CHAPTER 7
JARED WAITED, HIS mouth a mere breath from Lily’s soft, silky skin. God, she was something, standing there so tough, so fiercely independent, so utterly arousing.
And unexpectedly sweet.
He knew her now, or was beginning to, and he wanted her more than ever.
“Do I need you to kiss me all better? No.” Tilting her head, she met his gaze straight on, no wavering, no hiding, not for this woman. “Do I want you to? Yes. Because want is entirely different from need.”
Turning her to fully face him, he smiled. “I’ll take the want for now.” He would earn the need, for later.
Never before had he made time to be in the middle of nowhere, doing nothing but walking and enjoying the sights for four days. And he sure as hell hadn’t made time to have a wet, sexy-eyed woman stare up at him, flirt with him.
Him.
The sheer pleasure of that had a grin splitting his face. Before he’d gotten sick, he’d thought his life complete. He’d have sworn to it. But now that he was no longer consumed by either work or pain, he knew how wrong he’d been.
“It’s not going to happen,” she warned. “Not here. Not now.” Having said so, she backed up a step, and came directly up against a tree.
Ah, wasn’t that perfect. Shamelessly using the situation to his advantage, he shifted forward, gently pressing her to the trunk. Knowing he was now blocking her from the others, he set his hands on either side of her head and leaned in.
She slapped a hand to his chest. “Did you miss the not-here, not-now part?” she asked, cool as rain.
No, he hadn’t missed a thing when it came to her, but fact was, her eyes had softened, gone all sleepy-lidded and dreamy, and her mouth—God, her mouth had opened slightly, her tongue touching one corner as she stared at his lips. Body language was definitely conflicting with her words, and he figured body language stood for more.
Or so he hoped.
He shifted forward another inch, and then it was that heart-stopping beat right before the kiss, the beat where they both knew it was going to happen… His eyes wanted to drift shut so that he could sink into the feel of her, the scent of her, but she kept hers open, even as he closed the distance and touched his lips to hers. He’d never kissed with his eyes open before, and it was oddly, shockingly intimate.
Then, still watching him from those whiskey eyes, she slowly sank her teeth into his bottom lip, and held on. Not deep enough to really hurt, but not exactly gentle either.
And he went instantly hard. “Uh—”
Her teeth tightened, and when he winced, her tongue darted out and stroked his lip before she pulled back and looked at him with a cocked brow.
“Okay, so you meant it,” he said on a laugh. He’d never wanted to laugh while so aroused before. “Not here, not now.”
She smiled. “I just love teaching new things.” With that, she tightened the towel—his towel—around her shoulders and brushed past him to check on the others.
Standing still, he watched her go, watched as she jumped right back into being in charge as if she hadn’t just thoroughly rocked his world, so much so that he was going to have to stand here for a few moments before anyone got a good look at him.
One thing about no longer being consumed by work, he had the time to absorb things. Rock was showing Rose how to raise the screen on her tent’s window, which faced…surprise, surprise…Rock’s tent.
Michelle had pulled something out of her backpack, and from here it looked like a large chocolate bar. Jack shook his head, but when Michelle broke off a piece and handed it to him, he looked at her, smiled. She smiled back as he popped it into his mouth and held out his hand for another.
Lily hunkered in front of the fire, poking at it with a stick. In less than ten seconds she had that fire leaping back to life.
And watching all this, it occurred to Jared—as he stood there waiting for the blood to circulate back into vital areas of his body, say his brain—that everyone here was consumed by something. Work, food, love…
Not him. Nope, for the first time in his life, he was no longer consumed by anything, and it felt odd. Like the-loss-of-a-limb odd. He needed something new to get excited about, something other than work or family, something that was healthy, and soul-rewarding.
Lily rose and bent over the backpacks, pulling out supplies and food for dinner. Her still-wet cargo shorts clung to her features, her best feature right in bull’s-eye view as she rifled through the packs.
And he knew. He’d found his something new—he’d found her: his enigmatic, fearless, gorgeous, sexy guide. Yeah, that so worked for him.
He only hoped it worked for her.
* * *
LILY SERVED TROUT over linguini for dinner, and considered the night a success when she had everyone around the campfire singing silly songs, toasting marshmallows and laughing.
