That Reckless Night. Kimberly Van Meter

touched her hair lightly, enjoying the texture of the dark strands against the pads of his fingers. He didn’t know how a woman like her wasn’t attached, but for selfish reasons, he was glad. He couldn’t imagine a better person to break the seal on his self-imposed celibacy than a hot stranger who wanted nothing more than a dirty, sweaty good time.

      He sighed and allowed his eyelids to slowly shut. He was here in Homer for a fresh start with a new job. Tomorrow, he’d put a clean brush of paint on the old and battered walls of his life.

      But tonight...he was going to just enjoy the simple pleasure of the feel of a woman’s body pressed against his and sleep.

      * * *

      MIRANDA NEVER SLEPT in on a workday and she was never late.

      Except today.

      She opened her eyes blearily to find the pale watery light of the morning filtering into her bedroom and for a moment she was disoriented by her surroundings. What the...?

      “What time is it?” she muttered, her mouth tasting like the bottom of a dirty boot. Why had she drunk so many tequila poppers last night? Major mistake. Her head was splitting. With all the sharpness of a dull ax blade, Miranda pulled the memory of last night from her mental cache and glanced around in surprise to realize that her temporary lover had done her a solid by letting himself out before she woke.

      And he’d even left her a note. She grabbed the folded paper and focused on the masculine scrawl.

      Homer has one hell of a welcome party. Way better than a gift basket.

      Miranda dropped the note to her nightstand and fought the growing disquiet churning her insides. On one hand, she ought to be happy that he’d saved them both from any awkward, stilted conversation exchanged in the harsh morning light, but on the other hand, it didn’t sit well with her ego that he’d been the one to simply slip out the door while she’d been dead to the world. However, the bigger issue was far more upsetting than a bruise to her ego. Her temporary lover wasn’t a tourist.

      And by the sounds of it...he was taking up residence right here in Homer.

      “I’ll be damned,” she said, barking a short, irritated laugh, and headed to the shower. The town was too small to hope they wouldn’t run into each other at the grocery store at some point, but Miranda wasn’t above hoping and praying Homer simply wasn’t to his liking and he would leave.

      Why? Because there’d been a moment when lying in his arms had felt completely natural—almost as if she’d been waiting to find herself in those arms since the day she was born—and Miranda didn’t want any part of anything that resembled that.

      Besides, she already had her plus one—her son.

      And she sure as hell wasn’t auditioning anyone for the role of daddy anytime soon...if ever. Much to her mother’s chagrin, of course.

      With a mild shudder at the very idea, she dropped any lingering thoughts about her overnight guest and, after double-checking with her son’s paternal grandmother that the older woman had gotten Talen to school on time this morning, Miranda rushed to shower away the night’s activities and get ready for work.

      Today was a big deal, which made her oversleeping a major screwup and only added fuel to the argument that she hadn’t been ready for the position the new guy had managed to snag from beneath her nose. She wanted to look the new boss in the eye and see for herself if he was up to the job because there was no better tracker in the department than Miranda, aside from her brother Trace, of course. And no one knew the surrounding area better than Miranda.

      Miranda pulled into the slushy parking lot, the crunch of dirt and thin layer of snow beneath her knobby tires a familiar and welcome sound, but as she walked up the stairs she couldn’t shake the feeling of disquiet that dogged her steps. Sour grapes and disappointment, that was all it was, she told herself.

      Talen’s paternal grandmother, a Yupik Native, had always praised Miranda’s intuition, saying it was that inner knowing that helped her to navigate the dangerous Kenai Mountains when tracking the hapless lost. As Miranda pushed open the door to the Fish and Game Department field office to stride inside, it was then that she knew her intuition had been spot-on.

      Oh, shit. She wanted to die. Or at the very least sink through the floor and disappear.

      Standing there addressing the office, dressed sharp as a tack, looking fresh and starkly handsome, was her one-night stand—and apparently, her new boss.

      Hell, she didn’t even know his name but she vividly remembered what he looked like naked in the pale moonlight.

      Somehow, she didn’t think that information was going to be helpful.

      Well, her mother had warned her that her bad behavior was going to catch up to her someday.

      Guess today was the day. And it felt every bit as wretched as her mother had probably hoped that it would.

      Yay me.

      CHAPTER THREE

      JEREMIAH ADDRESSED HIS new team, looking at faces that he would soon learn to know and personalities he would learn to understand, but part of him couldn’t help but wonder if he’d made the right choice as he stood before strangers, especially when he knew for a fact he was running away from a particular heartache.

      He had no doubt he could do the job. It wasn’t that he was having a sudden attack of inadequacy fears, rather he knew he should have been a bit more adult about his decision to leave everything he knew in Wyoming to start fresh in a town where he knew no one and felt even more isolated than ever.

      Wyoming had been good to him until it wasn’t, taking the one thing from him that he’d loved the most—his son.

      The sound of the door opening and the wind whistling through the open doorway caused him to pause midsentence and turn.

      It was then that any misgivings he’d had about taking the job coalesced into a big ball of certainty. It was her—of all the people who could’ve walked through that door in this little fishing town, why did it have to be her? He couldn’t believe his dumb luck—some might even say it was painfully ironic but he was in no mood to appreciate the wry humor—but there she was in all her glory, only this time...she was clothed and in a fish-and-game uniform.

      He swallowed and hoped his shock wasn’t plainly evident to his entire team as he stared at the woman he’d buried himself in several times only twelve short hours ago.

      And he didn’t even know her name. Hadn’t that been the stipulation she’d set? And he’d been only too happy to play along. Of all the stupid moves...

      Their stares collided, a combination of dismayed surprise and horror, as both processed the reality of the situation. Yeah, talk about awkward. It was his first day, and he’d already slept with an employee. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t known; all that mattered was that now they had history and it was likely to become even more complicated, which was the worst way to kick off a fresh start.

      “Everything all right, Miranda?” asked a woman named Mary Calhoun, who had introduced herself the minute he’d crossed the threshold. “We were starting to worry. Is Talen okay? Did he catch that flu bug that’s going around? It’s not like you to be late.”

      Miranda. Her name was Miranda. And who was Talen? He rolled her name around in his mind. It fit her—strong, bold and every bit as fierce as he suspected her personality was. Damn, if she wasn’t as beautiful in the morning as she was in moonlight. Definitely not the way he wanted to start their professional relationship. There were too many images in his head of her naked in the throes of passion to shake free. How the hell was he supposed to act? He was on unprecedented ground and he hated it.

      “I overslept,” she murmured, edging her way past him as she took her place among her peers. He didn’t miss how her gaze seemed to skitter around the room, content to rest on anything but his own gaze.