When she finally opened her eyes, Colin was staring at her from between her legs. Embarrassment slowly flooded in. Was she loud? Demanding?

No, Colin was smiling from his eyes.

“Now that I know what you sound like when you come, I’ll always know if you fake it.”

She chuckled. “I wouldn’t know how to fake that hard of an orgasm.”

He reached for his wallet, removed a condom. “Let me show you some more.”

Colin wasn’t sure what he loved the most . . . hearing Parker come, watching her come, or making her come. He couldn’t get the condom on fast enough, and she was rolling him onto his back and straddling his hips. It took biting the inside of his lip until there was actual pain to keep from exploding the moment she opened her body and let him in. She’d been tight and hot, wet from her own release.

And if she was rusty, he’d found the oil needed to limber her up. They teased and fondled for some time before he caught his name on her lips with open mouth kisses. Her breath caught again, and he felt her body squeezing and milking his cock until he couldn’t hold back any longer.

He held her until their breathing returned to normal. Colin snuck away long enough to get rid of the condom and returned to find that she’d tossed a blanket over her hips. There was a siren quality of her like that, breasts exposed, half of one leg . . . a satisfied smile on her face.

“That was incredible,” she said after he’d taken his place beside her.

“It doesn’t get better.” Not in his memory at least. “But we can try. We’re both overachievers.”

Parker snuggled her head onto his shoulder and laid a lazy arm over his stomach. “I don’t think I have it in me tonight.”

“I could be talked into round two, but I don’t want you sore.”

“And I don’t want my brother or sister to overhear anything.”

He kissed the top of her head. “Then we’ll save the next round for the weekend.”

She tangled one of her legs with his. “At the risk of sounding like an insecure woman . . .” The pause was long enough for him to think she wasn’t going to say whatever she was thinking.

“What?”

“Was it . . . I mean, were we . . .” She looked up at him. “It’s been a while, for me. I’ve had sex before, but I don’t think I’ve had anything like that.”

There was nothing she could have said to make him happier. He pulled her up to him for a kiss, stopped with only that. “It was, and we are. That wasn’t just sex, Parker.”

She was slow to smile as his words sunk in. He wasn’t ready to put labels and words to what they were doing, or the relationship they were embarking on, he didn’t want her believing she was feeling those things alone.

“Okay . . .” She returned to the crook of his shoulder and sighed. Less than five minutes later, they both heard the house speakers announce that the gate was being opened.

Parker sprang out of bed. “Someone’s home.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“That’s it?”

“Yup. We’re all done.”

Parker, Colin, Fabio, and Scout stood on the high hillside on the north side of the project looking down. The first basin looked big enough for the foundation of a twenty-story high-rise. Boulders lined the south side at the mouth. The earth had been compacted and sloped where the water had no choice but to funnel by the slatted structure that was designed to hold back debris, but allow water to sift through. The second basin was much smaller, but still gave up a lot of space to fill with material. K-rails were then placed on the shallow north side just above the next structure, but then things got tight. They’d cleaned out a lot of overgrowth that managed to make it back from the fire, but the depth through the fenced portion of Parker’s land hadn’t changed . . . couldn’t without undermining the concrete covered culverts that made up her driveway. The dip in the driveway was there to funnel water if the culverts filled with rocks and dirt. Which had happened at least twice that Parker remembered, which was why there was an elevated footbridge on the downside of the driveway so they could get past any flooding nature tossed their way.

“What happens now?” Parker asked.

“We’re pulling out tomorrow.”

She looked over at where the loaders and excavators were parked. “Are you leaving anything on the property during the winter?”

Fabio shook his head. “We’ll bring them back if we need them.”

Strange how she didn’t really like the sound of that. “They’re predicting rain by the end of the week.”

“We’ll keep an eye on it, Parker.”

Colin had made good on keeping an eye on almost everything. Only now he wouldn’t be there every day for work.

“No more trucks beeping as my alarm clock,” she teased.

“Can you handle it?” Fabio asked.

She grinned, despite the trepidation she was feeling. “I’m sure there’s a ringtone I can download from the app store if I miss it enough.”

They both found that funny.

Slowly, they trekked down the hill and onto the field portion of the property.

“What about the toilet?”

“That’s the last to go. We scheduled pickup on Friday.”

“Good. I could go the rest of my life without seeing men emerge from that thing while they’re zipping up their pants.”

“Sorry,” Colin apologized.

“Par for the course. I expected nothing less. But I won’t cry when it leaves.”

She walked them to their trucks. Some of the men were taking down their break station and loading picnic benches and tables into the backs of trucks.

“I won’t be here tomorrow,” Fabio told her. “I’ll see you when we come back to clean out when these fill up.”

Which she’d already been told was likely to be at the end of winter at the latest. Their optimism was just that. Parker was a realist. Fifty miles of burned-up forest being funneled into a neighborhood, even with the structures they built, was right up there with placing a Band-Aid on a hemorrhage. Maybe she was wrong.

Parker opened her arms to hug Fabio before he left. “Thanks for everything.”

“Just doing my job.”

No. None of them just did a job. They cared about what they were doing, and the people they were doing it for.

It showed.

He drove off, leaving her and Colin standing there. It was then that he placed a hand on her arm. Even though Colin’s team knew they had something going, he didn’t go out of his way to flaunt it when they were around. “You okay?”

“Nervous.”

“Your house is going to be okay.”

“I know.”

“The guesthouse should be fine.” It sat low on the property and had been surrounded by sandbags. The surviving shed as well. Colin had directed one of the guys behind the burned fence to shore up a path to give the runoff a place to go. All the normal ditches on the property had been etched as well as they could be.

“I can’t afford to run off my renter.”

“Anything that happens, we can fix.”

She really hoped that was true.

Colin’s phone rang and pulled his attention away. “I have to take this.”