The 48 Hour Hookup (Chase Brothers) (3 page)

Liam could practically see his brother’s knowing, obnoxious grin. “A year is a long time to be reminded of this mess,” Liam said, “and I’m pretty sure drinks would cost double my deductible.”

“Then don’t lose.”

“I won’t,” Liam snapped.

“Good. Then it’s a bet.” Sawyer seemed oblivious to the fact that it most certainly was not a bet, but before Liam could correct him, he heard Monk’s old truck roar to life.

Which was hitched to Liam’s truck. With Liam’s gear inside.

“Gotta go.” He ended the call and took off in the direction of his truck, which had begun to inch across the packed snow behind Monk’s tow rig. What the hell? Didn’t he need to sign something? He caught up, sliding on the flattened tracks on the road, and smacked his hand against Monk’s back fender.

The old man coasted to a stop. “What, son?”

“I need my stuff. And don’t you need a signed authorization?”

“Miss Henley took care of that signature. Grab your stuff, boy. Don’t want it gettin’ dark out here on this mountain before I get your truck down. Even if it is a Chevy.”

Yeah, heaven forbid it was wrecked a second time in one day. Nevertheless, he quickly grabbed the backpack he’d packed, his small tool bag, and his snowboard, not because he thought he’d get to use it, but because he didn’t want to afford anyone else the opportunity. He had more equipment locked in the boxes in the back of the truck, but he could get that in the morning after he’d done an initial assessment. He’d rather find out exactly what he needed than unload his entire truck on the snow.

Monk paused, looking from Liam to Claire to the lodge and back again. “You folks know about the storm coming in, right? Don’t know that you should be on the mountain, isolated such as you are.”

The last thing Liam had heard was there was a chance of snow, but he’d listened to a playlist all the way up. Either the forecast had made a drastic change or the old guy was prone to exaggeration. “We’ll keep an eye on the weather,” he assured Monk. Liam nodded his thanks and cringed when Monk popped the clutch, causing the whole rig to jerk forward.

Great.

He watched the vehicles disappear around the first switchback, then turned to see
Miss Henley
watching him. Apparently she was hiding from everyone, not just him. They might be the last two people on earth who should be anywhere near one another, but that had an upside. However awkward she might find him, odds were she wouldn’t be telling that tale off that mountain. There would be no Hot HVAC Guy selfies. In fact, he was willing to bet what happened on that mountain would most certainly stay there, which meant for once he could take a chance on being someone who just went for it.

Forty-eight hours to get her to agree to a coffee date after the job was finished. Nothing to it. He didn’t need to be some kind of player for that. Just a decent person.

If Sawyer thought that was proof of something monumental, all the better to shut him up.

He was on.

Chapter Three

Claire had been almost nauseous when she found her Christmas tree lying across the hood of what appeared to be a brand new truck, and that feeling had only ramped up when she saw the man driving it. He was insanely hot, with electric green eyes and golden hair lightening to sun-bleached tips in a messy cut that belonged on a California beach. Or on a mountain. She had a feeling he could handle that snowboard and a whole lot of other stuff. Carnal stuff. She couldn’t believe the snow didn’t melt in circles under his feet.

She couldn’t believe she was…staring.

She’d made an absolute habit of not noticing men. After her third failed relationship in as many years, she’d not so much as felt a stirring of attraction to anyone—
thank you, bitterness
—which made her physical reaction to this man absurd. The pounding heart she attributed to the fact that she’d just smashed his truck, but the
stirrings
…was that even a thing?

When he hitched that green-eyed gaze to hers, something stupidly akin to desire curled through her, flinging common sense off the side of the mountain. Not just because she was a woman left alone at what amounted to an abandoned lodge with a man she’d never met. Her best friend had sworn by Fusion’s reputation, so Claire wasn’t particularly worried about flying solo with one of the owners. If he was going to go nuts on her, she’d already given him ample reason. Nope. The reason wasn’t fear. It was the attraction.

Because she was so absolutely, completely, entirely done with relationships. Casual or otherwise. Not that paying a guy to come crawl through her attic constituted a relationship, but there was no reason she should be gawking. She wasn’t going there again.

She’d walked out on two weddings. The first time, she caught her groom in a supply closet an hour before the ceremony, enthusiastically impaling a naked catering assistant. The runaway bride jokes had been mortifying, but she’d just been relieved not to marry him. She’d even laughed along, at least until her situation had earned a mention on a rival local station. That had only made her ratings go up, though, which made her boss put her out there more. Not the worst scenario for a relatively new reporter trying to navigate crowded, shark-infested waters.

Only that had backfired in a big way.