Well, almost everybody. Michelle wasn’t singing, she was sitting in that bright yellow rain jacket, barefoot, staring morosely at her feet. As Lily watched, Jack came close with a fistful of Band-Aids, and kneeled at her side.
Michelle pulled her feet in and shook her head.
She didn’t want help, or at least not his help.
Jack patiently reached for one of her feet and inexorably pulled it toward him, turning it this way and that, inspecting it. Then he began opening Band-Aids and fixing her up.
Michelle tried to hold on to her frown, and managed for a good long time, but somewhere between her right and her left foot, the frown faded, and she sighed her husband’s name.
“Shh,” Jack said.
And just like that, the frown was back. “Why do you always shush me?”
“I don’t.”
“You do, you always do. I embarrass you.”
Jack looked around, caught Lily looking at them, and hunched his shoulders. “When you pick a fight in public, you do.”
“What do you care what anyone else thinks? I don’t want you to care what anyone else thinks.”
“And I, for once, would like to be able to have a discussion without yelling.”
“Who’s yelling?”
“You.”
“I’m talking loud, I’m passionate. Excuse me.”
Jack sighed and shook his head when Michelle snatched the bandages and hobbled toward their tent.
Alone.
Lily watched Jack walk off into the woods as a result, and it was her turn to sigh. Making sure that everyone was having a good time wasn’t always the hard part, sometimes the people were the hard part.
And this time, unlike on any other expedition she’d ever led, she had a distraction—she was attracted to one of her group.
And not just an oh-gee-he’s-cute attraction, or an I-wanna-jump-his-bones attraction.
But something much, much deeper.
Luckily she’d come to her senses.
Not before he’d kissed you…
Shaking her head over that, she decided it was time for dishes. She took two pots and walked to one of the creeks that ran into the falls. Hunkered at the water’s edge, she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. She wasn’t alone. Two masked bandits watched her very carefully—raccoons. “Sharing the water hole tonight, boys,” she said softly, and reminded herself to make sure the food was locked up tight and safe, because she didn’t want a bigger unwelcome guest later—a foraging, hungry bear. Rising, she turned, then gasped at the tall, dark shadow right in front of her.
“Hey,” Jared said softly, his glasses reflecting the starlight from above. “Didn’t meant to startle you.”
“You didn’t.”
He kindly didn’t point out that she’d nearly swallowed her tongue.
“What’s everyone doing?” she asked, trying not to notice that he looked clean and warm and put together in a new pair of jeans and another button-down shirt opened over a sharp white T-shirt. Somehow it made her want to rumple him up, get him all dirty.
“They’re telling stories at the moment. They started out with ghost stories…” Smiling, he shifted closer, then stroked a runaway strand of hair from her jaw to behind her ear, making her breath catch. “But at the moment, Rose is telling one that sounds more like ‘Dear Penthouse.’”
“Oh, boy.” Lily thought of how Rose had looked earlier, rising out of the river, her enhanced breasts perfect, her everything perfect. Clearly, she tanned in the nude, because there hadn’t been a bathing-suit line on her. Jared’s hands, big and paler than Rose’s skin, had showed up as he’d pulled her from the current, his hands on her hips, her belly, his arm wrapped around her, plumping up those breasts that didn’t need plumping.
What had he thought about as he’d had those hands all over her?
Jared tipped up her chin and looked into her eyes, stepping even closer, so that they were toe to toe. All around them came that extraordinary silence that wasn’t really silence at all. Trees rustling, the water gurgling, the hum of a thousand invisible insects…wildlife… With a small smile, he kept his fingers on her and made her forget all of it, everything but him.
“You’re looking at me as if I might bite,” he said, “when we both know it’s you who bites.”
She laughed. “Sorry.”
“Are you?”
“Not so much, no.”
Now he laughed. “I love it out here.”
There was just enough surprise in his voice to have her taking a second look at him. “Why does that surprise you?”
“I didn’t know what to expect. But out here, in the mountains…” He looked around them into the night. “It’s different than being at sea level. You can breathe deeper, you know?”
Yeah. Yeah, she did know, and she found herself fascinated that he did, too. “What else?” she whispered.
“Well…” He considered. “The dirt’s dirtier. The water’s clearer. The wildflowers are brighter. It’s like… I don’t know, time moves differently. Better. It’s worth more, here somehow.”
