The Spark Between Us by Stacy Travis
Chapter Two
Braden
I hadno idea what I’d gotten myself into when I said yes to Finn, but after he referred to his sister as a physics dork for the third time, I decided she sounded pretty harmless.
I pictured a female version of Albert Einstein with wild wiry hair and a slide rule in her pocket. I realized that stereotype made me sound like an uninformed Neanderthal, but Finn had painted a picture, and my imagination followed to an unimaginative place.
So, I agreed.
What else could I say to my oldest friend who’d talked the cops out of arresting me, wing-manned me into my first girlfriend, and defended me in front of my irate parents—all before we were sixteen? Not to mention bailing me out of the biggest shit show of my life just a couple years ago.
Even if he was too nice to say it—or think it—I owed him.
By transference, I guess that meant I owed his younger sister too.
I knew very little about her except for the whole science dork thing, which only told me she had nothing in common with me.
Probably better that way. If she and I had different interests and separate lives, we’d have less chance of getting in each other’s hair.
“And dude, in case it wasn’t clear . . . she’s not your type,” Finn said.
I laughed at the insinuation. Warning me to stay away from his little sister felt like a throwback to junior high school when I’d have jumped on any warm-blooded female. By high school, I had standards, and they didn’t include studious Sarah who rolled her eyes like a typical twelve-year-old and made it clear I bored her.
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” I said.
He laughed to cover the awkwardness. “Sorry, but I needed to put it out there. Sarah doesn’t really date, so she’s not the kind of girl you hook up with.” I wondered how much he really knew about his sister. I didn’t date anymore either, but I sure as hell hooked up. Probably not how he wanted to think about his sibling.
I also wished he were here so I could punch him.
Finn rattled off a few more details about Sarah, all of which made me confident that keeping my hands off her would pose no problem. He described an uptight workaholic who kept to herself and had her head so much in the clouds that she bumped into things and sometimes showed up at work in pajama bottoms.
“Stop trying to paint an awful picture, okay? I’m not some unhinged sex addict who won’t be able to keep my hands to myself.”
At the very least, I can resist a clumsy female Einstein.
I vaguely remembered her, always outside rigging up some science fair project that inevitably made a mess. I was from a family of boys, but if I’d had a sister, I imagined she’d act just like Sarah, timid around my friends because we were loud, sweaty, and generally up to no good.
I remembered her wide-eyed look when she saw us drinking beer once while still in high school. “But the drinking age is twenty-one. You’re breaking the law,” she’d said primly, hands on her hips like a schoolmarm. After that, I went out of my way to avoid her. I didn’t need the judgement from a prepubescent know-it-all.
Finn had turned a corner when he got to college. That was around the time his dad was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. His outlook toward himself and his family changed, and he instantly went from being an aimless college kid to an organized economics major who was already making plans to be the only man in the house.
When his dad died two years later, Finn took on the role in earnest, saved his first million by successfully gaming the stock market, and served as fierce protector of his mom and five sisters ever since. That included finding housing for his dorky sister now.
A week ago, I’d have greeted the vaguest suggestion that I get a roommate with a loud hell no.
And yet . . . here I was.
“I’ve got the extra bedroom just sitting here empty. Might as well put it to good use,” I heard myself saying. I didn’t bother to add that part of the reason it stood empty was that I couldn’t bear to go in there. Finn didn’t know I still wasn’t over the shit my ex said when she left. But in two years, I hadn’t set foot in that room. Each time I’d attempted it, my chest had seized up and I’d felt gutted all over again. Maybe it would help me move on if someone else used the space and I could view it as a spare room again.
“It’s fine. Really. Can she cook at least?” I asked.
His bark of a laugh answered that question. “Not unless you like a lot of salads and baked potatoes with weird toppings like mustard.”
“Nothing wrong with those, as long as they’re next to a steak.”
“My thought exactly,” Finn chuckled. “I think you’ll get along fine. You’re opposite enough. You can stay in your separate corners, you shoveling down animal entrails and her eating some fake steak made from jackfruit.”
“Is that food, or are you trying to be funny?” I asked. People didn’t try to make steak out of fruit, did they? Finn’s laugh told me that maybe his kooky sister did. “I’m glad you find this all so amusing.”
Is his sister some kind of insane vegan hippie? She does live in Berkeley, so it’s possible.
