Ignite (Firefighters of Montana Book 3) Page 3

  “And yet this bar exists in a free country with freedom of speech. I believe I can comment on your wardrobe all I like.”

  “Don’t be an ass. It doesn’t suit you.”

  “You flirt with every guy by calling him an ass? Because let me say, that’s not the best road to take.”

  “Who said I was flirting with you?” she demanded, though there was more prissiness in her demand than outrage.

  Ace flashed his most confident, charming, arrogant grin. One that would likely set her teeth on edge, if he was reading her right. “Oh, honey. You’re too smart to act dumb. I know why you’re here.”

  “Do you?” The arch look she gave him made him think about the moment back in the exam room, when he’d realized she was a McArthur, a McArthur who knew his sister, and hadn’t been able to hold his shock.

  “Of course. I’m irresistible.” He knew it lacked some of his usual finesse and charm, but he couldn’t quite get there with her all too discerning gaze on him.

  She didn’t respond for the longest time. She sat there, staring at him. Her blue eyes seemed to bore into him, to see into him. He had never felt as though someone could simply look at him and unlock all of the secrets he kept hidden under years of lies and costumes and running away. Never in his life had he wanted to lay that all at someone’s feet.

  He must’ve had more to drink than he remembered.

  Her mouth curved, slowly and sensually, and her posture softened as she batted her eyelashes. It was as if she transformed into someone else—someone silky and sultry. Someone who was good at flirting, someone who was soft. Inviting.

  Some trick.

  “You’re right,” she all but purred. “I came here to flirt with you.” She leaned forward, her fingers brushing against his wrist. Much like her gaze, no touch had ever felt quite so intimate and yet been so innocent.

  “Are you going to flirt back?” she asked, smiling up at him.

  That was the plan, wasn’t it? He had to remember the plan. Damn, but this woman made it hard. But he was used to challenges, used to lies. What were a few more?

  Chapter Three

  It had taken Lina quite a few minutes of sniping at him to realize her approach was all wrong. She might not be good at flirting, but that didn’t mean she was stupid. She knew how to watch someone and emulate them. She had seen Jess and her sister-in-law, Sierra, fall in love. She’d watched them interact with her brothers, flirtatiously, sweetly.

  She’d seen them be soft and touchy feely, and it was against everything Lina usually was. But she had to employ some of that. She had to embrace some of the softness and approachability of the women she knew and had watched win men over.

  Lina could tell she had surprised Ace with her change in demeanor, and maybe that had been part of her intention too. Part of what spurred her on. He thought he had all the control. He thought his charming, confident demeanor would put Lina so completely off balance she couldn’t play the game, too.

  Because this was a game. She wasn’t a fan of playing games, but she knew them well. Her childhood had been nothing but smoke and mirrors and lies and reputations, and she was ready to be done with it. That was why she’d come to Kalispell. She’d left Marietta and all of the crap that went along with the McArthur name.

  But for as science and math minded as she was, she couldn’t ignore that maybe this was a little bit meant to be. That being thrown into Ace’s path meant something. Even if he really was just some long-lost cousin of the Clarks, how could she possibly believe this didn’t happen for a reason?

  She was going to find that reason.

  She felt confident in that, for about five seconds. Until Ace smiled and she knew she was so far out of her depth with this man.

  But she’d been out of her depth before. For as many roads had been smoothed for her, she’d still had to study her ass off to become a doctor. She had struggled through her residency and the stress of living up to her name, and she had survived and succeeded.

  Ace might be more experienced than she was, he might have charm just oozing out of him, but that didn’t mean she had no tools of our own. She just had to be smarter than she had been. And she couldn’t be dazzled. Which shouldn’t be a problem because she usually wasn’t dazzled. At all. She might not be good with men, but not because she was intimidated by them.

  Of course there was something about Ace that was…intimidating.

  Which only made her want to win all the more. Because Lina McArthur would not be intimidated.

