Love on a Summer Night (3 page)

Maybe she’d still be like that, if life hadn’t made her a mother at thirty and a widow at thirty-one. The one-two punch of good fortune and tragedy sent her life into a tailspin, and in the four years since, she’d made a set of rules for herself.

No risk-taking.

No adventure-seeking.

No men who…

The last rule was a bit nebulous. No men, basically, just to stay smart and safe. She’d barely dipped her toe into dating before yanking it back out again, not quite sure she wasn’t looking for the exact wrong reasons. And over time, that proved true: she’d stopped yearning for physical connection.
 

But this guy made her wish that, if just for a night, she was looking for a sexy stranger.

He even had a sexy as sin name.
Zander
. That one corner of his mouth twisted a little higher as he said it, and his voice got a little huskier, like he knew his name alone was a turn on…

It was sexy enough a girl might just accidentally take off her panties.

Luckily there was zero risk of that happening. For one thing, Faith was wearing utilitarian day-before-the-period-might-arrive safety underwear. And for another, they were in the middle of Greta’s Bakery, where nudity would surely be frowned upon.

She blamed the heat rioting through her body on her mother, for bringing up the idea of Mr. Tall, Dark and Handsome. Of course, Miriam wouldn’t have meant a tattooed weapons expert.

And there was no blaming the way she was hanging on his every word, furiously scribbling notes about ammunition size and wound descriptions, on her mother or anyone else. This was Faith being a greedy girl, absolutely. She couldn’t help herself. Zander knew everything she needed to know about weaponry and more. And he wasn’t bad on the eyes, either.

Eyes, ears, brain…he was far too good for far too many of her body parts.

He’s an expert. This is a research interview
. And he kept talking, making the lie plausible.

“What kind of mess do you want the blast to make?” he asked, leaning back in the booth.
 

She snuck a hungry little look at the edge of a tattoo peeking out from the collar of his low-slung t-shirt before re-focusing on the scene, further in her book, where she needed to leave obvious evidence of a shotgun death. “What would happen if he was killed in the middle of the warehouse? Just a massive pile of blood?”

He rocked his jaw from left to right, thinking completely unsqueamishly about her poor character’s guts being blown apart. It turned her on in an unhealthy way. “Better if it was near a wall; that might get a better spray pattern and contain the shell. In the middle of a warehouse it could go skittering anywhere.”

“I can do that.” She tapped her pencil against her forehead. “But they’d probably take the shell with them, right?”

“Yeah, if they were smart. But there’s a lot of adrenaline pumping, and shit happens. Or maybe they pick it up and it leaves an outline. That’s not going to be easily ID’d, but you can play with that a bit, right? Beauty of fiction?”

Beauty of something. She nodded like a freakin’ bobble head and he grinned, all white teeth and deep laugh lines.

But most of the time as he talked he was dark and brooding, heavy eyebrows pulled tight as he described a dozen ways to kill a man. He paused from time to time, tilting his head a bit to the side as if asking,
are you sure you want to hear all of this?

She did. She gobbled it up, because she’d been stuck for days, thinking she didn’t quite get the mechanics of the fight scenes, when really, she hadn’t sunk far enough into the mind of a killer.

Not that she thought this guy was a
killer
, exactly. But he certainly spoke with a certain legitimacy that made her wonder.

How twisted was it that she still wanted to pump him for information, regardless of where his knowledge came from? Because it was a heck of a lot better than watching YouTube videos on repeat, that was for sure.

“Hey, you want more coffee?” he suddenly asked, interrupting himself.

“Sure.” She passed her cup across the table before she could talk herself into saying no.

He got up and stretched, his arms reaching practically to the ceiling. She tried and failed not to notice how his t-shirt rode up, revealing a tanned, muscular stretch of skin above the waistband of his jeans. Her gaze lingered on the narrow line of dark, curly hair that ran south from his flat belly button and disappeared behind his heavy leather belt.

So much for utilitarian underwear protecting her. She was pretty sure they’d just spontaneously combusted.

