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

“He doesn’t—damn it. Charlie!” Luke bellowed, knowing his friend was on kitchen duty.

Charlie’s red head poked out of the kitchen door. “?’Sup?”

“Why are you trying to get out of the kissing booth? This seems exactly like one of your creepy fantasies.”

“Once upon a time, yes.”

“Once upon what time, like yesterday?” Luke asked his playboy friend incredulously. “What’s your deal?”

“He’s boinking the kindergarten teacher,” Ryan said, pulling a protein bar out of his back pocket and tearing the wrapper with his teeth.

“Third grade,” Charlie corrected, disappearing into the kitchen once more.

Ryan lifted a shoulder. “Guess he’s out.”

“You’re the only single firefighter,” Vicky said sympathetically. “Under fifty,” she added quickly, lest Luke try to submit Ivan Gash as a candidate, which Luke wouldn’t because Ivan chronically smelled like onion, and Luke wouldn’t wish that kissing situation on anyone.

“So bug the PD.”

“Firefighters are hotter,” Vicky whined, sounding closer to seventeen than her actual age of sixty-something.

Ryan wandered over, leaning against the back of the fire truck as he nodded. “We are. Everyone knows this.”

Luke finally got to the end of the hose and, finding no issues, began to wind it back up again. “No way,” he told Vicky. “Final answer.”

“Luke Elliott, don’t make me call your mother.”

He winced. It wasn’t an idle threat. He’d spoken with his mother just yesterday, and she’d launched into a fifteen-minute description of an article she’d read about how men’s reproductive systems age just like women’s and if he was going to give her grandchildren, he’d better get on it.

He’d claimed a fire emergency before she could describe what or whom exactly he was supposed to get on.

There hadn’t been a fire, but he didn’t feel even remotely guilty about the lie.

“Hello? Am I interrupting?”

Luke froze at the familiar voice. One he hadn’t heard in three days. Not since he’d heard it whispering and moaning against his lips. The very memory of the kiss made his entire body come to life, but that wasn’t even the part that pissed him off. What pissed him off was that he’d missed her—missed the way she provoked him and made him feel the most alive he had in years. He missed the ways she could coax a smile from him, the way she’d befriended his damn cat….

“Jordan!” Vicky said, beckonin

g the younger woman for what Luke knew would be an air kiss, heavy side of floral perfume. “Don’t you just look pretty as a picture. I haven’t been able to wear sexy shoes like that since I got my first bunion.”

Jordan made a wise, noncommittal murmur of acknowledgment as she accepted her hug.

Vicky’s warm welcome of Jordan, Luke could see. The woman had a knack for taking anyone and anything under her wing.

What Luke absolutely did not expect was for Ryan to wrap an arm around Jordan’s neck, planting a brotherly kiss on the side of her head. “Jordo. Good to see you again. The drill I gave you do the trick on that bathroom shelf, or you want me to swing by after work, take a look?”

Jordo?

And exactly when had they been discussing Jordo’s bathroom shelves?

“No, it worked great!” she said, beaming up at Ryan as though they were old friends. “Thanks so much. That’s actually why I’m here—I was passing by, realized I had the drill in my trunk, and thought I’d see if you were here so I could give it back.”

What.

The.

Hell.