A woman dressed in a pale gray pantsuit and spike heels crouches over the rain grate on Main St.
I’d be less shocked to see a Sasquatch.
No one in Rush Creek dresses like that. And no one in Rush Creek looks like that. Long cornsilk blond hair, narrow waist, flared hips. The way she’s squatting emphasizes all her curves, and there are plenty of them. I know this because I’m staring at her.
I need to stop: A fish out of water like this woman can only mean trouble for me.
But wait!—my foolish dick begs—if she’s just passing through, she’ll be the fun kind of trouble.
This is how mistakes get made.
I am outside the feed store with a forty-pound bag of dog food slung over my shoulder, stopped in my tracks as the first few drops of rain begin to fall. My shoulder starts to ache, Buck is back home, waiting to get fed, and I’m staring at gray pants stretched tight over the world’s most perfect ass.
What the hell is that woman doing here, dressed like that?
I think about the last beautiful stranger I met who was dressed all wrong. Who was all wrong in every way.
What the hell is she doing?
Then a whole bunch of things happen at once.
I hear the sound of a distressed duck.
I’m a hunter, so I know bird calls, but even if I weren’t, I would spot the mama duck immediately. She’s agitated, hopping around on the sidewalk above the grate. It’s the corner of Main and South, on the side with the bookstore.
I hear another sound, high pitched and persistent.
Ducklings, cheeping, panicked.
Okay. I know what’s going on.
This storm grate is a magnet for duck disasters. Every spring, at least one brood has to be rescued.
I reach for my phone to call my friend Josiah at Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife. He’ll have those little dudes out of the drain in seconds flat.
And then she turns her head and I see her face for the first time. Perfect oval, clear pale skin, big blue eyes, cute nose, wide mouth. Her eyes meet mine, and I guess something about me suggests that I’m the kind of guy who’s good in a crisis, because when her gaze locks with mine, I see her relief.
“Hey—” she calls. “There are ducklings down there! Can you help me?”
All thoughts of calling Josiah slip out of my head. Josiah’s a good-looking guy. Women go nuts over him. And for whatever reason, I don’t want this woman to go nuts over Josiah.
I want to be her hero.
Which is pure, total, complete, and utter bullshit. One: I have enough going on in my life. I don’t need to be anyone else’s anything. And two: nothing—I repeat, nothing—about this woman suggests that she’s anything but temporary.
Right about then, my gaze drops from her beautiful face to her silky cream-colored blouse. The rain is falling harder now. I wonder if the rain will ruin her top—or make it see-through. Even from the other side of the street, I can see the contours of her breasts and the shadow of an edge of lace. I drag my eyes back to hers, just as a car swings around the corner, too close and too fast. She gasps as it splashes muddy water onto her pants. But her eyes stay on mine, the question between us.
She’s clearly not going anywhere until the ducklings are okay.
Next thing I know, I’m at her side.
It’s getting late, and dusk is starting to fall. The shops are closing down. There are a few cars passing on the street, headlights on. One slows to a crawl. “Hey, Gabe!”
“Hey, Joe!” I call back. One of the shop owners in town, heading home for the evening.
“You all good?”
“We’re good!” I call back.
“Who’s your friend?” he asks, angling his thumb in the direction of the newcomer.
I roll my eyes at him, and he laughs, speeds up, and heads on.
“Hey,” I say to her. “What’s going on?”
She bites her soft, pink lower lip. “We have to get them out.”
I crouch down, and sure enough, there are several ducklings, drab yellow balls of fluff, swimming in circles, crying for mama.
“Let me just put this away”—I shrug to indicate the dog food—“and get some stuff from my Jeep, and I’ll be back.”
Her makeup’s starting to run. The dark streaks make her look like she’s been crying, even though I can tell she hasn’t. Maybe that’s what pushed my rescue buttons. I don’t know. But whatever it was, when she smiles at me like I’ve just saved her day, I feel like a big hero. And I haven’t even done anything yet.
I tell myself it’s no big deal. Everyone wants to be a hero for a beautiful woman with a pretty smile.
I cross to my Jeep, wave to Tom Morrow who’s shutting down the feed store, sling the dog food into the back, and rummage around. I hope like hell I can repurpose something to help her. If I had the Wilder Adventures van with me, I’d definitely have more options.
Luckily, the last time my brother Brody borrowed the Jeep he left a bunch of fishing gear in it, including a net. And I can use the tire iron as a crowbar, so I’m pretty sure I’m set.
I jog back across the street, passing by two of my sister’s mom-friends who greet me warmly. They’re wearing jeans, rain boots, and rain jackets with the hoods up, and as I rejoin the duckling woman, I’m struck again by how out of place she is in her city girl costume. I bet she owns a little folding umbrella that would be blown to bare spines and ragged nylon in two minutes in a Pacific Northwest windstorm.
As I crouch down by the grate, she crouches next to me. “Hey. Thanks. I didn’t know what to do. I was going to try to call someone, but I didn’t know where to start. I googled ‘ducklings in grate’ on my phone, and then you showed up—”
“Best thing to do in this situation is call Oregon Fish & Wildlife.”
