One Hot Summer (11 page)

He opened and closed his mouth, then straightened. His lips quirked into a grimace. With a scrape of his chair legs over the linoleum floor, he stood. “Barbara? Hold on a sec.” He waited until the waitress had turned back to face them. “My apologies to the cooks and to you, but Ms. Lane and I need to cancel both our orders.” He held a twenty-dollar bill out to Barbara. “Bless her heart, but Ms. Lane forgot she's got somewhere else she needs to be.”

“No, I don't. Not until I've eaten a delicious, greasy Double Spanky Burger with extra bacon.”

Barbara looked from Micah to Remedy, then back to Micah. She tucked the twenty in her apron and nodded. “If you say so, Chief. Let me know if there's anything else I can do for y'all before you go.”

After Barbara left, Remedy kicked Micah's boot with her pump. “What the frack? Did you feel a sudden need to demonstrate your power in this town? Proof that I need you or else I don't eat? You've got about three seconds to explain before I go postal.”

He pushed his chair in and handed her purse to her. “I wasn't criticizing your diet.”

“Whatever you say, Alpha Bubba.”

“Alpha Bubba?” He shook his head. “You know what? Never mind. I don't want to know. Let's get out of here.”

“Excuse me?”

He rolled his head on his neck, oozing exasperation. Then he braced his knuckles on the table and loomed over her, his voice lowering to a harsh whisper. “I'm going to get you some food before you go postal, but the only food fit to eat on Petey's menu is the pie and the chicken salad. All I was trying to do was save you from experiencing the worst cheeseburger in Texas.”

“The worst?”

“It's legendary. Or, rather, infamous.”

She followed a vein from his wrist over his muscled forearm to his elbow, then skipped up the rest of his body to look him in the eye. “What game are you playing at?”

“I know where to find the best cheeseburger you'll ever eat, guaranteed, and since I cut your dinner short here, it's the least I can do to steer you toward burger nirvana. No game, promise.”

“From threats to promises? My little ol' head's spinning.”

He grabbed her hand and pulled her out of her seat. “We're leaving now. My sense of charity can only weather so much snippiness.”

Did everyone in this backward town do everything Micah commanded? They must, because he sure was unaccustomed to being told no. Even she was having trouble with the word, seeing as how she let him drag her from the diner, through the parking lot. When they passed her car, she planted her feet firmly on the blacktop. Wherever he planned to take her, she had enough street smarts to know she should drive herself.

“Now what's wrong with you?” he said.

“You were taking me to your truck.”

“How did you expect me to take you for burgers?”

She pulled her arm from his grip. “I'll follow you in my car.”

His features softened. “I'm not going to kidnap you.”

She dug through her purse until her fingers touched on her car keys. “Good to know.”

The harsh edge of irritation disappeared from his voice. “Remedy, I'd never harm you.”

Was that the first time he'd called her by her first name? It must have been, because the word on his lips sent a shiver over her skin.

No, she didn't believe he would harm her, and she could tell how much the idea that she might think he would genuinely bothered him, but a precedent needed to be set about her not jumping to comply with his every command. “Says the wolf.”

He sighed. “Okay, I get it. I've got two sisters, so I get it. Wait for me in your car while I go across the street and get my truck.”

“Why are you taking me to dinner? We can't breathe in each other's airspace without ticking the other one off.”

She braced herself for a snarky comeback, but his earnest expression held fast. “I've got a new plan for dealing with you. I'm going to show you why this county and the people matter. Why I'm such a hard-ass about the fire codes at the resort and why I'm willing to keep being a hard-ass indefinitely to make sure that this land and the people who call it home are safe.”

Micah Garrity, the great protector of Ravel County. “That's a relief to know.”

“What is?”

“For a crazy moment there, I thought you were calling for a truce between us.”

He swaggered a step closer and looked down at her from beneath those impossibly perfect lashes. “Why would I do that? We're only getting warmed up as enemies.”