  “Tell me something, Lina. How exactly would you like me to flirt with you?”

  “That’s not how it’s supposed to work. You’re supposed to be charming and interesting without me giving you a how to.”

  “But everyone has a different definition of charming and interesting.”

  “Isn’t flirting all about seeing if you have the same definition of those things? Seeing if you have the same…interests?”

  He leaned even closer; his eyes were a myriad of blues and greys, and she could smell whatever scent was on his skin. Woodsy and…smoky. Like soap and probably the air he existed in.

  She felt antsy all of a sudden, like she had to move, but he would read into that, so she forced herself to stay still. Just like when she’d had to train herself to be still during her surgery rotations.

  “And what are your interests, Lina?”

  She didn’t know why but something about the way he kept saying her name skittered along her nerves. It was both unpleasant and pleasant all the same time. It made her uncomfortable and nervous and yet she felt a little giddy thrill at it, too.

  She was really losing it.

  Focus, Lina. She was supposed to focus on flirting with him. Except now she couldn’t exactly remember what she had hoped to get out of that. A touch? A kiss?

  Information, you idiot. Right. “So, you grew up in Oregon?” she managed to ask, her voice not as steady as she’d prefer. But at least it softened her question from coming out like an interrogation.

  “Yes,” he replied, something in his demeanor changing so infinitesimally, she couldn’t read the change. Only that he somehow held himself differently.

  “Whereabouts?” She inwardly groaned. She sounded about as smooth as a middle-aged man trying to get information out of teenagers.

  “Portland,” he replied easily. “My dad had a mechanic shop and mom was a cafeteria worker at the elementary school. Just your average childhood.”

  He said it all so easily, as if it were simply true. Which meant he couldn’t be Dean. For as little she knew about Jess’s childhood, she knew that the Clarks had at least grown up in Montana—even when they’d gone from foster home to foster home.

  So, unless Ace had a very believable lie up his sleeve, he couldn’t be Dean. Of course, if he was Dean, and had been on the run from Jess finding him, surely he’d come up with a few lies.

  “You’re frowning,” he said, something like mocking in his tone. “Is that not what you want to hear? Usually people don’t frown about my lower middle-class two-parent childhood.”

  “I’m not frowning.” But of course she was giving herself away. Maybe this had been a mistake. Stupid to think fate of all foolish things would drop Dean Clark in her lap so she could offer him to Jess.

  Even stupider to think she could flirt or seduce anything out of him. Her. Icy, plodding, too-stern Lina McArthur.

  “You really need to work on your poker-face, sweetheart. If the whole idea was to come here and flirt me into revealing some deep dark secret you seem to think I have, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. So maybe you should scurry along home and leave this seat for the people who are actually interested in a little male-female companionship.”

  “Gross,” she muttered.

  “You think male female companionship is gross?” he asked, that mocking note to his voice growing, which caused her irritation with him to grow.

  “I think the word companionship is gross. I think the idea that a woman can
only come to a bar for that is gross. It’s ridiculous for you to think people only come here for sex. I came with Cherrie to have a relaxing night with an alcoholic beverage.”

  “Your friend is over in that corner with a guy.”

  Lina jerked her head over to where Cherrie was indeed standing in the corner with a young, burly firefighter type. Lina felt a stab of envy that it could be so easy for her, that it could be so easy for, it seemed like, everyone but her.

  God, she was so tired of feeling like an outsider. Like someone who couldn’t just…be normal, have normal relationships. Suddenly, she didn’t really care if Ace was Dean, she just wanted…to be like Cherrie instead of the virgin who’d never even been kissed because everyone in Marietta had been afraid to touch her.

  She wanted to be like Cherrie, and like her sister-in-law, Sierra, who’d had more than a little fun sneaking around with Lina’s oldest brother before their surprise wedding. She wanted to be like those girls in high school and college who’d put on makeup and laughed and made guys drool.