Finn cleared his throat in his professor-serious way, but the laugh didn’t leave his voice. “I find it awesome. And truth be told, I’m a little jealous. We always said we’d room together after college—too bad it never worked out. Just be nice to her and show her around town. After that, you probably won’t see her much. She pretty much lives at work.” A fruity, robotic nun.
He thanked me a few more times, which somehow made me feel more indebted to him, and we hung up.
I raked a hand over the few days’ worth of scruff on my face. I hadn’t decided yet whether to let it grow back into a full beard. The guys at the fire station had been giving me shit since I’d shaved my beard a month ago, constantly touching my face like it was a miracle that I had actual skin under there. If I heard “like a baby’s butt” one more time, I’d hand down a week of kitchen duty to the nearest asshole.
By my calculation, Sarah wouldn’t arrive for at least an hour, which gave me time to get out of the house for a bit. I’d been crammed inside cleaning the place up for most of the day because I didn’t want Finn’s sister to bolt before she knew me well enough to embrace my clutter.
My bike sat basking in the sun, begging me to ride. I couldn’t turn that pretty thing down when I had a free hour, so I grabbed my helmet and leather jacket and headed outside.
“You’re as pretty as ever, Dolores,” I said, rubbing a hand over her shiny red gas tank. No one was around to hear me talking to a motorcycle, but who cared if they did? A man’s relationship with a beautiful machine was his own business.
I wasn’t a Harley Davidson kind of guy, and I didn’t belong to a pack or a club. When I needed to escape or clear my head, I went for a ride. A couple years ago, I bought a used Ducati with all the speed I wanted without the flash. No two-wheeled swinging dick to prove anything to anyone.
I pulled on my gloves and straddled the bike. Firing up the engine, I felt the seductive purr that always ratcheted up my heartrate a few notches. Perfect day to ride the winding roads past the vineyards outside of town.
I eased the bike out onto the road, keeping the speed down on the residential streets and into town. No one liked a loud, crazy motorcycle scaring the life out of people when they were out walking around. Once I got onto the road, I’d open her up.
It surprised me to find a string of cars idling for a couple blocks on Second Street. Traffic wasn’t a thing in Carolwood. The place was too small. Had to be construction.
Splitting the lane on the bike, I passed most of the cars, planning to high-five the crew as I rode by. Probably guys I knew.
But I didn’t see construction guys.
“Shit. That ain’t good.” I winced, watching the guys from my unit, Engine 97, circle a white Prius that had rammed into the back of their truck.
From the looks of things, it had just happened. The hood sat uselessly crumpled like an empty TV dinner tray. I could see someone in the car behind the cloud of airbag. “So much for the ride,” I muttered, pulling my bike off the road, locking my helmet, and jogging over to the rig.
“What the hell happened?” I asked Logan, our driver-engineer who’d never gotten as much as a scratch on the paint in seven years. As he took photos of the scene, he made notes on a small pad. I knew he’d be stressing over getting the truck back into spit-shine condition, no doubt mentally polishing every inch of chrome while he grimly surveyed the damage.
“Just what it looks like. We were stopped, and next thing I know, there’s a car glued to the back of the truck.”
While he wrote his report, two of my other guys climbed through the backseat to try to get the driver out. I could only see them from the waist down.
“Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear,” I grumbled.
“Way closer.” He shook his head, his close-clipped yellow-blond hair not moving an inch. “I didn’t even see her. She must’ve been following so close I didn’t pick her up in the mirrors. Then, three, two, one, contact.”
“For real, did you back into her?” I loved giving him shit.
He glared at me. Logan was the guy you wanted behind the wheel, but he had no sense of humor about his driving, which meant no one would pass up a chance to get in a dig—it was the culture of our unit. “Nope. Parked at the light. I dunno what the hell she was doing. Probably on her phone.”
Probably. Distracted drivers caused nine rear-ends out of ten these days.
“You need to break out the jaws?” I’d have felt a little jealous if they ended up using the jaws of life without me, not gonna lie. There wasn’t a guy in the department who didn’t secretly love it when we could cut a car in half.
“Driver door’s jammed. They’re hoping to get her out through the back,” Logan said.
Then, as if noticing me for the first time, he looked me over from head to toe. “You trying to pick up women in that?”
I looked down at my motorcycle boots, jeans, gloves, and leather jacket, which must’ve looked a warm on a nice day and a little odd without the accompanying motorcycle. “Hilarious. I was headed out for a ride when I pulled up on your mess.”
