Wolf and Bare It (Wolf Brothers #2)

Chapter 1

Chapter

One

“I might be forgiven for having no magic, but I have no beauty, either. I am curvy where I should be thin and my hair is dark instead of blonde. I do not look like the other Fae maidens...”

— EVANGELINE ANDERSON, THE THRONE OF SHADOWS

D icks were trouble.

The long, fat stalk? Red flag. The plump head? Also a red flag.

Misfortune or fault, the mushroom at my feet resembled a very puffy phallus.

Why not pick it? That was my thought when I reached out with grabby hands.

And then suddenly I was somersaulting downhill, betrayed by my fungi lust. Betrayed by a dick. AGAIN.

The world blurred in a haze of green ferns and brown dirt. Grounding was therapeutic, but right now I was too connected to the mountainside.

Landing was even more painful.

Looking back, maybe I should have planned my day off better.

The forest was a place where my kind, those with certain supernatural gifts, came to recharge. Replenish the magical well. Get away from the humans, get away from ourselves and the masks we have to wear to fit into your world.

Sick and tired of wearing that magical mask, I’d temporarily traded the glitz of my TV-star life for alone time with Mother Nature. Trees! Fungus! Epiphytes hitching rides on other plants! At first I thought Tennessee had the best woods ever. Awesome decision!

But now, I was starting to rethink my choices. For example: these woods were not well marked. Was there an EXIT sign?

Well, no. This was compounded by my sad failure to grab a trail map when I’d decided to stop for a hike instead of pushing straight on to my rental cabin. “Unexpected detours are so much fun,” I’d enthused to the barista who’d told me about the trail. “I love surprises!”

Then I’d run out of the coffee shop before anyone could recognize me—ball caps were the best —and hopped in my rental car. In the parking lot, on the road, stopped for traffic lights, I’d got a few second looks. Some sideways glances. One lady snapped a picture with her phone before waving hesitantly.

I’d been happy to hit the trail and be alone. It was just me! No one else around! HEAVEN!

But now that I’d crash-landed at the bottom of a tricksy slope, I was rethinking my anti-people sentiment.

I took inventory. Winced.

I was . . . functional?

Multiple scratches, some missing and much mourned skin on my left elbow and right palm. Bruises, dirt, and bug bites. Was I otherwise in one piece? Yep. Was I looking forward to covering up the damage when I went back? Not at all.

People talked up personal glamour, but it came with a hefty price tag. It was like a plane: the farther you flew, the more gas it took. The more I changed my appearance, the more energy I expended. Let me tell you, my TV-star good looks and charm took considerable energy. My face was the gas-guzzler model.

The crunch of dry autumn leaves as I carefully rolled over almost but not quite drowned out the angry rumble of my stomach. I was hungry and grumpy. Grungry.

Keeping my feelings to myself was like staying silent during sex: unsatisfying, off-putting, and sure to disappoint. I shared those feelings—loudly and liberally—with the forest floor.

“ Oye , stupid, warty, spiny, oversized puffball. What the pineapple ?”

Was the trail anywhere in sight? No.

Cell phone signal? Also a big, fat no.

Actually, both living creatures and bars of cell phone service had been absent ever since I’d left the trailhead to forage for mushrooms...which had landed me here. Somewhere in the dirt in the middle of nowhere, Tennessee. At least it was still daylight and would be for hours. Trust me, October days in this state did not end quickly and the sky was still blazingly, brightly hot.

Really, I’d die out here from dehydration and starvation. The epitaph on my gravestone would read: No finding spell could help. Her sense of direction was so bad, even the trail mix was confused .

Was I overdramatic? Was I letting my acting job bleed into my personal life? You betcha, but I still rechecked my phone like the essential lifeline it was. Perhaps a massive cell phone tower had sprouted in Moonlight Valley and this isolated, people-less corner of the fine state of Tennessee miraculously had cell phone reception and Google Maps.

