I wound my way back to the server’s station to put their orders in and ran into my oldest and dearest friend. Cookie was busy tapping in orders, too, her nails clicking on the screen. As far as rush hours went, this was a doozy. And they seemed to be getting doozier every day. I would’ve thought December a far cry from tourist season. Apparently not.

“Is it just me, or are there a lot of women in here?” Cookie asked, closing out her order.

I scanned the area and concurred. There were a lot of customers in general, and they all seemed exclusively focused on one customer. The tables of women. A couple of tables of men. Even a businessman sitting alone pretending not to be interested in tall, dark, and delicious. I couldn’t blame any of them, but it did up the competition.

Not that I was competing. Reyes was evil. And he hated me. I would never entertain the idea of us hooking up. Of him following me to the storeroom, pressing his body into mine, pulling my skirt up and my panties down so he could bury himself inside me.

Nope. All that was more of a… a caveat for something I most definitely did not want to happen. He was like a panther in the wild. Beautiful to look at. Far too dangerous to approach.

Cookie took off to do God knew what. I entered orders. Erin, the server who despised the fact that I dared to breathe air, and Francie, the server who pretended not to despise the fact that I dared to breathe air but who I suspected was right there with Erin, hurried past me for this or that, and the lunch crew behaved like a well-oiled machine. A well-oiled machine with one tiny clink: a loose cog named Cookie. Other than the occasional hiccup, however, we performed like a pit crew at the Indianapolis 500 despite our differences.

Cookie walked up to grab a couple of plates off the pass-out shelf.

“Do you see that?” I asked her, nodding toward Reyes.

A velvety fire licked over his skin, the undulating waves mesmerizing. That was nothing new. The fire he left on the table was. While he scanned his phone with one hand, the other rested absently beside his plate, his fingertips drawing lazily on the smooth surface. His touch left a trail of soft flames in its wake, as though he were igniting the wood beneath his hand.

No one but me seemed to notice. Still, I had to be sure we weren’t all about to be burned alive. Maybe he was a pyromancer. A supernatural arsonist.

By the time Cookie turned for a look-see, her arms full of plates, he’d shifted and put his hand down. Yet the table was still on fire where it had been.

“I do indeed,” she said, her tone appreciative.

“You do?” I asked, surprised.

The flames slowly died away, leaving wisps of smoke drifting heavenward.

She smirked. “Honey, I’m married. Not dead. How could any woman not see that?”

I scooped coffee into the basket, remembered it needed a filter, poured the granules back out, and started over. “True. But do you see anything out of the ordinary? Anything – I don’t know – hot?”

“Sweetheart, that is the definition of hot.”

“No. Well, yes, but do you see anything unusual?”

“You mean the way he sits?” she asked, her voice growing husky. “His legs always slightly parted with one hand resting on his thigh. How can any man make something so mundane as sitting so damned sexy?”

She clearly did not see the fire.

Before she took off again, she asked, “Is it wrong that every time he comes in I want to straddle him?”

“Only if you act on your desires. In front of your husband.”

She chuckled, narrowly escaped a head-on with Erin, then took her customers their lunch.

But she was right. So very, very right. The guy defined the hyphenated euphemism sex-on-a-stick, and I had to get the fuck over it. Dating him would be like playing Spin the Bottle in a nuclear reactor. He should’ve been wearing a biohazard sign, because I was so not tapping that. I had no intention of going anywhere near it. One hundred percent off-limits. Soooooooo not happening.

I grabbed the water pitcher to see if he needed a refill, which was not so much me going near him but me doing what I was paid for. I had a job to do, damn it. And I lived in a constant state of denial.

Actually, the reasons for my approach were threefold. One, I wanted a closer look at the table. Did he really burn it? Two, I wanted to test a theory I’d had for a long time. Every time he walked into the café, the entire area seemed to grow warmer. It made sense, him being made of fire and all, but was he really causing my hot flashes? I was way too young for menopause, so I had my fingers crossed on that one. And three, how close could I get? If he really was hot and he touched me, would I burn like the table? Would he set me on fire – in the nonmetaphorical sense? Would his touch blister as much as his presence?

I walked toward him with purposeful steps but slowed as I got closer. Cookie stopped what she was doing to watch me, surprise evident on her face. Francie had a similar reaction when she spotted me heading for her customer. Not that it was all that unusual. We each saw to all the customers as needed, and this one was most definitely in need. The poor guy was on fire, for crap’s sake. If anyone needed water…

Twenty feet. I was now about twenty feet away and closing fast. Ish. The heat that I felt whenever he walked in increased exponentially with every step I took until it became almost unbearable by the time I stood beside his table. Standing next to him was like being too close to a blazing furnace. His heat radiated out in white-hot waves.

“Can I top this off for you?” I asked, my voice only a little wobbly.

He didn’t look up at me right away. He’d seemed to sense my approach, though. His sparkling gaze landed on my lower extremities as I’d walked up, but he didn’t move then and he wasn’t moving now. What was moving was the fire that forever sheathed him. It sparked to life. Swelled. Consumed him completely until his muscles contracted beneath it. His jawline sharpened. His forearms corded, hardened to the density of tempered steel as though he were fighting something inside him. As though he were fighting for control.

I took a minuscule step back. After a few seconds, the fire died down to the soft glow of his everyday armor.

I waited a moment longer, a moment that seemed to stretch forever, before taking the hint. He really did hate me. His emotions were so dense, so tightly packed, I couldn’t distinguish any one in particular, but I was certain at the middle of it all lay a seething kind of hatred.

Embarrassment rocketed through me, and I prayed for a sinkhole to appear beneath my feet. On the bright side, no one knew who I was. Including me. I could leave town anytime and all this would be forgotten.

I’d have to change my name. Janey Doerr – because Jane Doe was so last week – would become nothing but a memory. And I didn’t have many of those. I could use a few more.

Mortified, I started to step away, but then slowly, methodically, he lifted his lashes. His gaze raked up my body, leaving heat trails everywhere it touched until it met mine. The effect of that meeting was like being hit by a freight train, his presence was so powerful. So raw.

He nodded, the movement barely perceptible, and I’d almost forgotten the question. The cold pitcher in my hands reminded me. I swallowed hard. Tore my focus off him. Bent forward to top off his water.

He monitored my every move, studied me with the intensity of a hungry jaguar, and I suddenly felt like prey. Like I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book and had been lured into a trap by the deadliest of predators.