Chapter 1

Ruby’s Diner had the best scenery of any spot in the whole of Superstition Springs. That’s where Tristan Marchande could indulge in his favorite activity—appreciating women. Some guys fished or played golf. He could think of no finer use of an afternoon than looking at women, talking to them, and/or figuring out how to compliment them in order to bring out their best smiles.

His love of females approached art in its purest form.

Some people called it luck the way women thronged around him. Or worse, they slapped degrading labels on his passion. But he wasn’t playing anyone, nor was it a game. Treating women well was a talent and he’d been blessed with more than his share.

The real art lay in his unparalleled finesse at sending a woman off to her next adventure, confident, glowing and fortified with fond memories of her experience with Tristan. Women always moved on to someone better, a secret he’d learned at an early age. Since it was the height of arrogance to assume he should get to keep one, he always stuck to the tried and true: burn hot, burn fast, let her go. C’est la vie.

Ruby’s had the singular distinction of being where everyone in town hung out at least once a day, so Tristan tried to be there as often as possible. He liked the buzz of the crowd, plus Ruby kept the air conditioner somewhere in the realm of frigid, which made it a popular place during a Texas summer. Best of all worlds. He could look his fill, remind himself he wouldn’t be touching any of the women for any reason and carry on.

“Solo again today?” Ruby jutted a hip against the side of the corner booth where Tristan sat nursing a cup of coffee. She leaned into her conversation pose, which meant she’d cleared the kitchen of orders for the time being. “Do I need to check the vital signs of the girls in this town?”

Tristan grinned at the ageless owner of the diner and held up his mug for her to refill. In a couple of hours, she’d switch him to iced tea like clockwork, which was less a staple of small-town graciousness and more a testament to the fact that he’d put considerable effort into charming her. It never hurt to be the favorite of the lady with all the food.

“You’re the only girl I need, Ruby. When are you going to put me out of my misery and do me the honor of becoming Mrs. Marchande?”

Her laugh made him happy, which was one of the reasons he enjoyed talking to her for hours on end when time permitted. It wasn’t a chore. Ruby was an awesome lady with a great sense of humor, who had pretty auburn hair and a face with enough character that she could be fifty but still so youthful that it kept you guessing about her age.

“As soon as Darling circles the globe, I’m yours, sweetie,” she advised him with a wink, which he responded to with his typical heart-clutch as if she’d pained him enormously, but he couldn’t stop from laughing at her comment. Darling belonged to Farmer Moon and the pet pig was as much a resident of Superstition Springs as the people.

“You’re the only woman I know who can say ‘when pigs fly’ with such panache.” Which he also appreciated about her. “Come on. Who’re you holding out for?”

“Matthew McConaughey.” She stuck her tongue out. “And before you laugh, he was a regular customer at my restaurant in Austin.”

Tristan held up his hands in mock surrender. “I wasn’t going to say a word. If I have to lose out to someone, might as well be a Hollywood pretty boy. He won’t treat you half as nice as I would though. Just sayin’.”

“Are you torturing Marchande again, Ruby?”

Ruby smirked at Isaiah West’s comment as Tristan’s former SEAL teammate joined the party in the corner booth. She bumped Isaiah with her elbow. “You know I live to crush his ego into little pieces.”

“And she does it so well,” Tristan agreed with a smile for Isaiah’s fiancée, Aria, who slid into the booth to sit next to him so West could take the seat on the end. “There’s my favorite redhead in the whole entire town.”

Aria laughed and pushed her long straight locks behind her shoulders with a pleased smile. “That’s because the other two don’t have my sparkling personality.”

The other two being her sisters, Havana and Ember, and yes, he would agree that of the three, Aria could light up a room the fastest with nothing more than a smile. Havana had her own great qualities, namely her taste in men since she was engaged to Caleb Hardy, the leader of the small band of SEALs Tristan had pledged allegiance to for more than a decade. Tristan respected Hardy more than any man alive, and a woman who likewise recognized his greatness got beaucoup points. Ember, on the other hand, had lush curves, a lush mouth and a vibe that said you better watch your soul around her, or you’d lose it in a heartbeat.

