So maybe she’d imagined her little utopian fantasy of him checking her out again. He seemed all business.
“Get out!”
He ripped open her door, his old, threadbare navy-blue T-shirt plastered to those cattle grate abs that she’d dug her nails into last night, pure farm-fed muscles. Jeezus, her memories were assaulting her to the point that she couldn’t think coherently while he barked at her like a drill sergeant, a 180 from his quiet brooding last night.
He glanced back at his farm. Then her.
“We can’t make it to the storm cellar in time!” He unclipped her belt. Ripped it over her chest. Hauled her out like she was a hay bale and he was about to toss her.
His broad, warm hands gripped her as she jumped into action.
Tornadoes. Death. Got it—“Wait! My backpack!”
“Wait, what? No! What the hell?” He scoured his face, groaned, as she wrenched her hand away. His brow twisted with frustration. She leaned across the driver’s seat, dragging her rusty-brown Carhartt backpack into her hold, patting it to feel for her phone lost within a pocket somewhere and standing upright again, turning over her shoulder to see his gaze locked firmly on her ass.
Ah yes, she was still in the same flowy black skirt from last night, legs bare. She’d seen him eyeing her rear all night long like he’d wanted to sink his fingers into her cheeks, and she’d loved that feral carnality emanating off of him like soundwaves, like a mating call, like he was putting out vibes and waiting for her to follow the waft of pheromones and come to him.
His fists flexed, as if to drive that thought straight home.
“You got a death wish?” His growl cut through her hazy thoughts. “We gotta get to shelter. Light a fire, woman.”
“Woman?” Her Hercules had actually just called her that?
He seemed to suddenly soften. As if he realized how he’d sounded. A glimmer of the longing gaze from last night cut though the intensity of his actions now, and he swallowed his obvious worry down, scouring his face, touched her chin with his thumb as if willing himself to chill the hell out, though his hand trembled. He was serious. She’d forgive him the woman remark. Her skin burned beneath his touch, no, melted, where those calluses—raking memories over her—traveled, stopping upon her lower lip where his gaze seemed to lock momentarily as if he remembered how she tasted, before his eyes flitted up to hers again.
“We gotta get to safety, sweetheart,” he drawled calmly. “You can trust me. C’mon.”
And she could. His ten million questions of consent last night and reminder that their tryst would stop if she just said the word, told her she could put her life in his hands and he’d take care with it. His thumb sadly dropped from her lips, and he put out his broad palm. She placed her hand in his. Their fingers laced intimately. Thank fuck she was certain she’d heard him mutter, and smirked at his back as they dashed across the abandoned two-lane highway.
“All that stuff’s replaceable!” he added over the wind as he hauled her into the ditch beneath his farm road, forcing her to her knees and practically shoving her to crawl into the corrugated metal culvert.
Yeah, for tens of thousands of dollars, considering her truck bed was loaded down with GIS and survey equipment.
“Get inside!” he called, gesturing to the culvert and eying the storm clouds once more.
*
Was this real?Tyler was still catching his breath. He’d slept with a semi all damn night, reliving their encounter, and suddenly the woman on his mind was broken down on his road? Fantasy swirled with reality in a heady sensation he wasn’t sure how to describe.
Had she tracked him down? Had she somehow figured out who he was? Surely no. She, with her hair piled up in an adorable messy lump and held together by pencils stabbed through the tresses, didn’t seem like the demographic who would have subscribed to the 2006-2008 Austinite Law journal, upon which he’d graced the cover once upon a time. Nor did she seem as if she’d follow women’s mags when he’d been suckered into a special edition on the cover of Lush with Izzy, which he’d mostly scrubbed from the internet over the years but still cropped up once in a while when he wasn’t paying attention. Was Tie-Dye’s appearance here some twist of cosmic fate?
Not tie-dye today, though. A loose spaghetti strap top, black, low-cut to rest atop her breasts and splotched with cheerful sunflowers, army-green hiking shirt hanging open and rolled up to the elbows, those bangly earrings, toned legs evoking memories of his fingers digging into them as he ground into her assaulted him—He knew these legs now. Knew how perfectly they’d fit around his hips. There was no way he wasn’t not going to think about them for a really long time.
They extended from a fluttery skirt resting upon a fine heart-shaped ass in front of him as she crawled into the culvert. Strappy sandals that wrapped around her ankles like a Renaissance fair nymph. Dark waves turned the ends of her tresses into haphazard ringlets that stuck out in all directions from her knot as if refusing to be tamed, and in the light of day, were rich and nuanced with golden amber and natural copper and far more beautiful than they’d seemed last night. The entire image was at odds with her ranch-worn pickup and bed loaded with some sort of equipment.
She whirled over her shoulder, staring down her back at him, a soft smile on her face even at a time like this, that, my God, could jump-start a dead guy’s heart.
“What’s got you smiling?” he grunted.
“You,” she replied fondly, gaze flitting to his corded arms. “I know I’m going to be safe now.”
The remark hit him in the chest. She trusted him. He shook away the stupefying effect, palmed her ass unapologetically to push her inside as he hovered over her backside shielding her from the hail—it was as firm and pretty as he’d remembered, and damn his position behind her wasn’t lost on him. He didn’t look at the churning funnel of doom as the wind kicked harder, harder, and he scrambled in behind her, submerged finally. Good God he couldn’t die, but…fuck.
What would his kids do if he died? Sure, they’d go to his brothers. Uncle Travis’s during the school year to live with their cousin, Brandon, where they’d ride horses to their hearts’ content, and Cool Uncle Toby’s in the summers, who’d probably have them gambling away their piggy banks in a poker pool faster than a judge could say juvenile delinquent. That thought alone was enough to make Tyler single-handedly defy death. A single parent wasn’t allowed to ever get sick or die, period. Thank God Tobes had settled down a lot since his fiancée and her little boy, Sage, had come into his life.
He focused on the straps of her sandals wrapping around her ankles like ballet slippers as he shifted to his rear and braced his boots against the culvert, knees bent. Her entire outfit was a mismatched ensemble. A chaotic mix of styles. So not like Isabella who wouldn’t have been caught dead without her Lancôme mascara, Louboutins, and Gucci handbag—
What the hell? Where were thoughts of his ex coming from again? This stranger was nothing like Izzy. She was quirky, taking him completely by surprise. She was understated, and he was an idiot to even think about how striking those eyes and hair and ass and strappy sandals were at a time like this.