He might be a hardened criminal
, she chastised herself as he grabbed their mugs and sauntered across the eatery. He leaned against the counter, crossing one leg behind the other as he smiled at the cashier, then waved at someone in the back.

Faith sat up a little straighter. She narrowed her eyes. He was laughing at something someone said.

A nervous tremor rippled through her belly.

He leaned back from the counter, his body twisting fluidly. Why did he have to be so beautiful? And dangerous? And obviously, since he knew Greta,
not just passing through
.
 

Did it matter?

Part of her wanted to run screaming from the restaurant. She’d shown her hand, and he had to know she was interested—but it wasn’t an interest she could follow up on. This only worked if he would disappear into the night, never to be seen from again.

Disappointment zinged through her gut, and that in turn lit a tiny spark of anxiety.

Because it wasn’t in Faith’s nature to want just a
little
taste of adventure. She wrote about epic battles between good and evil, about larger than life heroes and kick-ass heroines, for a reason.

Once upon a time, Faith had lived life to its absolute fullest.

So had Greg.

Neither of them ever imagined the price they would pay for that choice.

And here she was again, getting swept away in the imagined romance of a dark, brooding bad boy with an endless capacity to thrill her.

Faith didn’t deserve thrills. More to the point, she had a responsibility to avoid them now.

But she couldn’t bring herself to leave the booth.

Not just yet.

Soon, though…and with that thought, she pulled her gaze away from Zander just as he turned back toward her, coffees in hand.

Ignoring the way his broad shoulders bunched and rolled like a slow-motion Levis commercial—because he didn’t just look like a biker, he looked like a movie star playing a biker, an extra-hot cliché of snug denim and leather-clad masculinity—she looked down at her notes. She hadn’t written any new words tonight, but in the margins she’d sketched another scene. Where her heroine, Vera, duelled it out with a shotgun-carrying mystery man with two days of stubble covering his square jaw and black aviator sunglasses covering his hooded gaze.

Even with her little trio of question marks next to that note—because how could she know his gaze was hooded behind the sunglasses?—she still knew it would be wicked hot. When she got home, she’d write like the wind.

And then probably delete it all, because it was mostly fantasy fodder and not actually something that would further Vera’s search for her missing father, which was the plot she’d outlined.

Sigh. Faith drew a sad face below the shorthand scene notes. Maybe she’d fit it in.

Now she just needed to find a way to say thank you and goodbye, and get the hell out of there.

“Tell me more about this urban fantasy stuff you write,” he said as he set the coffees down, at the same time as she planted her hands on the table and took a deep breath. He paused, his lower lip caught between his teeth as he gave her the exact same hooded glare she imagined Deacon giving Vera.

Deacon?
What the…? No. This guy wasn’t inserting himself into her novel with a character name and everything.

“You’re heading out?” he asked after a beat.

She nodded. “I should.”

He didn’t say anything else, just gave her a slow, understanding half-smile and took up a lot of space.

“Thank you for your help,” she started, then stopped.

“My pleasure.” God, his voice. Rough and low, but kind and interested and…sigh. She didn’t want to stop listening to it.
 

She reached for her mug. She should at least drink the coffee since he’d gone to the effort of re-filling it.

And then she’d leave.

“Do you come here a lot?”

Her resolve to run away from him fell apart as she jerked her eyes up, meeting his gaze again. “Uh… yeah. A few times a week. For a change of pace. I usually write at home, but when I’ve been trying to do that all day and nothing is clicking, a change of scenery sometimes helps. Occasionally I’ll even write outside…”

She was babbling. She bit her lip.

He laughed. The corners of his eyes tugged into very pleasing lines, and she blushed.

“Yes. The short answer is yes.”

“I liked the long answer.” He kept his attention on her as he lifted his own mug, taking a slow sip. “And this book that you’re writing…you said it’s in a series?”

She nodded, not trusting herself to not flood him with a TMI answer again.

He didn’t let her off the hook that easily. “So this would be… book two?”

“Four.” The look he gave her made her all warm and fuzzy inside.
Danger, danger, danger
. “And I had another trilogy before this series.”

