Please, God, make him stop. Summer Rule Number Two clearly states,“There is to be no sex with island boys.” Richie was definitely an island boy. Man, island man. Shit. Island men frequented the same places she liked to, year round, which made it no fun when their play time was up. At least with tourists, she could rest assured they had return ticket in their pockets.
“I’ll take one of those bags.” She turned her back to the distracting sight of muscles and tendons and the implied strength of his forearms. “When can you get started on the tree?”
“Right now.” Richie stepped out of the truck.
Elaine flicked the light switch and surveyed the damage inside the mobile kitchen. It could’ve been much worse, especially if Rocky had visited during the rainy season. She and her assistant should be able to have the truck cleaned and disinfected within the hour and still be ready for the lunch rush.
Lunch rush.
She sucked in a short breath. Tourists arrived via prop planes, ferries, and pleasure boats, and they’d be flocking to her food trucks in under two hours. She stepped out of the truck and found her tree guy at the base of the hemlock. “Can you have a look at the damage to my roof when you come back down?”
“Sure. Give me a few minutes.”
She shook open the bag he’d left on the portable steps, filled it with nibbled-on tortillas, and hauled it to his truck. An assortment of neatly organized ladders filled the raised rack in the back. She left the bag underneath; she could check the roof herself.
“Hey, Richie, can I borrow one of your smaller ladders?” she yelled, directing her voice to a spot two-thirds of the way up the cracked tree.
“Borrow whatever you like,” he answered.
Elaine grabbed a pair of heavy canvas gloves with leather finger patches. She guesstimated the twelve-foot ladder would get her safely to the flat roof of her truck and slid the equipment off the rack. The ends rested on the gravel parking area, and when she tried to lift, it was heavier than she expected.
Shit.
She dragged the ladder through the gravel, leaving two long trails from his truck to hers. Now all she had to do was figure out how to open it close enough to the back of the food truck to allow her to get to the roof and not ding the custom-painted sides.
Dropping the ladder where no one would trip over it, she checked her cell phone and sighed in exasperation. Her missing assistant should have arrived soon after Richie, and cleaning up from Rocky’s nighttime incursion was taking entirely too much time. She had food to prep, and as she looked across the lot and into town, a tour bus stopped near the information center and began to disgorge passengers. Hungry passengers who were likely unfolding maps and firing up apps and plotting their paths to the island’s “must visit” spots. She’d busted her butt to guarantee her food trucks stayed at the top of the rankings.
Elaine checked her cell phone again, this time for messages, and sure enough there was a text from Claudia.
“Projectile vomiting.”
Great.
She shoved the ladder with her foot and strode to the hemlock tree. A muscular male ass in tight jeans and a special sling greeted her upward gaze. “Hey, Richie.”
He shifted slightly and propped his boots against the trunk, allowing him to look over his shoulder and down at her. “What’s up, Elaine?”
“How are you in the kitchen?”
His chuckle tumbled through the branches and rattled her bones. “You want my opinion, or you wanna call some of my other clients?”
Elaine snorted. He really was full of himself. But with time marching on, a hole in the roof, and hungry tourists on their way, she was desperate. “Twenty-five bucks an hour for the next four hours if you get your butt out of the tree, into my truck, and help me in the kitchen. My regular cook is sick.”
Silence. He loosened something and slid a few feet closer. “I can make a lot more than that hanging out in trees.”
Shit.
“Thirty. And lunches on me for one week.”
Richie loosened his pulley system a little more. His biceps flexed, and his calves clenched the tree trunk. One more disaster and she’d affix a closed sign to the side of her truck and offer to let Richie climb her for free.
Island boy, Elaine. Hands. Off.
“Deal.”
Pick up Summer Rules
and other books by Coralie Moss at
coraliemoss.com
