Chapter Three
“I think we got lucky,” said James. “The wind dying down that quickly was honestly a miracle. I thought we were going to spend the entire day and night out there.”
“It’s already three am, James,” said Josie, smoothing back the sweaty strands of hair that were clinging to her forehead.
She smelled terrible. She looked worse than terrible, and she was quite certain that there was a dangerous amount of soot lodged up her nose.
One blow on a tissue and she would probably set off a smoke detector. “We’ve been up all night.”
James lifted his wrist and scanned his watch. “Oh shit. You’re right. Didn’t expect that.”
His strict boss persona had stripped away as soon as the truck had parked back at the station and everyone except those on call had scattered like mice to their beds.
Almost everyone.
Josie could easily have shrugged out of her turnout gear and rushed home to her lovely walk-in shower to scrub off the grime and then flopped onto her king-sized bed with its soft Egyptian cotton.
Instead, she had followed Peyton into the locker room and had felt somewhat disappointed when James had walked in right after her.
She couldn’t possibly go home, not with the irrational fear that if Josie left without waving a white flag in Peyton’s direction, that tomorrow when she came back to the station, Peyton would be gone and there would be no way of finding her ever again.
Even with the lying, and the obvious rudeness, Josie remained as intrigued by her as that first time she had spotted Peyton deep in her book while the world continued noisily around her.
And Josie believed in fate. So, of course, it meant that all this had to have happened for a reason. She just needed to know why.
“I guess it’s too late to catch a bite to eat. Are you hungry, Jo? Should we go see if Greg’s diner is still open? I’m sure we can wake him up.”
Josie was barely listening. She was far too busy glancing over his shoulder to where Peyton was standing at the furthest end of the lockers.
Peyton’s tank top was wet and clung to her body.
Her shoulders were shiny and glistening from sweat.
She was wrestling off her turnout pants, the bulky heat-resistant layers making the process awkward, but somehow, she still remained eloquent.
It was like seeing a Victoria’s Secret model stumble.
A heat as hot as the earth’s core made its way into Josie’s stomach.
She reminded herself to breathe. To relax.
Peyton wasn’t the ethereal being blessed by Zeus himself.
She was a liar. She didn’t deserve Josie’s admiration.
All that pining, that blinding sort of longing over the last year for something that should’ve been, that could’ve been.
If only she hadn’t let Peyton walk out her hotel room without at least a number, suddenly seemed so silly.
It was so outlandish, embarrassing even.
But if that was the case, then why the hell did Josie have to physically stop herself from lunging in Peyton’s direction?
Why did she have to restrain herself from gathering the woman’s silky, sweaty body in her arms, and kissing her so hard and so deeply that the ground would slip away from beneath their feet?
“Are you even listening to me?” came James, opening his locker and grabbing his shirt. He stripped the one off his back, showing his well-earned six-pack, and shrugged the shirt on over his head. “Food. Are you hungry? I’m thinking bacon-loaded waffles.”
But Josie was far too busy running the memory of that night with Peyton through her head to even consider the hole in her stomach. Of course, she was hungry. She was starving. Or at least she had been starving minutes earlier.
Peyton’s back was facing them while she wrangled her wavy strands together and twisted them into a bun above her head.
The lean muscles of her back pulsed in the loveliest of ways, and now Josie’s stomach was filled to the brim with a swarm of bees, their wings whirring uncomfortably, taking away her appetite.
“Jo, what’s going on with you?” James snapped his fingers together, but even that didn’t break Josie from her spell.
He followed her gaze instead and looked back over his shoulder, his eyes narrowing and then widening, and then his jaw slackened.
He slapped a palm to his mouth, whispering, “Is that her? The her? Trace said your one-night stand from Costa Rica was here.”
“Shhh,” muttered Josie under her breath. “Keep your voice down.”
“I am,” he whispered again, leaning forward as he ran his fingers through his hair. “So, is it? Is that Peyton? I heard someone call her name, but I didn’t put two and two together.” A frown suddenly graced his forehead. “I thought she was an editor.”
Josie flicked her attention back to James. “She lied, okay.”
