Under her curious gaze, he found himself wanting to keep talking, which was unusual for him.
“When did you become a fire chief?”
“When I moved to Lost Harbor. That’s generally how it happens, you have to switch locations to get promoted. I’ve had a lot of experience with volunteer fire departments because that’s how I started, as a volunteer for the county where our ranch was located in Texas.”
“Texas to Alaska. That’s a long way.”
“Yeah.” He saw no need to elaborate on that, but she kept waiting so he felt rude not answering. “I had reasons for wanting a change of scene.”
“Like what?”
Oh lordy, she really did want to get into it. “Divorce,” he said simply.
Her expression shifted from interested to cautious. Not that he could blame her.
“I needed a new start, and it wasn’t ever going to happen within a hundred miles of my ex.”
“Lost Harbor is a lot more than a hundred miles away from Texas.”
“And about six state lines away. Part of its charm.” He leaned forward, propping his elbows on the table. “Listen. I don’t bad-mouth my ex. Either of them. Those relationships were what they were, and I learned my lessons.”
“Which were?”
“Why make things complicated when you can just fuck and have fun?” He said it lightly, but he heard the hollowness of his own words. It had taken a lot of hurt for him to get to the point where he believed that.
He still wasn’t completely sure that he did.
“Sounds like you had a rough time.” Her sympathetic gaze drew more confessions from him.
He shrugged. “I’m not complaining. I married the first girl I really loved. Gillian. We got married at the end of high school. Then I got busy with college and she got bored. Met someone else and took off. I didn’t blame her, but it was a kick in the guts. I was still a naive kid, basically. It blew me away that she could even think about another man. I was so in love, or at least I thought I was.”
He could hear the hurt seeping into his voice, and cleared his throat. “Like I said, it was a good lesson.”
She touched his hand, making him realize he’d been clenching it. “I’m sorry. That must have been a real heartbreak.”
“Oh, yeah. I thought we’d cracked the whole love-and-marriage thing. I was going to get my degree, become a doctor, start a family. Turns out we never made it past my freshman year. Poor dumb kid.” He shook his head at his own past self. “I proposed to her on horseback during a roundup. Man, when I look back, I can’t believe what a dolt I was.”
A funny smile flitted across her lips. “It’s very sweet, honestly. From the outside, I never would have pegged you as a sap.”
“And you’d be right about that. My sappy days are dead and gone. After Gillian left, my brothers kept telling me to ‘buck up, be a man.’ I shut the fuck up after that. Got into firefighting and moved on.”
What he left unsaid was that if his marriage to Gillian hadn’t killed off his romantic side, his nightmare with Amelie would have done it.
“Here’s the thing. I was a naive, clueless, horny kid. I thought women were…angels. I idolized Gillian. When she left me, it was like a bomb hitting. I had to rethink everything. I went through a really dark time. Honestly, I went a little over the edge.”
“Over the edge? How do you mean?”
He stopped himself before he went any further. “I don’t know you well enough yet. Sorry.”
Her eyes went wide with indignation. “Now that’s a tease and a half. Unfair.”
“How is that unfair when I don’t know the first thing about your life? Except the two-year dry spell. Can’t forget about that. Ever been close to getting married?”
“Nope. Before I came to Lost Harbor, I was one hundred percent focused on my career. Except when I was focused on having fun.” She sparkled a smile at him. “I’ve always kept my relationships…undemanding.”
“What were you afraid of?”
His question seemed to startle her. “Afraid? What makes you think I was afraid?”
“Just an impression.”
She tilted her head, mulling that over. A basket of breadsticks appeared, dropped off by the hostess, and she cracked one in half and dipped it in olive oil. “Maybe I was afraid. I didn’t want to get sidetracked. I didn’t want to get sucked back into the muck. I always figured I was one bad decision away from becoming Naughty Kate all over again. So yeah…I guess I was afraid.”
“Hm.”
She made a face at him. “Hm? What does that mean? Hm.”
“I think you’re brave. You grabbed your life and decided for yourself what you wanted. And hey, you came to Alaska. Farming in Alaska is no cakewalk.”
“That’s true. The other day I literally fell through the snow crust while I was carrying a bag of fertilizer to a shed. I fell on my ass and got showered with chicken manure. I even had some in my eyelashes. I think I still might have a few bits of it here and there. Oh, hello!”
The waitress had arrived and, judging by her look of revulsion, had caught that last part. “Sorry, I’m a peony farmer from Alaska,” said Kate. “I have stories.”
“A peony farmer? That’s a thing?”
“It was a surprise to me too. But yes.”
The waitress, a gorgeous twenty-something, turned to Darius. “Are you a peony farmer too?”
“No. I’m a—”
“He’s my personal bodyguard,” Kate interrupted.
He raised an eyebrow at her, but she just blinked at him innocently and picked up her menu. They placed their orders—both of them going for the steak specials, with all the extras.
When the waitress was gone, he allowed a smug smile to curve across his face. “Your personal bodyguard, eh?”
She shrugged one bare shoulder. “If you’d told her you were a firefighter, she’d be flirting with you nonstop. I rescued you.”
He decided it would be fun to tease her a little. “You keep telling yourself that.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were obviously telling her to back off. You were guarding your territory.”
“My territory? What are you, the back forty?”
He leaned closer to her. “You called me ‘your personal bodyguard.’ Not just your bodyguard. But your personal one. She got the message pretty quick too.”
“Maybe I don’t want you getting distracted when you’re supposed to be protecting me.”
“Maybe you know there’s something going on here,” he waved his hand between them, “and you don’t want anyone messing with it.”
“Oh really, that’s your interpretation? Isn’t that a little bit arrogant?” The quiver in one corner of her mouth took the sting out of her insult.
“It’s not arrogance if it’s true.” He held her gaze, feeling that wild connection flare between them again. It was always there, like background static, and all it took was a little oxygen to make it burst to life.
The muscles of her throat moved as she swallowed. His cock twitched in response. Fuck, why was it that every move she made got a rise out of him?