She’d dumped fiancé number two when she heard him bragging to his best man about how he was going to use her connections as a television reporter to further his own career aspirations in televised media. The joke had been on him all along—local reporters were the bottom of the televised media barrel—but that had done little to combat the sting of betrayal. And after two missed dates at the altar, however justified, the Runaway Bride nickname had stuck.

Her boss had been less impressed the second time around. She’d become a laughingstock.

By the time she was ready to get out there again, she was wary at best. Which made it particularly devastating when her most recent relationship imploded after she found out he was blogging about his experience dating—and hooking up with—New York City’s infamous Runaway Bride.

Whereas her previous two exes had avoided the press as much as she, the blogger had gone public, to the extent of scheduling a local press tour. Six months after she learned of his deception, he’d secured a book deal, promising to spill everything she’d told him in confidence, word for word, for the entire world to read. Or at least the part of the world familiar with the niche New York City publisher that had inked the deal. Everything had blown up all over again, not just with the blogger but with ex-fiancés one and two, now that the blogger had promised exclusive details to the reading public.

She. Was. So. Done.

So why she stood there, drooling over the man whose truck she’d just wrecked, she didn’t know.

“I’ll show you where you can put your things,” she said, perhaps a little too brightly. It was hard to find a suitable ice breaker when you’d just crushed a man’s truck under a tree. Judging from his expression,
help me move the tree
hadn’t been it, though that subject was bound to be revisited, since the tree occupied the majority of the porch in front of the door.

He paused, his gaze sliding along the length of the conifer. Briefly, she imagined how it might feel to have that attention focused on her, but she pushed the thought away. She’d expected someone older, more Monk-like. Liam had caught her off guard. She doubted there was a woman alive who could look at him without entertaining at least some of those thoughts. He was young, and definitely hot. He was…

She blinked him into focus.

Holy crap.

It was
him
. Hot HVAC Guy.

Slowly, the pieces clicked into place. Fusion Air…she’d thought it sounded familiar because her friend who had given her the recommendation must have mentioned them before. That might be still be the case, but she’d definitely heard of him elsewhere.

He was a freaking
meme
.

But then again, so was she.

And he was still staring.

He rested his gaze on her, those green eyes like lasers seeing way too much. “You were going to show me…something?” He glanced up at the towering lodge—actually only two floors with a huge attic—and she swallowed what felt like a rock in her throat. She’d fantasized about this man. Hell, she’d even fantasized about him in bed. And now those fantasies were stupidly real. Or at least the man was. God, did he smell like soap? Soap and forest and—

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah. I mean, I can show you inside.”

He nodded. “I’ll just leave my work gear here, since I won’t need it at the B&B,” he said as she stepped over her tree. How had she ever expected to get that thing inside by herself? She really hadn’t thought that through. She’d just come running back here, running being a thing she now did, and had blindly reached for the only thing that she thought would bring her any comfort. That Christmas tree of her childhood dreams, back in her family lodge.

Everyone was gone now. There’d be no one to see it but her, but the way her life was going, she didn’t need witnesses. She just needed that small place of comfort to crawl back to. Maybe forever.

Realistically, she knew she’d find her way back to the city. She’d loved her job before she became a joke there, but she welcomed the extended vacation. Everything back home seemed to have a bad memory attached, from her favorite coffee shop where things had blown up with the blogger to the elevator of her high-rise, where fiancé number two had fumbled his way through a proposal that had been meant for the rooftop, only a storm had blown in and thwarted his plans.

An elevator proposal
. She should have known right then.

But she hadn’t.

Trust was a mistake. Not just trusting someone else, but trusting herself. Her judgement clearly sucked.

The beauty of Dry Mountain Lodge took her breath, as it always had. It was far from its glory days, back when it had been booked to capacity during ski season, but the memories she associated with it were some of her favorites. Her uncle had owned the place, but around the holidays, it had always belonged to the entire family as well as any paying guests. Her parents brought her up for an extended ski vacation every winter until their deaths several years before.

Well, skiing for them. She wasn’t that coordinated, but she had loved the old fireplace and the crisp mountain air and the way snow seemed to settle like it had been painted just so. She’d been back one Christmas since, but the lodge had been silent. Only her and her uncle, who was by then in failing health and had closed the lodge to guests.

Until that point, she’d never seen the place without the decorations that shaped her childhood. To find her uncle sick and feeling the absence of her parents had left a dull ache in her chest. Her uncle had moved to an assisted living facility soon after, and she’d visited him there. The lodge remained empty. Even after his death, when she inherited it from him, she’d avoided returning.

Until she’d become the most blogged-about runaway bride in history.

