“Maybe a lecture would help you.” His reasonable tone made her teeth clench.
“I can guarantee that it wouldn’t. No one likes to be lectured.”
“I said it might help you, not please you.” The word “please” in his deep, rumbling voice sparked a surprising little thrill deep in her belly.
Oh no. None of that now.
“If you want to please me, you could tell me what you recommend here. Do I need to call a tow truck?”
He took a step back and surveyed the muddy ruts that had claimed her tires. “What have you tried so far?”
“Not much. Just a little cursing and whining and regretting the fact that I didn’t bring my mud boots. I tried powering out of it, but that made it worse.”
“Yes, that would make it worse. The tires can’t get any purchase on the mud, so they just dig the tracks deeper and deeper the more they spin. They need something solid to grip onto. I’m surprised you haven’t encountered this situation before. It is break-up, after all.”
“I’m not from here.” She bit off each word as she spoke it. This was sounding suspiciously like that lecture she’d told him she didn’t want. “I’ve never seen break-up before. Not this kind, anyway. But I’m sure you don’t want to hear about my love life.” She could practically hear the “ba-da-bum” after that lame joke.
He was watching her closely as she spoke. His eyes were two shades of blue south of gray, a surprisingly soft color in the midst of all that masculinity. They looked almost silvery in the misty light.
Heat came to her cheeks under his scrutiny. “Sorry, dumb joke.”
“Eh, it was all right.” He shrugged one massive shoulder. “A little obvious, but not bad.”
For a murderous moment, she wondered how bad it would be if she used her bear spray on him right now. Surely someone else would come along to rescue her. “Can we get back to the main event here? Car. Mud. Stuck.”
“Sure. As I was saying, you need something under the tires.”
Then came a pause. A long pause, like he wasn’t going to say anything more than that.
“And?” she said impatiently. “Has winter frozen your brain?”
“Oh sorry. I thought you didn’t want a lecture. But I’m happy to explain the physics of it. It has to do with the force of friction and fluid dynamics, not to mention momentum. You see, when you hit a muddy patch, the last thing you want to do is slow down. Momentum will overpower the force of the friction—”
Oh my God. He wasn’t lecturing her, he was teasing her. And honestly, she completely deserved it. She hadn’t exactly been polite to this stranger. Sure, she was having a hell of a few months, but that didn’t mean she had to take it out on him.
“Can we start over?” she interrupted in her sweetest possible voice. Witnesses melted when she used this tone. Juries fell in love. Judges ruled her way. “I would dearly love to hear everything you know about mud. Who wouldn’t, really? I could listen to you all day long. But I hate to keep you from whatever you were doing before this. So for your sake, perhaps we could shift to the action part of the lesson?”
She gave the word “action” just a bit of flirtatious edge. She loved a good double-entendre.
He definitely picked up on it. She could see it in the gleam in his eyes and the ever-so-slight quirk of his lips. But he had impressive control. Clearly he had no intention of letting her get the upper hand.
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll get right on that.” he said. She detected a bit of a drawl. Maybe he wasn’t from here either. “I’ll be sure to write up my notes on driving in the mud for you. They could save a life. Possibly even yours, but most likely someone else’s.”
“That’s a low blow. I’m a very skilled driver, I’ll have you know.”
“I’ll have to take your word on that.” He turned away to head for his truck. “I have some blocks in my truck. Lesson number one. This time of year, always bring blocks.”
Chapter Two
Darius swallowed back his grin as he went to retrieve his blocks from the bed of his truck. He always carried a selection of chunks of two-by-fours, four-by-sixes, one-by-sixes and other bits of lumber for emergencies like this. Most Alaskans did, but him especially. A rural fire chief was always on the job. Just this week, he’d helped a stranded motorist change a flat tire and pulled another rig out of a ditch.
He didn’t always get to rescue such a live one, however. Ever since he’d pulled over, she’d been spitting fire at him.
And he’d done everything possible to goad her on, he had to admit. There was nothing like a woman who gave as good as she got.
He wondered what her name was and where she was from. Definitely not local. Even if she hadn’t said as much, he would have known she wasn’t from around here. She was too…fancy, for lack of a better word. Her dark hair fell in glossy waves past her shoulders. Her lightly tinted aviator sunglasses looked like something you might see on a billboard. They took up half her face, giving him the impression of catlike bone structure and a sexy full mouth.
The icing on the cake was the fitted shiny red leather jacket she was wearing. You didn’t see a lot of red leather around here, and he hadn’t known what a sad situation that was until he’d laid eyes on her.
He grabbed an armful of blocks—at least one for each tire—and carried them back to the Saab. It was an older model, probably from the nineties, and unfamiliar to him. Maybe she’d driven it here from somewhere else. Like Chicago or New York City. Or Milan.
“I’m Darius, by the way,” he said as he passed the driver’s-side window.
“Kate.” Her tone was much friendlier now, probably because he was doing what she wanted instead of droning on about mud and purposely annoying her. “Be careful near the road, I saw a porcupine right before you showed up. I really appreciate you doing this. Do you want me to get out and help?”
He hid another smile at her obvious reluctance to do any such thing. She’d mentioned her lack of mud boots. He could only imagine the expensive shoes that probably went with that jacket.
“It’s all right. One of us needs to be at the wheel. Following my directions,” he added.
“Of course. When a knight in white armor appears, it’s bad form to argue with him, I suppose.”
“Shouldn’t that be ‘knight in white Armor-All’?” he murmured as he knelt down to insert a block under the front driver’s side tire. “Being a truck,” he added in case his dumb joke wasn’t obvious.
But she wasn’t one to miss a joke, clearly. She gave a surprised laugh. “That’s not bad.”
“Gee, thanks,” he said dryly. “Always good to keep your rescue victims laughing.” He stood up and gave the block a kick to make sure it was solidly wedged in place.
“You rescue people often?”
“Yes. It’s a full-time job.” Literally, it was. Not that she knew that. “Especially in mud season.” He passed around the hood of her car to the passenger side. She unrolled the window so they could keep talking.
“See, that’s the kind of thing that gets to me. What kind of place has a mud season? Why are people okay with that? Why do people voluntarily choose to live in a place where you have to jump from snow boots, which are unattractive enough, right into mud boots, which are somehow even less appealing?”