Nada.

I’d just have to find the trailhead and my stupid, stick-shift car on my own...or maybe I’d try a finding spell if I had the energy. It had rained recently, and the ferns taunted me as I climbed back up, a layer of delicious green frosting on mud pie. Moss, more ferns, unattractive dead branches, a sprinkling of lichens, and ooh... sparkle .

Quartz crystals , my brain supplied. Black, slightly glassy, just a hint of sparkle. Field diamond , my ever-hopeful heart whispered back. DIAMOND.

It was nestled amongst the dirt and leaves, as if it had been placed there just for me. It was luck. An unexpected gift to find something so precious where it shouldn’t be. No digging, no searching—it was simply there . Waiting.

I tucked the rock into my pocket.

That bit of hope motivated me up the ravine, although I faceplanted in the muddy dirt more than once. Stupid mushroom hunting, making me walk miles. I’ll eat you for dinner!

A distant, tuneless whistling tugged on my attention as I clambered back onto the path. There was a sort-of melody to the off-key sound, a cheerful but terrible warble that heralded a fellow hiker having a good day. Or an untalented bird with powerful lungs.

Did birds have lungs? I made a note to research that after I returned to civilization and the land of working internet. And showers...

I was covered in dirt and leaves. My hair stuck out in a dozen different directions, all unflattering. The last thing I needed was pictures of me imitating a crone from Shakespeare’s Macbeth all over the internet. Or worse, pictures of unglamoured me.

Trust me. There would be questions if anyone saw my real face.

The bad whistling morphed into an inexplicably peppy but recognizable rendition of the 1812 Overture. Booted feet crunched over the leaf-covered trail, coming closer.

Commencing evasive maneuvers.

I sucked in a breath, pressed a hand over my noisy stomach, and reached for the energy for a glamour. Hi, unknown hiker! I’m just a random, unknown person you’ve met on the trail! You don’t recognize me at all, but you’ll point me in the direction of the parking lot? Awesome! Thanks SO much!

Except . . . An unwelcome, far uglier thought popped into my head.

What if it wasn’t picture-taking that he wanted? The universe was full of assholes—both human and supernatural—and I was a woman alone in the woods. Sometimes, bears were safer.

Having read this story dozens of times on Yahoo, I fished my very unmagical but handy mace out of my bag and tucked it against my side.

I ducked behind a tulip poplar to put my glamour on. My new tree friend was a good hundred feet tall, papered with shaggy brown bark, and slimmer around than I was. The glamour was a simple magic, one I’d honed further with practice, and it changed how people perceived me, like magical makeup or a face mask. Glamoured me was more confident, more empathetic, just more .

And also less .

Specifically: I was less supernatural.

People reacted badly to half-Fae, half-Chaneque women. The pitchforks came out. Threats were made. Ergo, I glamoured when I wasn’t in private, letting the magic hide my eye color, smooth down the rough edges of my teeth and ears. And then I added a little oomph for good measure. Maybe it was unethical. Maybe that meant people didn’t like me for myself. Maybe that was why my relationships sucked—but I was safe.

The product that kept my long, brown hair sleek and smooth had dried up or rubbed off, and now random waves and curls sproinged and sprouted. I’d donated my hair tie to the forest floor. Dry twigs and crunchy leaves poked out at random intervals. Given how much energy I was devoting to the glamour already, I’d live with the bad hair.

I snuck a peek around the tree trunk—was Whistling Dude flashing a camera or a phone in my direction? Was I in imminent danger of being filmed? Did Southern hikers do social media?

If a tree falls in the forest, and there’s no one around to record it, does it make a sound?

I saw no phone, no camera, no drone.

