At Last Read Free

wrangling I do, rescuing fair maidens is also part of my job description.”
    “I’m no fair maiden—” She broke off when something screeched directly above her. Reacting instinctively, she flattened herself to the rock, completely ruining her tough-girl image.
    “Just the cry of a loon,” her very own forest ranger said. “Echoing across Four Lakes.”
    She straightened up just as another animal howled, and barely managed not to flinch. “That,” she said shakily, “was more than a loon.”
    “A coyote,” he agreed. “And the bugling of an elk. It’s dusk. Everyone’s on the prowl for dinner. The sound carries over the lakes, making everyone seem like they’re closer than they are.”
    “There’s elk around here?”
    “Roosevelt Elk,” he said. “And deer, bobcats, and cougars, too.”
    Amy shoved her sketch book into her backpack, ready to get the hell off the mountain.
    “Whatcha got there?” he asked.
    “Nothing.” She didn’t know him well enough to share her drawings, and then there was the fact that he was everything she didn’t trust: easy smile, easy nature, easy ways—no matter how sexy the packaging.

Chapter 2
     

     
    If God had meant for us to be thin, he wouldn’t have created chocolate.
    M att loved his job. Having come from first the military, then Chicago SWAT, the current shortage of blood and guts and gangbangers in his workweek was a big bonus. But his day as supervisory forest ranger for the North District had started at the ass crack of dawn, when two of his rangers had called in sick, forcing him to give the sunrise rainforest tour—a chore he ranked right up there with having a root canal.
    Without drugs.
    Talking wasn’t the problem. Matt liked talking just fine, and he loved the mountain. What he didn’t love were the parents who didn’t keep track of their own children, or the divorcees who were looking for a little vacay nookie with a forest ranger, or the hard-core outdoor enthusiasts who knew… everything.
    After the morning’s tour, he’d measured the snowmelt and then gone to the Eagle Rock campsites to relocateone royally pissed-off raccoon mama and her four babies from the bathroom showers. From there, he’d climbed up to Sawtooth Lake to check the east and west shorelines for reported erosion, taken steps to get that erosion under control, patrolled all the northern quadrant’s trails for a supposed Bigfoot sighting, handled some dreaded paperwork, and then come back out to rescue a fair, sweet maiden.
    Only maybe not so sweet…
    She was still sitting on the rock outcropping, her mile-long legs bent, her arms wrapped around them, her dark eyes giving nothing away except her mistrust, and he felt the usual punch of awareness hit him in the solar plexus.
    So fucking beautiful. And so full of 100 percent, hands-off-or-die bad attitude.
    She wasn’t his usual type. He preferred his women soft, warm, giving, with a nice dash of playful sexiness, so he had no idea what it was about Amy Michaels. But for the past six months, ever since she’d moved to Lucky Harbor, they’d been circling each other.
    Or maybe it was just him doing the circling. Amy was doing a whole lot of ignoring, a real feat given that she’d been serving him at the diner just about every night. He could have asked her out, but he knew she wouldn’t go. She turned down everyone who asked her.
    So instead Matt had regularly parked himself at Eat Me, fueling himself up on diner food and her company when he could get it. Then he’d go home and fantasize about all the other ways she might keep him company, getting off on more than a few of them.
    Today she wore low-riding jeans and a black tank top that hugged her curves, revealing slightly sunburnedshoulders and toned arms. Her boots had both laces and zippers. City girl boots, meant to look hot.
    They did.
    “You going to tell me what’s going on?” he asked.
    “Nothing’s going on.”
    “Uh huh.” She was revealing a whole lot