Chance Encounter

suggested against her lips.

“I…I-”

He slid the tip of his tongue over the seam of her mouth and she moaned. “I think that would be playing with fire.” She pressed her hands to his chest. “And then there’s all those other women you’re wanting.” Her eyes had gone solemn. “I don’t like to share, Chance.”

She was waiting…hoping, he’d say something more. Maybe even offer her some sort of commitment to go with the sex they both wanted so badly that they were shaking. She was wondering if maybe he could change, change for her, and his heart clenched hard.

He couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

“Chance…” Slowly, eyes on his, she kissed his jaw.

His heart leaped. “Stop.”

She kissed the corner of his mouth.

“If I touch you now,” he said in a voice so thick and grainy he hardly recognized it, putting his hands on her hips to hold her away. “I won’t stop. I won’t stop until I’ve pulled off all our clothes, until I’ve touched and licked and kissed and sucked every inch of you.”

Her mouth fell open.

“I won’t stop until we’re both mindless with it, completely gone, until there’s nothing else. Do you understand what I’m saying, Ally?”

She only blinked and stared at him.

Chance was so turned on by his own images that he’d probably explode with just one kiss. “I’m saying you have to stop looking at me like that or it’s going to happen, no ties or promises attached. I’m saying you should turn and run like hell.”

She stared at her hand on his chest. Slowly she slid it over him, from one side to the other, and with each pass over his heart, the poor sucker doubled its workload. “I don’t want to run.” She lifted her gaze to his, daring. “Why should I? Because you’re too big and tough for me? Well guess what? I’m pretty tough, too.”

“Not tough enough,” he said. Then, because he was close to doing something he’d never done before, because he was close to begging a woman, he turned and walked away. It wasn’t until he was alone in his bed that he realized the truth.

She was tough. Far tougher than he.

9

THE FIRE INSPECTOR found empty soda cans, food wrappings, and a science text book near the origination point of the fire. The book just happened to come from the school Brian attended.

And Brian had been on the mountain yesterday.

He’d also been unsupervised for a great part of the afternoon, not to mention his sullen attitude when Chance tried to talk to him about it.

To Ally’s horrified shock, the boy refused to either defend himself or give them an alibi for his whereabouts.

They sat in the lodge, on the main floor. Ally, Chance, the fire chief, the fire inspector, Jo and the very quiet Brian, all around one of the huge tables they used to feed their lunch crowds.

“Brian, please.” Ally came close to him, put her hand on his arm and tried to reach him. “Please, just tell them you didn’t start the fire.”

His face defined defiance. “And you’ll believe me, right?”

“Yes, I’ll believe you.”

He stared at his feet, stubbornly mute.

“I will. We’ll all believe you.” She looked up into Chance’s eyes, silently begging him for help. “Won’t we?”

For once, his expression was free of teasing humor or that contagious wild heat, but instead, filled with everything he was feeling, fear leading the way.

Big, bad, wild man T. J. Chance was afraid.

And all Ally could do was tuck her hands in her pockets, because this wasn’t her problem, her fight. She wasn’t supposed to care.

But she did, so very much.

“Just tell the truth, Brian.” Chance’s voice was quiet and direct. “That’s all we’re asking.”

“But you already know where I was yesterday. On the mountain. Remember? You were annoyed to see me. Just like you always are.”

Chance closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they were filled with regret. “Do you know why you annoy me?”

“Yeah. I’m always in your way.”

“Because you remind me of myself when I was young and looking for trouble.”

Ally watched, heart in her throat. She knew Chance now, whether he liked it or not. She understood the wanderlust ways of his childhood. Understood the pain that the lifestyle had brought him later on with Tina, and the loss. He’d ended up here, and this was his home now. He’d learned, if not to love again, then at least that life didn’t have to be all loneliness.

But how to explain that to a teenager who’d never known anything else?

“It’s not annoyance I feel when I look at you,”

Chance told him. “And I’m sorry I let you think it. It’s remorse. Worry.”

Brian stared at Chance. “You…worry? About me?”

“More than you’ll ever know.”

Brian absorbed that for a moment. “But you had a billion other punks out there on the mountain yesterday. You’re not bugging any of them about the fire. It’s because you think I started the last one, and I didn’t.” His voice lowered to a mere whisper. “I really didn’t.”

A muscle jerked in Chance’s jaw as he rose and walked around the table to Brian. He brushed past Ally and sat next to the boy then took Brian’s shoulders in his hands and looked at him eye to eye. “I believe you, Brian. And you know what else? Everyone here that’s worked with you? Everyone you’ve spoken to or done something for? We know you now, we see how happy you are here, and we know you wouldn’t do this.” Chance’s gaze didn’t leave Brian’s as he clearly tried to convey the seriousness of the situation, tried to convince Brian to cooperate. “But the inspector doesn’t know you, only your reputation, which is going to haunt you for a while yet, no matter how you’ve changed.”

With heartbreaking intensity, Brian soaked up every word. “I have changed.”

“I know. I know, Slick. So help us out. Help us help you.”

Brian’s gaze revealed his fear, his insecurity, and Ally wanted to cry. How many times in his life had someone stood behind him? Promised to back him up? And meant it?

Probably never.

In comparison, her life had been a piece of cake. But not Chance’s. No matter how he tried to keep his distance, she could see the truth, could see that he looked into that boy’s eyes and saw a kindred spirit that broke his heart.

It was another crack in to the wild man image, another insight into the complicated man that was T. J. Chance.

“Please, Brian,” Chance urged softly.

Brian swallowed hard and in that moment, Ally was so certain he hadn’t started that fire, either fire, that she would’ve staked her very life on it. He loved this place as much as she did, and probably for many of the same reasons. Here, unlike any other place on earth, he’d found he belonged. He was wanted, needed.

Here, he was home.

She waited for him to tell everyone that very thing.