  She wanted to have fun. She wanted to enjoy some little piece of her youth instead of funneling everything into becoming a doctor. Into making her father proud. She’d come to Kalispell because she was tired of all that.

  She looked up at Ace. He was making it very clear he wasn’t Dean, and maybe she was fooling herself to take his word for it, but what would be the harm in indulging in some of that youthfulness she’d ignored for all of her teens and a good chunk of her twenties?

  What would be the harm in trying for once to have fun? Mindless, girl-plus-guy fun? She took a deep drink of the oddly sweet Long Island iced tea and she fixed Ace with a smile.

  “Okay, fine. Maybe I did come here for companionship. Maybe I came here for yours. After all, you’re pretty hot.” She knew her cheeks were flaming red at this point, but she’d said it without choking on her own spit. She’d said it with her eyes on his and her chin up because she was not afraid of a man. She wasn’t afraid of flirting. She was definitely not afraid of the truth—because Ace was hot.

  He studied her and she didn’t know what he was looking for—either an ulterior motive or just wondering why someone plain and poorly dressed and foolish like her was flirting with him.

  But she refused to feel foolish. Well, she refused to let him see she felt foolish, because of course she felt foolish. He was completely one hundred percent out of her league. It wasn’t even a contest. But that didn’t mean she was going to back down.

  McArthurs didn’t back down, and it didn’t seem like she’d left behind what a McArthur was just because she wanted a new life. So, why not embrace it?

  “Honey,” he drawled, his voice like… She didn’t know. It was like he touched her, but he didn’t. It was the movement of the air from his words, from somewhere inside of her that she’d kept locked away.

  “You’re too pretty and you’re too smart to be here hitting on me.”

  Her mouth dropped open for a second because he seemed very sincere about that. Pretty? Sure, she was used to being told she was too smart for something, especially by dumb boys, but not…pretty. Too pretty? Ha ha.

  Then her mouth curved into a smile against her will. She couldn’t help it. She wasn’t exactly used to physical compliments. Compliments that didn’t come with baggage. How could she ignore that they made her feel a little giddy?

  “Tell me about your job,” she said, resolutely. She was going to sit here and flirt. And maybe that was all it was going to be, but at least she’d have some fun.

  His eyebrows rose to his hairline. “Excuse me?”

  “I’m interested. I’ve never known anyone who fought fires and I’ve definitely never known anyone who jumped out of airplanes to fight fires. I find it fascinating.”

  He looked at her skeptically. “What exactly do you want from me, Lina? Why are you here?”

  “I told you. I think you’re hot. Believe it or not, I moved to Kalispell to experience different things and to break out of my shell. So here I am, breaking out of my shell. I want to know about your job, not just because I think you’re hot, but because I actually do think it’s interesting. And because I like watching you talk.”

  It was funny, the more she said these outrageous things, the easier they were to say without blushing or feeling self-conscious. The more she talked, the more she enjoyed his obvious shock over her being so bold. And if she wasn’t totally mistaken, she was kind of flustering him a little bit, and she really liked that.

  Yes, she’d given him a couple truths she hadn’t really meant to give him, but it didn’t matter because, by giving him the truth, she felt like less of a fake, and less of a liar and manipulator. Which made everything more enjoyable because those were two things she really didn’t want to be.

  “So, are you going to tell me, or do I need to go ask someone else?”

  He shifted in his seat, as if he wasn’t quite comfortable. Yeah, she didn’t mind that at all.

  “What do you want to know?” he finally said.

  “Let’s start with why—no, that’s too philosophical.” She tapped her chin, not missing the way his eyes dropped to her mouth. Definitely not missing the little flip her stomach did. “Let’s start with how you got interested in fighting fire. What made you even know this was a job let alone one that you wanted to do?”

  “That’s kind of a long story.” He nodded at the bartender, who slid him a bottle of beer.

