It Started with a Kiss (A Sequoia Lake Novel) Read online

  “So the warning above the bar claims.”

  “Not into beer?”

  “Not all that big of a drinker,” she clarified, then without further explanation she flagged down the bartender. “Excuse me.”

  And wouldn’t you know it, she snagged the attention of Harris Donovan, part-time brew-master and full-time chopper pilot for Sequoia Elite Mountain Rescue. He was also Ty’s cousin.

  Even though Ty worked out of Monterey County as the head of the swift water rescue team and Harris was stationed out of Sequoia Lake, they’d worked more than a few missions together. With Harris running rescues from the air and Ty rappelling into some of the most dangerous waters in the Pacific, the two of them had gotten into—and out of—some pretty squirrelly situations. Both on and off duty.

  Only now, Harris was smiling at Avery as if she was his next mission, and Ty suddenly regretted coming inside. Partly because he wanted to keep the news of his homecoming quiet until he saw his parents, and Harris, who up until two seconds ago had been his favorite cousin, was headed his way—and he tended to gossip like a schoolgirl.

  But mainly because Harris was flashing that charming grin he used when looking to get laid. Ty knew the grin well, had taught the prick its power back in high school when he’d had doggie eyes for Shelby Steel, the first girl to upgrade from a training bra. Those double-barreled Donovan dimples had gotten him up close and personal with Shelby’s silk and all of her secrets. That he was flashing them at Avery had Ty firmly planting his ass on the barstool next to her.

  Which was ridiculous. Avery might be sexy in a hot-librarian kind of way, but she was not his type.

  She was also off-limits. His trip home was packed, and unfortunately there was no room in his schedule for a fling with a crazy cutie.

  “Well, hey there, tiny,” Harris said, leaning in close, charm dialed to “let’s get naked.” “Haven’t seen you around in a while.”

  Avery self-consciously fiddled with her hair. That she’d done it while gifting a shy smile Harris’s way told Ty the two had a history. One that went beyond bartender and patron. That she’d avoided Ty’s gaze, as if uncomfortable with his presence, told him that they also shared a secret. One he wasn’t privy to.

  “Life’s kept me busy lately,” she said, and Harris’s expression changed. Not enough that anyone else would notice—his smile was still there, as was the lethal dimple he was working—but his eyes softened.

  What that meant Ty didn’t know, but he didn’t like it.

  “Kicking ass and taking names as I hear it,” he said, and Avery blushed as if the prick had dropped to a knee and promised her the world. “So, what can I get you?”

  Some fucking privacy? “How about decent service?” Ty said, resting a palm on the bar top.

  Harris’s gaze settled on Ty and went wide with surprise. “Jesus, man, when the hell did you get back into town? Shouldn’t you be lying on a beach somewhere, working on your tan?”

  Harris reached across the bar and gave him a side hug, and even though Ty wasn’t big on hugging, it felt damn good. He’d spent a decent portion of the past few years conquering one deadly terrain after another, sometimes searching for lost swimmers, sometimes searching for forgiveness. But no matter where he was he always managed to keep himself pretty isolated, except in Sequoia Lake. One of the reasons he avoided coming back.

  “I pulled in about an hour ago,” he said, aware that Avery was dividing her focus between the two of them. Funny how he’d been trying to get her attention for the past ten minutes and she chose now to acknowledge him, when all he wanted to do was disappear.

  “Does your dad know you’re back?” Harris asked cautiously.

  Ah, yes, the other reason.

  Dale Donovan: husband, father, respected adventurer, and town hero. Also the man whom Ty had spent a lifetime trying to impress and never failed to disappoint.

  “Not yet.” He’d considered going straight to his parents’, but he needed a little time to decompress from the trip and prepare himself. Telling the one person in town who didn’t want him back that he was settling in for the near future took some working up to. “And I’d like to keep it that way.”

  Being home was hard enough. Being home around this time of year was a painful reminder of everything he’d lost. Something his cousin understood firsthand.

  “Well, happy to have you back.” Harris looked from Ty to Avery, and his smile said he understood that too. Not that there was anything to understand—Ty had just been too long without sex. That was all. “Now what can I get you? On the house.”

