Over the next few days, Lacey settled into a routine of waking early, getting a lift up the mountain from Joel and Tony, working till sunset and getting a ride to Austin’s place, where she worked till dinnertime. Usually he was there the whole time, seemingly happy to act as her assistant. Tonight, though he had to work late, leaving her on her own to monkey around with Lucinda.
That was the name Lacey had chosen for her steamy friend—Lucinda. Never Lucy, a name that evoked silly capers and histrionics in the face of a stern Cuban husband. No, the train was definitely a Lucinda, named after one of Lacey’s favorite singers. She was bluegrass and country, soulful and throaty. She had plenty of tough history, but she’d chugged through it and come out the other side. She was a survivor and would touch a part of her riders’ souls that needed to believe they had the same fight in them.
And she was starting to look like a locomotive again. Tonight Lacey was working on sandblasting the rust and old paint off her harder-to-reach areas, a job that required a short ladder and a lot of elbow grease. Lacey lowered her transparent face mask and shouted along to Christmas tunes since Austin had texted to say he was running late. She changed the words of the song and crooned it to Lucinda as she fought the grime that had attached itself to her over decades of sitting outside. “Have yourself…a steamy little Christmas. Let your heart…be light. From now on, your troubles will be out of sight...”
“I don’t hear any glass shattering.”
Lacey jumped a mile, the sandblaster clattering to the floor and the ladder tumbling away from her feet. She jammed her arms into the hole where the chimney would be and clung on to keep herself from falling. A loud curse and the sound of a man scrambling reached her a split second before Austin’s hands clasped her waist. “Let go. Gotcha.”
She hesitated, the press of his chest against her butt and his head next to her ribs momentarily short-circuiting her brain. She wasn’t that high up. She could’ve dropped safely to the ground, once she’d gotten her balance back.
But she didn’t point that out. She relaxed her grip and let him lower her slowly till her feet touched the floor. And the whole back of her body touched the whole front of his.
“You okay?” His breath ruffled the hair on the top of her head, sending shivers of delight skittering across her scalp.
Laying her hands on his, she gently pushed them away and stepped away from the danger zone. “Fine. Th—um—thanks.”
“No problem, since I was the one who scared you ladder-less.”
A reluctant smile tightened her cheeks, making her filthy face mask bite into her temples. He was nothing more than a blur through the grime, but hopefully that meant he couldn’t read all the vulnerability she was struggling to hide from her face, either. “Give a girl some warning next time.”
“I thought you heard me. I made enough noise coming in.”
“If I’d heard you, I wouldn’t have been singing.”
He chuckled, but the way he ran his hand through his hair showed how the brief contact had affected him, too. “It wasn’t that bad, you know.”
“I was once told I have a voice not even a mother could love. By my mother.”
He laughed. “Well, I’m not saying you could get a record deal—”
“Or carry a tune?” she joked, making him laugh harder.
“Or that, but it was...nice.”
She clasped her chest and pretended to stumble back against Lucinda. “Wow! Nice? What a compliment!”
Face flushing, he scratched his cheek, looking adorably chagrined. “Not your voice so much as coming home to it. I’ve been doing this on my own every night for a long time.”
She couldn’t work out exactly how she felt about being Austin’s comfortable place to come home to. Needing to get back to work but unable to see anything through her mucky face mask, she pulled it off and swiped at it before freezing.
Uniform.
Her breath seized painfully at the back of her throat. She spun away, hoping to hide her reaction, but he’d been well-trained to spot details—like a woman who looked like she was about to puke.
He clasped her arm gently and tried to turn her to face him. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
She tried to shake him off, but he wouldn’t give up. He grabbed a chair and yanked it over, helping her sit. “Breathe deeply. Head between your knees. It’ll pass.”
No, it wouldn’t. She couldn’t cope with him in uniform. Her life had been inundated with uniforms, but seeing Austin this way dredged up all the terrified confusion of her arrest. The shock of seeing him in uniform here, a place she’d grown to feel a little bit safe, had brought on a wave of gut-dropping terror.
“Breathe. That’s it.”
She shook her head. “Can you...can you leave me alone?”
His hand fell away. “Leave you alone?”
She nodded, impotent anger filling her eyes until they burned. “I need a moment.”
“You sure you’ll be okay?”
Her head jerked in another nod. “Go.”
“Okay. I’ll come back in a few minutes.”
She choked out a sound of assent, relief immediately washing over her as soon as the door clicked closed. Her head hung limp and she had to grip her knees to keep from sliding out of the chair.
What the hell is wrong with you? The cheery melody of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” filled the annex. Strings of Christmas lights—lights that Austin had hung himself, to help her feel optimistic—twinkled merrily from the eaves and windows, bouncing shimmery rays of light off the tree’s ornaments.
You haven’t done anything wrong. You’re safe. You’re not going back.
But the threat of prison hung over her as threatening as a noose, leaving her shaky and weak even as the nausea subsided.
The annex door clicked again, and she tilted her head just enough to let her watch his feet carry him inside.
Jeans. He’d changed. Relief flowed through her, and she let her gaze lift to his sweater...
His Rudolph sweater, complete with a blinking red Christmas light for its nose. She snorted in shock, her hand flying to cover her mouth. “Oh, my God. That’s even scarier than your uniform.”
He gave her a wry grin. “My older brother, Wyatt, and I have a Christmas tradition. We try to humiliate each other through hideous Christmas sweaters. Whoever loses has to wear it at the next year’s stroll. He outdid himself last year.”
“He sure—wait a sec. You didn’t wear this at the stroll.”
