Rescued (A McKenzie Ridge Novel Book 1) (3 page)

***

McKenzie Ridge was full of rustic mountain charm. Being in the Pacific Northwest, it appealed to tourists all year, with its ever-changing seasons, and activities that surrounded their town. Main Street rested in the heart of town, both sides flanked with a variety of shops and eateries. Baker’s sat on the edge of town, on the west side of Main Street, opposite the hospital that resided to the east.

Jed Baker, third generation owner, was about the best baker there was, especially when it came to his morning delectable. Baker’s wasn’t small, nor big, with its eclectic design. It was comfortable, and accommodated its patrons reasonably as the morning hot spot amongst locals and even a few foodie tourists who saw him on one of those travel food network shows. It was a great place to meet…busy, lots of people, not a date!

Dawson arrived first and found he was surprisingly nervous; getting her here was a contest he almost lost. Now how did he keep her here? He wasn’t sure what they were doing other than,
not dating
, at this point. He wasn’t even entirely sure why this was so important to him. What was it about Sam that had him so enamored, ready to break all of his own rules? He was anxious to find out.

Not sure what she took in her coffee, he ordered her a tall black and had all the add-ins at the table so she could dress it up herself. He figured an apple fritter was a safe bet since it was her idea, and because there wasn’t a person around that didn’t love those fresh morning fritters. Hoping his charm was enough to entice her to let her guard down, he was only sure of one thing, and that was by noon the whole town would know they were at Baker’s,
together
. Small town living at its best.

Sam had sworn off men her last year of college, and with good reason. Men were a liability, they weren’t reliable, good for only a quick romp, some quicker than others, and no guarantee for that happy ending. Her problem was her lady parts disagreed with her every time she saw Dawson Tayler’s larger than life frame, emerald green eyes, dark hair, and heaven sent physique.

He was quiet, reserved even, except with her. He was gentle and kind, maybe a little cocky at times, but in an endearing, maybe a tad bit, charming way. Dawson Tayler could get a girl pregnant just looking at her. He was the epitome of sex, and anything with a pulse could see it. The look he had in his eyes every time she looked at him sent a shiver up her spine and a zing to her core.

She often wondered what a night in the sack with Captain Sexy Pants would be like, and then reality hit her like an ice cold shower. He was tempting, oh so tempting. There was a story there, a tall, sexy story that made her throb in all the right places. Or maybe they were the wrong places and she was just a horny old maid. She could never go out with him, he was far too dangerous, which is why this wasn’t a “date.”

He watched Sam pull into a parking space across the parking lot, where she sat for several minutes, oh to be a fly on that dash. As she got out she paused, looked up, and shook her head as if reconsidering her decision to be there. Dawson smiled as she shook it off and gave herself what looked like a pep talk,
that’s right, go get’em tiger
. It took her several minutes to find her way into Baker’s.

She was easy on the eyes and made him sweat with one look, even in those scrubs she was still wearing, but there was more there. Temptation was getting the best of him; he had to figure out what it was about this little sex kitten that made him want her for more than a midnight run of naked Olympics. He knew she would push all the right buttons in bed, keeping him warm, while he kept her satisfied—he knew he was a scholar in the sack.

He imagined her sprawled across his sheets, crying out from his touch, just about every night in his dreams. They would please each other in bed, no doubt, but he wanted to please her in other ways too. He didn’t know why, and he didn’t like it. He was better off alone, it made more sense that way, much safer.

His temptress was getting the better of him. For some reason he was willing to take risks he had sworn off a decade ago. He needed to know why she invaded his sleep, confused his thoughts, and what made her Sam…
his
Sam.

***

“Hey, Tayler,” she said, taking the bench across the booth from him.

“I ordered your coffee and fritter,” he proudly proclaimed, hoping that impressed her.

“What if I don’t like coffee and fritters?” She questioned with a coy smile, challenging him, reluctant to make this easy for him.

“Then you probably shouldn’t have said, ‘
Baker’s, coffee and fritters
’ earlier.” Amused, he quoted her words in a high-pitched retort, and an amused, you aren’t fooling anyone look.

“Touché, Tayler. Touché. And I don’t sound like that,” she said annoyed by his mocking. She did not sound like the stuffy snob he portrayed.

“You kind of do.” He winked, busying himself with a packet of sugar for his coffee. “I didn’t add anything to the coffee, but grabbed a little of everything.”

“Oh I like it just like this; tall, bold, and hot.” Just as she said it, she wish she could call it back, she just offered that one up to him on a silver platter.

“Are you still talking about the coffee, or…” He left the
or
open-ended, he would let her fill in the blank, and enjoy watching her squirm as she filled it in.