  “On the house? Thanks, Harris.” Avery tapped her chin with her finger, and after a drawn-out moment of dramatic contemplation—in which she wasn’t looking at the menu—she said, “A Shirley Temple, please.”

  “That’s a pretty prissy drink for someone who just scrawled ‘I owe you a screw’ on the front of a stranger’s truck,” Ty pointed out.

  “And a Flaming Pig’s Ass,” she added with a smile that had him nervous.

  “You do know that it’s a pint of porter with a lit shot of wild turkey and 151 dropped in?”

  She slid Ty a glance. “So I’ve been told.”

  “You can’t leave your seat until you finish it, and if you don’t finish, then you have to buy a round for the entire bar,” Harris said.

  Her eyes lit with excitement, which made no sense. He’d sweet-talked her into a corner, she knew it, and all that was left was for him to sit back and see if she was as stubborn as she seemed. Only she was grinning as if she’d planned this all along.

  “I know the rules,” she said, smiling, and damn if Harris didn’t smile back. “I guess the glass better wind up empty then.”

  “I don’t like it, but I’ll make it.” Harris walked off to prepare their drinks.

  When it was only the two of them, Ty said, “Big words for someone who was stuck in a safety harness for most of the day.”

  “Less than an hour, and it was a single clasp.”

  “Tell that to my screwdriver,” he said, leaning in and tucking an escaped curl behind her ear. “One chance encounter and it will never be the same.”

  “The same is overrated,” she said on a breath, her cheeks turning an adorable shade of pink. And look at that. Something flickered between them. It was raw and hot and something he hadn’t felt in a long time.

  Chemistry. The kind that wouldn’t disappear until he did something about it.

  She knew it too, because she was zeroed in on his mouth, which worked for him since he’d been thinking about that mouth of hers pretty much nonstop since he saw her. When he wasn’t fixated on her mouth, he was trying to get a better glimpse of her heart-shaped ass, which the safety harness had highlighted to perfection.

  Helping her out of it had been a damn shame, since it would have been so much more fun to watch her parade around with the harness shrink-wrapping her clothes around every one of her delicious curves. She might be petite and a little slender for his taste, but the woman was a bombshell.

  She was also breathing heavy. He could see the pulse beat at the base of her neck as clearly as the hesitation in her eyes. Oh yeah, Little Miss Live Loud might pretend to be all fearless and devil-may-care, but being impulsive wasn’t her normal MO.

  Ty was a ninja at making rapid assessments of subjects. A skill that had saved his ass too many times to count. Being able to size up a person’s nature and accurately predict their next reaction in a matter of seconds was crucial when hanging from a chopper and looking down at the rough waters of the Pacific with a terrified and often irrational subject in tandem. And Avery was about as close to being a balls-out kind of person as she was to being a princess.

  The way she nervously licked her lips told him that the most spontaneous thing she’d ever done was borrow his screwdriver. So he decided to call her bluff. “So this living loud thing—I don’t buy it.”

  She didn’t back down and didn’t lean away; instead, she zeroed in on his mout
h and said, “I’d like to prove you wrong.”

  Being wrong went against Ty’s nature. Always right and never in doubt had saved hundreds of lives. But if the determined heat in her pretty blue pools were anything to go on, Ty would be willing to man up and admit defeat this one time. Because he’d bet that being on the losing side of this discussion would taste like heaven.

  Only Harris, the slowest bartender in town, chose that moment to tap into his super speed and reappeared with their drinks in record time.

  He cleared his throat, and when Ty made eye contact, his good old cuz was looking back with a grin that made Ty want to punch him in the throat. “Here’re your drinks.”

  “Thank you.” Unabashed, Avery beamed up at Harris and then pointed to her Shirley Temple. “That’s not for me, it’s for him,” she said, turning those pearly whites Ty’s way. “For him to drink while he’s making me my crown. So can you put an extra cherry in it and an umbrella? A pink one?”

  Harris choked on a laugh. Not that it stopped him from reaching under the bar and placing a prissy pink umbrella right in the center of Ty’s drink. “He offered to make you a crown?”

