Lucy grimaced and I felt awful. I told her I’d take care of it and now I’d let her down. Oh no, she was already thinking of firing me, I could just tell.
A warm hand hit my back and the shiver told me who it was. “I can take you.”
I looked over my shoulder to see Linc’s disheveled brown hair and concerned blue eyes. “Yeah?”
He smirked and dipped his head. “Yeah. Hop on.” His hand swept over to his yellow scooter with the helmet hanging off the handle. Apparently, the gang had brought it back for him.
“Um, not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but will that thing get us there?” I wanted nothing more than to be pressed up against Linc’s fine body for the next twenty minutes, but not if it meant dragging ass all the way to San Jose. My self-esteem couldn’t handle it.
He frowned at the scooter. “It’s a fifty-fifty chance.”
I paused and then shrugged. “Good enough for me!” I ran toward the clinic next door, careful not to jostle Spunky more than necessary. “Let me just get the sperm!”
“The what?!” Linc yelled back at me.
Oops. Probably should have told him we’d be transporting some poor guy’s sperm along with Spunky. Hey, if Linc couldn’t handle a little spunk and a mini pig named Spunky, he should just bail now.
I came back out of the clinic holding both, wondering if Linc would have hightailed it out of there.
Instead, he was standing next to his scooter, the black helmet extended out to me, a leather jacket making him look even tougher than before. He rolled his eyes, but the smirk was there.
“Everyone told me things might get crazy if I moved to Hell, but I hadn’t expected crazy to be a hot girl with a pig and some sperm.”
“That’s how we roll!” Amelia hollered at the top of her lungs. Everyone else hooted and hollered, and if the cats weren’t traumatized before, they were now. Damn, I loved my town.
I bit my lip and climbed on the scooter.
Linc called me hot and liked my crazy.
And if I got really lucky, maybe he found out later tonight that I didn’t wear underwear…
Chapter Two
Linc
Bain had warned me moving to Auburn Hill, aka Hell, might be a culture shock, but I’d welcomed it with open arms. Lord only knew I needed something very different from what I’d experienced for the past eight years. If I spent one more day in the damn desert, living on base with a bunch of assholes who I loved and fought with like brothers, while trying to keep my cool in combat situations no human should have to see, I’d do something crazy just to get myself dishonorably discharged. Thankfully, I’d kept my shit long enough to leave at the end of my second tour with my honor still intact. Settling in a small town like Auburn Hill sounded like paradise.
Of course, my buddy Bain, a guy I’d grown up with, but lost touch with when I went into the military and he went to college, hadn’t made things easy. He’d insisted that the only way to be accepted by the other men in town was to pull a prank on my first day. I knew all about friendly hazing from my first year in the Army and I wasn’t about to let some pussy prison warden get the better of me. ‘Course, I didn’t realize until it was too late that I was pulling a fast—stinky—one on an old lady. That didn’t seem so honorable to me, but then again, I hadn’t lived as a civilian in a while.
“Make a left here,” came the feminine shout in my ear.
I blamed that whole “not a civilian” thing on how I already had a hot girl on the back of my bike on day one in Hell. She could have been a serial killer for all I knew, but something about the way she’d cradled the mini pig to her gorgeous breasts made me think the closest she got to a serial killer was watching a detective show on Netflix while she squeezed her eyes shut with dread. She’d flashed those blue eyes at me and suddenly I’d found myself offering to drive her all over the damn state with a fucking pig tucked into my leather jacket.
I made the left into a parking lot, the ridiculous scooter I’d been loaned making a groan that spelled future disaster if I didn’t give it a break soon. The stamp of Keva’s breasts, which had been plastered to my back for a solid twenty minutes now, left me feeling cold as she unwound herself from me and hopped off the bike.
Without a word, she ran to the building, intercepting a man leaving out the front door and trying to lock it. She jumped up and down, a wince with every movement. Normally, I wouldn’t have noticed, but I found myself studying her intensely, trying to figure out what it was about her that had me giving a shit about her job instead of worrying about my own ass. The guy’s shoulders dropped, but he let her back into the building where she was gone for a few minutes. I checked the gas gauge and thought we might have enough to make it back to Hell. If I had to, I’d get her home while carrying her on my back. Anything to keep her plastered against me.
I really needed to get laid.
How long had it been? I searched the night sky, jumping at every little noise, and there were a lot of them here in the city. Another reason Auburn Hill had sounded like paradise. Quiet. I needed a place to call home and the little town, set right along the ocean, seemed liked just the right therapy for a guy like me. A guy I’d served with for the last few years would be joining me next week. Figured we’d be roommates until we both got our new lives together. We hadn’t said it out loud, but I think we were both using the other as a crutch, afraid we wouldn’t blend back into civilian life. At least if we crashed and burned, the other person would be there to clean up the mess.
“I can’t thank you enough for hauling me all the way out here.” Keva stood to my right, startling me.
I hadn’t even heard her approach, which was highly unlike me. Horns and chatter a street away had distracted me.
“No problem,” the words tumbled out, both of us knowing it had been a problem. First the cat round up and then the drive completely out of my way on the lamest transportation I’d ever had the unfortunate luck to drive.
Keva’s lips curled into a small smile. I liked how she’d painted them red before she’d come back out of the fertility clinic and climbed on my bike. Almost like she’d taken a moment to spruce herself up before riding with me. Like she wanted to impress me.
“I was planning to meet some friends here…” she trailed off, biting that bottom lip I’d already gotten a taste of.
Fuck. What was it about this young woman that made my gut clench? I should let her go and drive straight to the new house I’d rented. My focus needed to be on building my new life, not trying to get in the pants of the first girl I saw. Although her pants did look mighty fine on her ass.
She frowned. “You don’t like animals?”
I tilted my head, wondering where that came from. I had her damn pig stuffed in my jacket at this very minute. “Uh, no, actually. Animals are fine.”
Her face cleared instantly. “Oh, sorry. Sometimes my mind reading is off when I’m distracted.”
There was a lot to unpack there. I’d start with the obvious. “You can read minds?”
She blushed, looking down at the toe of her boots before looking back at me, defiance straightening her spine. “Some people think I’m crazy, but I really can read minds.”