“Weird thing to lie about.”
The door suddenly clicked shut. When Josie looked up again, Peyton was nowhere to be seen.
“I have to go,” Josie stammered and without an explanation as to why and where to, she ran past James to the door. She only briefly stopped as it swung open to shout over her shoulder, “Love you. See you later.” Then she dashed into the corridor.
It was empty. No Peyton in sight. Josie picked up her pace despite her tired legs and darted past the trucks, out of the garage, and into the parking lot.
Déjà vu hit her out of nowhere. That moment when she had run out onto the gravel-lined parking lot, the book clutched in her hand, played like a video in her head.
So many times before, Josie had caught herself daydreaming, wondering what had happened to that book. Had someone picked it up and taken it home? Did they dry out the pages with the patience and love it required, or had it found its way to the bin, discarded forever?
“Peyton!” called Josie, coming to a halt.
Peyton stopped but didn’t glance back. Even in the dim light, the moon still faded by a fine mist of smoke, Josie could see the woman’s shoulders tense, her body straighten.
Everything about Peyton resembled a woman’s response to encountering a man in an alleyway—not hearing the voice of a woman you had once slept with.
Josie thought about aborting, turning around, and heading to her car parked west of the lot, and then driving to her sister’s house. Kelsey was a good ear. Even when woken up in the middle of the night, she would give Josie logical advice and put her to bed like she put Noah to bed.
Unfortunately, Josie’s feet were quite stuck, and her eyes were glued to the back of Peyton. “Where are you going?”
Slowly—just like that time in the rain-addled parking lot in Manuel Antonio—Peyton turned around.
The golden glow coming from the station caught her face, accentuating every sharp edge, her sleek jawline, the soft curve of her collarbone, and the swell of her breasts.
Josie used every ounce of her willpower not to look down and glimpse the hard peaks of Peyton’s nipples protruding through her white tank top.
Josie swallowed hard.
“Home,” said Peyton tersely.
“Back to the city?”
“Where else would my home be, Josie?”
“Why don’t you stay at my place?” The words came out so fast that Josie didn’t have any time to reach out and grab them. Instinctively, she flinched and stepped back.
Peyton’s eyebrows weaved together briefly. “Los Osos is like a fifteen-minute drive. I’ll be home in no time.”
“My apartment is two minutes away,” muttered Josie, who clearly hadn’t learned her lesson. “Fifteen minutes versus two. It’s just a comfy bed and you can leave in the morning. I’ve even got a fridge full of leftover spaghetti if you’re hungry. You decide.”
Peyton laughed. It bordered on the chilly, but instead of rolling her eyes or hitting back a sharp comment, she stretched out her neck, ignored the crack and the pop of her joints.
“Fine. But only because I’m exhausted, and I don’t want to fall asleep while I’m driving. Two minutes is better than fifteen.”
Josie was briefly taken aback. She had actually expected Peyton to laugh in her face and say, ‘No thank you, I’d rather sleep in my car than sleep at your house.’
Her answer shot a horde of buzzing bees into her belly.
“I can give you a lift,” offered Josie, trembling as if she was freezing.
Peyton shook her head and stepped back, reversing to a sleek silver sedan. “I’ll drive behind you.”
~~
“You only have one bed,” said Peyton sharply, a deep scowl pulling her brows together. She was pointing both hands to the king-sized bed that stood in the middle of Josie’s bedroom. “The way you were talking made it seem like you had two bedrooms. Two beds.”
“I don’t recall giving you that impression,” said Josie, putting on the sweetest voice she could muster—the same one that had saved her as a kid. Kelsey always said Josie had the ability to get away with murder.
Peyton backed toward the door. She was shaking her head from side to side as if she had just witnessed something incredulous, something shocking. A wavy strand of hair fell onto her shoulder. Josie would have loved nothing more than to reach out and brush it away.
“I’m going home.”
“Oh, come on,” said Josie. “You can’t be serious? You can build yourself a pillow fort in the middle of the bed if you want to. It’s just a bed to rest your head on for a few hours.”
Peyton snapped her head in Josie’s direction. “This isn’t some ploy to get back at me for lying to you?”