  “Yes, he did, for after I ride Widow Maker and am crowned princess for the day.”

  “Although I’d pay good money to see ham-hands there craft you a crown, Widow Maker’s incapacitated at the moment.”

  Avery looked toward the big pen in the corner, covered with red mats and a giant yellow OUT OF SERVICE sign, and her smile dulled.

  “What happened?” Ty asked, willing to call in a favor to get Widow Maker back in the ring if it meant he could watch Avery give him hell.

  “Ladies’ night and seniors’ Shot4Shot landed on the same Wednesday. Had to call in the sheriff.” Harris shivered. “Got a cleaning crew coming in later this week, so he’ll be back to business as usual by the weekend.”

  “Bummer.” She sounded genuinely disappointed. “I guess my coronation will have to wait.”

  “The night is just getting started,” Ty said. “Tons of time to live loud.”

  Avery turned around and met Ty’s gaze, and hot damn, he didn’t know what was on her mind, didn’t care.

  She gave one tug at his shirt collar, and their lips collided, hard and with heat, and he was game for whatever she had planned. Because if this was what living loud tasted like, then he wanted a second helping. Not only did Avery pull him close enough to smell the evening chill on her skin, she pressed her mouth to his in a kiss that was so unexpected it had every part of him begging to take the leap.

  Because right there, beneath the flashing neon BUZZ SAW BROWN ALE sign and in front of Harris and half the town, Avery Adams, adventure coordinator, kissed him. And holy hell, the woman could kiss.

  It started out slow, and a brush of air escaped her mouth, as if she’d surprised herself. There was a warmth, then a heat, and finally those lips of hers parted, ever so briefly, in a move that was as seductive as it was addictive. And just when Ty was about to go in for a second taste, she lifted her head and smiled.

  It wasn’t smug or wicked, like he’d expect, but sunny and a bit giddy. As if she was delighted with herself. He wanted to keep the get-to-know-you party going, but then Harris laughed, and he realized that a public venue wasn’t the place.

  Her bedroom, perhaps?

  “What was that for?” he asked, his voice raspy.

  “Bella.”

  Ty knew how to kiss. Period. In fact, his kisses had garnished a lot of praise from the ladies: luscious, mind-blowing, addicting, clothed foreplay, and his favorite, panty-melting. But they’d never been coined beautiful. A little flowery for his taste, but he’d take it because “bella” had Avery’s face flushing, her eyes gleaming, and her lips curling into a shy little smile. So he agreed. “Definitely bella.”

  “A reminder to live loud and in the moment.” A hint of romance tinged her voice. “Trying that something new we talked about.”

  “Damn shame the moment’s over.”

  “Ah, hell,” Harris mumbled as he approached and saw the just-been-kissed expression on Avery’s face, and he rolled his eyes.

  She looked at her shot and grinned up at his cousin. “You got a light?”

  “I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?” But Harris pulled out his lighter all the same.

  “Not if you let me light it,” she said.

  Harris held up his hand in mock surrender. “Have at it, girl.”

  She took a lighter and carefully lit the floater of 151. Her eyes sparkled with excitement when it caught, and then she scooted the glass full of porter beer, and herself, a little closer to Ty. Her hair brushed his cheek as she dropped in the shot and whispered to him, “Remember, if you don’t finish it you have to buy the bar a round.”

  Before Ty knew what was happening, she had the safety harness in hand and was swishing that fine ass of hers toward the door. Ty went to hop down and follow, but Harris grabbed his arm and looked at his Flaming Pig’s Ass and then burst out laughing. “House rules, cuz.”

  Right. Couldn’t leave until the drink was gone.

  “Where are you going?” Ty called out to Avery—from his freaking barstool.

  She stopped at the doorway. “I said I’d buy you a drink, not have one with you. Like I said, not a big drinker. But it looks like tonight you will be. Enjoy, and sorry about the screwdriver!”

  A little finger wiggle and she was gone. Just like that. Leaving him with a hangover in a glass and a hard-on in his pants.

  CHAPTER 4

  “What’s the deal with Avery?” Ty asked Harris, his intentions strictly professional, of course.