The unbuttoned state of the black flannel that hugged Hiking Dude’s frame was entirely due to his chest being too muscly for his shirt. Or possibly it was protesting the truly awful biology pun on said shirt: DJ Enzyme breaks it down! A boring pair of khaki-colored hiking pants stretched over a far more interesting, broader set of thighs. He had one hand shoved into a pocket, and a thick beard framed plush lips as he whistled badly but happily. Beneath an honest-to-God, beat-up black cowboy hat, his other hand gripped a Gandalf-worthy walking stick. Was it for beating off bears and other woodland creatures? He frowned up at the tree canopy as if the leaves had offended him.

BLESS YOU, FOREST SPIRITS.

I twisted my hair up on top of my head, anchoring it with the backup tie from my wrist, brushed the biggest clumps of dirt from the front of my sweatshirt, and exhaled. This was good. I didn’t need my glamour dialed to maximum effect or a script—just the most basic of enchantments to hide my otherworldliness. We’d do the head-tip thing, he’d point me toward the way out, and boom! End of social interaction.

As I inched out from behind the tree and faced him, magic in place, his confident stride faltered. Surprise! You have company!

His eyes narrowed, and interest tempered his gaze. Ugh. Showtime. I turned my glamour up a notch, but it was as sluggish and shy as I was tired and hungry. Glamouring wasn’t like flipping a light switch on or off. It was more like a dial that I turned up or eased back, a magical on-ramp rather than a sudden precipice. On set, I dialed it up to maximum.

Before I could wrap myself in the magic more securely, however, he’d recovered from his surprise and swaggered toward me. His arrogance was strangely cute and was paired with a crooked grin and a magnificent pair of dimples. Apparently, he found dirt and leaves amusing.

He gave up trying to hide his smile and outright grinned. “Afternoon, ma’am.”

His voice was deep and rough, a dark chocolate burr that made me think of molasses and honey, whiskey and midnight promises. Dear Danu—the man could earn a fortune in Hollywood.

He tipped his head and then, surprisingly, hung back on the path. It took me precious seconds to figure out why.

OMG. He was a gentleman hiker.

He was trying not to scare me.

I was so relieved that I snort-laughed. Maybe it was nerves. Maybe that’s why I made such a socially inappropriate noise. I wasn’t in danger at all.

Mr. Lumberjack was a teddy bear with boundaries.

A giant, adorable, dimpled teddy bear . Six-foot something, hazel eyes with gold-green flecks the color of sunlight filtering through the spring fronds of Onoclea sensibilis , my favorite fern. A strong, chiseled jaw covered with a thick pelt of brown beard. Okay, so he wasn’t precisely cuddly. In fact, he was built along the lines of a very sexy bouncer or a professional wrestler.

Fortunately, five years of Hollywood living had inoculated me against male hotness. His good looks barely registered. His attractiveness flitted through my brain the same way I’d have noticed a cute dog someone had snuck into the coffee shop or a darling mug in the window of my favorite boutique. La, la, la, la, that’s adorable, too freaking cute, but I don’t need it and it’s NOT coming home with me.

Hot men were the cute coffee cups of relationships—you never needed one more because you already had more in your life than you could use. Plus, they tended to be shallow, fragile, and require special treatment.

Early in my showbiz career, I’d leveraged my star appeal to date pretty actors—muscled and lean, dark and grouchy, sunshine and flirty, or all-round attractive—I’d dated them all. Na?ve, young Sonnet’s motto had been: why stop at one chocolate in the sexy box?

Older, wiser, and far more cynical, I had come to understand that too many chocolate-box men gave me a stomachache.

Firstly: hot guys dated hot women.

Secondly: the hot guy ran the hotness dictionary and decided who was hot—or not. This meant he wrote the script, and I said the lines he wanted me to say. I was expected to remake myself into whatever he thought was hot for a woman. As I liked maintaining creative control, this did not work for me. Also, it was a lot of work tweaking my glamour to charm someone into believing I’d been poured into the dream woman package.

Thirdly: I couldn’t afford to waste time on dating.

