Ride Dirty (Raven Riders 3.50)

He shifted on his bike, and his boot scuffed the pavement. “Which is?”

She almost missed the question, but her belly gave a weird little flip that he’d asked. He didn’t seem like a jobs-and-weather small-talk kinda guy. “I teach kindergarten. When you spend your days with twenty-three five- and six-year-olds, you’re bound to be talkative.”

He grimaced and scrubbed a hand over his face.

Now she was the one sighing. Because she felt like she’d said something wrong again.

Which made her want to do something that might help him. And, in a weird way, allowing him to help her actually would help him, too. Because then he wouldn’t have to sit here anymore either. In the freezing cold at midnight.

So she swallowed down the little ball of nerves suddenly in her throat and asked, “Still want to pick my lock?”

His head jerked toward her and then he was off the bike and standing right in front of her.

And wow if all that intensity wasn’t overwhelming up close. Overwhelming and strangely breathtaking. “Is that a yes?” she whispered.

“Hell, yes.”

Chapter 3

It took Caine less than a minute to let Emma into her house. She gawped as he pushed the door open and gestured for her to go in. Chewy raced ahead, his nails clicking against the hard woods.

Emma cleared her throat. “That was impressive. And kinda scary. Are you that good or is my lock that weak?”

“Both,” he said, pocketing the key ring that held the little wire devices he’d used.

“Well, that’s, er, not really…” She swallowed the words, not wanting to criticize him again.

But he apparently heard it anyway. “I suck at reassuring, remember?”

She shook her head. “No, it’s just that… I don’t know, maybe it’s better not to hide from the truth anyway?”

His gaze collided with hers, and there was an intensity there she didn’t understand. One that made her pulse race with a new dose of that fascination. “Always.”

Nodding, she stepped into her entryway and peered at Caine. She wanted to thank him—again—but didn’t think he’d appreciate it given their earlier conversation. So instead she smiled and said, “You were my hero tonight, Caine.”

“Never call me that,” he bit out, those icy blue eyes narrowed to slits.

Emma’s heart tripped over itself and her tongue got tangled. And then it didn’t matter that she didn’t know how to respond because he was off her stoop in a flash. Back into the shadows and on his bike.

Er, that…had not gone the way she intended.

Stomach falling, Emma debated, but this time she erred on the side of leaving him alone. On a tired exhale, she closed her front door and nearly moaned from how good it felt to be inside where it was warm. She shrugged out of her coat and hung it in the front closet, and then leaned against the door jamb to her living room and admired the colorful glow of the lights on her tree—the only lights she had on.

She adored sitting in a room lit only by her Christmas tree. It was something she’d picked up from her grandmother, who used to spread a blanket out on this very floor in front of the tree and tell Emma stories—made-up stories about fantastical worlds, or real-life stories about when Emma’s mother had been young. Stories her mother hadn’t been around long enough to tell herself because a pulmonary embolism had taken her away when Emma had been just nine.

Still, Emma didn’t associate the warm, almost magical glow of the lights with sadness. Instead, they made her feel closer to the women she’d loved and lost—which was why she was firmly part of the camp that put up decorations the day after Thanksgiving—tree, lights, and her grandmother’s Santa collection, too—and didn’t feel the slightest bit self-conscious if they stayed up well into the latter part of January.

Heck, she’d been the proud owner of a Valentine’s tree or two.

She grinned at where Chewy had curled up in his plush dog bed, his well-groomed little head resting on a stuffed Chewbacca. His namesake. As a girl, Emma had thought the expressive sounds that the Star Wars character made were the cutest things she’d ever heard. And when she’d adopted the little guy the summer before she started her job at Frederick Elementary, she’d still remembered that. “You have a hard life, you know that?”

In answer, the dog gave a big sigh and burrowed in deeper.

And the sigh made her realize…she hadn’t heard a motorcycle engine start up.

Frowning, she went to her front window and peered around the tree. Sure enough, Caine’s dark silhouette remained. Part man, part motorcycle. As if he were some sort of mythical creature from her grandmother’s stories.

Why hadn’t he left…?

Her gut gave her the answer that, holy crap, he was waiting. Because even though he’d gotten her inside out of the cold and made sure she had medicine, her locks weren’t yet changed and her keys were still out there somewhere…which meant Caine wasn’t going to leave.