Indeed they were. “Let me get this straight. You're taking me on this harebrained burger quest to prove that you're right and honorable and just and I should bow down prostrate at your boots just like the rest of this town?”

“Pretty much,” he said.

“At the risk of repeating myself, challenge accepted.”

There it was. Her favorite look of his. That straining attempt to keep the smile that touched his eyes from showing on his lips.
And, God, those lips …

“Why is your car all banged up? Did you get in an accident?” he said.

“It's a long story that involves pigeons and a golf cart.”

His earnestness broke, replaced by a cocky half smile that might curl a lesser woman's toes. “Sounds embarrassing.”

“For the pigeons? Very.” And maybe a little for her. Just a smidge. “I changed my mind. I'll drive with you.”
What the hay.
She wanted to spar with him more, and riding in his truck would present all kinds of opportunities. Not that she'd ever succumb to the charms of a gun-carrying, toothpick-chewing good ol' boy no matter how long his eyelashes were or how fast that cocky smile got her heart beating.

“God, help me,” he muttered, then took her hand again and led her across the street in the direction of his truck.

 

Chapter Six

He was certifiably crazy for doing this. True, Remedy had been about to eat a disgusting excuse for a cheeseburger, but so what? It wasn't like the soy filler that Petey's used in their ground beef or the mysterious origin of those plastic orange squares that Petey claimed were cheese would kill her. At least, Micah hadn't heard of any “deaths by soy” in the county.

What did he care if Remedy were to choke down a Petey's burger and learn her lesson the hard way? The better question was why he was going out of his way on a work night to play county tour guide for a stuck-up Briscoe Ranch short-timing executive. But he knew why. It was like he'd told her outside Petey's. Once she understood exactly how precious a place this county—hell, this
state
—was to the people who called it home, then maybe tempting disaster with Polynesian fire dancers during one of the state's driest summers on record wouldn't seem so appealing. Nobody wanted to be the cause of a catastrophic fire. The trick was getting rich snobs—or, rather, the people doing the rich snobs' bidding—to believe that the world beyond their stuck-in-the-air noses mattered. That's what tonight was really about. Opening Remedy's eyes to reality.

He glanced over at her, sitting in his passenger seat like it was her throne, the breeze ruffling the hem of her skirt and blowing her hair all over. She looked good in the Texas wind. She looked good in his truck, too, with her fingers strumming her bare knee in time with the country rock blaring on the speakers. The only way she could look prettier was if she had that spark of indignation in her eyes that she got when he provoked her.

And, boy howdy, he did love to provoke her. How had she put it? Ticking him off was her new favorite hobby? Yeah, that train ran both ways. His gaze settled on her legs again. He was seized by the wild urge to swing by his house, grab a pile of blankets, and take her out into the backcountry to strip her down beneath the stars and find out what those long, tanned legs looked like in the moonlight. There were certain parts of his anatomy that wanted to see her come undone in a real bad way.

He wrenched his attention back to the road beyond his headlights.

Nope.
You are not taking her to out tonight because she's pretty. That cannot be the reason.
There were plenty of attractive women all over the county who would appreciate being doted on and taken out to dinner by him, which circled him back around to the question about why he was spending his evening with the one he couldn't have.

Part of his job as fire marshal. Opening her eyes to reality.

Right.

It was a perfectly logical reason and he should feel quite satisfied with his maturity and logic.

“Why do the guys singing these country songs go on and on about girls gyrating and shimmying all the time? And what kind of sexist pig coined the term
moneymaker
? Like we're all strippers in training or something? Before I moved here, I had this image in my head that the men in Texas would be walking around with wallets loaded with cash, waiting for a girl with ass-shaking skills to shimmy by so they could throw money at her. I figured that's why the women of Texas carry such big purses. To hold all that cash. Imagine my disappointment that I haven't had a single dollar thrown my way since I moved here. I'm not sure what that says about the quality of my moneymaker. Maybe I'm not shaking it hard enough.”

