“Well, it looks like everything is on the up and up. Can I answer any questions for you?”
I thought about it for a minute. “The job title is an urban park ranger. Does that mean I’ll be required to go out into the city at times?”
“Good question. The answer is yes and no. As a summer ranger, you will primarily stay within the three city-owned reservoirs. There have been times, though, when summer rangers have gone on patrol on the trails that wind throughout the city. We are currently looking to obtain some additional land that butts up to the foothills and may even extend into the forest at some point, but that could be years away.”
I nodded. “What does a typical schedule look like for a summer ranger?”
“You would work a week of morning shifts followed by a week of evening shifts. The reservoir hours change from month to month depending on sunrise and sunset, so your shifts will change to be earlier or later depending on opening and closing times. We also occasionally have overnight shifts when the reservoirs are closed, but we rarely require summer rangers to take those.”
Overnight shifts with no one around and no gun to protect yourself? Sounded like a recipe for disaster to me.
“I think that’s all the questions I have for now.”
“Great.” Ben stood and I followed suit. “Kyle said if everything seemed good that I should go forward with a job offer. Pending a background check, of course.”
It took every bit of restraint in my body not to jump up and down with joy. I shook his hand. “Thank you so much.”
As soon as Ben snapped his radio back on, chatter resumed.
“—white male running in the nude on the back side of the lake.”
Ben let out a low groan. “I’d better go help. It was nice to meet you, Rylie. I’ll call you when the background check comes through and we can get you scheduled for training.”
I nodded, but my mind had jumped from the interview to the call on his radio. Naked men? Better that than homeless drug dealers, murderers, and rabid dogs, I guessed.
Once back in the comfort of Cherry Anne, I shimmied out of the pantyhose and tossed them, along with the heels, into the back seat. When I looked up to start the engine, two men in gray and blue uniforms stood gaping at me.
Seriously? I know I looked around before removing the pantyhose. Maybe they didn’t see anything?
Who was I kidding? By the look on their faces, they saw plenty.
The engine purred when I turned the key over, and I hit the button to roll down the window.
“Can I help you?” I asked in my most sincere and innocent voice.
They looked at each other like they’d forgotten what they were going to say. One was breathtakingly gorgeous, Italian, around thirty with muscles in all the right places. The other was tall and skinny with hints of gray peeking through his dark hair and a look on his face like he had a stick up his rear end.
“We certainly hope you can.” The Italian one spoke first, his voice deep and warm like a vat of molten caramel. “Benny asked us to come up here and introduce ourselves.”
“Don’t you have a naked guy running through the park?”
He snickered. “Dusty and Seamus apprehended him.” He offered his hand through the window. “My name is Antonio.”
Of course it is.
“And I’m Kyle,” the tall, skinny one said, “Your supervisor. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to the interview.”
“It’s no problem. Ben was very nice.” I shook their hands in turn. “Pleasure to meet you both.”
“The pleasure is all ours,” Antonio said in his thick accent before Kyle elbowed him hard in the side.
“Ben said you’ll be joining the team,” Kyle said. “But I’d suggest you ditch the pantyhose.”
“Done and done,” I motioned to where I’d thrown them in the back of the car.
“Yes. We saw,” Antonio said.
Kyle elbowed him even harder this time. “You can’t talk to her like that. Remember the sexual harassment class we had to take?”
Antonio stuck out his chest. “They can’t tame this Italian Stallion.”
I stifled my giggle. Something about him was magnetic.
“Ranger Four, Ranger Two,” Ben’s voice crackled through their radios.
“Ranger Two,” Kyle replied.
“If you and Ranger Six could come to the back of Muddy Water Cove, it looks like the MWB has struck again.”
“Copy, we’ll be there shortly,” Kyle said.
“Three clear.”
“MWB?” I asked.
“Muddy Water Bandit. I came up with it,” Antonio said through his devilishly handsome grin.
“It wasn’t a hard name to come up with,” Kyle said. “We have to go.”
“Until we meet again.” Antonio winked at me when Kyle wasn’t looking.
They jumped into gigantic matching black Chevy pickup trucks and tore off in the direction opposite the exit.
Plopping my head back against the seat rest, I allowed a smile to breach my face. Finally, a job, no pantyhose required.
The drive back into the city from the reservoir took so long, I wondered if I had actually been in Wyoming. My parents made the idiotic decision to leave our beloved home in the mountains when I graduated high school, to move to this hellhole city filled with tree-huggers and their stupid sweater-wearing dogs. Who put a sweater on a dog anyway? They have this thing. It’s called fur.
Pulling into their lower driveway, I dodged my sister’s minivan and my brother-in-law’s work truck. My parents parked in the attached garage, of course. Thankfully their house had been large enough for my sister, her husband, and my four nephews to live in the apartment above the detached garage with their three ankle-biting dogs, while also allowing me to have their walkout basement all to myself.
It was bad enough I’d
