Jill Shalvis - At Last

“It’s doubled our traffic,” Lucille said. “Matt’s out in front of Dr. Josh Scott, but just by a nose. You need to come by and vote.”

“I’ll do that.” Amy’s tone said that she’d be voting for Josh.

Lucille walked away, and Amy slid him a speculative look. “I’ll go put in your order. Ranger Hot Buns.”

He snagged her by her good wrist before she walked away. At the contact, he felt a current of electricity go straight through him.

She looked down at his hand on her. Apparently he wasn’t the only one experiencing the shock of connection between them. She tugged free, stepping back, looking a little off her axis.

He knew the feeling. Their chemistry was off the charts.

She turned and disappeared into the kitchen. He wasn’t all that surprised when a few minutes later it was Jan, Eat Me’s owner, who served him his food. Jan was fifty-ish, with a perpetual frown on her face and a black cap of hair that made her resemble Lucy from the Peanuts comic strip. “Where did Amy go?” he asked.

“Break,” she said in her been-smoking-three-decades voice. “She took her break.”

That night, Amy was trying to lose herself in a Friends marathon on TV, complete with a huge bowl of popcorn and two Snickers bars, when her phone rang.

“Chocoholics meeting tomorrow night,” Grace said when Amy answered. “Mallory wanted me to call you and let you know. She’d have called herself but she was about to go jump Ty’s bones.”

Yeah, or she was avoiding Amy after the whole sending-Matt-to-the-woods stunt… “I don’t know,” Amy said. “Jan says we can’t meet at the diner over chocolate cake anymore.” A couple weeks back, the Chocoholics had accidentally destroyed the interior of Eat Me when their chocolate cake had gone up in flames thanks to some trick candles.

“Brownies,” Grace said without pause. “We’ll meet over brownies.”

Brownies worked.

“Mallory says to prepare yourself,” Grace warned her. “Apparently now that her life is in order, we’re moving onto yours. She says we’re going to be giving you good girl lessons.” She laughed. “I’m sorry.”

“And this is funny why?”

“Well not funny exactly,” Grace said, still sounding amused. “A challenge, maybe.”

“Hey, I would make a good good girl.” If she wanted…

Grace snorted. “Okay. See you tomorrow night, good girl.”

“Maybe I’m busy.”

“Are you?”

Amy hesitated. She wanted to be busy getting back up the mountain to Sierra Meadows, but she wasn’t crazy enough to do it at night. She’d wait for her next day off.

“Amy?”

“I’m free. I just really think our time would be better spent fixing your life first. I can totally wait.”

Grace had worked as a financial wizard back East until several months ago. Looking for some happiness, she’d stuck around town, but the employment opportunities here were pretty limited. “Nice try but you’re up,” Grace said. “Oh, and bee-tee-dub, Facebook says you were getting cozy on the mountain with Ranger Hot Buns.”

“Bee-tee-what?”

“B T W. By the way. Jeez, don’t you ever surf the ’net?”

Amy sighed. “Brownies. Tomorrow night.”

“We’ll expect the Ranger Hot Buns story.”

Amy hung up and then got a text from Mallory: Good girl lesson #4: Omitting juicy details to your BFFs is a sin. You slept with him????????

Amy rolled her eyes and typed a response: Haven’t you heard-good girls don’t tell all. Especially to nosy friends who sneakily set their supposed BFFs up when they don’t want to be set up. Amy sent the text off, knowing Mallory would stew over that all night. It was a small consolation, because half an hour later, there came a knock at her door. Amy’s entire body went on high alert, especially her nipples, so she knew exactly who it was.

Matt Bowers.

Aka Ranger Hot Buns.

She’d known he’d show up sooner than later. The question was, did she want him to?

He knocked again, a sturdy, confident sort of knock. She looked through the peephole. Yep, one sexy-as-hell, uniformed forest ranger stood at her door, armed, locked, and loaded.

