Chapter 19 Nate
NATE
Ihad a plan.
It was a good plan, built on solid foundations.
Show up. Be professional. Stop making women cry in parking lots.
Definitely stop lying awake replaying that scene over and over.
Be friendly, but not close. Present, but not dangerous.
And for the love of God, stop thinking about how Maya tasted on that ridge trail.
That memory was doing nothing productive for anyone.
Okay, so the foundations needed work.
I pulled the Tacoma into the station lot ten minutes early, because punctuality was one of the few things I still had control over. Engine off. Deep breath. I checked my reflection in the rearview mirror, as though it might have a better handle on my life than I did.
“Keep it together,” I told my reflection. “She’s Dan’s sister. You’re leaving. This is not complicated.”
My reflection did not look convinced.
I grabbed my coffee and climbed out of the truck. The morning air was clean and cool, carrying that particular pine-and-earth smell that had started to feel dangerously like home.
I was inside the station for about ten minutes when Maya showed up.
She came through the door mid-conversation with Cooper, laughing at something he’d said. Her shirt was unbuttoned over a white tank top that fit her like it had been designed as a personal attack on my nervous system.
Glancing over, she caught my eye and smiled. Relief hit me square in the chest. We really were grand, as she’d said. Thank fuck for that.
“Morning.” She set her travel mug on her desk and shrugged her pack off her shoulder, the movement pulling the tank top taut across her breasts for just a second before the shirt settled back into place. “You’re early.”
“Habit.”
“Military precision.” She said it lightly, almost teasing. Something about the way she held my gaze for a beat longer than necessary sent a flicker of heat through me.
I looked away. Took a sip of my coffee. Reminded myself, firmly, about The Plan.
Brody emerged from his office. “Morning, troops. Got a fun one for you two today. Drainage culverts along the southern loop need clearing before the weekend rain hits. Take the tandem, it’s a decent haul of gear.”
Maya nodded, all business, already reaching for her gloves. “On it.”
We spent the next fifteen minutes pulling gear from the lockup. Rakes, shovels, a portable hose, and enough buckets to bail out a sinking ship.
Once the cargo rack was loaded and secured, Maya stepped back and looked at the quad, then at me.
“You can drive, if you like.”
“Yeah?”
“You know the southern loop by now, and I want to check the map on the way out. Easier to do that from the back.”
It made perfect sense. Logical, practical, no reason at all for the alarm bells clanging in the back of my head.
I climbed on and started the quad. It rumbled beneath me, familiar and solid. Then Maya climbed on behind me, and every rational thought I’d had that morning packed its bags and left the building.
Her thighs bracketed mine. Her arms slid around my waist, hands settling against my stomach, and her breasts pressed flush against my back. She was warm and soft and unmistakably, devastatingly, there.
“All good,” she called over the engine, her lips close enough to my ear that her breath ghosted across my neck.
I gripped the handlebars until my knuckles ached.
The trail punished me. Every rut, every root, every uneven stretch of packed earth jolted us together, and each time her body pressed tighter against mine. Her hands shifted on my stomach as she adjusted her balance, fingers splaying across my abs. Every muscle locked rigid beneath her palms.
About halfway down the loop, she leaned forward. “Slow down a sec. Here’s where I need to check the map.”
I eased off the throttle. The quad settled into a low idle, and Maya’s chin came to rest on my shoulder as she unfolded the map beside my head. Her cheek was inches from mine. That sweet scent of hers wrapped around me like smoke, making my pulse race.
“See that junction up ahead?” She pointed at a spot on the map. “We want to bear left there. The first culvert is about two hundred meters past the split.”
“Got it.” The words scraped out of my throat like dry gravel.
If she noticed, she didn’t show it. She just folded the map, tucked it into her back pocket, and settled against me again, her arms returning to their position around my waist like they belonged there.
I gunned the throttle and focused on the trail with the single-minded intensity of a man defusing a bomb, because that was essentially what this was. One wrong move, one moment of lost concentration, and the whole thing would blow up.
Maya’s fingers drummed lightly against my stomach. A casual, absent-minded rhythm, like she was keeping time to a song in her head.
She was just holding on for balance. Pure, unintentional necessity, and I was the one turning it into something it wasn’t.
I clenched my jaw and drove.
The moment we arrived at the site, I cut the engine, profoundly grateful to put some distance between us.
The first culvert was clogged with about six months’ worth of leaf litter, silt, and the remains of a bird’s nest. Maya crouched at the mouth of it, peering inside, then rocked back on her heels.
“This one’s manageable. We can clear it by hand and flush the rest with water.” She stood and brushed off her knees, turning to the gear on the quad. “Grab the bucket and the hand rake, will you? I’ll get the hose rigged up.”
I did as I was told. The work was simple enough; a straightforward physical task that should have let my brain settle into a rhythm and stay there.
Should have.
The channel wasn’t built for two people, and every time one of us shifted position, we bumped shoulders or knocked elbows or brushed hands.
Each point of contact registered like a static shock, small and sharp and impossible to ignore.
She reached across me for the rake, her forearm sliding against mine. “Sorry, just need to get at that root ball.”
“Go ahead.”
She leaned in, her shoulder pressing into my chest as she worked the rake under a tangle of roots. I held perfectly still, barely breathing, until she pulled back with the obstruction and tossed it clear of the channel.
“Teamwork.” She flashed me a smile, her face flushed from the effort, a streak of mud across her jaw that she either didn’t notice or didn’t care about.
We moved to the outlet end, where the silt had packed in hard, and got to work. The sun had climbed high enough to burn through the canopy, turning the narrow channel into a humid oven.
“Fuck, it’s hot,” Maya muttered. She leaned on her shovel and swiped the back of her wrist across her forehead.
I grunted an agreement, focusing entirely on my rake.
That was when she did it.
She blew out a breath, peeled off the ranger shirt, and tossed it onto the bank like it meant nothing. Like she hadn’t just removed the only barrier between me and Maya Brookes in a white tank top.
The thin fabric was damp from exertion, clinging to her tanned shoulders and rising with every heavy breath. My mouth went completely dry, and the blood rushed south so fast it made me lightheaded.
I missed the channel entirely with the rake and drove it into the dirt bank beside me.
Maya glanced over. “You okay?”
“Fine.” I yanked the rake free and went back to work, my neck burning. “Hit a rock.”
“Mm.” She picked up the shovel and went back to digging, the ghost of a smile playing at the corner of her mouth.
Or I was imagining it. I was probably imagining it.
We finished the last culvert just after three.
The afternoon light had gone golden and lazy, slanting through the trees in long warm shafts.
The air smelled like damp earth and clean water.
It also smelled like the faintest trace of whatever perfume Maya had put on that morning.
That particular scent had been slowly driving me insane since sunrise.
I was rinsing off the tools in the creek when she appeared beside me, close enough that her arm almost touched mine.
“Hey, hold still.”
She reached up and brushed her fingers across my cheekbone before my brain could even process the movement.
Slow, deliberate, her thumb sweeping just below my eye.
Her touch was feather light but it burned through me like a lit fuse.
Every nerve ending in my body converged on the exact point where her skin met mine.
“Mud,” she said simply. Her fingers lingered on my face for one beat longer than necessary. Then two.
Her gaze burned into mine, as the air turned thick and very, very dangerous.
Then she dropped her hand, stepped back, and smiled.
“Can’t have you going back to the station looking like you lost a fight with a mud monster.”
With that, she turned and walked toward the quad, tossing the tools into the cargo rack. I stood there with creek water running over my hands and her touch seared against my skin.
My plan was ash. Scattered, smoking, utterly beyond salvation.