Being Sonnet Ruiz, Smoky Spirits TV star and successful novelist, consumed my time. My planner had no empty square for dinner out or couple time on my sofa. As my manager and sister, Elena, reminded me constantly, success required putting my job first.

Time available for hot guys: zilch.

No, scratch that.

Time available for ANY guys: zilch.

My life was a guy-free zone.

And sure, this hiker was an attractive stranger guy, but he was also (I hoped) a man-sized EXIT sign who would point me toward my way out. I was sweaty and damp, muddy and miserable. And not that I wasn’t always sexy, but right now I might be actually, seriously lost and solving that problem was far more important than any future orgasm.

Ergo, I tipped my head once at the hot hiker’s polite greeting, shoving my tangled curls out of my face. “Greetings, fellow hiker.”

Noooo. Cut! That terrible line was a stinker that I’d have ruthlessly revised in edits. I did not do well in real time—I needed my laptop and twenty minutes to arrive at a decent opening line. But as I really did need his sense of direction, I hoped he was a smart hot guy. Or at least equipped with an excellent personal compass and a working cell phone.

His lips quirked. Parted. He seemed unsure of his next line in our scene.

How to interpret his interesting silence?

Sometimes people got weird when they met me. They’d ask me to reenact their favorite scenes. Strangely enough, these were not always the kissing scenes. They’d also ask me to sign stuff: napkins, coffee cup sleeves, ball caps, forearms, and other, more personal, body parts. I’d decline the reenactment requests and scrawl my signature on whatever non-animate objects they produced. It was part of the job. But right now, I’d fallen down the mountain. I was covered in dirt. I was grouchy and hungry, and he was way too freaking adorable.

But instead of holding out an arm for me to sign or mansplaining the plot holes in my latest novel where a curvy half-Fae astronaut had crash-landed on a planet of alien orcs with monster dicks, this man cleared his throat, pushing his cowboy hat back with one scarred and battered finger.

“Ma’am, do you need assistance?”

The expression on his handsome face conveyed his belief that this was a rhetorical question.

“Possibly.” I rushed across the path and latched onto his (very muscled, unsigned) arm. Hot or not, he was human, and I was lost in this mountain of green, trees, and rocks. His gaze dropped to my hands, clutching his flannel-covered forearm with obvious need. “Okay. Yes. Please. I fell down a giant hill, and I’ve lost the trailhead. I don’t know where I am in relation to the exit. My car is somewhere that is very much not here . Plus, it’s a stick shift, and it’s sentient and hates me. And I’m hungry, my phone is dead, and I don’t have time to learn how to trap a poor, defenseless rabbit and barbecue its fuzzy ass just so I don’t starve to death. You are perfect and currently meeting all my needs. Don’t leave me here.”

“Are you okay?” His forehead puckered slightly as he leaned toward me, concern filling his eyes. His eyes narrowed. “You have a bruise.”

A big, warm paw of a hand reached out to me. Did I want him to touch me? I would never know because he caught himself short. My stomach growled, in a hungry and combative mood.

He drew back, offered me a small smile as he shoved his hand into his pocket. “Sorry.”

His hand emerged, covered mine briefly, and then retreated again. It was a huge and warm. In fact, it felt so unexpectedly good that I almost grabbed it except that?—

He’d handed me a chocolate bar.

I’d never taken candy from a stranger before, nor had a hot guy ever given me a present. As a curvy gal, most people were more inclined to “helpfully” point out that I should consume carrots instead of refined sugars.

This guy was not most people.

His kindness was as unexpected as the gift of chocolate itself.

“Where do you need to go?” he asked gently.

Stranger danger , my mami’s voice shrieked in my head. Hija! You do NOT tell him where you live .

Mami had a point, but this man might have a map. Or, at the very least, directions. He definitely had chocolate.

Faced with the possibility of spending the rest of my (short) life lost on a Tennessee mountain, I discarded her sensible advice.

“Phantom Falls. I’m willing to consider selling my soul or making a deal with the devil to get there too.” This was said around a mouthful of chocolate.