And hot.

Looking her right in the eye, he raised a brow.

Still silent, she bit her lip in rare indecision. Obey the hormones? Or ignore the need humming through her…

“All night,” Matt said. “I can do this all night.”

Blowing out a breath, she opened the door.

He rocked back on his heels, hands in his pockets, perfectly at ease as he took in her appearance. “Pretty,” he said.

She was in her oldest T-shirt and a pair of cutoffs. She looked like a garage sale special, and the worst part was… he most definitely did not. He was looking waaaaay too good. “I’m a mess.”

“Maybe. But you’re a pretty one.”

She narrowed her eyes, and he laughed. “You know, most women like it when a man calls them pretty.”

“I’m not most women.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that.”

“Why are you here, Matt?”

“Get to it?” he asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes. Get to it.”

“All right. Direct. I like that. But you might not. It’s about the kiss.”

Her stomach suddenly had butterflies. “What about it?”

“You’ve been acting weird ever since.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Liar.” He leaned against the doorjamb, settling in, making himself comfortable. “So it’s been making me wonder. “Did I have bad breath?”

Was he kidding? He’d tasted like heaven. “No.”

“Did I kiss like a jackass? A Saint Bernard?”

She actually felt a smile threaten. How did he always do that, make her want to smile? Make her… want him, desperately. It was a conundrum, a big one. She really hadn’t had a single intention of getting tangled up in a man, but this man had come from nowhere and blindsided her, and now she could think of little else. “No,” she said. “You didn’t kiss like a jackass or a Saint Bernard.”

“Hmm.” He stepped into her then, crowding her in the doorway.

“What are you doing?”

“Apparently I have something to prove.” He pressed her up against the doorway. Fisting his hands in her hair, he kissed her. And just like that, with a single touch of his mouth to hers, her entire body disconnected from her brain. She kissed him back, too, hungrily pressing closer, as close as she could get.

The thing was, it’d been good the other night in the tent. Real good. But it was even better now-which made no sense. Neither was the way she could almost forget all her problems when he had his mouth on her. And what had begun as an irritating interruption quickly escalated into a heated frenzy, his body colliding with hers in all the right places. She was panting for air when he abruptly broke the kiss with a muttered oath and answered his radio.

She hadn’t even heard the interruption.

“I have to go,” he said, his breathing still a little ragged.

Nodding, she touched her wet mouth. “Yeah.”

His gaze dropped to her lips, and his eyes heated again. He didn’t want to go. He wanted her. Not that he’d ever made a secret of it, but the knowledge gave her a disturbingly warm glow.

“So we’re good?” he asked.

Good covered way too much ground. “You’ve got to go, remember?”

“Amy-”

“Bye.” Stepping backward into her apartment, she shut the door. Then stared at it. He was still standing there on the other side, she could feel him.

“I’m going to take that as a yes,” he said through the wood.

She let out a startled laugh, then clapped a hand over her mouth. Hell no, they weren’t good. Not when he’d just proven what she’d already known-they were so far beyond good it was scary. They were combustible.

But she knew the power of it now, she assured herself. And it was okay because all she had to do was stay clear.

Which was going to be a little bit like trying to keep a moth from the flame.

Chocolate is not a matter of life and death-it’s more important than that.

Matt spent a few mornings a week in the gym, usually in the ring with Ty Garrison. This morning they were doing their usual beat-the-shit-out-of-each-other routine. He ducked Ty’s left hook, feeling pretty damn smug for one solid beat-until Ty snuck a right uppercut to his gut.

Matt hit the floor with a wheeze, and then it was Ty’s turn to be smug. “Gotcha.”

Hell, no. They’d been at it for thirty minutes, and Matt was exhausted to the bone, but the last one down had to buy breakfast. Kicking out, he knocked Ty’s feet from beneath him. Then it was Ty’s turn to land with a satisfying thud.

“Jesus,” Josh muttered from the weight bench.