One Hot December

Ian blinked.

“You’re not kidding.”

“Why would I kid about that? You and I have already slept together. You know what I’m into. You’re into it, too. And you’re good at it, very good. It’s not easy finding someone good in bed. That’s valuable to me. I have money. I don’t have someone to have good sex with. It’s the barter system and don’t pretend you don’t want to. You could have asked Crawford to do this work for you. I’m not the only welder you know. I’m just the only welder you’re attracted to.”

“It’s more than attraction,” he said.

“What is it, then?”

“I don’t know. But it’s more.”

“Whatever,” she said with a shrug. “You decide.”

“You are bizarre,” he said.

“You’re the one who started this so who’s more bizarre—the girl with the blowtorch or the guy who wants to fuck the girl with the blowtorch?”

“The girl with the blowtorch. I’m going to go with that answer.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right about that.”

“You don’t even like me,” he said, rubbing his temples in the hopes of keeping his brain from imploding. “You have made it abundantly clear you don’t like me.”

“I don’t have to like someone to have good sex with them. I just have to respect them. You’re a good boss, you run the company well, you treat your employees well and you don’t take shortcuts with your work. That’s attractive to me. I don’t want to hold hands with you and go walking in a winter wonderland, but I’ll spread for you if you’re man enough to take me up on the offer. Because we both know you want to do it, and the only thing stopping you is fear.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“Yes, you are. You and I had an amazing night together and you dumped me because you were afraid of getting in trouble with dear old Senator Daddy.”

“That’s not why I dumped you.”

“Then why?”

“Does it matter?” he asked.

“No skin off my rosy nose. So what’ll it be? I can do this work in a day or two. Two days’ work for two nights? What do you say?”

Ian wasn’t prepared to answer that question because he hadn’t been prepared to be asked that question. He’d been propositioned by a lot of women in his thirty-six years. Never once in those years had a woman attempted to barter welding services for sexual services. Was he flattered? A little. Was he insulted? Yeah. Kind of. A lot.

“No,” he said. “That’s what I say. No.”

“Can I ask why you’re saying no?”

“You can,” he said.

She stared at him. He waited. She wasn’t the only one who could play mind games.

“Why are you saying no?” she asked, her mouth a tight line of either tension or disappointment.

“I told you, I don’t like using people. I don’t like being used, either. I’m not going barter my body just so you can get off without getting attached. Thanks but no thanks. I’d rather sleep alone.”

“Okay,” she said. “That’s fair.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and typed something. His own phone vibrated in his back pocket a second later.

“What did you send me?”

“The phone number of a guy named Daniel Tang. He’s a metalsmith in Portland. He does killer work, and if you’re willing to pay him to come out here, he will if you tell him my name.” She zipped up her coat and glanced over her shoulder at the sky darkening through the picture window. “I better go. It’s getting late.”

She headed back toward the garage without another word.

Ian rubbed his temples again. This woman blew his mind on a daily basis. And she was leaving. Right now. He heard her in the living room picking up her gear from off the floor and heard her footsteps on the hardwood and heard the garage door opening. She was leaving and he was letting her go. He’d thought of her every single day and every single night for months. She intimidated him, she confused him, she intrigued him like no one else he’d ever met.

And he was letting her go.

No, he wasn’t.

He ran through the house and made it to the door just in time to see her back out of his garage. She had her arm over the seat and was looking back as she turned around in his driveway. He waited and she looked his way one last time. He waved his arm to flag her down, to stop her, to slow her down, maybe. She gave him a little salute in return, and then drove out of his life.

She didn’t even give him a chance to tell her goodbye.

3 (#ulink_ee5920ce-f987-5a34-bc3d-70615c0ac88f)

FLASH CONGRATULATED HERSELF for not crying on the drive home to her apartment. She’d wanted to. She’d come very close. Then she’d seen that harrowing drop-off down the side of the highway and instead kept her eyes clear and on the road. By the time she pulled into her parking lot, she felt as good as anyone who’d been once again rejected by the guy she was in love with could feel.

“You don’t love him,” Flash told herself as she grabbed her duffel bag and a grocery bag from behind her truck seat. “You just want him.”

She closed her eyes and breathed long and hard through her nose, willing herself not to love Ian. A long time ago she’d read about those gurus who could control their own heart rates, slowing them to the point people could mistake them for dead. Why couldn’t she do that? She should be able to do that, will her heart to not beat so wildly in Ian’s presence. When he’d said his mother’s name and touched the iron ivy leaf on the fireplace grate, she thought she’d die of love for the man. If he was just a pretty face with good hair and a great body and a nice smile, and even if he was just a good person, she might have made it out without falling in love with him. But he was all that and vulnerable, too. That was her Achilles’ heel, her Kryptonite, the one chink in the armor she’d forged for herself. She felt protective of him as she never felt about any other man. She wanted to take care of him, which was stupid because if anyone on earth didn’t need taking care of it was the son of a rich father with a good job and all the luxuries in his life money could buy. But still...it was there, that love, that need to take care of him, and when he’d said he refused to let her use him, she’d almost broken down right then and told him everything she felt about him including all of that. Instead she’d turned tail and ran. He’d offered her friendship when she wanted his body and his heart and his soul. Friendship was the last thing she wanted from Ian Asher.

With a sigh, she got out of her truck, took her bags and walked to the corner apartment on the first floor. A few people had already started decorating for Christmas. She saw lights in windows, battery-operated candles, a few fake snow scenes. Fake snow? All they had to do was drive thirty miles east and they’d be up to their eyebrows in real snow.

She doubled-checked her grocery bag out of paranoia and knocked on the one door on the row with no Christmas decorations in the windows.

A few seconds later the door opened a crack, the security chain still locked.

“You’re late,” the voice inside the door said.

“Work-related. Sorry.”

“You have the stuff?”

“I have it,” Flash said.

“Two bags?”

“Two bags.”

“Anybody see you come here?” the voice asked, and Flash saw two dark brown eyes darting around in the direction of the parking lot.

“Nobody saw me but someone’s going to if you don’t let me in.”