He frowned. “Phantom Falls? You live up there?”

“Not yet. I just got here today. A friend, Wyatt Reynolds, has a rental with a view of the waterfall that he’s leasing to me for a few months and I’m on my way to pick up the keys.”

“Wyatt? You know Wyatt?”

“Yes, sir. We were college roommates.”

The adorable pucker in my lumberjack-cowboy’s brow deepened. The cutest pink flush colored his cheeks. “You don’t need to call me sir , ma’am.”

And you’re calling me ma’am. I bit back a smile.

“Do you have an alternate name? Mr. White Knight in Khaki Pants?”

The dimple in his cheek deepened. “You can call me Maverick, ma’am.”

Oh, my Goddess. I couldn’t even with his old-school manners and his sexy Southern accent.

“Your name is Maverick?”

Danger . That was either a hot-guy name or a stripper name. And since I didn’t see a stripper pole or a dancing conga line of guys with toolbelts, I needed to be careful.

He nodded. “My daddy was a big fan of trucks.”

“Uh, sure?” I said.

“And so he named my brothers and me after his favorite vehicles.” My new friend Maverick lifted one big, flannel-covered shoulder. Clearly, he was as flummoxed by his daddy’s naming choices as I was.

He was charming. Friendly and self-deprecating. It was downright adorable. The orcs I wrote about in my very popular paranormal romance novels were all swashbuckle and confidence. They were apex predators, giants of sexiness who swaggered around until they met their fated human mates. But when my heroes got near their heroines...BAM. They knew . She was their one and only. They didn’t even have to see their ladies; they had magical love-proximity radar.

I was a big fan of fated mates.

Because, in my experience, real-life hot guys did not date normal-looking women...and they certainly weren’t interested in supernatural me. My Hollywood boyfriends had asked me out under the influence of the glamour that made me look one-hundred-percent human.

“Where did you leave your car?” Maverick asked.

“The trailhead.” I whipped out my phone and showed him a picture of my rental car surrounded by trees. I guess I’d thought it was like the airport, where you took a photo of where your parked car was so you could find it again after you staggered off a red-eye, sleep-deprived and grungry. Unfortunately, the pull-off where I’d parked was smaller and less obvious than an entire parking structure. I’d also come to realize that one tree pretty much looked like any other tree.

Nevertheless, Maverick nodded and pointed back down the trail he’d come up. “You go down this trail until you spot the white blaze on the dead tulip poplar. Take the left fork, go two miles, take a right, then right again, it’s maybe four miles from here and?—”

That was too much information.

Also: FOUR MILES?

Maverick blinked impossibly long lashes. Possibly, he was telepathic? “On the other hand, my truck’s a half mile away.”

Then he hesitated.

He appeared to be performing complex social calculus. Or correctly interpreting the look of desperate despair on my face and weighing the not-so-remote possibility that he would have to carry my perishing but not slight body down the mountain to my car.

“Or—” he said. Then stopped. Blinked.

I gave him an encouraging smile, hoping I didn’t have chocolate smeared on my teeth. Should I up the wattage on my glamour? Strangely, I didn’t want to.

“There are twelve thousand different species of ferns,” I volunteered when he didn’t finish his sentence.

“Excuse me?”

Maverick blinked again. It was likely Morse code for Help, I’m trapped on the mountain with a socially inept person—please rescue me!

I was blurting out fern fun facts. Dear Danu. That meant Maverick made me nervous. Which was inexplicable because my last boyfriend had vaccinated me against hot guys.

It’s a miracle.

Or a curse.

My money was on curse. I should not have snagged the last doughnut at the coffee shop when a half-dozen hungry witches were waiting in line behind me.

“Or we could go in my truck. To your cabin. For today, maybe it’s easier if I give you a ride, and I’ll have someone pick your car up later.”