She was so moved that he got it, it took her a moment to say anything. “I’ve never heard it described quite that way before.”
He looked at her, his gaze open and honest, yet somehow enigmatic, as well, and she had to turn away. Above them, the stars were scattered across the sky like a million fireflies. It was mesmerizing, but truthfully? So was he. Completely. She could get lost in him, even pull him down to the ground…
He was looking at the sky, as well, and only when she turned back to him did he crane his head toward her, patient. Waiting.
“What?”
“I was wondering what you were thinking about,” he said.
“Nothing. I wasn’t thinking about anything.”
“Liar,” he chided softly. “Tell me.”
She gestured to the two pots. “I need to get this stuff put away and check on the others—”
He pulled her up. “Talk to me, Lily.”
“Today when you saved Rose—”
“I didn’t save her.”
“You helped her. She might have gone a lot farther down the river if you hadn’t.”
He acknowledged that with a shrug, and pushed his glasses farther up his nose.
Modest. She hadn’t spent a lot of time with men like Jared Skye. In fact, she’d spent most of her time with men his exact opposite, on purpose, though now she wondered why. There was definitely something to be said for such quiet strength.
Maybe it was because when it came right down to it, she knew she could resist a cocky guy. She could keep her heart locked up tight as a drum.
But not necessarily with a man like Jared, whose strength came from within.
Oh, boy, those were deep thoughts, far too deep for right now with the woods around them dark and silent, making this little gathering too intimate for her tastes.
“Is that really what you were thinking about?” he asked.
She didn’t intend to look into his eyes, but she felt the pull of him like that of the tide, or the need for her next breath.
His gaze was dark, but not guarded. Nope, everything he felt was right there on his sleeve for the world to see.
She’d spent her entire life moving around, shifting from one profession to another, free as a bird. And yet it was all an illusion, she realized, because for as free as she’d been, she’d never been truly open with her feelings.
Though the night was moonless, she could see Jared with shocking clarity, or maybe that was because he stood so damn close. His shoulders were surprisingly wide, wide enough for her to set her head on and let go of her troubles if she chose. And though she had no idea how he managed such a feat, he smelled incredible. Her nose twitched pathetically. She wanted to inhale him. “You got me,” she finally admitted. “I was thinking of other stuff, too.”
“Like…?”
Like kissing you.
Like dropping to my knees and touching you. Having you touch me.
As if he could read her mind, his fingers stroked her jaw, held her face so that he could see deep into her eyes. “Lily.”
Oh, God. That voice. It made her want to do things. It made her want him to do things.
To her.
“I’m going to be honest with you,” she said.
“Uh-oh.”
She shook her head. “This is my first expedition after a tough year, and I need my wits about me. But when I look at you, my wits scatter.”
He flashed a grin.
She shook her head with a laugh. “No. Don’t do that. Because I’m going to resist you, Jared Skye. With all my might.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
“I’m serious.”
“Okay.”
“You’re not even my type,” she said, still baffled by this. “Not even close.”
“Huh.” He cocked an eyebrow. “What’s your type?”
“Oh…” She winced. “Well…”
“Just say it, Lily.” A wry smile curved his lips. “More of an outside guy, right?”
She thought of how he’d run down the trail after Rose with the agility of a mountain cat. How he’d waded into the river without thought to his own safety. Seemed fairly “outside” to her, didn’t he? Damn, she’d been so sure she’d had him pegged. “Maybe someone with…” With what? More sex appeal? Not possible, because she was beginning to realize he had sex appeal in spades. “Damn it. I don’t know.”
He nodded but didn’t back up, didn’t get out of her space, and truthfully, she wasn’t all that ready to have him move, no matter what she’d said.
“It’d be good between us,” he said.
Oh, yeah. She knew that much. Turning from temptation—him—she faced the tree and set her forehead to it. “I don’t even know you.”
“Yes, you do. Or you’re starting to.”
“I don’t know you well enough.”
“And you like to know a guy.”
No. No, she didn’t like to know a guy, thank you very much. She was more of a one-night-stand girl if the truth was going to be told.
Which it wasn’t.
He put his hands on her hips and turned her back around, holding her gaze in his while she felt his hand cover hers on her thigh, which she’d been unconsciously rubbing.