She didn’t scare the maestro des femmes. But Tristan did give her a wide berth, solely because of the seven-year-old son she had in tow. Tristan wasn’t father material on any day and there were rules about that kind of thing. Kids didn’t understand when adults they’d grown to care about vanished from their lives. Tristan had firsthand experience with that thanks to his mom’s disappearing act, and he’d set himself on fire before doing that to someone else.

“What’re you guys up to today?” Tristan asked the couple who shared a conspiratorial glint in their gazes.

Ruby shoved off to take care of other customers as Aria pulled out a manila folder full of papers and then set a laptop on top of it. “Party planning. It’s tomorrow night and Isaiah and I are way behind because we…um, played hooky yesterday.”

The sweet blush that stained her cheeks made Tristan grin. “Hooky” sounded a lot like code for a trip to the cold springs on the edge of town, a place couples frequented to spend time together away from prying eyes. “Since you’re not still playing hooky, I’m guessing Elmer here might need a few pointers on how to do it right.”

West shot him a flat-lipped look that probably had more to do with being called by his nickname than anything. “I play hooky just fine, thanks. Some of us know how to quit having fun when we have more important things to do, that’s all.”

Tristan waggled his brows and let it ride. West was the peacemaker of their group, the first in line to smooth the waters, but he’d undergone a bit of a renaissance, thanks to Aria. His comments fell more in the realm of smart aleck than anything lately, which Tristan heartily approved of. Aria was good for Isaiah, not that anyone had bothered to thank him for his role in ensuring the couple had ended up together.

The little crush she’d thought she had on Tristan had been easy enough to dispense with. And he’d taken the opportunity to guide her toward Isaiah, which was as it should be. They were perfect for each other, and Tristan’s self-imposed female hiatus remained intact with no one the wiser.

“Speaking of important things to do,” West said and cleared his throat, which meant he was about to segue into a subject that Tristan would prefer to skip. “Have you thought any more about taking Hardy’s job offer?”

Yep. That was the subject he’d least like to talk about. “Not really.”

A lie. He’d thought about it for two point two seconds. And the answer was no.

It was a dirty shame that as a SEAL, Tristan had developed an even greater talent with fire than his talent with the ladies. As the team demolition expert, he’d gotten a lot of chances to hone his abilities. Sometimes he wished he wasn’t so good at turning things to ash. But fire had a ruthless efficiency that guaranteed there’d be no second chances. Poetry in his book.

At least until his skill with destroying stuff had resulted in a long gash across the face of his teammate. Later, in that horrible German hospital, he’d learned that Rowe Hardy had also lost most of the hearing in his left ear thanks to Tristan. So after Syria and the worst professional mistake of his career, he’d taken a sabbatical from playing with fire. Of any sort, even the female variety. His interaction with the women of Superstition Springs could best be described as harmless. For now. Anything else was out.

“I need you to think about it,” West advised with raised eyebrows that emphasized his multi-colored eyes. He had one brown and one blue, an oddity that Tristan had long grown used to. “We agreed to help Hardy get this town in order. Aria and I can’t gear up the campaign to start attracting tourists until there’s a town to come to. Hardy needs infrastructure. Like a fire department.”

“Sure, I get it.” Tristan shrugged nonchalantly and smoothed a hand along his tightly bound topknot to search for strays, but the heat-resistant hair product Mavis J had ordered online for him was doing its job.

Unlike him.

This wasn’t the first time Caleb Hardy had sent West after Tristan with a hard sell. Just because Hardy had been elected mayor of this place didn’t mean he had the right to start pressuring people into ill-fitting positions he thought they should fill.

Taking on the role of fire chief meant Tristan would have to stop pretending fire didn’t exist. Stop ignoring the twitchy feeling he got sometimes because he couldn’t burn off tension the same way he’d always done in the past.

Sometimes had grown into most times if he wanted to be honest. He didn’t. Tristan was good at destroying things, not building something critical like a fire department from scratch. Hardy would have to find another go-to on that.