His eyes moved over my very ordinary face as he said this, still warm and interested. I double-checked but my glamour was still dialed down. I was just me, a little smoother, a whole lot less Fae. Maverick stared at me. I stared back. This was...

A hawk screeched overhead.

The ferns beside the trail rustled.

Maverick kept right on looking at me.

The way he focused on me, interested and intent, made me reconsider my conclusion that he hadn’t recognized me.

Perhaps he was a superfan of my TV show or my mushroom- and magic-focused Gremlincore accounts? Maybe he was a voracious reader of orc romance, defying the statistics that proclaimed my core reader to be female and an average age of forty-two. Maybe he was starstruck at meeting someone famous.

Whatever the reason for this stare-fest, I needed him to take charge and get us out of this wilderness and back to civilization. I had to pee and his chocolate, no matter how delicious, was small.

“Yes,” I blurted out.

Maverick blinked and his brain rebooted. He turned, placing a big paw on my shoulder, and turning me with him so that I faced an entirely different direction. Then he promptly removed his hand and gestured toward my old nemesis, the ferns. “This way.”

“Are you sure?” It looked like an optimal direction in which to lure me and then stash my lifeless body. You know. If the rugged take on Prince Charming was just a super clever ploy.

“Very.” His mouth quirked up.

Huh. The direction he was indicating looked suspiciously like the direction from which I’d just come. Revisiting my Waterloo (aka the deceptively steep slope of fiddlehead ferns that had tripped me up so badly) seemed unwise. Nevertheless, faced with the choice of remaining out here alone or tromping along after my flannel-covered rescuer, I opted to tromp.

“Here.” He paused and held out his Gandalf stick. “For balance.”

I took it, then looked down at the front of my sweatshirt, which displayed unmistakable evidence of balance issues.

“Water,” he finished, holding out a canteen.

He was a one-man rescue group.

Maverick turned around and started effortlessly breaking a path through the ferns. He seemed to know exactly where he was going. In fact, he was entirely too comfortable out here. Was he human?

Not having a supernatural woodland species guide to consult (not to mention having a bursting bladder and an empty stomach), I decided to take my chances.

I followed along behind him, after a token protest. “I can’t take all of your stuff, Maverick.”

“You seem like you’ve had a rough day.” He stopped—I hoped it wasn’t because he was lost too—and gave me another thoughtful once-over with his eyes. “If you’re tired, I could carry you.”

He patted his ridiculously broad, flannel-covered, lust-worthy back.

I shook my head automatically, then kicked myself. Not that he should have to carry me down a mountain when I had two functioning legs that had got me into this mess in the first place, but...holy research opportunity, Batman.

Pink colored his cheeks again. “Right. Down the mountain it is.”

He turned and started forward again, holding back ferns and branches with one big arm so that I was not further assaulted by the wilderness. His thoughtfulness caught me off guard.

I had never met a hot guy who was empathetic. Most were orc-like with beastly manners.

It made no earthly sense.

Or I had met all the wrong people.

Possibly, the hot, Hollywood types were a different, more bright-light-loving species than their Southern counterparts. They throve in the spotlight, turning their faces up to the sun. Sometimes beautiful plants had shallow roots—and sometimes, like my mystery gentleman, they were shyer, more mysterious, and hid in the shade.

I thought about that for the next twenty minutes while we twisted and turned our way down the mountain. Once, he came to an abrupt halt and stared with adorable concentration as a slender ribbon of neon green snake peered at us from a tangle of vines.

“Rough green snake,” he shared as I snapped a picture. “Probably looking for lunch,” Maverick added.

I gave him a look.

“Insects,” he clarified, with a grin. “Spiders. Miscellaneous invertebrates.”

Well, whew. I had a backbone, even if it didn’t always function.

“That’s not a snake. That’s a tiny nope rope,” I told him.

This earned me another grin. We continued on our way, unmolested by the snake.

“So.” He held out a hand to help me over a giant fallen tree. “What brings you to these parts?”

