Ready to Run (I Do, I Don't 1)

“Hey, hey, don’t crowd him!” Millie said, charging forward and taking control of her class as dozens of little hands reached out to pet the eager-for-attention Dalmatian.

Charlie Bander clamped a hand on Luke’s shoulder. “Nice work there, bro. Clearly they really picked up the important parts of your speech.”

“Didn’t see you chiming in,” Luke said, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Hey, I did the stop, drop, and roll demonstration. You owe me,” Charlie said, pulling out a stick of his ever-present bubble gum, unwrapping and folding a piece into his mouth. “And, look, don’t take it personally. Oreo always steals the show at these things.”

Too true.

“I think Deb Bryant is checking me out,” Charlie said around a bubble. “Verify.”

Luke rolled his eyes but scanned over his friend’s shoulder. The pretty third-grade teacher had brought her flock out to recess, and, sure enough, her attention seemed to be on Charlie’s backside.

“You angling for short ginger kids?” Luke asked.

The petite redheaded teacher’s bright hair matched Charlie’s almost exactly.

“Hell yes,” Charlie said, blowing a bubble. “We’ll be taking over the world someday. And I’m short only compared to a giant like yourself.”

Luke grunted as he began picking up the gear he’d brought out to show the kids. At six feet tall he was hardly a giant, but he definitely had a couple of inches and a bit of brawn over Charlie’s wiry five-foot-eight frame.

“You wanna go strike out with the teacher?” Luke asked, hauling a tank onto his shoulder. “I can clean up while you crash and burn.”

“Hold that thought,” Charlie said. “Looks like Henderson’s bringing us a hot blonde instead.”

Luke turned, intrigued. Not because Charlie had dubbed someone hot—he thought anyone with breasts and legs qualified—but because it was an unidentified blonde that his friend didn’t know by name.

Lucky Hollow had lots of things. Newcomers weren’t often one of them.

A little girl broke free of the group surrounding Oreo, flinging herself at Ryan Henderson’s legs. “Daddy!”

Luke’s fellow firefighter and lifelong friend scooped up his daughter and gave her a smacking kiss on both cheeks.

It was a familiar scene, and Luke absorbed it all in his peripheral vision even as most of his attention went to the unfamiliar.

Damn. Charlie hadn’t been lying about the hot blonde.

The woman walking straight toward him was all tight jeans, high heels, and confidence. And hot. Very, very hot.

Charlie muttered something admiring under his breath, and Luke’s gaze flicked to the man beside the woman. Tried to place him. Couldn’t.

Not too many guys around here wore light-purple shirts and white pants with the same easy comfort that Lucky Hollow residents wore jeans and flannel.

No doubt about it—neither was from around here. Not by a long shot.

The man was a half step behind the woman, and Luke assessed that the woman was calling the shots.

His eyes narrowed as he realized that she hadn’t once wavered in her approach.

She knew what she was after:

Him.

She got closer and Luke saw that the face matched the body. Wide blue eyes, full lips, sassy shoulder-length blond hair that was just tousled enough to make a man wonder how it had gotten that way—and to want to be the one to muss it.

Her gaze flicked over him, and Charlie whistled and muttered under his breath. “She just checked you out, man.”

She had indeed, but Luke was far from flattered. It hadn’t been the assessment of a woman checking out a man so much as a predator evaluating its prey.