Match Made In Paradise by Barbara Dunlop (black female authors TXT) 📕

deploys, it’ll blind the driver. We’d crash.”

She pressed her lips together, struggling once again with the embarrassing rush of longing that heated every corner of her body.

Silas was all business, while she was melting into a pool of sexual desire.

*   *   *

Mia was hot with a capital H. She was also big-eyed, charming and disarmingly vulnerable.

Vulnerable women irritated Silas.

Oh, it might be sexy in a midnight fantasy kind of way. But in the real world, vulnerable women were usually weak women and often manipulative women, all sweet, simpering helplessness that cut a man to the core.

He’d known some of them well, met others in passing. He knew the drill.

It didn’t mean he wanted Mia to get mauled by a bear. Odds were, she’d have been fine jogging her way into town. But Paradise was bear country, grizzly country and at a high enough altitude to be part of the bears’ summer range.

“Where do you want me to drop you?” he asked as they entered the north end of Paradise. He was due to take off on a flight to Viking Mine in thirty minutes. He could still make it on time, if barely.

“I don’t know,” she peered around at the buildings on Main Street: businesses like Bill’s Hardware, the Butterfly Boutique, Caldwell Corner Gas and Repair Shop, and the Co-op Grocery Store. There were private homes at the north end of town and more at the south end of Main near the river. It was prettier over there, with the white water rushing past and a clear view out everyone’s door of the glacier peaks.

West down Red Avenue was Silas’s place in WSA staff housing, which was made up of modular units with the basics: single beds, desks and compact bathrooms. On the opposite side of Red Avenue, Galina Expediting had taken over an old army bunkhouse. It was dormitory-style accommodations, with bathroom facilities at the end of the hall. The guys living there shared the WSA cafeteria and lounge. On the east side of town was Blue Crescent leading to the WSA warehouse and depot. Besides the medical clinic, the Baptist Church and the school, that was about it for Paradise.

“Raven mentioned the Bear and Bar,” Mia said. “You could drop me there.”

“How are you planning to get home?” Silas couldn’t help her with that. He’d be at the Viking Mine until later in the evening.

Mia pulled out her phone. “I’ll call Raven and see when she’s ready. I’ve got three bars now.”

“Raven’s cabin is in a dead spot.” Silas brought the truck to a stop beside a section of raised wooden sidewalk. If it were him, he’d have put in a signal booster by now. Then again, if it were him, he wouldn’t be fixing his leaking roof with a bucket either.

Maybe once he and Brodie fixed the roof, they could talk to Raven about upgrading her Wi-Fi. For safety alone it would be a good idea.

“She said something about the cache,” Mia said. “That she could get one bar up in the cache if she needed to make a call. I tried before I left, but I couldn’t get a signal anywhere.”

“You climbed the cottonwood tree?”

“Climbed?” Clearly, she hadn’t.

“It’s the old food cache from when Hugh Oberg first built the place. It’s up in a tree to keep the bears away. There are wooden rungs nailed to the trunk. If you ever need to get up there, a trapdoor pushes open from underneath the floor.”

She was staring at him like he was explaining cutting edge theoretical propulsion systems. “A tree?”

“It gets you up high enough for the signal.”

“I’m not climbing a tree.”

He couldn’t stop himself from cracking a smile.

“You’re laughing at me.”

He was. “You’re funny.”

She wrenched open the door. “And you’re a jerk.”

“Yeah, I am.” He knew he was having fun at her expense.

“Thanks for the ride,” she said tartly, sliding from the high seat onto the sidewalk.

“You want to take the bear spray?” he asked.

“I don’t expect to need it. If I do, I’ll buy my own.”

“Over at Bill’s Hardware,” Silas said as she shut the door behind herself.

He watched for a minute while she walked toward the front of the Bear and Bar. Two of the Galina warehouse guys were coming out the other way, and they held the door, their gazes glued to her as she smiled her thanks.

Xavier came out behind them and hailed Silas.

Silas rolled down the passenger window. “Hey, Xavier.”

Xavier walked over. “You heading out to the strip?”

Silas nodded. “Got a Viking run this afternoon.”

Xavier opened the door and hopped in. “Great. I told Cobra I’d give him a hand.”

“You planning to become an AME instead of a pilot?”

Xavier stretched his arm along the back of the seat. “Any reason I can’t be both?”

“Not a one,” Silas said as he pulled away.

“She’s a hottie,” Xavier said.

“She is,” Silas agreed.

“She’s going to be trouble.”

Silas thought that might be going too far. “We have women in town all the time.”

Sure, Mia was more glamorous than most, but that would wear off. He couldn’t see her keeping up that fluffy hair, the perfect makeup and that fashion parade way out here.

“Dude,” Xavier intoned.

“What?” Silas upped his speed as they cleared town.

“We don’t get women like that here.” There was an undercurrent of excitement in Xavier’s voice, and Silas realized he’d misunderstood what Xavier meant by trouble.

“I’d give her a wide berth,” Silas advised.

“Why? If she’ll give me the time of day, I’m taking it.”

“She’s just visiting.” Xavier was a decent guy, but Silas couldn’t see Mia being interested in him—or in anyone else from Paradise, for that matter. The men here were ordinary, hard-working, two-feet-firmly-planted-on-the-ground types.

Mia was a high-fashion model, and her late husband had been a millionaire industry mogul who probably jetted her off to New York, London and Milan to stay at five-star hotels and attend A-list parties. Paradise had nothing that could compete with that.

“I’m not planning to marry her,” Xavier said. “Maybe a date.”

Silas thought Xavier was dreaming in Technicolor.