Magic. Magic, and an opportunity to forage for spell ingredients.

Most people didn’t believe in the supernatural or magic because the only people who were witches were (they thought oh-so-wrongly) the colorful, free-spirited, nature, granola types. Or they remembered Macbeth ’s We?rd Sisters and decided all witches were cackling crones with cauldrons, and that wasn’t how I rolled, thank you very much.

I laughed to myself, imagining Maverick’s face if I told him the truth.

That I was magical and searching for ingredients for a spell.

But I wouldn’t— couldn’t —do that. I was in town to do a job, and probably this was the moment where I should have mentioned Smoky Spirits , my TV show. The plethora of people waiting for me to show up, just in case he was the world’s most gorgeous, flannel-wearing serial killer.

Instead, I went for the joke.

I grabbed his hand. “Mushrooms.”

He was solid and bracing. I had a feeling that I could throw myself off the top of the fallen tree, and he would simply catch me. My imagination embroidered on this possibility, adding some pair skater lifts and delicious twirling. He was large enough to handle my substantial weight.

He nodded. “What kind of mushrooms?”

The jokester kind.

“Big ones. I love to eat enormous mushrooms, and you guys have a reputation for having the largest, tastiest ones in the fine state of Tennessee.”

“Mushrooms.” He choked. I was so riveted by his lumberjack good looks that I didn’t miss the faint pink flush now painting his cheekbones. Oh my GOD. He was a blusher. This would be so much fun.

“ Sí, claro que sí. ” I rested against him ever so briefly. He was my gentleman rescuer. I wouldn’t tease. Much. “Mushrooms are delicious. I could eat them every night. I love a nice, thick stalk with a fat head. Plump, juicy tips on massive clubs. There’s a buffet of choices in your fine state.”

My words came out a little too playful to seem serious. Still, he thought about my buffet for a moment. And then he gave a moment to the mushroom selection. I hoped I hadn’t given him a heart attack or performance anxiety. We were not yet to the parking lot or civilization.

Eventually, a small smile quirked the corners of his mouth. “So, you’re not interested in a tiny frill of a mushroom?”

He was playing with me.

Can I keep you? I had to clear my throat. “Big mushrooms are the best.”

After we’d exhausted the dirty mushroom puns, we mostly walked. He pointed out the occasional tree or bird, while I snapped pictures of ferns and moss for my social media. It was so nice that I was startled when we popped unexpectedly out of the woods and into a neatly cleared rectangle of dirt parallel to a road. An oversized, mud-covered pickup truck the color of a rusty Halloween pumpkin was perfectly parked in a space outlined by pieces of deadwood. My suspicions about his humanity grew: no one could parallel park with that degree of accuracy.

He strode over to the passenger side of his truck and opened the door. He hadn’t locked it, proving either that Maverick was the trusting sort or that we truly were in the middle of nowhere. Now he waited, a playful smile playing over his plush lips. The quirk of his mouth was happy and flirty. His eyes warmed as he looked me over, moving up and then down my body.

He likes what he sees.

I tripped over an invisible boulder because something unexpected and quite unusual was happening in disused regions south of my brain. My heart gave a curious flutter in my rib cage, tapping out an SOS. My breath caught.

I liked him right back, in a purely visual way. The long lashes on his stunning eyes. The stern slope of his nose. His shy grin framed by all that beard. He was big and beardy—absolutely perfect for woodland rescues—but most of all he was sweet. Gentlemen lumberjacks were the best . He’d done his best to give me space, even though I’d been alone on this mountain long enough (really, it felt like years) that I’d been willing to sacrifice my boundaries in the excellent cause of returning to civilization. For some reason, I regretted his polite insistence on keeping some distance between us, and also felt a teensy bit like leaping across that space and wrapping myself around him like a monkey. It was perplexing. Even more discombobulating was the way in which he truly seemed to see me.

Me.

