“Would help if he wasn’t such a prick.”
Savannah laughed, and the load on her shoulders lifted.
Jamison’s next throw went wild, and Ian lunged left. The leather slapped his palm just a foot from the cruiser’s rear window. Savannah’s breath caught.
“Whoa,” Ian said with a grin. “That was a close one.”
He was quick, agile, athletic. And damn, that smile of his, one she didn’t get to see often enough, was so sexy.
“Okay,” Savannah said. “I think that’s enough for today. My nerves are fried.”
While Jamison complained and danced in the street, begging Ian for just one more grounder, Ian asked Savannah, “What’s your ex so afraid of?”
“Losing control.”
“Hasn’t he already lost it?”
Savannah cut a look at the patrol car. “Does that look like freedom to you?”
Ian studied the car for a long, quiet moment. “My mom always told me you can’t control what others do; you can only control how you react to it.” He tossed the ball a foot in the air and caught it as Jamison ran toward them. “Why do you stay?”
“Sometimes there’s too much power holding you down to have control over how you react.”
“That’s just flat-out wrong.” A slow, sultry smile lifted his lips and heated his eyes. “But I’m feeling damn lucky you’re staying put next door.”
He held her gaze, thoughts churning behind his eyes. If they were anything like the ones rolling through her own head, the two of them should erupt in a fireball of spontaneous combustion. Savannah hadn’t had thoughts like this in years. The raw power of them made her shaky.
Luckily, Jamison ran up to them, breaking the tense spell. His face was flushed, eyes sparkling, grinning ear to ear. It was the happiest Savannah had seen him in months.
He looked from Ian to Savannah, vibrating with excitement. “Can we paint now?”
6
Everly scanned the dingy office as Tim Baulder read over her résumé. She didn’t expect to find anything labeled “Terrorist Ledger” lying around, but…hell, criminals were notoriously stupid.
The space reflected the man so perfectly, Baulder could have melted into the grungy fixtures. In his late fifties and forty pounds overweight, Baulder wore his dark hair, threaded with gray, too long and too limp. His skin had aged heavily during his years working outdoors, he hadn
’t shaved in about two weeks, and his sweatshirt and jeans were threadbare in places. In contrast, his navy parka with the Bishop Mining logo embroidered into the left upper chest looked brand-new.
“I’d say mines aren’t the place for a woman,” Baulder said, his gaze roaming the résumé, “but it looks like you’ve grown up in one.”
“I’ve always worked best with men. Have four brothers,” she lied.
“Your family still in Alberta?”
“They are.”
He looked up from the paper, eyes narrowed and hard. “These guys are rough around the edges. Pretty girl like you is bound to get harassed.”
“Nothing I haven’t dealt with before. Definitely not anything I can’t handle.”
“Awful sure of yourself.”
Everly gave him a smile. Baulder was not impressed. He just turned his scowl back to the paper, shook his head, and finally leaned back in his chair with a restless air, like he was beyond ready for this interview—all ten minutes of it—to be over.
“I’ve got an admin position open,” he said. “And an HR position coming up next month when the girl goes on maternity leave.”
Everly swallowed a guffaw. Movement in the hallway beyond the office drew Everly’s gaze. Lyle Bishop wandered in from the cold, pausing at the secretary’s desk to collect messages.