“You’re hurting,” he murmured.
“No, I’m fine—”
“I have some ibuprofen—”
“I’m fine.” Humiliated that she hadn’t hidden it, that he’d been able to so thoroughly see right through her to the things she hadn’t wanted anyone to see, she tried to twist free, but he held her still, studying her face carefully.
“You think of it as a weakness,” he said in disbelief. “Your injury.”
“It is a weakness. I’m your guide, I’m not supposed to be whining about a little residual pain.”
Putting his hands on her shoulders, he turned her back to face the tree again. Then he lifted her hands to the trunk and pressed gently, signaling that she was supposed to stay like that, just where he put her.
No one ever got to tell her what to do, and yet he did, and she’d let him—
He dug his fingers into the muscles of her shoulders, and ohmigod, all thoughts flew right out of her head because he hit it right on the nail. His fingers moved over her muscles, coaxing out the tension, and before she could stop it, also a throaty moan that horrified her with its neediness. She clamped her lips shut tight, but he just leaned in, putting his mouth to her ear. “Relax,” he said. “I’m good at this.”
He wasn’t kidding. She tried to relax, she really did, but she could feel his body just behind hers, not quite touching, but almost…
“Relax,” he said again. Those talented fingers moved up her neck and down her back and shoulders, unbelievably pulling out the tension and relieving the pain.
Not to mention melting her bones.
Seriously, if he kept this up, she was going to slip to the floor in a boneless heap, maybe even have an orgasm. Or maybe she’d just strip and beg him to take her.
“Good?” he asked.
“You must have girls falling all over themselves with this talent,” she managed.
His fingers went still for a beat, then resumed. “Yeah, I have them lining up at my door.”
Tipping her head back, she looked up at him.
“I’m not exactly a babe magnet,” he explained, and at her bemused look, he smiled. “Tech geek, remember?”
“Well,” she said softly, oddly touched, her voice suddenly gruff. “Women can be extremely shortsighted.”
At that, his smile reached his eyes. “It doesn’t help that I used to work 24/7, without time for anything else. I’m trying to fix that.”
“What, being a tech geek?”
He laughed. “Working 24/7.”
Reaching up, she ran her fingers through his hair. “You know what I think? That any woman who passed you over was an idiot.” Including herself.
“I pretty much fly under most women’s radar.”
It shamed her to know that he’d nearly flown under her radar. That she would have passed him by on the street without a second thought, shrugging him off as not her type, simply because his world was so different from hers. “Women need to be retrained from adolescence,” she decided. “The bad boys? Not where it’s at.”
He laughed. “Yeah. Thanks.” He set her hands back on the tree and resumed his incredible assault on her tense muscles, and pretty soon, she was a puddle at his feet. Another minute, or even less, and she was going to start drooling. “That’s good,” she managed. “Thanks.”
He didn’t take the hint and remove his hands from her. In fact, he kept at it until she could feel the last of her tight muscles loosen, until she could hardly remember her own name.
“Yeah, that’s it,” he said quietly, still massaging. “Better, huh?”
So much better that she had to lock her knees.
“You’re like a rock quarry.”
“I know.” She felt his gaze on her, and kept silent.
He didn’t. “So you fell off a cliff trying to fight an out-of-control forest fire, you nearly died, were told you’d never walk again—which you proved wrong by sheer wil—and…help me out here…you honestly think of it as something to be ashamed of.”
“No.”
“You do,” he said, putting his hands on her hips to turn her to face him, dipping down a bit when she tried to look away. “Seriously, Lily. Life’s too short for that kind of shit. Trust me. I know.”
She was eye level with his throat, which just this morning had been silky smooth, fresh from a shave. Now there was a day’s growth there, and suddenly he didn’t seem quite so neat and tidy. “There’s…something you don’t know about what happened to me.”
“What?”
“Before I slipped off the cliff, there’d been a fire.”
“I figured that, since you were there as a firefighter.”
“I was on mop-up duty. It was my job to make sure there were no flare-ups. And I fell asleep.”
“You were probably exhausted.”
“When I woke up, the fire had started again. That’s my fault. I missed a flare-up. I screwed up big-time, Jared.”