Really? Does he? Because he would be the first. After all, my previous men friends had all asked out Sonnet the Star. Which meant...

This was either Stockholm syndrome or a strong survival instinct combined with my legitimate fear of starving to death in the wilderness. I knew exactly what my mother would say:

Hija, I told you! You do NOT get in a truck with a strange man!

I hesitated. He removed his wallet from his back pocket and pulled out two cards, holding them up so I could read them.

“My driver’s license and my college ID. I teach at the local community college.”

I tried and failed to imagine him in a tweed jacket and a rumpled button-up.

My rescuer waited patiently by the door. I got the feeling he’d wait a week if that was what it took—and he wouldn’t complain.

“Perhaps you’d feel better if you told me your name?” he asked.

Hold on . . .

I peered suspiciously at Dr. Maverick Lincoln Boone. “You don’t know who I am?”

“I’m a snake expert, not a mind reader. Can I have a hint?” He tipped his chin at me, that mischievous smile lighting up his face once more.

“Uh-huh,” I answered. How, exactly, did I announce I was a famous TV star and therefore almost never anonymous?

It was a conundrum.

Nevertheless, I climbed into his truck. While I considered future car retrieval logistics, he went around, got in, and then waited for me to buckle up before he started the engine and drove us away. Presumably toward Wyatt’s rental property, but possibly toward the Outer Hebrides or his secret lair.

Not that he seemed like a secret-lair kind of guy.

I thought about that for a good ten minutes.

I had so many questions.

I slouched against the window, folding my arms over my sweatshirt as I tried to hold the questions in. Eleven minutes into our drive, I gave up and asked, “You really don’t know my name?”

Professor Mav’s smile faded.

He slowed the truck, braking carefully, as the light up ahead of us on the sloping road switched to yellow. Then he set the parking brake out of an abundance of caution. His eyes examined my face, anxiety coloring his.

“Were you one of my students?” he asked warily.

He doesn’t watch TV? Can I be myself? Drop the glamour? I stared, forcing down the bubble of hope that wanted to float up from my stomach, travel through my esophagus, and emerge as a proposition.

When was the last time I’d started out with a social blank slate with someone? I was covered in dirt, angry, and needy. So why?—

Slowly, the clues presented themselves to me.

The flirtatious grins, the hot eyes, the white-knighting with chocolate—Professor Mav was attracted to me.

Me.

He’d been testing the waters in the Sea of Attraction and flirting with me .

Not Sonnet Ruiz, the famous author, television star, millionaire, award-winner, everybody’s best friend, and fun sidekick.

Just me.

Danu’s beard! I hadn’t gone unrecognized in years. I had an instant to process the relief and joy that his bafflement gave me before the anxiety painting his handsome face erased my pleasure in his ignorance.

Judging by how his forehead crinkled and his big hands beat out a nervous rhythm on the steering wheel, he was worried about the whole student thing. Perhaps he thought he’d graded my performance, and I hadn’t taken it well. Perhaps he worried that there had been some flirtation—or more—in this putative teacher-student relationship and he’d forgotten all of it.

This was when I realized that I knew exactly what type of hot guy he was. He was the bad boy, the always moving on, never calling again hot guy, which was the deadly polar bear of dating bears. Because that kind of hot guy was funny and charming, so nice that you didn’t see the teeth until it was too late.

They were fun until they ate you for dinner.

And then, being bears of voracious appetite, they moved on and had some other lady for dinner. Lots and lots of ladies. Serial meals.

I didn’t begrudge Professor Mav his hot ladies. Even a year ago, I might have gone out with him for a night or two. It would have been fun. Sexual enjoyment would have been had by all. But seeing as how I’d given up dating for the greater good of my career, losing my heart to a serial dater was also not part of my life plan.

He frowned at the road as the light changed, and he released the brake, looking fierce and anxious and so very large. I couldn’t help myself, I really couldn’t.

“No, I was not one of your students.” I burst out laughing.