The 48 Hour Hookup (Chase Brothers) (2 page)

Chapter Two

Claire had barely covered the misstep of starting to give him her real name, but Liam had it figured out now. Her voice had caught his attention, but it was the three freckles that made a little triangle on her temple that gave it away. He’d always thought her attractive, but out here in the wilderness, fresh-faced and glowing from the cold, she was something else.

Something he really needed to avoid. Because the only thing worse than have a totaled truck would be word getting out that the Hot HVAC Guy had hooked up with New York City’s infamous Runaway Bride. Thank goodness for being in the middle of nowhere. As long as this Monk guy couldn’t put two and two together, Liam’s reprieve from infamy might be preserved.

He doubted he had to worry about Claire. She’d probably avoided media about as much as he had, but even if she recognized him, she’d be the last one to point fingers. He sure wasn’t going to say anything.

He realized he was staring at her when she cleared her throat. “Sorry,” he said. “Just…my truck.” Flimsy excuse, but better than telling her he knew who she was.

Genuine remorse filled her eyes—unless that was just a made-for-television response they taught in broadcasting school—and a dull ache gnawed at him. She’d been on the air as recently as a week ago. If she was out there dodging the public eye, he related a little too well. Not that they’d commiserate over that fact, because he was keeping his ability to do so to himself.

“We should probably move the tree,” she said.

He eyed the thing, a bulky, snow-soaked beast of a conifer, and doubted he’d be able to roll it off the truck, let alone
move
it. But he wasn’t going to leave it there to give that Monk dude any reason to upcharge him. “Okay,” he said. “Let me just take some pictures.” She’d said she’d cover it, but he didn’t want to take any chances. If he was going to be stuck footing the bill, he needed more than a ridiculous story to tell his insurance company, and no doubt her insurer would be just as interested in pictures as his.

She stood well to the side while he took a dozen photos. Satisfied he’d preserved the evidence, he assessed the tree. “What were you going to do with it? Cut it up for firewood?”

She gaped, as if he’d said the worst thing in the world. “It’s my
Christmas
tree.”

“Unless your tree is going in Times Square,” he said dryly, “I’d say it’s a bit much.”

She didn’t respond, much less back down from the idea of moving the tree inside, not that he expected her to. He tossed his phone on the front seat of his truck and grabbed a pair of work gloves. The middle of the tree had crunched his truck, which left the tree trunk on the ground and the top half hanging over the road.

He hadn’t any idea if Claire planned to help him, but the tree needed to move. He went to the trunk and lifted, and she moved in beside him. It was heavy, but it budged, so that was something, particularly for a snow-soaked twenty-five-foot spruce. Together, they half-rolled, half dragged it off his truck. It hit the ground with a thump. When he looked back at his hood, he immediately wished he hadn’t.

“I’m really sorry,” Claire said again. “I’ll pay for it.”

He ignored that, mainly because he wasn’t sure the whole thing was completely her fault, and picked up the cut end of the trunk. The tree had to weigh a couple hundred pounds, but he found it wasn’t so hard to drag over ice, and it became a lot easier when she grabbed a branch near the middle and helped. The process was slow, and by the time they crossed the hundred feet to the lodge, he was a lot less amused by the steps spanning the distance from the ground to the porch.

Before he could say a word, a 1950s-era tow truck arrived, horn blaring. Liam and Claire exchanged glances—hers apologetic, his he couldn’t imagine—and crossed the clearing in time for Liam to hear the man he assumed to be Monk mutter, “Ain’t never seen one of these before.”

“One of these trucks?” Liam almost fell over. Was
that
what he hadn’t seen before? The guy had a garage. Or at least a tow truck. Sort of. Liam eyed the heap of junk, his hopes of ever again seeing his own truck in one piece diminishing by the second. “It’s a
Chevy
.”

“It’s one of those hi-breds,” Monk said. “Says right there on the side.”

“Thanks for coming,” Claire said, giving Liam a warning look. He wasn’t sure why, considering she’d wrecked his truck and this guy was about to attach it to a bucket of rust and haul it off, having never
seen one
before.

“Glad to, ma’am,” Monk said. “Before I hook up, you know there’s an extra fee for coming up this mountain, dontcha?”

“I understand,” she said. “I’ll pay whatever it takes.”