By then, the ghost of her past was no longer empty and sad. It was more like a set of wide, welcoming arms that offered respite from being the punchline of every comedian and talking head in New York City. But still, there was a certain emptiness in the building that hollowed deep in her heart. Something she wasn’t sure she’d ever get back.

Liam had already stepped inside and stood with his head tipped back, his appreciation of the architecture apparent. “This place is pretty amazing,” he said. “Are you going to open it again to the public?”

“I’m not sure,” she admitted after she joined him, with a glance toward old reception desk built into the front corner of the main room. “It used to stay packed. There’s a resort fifteen minutes away, in town, and in addition to the downhill runs, there are miles of cross-country trails right out its back door. Do you ski?”

“Mostly snowboard,” he said. “But anything that gets me out there on the slopes is fair game. I might have to check out the resort if I finish up here before my truck is ready.”

Yeah, that. “I’m really sorry,” she said again.

“Don’t worry about it.” He shot her a crooked grin. “If nothing else, it makes for a good story. Hybrid truck crushed by tree. Full story at eleven.”

Her breath caught. Standard, stupid joke, but she was no standard listener. She was the Runaway Bride. The one from his local news. And that crack couldn’t have been a coincidence, only nothing in his expression indicated it had been anything but. She drew a somewhat shaky breath. “I’ll show you around inside,” she said. “So you can get to work.”

“I doubt I’m in any hurry,” he told her. “Your buddy Monk said there’s a storm coming. Have you heard the weather? I didn’t check on the road.”

She frowned and withdrew her phone. The day was sunny and pleasant, still evident as she stood in the threshold of the lodge, and she’d avoided her phone because the majority of messages and notifications reminded her of why she’d left the city. She thought of that enough without the visuals, so she’d focused on finding pieces of familiarity in the old place and comfort in the work of making it home again.

With the sky blue and the sun making the snow glitter, she hadn’t thought twice about the weather, but when she pulled her phone out to check, sure enough, in the last few minutes, she’d gotten a winter storm warning via text. “Winter Storm Goliath. Looks like it’ll hit the city hard—they’re calling for a couple feet to hit Manhattan. Several inches here tonight, which isn’t anything the locals can’t handle, but the ice might be a problem. Looks like we have a couple hours before it moves in.”

“Are you staying here for the duration?”

She hadn’t realized he was looking over her shoulder at her phone screen until he spoke, his voice caressing her ear and shooting shivers through her that had nothing to do with the falling temperatures. “I could use some supplies. Two hours should allow time to get to town and back, so staying here shouldn’t be a problem.”

He looked at her, and she just happened to be looking back, and only eight inches separated them. She was falling headfirst into swoon territory when he spoke. “Since you have to pick up some stuff anyway, can you give me a ride to my B&B? I have reservations through the weekend and an unexpected lack of transportation. I’d like to scope out a rental car situation, but need a few minutes before we leave to check out what’s going on with the furnace, so I’ll know what else to grab off my truck.”

She cringed inwardly, being the reason he was stranded, but didn’t sense any anger in his tone. “S-sure,” she practically stammered. One syllable, and she couldn’t get it out with a hot guy a few inches from her.
Nice
. “Just let me know when you’re ready.”

Thirty minutes later, she was beginning to think the radar had a glitch. Or a delay, if that was such a thing with the hit or miss reception on the mountain. Either way, the sunny day had turned dark and ominous, clouds low and hampering visibility even before the snow settled in. Stray flurries tickled her nose, an oddly light precursor to what was to come.

She and Liam exchanged glances when the wind kicked up in a single blast that nearly bent the evergreens in half. “Are you comfortable driving in this?” he asked.

With a tight smile that probably exuded more confidence than she felt, she said, “More so than I am staying here without supplies. I might spend the night in town, though. The lodge has been sitting vacant for years. Another couple of days won’t hurt it, and the sooner we hit the road the better.”

He nodded his agreement, lending another worried look at the sky as the wind kicked and curled around the sides of the lodge. He stowed his stuff in her truck and climbed in, surprising her by not commenting on a city girl driving in this mess. He glanced at his phone screen again and swore. “I refreshed this, and it looks the same, which means it’s not updating. I’m guessing we have a fast-moving storm and outdated radar.”

“Nice combination,” she said tersely. Snow smacked the windshield in the growing fervor, and she wasn’t sure if the flakes were blown out of the trees or part of the upcoming storm. She hesitated in against a gust of wind, then eased ahead.

Two twists of the road later, through thwacking wipers, a burst of green interrupted the gray icy road. She hit the brakes, steering through a brief loss of traction, and stopped, nosed up to a tree.

Lying across the path, completely blocking it.

She and Liam were stuck. Together.

Freaking perfect.