“Of course not.”
“You’re not going to draw a mustache on my face while I’m sleeping, are you?”
“I’m not that petty,” said Josie, biting down a laugh. She might not be petty, but drawing a mustache on a sleeping person was something she had done on multiple occasions. Just ask Kelsey.
Peyton breathed in deeply, glanced once more from Josie to the bed and back again, and sighed loudly. “Fine. Do you have a shower?”
“Of course, I do. I’m not a barbarian. There are spare towels in the cupboard next to the sink… and I’ll put out a pair of pajamas for you.”
Peyton’s nostrils flared. She looked just about ready to attack Josie, which Josie found kind of sexy actually, before turning and marching down the hallway to the bathroom.
It was minutes later when Josie walked back into the bedroom.
Peyton was already tucked into bed wearing an oversized T-shirt that had once belonged to Mark, and a pair of polka-dot pajama shorts.
Josie, on the other hand, had put on her best matching satin pajama set.
She had bought it for herself last summer but hadn’t yet had the occasion to wear it.
Not that it mattered. Peyton appeared to be doing everything in her power not to look at Josie. A snort sat thickly in Josie’s throat. Had she really thought that she could seduce Peyton? Had she really thought the satin pajamas and the dim lighting would lead to anything?
Heat flushed Josie’s cheeks. It seemed that there were an endless number of ways she could embarrass herself.
She flicked off the light switch, hurried across the room, and climbed into her side of the bed, burrowing beneath the sheets, her back to Peyton.
Every ounce of her felt alive. Whatever tiredness had consumed her earlier, when she had climbed back into the truck, her body, feeling exhausted and broken, had somehow disappeared.
“Goodnight,” she murmured.
A grumble sounded from the other side of the bed.
Josie took it as a reciprocal goodnight and pulled the sheet up over her shoulders.
Her eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room.
Soon Josie could make out the dresser across from where a bonsai tree sat at one end and a framed photo of her and Kelsey at the age of five, licking strawberry swirls off a waffle cone, sat on the other.
She listened out for any sign that Peyton was sleeping. Possibly a deeper, slower kind of breathing pattern, but there was none.
“Are you awake?” whispered Josie, her heart beating loud and fast in her head.
The mattress creaked and moved beside her. Josie counted to three and when Peyton said nothing, she turned around to see Peyton lying on her side, facing her. Sun-kissed waves of hair took up most of the pillow and one strand fell across her cheek.
Instead of tucking it behind Peyton’s ear—something Josie wanted to do so fricken badly—she fluffed up her pillow and placed her hands together under her cheek. “Why lie?” she said softly. “Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?”
Peyton skated her tongue over her teeth. She had great teeth—straight and pearly white with incisors slightly sharper than typical. “I have my reasons.”
“What reasons?” asked Josie, desperate to know. She wanted to understand how someone could make up so many lies in one short period of time without even batting an eyelash.
Was Peyton a sociopath? Possibly. Except sociopaths didn’t exactly put their lives on hold to save someone else. Josie had never heard of a firefighter sociopath.
“This isn’t the right time for that conversation.” Peyton rolled onto her back and pulled the blanket under her chin. Her eyes were still open, fixed on the ceiling, her chest rising so subtly, Josie could barely make out the faint rhythm of her breath.
“Will there ever be a right time?” asked Josie.
“Probably not,” said Peyton, turning around so that her back faced Josie once again. “Now, can you please leave me alone so I can fall asleep?”
The last thing she wanted to do was leave Peyton alone. Actually, she would rather battle a giant squid than let Peyton leave tomorrow morning without a proper explanation.
But what could she do? Tie her to the bed. Handcuff her to the occasional chair in the living room and demand Peyton tell her why she hadn’t just told the truth.
The idea was tempting, but illegal.
And then, of course, there was that other thing. That thing she hadn’t stopped thinking about since the drive home.
Breathing deeply, Josie put that thought out of her head for the time being and closed her eyes. Hopefully, sleep would come easily tonight. Although she had a feeling it would be incredibly difficult to relax with Peyton beside her.
Hot, book reading Peyton.