Smoke & Mirrors by Skye Jordan

11

Logan

I’m still high from the blood-pumping, adrenaline-induced scrimmage against the cops, and the killer win, of course.

I grabbed a shower before I left the rink because I knew I’d be busy once everyone got to the Cockloft. We see the cops often enough on calls that we all know each other for the most part, and we work well together, so we’ve got a bar full of family and friends along with all the cops and all the firefighters. Our rivalry is as old as time.

I fill the last of three pitchers and place them on a tray. Before I can pick it up, Isabel is there, grabbing it. “Are these for Zach’s table?”

“Would you chill?” I say. “You’re not working.”

“Have you opened your eyes lately? This place is packed. I can’t just stand around bullshitting when you guys are working your tails off.”

Most everyone else seems to be able to do just that. I’m reminded of what an incredible heart she had as a kid. It’s good to see that hasn’t changed.

She picks up the tray with the kind of smooth balance that exposes her experience waiting tables.

“How is it that you can be so good at so many things?” I didn’t think of the question before it came out of my mouth, but I realize it’s something that’s been nudging me subconsciously.

She turns, a swivel so smooth, the liquid in the pitchers on the tray barely sways. “What do you mean?”

I gesture to the tray. “You’ve definitely waited tables before. You also play poker like a shark, sub for a prep chef like a pro, and lend a hand at the bakery. You certainly aren’t taking that break you came here for.”

I don’t mention the way she can also live in an awful motel without whining or how she can hold what looks like everything she owns in a Jeep. Nor do I point out how easily she melds into a crowd or how instantly she makes friends, though that’s just as curious.

“It’s just life, isn’t it?” she asks. “I mean, you’re a great example of how someone can manage more than one job at a time.”

That sounds to me like she’s been juggling multiple jobs, only that doesn’t jive with what I know about her life in New York. The truth is, I have no idea what’s going on with Isabel, but I do know some of her puzzle pieces are clearly not fitting as they should based on what I know of her life through social media and Tucker.

I guess what’s driving me crazy is that I don’t trust myself now. And I don’t trust women.

Before I can bring up the discrepancies, Isabel gives me a conspiratorial look and lowers her voice to say, “Incoming.”

Then she turns away right as Emily slides onto a barstool in front of me—which means Isabel heard about the mess between me and Emily in the not so distant past.

“Hey,” she says, sweet, innocent, as if she won’t turn into a man-eating shark the moment things don’t go her way. Great reminder of why I’m single and why I want to stay that way.

All my walls go up, making me stiff and edgy. “Hey. What do you need?”

“You.”

“Not on the menu.”

“Then I’ll settle for a lemon drop. No one makes them like you do.”

I start on the drink, my gaze flicking toward Zach’s table and the way Isabel melts right into the group. She definitely flirts while she’s working, but she’s a subtle flirt, giving almost intangible signals—the way she holds her body, the way she smiles and laughs, lots of eye contact, leaning in, subtly sliding her fingers against the skin in the open neckline of her sweater.

I don’t blame her. We all know it brings in tips. But I wonder if I see Isabel’s brand of flirting as sweet and open because I want to see it that way. Then again, maybe it just seems sweet and open compared to the woman sitting in front of me now, who is far more like a barracuda than a kitten.

“How’s work been?” Emily asks. “I heard you got a rough call yesterday.”

One of the problems with Emily—among many—is that she’s an EMT for a local ambulance company, so we cross paths far too often for my taste. That’ll teach me to screw around with someone so close to my second home—the firehouse.

“Yeah.” I think of the twenty-something rafting the Columbia River, just trying to have some fun in the sun. He caught an eddy wrong, flipped, hit his head on a rock, and drowned. I worked on him for forty-five minutes before I gave in to the failure. Pisses me off that I couldn’t get him back. “Tragic.”

I slide her drink across the bar, and when she reaches for it, she bypasses the drink and takes my hand instead. I immediately pull away, annoyed, creeped out. She’s got issues. Issues I didn’t see until after we’d hooked up a few times.

I ended things at the beginning of the summer, and she’s dating one of the cops who played in the game today, who also happens to be standing nearby, talking with friends.

“Classy,” I say. “Dalton is twenty feet away.”

“I’d drop him in a heartbeat for a second chance with you.”

When I look at her, all I see is the awful lie that put me through the wringer, only to discover the depth of her manipulation.