“Everyone makes mistakes, Lily.”
“Yeah.” She looked away. Needed to look away. “Thanks for the massage.”
“But?”
She looked at him, and was caught by his wry smile. “But?”
“I’m pretty sure I heard a big but at the end of that sentence. Thanks for the massage, Jared, but you’re not my type…right?”
“You’re not,” she reminded them both.
“Look, I’m well aware of the fact that you’re totally out of my league.” He let out a rough laugh. “And only six months ago I’d have had to talk myself into trying for you. A year ago I’d never have even considered it.”
“Why not?”
“Because, like I said, I was an ordinary working stiff turned classic workaholic, who put in twenty-hour days, seven days a week. I was addicted to the office, to the work, to the adrenaline and excitement that comes from making money hand over fist. I wouldn’t have had time even to think about going out with you.”
“Why did you stop working like that?”
He looked away, a rare thing with him, and her stomach dipped, insinuating she knew, that whatever it was, it was bad. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
His smile was a tad crooked, and extremely endearing. “Don’t really want to know, huh?”
“I just have a feeling I’m not going to like it.”
“I got sick.”
Her stomach dipped again. “What happened, your boss fire you for missing a few days?”
“I’m my own boss,” he reminded her. “And I missed five months.”
She swallowed hard past the uncomfortable lump in her throat. Yeah. Definitely bad. “That must have been a helluva sickness.”
“It was cancer,” he said. “And I know this sounds clichéd, but I should have died and I didn’t. I cheated the Grim Reaper and because of that, I’m not the same anymore.”
“Cancer?” she whispered, and found her hands clutching his arms. “Are you… Did you…”
“I’m recovered, heading toward remission.”
She couldn’t take her hands off him, as if he might vanish if she let go, and he seemed to understand the reaction, because he let out a little smile. “I’m okay, Lily.”
“Of course you are.” She tried to loosen her fingers so at least she wasn’t hurting him, but couldn’t. He felt okay, she assured herself. Beneath her fingers he was warm and strong. “My God, Jared. You must have been through so much.” She managed to let go of him to reach up and run a hand over his short, short hair.
“Yeah.” His smile went a little self-conscious as he ran his fingers over it. “That’s all new growth.”
And just like that, right then and there, she felt her heart catch. Oh, God. That couldn’t be good.
She hadn’t realized that she’d put a hand over her aching heart until he took her fingers in his. “Mostly,” he said. “I learned, along with the newfound humility, and how much being sick sucks, that life is damn precious. I missed too much of it, Lily. No more.”
She couldn’t tear her eyes off him either. More, she found she had to hear him say it again. “You’re…fine though. Right?”
“Very,” he assured her.
Still staring at him, she let out a long breath. “Okay. Okay, then.” She breathed some more. “Wow. That word sort of just grabs you by the throat. Cancer.”
“Not many people actually use the word in front of me,” he admitted. “I hate that.”
“Cancer.” She fisted both hands in his shirt. “Cancer. It’s just a word, not so scary, right?”
He smiled, and cupped her face. “I’m really okay, Lily.”
She resisted the childish urge to make him promise. “So…it changed you.”
“You saw my list.”
“Yes.” And now the significance of it made so much more sense.
“I wrote it on the day I decided not to die.”
She wanted to flinch from that word, but refused, for him. She imagined him in the hospital, writing that list, not sure if he was going to live to do those things on it. It grabbed her by the throat and held tight. To combat it, she bent for the two pots she’d cleaned in the river.
“Actually,” he said. “I’ve thought of a new addition to the list.”
“What’s that?”
He smiled and nudged her backward against the tree again. “To be with a fiercely independent, prideful, tough as hell, prickly, oblivious-to-her-own-appeal woman.”
“Jared—”
“You, Lily.” His gaze dropped to her mouth. “I want to be with you.”
She felt her insides melt away. She’d been so busy trying to be strong, and had always wanted a guy with that same obvious strength. But here the quiet, easygoing guy had turned out to be the one with the strength—the inner strength.
And it was more arousing than any show of muscles had ever been. “By be with, you mean—”
“Well, this for starters.”
And pressing her up against the rough bark, he kissed her, long and hard and wet, and ohmigod, like he was never going to let her go, and at the moment, that worked for her, it really worked.