“When are you going to get rid of that death machine, man? Seriously, if I have to peel one more case of roadkill off the asphalt, I’m gonna hurl.”
I huffed out an annoyed breath. “I’m careful.”
“No, you’re not, and we both know it. Been two years of this shit.” He was right, and I didn’t care. Riding the bike was the one place I acted irresponsibly, and I loved the rush.
“I didn’t stop here for a lecture. Do you need any help?” I folded my arms and waited for him to let me take over.
“No. You’re off duty. We’ve got this.”
I didn’t want to leave, though, so I conjured reasons why my guys might need me there. “You call an ambulance?”
“What kind of question is that?” Logan glared at me, looking about as vicious as a bunny.
“Well, I don’t hear them,” I said, straining to hear any sign of sirens in the distance.
He pointed. The ambulance was a block away, trying to navigate around the traffic.
“You might ask if we’re okay, seeing as we’re the ones who got hit, asshole,” Mitch said, backing himself out of the Prius. He scrubbed a hand through his brown curls, which he’d slicked back with some kind of product. “Women love to touch it, never gonna cut it,” he said way too often.
“I can see you’re fine enough to run your mouth, so I’m not asking, jerkoff.”
Mitch wasn’t just a firefighter in my unit. He was also my half-brother, courtesy of our dad, who couldn’t keep his pants zipped long enough to stay faithful to one wife, let alone three.
When I was five, my dad left us and married Mitch’s mom. Left her a few years after that. Left his third wife after that.
The walking heartbreak of a man gifted me with a skewed view of commitment, but the silver lining was Mitch, two years younger than me and an inch taller, which he never missed an opportunity to mention.
I clenched my fists, needing someplace to channel my energy when I saw no obvious way to help. Stifling the urge to ask whether they’d turned off the battery to the Prius—they knew what they were doing—my eyes drifted to the mess of a car anyway to check for signs of a leak.
“You love us so much, you come on your day off.” Mitch smacked my shoulder with the back of his hand and took in my outfit. “Loser, you’d rather skip a ride than miss out on any action?” I turned away from his smirk, unwilling to admit he was right.
Wriggling out of my leather jacket, I grabbed some extra medical supplies while a rookie named Cash and one of the medics slid the driver out of the car, laying her on a stretcher on the sidewalk.
The tow truck’s backup signal beeped as it moved, and the woman let out a yelp. “Wait, I’ve got stuff in there I need. You can’t tow it!”
“Oh, hey. There’s a task for you, Michaels. Purse retrieval,” Mitch laughed. The smartass was guaranteeing I’d be filling his running shoes with sand tomorrow.
“Relax and let them check your vital signs. I’ll unload your car,” I called to her, ducking into the backseat. I pushed past clutter and boxes of books to reach the front. Her cellphone sat in a mount on the dashboard. It felt warm from use, but at least she’d been hands-free.
The passenger seat contained banker’s box with a lid. I nudged it out of the seat, and judging by its weight, more books.
People said books made good friends. If it was true, this woman had a lot of people in her corner.
I grabbed her purse off the floor, along with a small daypack and a brown paper lunch bag folded neatly at the top. Then I lugged the heavy box over the center console and out through the back door. When I emerged from the car with the purse and backpack over one shoulder and boxes stacked high, she was sitting up, frowning, eyes narrowed in my direction.
“What are you doing with those?” she asked, her eyes fixed on the boxes in my hands. I almost dropped everything, not because of her glare but because of the arresting blue of her eyes. The pale aqua color reminded me of a beach in the Caribbean Sea where I suddenly, desperately wanted to go. The drinks would have umbrellas, and I’d float on a raft and gaze at that soothing blue for days.
If I took vacations. Which I did not.
“Your car’s not drivable, ma’am. I’m helping you remove your belongings.” I wanted to be polite and not let her vacation eyes, her messy strands of honey-brown hair, or her plush, pink lips distract me from being professional. I swallowed hard and pretended my heartrate hadn’t ticked up a notch.
But those eyes. Pale like aquamarine gemstones, they contained a hundred tiny flashes of color and light. I didn’t want to look away—couldn’t look away.
“But who are you? Where’d you come from?” she asked, pulling me out of my trance.
Oh. Yeah. I probably looked like a random biker who showed up and started manhandling her stuff.
