Free Scorch by Dani Collins

gave his sandpaper jaw a scrape with his palm. “Do I need a tie?”
    “No! No, of course not. But, yeah, take your time. We can leave in an hour or so. I’ll see what kind of wine is in the fridge in the garage. Save us stopping on the way.”
    They were both babbling and she thankfully put a stop to it by calling the dog into the garage. The door whooshed shut and he heard the leash rattle off its hook on the back of the door.
    Vin let out a breath at the ceiling, then took the stairs in big leaps, putting as much distance between himself and Russ’s widow as he could.

Chapter Five
    A s they got on the road to Rhonda’s, Jacqui confessed, “They were really hoping I was pregnant.”
    She was trying to get things back to normal from an hour ago when she’d given Vin that, kiss-me-you-fool invitation, and he’d veered away like she was a street beggar.
    She hadn’t meant to come on to him. Hugging him had felt really natural and nice and his mouth was so damned intriguing and kissable looking. His whole body was, well, she didn’t blame women for throwing themselves at the men from the base. They were insanely fit. All of them. Not just Vin.
    None of the rest were provoking this level of lust in her, though. Her desk at work put her right in the mix of the men, grabbing coffee and throwing down with trash talk. They tossed banter her way and some were inveterate flirts who charmed out of habit. They were good-looking and funny and she adored them all like Snow White’s dwarves.
    Except Vin.
    She wasn’t sure why attraction toward him kept blindsiding her like this. It was mortifying when he obviously thought of her as a friend. If her interest was unwanted .
    “Russ’s parents?” Vin swung his head to ask. “I guess that’s understandable.”
    “Hmm? Oh. Yeah,” she agreed morosely, looking out her side window at the herd of bighorn sheep that had come to lower ground to search out the first tufts of spring’s greenery.
    “You were, too, weren’t you?” he asked after a beat, quiet and wary, like he was treading very cautiously. “Hoping for a baby?”
    She sighed. He wasn’t the only one struggling with guilt.
    “I wanted to raise a baby with my husband, not by myself.” She picked a strand of yellow dog hair off her knee. “Single parenting isn’t easy. My parents did it for years after they divorced and they were still, you know, both alive and part of my life. They cooperated with each other as much as possible. Dad paid support to Mom. Money was okay on both sides. And even though they divorced when I was nine, Dad didn’t take that job in Florida until I was thirteen. So it wasn’t all on just one or the other to do it all with raising me. But they were both still holding down demanding jobs and had mortgages to pay. When Dad moved to Florida, it was for a really good promotion, not to get away from parenting. I always went to him for Thanksgiving and the summer, which gave Mom a break, but Dad hated leaving me alone during the day while he went to work. Which was ironic because here, Mom left me alone when she worked nights.”
    She had wanted so badly to zip her family back together. Sometimes she wondered if she had expected too much from her marriage. Had she put too much pressure on Russ to rewrite her childhood?
    “It’s been all I could do to take care of myself since Russ died,” she said wistfully. “If I was pregnant, I’d be about to give birth right now instead of going back to work. I can’t imagine that. Can you?” She turned her attention from her window to him.
    “All too vividly,” he said dryly. “I caught a baby once. You wanna talk about something that imprints on the brain…”
    She chuckled, knocked out of her maudlin thoughts into curiosity, wanting to ask more about that, but he flashed her a look halfway between empathy and a scold.
    “Being glad you weren’t pregnant doesn’t make you a bad person, Jac.”
    “I wasn’t glad.” Her heavy thoughts