“I have a picture that says otherwise. Fortunately, Wyatt was in L.A. with his girlfriend, so this was all the proof I needed.” He slipped his phone from his pocket and flicked through it before handing it to her. Sure enough, Austin stood in front of his Santa’s Wonderland stand wearing the hideous sweater and an ironic look of wide-eyed exuberance while giving two thumbs up. Gabriel and Josh flanked him, grinning hugely and pointing at Rudolph—as if anyone could miss him. Behind them, her Christmas tree display twinkled.
Lacey squinted. “Is that me in the background?”
He took the phone and slid it back in his pocket. “Yep.”
“How on God’s green earth did I miss that?”
He gave her a lopsided grin. “The whole operation took us less than ten seconds. I made sure to do it when your back was turned. I’m not an idiot, you know.”
Words from a long-ago courtroom bounced around her head. She’s either guilty of transportation of a controlled substance or of criminal stupidity.
She turned away. “Thanks for changing. Your uniform…it caught me off guard.”
“I figured that out.”
“It’s one thing to see it in the forest, where I expect you to harass me, but—”
“Is that what you think I was doing?”
She shrugged. “I’m sure you were just doing your job.”
He didn’t answer. He just nodded toward Lucinda and said, “I’m yours to harass for the next few hours. Tell me what to do.”
“Easy, now. Set her down easy.” Lacey guided the railroad crane driver as he lowered the boom and the driving wheel it held suspended over the track. Austin watched, amazed and impressed as hell as she worked.
Each set of Lucinda’s driving wheels weighed one ton, not exactly something Austin and Lacey could handle themselves, so she’d gone online and found some volunteers to help them out. She was apparently fluent in train geek, so she’d found several guys willing to give up their night for a chance to put Lucinda’s driving wheels back on. Lacey had texted Austin earlier, telling him to expect a few men to drop by looking for a good time with a naked locomotive. He’d ordered a dozen pizzas and bought several six-packs—for after all the hard work was done.
Now he stood next to her as she held the sides of the wheel and helped slot it into the track. Once it was upright and balanced, she disconnected it from the boom and gave him a wide grin, making something weird flicker in his chest. Something warm and friendly and not at all professional or distant. Something that was getting harder to ignore with every moment they worked together.
“Ready?” she asked.
To fit the wheel? “Yep.”
For whatever the hell is sending blood rushing to the wrong places?
Nope.
They flanked the wheel and pushed hard. Even though the wheels were designed to roll easily and quickly along the rails, just as they would do when the locomotive was chugging away, their weight and counterweight made them difficult for humans to get moving. Austin unconsciously mimicked Lacey’s stance, using his body weight until the wheel started turning. They rolled it under Lucinda’s frame and steadied it with blocks when it was in the right spot. When all the wheels were in place, they would carefully lower her freshly painted frame and attach the wheels. She would finally look like a locomotive again, steady in her track and ready for all her inside pieces to be reconnected.
Rolling the wheels under the frame was a two-person job, but the other volunteers wanted to take part in the glory, so, after showing them what to do with the first one, Lacey supervised the guys as they fitted the rest. Austin stood back with his hands on his hips, supervising her.
Well, watching her. The more he saw her work, the more impressed he was. When it came time for the potentially dangerous jobs, she had a no-nonsense style that commanded the respect and attention of her team. She wasn’t afraid to get dirty, evidenced by the fact that every bit of exposed skin was smeared with grease. And when break time came along, she sipped her soda and took the guys’ ribbing about why she was laying off alcohol all in her stride.
They clearly didn’t know she was on parole, and it probably would never have occurred to them. Pregnancy seemed to be their main guess, followed by religion. Maybe they secretly suspected alcoholism, but that wasn’t a fun subject to tease someone about so they kept it to themselves. Parole never came up, and Austin certainly didn’t blow her secret.
In fact, he’d completely forgotten about it until the guys pointed out her teetotal drinking habits. Somewhere in the last several days, he’d stopped thinking about her crime. She’d become Lacey Gallagher, train geek and, weirdly, almost-friend.
And dark fantasy.
He took a swig of his beer and tried not to think about the sweaty dreams that had woken him the past few nights, dreams that made no sense, had no structure, but were flashes of flushed, naked skin. Long brown hair sticking to the nape of a neck, tilted to make it easier for a man to slide a woman’s shirt off her shoulder, down her arm, and away from her breasts. Thighs parting but shadows falling over their apex, hiding hot, secret places he wanted to bury himself in.
He pressed the cold beer can against his burning forehead, grateful the manual labor meant everyone else looked overheated, too. He’d never, ever, been attracted to such a wrong woman. How could he fight the serpentine desire snaking through his belly and chest every time she stripped to her undershirt and cranked a wrench, sweating and shaking with physical exertion? Each movement made him want to grab her hips, shove her messy jeans to the concrete floor and discover her shadowed places.
Lust wasn’t the only thing he battled on their nights together. Doubt had begun to creep in, too. What would make a woman who so clearly loved her work throw it all away? Easy money had been his initial thought, as that tempted many traffickers to the trade. But railroad engineering paid really damn well, and Lacey must’ve had a good, long career ahead of her. More than that, it seemed to be a profession she respected. She treated the locomotive as if it were human—a friend, even.
He couldn’t picture her using her friends.
And what kind of future did she have ahead of her now? He knew the stats—nearly half of women parolees returned to prison within a year of their release. The conditions were tough, and violated communities could be an even tougher place to return to, even though the parole board thought they were the parolees’ best bet for reintegration.
Lacey had clearly beat odds before. Hell, there couldn’t be many female freight train engineers.
Only two things he knew for certain. First, he had to keep his hands off her.
And second, that got a hell of a lot harder every night he sweat alongside her.