Driving Chloe Wild: A Smoke Jumper Short Story by Anne Marsh Page A

could get a word out. She was a take-charge
thing, half-teary and half-upset, riding that thin edge between righteous anger
and an all-night binge with a package of Oreos and two quarts of Ben and
Jerry’s. A wise man would have kept on going because a woman like this was
going to be holding a grudge against his gender for a long, long time.
    “Step on
it,” she ordered, like they’d already settled everything between them and he
was simply here to pick her up.
    She
dropped down on his seat, her dress billowing up around them both. White tulle
on his arm, his thigh—there was a sea of gauzy white pretty much
everywhere he looked. Her dress was one of those strapless numbers, the kind
held up by double-sided tape and a whole lot of praying. His eldest sister had
explained once that if she inhaled deeply, the whole thing could end up around
her waist. Examining his passenger, he decided that might not be a bad thing. The
parts of her he could see around the explosion of white were pretty as hell.
She was petite, but something about her screamed strong . Her bare arms
were lightly muscled, her skin sun-kissed everywhere he looked, thin white
lines from a bikini top crisscrossing her shoulders. She also came with a
handful of freckles in places he’d like to kiss. Seeing her naked— touching her—would be a fantasy come true.
    And
that was before he got a good look at her face. He’d noticed the mascara tracks
from the road, but now he saw that her blonde hair had been caught up into a
complex twist, curls escaping left and right. Someone must have sacrificed a
can of Aqua Net to its creation, however, because her hairdo was only
half-wilted from the heat radiating in from the outside. When she leaned over
and yanked the door shut, he caught a glimpse of a heart-shaped face, with long
lashes and brown eyes. She was pretty, not beautiful, but there was something
painfully alive and impishly naughty about her eyes. He’d always been a sucker
for eyes like hers. He might not believe in love at first sight, but he was
plenty convinced in lust at first sight.
    Starting
with his errant bride.
    Tapping
his fingers on the wheel, he tried to make up his mind what he should do with her. “You don’ think we should introduce ourselves first?”
     
    ***
     
    Getting
into the truck’s cab had required a hop-and-jump number to swing herself up.
The move definitely wasn’t dignified but Chloe had abandoned all pretense at
dignity earlier, when she’d put on her monstrosity of a dress. The thing was
twice her size and clearly had a mind of its own. Unfortunately, her choices at
Goodwill had been limited. The only other option had been a silky sheathe that
might have accommodated half her body, but which had most definitely not been
large enough to hold her entirely.
    Truly,
she didn’t care if the driver were an ax murderer (okay, she did, although it
was close). She needed out. Now. Or yesterday. Yesterday would have been
even better, before she’d agreed to elope with Big Timmy and quit her job at
the diner.
    Burned
her bridges.
    Pissed in
the pond.
    “Go,” she
said again because her rescuer had clearly missed his cue.
    “Now I’m
definitely thinkin’ we might have ourselves a problem, sweet thing.” The
truck’s owner had a smoky Louisiana drawl that made her girly bits sit up and
take notice. Yum. He was a dark haired, dark-eyed man, big enough to
more than filled up the truck’s cab. He wore a T-shirt with a fire department
logo, faded jeans, and a pair of battered steel-toed work boots. The aviator
sunglasses shoved up on top of his head meant she could clearly see his
expression as he stared at her, clearly stunned. Yeah. She had that effect on
people.
    “Your
truck’s pointed in the right direction.” She fastened her seatbelt. Axe
murderer or not, going headfirst through the windshield wouldn’t improve her
bad day any. She sensed, however, that she could trust him. It might have had
something to do with