Chapter Three

WHILE JACKSON SET up the tent, Laney gathered wood for the fires they’d need in the evenings to keep warm. They’d been camping together for so many years that they had a system down pat. She remembered the first time they’d gone camping together. Jackson had been camping a zillion times with his family, but it had been her first time, and she hadn’t really known what to expect. Jackson had been patient with her and was careful to ensure she didn’t do anything that might cause her to be injured. As she’d learned, he’d loosened up, hovering less over her every step and treating her more like an equal than the naive girl who hadn’t known the difference between a square knot and a timber hitch. She smiled with the memory of lying naked in their tent as Jackson taught her how to master knots while they took turns tying each other up, then teasing and taunting until they were both begging for more.

She carried the wood she’d gathered back to the campsite, where she found Jackson putting their gear in the tent.

“Good job. Did you have any trouble?” he asked as he helped her stack the wood by the area he’d cleaned out for their fires. How he managed to get so much done while she was gathering wood used to baffle her, but she’d come to accept that Jackson was simply good at everything he did.

“Nope. No bears, snakes, or strange backwoods freaks anywhere in sight.”

“Well, then, I guess we’re safe.” His lips quirked up. “For now.”

He handed her a fishing pole, then ducked into the tent and came back out with his camera around his neck and the tackle box she’d bought him for his twenty-second birthday.

“Usually you wait for the sun to go down before you start giving me a hard time about things lurking in the woods,” Laney teased as he reached for her hand.

“I figured that with your confused state of mind, you needed a reminder.” He led her away from the camp and assumedly toward the lake. She wondered how he always knew exactly where to go without a compass or anything else to guide him, especially since they never seemed to camp in the same spot twice.

She needed to distract herself from the whole proposal situation and decided to catch up on his family, whom she loved. His parents had accepted her into their family so warmly from the moment they’d met. Even after his mother had caught them in bed together, she’d still allowed her to spend the night on those occasions when she’d been too sad or angry to face her mother, whom she’d lived with after her parents’ divorce. Her only stipulation was that Laney sleep in the sleeping bag on the floor. As if Laney would ever have sex with his brother in the room. They slept in bunk beds, for God’s sake. The afternoon his mother had caught them in bed together, while his brothers were at school and she was supposed to be out for the afternoon, they’d even had the bedroom door closed, even though they were alone in the house. She hadn’t seemed to mind that they’d skipped school, or at least the sex part had overshadowed that part. She hadn’t gotten angry as much as she’d been worried. She’d asked a lot of questions, which seemed to have more to do with whether they’d practiced safe sex and whether Laney was emotionally okay than with being angry about the actual sexual act. Poor Jackson had been mortified, whereas Laney had been so shocked and frightened about his mother calling her parents and her father finding out that, to this day, she wasn’t sure what her responses had been to any of his mother’s questions. For whatever reason—and Laney wasn’t about to ask for them—his mother never had told her parents, and from that moment on Jackson and Laney had been more careful where they had sex.

Most of the time.

“Watch your step,” Jackson said as they descended a steep hill. He tightened his grip on her hand, then reached for her fishing pole. “Just in case you need to grab a tree to keep from falling.”

“What’ll you do if you need to grab a tree?”

“I’ll grab you,” he answered with a sexy smile. “And I expect you to dive beneath my body to break the fall. Since you’ll have two free hands and all.”

“Sure, no problem, as long as you don’t stick me with the fishing pole.” She stepped over a big rock, and when he said, “I’ll stick you, all right, but it won’t be with my fishing pole,” she stumbled, and he caught her in one strong arm and swept her against his chest.

“You like that idea, huh?” His eyes gleamed with the tease.

She loved the way he teased without hesitation, even with the proposal looming over them. The idea of losing that, which she knew would happen if she accepted the proposal, if for no other reason than his making an effort to respect the man she was going to marry, had her stomach in knots.

“I happen to think you have more of a rod than a pole.” She ran her finger down the center of his chest, then pressed a kiss to his Adam’s apple, which she’d always found sexy as hell.

“Keep that up and we aren’t going to get a lick of fishing done. Then you’ll go hungry tonight.”

“In all the years we’ve been camping, we haven’t starved yet. I’m not worried.”

They started down the mountain again, maneuvering between the spruce and pine trees, over fallen limbs, around ditches and rocks. It was so peaceful in the mountains, and the air was definitely cleaner than in the city. There were so many things Laney loved about camping with Jackson, from the scent of the earth to having him all to herself for however many days they chose to stay. But as the land leveled out and the woods thinned, she realized that the best part of camping with Jackson was the feeling that swept over her while they were here. All of the stress of whatever was going on in her life fell away. Worries about work, friends, family; none of it stuck with her the way it did in the city. And she had a feeling it had nothing to do with the city and everything to do with the man she was with, because, like last night when she’d fallen asleep in the safety of his arms, when she was with Jackson, nothing else mattered.

Except this morning that damn proposal had slipped back in.

***

THEY’D BEEN FISHING all afternoon, and of course Laney had found a boulder to lie on to feed her need for sun worshipping. She lay with a sweet smile on her lips and her shirt tied just below her breasts, exposing her taut stomach. The edges of her dangerously short cutoffs were rolled up even higher. She’d always loved the sun, and as Jackson moved stealthily around her, taking pictures for what very well might be the last time they would be alone on her birthday weekend, his mind tumbled back through the years.

She’d changed in so many ways since they’d met. When her parents had separated, she’d become harsher, more wary of just about everything and everyone. Except when she was with him. When they were together she’d strip away those thorns and, it seemed to him, breathe for the first time in however long it had been since the last time they’d been together. It bothered him that she had such issues with monogamy, because she was an amazing woman and she’d make an incredible wife for some guy.

Then again, that was the last thing he wanted for her—which was what made him the selfish bastard he was. He stood on a rock beside the boulder and zoomed in on her profile, trying to ignore the pull in his gut over some guy marrying Laney. Some guy was looking more and more like Bryce.

Jackson had always loved capturing Laney’s image when she was unaware and at her most innocent, completely unguarded. Just like when they were in bed together. Through the camera lens, she was all he saw, all he felt. All he needed?  

He lowered the camera, chewing on that thought. He stepped closer and ran his finger down her arm.

She smiled, and without opening her eyes, she said, “Hey, you.”

He wanted to push the truth away, to make it easier for him to let go and allow Laney to live her life with a man who was ready to settle down. But he couldn’t deny the truth. It wasn’t the camera lens that filtered out the rest of the world. It was her. Even now, with the sounds of the birds overhead and the tree leaves swaying in the breeze, it wasn’t the beauty around them that captivated him.

It was Laney.

It had always been Laney.

And, he had a feeling, it would only ever be Laney.