the first lug nut, then a second, then a third. Piece of cake. For him.
Dylan approached her and she noticed his amazing blue eyes. He completely ignored her and began to pull things out of the back of the SUV—first a large, heavy suitcase, a smaller one, then the cooler. Meanwhile, the SUV was lifting, apparently already on the jack.
Dylan paused, cooler in his hands, looking down at her. She followed his gaze down. Swell. Her white T-shirt was soaked, plastered to her skin, her pretty little lace bra was now transparent, her nipples were tan bullets pointed right at him. He looked up and frowned. He put down the cooler, stripped off his leather jacket and draped it around her shoulders, pulling it closed.
Nice, she thought. Wet T-shirt display on the deserted road for a biker gang. “Thank you,” she mumbled. And she backed away so he could empty the back and get the tire from the undercarriage.
“Must’ve hit a pothole or something,” the first biker was saying. “That tire is done for.”
She hugged the jacket around herself and his scent rose, his very pleasant musk combined with rain and forest. It was toasty inside, dripping on the outside. Okay, maybe they weren’t Hells Angels. Just a bunch of nut balls out for a ride in the rain?
While Dylan took the spare around the SUV to his buddy, Katie got into the suitcase on top and pulled out a dark, cowl-neck sweatshirt. She put the leather jacket in the back of the car and pulled the sweatshirt over her wet T-shirt. She looked down. Better.
Not long after her clothing adjustment, Dylan came around the back of the car, carrying the useless tire, his long-sleeved shirt glued against his totally cut, sculpted chest. His shoulders and biceps bulged with the strain of carrying the heavy tire. But, God, what a body. He probably shouldn’t be out riding in the rain—he should be modeling or working with the Chippendales.
Stop, she told herself. Great to look at, but I’m sworn off. I’m concentrating on my future and my family.
After he stowed the tire, she picked up the jacket and held it toward him. “Here you go,” she said. “Thanks.”
“My pleasure. Hard to believe it’s June.”
“I was just thinking that.”
And then he did the most unexpected thing. He put the jacket down in the back of the SUV and stripped off his soaked shirt; he put the jacket on over skin. Her mouth fell open slightly, her eyes riveted to his body until he snapped the jacket closed. Then she slowly looked up, and he smiled and winked. He walked back to his bike, shoved the wet shirt in a side pocket and returned to the back of the SUV just as it was lowering onto a new tire.
Dylan began to reload the SUV and for a second she was just mesmerized, but then she shook herself and began to help, every once in a while meeting his eyes. Oh, God, he had Conner’s eyes—crystal-blue and twinkling beneath thick, dark lashes. She also had blue eyes but they were merely ordinary blue eyes while Conner’s (and Dylan’s!) were more periwinkle and almost startling in their depth. Paul Newman eyes, her mother used to say. And this guy had them, too! Her parents must have had a love child they left on the church steps or something.
No. Wait. She knew him—the eyes, the name. It had been a long time ago, but she’d seen him before. Not in person, but on TV. On magazine covers. But then, surely it wasn’t… Yes, the Hollywood bad boy. What had become of him since way back then?
“You can get back in if you want to,” Dylan said. “Turn the heat up. I hope you don’t have far to go.”
“I’m almost there,” she said.
Dylan put the cooler in, then the heaviest suitcase. He took a handkerchief out of his back pocket, wiped down his rain-slicked face and then began to wipe off his dirty hands. “You have a couple of stowaways,” he said, glancing into the car.
She peeked into the SUV. A couple of identical sets of brown eyes peered over the backseat. “My boys,” she said.
“You don’t look old enough to have boys.”
“I’m at least fifty now,” she said. “Ever been on a road trip with five-year-old twins?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
Of course he hadn’t, because he was some gorgeous godlike hunk who was as free as a bird and out either terrorizing or rescuing maidens in the forest. Wow.
“You’re all set, miss,” the big biker said as he came around the SUV, pulling on his leather gloves. Jeez, he had chains on those, too.
“Thanks for your help. The lugs get me every time.”
“I’d never leave a lady in distress by the side of the road, my mother would kill me. And that’s nothing to what my wife would say!”
“You have a wife?” she asked. And before she could stop herself, she added, “And a mother?”
Dylan burst out with a short laugh. He clapped a hand on the big guy’s back and said, “There’s a lot more to Walt than meets the eye, Miss… I didn’t get a name…”
She put out an icy hand. “Katie Malone.”
“I’m Dylan,” he said, taking the hand. How in the world he had managed warm hands after changing a tire in the freezing rain, she would long wonder. “And of course, this is Walt, roadside good Samaritan.” Then he addressed Walt. “I’ll ride back and get Lang. We’ll scoop up Stu on the way up the road.”
“You should be just fine, Katie,” Walt said. “Jump in, tell the little guys to buckle up, crank up the heater and watch the road.”
“Right. Yes. Listen, can I pay you for your trouble? I’m sure it would’ve cost me at least a hundred bucks to have that tire changed.”
“Don’t be absurd,” he said, startling her with his choice of words. It just didn’t seem like the vocabulary that would fit a big, scary biker dude. “You’d do the same for me if you could. Just be sure to replace that tire right away so you always have a spare.”
“You always go out for a ride in the rain?” she asked.
“We were on the road already. But there are better days for it, that’s for sure. If it had been coming down much harder, we’d have had to hole up under a tree or something. Don’t want to slide off a mountain. Take care.” Then he turned and tromped back to his Hog with the high handlebars.
Two
When Katie pulled up in front of the house in Virgin River, she saw her brother pacing back and forth on the front porch. He had told her that if she arrived before five the front door would be unlocked, yet there he was. She barely had the SUV in Park before the boys were out and tearing toward their uncle. He scooped them up, one in each arm, and just that sight alone caused all the tension she’d been feeling to float out of her, leaving her almost weak. Conner, like a great, faithful oak, always strong and steady.
She went up to the porch. “Why are you here?” she asked him.
“I wasn’t really concentrating at work, so I came home to wait for you.”
“Oh,