  Which Lina took as an excellent sign. She took another dainty sip of her drink and gave him another flirtatious smile. “I have all night,” she offered.

  And she was damn well going to enjoy it.

  *

  Ace really had no idea how it happened, but somehow an hour had passed and he had spent it enjoyably talking to Lina McArthur.

  She didn’t just to ask about smokejumping—she was interested. He could tell she was paying attention by the questions she asked, by the comments that she made. A lot of times when people asked about his job they wanted to hear the near-death experiences, the danger and he loved that. He loved making people think he did something crazy and amazing and life-threatening every day.

  But the reality of the situation was this was a job dictated by seasons and waiting. Some days were doing not much of anything and sometimes putting himself in that kind of danger was downright scary.

  While he didn’t admit to being scared to Lina, she did ask about the more nitty-gritty things. She didn’t want to just know the heroics, she wanted to know the ins and outs. He found the more she talked to him about this thing he’d grown to love, the more he liked her.

  She was… Different. There wasn’t a lot of softness to her, and yet he thought that was why he was attracted to her. Because she gave the impression she was this impenetrable rock, and he couldn’t possibly do any damage here.

  It was probably unfair to think so. Probably wrong to think she couldn’t be hurt, and yet here he was, still doing nothing more than talking.

  Craziest of all, he was enjoying himself. He couldn’t remember the last time he talked to a woman for an hour without thinking of getting into her pants and enjoying himself horizontally.

  Well, not that there weren’t a few times his gaze had dropped to the way the ridiculous turtleneck hugged her breasts and his thoughts had wandered. She was uncommonly beautiful. Nothing classic or in-your-face, but something more in the way her personality seemed to match her appearance. There was a sharpness to her features, and a…solidity. She was tough rather than pretty perfumes. She was this austere thing and, for him, it worked.

  More, there was something about her blue eyes that made it feel as though she could see through him, and he found it being her somehow didn’t bother him as much as it normally would have.

  She didn’t ask any more about his childhood, so he had to think she believed him about not being Dean. Which…somehow made him feel like a jerk. Which was stupid. Insane, considering he didn’t have any real connection to her. He couldn�
��t let his weird feelings for a stranger derail his life’s mission since he’d finally escaped foster care.

  Stay the hell out of Jess’s way. She deserved a life without him.

  So, of course, he’d sidled up to someone she knew, probably quite well, and was enjoying the hell out of his evening with her.

  Well, he’d never claimed to be a genius.

  “So, how did the fall happen?” she asked, still nursing the remnants of that first drink.

  “Well, part of jumping is being able to read the wind and making sure your chute hits it right, but every once in a while a gust comes out of nowhere and you lose control. I missed the grab, tried to overcorrect, then boom—right into a tree.”

  “Was it scary?” She didn’t ask it in the breathless way many a woman had. No, Lina was all…direct and analytical. She wanted to work out the situation, not be wowed by his prowess.

  He didn’t know if he liked that or not.

  “Scared is a weird word.”

  “Because you’re afraid if you admit you were, you’d look like a coward?” she asked, that hint of sharp humor in her tone making him want to smile even though she was insulting him.

  “No. There are a lot of times on the job when I’ve been scared, but there’s different levels of fear. Because I’ve jumped out over huge blazes where I couldn’t see anything but smoke and flame for miles—that’s a hell of a lot scarier than hitting a tree that wasn’t even on fire.”

  “Alright. I’ll take the coward back.”

  “See that you do.” He grinned, realizing that over the course of their conversation they’d slowly leaned into each other. Part was to hear in the din of the dimly-lit bar, but part—he thought—was attraction—a force. Like magnets or a wind guiding them closer and closer.

  “What about you?” he asked softly, hoping she’d lean even closer.

  He was rewarded as she leaned forward and he could make out the individual wisps of her dark hair, the somewhat vanilla smell of what he assumed was her shampoo.

  “What about me?”