  “She’s local. Not a regular of the bar, but local,” Harris said, still laughing even as the door swung shut. “Keeps to herself, on the shy side, but seems to be a sweetheart. Too nice for a guy like you.”

  Ty almost laughed. Hard to picture the woman who’d offered him a screw and a kiss in under thirty minutes as shy. But beneath the excitement and boldness of the moment, he could sense a quiet gentleness as well as an adorable naïveté that was shockingly refreshing.

  So where had she been hiding? Sure, Ty had chosen a career that kept him busy enough to spend the majority of his time everywhere but here, but he came home on rotating birthdays and all of the expected holidays. Yet he’d never come across Avery.

  Odd since Sequoia Lake was, like most of the tourist towns in the Sierras, a destination for many, home to few. When the bass weren’t biting and the powder wasn’t falling, the town would shrink to less than six thousand. So hiding a face like hers in a place that small would be damn near impossible.

  Good thing Ty loved tackling the impossible—almost as much as he liked being right.

  “Everyone around here likes her, including me, so watch yourself,” Harris warned.

  “Hey man, she kissed me.”

  “Right, and the Flaming Pig’s Ass was what? You being neighborly?”

  “We were just having fun,” Ty said.

  Harris flipped his ball cap around and leaned in so that Ty could see the whites of his eyes. “It’s always fun until someone gets hurt.”

  He palmed his cousin’s face and shoved. The asshat didn’t move. “It was a little meaningless flirting with a girl who lives here and knows I don’t. Plus, she’s not my type. Too sweet, too young.” And way too vulnerable for a guy like Ty.

  She might have been all rainbows and happy-go-lucky, but he could see the shadows beneath her eyes. Noticed how hard she worked to appear sunny, when it was clear that she was exhausted. The kind of exhaustion that came from challenging the universe.

  “I think she was a few years behind you and Garrett in school,” Harris chimed in.

  Ty placed a hand on his chest to slow the familiar shot of pain before it took him down. It had been fifteen years since his brother passed, but the sound of his name still brought back all of the sorrow and regret. Not to mention guilt. A giant rucksack full of guilt that pressed down so hard that sometimes it was imp
ossible to breathe.

  Only eleven months apart, Ty and Garrett had been more like twins growing up. Best friends. And when Garrett died it felt as if a part of Ty died with him.

  “Thanks for taking Dad up the mountain last week,” Ty said. “I should have guessed he’d be determined to make the trek, even though he’s about a decade too old to make that climb.”

  It was a hike every Donovan man made with his pops on his eighteenth. It was the same hike Harris had made on his eighteenth—and the same hike Ty attempted when he’d been a cocky seventeen-year-old, desperate to prove he was ready for bigger and better. Ty had made it to the top of River Rock—in record time. Came home with a touch of frostbite, a fractured wrist, and what should have been bragging rights for a lifetime.

  Only Garrett’s competitive nature had kicked in, and refusing to be out climbed by Ty, he had come along for the climb. They’d made it back to the bluff, but then Garrett slipped on some loose rocks and slid down the mountainside and into the river. Garrett was an expert swimmer, but with the snowcaps melting and the rivers rushing, the current was too difficult to navigate in the dark.

  And for the first time in his life, Ty wasn’t fast enough to make a difference.

  “Your dad called and told me he was going to River Rock. Said I could tag along or get out of his way. I offered up the chopper.” Harris shrugged as if it were no big deal. But it was. It was a huge fucking deal in every way that mattered.

  “I saw the pictures on Facebook. He looked happy, so thanks,” Ty said, hoping the genuine appreciation in his voice wasn’t smothered out by the disappointment.

  Not that that was a new emotion when it came to his dad. Since the funeral, Dale hadn’t bothered to invite Ty to a single anniversary climb. Not one. Whether it was simple oversight or something much more difficult to acknowledge, the rejection burned long and hot.

  Why he expected Garrett’s fifteenth anniversary to be any different, he couldn’t say. But for some stupid reason, Ty had hoped he’d get a call. An email. Something. But when communication had been nonexistent, he got the message.