“Forget it.” I walk away before I say something I shouldn’t.

“Where’s your puppy?” she asks.

Instead of answering, I take another drink order and get back to work.

“What did you name it?” She’s just trying to elicit conversation, but I know exactly where that will lead.

Eventually, Dalton comes over and kisses Emily’s neck. But Emily is still looking at me. She’s so messed up. It’s like she wants me to be mean to her. I’m reminded of the way my mother wanted my father to be mean to her. Without the abuse, my mom didn’t believe my dad loved her. They were so fucking twisted.

I should be—probably am—as fucked up as Emily, even while hoping to God I’m not.

She moves on with Dalton, and Isabel returns to the bar with the tray. “Can I get three cosmos, two mules, and two drafts?”

I reach for glasses and start mixing.

“You okay?” she asks. “She giving you a hard time?”

I cut a glance at her, assessing. “Who told you?”

“She did in a way. Gave me the stink eye from the moment I walked into the rink. When I asked Natalie what her problem was, Nat told me you two dated and she didn’t take the breakup well.”

I’m relieved Nat didn’t get into the whole pregnancy scare. “Then you know the story.”

“Not the whole story.”

“When you want to share the whole story about Cocksucker, I’ll tell you the whole story about Emily.”

“Why is that still bothering you?”

I stop what I’m doing, plant my hands flat on the bar, and meet her gaze directly, defiantly. “Because he hurt you.”

She doesn’t turn away or try to bluff. No stories, no excuses. Just bold, direct eye contact. “You’re angry with Emily, and I’m pretty damned sure that’s why you’re acting like a dick to me, which is totally unfair, by the way. And I’d tell you what happened, but you wouldn’t believe me. Which is fine. You don’t have to believe me. It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other. That’s your issue, not mine. If you want to worry about some nonexistent abuse you made up in your mind, so be it. Just don’t act pissy with me over something you don’t know anything about or because you’re really mad at her.”

She just took me out at the knees. She’s right on every damned point. How fucking annoying is that?

Her phone rings. She yanks the cell from her pocket and looks at the screen. “Fucking men.” She answers with a terse “What?”

Then she turns away, starts toward the back door, and heads outside, and I’m left staring at the closed door for a long time. What in the hell am I doing? I don’t want to be into her.

I’m not. I’m not into her, goddammit.

A tap on my legs signals the pup is awake. I look at Tim, another firefighter helping out behind the bar. “You got this? I’ve got to take the dog out.”

“Give him a name, for God’s sake.”

I scoop him up from the floor at my feet. I already think of him as Lucky, but I’ve never called him by the name. There’s still a chance someone will claim him, and I already know that won’t go over well with me.

His blue eyes are sleepy, and he yawns, his pink tongue curling before returning inside his mouth. Why do I like this guy so much? Why do I feel the need to rescue everyone? I’m sick of the bullshit. I need some serious boundaries.

I take the pup out the back door and find Isabel standing near the fence that encloses the dumpster. She hammers a button on the phone—Disconnect, I’m assuming—and bites out, “Fucking moron.”

She doesn’t startle when she sees me, just watches me set the pup down, then follows his path until he pees on a strip of grass near the back door.

“He’s potty trained already?” Isabel asks. “Doesn’t that usually take, I don’t know, months?”

“Not if you’re diligent about it. They’re smart. They pick things up fast.” When the pup is done, he wanders into the surrounding brush, roots around, and returns walking backward dragging a tree limb five times his size with him, then plops down across one of my feet and chews on the wood.

Isabel laughs. “Hope you weren’t planning on going anywhere soon.”

“I could use a break.”

Isabel presses her shoulder against the fence. “Yeah, a break would be nice.”

“When do you head back to New York?”

She shrugs her free shoulder. “I don’t know.”

“Are you even going back to New York? Nat said you put in some résumés on the West Coast.”

“I’m leaving my options open.”

She can’t even pick a city to live in—a reminder she’s already got one foot out of town.

“What about him?” she says, indicating the puppy. “You keeping him? Seems like it would be hard to take care of a puppy with your schedule.”

“Fess up. What have you got against puppies?”

“Nothing. They just…” Her gaze rests on the dog, and her expression clearly registers discomfort. “They just remind me of a dog I had when I was a kid.”

“I don’t remember you and Tucker having a dog.”