Eventually, Tristan would have to put his foot down and stop weaseling around about the job. It would be great if he could find something else to point to as his excuse for why he couldn’t be the fire chief. Anything else. Being idle wasn’t working for him now that he and West had finished renovating the old barn on Tallhorse’s property, turning it into a schoolhouse that would serve the new families the mayor hoped to attract. But what was he supposed to do instead?

“Do you get it?” West asked mildly in full Elmer mode. He’d earned that nickname because he excelled at gluing you back together when stress and other nasty stuff threatened to pull a guy apart. “Because it doesn’t seem like you do. We all have to pitch in. We’ve only got four more months to get this place operational before the developers pull the plug.”

The problem was he didn’t want to be put back together.

“Ben oui,” he shot back automatically. His speech always shifted to French when he got agitated. A gift from his father. “None of this is news to me.”

The twitchy feeling got worse the longer West and Aria sat there watching him carefully as if he might spontaneously combust right in front of them. And he was fini with this.

“When is the party?” he asked. “I’ll help with that.”

West gave him a look that said he knew exactly why Tristan had changed the subject and he was not amused. “The party is my job. You wouldn’t take that away from me after all I went through to get it, would you?”

“Seems like I recall you spent a lot of time shucking it off over some misguided idea that you weren’t going to be hanging around here much longer,” Tristan reminded him just as the bell over the door clanged to announce the entrance of someone new.

Cassidy Calloway.

She flowed into the room like a gorgeous river, prickling the back of his neck as her energy took up all the spaces inside him, squeezing everything until he was so uncomfortably full of her that he wanted to claw his skin off to ease the pain.

Tristan’s mood went sideways instantly. How she had the power to do that stuck in his craw. But there was no escaping the way she affected him. She walked into a room and bam—he went insane. Everything she did got him hot and bothered and not in a good way. Except sometimes it was very good, in the very best way.

There was nothing remarkable about her mouth, but he itched to rub a thumb across her bottom lip, just to see if he could caress a smile out of her. Nothing else he’d tried worked. That had to be why he dreamed about her in these half-lucid patchwork visions where he figured out exactly what made her tick and pushed every last button until she melted into his arms.

The odds of that happening in real life were zilch. She was the only woman he’d ever met who was wholly resistant to Tristan Marchande and it was messing with his head.

“I have to go,” he muttered and slid out of the booth as unobtrusively as possible.

Cassidy had obviously come here for a reason and if she spied Tristan sitting at the corner table, she’d flounce back out the door in a huff that would draw even more attention to the fact she hated his guts. Frankly, he’d gotten a little tired of the theatrics, so it seemed easier for him to duck out.

Plus, it kind of hurt. He’d spent his life honing his skills so that every woman he came in contact with loved him. How did he keep hitting a brick wall with this one?

Deep down inside, he knew. Syria had snuffed out the flame inside him.

“The thing where you two refuse to be in the same place at the same time is getting old,” Aria announced a lot more loudly than Tristan would have liked. “Grow up.”

“She started it,” he said which didn’t help his case, but he was fresh out of grown-up responses when the dynamic between him and Cassidy raked across so many raw places inside. “When I figure out how to finish it, I’ll let you know.”

He vacated through the kitchen, kissed Ruby on the cheek on the way out, and snagged the sandwich she nodded to on the sideboard because he might be an idiot about Cassidy but not when it came to eating. Ruby took care of him and he liked that.

As Tristan entered the lobby area of the mining-town era hotel where he’d taken a room—“lobby” being a pretty grand term for it—he spied Serenity sitting on the threadbare couch expectantly, as if she’d been waiting for someone. She had her long grey hair down around her shoulders today, a mess of contradictions because it made her look so young while framing her pretty, careworn face with hair that aged her.

“There you are,” she said with an indulgent smile, confirming that Tristan was the subject of her ambush.

