He lost. Just barely. I sigh.

I don’t know why I really even care. I came here for one reason: to save my sister. Jack may just happen to be one of the hottest guys I’ve ever laid eyes on, but I’m here to steal the ring from him, not to fall for him.

In another world, a world where Aldus didn’t exist and where I had just run across Jack in a bar, I would definitely have been into him. But Aldus has forced me to do something awful, to manipulate him. To steal from him.

Stealing from him would feel awful either way, but I was hoping he’d win the $30,000 grand prize, so that it would at least somewhat soften the blow when he realized his ring was gone.

I sigh. I need to do this. For Jane.

I find Jack with a beer in his hand. He’s with two of his friends, and they’re both giving him a hard time. Even next to his two friends--both lumberjacks--Jack looks massive. His arms are nearly as thick as the logs he chopped through, and his chest is wide as a tree trunk. His dark hair contrasts with his deep blue eyes, and his chiseled cheekbones look as if they are carved from marble by a Greek sculptor.

He smiles wide when he sees me. “Sawyer, Hutch, this is Elisabeth.”

They both eye me up and down, and then they turn to grin at Jack.

“Buy me a beer?” I ask.

Hutch grins, but Jack elbows him. “I got it.”

“Mister big ten-thousand-dollar man,” Hutch says, laughing. “You sure you don’t want Bunyan to buy you a beer instead, Elisabeth?”

“I’m sure,” I say, smiling up at Jack. “I heard his real name is Clarence anyway.”

“Give me 30k,” Sawyer says, “and you can call me Clarence.”

“You two jealous of my big second place not-quite-win?” Jack asks.

“Hell yeah, we are,” Hutch says, chugging half of his beer down and then taking a big breath as if he just surfaced from a deep dive. “But you managed to get us 5k each just for showing up here, Jack, so I’m not jealous enough to try to steal your girl.”

They all grin. I can tell they’re joking--that probably they respect each other enough not to steal from each other.

Shit. Stealing. That’s why I’m really here, isn’t it? The guilt stabs at my insides. Jack isn’t just stunningly, mind-numbingly gorgeous, but he seems like a genuinely good guy. His friends all respect him and look up to him, and it seems he looks out for them, too. No wonder a snake like Aldus hates him so much.

“You wanna get out of here, Elisabeth?” he asks, smiling.

I bite nervously at my bottom lip. I can’t do this. Can I?

An image of Jane, battered and bruised, flashes into my mind. I have to do this.

“Let’s drink more,” I say, smiling. “Then we can get out of here.”

I have two more huge one-liter glasses of Bavarian beer. My head is spinning a bit when two of the Canadian competitors come over to join us.

“Buddy,” one says, grinning. “You can’t feel bad about losing to the second place winner, eh?”

“Guess not, buddy,” Jack says, shaking his hand.

“This is Mike and Yannis,” Jack says, introducing the two Canadians to the rest of us.

I try to give a small smile and nod, but my face is flushed from all the beer, and I’m pretty sure that I give a big, dumb, sheepish grin while swaying back and forth on the bench.

“Oh,” Yannis says, smiling. “I know Hutch already, we had a nice close competition together.”

“Fucking Canadian politeness,” Hutch mutters. “You whipped my ass!”

“Oh,” Yannis says, pursing his lips. “I wouldn’t quite put it like that now.”

“Say it!” Hutch shouts. “You’re in America!” He slams his glass down so hard that some beer spills over onto the table. “Say you whipped my fucking ass.”

Yannis grins. “Okay there, buddy. I whipped your ass.”

We all laugh and order another round.

By the time I get in a cab with Jack to go back to his hotel, I’ve drank enough to blast stark reality mostly out of my mind. In the back of my head--somewhere--I know what I have to do, but I’ve managed to 99 percent convince myself that I’m just really into Jack, and that I want him to fuck my brains out. Hell, that’s all true. I am into him, and I can’t wait to let him do whatever he wants with me...there’s just one little bad thing I have to do. And I’ll think about that later. Only when I have to.

“So,” Jack says, taking hold of my hand in the backseat of the cab. “How’d you get interested in competitive lumberjacking?”

Oh, God. I hadn’t even thought of that. The only reason I was there was because Aldus told me he would be there. It is weird, isn’t it, for someone like me to go to a lumberjack contest?