Ah, hell, who was he kidding? Remedy had been right to call him a wolf. He felt pretty damn wolflike at the moment. One hundred percent carnivore. And that had nothing to do with his job or protecting Ravel County. One look, one word, from her made him simultaneously want to smile like an infatuated fool and throw up his hands in frustration.

“Don't kill the messenger here,” he said, “but I think that term is referring to the idea that girls who can shake their moneymakers stand a good chance of landing a rich sugar daddy to marry.”

“That's disgusting.”

Yes, it really was. “In your business, I bet you see that all the time. I guarantee that every richie rich wedding you've planned features a bride who knows how to work her moneymaker and a husband whose bank account is loaded.”

She shifted in her seat to study him. “Are you saying that millionaires aren't capable of pledging deep, abiding love to each other in marriage?” It would have been a sentimental question if her words hadn't been dripping with sarcasm.

He turned off the highway and onto Old Route 47, a dark, two-lane byway that cut the corner of the two main highways at the edge of Ravel County lined with nothing but tired ranches and Hog Heaven, their final destination.

“I don't doubt that there's a little room left in their gold-plated hearts for deep, abiding love,” he said. “But I'm pretty sure the love part doesn't happen until the requisite ass shaking and money throwing have occurred.”

She tapped her chin, a sly smile spreading on her lips that made it hard for him to keep his eyes on the road. “What do they call someone who's prejudiced against wealth?”

She was talking about him, of course—and she wasn't far off. “No idea.”

“Someone who hates technology is a Luddite. A man who's prejudiced against women is a misogynist. And a person who hates people is a misanthrope.” She smoothed her hand over his shirtsleeve, following the curve of his triceps and sending a shot of electricity right to his core. “So what do they call people like you?” she mused.

“A realist?”

She snapped her fingers. “I know! A liberal Democrat.”

Like hell he was. “You'd better watch your mouth, California.”

She threw her head back and laughed at her own joke. “I think I love Texas.” Then, in a paltry imitation of a twangy accent, she added, “Y'all are so easy to tease.”

Micah spun the volume dial on his sound system, cranking the music up. Any more teasing from her and he was liable to pull over to the side of the road and wipe that grin off her face with a kiss.

He strangled the steering wheel with his grip.
A kiss? Really, man?
Not cool. And definitely not professional. He'd never been so grateful to see Hog Heaven's neon lights in the distance.

He cleared his throat. “We're here. Burger nirvana, better known as Hog Heaven.”

The roadside bar wasn't much to look at. A low-ceilinged one-story building with wood siding and a neon pig wearing a halo sticking up from an ancient wood shingle roof. Smokers spilled out around the front door in packs. The country rock blared from the windows and doors, loud and raw as though from a live band. The gravel parking lot was jammed with cars and trucks and motorcycles to the point that most new arrivals looked to be parking on the street. Just another night in hill country.

Remedy ducked her head and peered up at the neon pig as they passed it in search of a parking spot. “Oh my God, that name. Hog Heaven. I love it. But it doesn't explain why you're bringing me to a roadside diner that specializes in pork to eat hamburgers.”

He pulled to a stop past the last parked vehicle on the side of the road. “Because they put ground, raw bacon right into their burger meat.” And it was the best damn thing Micah had probably ever eaten in his entire life.

The bar was just as crowded inside as the parking situation suggested. The dark, smoky air did indeed smell like hog heaven, a result of the wall-to-wall crowd and the briskets and chickens and pork they smoked every day, along with the burgers they were cranking out from the open kitchen to the left of the bar. He'd been right about there being a live band playing, too.

Remedy's eyes lit up as she gave the place a once-over. “There's sawdust. Cool. And a dance floor. I hope you brought some small bills, because I'm seeing a lot of moneymakers being shaken out there.”

“You gonna shake yours tonight? I've heard you could use a little practice.”
Damn it all to hell.
What had made him say something so stupid, because what if she took him up on that challenge?