Liam cut her a sharp glance. No wonder she had a problem with people overcharging her. If this was typical, she practically handed them a blank check. And the
last
person who needed a blank check was the guy who’d never seen a truck like his. “Are you sure you can fix it?” Liam asked.

“Might have to order some parts,” Monk said, already under Liam’s truck, presumably looking for a place to hook in. “We’ll get it.”

“I bet,” Liam muttered. To Claire, he said, “I’ll be right back. I need to call my office.”

She pointed to a spot several yards away. “The best cell reception is over there, but be careful. There’s a bit of a drop, and the snow tends to drift, making it hard to see the edge.”

He watched her for a moment, expecting a punch line, but she didn’t crack a smile.

Shaking his head—he needed hazard pay for this job—he snagged his phone from his truck and walked away from her and the seventy-if-he-was-a-day mechanic. He was shocked to find he actually had reception. To avoid having to explain everything from the beginning to whoever answered the phone, he called Sawyer instead of the office.

“How’s it going?” Sawyer answered.

“A tree fell on my truck.”

Silence dissolved into laughter. Finally, Sawyer managed to include some words with that chortling. “You’re kidding.”

Because he sounded amused. Sure. “No, I am not.”

To his credit, Sawyer almost immediately stopped laughing. “Are you okay?”

“Not a scratch, but some guy named Monk is about to haul away my truck, and he’s never seen a hybrid before.”

“Oh.” Sawyer sounded funny. It took a moment for Liam to realize he was laughing. Again.

“I’ll be stuck here a few days.” He hoped the town was big enough to have a rental car place, or that Claire would be willing to take him to the nearest one, because he was otherwise out of options. Unless she wanted to drive him back and forth, but sharing a twice-daily ride up and down that mountain road felt a bit intimate. And on top of that, he’d spend his waking hours with her in the lodge.

The enormous lodge without heat.

Perfect.

Unless maybe she was staying in town, but he had a feeling if
the
Claire Stevens had found her way to a remote mountain lodge, she wouldn’t be advertising her presence by checking into a local B&B, and the waft of smoke coming from the massive stone chimney seemed to confirm as much.

“I’ll let everyone know,” Sawyer said. “How’s the client?”

Liam glanced back at Claire, who had her back to him. “She’s Claire Stevens.”

“Who’s that?”

Liam almost laughed. Sawyer must be well and truly domesticated now that he’d gone and fallen in love if the once-notorious playboy didn’t immediately recognize the name of a gorgeous single woman from the city. “The Runaway Bride. The one from the local news.”

“Ah, hell.” Sawyer sounded on the verge of laughter. “That’s amazing. Does she know you’re Hot HVAC Guy?”

“Hilarious,” Liam said. But Sawyer probably couldn’t hear him, because Sawyer had muffled the phone and was telling someone else, “A tree fell on his truck, and now he’s stuck in the mountains with the Runaway Bride.” After a moment he added, “Yeah, that one. You can’t make this shit up.”

Liam wholeheartedly agreed with that point, not that Sawyer would have heard him if Liam had said it aloud. Sawyer was too busy relaying the rest of the story to someone—presumably their brother Ethan, because he made so many job references that anyone else wouldn’t have a clue, and he included enough profanity in the re-telling that Liam knew he wasn’t talking to their parents.

Liam used the time to check out the view. From his vantage point, he could see the drop Claire mentioned. Not terribly steep, and there was a clearing beyond, but unfortunately, it didn’t appear to be a trail. His feet itched to be strapped to a snowboard. Being stuck without transportation meant not taking advantage of the slopes at any of the resorts for which the town was built.

“Ethan wants to know if you need a ride home,” Sawyer finally said, snapping Liam out of his daze. Cutting a path through fresh powder was about as wicked as it got, but only until you hit a stump or a rock.

“And you aren’t wondering the same thing?” Liam asked.

“Hell no, I’m not,” Sawyer said. “This is gold. Besides, you haven’t finished the estimate yet, have you?”

Liam glanced at the massive lodge. Sawyer was an idiot. He’d only arrived on site a few minutes ago. “Not quite,” he said humorlessly. “It’ll be a couple days, at least.”

“I think you might owe me one, little brother.”

