Hot Attraction

His skin tingled where she’d touched him. And his pulse quickened. Hers was beating fast, too. He could see it moving in her throat.

“Why did you hit me with the oar?” he asked. “Who’d you think was coming through that door?” Had she lived in so many big cities that she was jumpy and paranoid?

“I had no idea,” she said, and her distinctive voice cracked slightly with fear.

He narrowed his eyes and studied her. “You really weren’t expecting anyone?”

“That’s what I told you.”

But was it the truth? “So you just stand around with an oar in your hands?”

Her face flushed. “When I got home a little while ago, it seemed like someone had been in here. I even thought I smelled smoke.”

Smoke. His heart began to beat even harder. “You were smart to grab the oar.”

“I carried it as a weapon when I checked out the bedrooms and bathrooms.”

He groaned over the thought of what could have happened to her. “You should not have looked for the intruder,” he said. “You should have run right out of here and called the police.” Or him.

He would have come if she’d needed him.

“And reported what?” she asked. “The smoke could have come through the open sliders...” Her brow furrowed slightly as she looked toward the sliding glass doors—as if she wasn’t certain she had left them open. They were closed now; the curtains pulled over them. But through the white linen the glass glowed with the last rays of the setting sun.

Why had she shut out the sunset? Or had she been shutting out something or someone else?

“You should have at least gone back to your sister’s,” he said.

“I can take care of myself,” she said, and she was all prickly pride again as she lifted her chin.

“I took that oar away from you,” he said. And finally he released it, tossing it down onto her couch.

“After I hit you with it.”

“If you’d found an intruder, he could have taken it away from you just as easily as I did,” he said. “You shouldn’t have taken that chance.”

“Says the man who fights wildfires for a living,” she said. “Like you should talk to anyone about taking chances. Hypocrite.”

“I know what a fire can do,” he said. He’d learned at a young age—only too well—the destruction and devastation a fire could cause. “You don’t know what an intruder would have done to you.”

She shivered and wrapped her arms protectively around herself. Without her heels and fancy dress, she looked small and delicate and vulnerable.

During a wildfire, rescuing people in danger was part of his job. He wasn’t on the job tonight. But it didn’t matter. He couldn’t fight his nature to protect. He couldn’t fight his attraction to Avery Kincaid, either. Silently cursing, he reached for her and pulled her close. Her body felt small and delicate against his but also soft and warm and curvy.

She trembled in his arms. Then her hands clutched the back of his shirt. Instead of pulling him away, though, she burrowed closer.

“You were really frightened,” he said, as he pulled her even closer. The thought of her being alone and scared had a pang striking his heart.

A breath shuddered out of her lips and warmly caressed his throat. “I just had the strangest feeling,” she said. “Like someone was watching me...”

Someone was outside her house. He had felt it, too.

“Who would be watching you?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know...”

“You weren’t meeting anyone here tonight?”

“I already told you I wasn’t expecting anyone,” she reminded him.

“You haven’t been talking to anyone in Northern Lakes about a story?”

“Just you,” she replied, her eyes full of suspicion.

“I was at your sister’s,” he reminded her, “looking at every single little thing your nephews own.”

Her lips curved into a slight smile.

“You haven’t been talking to anyone else? No sources?”

Her brow furrowed now. “My nephews are my sources,” she reminded him. “They’re the ones who told me that you were the one who saved them.”

It sounded as though she was telling the truth. But Dawson wasn’t certain he could trust her. Reporters lied. They’d lied to him years ago. Women lied. His friends—Braden Zimmer most recently—had been through enough pain to prove that to him. But if he pressed the issue of sources, she would figure out that there was more to the fire, just as she already suspected.

“Do you have a stalker?” he asked. “An obsessed fan?”

“I don’t know if I’d call them fans,” she remarked, almost modestly. “But I have people who send stuff to the station for me. Letters. Gifts.”

Of course she did. As beautiful as she was, she probably got marriage proposals and jewelry.

“But I wouldn’t call any of them obsessed,” she said. “And not a one of them would know that I’m in Northern Lakes right now.”

Unless they were already in Northern Lakes. Like the arsonist.

But she was right. They couldn’t call the police. They had no proof that anyone had been inside her house. No evidence that anyone was watching her. Only that feeling...

One they shared.

If there had been someone inside, they might come back. Dawson couldn’t leave knowing that Avery could be in danger. It would be against his nature.

“I’m staying here tonight,” he said.

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