She gives me a sidelong look under long, damp eyelashes. “I could still do that—”
“Nah. I’ve got this.”
“Thank you,” she breathes.
I wiggle the tire iron under the edge of the grate as she watches. I can feel her next to me—the warmth of her body, her slightly sped-up breathing. My own breathing hooks itself into hers, my pulse kicking up. I tell myself it’s just the adrenaline of a rainy duck rescue, but I know I’m full of shit. This isn’t adrenaline, it’s lust.
I’m going to pin it all on the spike heels. I’m apparently a sucker for them, even though it makes zero sense. I should be all about women in hiking boots, the kind who know how to pitch their own tents and manage a rifle. Instead, I’m thinking about this woman—who I’ve never seen before and whose name I don’t even know—wearing those heels in bed.
Her eyes settle on me. I can’t stop being aware of her gaze as I use the tire iron to pry up the grate. The city girl makes a little sound of relief and appreciation as the grate pops loose.
That sound has nothing whatsoever to do with sex. Nothing.
Tell that to my suddenly perked up cock.
“I didn’t know the grate came up like that,” she said. “I just figured it was screwed down.”
“Nah.”
“Have you done this before?”
“Seen it done.”
She looks at me like I set the earth in orbit. Her makeup situation has gone from bad to worse. Her hair is wet and limp, with strands stuck to her face. And all I want to do is fix it. Run a thumb under each of her eyes to clear away the smudges. Brush the sodden strands off her cheeks. Get her somewhere dry, wrap her in a blanket.
And ask her fucking name.
God, Gabe, you giant dickweed.
“I’m Gabe.” Better late than never.
“Lucy.”
Her gaze flicks away from mine—breaking eye contact that’s too intense for comfort—and then, unexpectedly, she laughs.
“What?” My eyes track hers to the Rush to Read Books window. In spite of the fading light, we can see the display—picture books about ducklings.
“It’s like they came to this corner for a reason,” Lucy says, a bounce of delight in her voice. “Do you think the owner would like it if we took photos for her? She can add them to her display.”
“Uh…” The suggestion has caught me off guard, but it’s perfect. “Yeah. I think Jem would love that. We can do that after we get them out.”
Lucy pushes a strand of damp hair back. I realize she has the net in her hand, and I reach to take it from her, but she bends and dips it into the drain. She tips forward onto one knee, probably destroying her expensive pants, but she doesn’t seem to care. The fluffy babies are still yelling their little heads off below us. She scoops the first one up so I grab the hoop as it surfaces, then gently tip the soft, warm ball of fluff onto the sidewalk. “There you go, little dude,” I tell him, as she leans down for the next one. I try to keep my eyes off her ass, and I’m mostly successful.
Mostly.
As each duckling reaches safety, it scurries to join the mother who has been supervising warily. When the last is freed, they hurry off together, mama and babies in a tight parade, as I snap photos for Jem, and Lucy watches them waddle off.
“Ohhh, look at them,” she says, her hand covering her mouth. Then she turns her gaze on me. Her eyes shine with tears. “We saved their lives. Thank you. I’m so glad you turned up when you did.”
I cough. I hate having a big deal made over stuff. “Yeah. Well. Glad I was here.”
I bend down to reset the grate. When I stand up, I catch her gaze on my ass. Our eyes meet. And she doesn’t look away.
Well, well, well.
Now I’m really glad I was here.
“You, um, want to get a drink?”
As soon as the words leave my mouth, I realize exactly how ridiculous they must sound. She’s dripping wet, hair plastered to her face, makeup running, cream-colored silk so saturated now that I can see the faint outlines of peaked nipples, even under the shadow of her blazer. My cock hardens even more.
Of course she doesn’t want a drink. She wants to go wherever she is supposed to go, take a hot shower, and put on warm clothes. That’s what I should want, too, because I am equally wet, although my green t-shirt, Carhartt pants, and leather hiking boots are more up to the task than her businessy clothes and fuck-me shoes. Plus, I have to get home and feed Buck, whose forty-pound sack of dinner is sitting in the back of my Jeep.
Still, my better judgment doesn’t come online. Instead, I say, “Forty-five minutes. Meet me at Oscar’s.”
I gesture toward Oscar’s Saloon and Grill, Rush Creek’s local gathering place. She turns to look, and I try to see it as she would. Pretty sure she’s east coast, and I wonder if Oscar’s Western-style false facade looks kitschy through her eyes.
Then I wonder why I give a shit.
I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I don’t even know why she’s here. She could be just passing through, in which case she’s totally fair game. But she could also be new to town, and that would mean she’s off limits.
I tell myself I’ll find out first. Before I let things get out of hand. While I can still set boundaries.
Her pretty blue eyes are moving over my face, trying to figure me out. She bites her lip. I’m ninety percent sure she’s about to say no.
Then she bites her lip again and shrugs.
“Okay,” she says, and her mouth turns up at one corner, almost a smile. There’s something wary in it, but also—eager.
And fear pulses through me, because it’s possible I already missed it. The time before I let things get out of hand. The moment when I could still set boundaries.
It’s possible it never existed with her.