“How’s that?” Liam asked, immediately suspicious. He needed normal relatives. Probably too late for that.

“Sounds like you’ve finally found a woman you can hold onto.”

“The Runaway Bride?” Just what Liam needed. A woman with built-in complications.

“Think about it,” Sawyer said. “You’re stuck there in a resort town—”

“I am.” He realized he was methodically flattening a circle of snow, one footfall at a time. He loved fresh clean powder. It wasn’t even a thing where he was from. Five minutes after the snow fell in New York City, it was filthy, stomped into streets, and tossed dirt-side up by the plows. “She isn’t.”

“She’s not leaving without you. At least not for any period of time. Hook up with her; convince her to go out with you. I dare you.”

Liam took a measured breath of clean, cold mountain air. He’d been in so-called relationships before, but he hadn’t found them worth the hype. His life wasn’t a series of one-night-stands like Sawyer’s had been before he met his wife, but there was entirely too much drama involved in relationships for his taste. His last girlfriend had lost her shit because he’d moved her handbag from the sofa to the floor so he could sit, and apparently a two-thousand-dollar handbag didn’t belong on the floor.
Apparently
he should have built a shrine to the thing instead. At any rate, keeping it casual had become a thing for him. He’d hooked up a few times, but even that was low key. That was how he preferred to live his life. Laid back.

Of course, keeping things casual was a problem. Because he was terrible at casual. Actually, he was terrible at small talk, hence terrible at picking up women.

“Remember that time”—Sawyer said as if on cue, laughing—“you told that woman who came up to you asking if you were the hot one that you were actually cold and she offered to warm you up and you said you had a coat in the truck? You were so clueless.”

Liam sighed. This again.

Like Sawyer loved to remind him, he had absolutely no game whatsoever. He’d go to a bar or a dance club and inevitably, he’d say something stupid or unintentionally sketchy—because he sucked at small talk even more than he did dating—and there would be no second hook-up, if he’d even managed to make it to a first hook-up before that point.

Granted, now he had a captive audience who might be forced to move past the creepy small-talk stage with him. But getting involved with New York City’s twice-famed Runway Bride was not the way to avoid drama for any man. When you were Hot HVAC Guy, it would be disastrous.

Sawyer laughed harder. “And that time that one woman came up to you and wanted a selfie, and you said you needed a few more drinks before you could talk to her, and she
cried
?”

Liam rolled his eyes, but mostly he felt bad, as he did every time he thought of that poor girl. “I just meant I needed to take the edge off. It had nothing to do with her.”

“I don’t think she got that. Because, again, she
cried
.”

“Is there a point to this?” Liam asked, irritated.

“Come on, man,” Sawyer said. “Here’s your chance to prove you’ve got some game after all.”

“With a client,” he said evenly. “Who is more or less stuck here. Hooking up with someone who doesn’t have any other options isn’t resounding proof of
game
.”

“Okay, look at it this way,” Sawyer said, a bit too gleefully for, well, anyone. “You can’t screw this one up.”

“Yes, I can. I can screw it up by offending a client. One I’ll have to face every day until this job is done.”
One with a chainsaw
, he thought but didn’t mention. Not that he thought she’d go after him with it. It was just the principle.

“Dude. You’re stuck. You can learn the art of speaking to a woman with a guarantee she won’t flee.”

Liam closed his eyes and counted to eleven. He was
not
having this conversation. “She’s the Runaway Bride. She can flee.”

“And
you’re
Hot HVAC Guy,” Sawyer shot back. “She won’t.”

“I’m not going to screw her,” Liam said through his teeth. “On or off the estimate, so forget it.” He kind of hated that Sawyer was right. Having spent his entire existence as the youngest of a rowdy band of brothers, he had no problem keeping up with the never-ending verbal sparring matches. But that talent didn’t extend to strangers he might potentially date.

“No one ever said you had to fuck her,” Sawyer said. “Just make yourself irresistible to her. Get her to agree to go out with you within forty-eight hours—something after the job. Prove it can be done.”

“I have every intention of not being an ass. You don’t need to challenge me to that fact.”

Something Sawyer apparently missed, because he immediately replied with, “You get her to go out with you, and I’ll pay the deductible to get your truck fixed. If she doesn’t, you buy the first round of drinks every week for a year.”