Almost Just Friends Read online

  Which had turned into a river.

  She’d clearly jumped and fallen to her hands and knees, and didn’t appear to be moving. Cam took a running start and leapt across, landing at her side.

  She startled and gasped as she fell away from him.

  “Just me,” he said, crouching beside her, pulling off his hood so she could see his face. “You okay?”

  “Oh, I’m just great,” she said, wet and muddy and pissed off.

  He rose and helped her to her feet, slipping an arm around her to keep her steady. “Come on, let’s get you home.”

  “I can walk.” She pulled free. “It’s just a storm. Go take care of your dad. Speaking of that, why have you never visited him since he moved here five years ago?”

  “I have. Twice. Both visits were very brief. I’m always gone, it’s hard for me to get enough time to come all the way out west.”

  “Well, you’re here now. So go back over there.”

  “Soon as I see you inside,” he said. “It’s not safe out here.”

  Planting her feet against the wind, she stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. In the glow of his flashlight, he could see the bright green eyes that had so charmed him in the bar were now flashing irritation. Only it was hard to take her seriously since she had mud on her cheek and nose.

  “Maybe you don’t know what the definition of first responder is,” she said.

  He felt his mouth twitch. “Actually, I’m quite familiar with the concept.”

  “So you do realize that I’m usually the one out in this kind of stuff rescuing people, not the other way around.”

  In his world, he was at the top of the food chain, his every command obeyed, his authority never questioned. So it took him a single surprised beat to realize she’d whirled on her heels and was moving away from him, calling out for someone.

  “Who’s missing?” he asked.

  “Sweet Cheeks.”

  “Ah, thanks. Seems a little sudden, but I’m flattered.”

  “Oh my God, not your ass, I’m talking about my stupid sister’s stupid cat. She loves a good storm, but I can hear her crying from somewhere.”

  Cam stilled and listened. Past the wind, past the driving rain, he heard it too, a cat’s plaintive meow. Turning, he headed along the water’s edge and stopped at the base of a huge oak tree doing its best to stand strong against the heavy gusts.

  Thanks to the beam from his flashlight, he could see the cat in the tree, about twenty feet up, huddled miserably against a branch, looking more like a soaked rat than a feline.

  “Oh, for—” Piper had come up to his side and was now swearing rather impressively as she dropped her medical bag to the ground and reached for the trunk of the tree.

  “Stop,” he said. “You can’t climb it, not in this lightning storm, not without risking your neck.”

  “If Winnie finds out I killed her cat, I’m as good as dead anyway.”

  “Stay,” he said, and with an inner sigh, started climbing the tree himself. It’d been a while since he’d done a rescue on land, even longer since the victim hadn’t been human.

  “Just FYI,” Piper called up to him, “I’m only staying down here because there isn’t room for two of us up there, and not because you told me to stay like a dog!”

  He kept climbing.

  “And also, Sweet Cheeks isn’t exactly on the people train, so proceed with caution!” she yelled. “Or at least like you have a healthy fear of cats.”

  “Fear isn’t a productive emotion.”

  He was pretty sure she snorted at that, but he was serious. He climbed for what felt like forever, and when he got to damn near the top of the world, cat and man stared at each other grimly. “Let’s go,” he told her.

  The cat just glared at him, tail swishing back and forth.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not thrilled either, but see that woman down there scowling up at me like I’m a pain in her ass? That’s because I’m a pain in her ass. If I rescue you, maybe she’ll soften a little bit. So what do you say?”

  The cat declined to answer, so he snatched her off the branch. To say she wasn’t pleased with this development was an understatement. She hissed and bit and scratched the shit out of him, nearly causing him to fall out of the tree twice. If his unit could see him now, they’d be rolling on the ground. It wasn’t often he got his ass kicked, especially by a ten-pound, soaking wet feline, but by the time he had them both out of the tree, she’d most definitely won the battle.

  When his boots hit the ground, Piper reached out for the she-devil masquerading as a cat. The she-devil who . . . stopped hissing and clawing him and melted into her.

  Piper lifted her gaze with a “thank you” on her lips, but broke it off with a gasp as her gaze locked on his hand, which he’d used to rub his chest through his soaked rain jacket. His fingers were streaked with his own blood.

  “Oh my God, you’re hurt.”

  “I’m fine.” How was it that a cat scratch hurt more than a bullet? “Get inside. Unless there’s another wild animal you need to rescue.”

  She didn’t say anything to this, just tucked the now complacent cat under one arm and grabbed his hand, tugging him with her to run across the property toward her house, skidding to a halt twice in shock as lightning hit far too close.

  Cam had been to war zones that were less hazardous than this hundred-yard dash.

  Finally, Piper shoved open her front door and they stumbled inside. Kicking the door shut behind them, she set down the cat, who meandered off without so much as a thank-you glance.

  “Ingrate,” he muttered as Piper moved off as well.

  She was back in less than a minute with a lantern that wasn’t dead. Pushing a bunch of mail and an empty pizza box to one end of a coffee table, she set it down. “Should’ve cleaned up,” she muttered. “It’s on my list.”

  The lantern illuminated the room. Curious, he took a good look around. The Victorian had been built what had to be close to a hundred years ago. The ceiling was high, the moldings original to the time period, the wood floor scarred but gorgeous. The furnishings were comfy and clearly well lived in, and plants thrived throughout the room. The bookshelves were filled, and there was just enough clutter and mess to give off the sense that this house had earned the right to be called a home. He didn’t know why, but he loved that she was . . . well, messy. “Nice place. You live alone?”

  “I grew up here with my brother and sister, but at the moment, Gavin’s working in Phoenix, and Winnie’s in school at UCSB.”

  “They didn’t come for your party?”

  She shrugged. “It’s expensive for them to get home, and anyway, Winnie needs to spend the time studying.”

  “You need to start a fire. It’s freezing in here. You’ll never be able to sleep.” He moved to the huge wood stove to do it for her, but she stopped him, her expression dialed to grim as she took in the blood seeping through his clothes. “I’ve got this.” Hunkering low in front of the stove, she lit a match. In less than sixty seconds she had a fire going from what clearly had been a pre-prepped fire stack.

  “Impressive,” he said, insanely curious about this tough woman who, according to both his dad and the guarded look she wore like a cloak, had been through hell in her life.

  He wanted to know more.

  “Not my first time,” she said. Rising, she came back to him, looking him over carefully. “She got you good.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”

  She lifted a hand and touched his jaw, which was also burning now that he thought of it.

  “Take off the jacket,” she said.

  “What, no dinner first?”

  “Off,” she said, not charmed, and then lent her hands to the cause, tugging at it until he took over and let it hit the wood floor with a wet thwap. They both looked down at his torso. Yep. Blood was seeping through his shirt in several places, on his neck, arms, chest. And not that he was about to tell her, but his right thigh too.

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