He nudged the passenger-side block into place. “You seem awfully worried about shoes.”
“Just go ahead and call me shallow. I don’t mind.”
He stood up and smiled. “So long as you promise not to mace me.”
She pulled a funny face at him. “It’s bear spray. And no promises.”
“Are you always this prickly when someone’s trying to help you out?”
She paused, cocking her head as if she had to think about that one. “Well, I can’t really say. Generally I don’t need help. And if I do, I just pay the person for it. It’s a cold, cold world out there, Darius.”
“Is it?”
He moved to the rear of the car to install the remaining blocks. He put them behind the tires so the car couldn’t roll backwards.
“Sad to say, it is.” Her grave tone piqued his curiosity. He got the feeling she was referring to something specific. “I don’t want to crush your illusions, Knight in White Armor-All, but most people are crap. Even more to the point, most men are crap. So I suppose I haven’t perfected my help-receiving manners because it just hasn’t come up very often.”
He finished his task and stepped to the side. “I’m going to overlook that insult to my gender. At least for now. Want to give it a try? Nice and gentle on the accelerator.”
She turned the key in the ignition and fired up the engine. The car rolled forward, the weight of the front end pressing the forward blocks into the mud. He held his breath as the tires fought for purchase on the wood. Should he have put more blocks down? He hefted the extra length of two-by-four that he’d brought over. A little more wood ought to do it.
And that way they could continue their conversation. Maybe he’d even find out why she was so cynical when it came to men in particular, and people in general. Not that he disagreed, entirely. People could be crappy. In his case, that included a couple of women. More specifically, his ex-wives.
The car lurched forward and slid from side to side in the muck. A rooster tail of mud slammed across Darius’ pants, even though he tried to jump back in time. The Saab climbed onto the gravel with a squeal. As soon as she’d made it all the way out of the mud, Kate hit the brakes.
“You did it,” she called to him. “Thank you so much!”
He shook mud off his right pants leg, like a dog. Damn, now he was going to have to change before he drove out to the Moose. That meant he was probably going to be late for his gig. “No problem,” he grumbled.
“I owe you one. Really.”
“You don’t owe me anything.” The very thought irritated him—even if it wasn’t his job, people helped each other out around here. It went with living on the edge of the wilderness. “Just be more careful in the mud. If you hit a slick, don’t slow down. Just keep going or the mud will suck you in.”
She pushed her sunglasses back up her nose. “Now that sounds like life advice I can follow. Don’t slow down, just keep going. Got it. Thanks again, Sir Armor-All.” With one more salute of thanks, she zoomed off down the road at least fifteen miles over the speed limit.
He shrugged. What the hell, he was a fire chief, not a state trooper. It wasn’t his job to make her obey the speed limits. Good thing, too. She didn’t seem the type to obey anything except her own wishes.
Even if they left a guy alone with his wood, all covered in mud.
And if that wasn’t the story of his life, he didn’t know what was.
Darius swung back into his truck and grabbed his phone. He fired off a quick text to the band manager. Running late, but I’ll be there.
The bassist for a band from Oregon had gotten food poisoning and their manager had called him in as a last-minute fill-in. He loved getting a chance to play again—it was a great break from his current problem.
Someone was setting nuisance fires around Lost Harbor, and it was starting to piss him off.
He hit the speed dial for Nate Prudhoe, the only other full-time member of the Lost Harbor Volunteer Fire Department.
“Same as the others,” he told him. “No real damage, but one pissed-off home owner. I guess that bear cache dated from the 1930s.”
“Damn. Any clues?”
“Not a one. Who would have a motive for burning down a bear cache? Other than a bear?”
Nate chuckled. “Ding ding, we have ourselves a suspect. They are coming out of hibernation right about now.”
“We need to have a crew meeting about this. We’re lucky none of these fires have done much damage.”
“Except to our reputation.”
Darius swore. “This idiot is going down, whoever it is.”
“Right there with you, Chief. I’ll set up the meeting.”
“Thanks, Nate.”
He hung up his phone and noticed that a new email had come in while he’d been sliding around in the mud. It was from the woman who’d been driving him nuts for the past week, Catriona Robinson, Attorney-at-Law.
What kind of person felt the need to attach that information to every single email?
The same kind of person who would try to evict a guy for absolutely no reason, in the middle of gearing up for tourist season. He didn’t have time to hunt for a new apartment. Housing was surprisingly difficult to find in this little town, unless you were willing to buy. But he’d only been here for a little over a year, and he still wasn’t sure he was going to stay. So he preferred to stick with a rental.
But he disliked apartment hunting so much that he’d actually offered to buy the house from Catriona Robinson, Attorney-at-Law, instead of having to move before he was ready.
She’d rejected that idea right away, and their email correspondence had gone downhill from there.
I have a signed lease. I have no intention of moving until my lease is up. I’ve already paid next month’s rent. You have no right to evict me without notice or cause.
That sounded properly legalistic, but it didn’t seem to impress her.
I’m sorry to say that your lease wasn’t signed by the actual owner. It was signed by my grandmother. I’m the owner, and I wasn’t informed of said lease. I am ready and eager to claim possession of my property.
So this obnoxious lawyer was Emma Gordon’s granddaughter? He’d never heard about Emma having a granddaughter—or even a husband or children, for that matter. Obviously this attorney didn’t live here or know how things worked in Lost Harbor.
So you’re putting the blame on your grandmother? I signed in good faith and so did she. Emma is a friend and a solid member of the community. You should talk to her. She’ll straighten this out.
Emma Gordon was a very unique and iconoclastic woman with some wild stories to tell. She’d supplied a dozen orders of peonies to a volunteer fire department fundraiser, but that wasn’t the only way Darius knew her.
He and Emma both owned Harleys and had bonded over that fact when he’d picked up his bike from the ferry it had been shipped on. Apparently everyone knew to call Emma the instant a Harley came to town. She’d tracked him down at the firehouse and they’d gabbed for hours about their bikes. He respected the hell out of her, and felt sorry for her that her granddaughter was such a shark.
My grandmother has nothing to do with this. She signed the house over to me in exchange for taking care of her chickens when she dies, the lawyer had written.