“Nice try. So let’s cut the crap. Why breakfast?” Her quick change in direction didn’t help her case. This was a one-time deal, and she wanted to make that clear.

“Breakfast was your idea, I wanted dinner.”

“Okay, why this?” She flailed her arms around in a circle indicating
this
meant
them.

“Why not? We’re friends. What’s wrong with friends getting together for a bite to eat and getting to know each other better? We’ve worked together for a long time and know nothing about each other. Maybe I want to know Sam, the girl in the bakery, as well as Sam the life-saving nurse.” He made his point, delivering it with innocence. Friends…that’s all this was.

“Interesting. We can play it that way. So, where are you from, what brought you to McKenzie Ridge to play super, hunky hero that saves lives?” She bit her tongue, a second too late, she really needed to quit offering him her thoughts so easily—
hunky?
Really? Shoot me now, she thought.

“Super hunky? Okay, I can work with that. Well, about 10 years ago my entire family died in a plane crash. I was the only one left, so I
left
. I was supposed to be on that plane.” He paused briefly, questioning how much was too much, before continuing. “I traveled a bit, but nothing felt like home except McKenzie Ridge. I grew up coming to this area. My uncle had a cabin not far from here. He would bring in all the cousins and we would spend a few weeks together every summer,” Dawson shared in a less than tactful way, not intentionally delivering a shocking admission.

“I had no idea, Dawson, I’m sorry. That must’ve been awful. What am I saying, of course it was awful. I didn’t mean to…” She was shocked and at a loss for words, which didn’t happen often to her.

“Don’t worry about it, you couldn’t have known, and it was a long time ago. Isn’t this why we’re here? To get to know each other? Your turn…spill it.” He wasn’t sure why he was sharing this, but the words just fell out displaying his past, like clothes on the line.

“Spill it? Oh, yes, well, I grew up kind of all over, literally. My dad left before I was one, and my mom doesn’t do single or broke, so we followed several
stepdads
around before landing here. That’s when I met Evie and Granny Lou; they became my family. The rest is history.” Simple and to the point, that was the sweet and short of it, and all she felt like sharing. It’s not exactly a warm and fuzzy story in its entirety.

“What about your mom?” Confused by her admission, he briefly paused before questioning the obvious; there wasn’t anyone else that he knew of, living in the Taylor or Shaw household. Where was the rest of her family?

“What about her? She’s out there somewhere married or chasing—gotta be around husband nine or ten…not sure which.” She was good at saying that with a straight face now, years of practice under her belt, and she had finally convinced herself that it didn’t bother her. “Once we were here she trusted Gran, so she would ‘go on trips’, and I would stay with Gran and Evie. Eventually her
trips
became longer and more often, so she gave Gran guardianship and that was that.”

“So she just left you?” Wincing at his own question, natural curiosity reared its head and got ahead of him. He didn’t mean to ask such a pointed question, but he was genuinely shocked by her story. How does a mother just leave?

“Well, no, yes, I don’t know, I guess. It was better that way. I got Gran and Ev, and got to go to the same school every year, have roots, and it worked out for me.” She honestly felt that way, they were family, more so than her mother or the countless stepdads ever were. “I couldn’t imagine how my life would have turned out if I’d stayed with her, chasing man after man—what kind of life is that for a kid? Who even does that, besides
Bette Morrison
, serial bride and man chaser.”

“Wow, that’s…I don’t even know what that is. Let’s move on to something else. What do you like to do when you aren’t at the hospital, playing super seductive nurse, and saving lives?”

That earned him a spirited laugh, one that was deep and spontaneous, he liked that, and hoped he saw more of
that
Sam. The morning continued on as they shared simplicities in a light, non-date manner, like what their hobbies were, favorite foods, and several other nonsensical things that ended as a very nice and enjoyable breakfast together.

***

Granny Lou spreads gossip like wildfire, but only the good kind, if you asked her. Mornings at Baker’s were like a game of telephone. By the time the morning rush ended, juicy gossip got a whole lot juicier…steamy even. She knew a couple when she saw it and Sam and Dawson were a mighty handsome one. They would make beautiful babies, in her wise, old, never wrong opinion.

Spunk, honesty, and say it how it is, Granny Lou is a real kick in the pants. The old lady lacked a filter, but at least she was always honest. If you didn’t like what you heard, it was probably because you needed to do some soul searching. Wisdom spewed as fluidly as the sarcasm. There wasn’t a person around who didn’t love this lady. Her ears occasionally strayed into other people’s business, and she was known to share stories…gossip, but her heart was always in the right place. Gardening, horses, match making, and saving lost souls were her hobbies.

Granny Lou lost her husband 20 years ago and never remarried; she didn’t even date really. She believed in only one true love and she already had that. Tragedy followed again just a few short years later, when her only son and daughter-in-law were lost in a tragic accident. As the only living relative, willing and able, Gran took in her granddaughter, Everly, and they saved each other.