“Well,” I say, smiling and giggling, “I have this Wal-Mart nightstand, and it’s so wobbly that I spilled a glass of water all over my phone and iPad and books in the middle of the night. I got so annoyed I threw the thing into the dumpster in the middle of the night. The next day, I realized it really sucks not having a nightstand, so I went to Ornsley’s, and--”

“Putting a glass of water on the nightstand is never a good idea,” I say. “You gotta use a bottle.”

“Do I look made of money to you?” I say, smiling, “Mr. $10,000!”

“I’m a lumberjack,” Jack says, “not a billionaire. I re-use the same bottle, fill it with tap water.”

“Anyway,” I say, reassuring myself that I wasn’t telling a lie and that this story is actually true, except I actually just went to Target instead of Ornsley’s. Like I said, I’m not made of money. “I go to Ornsley’s, and there’s this big picture with all these buff, jacked lumberjacks on it. I’m sure it was just stock photos, but one really looked a lot like you.”

“So getting the chance to see a lot of hot lumberjacks was enough reason for you to go?”

I smile and nod enthusiastically.

“What do you do?” he asks.

“I work in HR, at some big grey building. Brutalist architecture.”

“Huh?” Jack asks.

“Brutalist! It’s like--come on--your job is sort of related to building construction. Don’t you know anything about architecture?”

“I just chop the wood. Before I did this, I sometimes blew up buildings in Iraq. I never really stopped to admire the architecture.”

“It’s like,” I say, “like--”

My eyes widen. Like Aldus’s apartment building.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing,” I say. “Just big grey buildings. All concrete, I guess that’s why you don’t know it. You just do wood. I guess it was supposed to look futuristic at one point, but now it can look really dated if it’s not done right…”

“You an architect or something? I thought you said you worked in HR.”

I sigh. “I was trying to be, once upon a time. I went a bit all or nothing on my own firm, and an unfortunate chain of events forced me to get a more secure job.”

Jane’s addiction. Before she became involved with the wrong kind of men, she was hard into drinking. I couldn't get my company running and keep an eye on her all at the same time, so I had to give up my dream to protect my sister.

Jack shakes his head. “I know the feeling. Once upon a time, I had a nice thing lined up for myself. I thought I wanted it really bad, but it turns out I was born to be a lumberjack.”

“How do you figure?”

“Didn’t you hear the announcer?” he says. “Jack the Lumberjack!”

“You really like it?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says. “I think I’m going to compete again, too. Especially if they hold these things around Seattle…”

His blue eyes start to smolder as he looks at me. I feel my nipples getting hard, and heat surging between my legs. Fuck, I want this guy.

He helps me out of the cab, and we both laugh as we stroll into the lobby of his hotel. I’m not so drunk that I’m clueless or completely out of it, I just feel cheerful and happy. Or maybe that’s just the effect Jack has on me.

We reach the elevator, and he hits the button. I grab his arm and cling to it. He wraps a hand around my shoulder and squeezes me protectively. “You’re not too drunk to…”

“You never sleep with girls who are drunk?” I ask, giggling.

“I mean,” he says, sucking air through his teeth. “Sure I do, but I’m wondering if maybe this doesn’t have to be a one-time, drunk thing with us? It can be, if that’s what you’re after, but--”

I put a finger to his lips. “One thing at a time.”

The elevator opens up, and we step inside.

The moment the doors shut, Jack shoves me against the wall. My lips part for him, and I close my eyes. He presses into me, squeezes me, and then I feel his lips against mine. Our tongues meet, and electricity surges through me. We’ve barely started to kiss and already my body is on fire.

His hand reaches down and squeezes my ass, and I moan into him even as his tongue fills me. I press my teeth against his lip, and when he doesn’t resist, I bite down. He growls, squeezing me harder with one hand, as the other runs up my side.

The elevator dings.

We snap out of that spaceless dimension that existed only for the duration of that kiss, and we look over toward the opening door.

“Your floor?” I ask.

He nods.

My ears are still ringing from the kiss. My heart is racing and my blood is surging through my veins in warm pulses.

The door finishes opening, and he grabs my hand, nearly dragging me down the hallway. He stops in front of a doorway and then slides his keycard into the slot. The door swings open.

“Woah,” I say, looking the place over. It’s not the kind of room I expected a lumberjack to book.

“I drove a tough bargain with Ornsley.”

“Looks like he got his money’s worth out of you,” I say, squeezing his big, muscular arm.