“Oh yeah?” He tapped his thumb on the table. “And your author name…”

Oh God. She swallowed, hard, and made herself cough.

“Is it a secret?”

She shook her head. It would be easier to tell him if it was a secret pen name. “Faith Davidson. On the covers it just says F. Davidson, you know, for the cross-over appeal to male readers, but you can search for me by my name. Not that you should search for me. You shouldn’t.”

“I shouldn’t?” Another tap of his thumb, another amused twist of his lips. “Okay.”

“We should talk about something else.” She was all off-kilter now.

“Like throwing stars?”

She breathed a sigh of relief. “Yes please.”

— —
 

In the time it had taken Zander to get refills on their coffee, Faith had gone from interested to wary. Both understatements, really. They’d both dove headfirst into the conversation, and when was the last time that had happened to him? But now she had a new, nervous look in her eye, and she’d pulled back.

But she wasn’t sprinting out the door, so he supposed that was something.

“The thing to know about
shuriken
is that they’re not killing weapons—at least not by design. You want your characters to use them when they’re still in hiding, or as they storm in. Aim for exposed skin. Weaker opponents will be distracted by the sting of a surface wound.”

“And stronger opponents?” She double-blinked at him, her hand furiously writing again.

Zander bit back the urge to show off and tell her about his own hand-to-hand combat experience. But real life wasn’t like a novel, and he wasn’t much of a hero. He was just a guy who did a job. He did it well, but it would be wrong to use that to make those stars in her eyes any bigger. Not when she didn’t want them there, either. “You learn to ignore it. The guys who don’t stop coming at her—those are the ones she’ll have the sword fight with.”

In his pocket, his phone vibrated. Probably his brother, wondering where the hell he was, since he’d messaged more than an hour ago that he was getting off the ferry, and it was only a thirty minute drive to Pine Harbour.

It was time for him to go. Not because of his family, but because he wanted to see Faith again, and he didn’t want to overstay his welcome—she was skittish and he didn’t want to spook her. He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and thumbed through it, looking for the business card he’d stuck in there a year earlier. He never had any use for them, so he only carried the one and…
 

Shit. He was nervous to give it to her. The idea she might not want to meet up again bothered him. Or even just stay in touch.

“Listen,” he said, finally sliding his card across the table. “I’m not exactly local, but I’ll be in the area for the rest of the week. If you need any other questions answered.”

He wanted her to take it from his hand. Wanted her fingers to slide against his. Instead, she just looked at the card as he slowly drew back across the centre line of the table. Then up at his face.

Then back at the card.

She was killing him.

“All right, humour me,” he said gruffly. “This might be the most interesting conversation I’ve ever had.”

“Says the guy who seems to have firsthand knowledge of a disturbing array of weaponry.” She curved one eyebrow high on her forehead, doubt written all over her face, and he laughed as he pointed at the card. She picked it up, upside down at first, but once she turned it the right side up her mouth fell open.
 
“Oh.”

“Did you think I was a hired gun or something?”

Her cheeks turned pink again. He found that rush of nerves adorable every time. “Um…maybe.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

She laughed at that, a slow, rolling sound that wormed straight into his chest. Sighing, she read the rest of the card between glances across the table, each one more relaxed than the last. “Canadian Forces Base Wainwright. So you live in Alberta?”

For the next six months
. “Yep.”

“But you know Greta.”

Why did he feel like he’d just been busted in a lie? His pulse thumped heavy in his neck. “Yes.”

She nodded slowly, then tucked his card into a paper pocket on the inside cover of her notebook. “I really do need to go.”

Had he just made it worse? Honesty was the best policy, but damn, he wish he hadn’t talked to Greta up at the counter. He wanted every chance he could grab to get to know Faith better, and he had the sneaking suspicion there were already a lot of barriers to that. Him being local apparently one of them. “Same. It’s been a long day of riding.”

She glanced out the window at his bike. “So you’re not the president of a motorcycle club, eh? I guess this means I can’t cross off
coffee with an assassin
from my bucket list, then.”