Everly was part of a package deal, her best friend, Sam, came with her…most of the time. Sam’s mother was more interested in men than her own daughter, leaving at any given moment to chase her true love—money. Granny loved that child like her own, and preferred to have her around. She didn’t trust the life her mama was providing, so there they were, a family.

Dawson and Sam hadn’t even seen her when she stopped in for a caffeine fix, to chase the doughy, sugar fix she ordered to go, but Granny sure saw them, happy with what she was seeing. Sam was going to be harder to sell, but Lou saw something brewing, whether the two of them wanted it or not. Fate never got it wrong, and neither did Louise Shaw.

She just needed to draw it out for them, give them a road map of sorts, if necessary. She didn’t know Dawson’s story, nobody did really, but she knew Sam’s, and her gut told her Dawson was a good boy with a lost soul…nothing a little love couldn’t fix. This was going to be her biggest triumph yet, and she was already patting herself on the back and high-fiving herself.

That was the benefit and burden of living in a small town—everyone knows everyone, and
everyone
knows
everything.
It was a foregone conclusion, half the town was already buzzing about Taylor and Tayler. Bets were probably waging on the unlikely twosome, too.

***

As expected, Taylor and Tayler were the main topic of conversation around the hospital and at the House. Both found themselves defending their new routine morning breakfasts as just that, two people that need to eat before ending their day and starting over. The gang at the House was a little less forgiving, taking every opportunity they could to rub in the fact that Dawson was dating.

“Seriously bro, you guys have been at Baker’s every morning for weeks. That’s dating. Getting any
perks
? I bet she’s full of…” Colton started the ribbing; he
was
a relationship guy, or wanted to be, anyway.

“Shut it, Sparks, they aren’t dates. You have breakfast
and
dinner with Blake here all the time, you two dating, man?” Dawson knew he was being overly sensitive, but protecting whatever it was he had with Sam felt instinctive; it was off limits, even to the people that know them best. “Do you get burns from his scruff? I bet you like a good beard burn.”

”Go to hell, Tayler, this is between you and Sparks, besides, he’s not my type.” Blake Cooper could take a joke, dish a few good ones himself, but giving beard burns to Sparks wasn’t funny. He’d rather it be a five-foot nothin’ spit fire, but it just wasn’t in the cards, for now.

“What do you mean, I’m not your type?” Sparks shot back. “Have you seen alllll this? You wish I played for the same team.”

“Neither of you is worth a hissy fit, get over yourselves.” Jessie was a good sport, but boy banter annoyed the crap out of her, and this was a
shut the eff up
moment. Sometimes she was better at being one of the guys, than the guys, which was her way of surviving in a man’s trade, all five feet three inches of her. “If Tayler says they aren’t dating, then they aren’t dating. Some people are just casual that way, friends with
benefits
, if ya know what I mean.”

“Of course you had to go there; thought you were offering support from the female regime. Guess you left all your estrogen at home?” Appreciating her input, crass as it was, crap from Jessie was a compliment, and Dawson welcomed it.

“Suck it, Dawson, like seriously hard.” A classic Jessie Clarke response—vulgar.

“Spoken like a true lady. Look, Daws, it’s no one’s business what you are doing, she’s a nice girl. Who wouldn’t get
buns
every morning if they could? ”

“And there it is…I expected more from you, Morgan. And, its fritters. We eat fritters.”

“Alright, lay off guys. You are all just jealous that Tayler has someone to have breakfast with and none of you do,” Carigan interjected, always kind, always level headed, although around the same age. Carigan O’Reilly was the
mother
of the bunch, always making sure everyone was okay. “Daws, I do want to point out as your partner, and the person you spend most of your time with, that you do seem to be a lot happier these days. I hear she’s getting the same crap over at the ER, and survey says she has been smiling non-stop for weeks now. Non-dating looks good on you.”

“Thanks for having my back, O’Reilly. So I make her smile? Huh, interesting.”

Dawson could always count on Carigan to have his back, that’s why they worked so well together, they watched out for each other, understood each other. He knew the gang was just giving him crap, they were his family, and that’s what families do. He would partake if it were any of them, but for some reason he felt Sam was off limits to them. They weren’t dating, but they certainly were more than just colleagues, something about that was both exciting and frightening.

***

It had been several weeks of mornings at Baker’s, it wasn’t even a question anymore, just a
see you there
standing arrangement. They even found themselves there together, on a couple days off, not breaking routine. He was really enjoying Sam, getting to know her, spending time with her, it was like they were old friends, rather than new friends. He didn’t know what this was, where it was going, but he really liked it, even if it was kind of like dating.