“We didn’t. I picked her up from a box in front of the grocery store one day, and she was gone three days later.”

“What happened?”

“Derik Merlin happened.”

“Your mom’s boyfriend? The one who—”

“Yes, that one.” She cuts me off before I can remind her of how sleazy he was by coming on to her. “He hated everyone and everything, including my dog. I came home from school one day, and she was gone. Just gone. And Derik was very pleased with himself.” She presses her fingers to closed lids. “I’ve had countless nightmares about what he did to her.”

“Maybe he just gave her to someone else.”

She opens her eyes and meets mine. “You didn’t know him.”

The darkly edged certainty in her voice sends a tingle across the back of my neck. “Your mom really picked from the bottom of the barrel, didn’t she?”

“My mom scraped the bottom of the barrel.”

“You never told me about that when we were hanging out together in high school. About the dog, I mean.”

“It’s not the kind of thing I wanted to talk about. I tried my damnedest to forget, and when I couldn’t forget, I thought of her in doggy heaven, playing with all the other dogs.” She shrugs. “So, yeah, I guess I have an aversion to puppies. Besides, they require commitment, and that’s not in the cards for me.”

Reminder after reminder after reminder. Eventually, it should stick.

“He doesn’t require anything of you,” I say, looking down at the pup, who’s curled into a ball with his head on my foot. “At the moment, he doesn’t require much of anything from anyone.”

“No point in getting attached if you’re just going to lose them.”

The tone of her voice makes me think that’s her outlook on life, not just pets. “Are we still talking about puppies?”

She shrugs again. “Puppies, relationships, whatever. That was your MO with Emily, wasn’t it?”

“I didn’t have an MO, and we didn’t have a relationship.” I’m annoyed, and my voice carries the emotion. “I was very clear every time I saw her that all we were doing was hooking up. It was mutual. I wasn’t using her.”

Isabel lifts her hands, palms out. “Chill. I’m just wondering if that’s where you’re at in life right now or if it was specific to Emily.”

I think about the question for a minute, then tilt my head. “Why does it matter?”

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like, like…” She gestures toward me, suddenly flustered, her face gaining color. “Like I’m into you. ’Cause I’m not.”

My mood turns around, and I grin at her. “Yeah, you are,” I say, half joking, half hoping. “You’re totally into me.”

“Pffft. You’re dreaming again. When did you get so full of yourself?”

“Probably during those first couple of years after you left. Had to build up my sexual esteem after you bailed.”

She laughs, drops her arms, and turns toward the bar. “I’m gonna grab my stuff and go—”

But I’m not ready for this to end. I like the intimacy of it. I reach out, and my hand lands on her biceps. She flinches and turns to release my grip instead of jerking away. The sight of those finger-shaped bruises on her skin fill my head.

“Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I know.” She rubs her arm. “Bet you would have held on tighter if I was about to fall down a flight of stairs. Even tighter if I was trying to get away from you, with the stairs behind me.”

Those images rise up in my mind, and she’s right. That’s exactly what I’d do, bruises be damned. “Is that what happened with Cocksucker?”

“As far as the bruises go, yeah, that’s how I got them. Only, I did get away, and I did fall. Not all the way down the steps, but far enough to leave bruises in a few places.”

It’s a legit story, and I do my best to take it at face value. But the truth is, I don’t think I can tell when a woman is lying and when she’s not anymore.

“Are you keeping him?” she asks, looking at the puppy.

“I don’t know. No one’s come forward.”

“Tucker says nobody will.”

There’s something about the way she says it that’s challenging. Snarky, sassy, sexy. She’s getting under my skin.

I reach down and separate the pup from his tree limb, then face her again. I let my gaze skim her beautiful face, her long, dark silky hair. Her breasts stretch the fabric of her shirt, the crisscrossing straps exposing the smooth skin of her chest, hiding the tattoo I really want to see. Her posture speaks of an underlying attitude she’s probably oblivious to.

“You should really just decide if you’re going to keep him or not and get off the fence,” she says. “Name him or something.”

“The only thing I’m on the fence about is you.”

She gets a confused look on her face, opens her mouth to say something, but only exhales.

I take it as tacit permission to cross the line I’ve been too aware of from the day she showed up, and in one step, I close the distance between us. “Guess I better just get off the fence altogether.”

