Finding the Right Girl (A Nice GUY to Love spin-off) (2 page)

Had to be that his mind was playing tricks on him. A dainty little pixie with peekaboo strips of neon-bright rocker hair out in that terrain?

Couldn’t be.

But it was. That was definitely another flash of sexy hot purple he just saw.

And for some reason, the streaks of color in the long ink black ponytail of the hiker venturing farther into the desert brush immediately had him thinking of the woman who’d been making random cameos in his thoughts for months now, since the day of his brother Connor’s wedding.

Shockingly pink highlights, a fallen angel smile, and a laugh he’d been unable to forget.

He shook his head—partly to try and dislodge the image of her out of his mind—and studied the hiker intently when she happened to turn in his direction for a brief second. Just long enough for him to see her face fully.

Huh, what were the odds? Same woman.

Now what the hell was she doing hiking out there in a pair of backless sneakers and an utterly useless-in-the-mountains slouched, boho-gypsy looking bag, similar to the one his daughter Skylar had begged him for this past Christmas?

He rolled his eyes. The woman took offbeat to a whole new level.

Before he could even decide whether or not to follow her so he could tell her as much, however, she dropped out of sight.

Literally. Dropped.

With an explosive curse, he went tearing across the lawn, hopping over the fence to make his way up the mountain toward the ravine she’d clearly fallen down into.

U
N-FREAKIN-BELIEVABLE!

Tessa unstrangled herself from the noose her bag strap was making around her neck and untangled her now-ripped clothing from the thicket of mesquite and ironwood trees she’d crashed through on her plummet down. The small gulch had appeared out of nowhere. One minute there’d been ground under her feet and the next she was falling like a coin down a slot.

When the rustling ruckus of her fall finally dissipated, blanketing her in the quiet of the surprisingly lush desert forest once again, that’s when she finally heard it—the garbled grunts and snorts of a creature not twenty feet away from her.

Scrabbling quietly to a steadier perch on the tree that had broken her final descent, she took a good look down. All but camouflaged in the shadows below was an animal she’d never seen before; it looked like a cross between a boar and a huge possum. In fact, if not for the viciously long tusks, the creature could've even looked cute. Cuddly.

She quickly retracted that assessment when the hair on the animal's body shot up like spikes and a hot, angry snarl hissed out of him.

Javelina.
Almost twenty-eight years she’s lived here in Arizona now and not once had she ever seen a Javelina in person.

Who said there was no such thing as small miracles?

Tessa stopped moving altogether and quickly took inventory of her surroundings and situation—she was in a tree and injured…check—more checks sounded in her head as she raced through her options and limitations. She’d almost landed on her plan for escape when she heard a muffled voice shout out from above, “
Tessa!
Are you okay?”

That voice. She knew that voice. It was a voice her subconscious seemed particularly fond of, if her ridiculously overheated dreams over the past few months were any indication.

Brian Sullivan
. Brian Sullivan was here and calling out her name in that wickedly deep alpha male voice of his.

Hot damn, her subconscious was definitely recording that one to put on instant replay later.

Much later. When she wasn’t one big walking bruise with a giant thorny branch crammed against her butt cheeks and a vicious, growling animal not far away.

A snap of dry twigs alerted her attention back down the ravine.

Crap. Okay, make that
two
vicious, growling animals.

She added a perfectly reasonable freak-out over the situation as another thing she’d put on hold until later. Ignoring the twenty different kinds of pain attacking her brain from all her injuries, she scanned the gulch wall she’d tumbled down and spidey-sprang to the surface with the least amount of cacti and succulents, tucking and rolling when her ninja skills proved to be seriously lacking.

Brian grabbed her by the shirt to keep her from sliding back down the gulch at the last second. Then he growled in her ear, “
Climb
!”

O
PTING FOR THE ROUTE
that would get them a safe distance away from the javelina the fastest, Brian forcibly shoved Tessa up the ravine wall with the steepest angle. Scrappy little thing. She was surprisingly quick in her ascent up the rocky terrain, considering how bad of a tumble she’d just taken.

Keeping his ears open for the sound of the javelina charging after them, Brian didn’t let up for a moment until he had the top ridge of the gulch in his sights.

What had his blood pressure shooting back through the roof again, however, was seeing the dainty little hand, covered in dirt and blood, reaching out to him from above.

Grabbing hold of a thick tree root jutting out of the mountain instead, he hoisted himself up and over the edge.

He paused to catch his breath, allowing the adrenaline to drain out of his system as he watched her smile at him in relief and scoot her way back from the edge of the cliff.

She’d had her legs wrapped around a tree to brace herself.

So she wasn’t completely insane. Though the jury was now out on him. Here they were just having scrambled their way up a steep ravine to avoid a pair of rabid javelina and his brain was thinking about how it would feel to have those sexy legs of hers wrapped around him instead.

He was definitely the one losing his mind.

It took him a few silent minutes of their walking back down the trails for him to finally notice all the deep gouging scrapes and gashes slashed across her calves and thighs. “Shit, you’re bleeding. Come here, let me—”

She jumped back and gave him a look. Not a wary one but one that looked…confused, out of sorts.

Maybe she hit her head when she fell.

“I’m fine.” She backed up again when he took another step forward.

There was that look again. Like she was expecting him to suddenly sprout a second or third head.

“Thanks for coming to my rescue back there. I really appreciate it. But really, you don’t have to do this knight in shining armor thing. I’m good.”