“Technically, I’m off duty, but I’m a firefighter with these guys, ma’am.”
She closed her eyes for a long blink, and shook her head. When she opened them, her lips turned up into a smirk. “Okay, but please don’t call me ma’am. I’m not a ninety-year-old woman.”
“What would you prefer I call you?”
“I dunno. Anything. ‘Damsel in distress’ is better than ma’am.” I took her sass as a good sign. Likely meant the accident hadn’t hurt her too badly.
“Fine, damsel in distress, I’m going to keep emptying your car. Is that okay by you?” I grinned, pouring on a bit of charm to try to blunt her discomfort. I organized her boxes in a neat stack.
“Sure. Thank you,” she croaked, grimacing. “Oh, and could I have my lunch?” She tipped her head toward the paper bag I held in my hand with her purse. I forked it over. She carefully unfolded the top, took a crustless sandwich on wheat from a baggie, and took a bite.
This woman had probably totaled her car, and her chief concern was eating her PB&J. I’d seen pretty much everything in my line of work, but I hadn’t seen that. It wasn’t until her eyes fluttered up at me that I realized I was still staring at her face.
“Check for swelling in her cervical spine. Something’s pinching a nerve,” I told the medics, turning away before my smile betrayed how much I liked looking at her. I went back to grab another load from the car.
In no way had I ever viewed a car accident as a means to hit on a woman—creepy and opportunistic was not my style. But I’d also never found it so hard to look away from someone. I suddenly wanted to know what else she had in that lunch bag and why she had all the books in her car. She had me intrigued after only a minute. What the hell was that about?
I heard Mitch laugh. “Too salty to be a damsel. Guess you’re not in too much pain if you’ve got an appetite, but we still need the medics to check you out.”
I stacked a few more boxes, all of them heavy.
“I told you. I’m fine.” She looked from Mitch to Cash to me, and then she looked at the other two medics. The color drained from her face. “Actually, maybe I should lie down for a minute.” She immediately shifted into a reclining position on the stretcher and curled her knees into her chest. “Sorry, vaso-vagal . . . it happens sometimes when I get nervous.”
She hadn’t seemed nervous. Was it the crowd? The attention? I felt an oddly possessive need to protect her from whatever was bothering her. The more we all hovered, the more she seemed desperate not to have people fussing over her. Here I was adding to the mess.
You’re also acting like a lovestruck idiot.
I gave myself an invisible slap and went back to work emptying her shit out of the car.
The medics edged in with oxygen and started taking her vitals.
“Let’s start with your name,” Johnny, one of the medics, said.
“It’s Sarah,” she said, and I felt a stir in my gut at her name. Had to be a coincidence that Finn’s sister had the same name . . . right?
“Do you know what day of the week it is, today’s date?” Johnny asked. Standard question to assess whether she’d sustained any head trauma.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her lift her head. “Um, yeah. It’s Tuesday. Thanksgiving Day. Nineteen seventy-two.”
She was giving them shit. Unbelievable.
“Are you sure about that, ma’am?” Cash asked.
Her face cracked into a grin. “If you keep calling me ma’am, I’m going to keep giving you ridiculous answers. I told you, I’m fine.” Her plump lips drew my eyes again, daring me to look away. She gestured to me. “If you’re planning on unloading everything, I really appreciate it, but I’m afraid you’ve got your work cut out. The trunk is packed to the gills.”
“Yeah? You moving your office or something?”
Or are you moving in. . . with me?
“Or something,” she said, suddenly pressing the heels of her hands to her temples. “On second thought, mind if I lie back down? I just got a major head rush.”
I looked down at the boxes of books I’d just taken out of the car, the gears in my brain starting to churn. Science books. Moving boxes.
“Sorry, what did you say your last name is?” I asked, dread crawling over my skin.
“I didn’t. But it’s Finley.”
Of course it was. Shit.
I extended my hand. “Nice to meet you. Braden Michaels.”
Her eyes grew rounder, tiny sparkles igniting amid the gorgeous aqua. “Braden, as in—”
“Yeah. As in Finn’s friend. And your new roommate.”
She looked the way I felt—confused, wary, maybe a little bit annoyed? It could have been shock from the accident, or maybe it just embarrassed her to meet me under these circumstances.
But I was wary for a whole other set of reasons, none of which had anything to do with a car accident. A brainy woman who looked like that spelled trouble. And I’d be living with her for six long months.