With my free hand, I cup her jaw and press my lips against hers. They’re soft and warm, and I know instantly, one kiss will never be enough.

When she doesn’t pull away, I angle my head a little more and kiss her again, this time catching her lower lip between both of mine.

She sighs, so I slide my tongue across the flesh.

She moans, and I don’t have to do anything else. She steps into me, pressing her body against mine. Then she slides her hand around the back of my neck and pulls my head down. Her kiss isn’t the least bit tentative. It’s an I-want-you-right-fucking-now kiss. Fire licks through my veins. I slide one arm around her waist and pull her against me, holding the puppy out of the way so we don’t squish him.

She tastes me in a bold, sexy move, and I’m on fire from the roots of my hair to the soles of my feet. I groan into her mouth and wish I had somewhere to put the dog so I could get both my hands on her. The next best thing is walking her backward until she’s against the building. Until I can press into all her sweet curves and devour her hot mouth. Pressure builds between my legs, and I rock my hips against hers.

The sound that comes from her throat matches the all-in way she kisses me, and I’m trying to think of how to take the next step, but with the pup, I can’t do much of anything. And I have no doubt that if we let even a sliver of reality in, this will be over with no guarantees of ever happening again.

Right on cue, the puppy whines. I reposition him, but that only gets him close enough to press his cold nose against my neck. The final blow is the puppy leaning in and licking Isabel’s cheek.

When she pulls out of the kiss, she sighs and looks at the dog. “Thanks for the reality check, buddy.”

But she’s still leaning into me, and I swear she’s got to feel the beat of my heart in my dick pressed against her pelvis.

Her gaze returns to mine, lowers to my mouth, and she strokes her thumb across it. “You always were an incredible kisser.”

“I was?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“You know,” I say, going for light. “I’ve been told I’m pretty good at more than kissing.”

She laughs. And laughs. And laughs, dropping her forehead to my chest.

“It’s a good thing my ego has fully, robustly recovered.”

She pushes me back a few inches. “Don’t read anything into this. I’m off men. All men.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I mean it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“For real. I can’t do”—she makes a circle with her hand, gesturing to me—“this.” Then amends, scanning my body. “I mean I could do this, boy oh boy could I do this.” Then her hand moves between us, and her gaze meets mine again. “But not this.”

“Yeah, I can’t do this either.”

“So, we understand each other.”

“We can do this,” I repeat her gestures. “But not this.”

“What? No, no, no. Because this would lead to this and I can’t do this.”

I grin. “I’m officially confused as hell.”

She puts a hand against her head. “So am I.”

I laugh. I love the vibe between us. Kinda fun, kinda serious, really sexy.

I don’t want to let her think too long, so I slide my arm around her waist again and pull her in for another series of white-hot kisses.

The sound of the knob on the back door makes me take one giant step back before the door opens. I shift the puppy in front of me, just to make the possibility of Isabel and me kissing that much slimmer.

It’s Tucker. He looks between us. “You two gonna work or get a room?”

“Shut up,” Isabel says to him. “Like you’re one to talk.”

“Be right in,” I tell him.

When the door closes again, I smile at Isabel. “I vote for the room.”

She groans. “Yeah, no. This would get really messy, really fast.”

“Right, right.” I nod and rub my eyes with my free hand. “You’re so right.”

When I drop my hand, she holds my gaze and pushes off the wall. “I’m going to head back to the motel. If I stay here too long, that is going to happen again.”

She turns for the door, and I use the back of her shirt to tug her into me again. She’s laughing when I kiss her, but as soon as my mouth is on hers, her laugh turns to a moan.

I pull away to catch my breath. “What’s wrong with this? I can’t remember.” I kiss her again. “And you did just call me an incredible kisser.”

As if the reminder makes her hungry, she groans, opens, and leans into me, her breasts pillowing against my chest, her hands sliding up my back. I can’t help but want more. Lots more. We’re flash fire together.

“I changed my mind,” I say between kisses. “You’re not right. This is right.”

Lucky yips and whines, and I growl as Isabel breaks the kiss.

She slides her hand over Lucky’s head. “I think he’s smarter than both of us.”

“You mean individually?” I ask. “Or combined?”

She laughs and turns for the door, dodging my attempt to grab her again. And in the end, I’m left with nothing but a hard-on, the taste of her on my tongue, and a high-maintenance puppy.