Black Heat by Ruby Laska Page B

beautiful machine, not a toaster."
    Walt grinned. "Funny, he said the same thing about you. Said he'd fix it quicker, too."
    He turned and limped out of the room, favoring the hip that bothered him some mornings. Roan smiled to herself. Hank was a perfectly competent mechanic, but she enjoyed the pretend rivalry between them. It was the closest thing she'd had to a sibling experience. Hank didn't seem to mind being a stand-in for the big brother she never had. It was almost like...
    She shook her head, yanking the packing tape off the box with more force than necessary. Family , she was thinking, but that wasn't true. Wishing didn't make a friend—really, just a coworker—into something more. Family were the people you shared blood with, and all of hers were dead. All she had was a scheming, overblown, bleached-blond ex-stepmother.
    Did it ever occur to you to give Mimi another chance? Cal's words came back to her, stilling her hands on the cardboard box. For a fraction of a second she wondered what it would be like to say all the things she'd never said to the woman. To find out what she'd really been thinking all those years.
    But no. That was in the past. Everything that mattered was gone: her dad, the house, the ranch. Why try to fix a link to something that wasn't even there anymore?
    She got back to work and let her mind wander to Cal. To the way he'd felt in her bed, the things he'd whispered as they moved together, discovering each other, learning each other's bodies. She blushed, remembering how he'd whispered her name as he kissed the soft expanse of skin along her neck, the way he'd...
    No, better not to indulge that now. Roan felt the small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth and forced herself to stop. Cal had made her feel all kinds of amazing things. It had been a long time since she'd been with anyone at all, and she had never felt the way she did today. Probably because of the adrenaline. The narrow escape. All the emotions stirred up by being back in the house that had once been her home.
    No wonder she felt safe in his arms—it was just because he represented safety, because he was kind to her. Hell, he was practically a cop . The men she'd been with—boys, really, most of them—had been a lot like her: undependable, reckless...sad. That's why she'd practically given up dating. How long had it been? Roan counted: she was 24, and the last guy she'd dated for any length of time...
    Tony Garwood. They'd broken up on her twenty-first birthday, when she was almost too drunk to walk home by herself, and she had realized she didn't want to live that way any more. It had been a turning point, getting to midnight on the day she was an adult, by most objective standards, and deciding that being alone was better than being with someone who encouraged the worst in her.
    She'd gone home. Drunk a glass of orange juice. Given Angel a bone. Wished herself a happy birthday and fallen asleep on the floor, with her cheek resting on Angel's dog bed.
    But Cal. Could this be more than a one-time thing? Was there a chance this could actually work? Not as a boyfriend thing, but as a...friendship? With the extra parts, the benefits , as some people said—Roan hated that word. She wanted to be Cal's friend and she wanted, very much, to hold him again, to kiss him, to make love to him. In her narrow bed that wasn't really big enough for them both, but somehow felt just right. Or maybe camping up along the Little Muddy River if they got a late autumn warm spell.
    But not at the bunkhouse. She wasn't ever going back there. Not after today, not after running from the cops. Which brought her back to the problem at hand. She still needed five thousand dollars, and if she had any chance of not ruining things with Cal, she had to get it legally. She didn't have anything to sell, and she wasn't sure what kind of second job she could get—lots of places were hiring, and for good wages too, but she couldn't leave Angel alone all day