He could see that. There wasn’t a single thing about her that cried out ‘damsel in distress,’ even given what could’ve happened to her back there. She wasn’t a leaf shaking in the wind over it, and it wasn’t because she was just made of tougher stuff either; he could see the weary, still-simmering terror in her eyes. She wasn’t over the situation by a longshot—she just appeared…acceptant of it. Simple as that.

And that intrigued him as much as it rankled. He remembered how devastated she’d looked at the wedding when she’d told him how she lost her sister to Huntington’s. He knew that devastation, knew exactly what that kind of loss did to a person. Simple acceptance was the last thing he’d expect from her.

The one thing he’d yet to be able to achieve himself.

“Why didn’t you scream?”

“What?” She looked up in surprise.

“When you fell, and when you saw the javelina—you didn’t scream. Not even a little. Why not?” He had to know.

She blinked as if the question, and the reason, had never occurred to her. Her shoulder lifted and fell in a no-nonsense shrug as she said simply, “I didn’t think anyone would come.”

When she reached down to brush the blood off her legs while smothering a pained wince as she pulled a set of keys out of her pocket, he reached for her again, not wanting her to go with an intensity that stunned him.

“Turn around,” he tried gentling his voice. “Let me check out your legs.”

Smooth, Sullivan. Real smooth.

At least that made her stop backing away from him. Of course now she was just staring at him like he was nuts. “Let me check out your
injuries
,” he amended. “I have a first aid kit in my car.”

“Oh. That’s okay, so do I.” She was back to cutting quickly across the lawn. Three more stealthy steps back. “I have a whole survival kit in there, in fact,” she continued on a cute ramble, “complete with food for a week, extra changes of clothes, and a small generator. I even have a sam splint and one of those foldable pocket walking canes in case I break a leg or something.”

Well that was…unexpected. Brian wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that. “Are you some sort of apocalypse radical or just on the lam from the authorities?”

Yeah…he should’ve kept his mouth shut. The woman rattled him, infected him with that talking out of his ass virus he hadn’t had since he was a teen.

But for some reason, the asinine comment succeeded in making her stop retreating. And laugh.

That laugh.

It was like hearing a Christmas carol on the hottest day of summer.

“I almost forgot how much I like you, Brian.”

Likewise.

“Listen, thanks again for saving me, but I really do have to run. I’ll ask Connor for your number and take you out for coffee sometime. Or pie!” She grinned. “Pie is better as a thank-you.”

Then she turned and ran off to the parking lot, leaving Brian to stand there and simply stare at her long ponytail windmilling around with every buoyant step she took.

The fact that she stopped suddenly and spun around at the edge of the lot to give him a final smiling wave had him completely off-kilter. She was freakin’ adorable as hell.

And absolutely, positively the last woman on earth he pictured himself being
this
drawn in by.

C
HAPTER
T
WO

B
RIAN GRABBED
a bag of tortilla chips from the pantry and checked Connor’s fridge for some fresh guacamole. He knew Abby had a big presentation this week with the intertribal education board members on her most recent research recommendations so he knew she had to have made a vat of guac to munch on while she prepared.

Jackpot.
He swiped the familiar glass tupperware off the top shelf and dug in.

“Don’t you have food at your own house?” complained Connor as he entered the kitchen.

“Not since you went and married my best friend,” complained Brian right back. He sighed in mock melancholy. “Abby’s guac used to be in
my
fridge every week. Not to mention the homemade cookies and all the great sandwiches she’d make for me to take for lunch.” At the fond reminders, his next sigh was less feigned. And utterly silent. While he was thrilled to have Abby as a sister-in-law now, he missed how close they used to be.

Not that he ever mentioned that fact to Connor or Abby. Even though he really was truly over his non-platonic feelings for her, any and all conversations on the topic generally ended up being pretty awkward for all involved so he avoided it altogether.

“Nice of you to say hi before you raided my kitchen by the way.” Connor checked the time. “Tell me you haven’t been here since school let out.”

Brian saluted him with a loaded chip as a non-apologetic hello. “I just got here. Today’s faculty meeting was short. And since it’s my turn to take Skylar and Becky out for Friday night dinner, I’m just killing time until they’re done with musical theatre club rehearsals.” He looked around for the remote. Connor had a way better satellite sports channel package than he did. “I didn’t even know you were home. Where’s your car?”

“Abby took the Lexus to work since her car is in the shop again. I came home to get my tux and Abby’s dress for tonight. We’ve got another fundraising benefit to go to.”

“And you’re not concocting some excuse to get out of it?” Weird. Connor usually hated going to those functions.

“This isn’t for work; it’s for one of the charities Tessa and I have been helping out.”

At the mere mention of Tessa’s name, Brian’s hunt for the remote was instantly forgotten. Carefully keeping his voice neutral, he launched a very
casual
interrogation. “Tessa…that’s your caterer friend right? The one with the pink striped hair? What’s the deal with her? Why’d you end up picking a cook to help you with all your pro bono grant write-ups?”

“Because she’s damn good at it. Besides, the catering thing is just a part-time gig for Tessa and Lana. Lana started the catering company and asked Tessa to partner in because of all her dessert-making experience—once upon a time, Tessa worked at a bakery for over five years, I think. But just like Lana, Abby also has a day job; she’s the chief editor of the two sister magazines
AZ Hotspots
and
AZ Potluck
.”

Brian was impressed. He knew of both those local magazines; the seasonal travel magazine was his standard reading material of choice in every doctor’s waiting room he’s sat in for the past few years, and he knew for a fact that the online cooking magazine was a huge hit with his colleagues at school. This Tessa was just full of surprises.