler’s door down the hall. She didn’t miss how his eyes lit up when he saw her.
But she also didn’t miss how he pushed aside some papers and dimmed the computer screen. She knew he was working on his counter-proposal, something to get the project back on track after her last move.
She wanted to be angry about it, and she knew she probably should be. But right now, she had bigger things to worry about, and he was the one she wanted to talk to. She told him about the latest call.
“A cigarette?” Tyler frowned. “That’s really stupid to do out there.”
“Which puts another check mark firmly in the Russ box.”
“This was last night?”
“Yeah. She said it went on for a while. She could see someone in a clearing for like an hour. I’m not sure how high up that means, though—whether it was at the firebreak site, or near there. Or maybe it’s just a coincidence and this doesn’t mean a thing.”
“Could someone be camping anywhere within sight of Ridge Line Road?” Tyler asked.
“No permits have been given out for backcountry sites in that area—I checked. But even if you were camping illegally, that seems like an odd place to choose.”
Tyler pulled together the papers on his desk and put them in a drawer. Then he turned off his computer and reached for the hiking boots that had found a home in the corner. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he said.
“I’m thinking of telling everyone I’ll be out for the afternoon.” She paused. It was crazy how they kept getting thrown together. And how much she’d stopped trying to resist it.
She flashed him a grin. “Want to go for a ride?”
…
“What would Russ be doing there, though?” Abbi said, looking out the window and biting her lip. “He doesn’t even have the work permits yet.”
Tyler kept one hand on the wheel and reached over to slide the other into Abbi’s. He’d insisted on driving—his truck was better on the steep turns, and he didn’t like how keyed up she was over this. “It’ll be okay.”
She gave a faint smile. “You’re awfully confident.”
“It’s fixable.”
“Not everything is fixable, Tyler.” But she squeezed his hand, and Tyler couldn’t help thinking she was wrong. Maybe some things were fixable. Because here they were, her hand in his, even though there was no one pushing them to fake it, no reason for them to pretend.
They were finally on the same side, both caring about what was happening up in those woods, both concerned not about whether Gold Mountain needed a firebreak but about how to take care of the people and places that needed them.
But what did Abbi want? And how come it sometimes felt so hard to figure out?
“So why’d you get involved with him in the first place?” he asked, because it was something he’d been wondering ever since that first night at the bar.
But maybe he shouldn’t have asked, because she quickly shot him a look. “Are you judging my poor decision making?”
“No!” he said, startled, and then conceded, “Okay, maybe a little.”
He thought she’d laugh. He’d meant it to be funny. But a shadow crossed her face and he knew he’d gone too far.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was just kidding.”
“It’s not a big deal.” But she said it automatically, and he didn’t believe her.
He shook his head. “Don’t make me force it out of you.”
That made Abbi flash him a look, and she said, “Maybe I’m still making poor decisions when it comes to men.”
“Oh yeah?” He raised an eyebrow.
Abbi shifted in the passenger seat. “Yeah.”
“What kinds of poor decisions?”
She slid her hand out from his, which wasn’t what he wanted. But then she put it around his shoulder, teasing the hair on the nape of his neck. It was pretty much impossible to concentrate on driving while she pulled gently on his hair. Her other fingers tiptoed lightly up his forearm, where his hand rested on the steering wheel.
“Oh no,” he said. “You’re not wriggling away from my question that easily.”
“But I’m an excellent wriggler,” she teased.
“Don’t I know it.”
She shook her butt in the seat.
“That,” he said. “Right there.”
The hand that had been on his forearm dropped to his lap.
“I’m driving,” he warned.
“I see that.”
She ran her fingers over the crotch of his jeans.
“I think you’re doing something else, too,” she murmured, sliding closer to him in the car.
“Shit, Abbi.” He was growing hard. Or harder—the single touch of her fingers to his neck had already sent his blood flowing. “You can’t distract me.”
But his dick obviously had other ideas.
“You’re a good driver,” she said, stroking him through his jeans. “A man like you can concentrate. He can multitask. Are you telling me you’re not the man I think you are?”
She unzipped his pants and he groaned. This wasn’t highway driving. They were climbing up a narrow mountain road. It was empty, though. No cars around, nothing but trees. Every so often a break in the foliage appeared and he could see across to the mountains, and he might have told Abbi to look at the view except she was entirely focused on something else…and at the moment, he didn’t want her to stop.
Her hand disappeared inside his pants and he felt the warm heat of her palm along his shaft, straining inside his boxers. But it didn’t stay trapped for long. She pulled his dick through the fly and made an appreciative noise as it sprung free. “Damn,” she murmured. “Would you look at that.”
“You’re a fucking tease,” he said.
“Eyes on the road,” she told him.
And then she leaned over, snuggling herself down under his arms, and brought her mouth—her sweet, warm mouth—to his lap.
She kissed the tip first. Just the lightest touch, enough to make his hips jerk up, wanting more. Dammit, she really shouldn’t play with him like this. One foot on the gas as he took the turn. A quick glimpse at his lap when he eased into the straightaway. He kept a hand on the wheel and brought the other down to thread his fingers through her hair, wanting to feel the softness. Wanting to feel how much her mouth was his.
He gripped her hair as her head came down and his cock disappeared into her mouth. Sensation started in his toes, up through his balls, and tightened in the base of his spine. Her mouth worked up and down, her head bobbing in his lap in front of the steering wheel. He took the next turn too fast. He had to slow down. Let this last. He wished there was a place to pull over but it wasn’t like he could stop in the middle of the road.
And she was too good, she was too fucking good, he was going to explode. The murmurs coming from her mouth muffled on his cock said that was exactly what she wanted.
How could she even take him that far? And still do that thing with her tongue? She had one hand firm around the base of his shaft, the other hand cupping his balls. His grip tightened in her hair: a signal. He was going to come.
Abbi responded by taking him even deeper. Someone was panting, saying fuck, fuck, fuck, but it couldn’t be her because her mouth was so full of him, and he realized it was his own voice, his own cry as he spilled himself onto her tongue. He could feel her swallowing quickly, still sucking him, getting it all.
It took everything in him not to close his eyes to savor the sensation, the lingering heat of her mouth, the brush of her tongue lapping at his cock to clean him off. His legs ached from where he’d clenched before the release, his shoulders tight from gripping the wheel to steady himself as he came.
If you like me enough to do this, then why won’t you talk to me about your past, about Russ, about who you are?
Instead he said, “I think I missed the turn.”
Abbi’s head popped up. “Oops. Guess I forgot to give you directions.”
“You can forget to give me directions anytime,” he said, tucking himself back into his pants. He loved the way the wetness of her mouth coated his dick, as though he could still feel her there.
“Turn around. Ridge Line Road comes up before that last bend.” Her words were all business, but she brought a hand to her lips to wipe her mouth and flashed him a grin that would have been dirty enough to make him stand straight up again—if he had any blood left in his veins.
He tried to imagine someone giving him road head in L.A., but the thought made his brain go numb. First was the question of who. And where would they do it? Along Interstate 10? He was sure plenty of lucky guys had. He just wasn’t one of them.
And was he ever going back to L.A.? He didn’t even have a job there anymore. He was supposed to be thinking about what came next, not getting stuck in fantasies.
Abbi may have given him the most incredible blowjob of his life, but she hadn’t given him a single sign that to her, this was anything more than a few weeks of something wild and fun.
That was why he couldn’t expect anything else. And why he couldn’t get carried away. Fake relationship, real relationship—it didn’t make a difference. In less than a month, he was out of there.