At Last Read Online Free PDF

camper, huh?” he asked sympathetically.
    “I’m more of a city girl.”
    “Which city?”
    “New York. Miami. Dallas…”
    “All of them?”
    “Chicago, too,” she said. “I moved around a lot.”
    He pulled his stick from the fire and wished he had chocolate and graham crackers to go with the perfectly toasted marshmallows. “I’m from Chicago,” he said. “Born and bred in the rat race.” Which he didn’t miss. Not the weather, not the job, not the ex… Although he did miss his family. “When were you there?”
    “Ten years ago.” She shrugged. “Just for a little while.”
    He knew she was twenty-eight, so that meant she’d been eighteen when she’d been there. “You went to high school in Chicago?”
    “No. I took the GED and got out early. Before Chicago.”
    “Ten years ago, I was just out of the Navy,” he said. “Working as a cop. Maybe our paths crossed when you were in town.”
    “Yeah, not likely,” she told him. “You were SWAT, not a beat cop running homeless teens off the corners.”
    He wasn’t surprised that she knew he’d been SWAT. Everyone in Lucky Harbor knew everyone’s business. He just wished he knew hers, but she’d been good at keeping a low profile. “You were a homeless teen?”
    She let out a single syllable hum that could have been agreement or just a vague “don’t want to talk about it.”
    Too bad that he did want to talk about it. “What happened to your parents?”
    “I’m the product of what happens when teenagers don’t listen in sex ed class. Nothing you haven’t seen before on
16 and Pregnant
.”
    “That bad huh?”
    She shrugged and stuffed the marshmallow into her mouth.
    Conversation over, apparently. Which was okay. He’d get another chance. He enjoyed watching her savor each marshmallow like it was a special prize. He especially enjoyed how she licked the remnants off her fingers with a suction sound…
    “You give good marshmallow,” she said.
    He gave good other things, too, but he kept that to himself.
    When they were high on sugar, they balanced it out with the beef jerky. Amy unzipped her backpack, and he unabashedly peered inside, catching her drawing pad, colored pencils, a hiking guide, lip gloss, and a pocketknife before she pulled out an apple and zipped the pack closed.
    She was a puzzle, he thought. All tough girl on the outside, girlie-girl on the inside, and a whole bunch of other things he couldn’t quite put a finger on yet.
    She handed him the apple. He took a bite, then handedit back. They shared it down to the core, drank their waters, and then Amy yawned wide.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, and yawned again. “I had the morning shift at the diner. I’m exhausted.”
    “Bedtime then.” He stoked the fire, then rose and pulled her up as well, turning her toward the tent.
    She stared inside at the still rolled-up sleeping bag. “This is yours. I can sleep in your truck.”
    “The bucket seats suck, and the truck bed’s ridged and cold as hell. You’ve had a long day and need some sleep. Take the tent.”
    She bit her lower lip, her eyes suspicious again. “And you?”
    “I’ll be by the fire. I have an emergency blanket, I’ll be fine.”
    “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t let you do that. You’ll get cold.”
    “Are you offering to share the tent?”
    Her gaze dropped down to his chest, and she chewed on her lower lip again—which was driving him insane.
He
wanted to chew on that lower lip and then soothe the ache with his tongue.
    “Sharing is a bad idea,” she finally said. “A really,
really
bad idea.” But she gave him another slow sweep. His chest, his abs, lower… Her pupils dilated, giving her away.
    Either she had a head injury he didn’t know about or looking him over had aroused her. “Sometimes,” he said, “bad ideas become good ideas.”
    “No, they don’t.”
    He didn’t like to disagree with a woman, especially a pretty, sexy woman whom he’d been dreaming