Hurricane Love

1. Wylie

WYLIE

The new guy was built, with a tattoo sleeve covering one arm from wrist to shoulder and an aura of danger that clung to him like a heady cologne.

Badass or bad boy, either way Wylie was intrigued, both of those being his type.

It didn’t necessarily lend itself to stable or healthy long-term relationships, but he and his therapist were working on that.

“You’re being too obvious, Wy,” said his best friend Hannah while pulling drinks at the sputtering soda machine.

She was a server at the family-owned barbecue joint where both of them had worked since high school.

Hannah got him the job, being a darling of the owner, Frank Machado.

Wylie worked the takeout window and filled to-go orders because Frank said he was too easily distracted to work the floor, which was true.

Wylie blamed his ADHD. The one advantage of his work station was that it offered him an excellent view of the kitchen, including the new line cook currently manhandling a massive hunk of meat.

“Just admiring the view,” Wylie said.

“And what a view it is.” Hannah fanned herself with a stack of paper takeout menus. The new guy in question glanced up and shot them a suspicious look, forehead crinkling under his backwards ball cap, which sent a little jolt of adrenaline through Wylie. He loved a challenge.

“Go do some recon,” he said to Hannah.

She laughed, her tongue piercing glinting in the fluorescent light.

Wylie had a matching stud, a fun adventure from a spring break a few years back, right before Hannah got pregnant by her shithead boyfriend and had to grow up and be a mom.

“What do you want me to do? Stick my tits in his face?” she teased.

“Obviously.”

Shrugging gamely, Hannah loaded up her drink tray and sashayed over to the line, which was just a long, stainless steel counter where the smoked meats were portioned and plated.

“Hey, handsome, what’s your name?” she asked the new line cook while canting her hips to the side, one arm akimbo to offer Wylie an unfettered view of this “scientific research.”

“Diego,” the man responded with a flat, unimpressed look. His shitty attitude and hostile expression only heightened Wylie’s interest.

“Diego, huh?” She shifted the tray so that she was leaning forward, the upper swells of her breasts threatening to topple out of her tight, white t-shirt emblazoned across the front with ‘Frank’s Pit Barbecue.’

The new guy didn’t bother to give her knockers a second look, just went back to methodically slicing his meat. When Hannah lingered a bit too long, he asked in a bored tone, “And you are?”

“I’m Hannah,” she said with a brilliant smile, then nodded over her shoulder. “That’s my bestie, Wylie Fox Sommers.”

Grunting, Diego glanced up at Wylie. Long eyelashes framed honey brown eyes that were surprisingly soft and expressive despite his tough demeanor.

Damn, that man is fine, Wylie thought, but there was something else that he caught in the man’s expression, however brief and guarded.

Pain. Well, Wylie could relate to that too.

“Sup?” Wylie said, giving him a dudely up-nod.

Diego exhaled as if aggrieved and shifted his attention back to Hannah. “You need something?”

“Just this here sauce,” she said smoothly and grabbed one of the plastic bottles of sweet n’ spicy barbecue–house recipe.

She winked at Diego and made her way to the swinging door that separated the kitchen from the floor while balancing the full tray of drinks in one hand.

The look she gave Wylie on her way out said that this conversation was to be continued.

Diego went back to dissecting a hunk of beef brisket, each slice uniform in thickness.

Precise. This guy is really locked in, Wyle mused while wondering if that singular attention extended to the bedroom.

The black latex gloves covering his hands were sexy as hell, as were the prominent veins of his forearms, and the tattoos, half hidden by the sleeve of his navy FPB t-shirt.

Wylie had spearheaded a campaign a few years back to get uniform shirts that were a thinner blend of cotton, due to the temperamental nature of the pit’s air conditioner and the fact that Florida summers lasted half the year.

Seeing how that poly-cotton blend now stretched across the new guy’s wide torso, Wylie was thankful again for his campaigning efforts.

Diego glanced up once more and gave Wylie a look of warning, which Wylie returned with an eager smile, never one to play hard to get. That earned him a slight head shake and another sexy grunt. Unfortunately, a customer arrived at the takeout window and interrupted Wylie’s grand seduction.

They didn’t speak for the remainder of their shift, but there was a new tension in the air between them and an awareness that hadn’t been there before, like the metallic tang of ozone before a lightning strike.

In Wylie’s experience, it meant the other guy either wanted to beat his ass or fuck, sometimes both.

He hoped for a more sexy encounter with the new line cook.

Diego.

“Results are inconclusive,” Hannah said to him later, in regards to the new guy’s sexual leanings.

Wylie nodded, his chest ballooning as if he were about to jump from a very great height. “I can work with that.”