“Good morning.” Pleasantries were a must when opening any conversation, no matter what. He crossed the small room in two strides and lifted Serenity’s lined hand to his lips for a brief kiss. Ladies loved that old-fashioned gesture and it served as his unique calling card, something they remembered about him long after he’d faded from their lives. “Is that a new dress? I love it. It suits you to the ground.”

Serenity’s smile widened as she fingered the swirling patchwork skirt covering her legs with a pleased titter. “How do you keep track of an old woman’s clothes so well? I finished sewing it last night.”

“When I see an old woman, I’ll let you know.” He winked and settled in next to her on the tiny couch, a trick and a half since his six-foot-four frame scarcely fit on regular sized furniture. “You should find something better to do with your time than sit around here waiting on me.”

“There’s nothing else I’d rather do than take care of my boys.” She patted him on the knee. “I sensed you needed reminding that someone cares about you.”

That put nice little catch in the back of his throat. Because she wasn’t wrong. Serenity Force mothered him better than his biological one had. Of course, a turnip would be leaps and bounds ahead of the woman who had birthed him—whoever she was—simply by showing up.

“I did need that,” he told her gruffly and gathered her hand in his because it suited him to create a connection with her at that moment.

Serenity had been his pen pal while he’d been overseas. Actually, she’d written to each of the five members of Caleb Hardy’s team continually as they’d infiltrated the sewage-filled areas of Syria via multiple deployments. Her letters had been a bright spot as they’d drained the place of al-Qaeda militants.

And then when they’d been kicked out of the Navy—honorably discharged, like that made a difference—she’d taken them all in, given them a place to live, a town to refurbish and a new purpose in life. Tristan couldn’t possibly express his gratitude and Serenity was also the only person in a town-wide radius who loved him unconditionally, whether he had anything to do with fire again or not.

“You’re not blowing off my prediction, are you?” she asked him pointedly. “Because if you were doing it right, a woman your own age would be caring about you by now.”

“I’m not blowing it off…not exactly anyway,” he mumbled because he had totally written off the lines she’d penned him while he’d still been belly-down in the dirt of Syria. “I’m just—you know. Going through a dry spell.”

It did not escape him that the women he currently had success at charming were all twice his age. They were safe. Mother-figure types with no strings.

Serenity tsked and in that small sound managed to convey disapproval the way only moms could. “Because the prediction said you had to do the work, sweetie. You can’t expect the right woman to fall into your lap. What would that prove?”

That he still had the magic touch, of course. But he grinned to cover the ragged place inside that she’d rubbed raw without realizing it. “I like it when they fall into my lap.”

“I just bet you do.” Her arched eyebrows continued the verdict she hadn’t verbalized. From the reaches of her new dress, she pulled a pen and a pad of paper. “Write it down again. So you don’t forget this time.”

Dutifully, he took dictation as she spoke and read over the words when she’d finished.

You will experience a great shift in your love life if you are willing to put in the work. After much give and take over the last year, you must make emotional adjustments and surrender to the flow of life and death before you will find intimate love.

That didn’t sound as woo-woo as he’d recalled and not nearly as permanent. Clearly Serenity’s direct pipeline to the universe had his number. He was all about intimacy. Permanence? No. But this? Seemed like it was right up his alley. Maybe he could make a few small mental adjustments and ease away from this self-imposed woman-sabbatical that he’d forced himself into. If that was indeed the problem.

Had he screwed up by swearing off women? The lack of fire—both personally and professionally—was making him miserable. Why not try finding a new woman and see if it helped him get back the spark inside on at least one front?

The prediction even said he should surrender to the flow of life and death. That was a no-brainer. He started every relationship under the premise that it would eventually die. He was aces at helping it burn out as quickly as possible, too.

“Thanks, Serenity,” he said sincerely. “I’ll keep this on me at all times so I don’t forget.”

It didn’t mean he’d bought into the concept of a woman fixing his problems. More like distracting him from them, if he wanted to be honest, because no woman could ever make him want to take on a role in Superstition Springs that had anything to do with fire. His hands had caused enough destruction of people and property for a lifetime.