Jill Shalvis - Instant Temptation

“It’s not like you’re even around to be a boyfriend,” she said, still talking, still under the apparent illusion that he was following her logic. “You’re gone all the time. You like women in your bed but not your life. Et cetera, et cetera.” She sucked on a piece of orange and blew a few of his brain cells.

“So trust me,” she continued. “I don’t look at you and think relationship. Mostly I look at you and think I wish I had something to hit you over the head with.”

He blinked. “So I should stay at arm’s length then?”

“Eight to ten inches should do it.”

She’d walked away by the time the laugh tumbled out of him, but he didn’t remain amused. He’d just been thoroughly put in his place, dumped before he could even think about doing the dumping.

Even more disconcerting, he got it. He got her. Because he knew her better than she wanted to admit. He knew that thanks to her sweet, hippy-throwback parents, she’d grown up with an utter lack of tradition, and he knew she secretly yearned for exactly that.

She wanted a solid, stand-up guy, with a white picket fence and two point four kids. Which is what had drawn her to Nolan. Nolan was one of those solid, stand-up guys, one who’d absolutely give her what she needed.

Unlike him. “Harley-”

“Ignoring each other,” she said. “Remember?”

Yeah.

Her eyes drifted to his bare chest, then darted away, but not before he caught the flare of heat.

“I’m going to have a hard time ignoring you when you’re looking at me like I’m lunch,” he said, reaching for his shirt.

“I’ll work on that. Maybe you could get fat or ugly or something.” Ignoring his laugh, she sat on the edge of the ridge as dawn rode in, banishing the last of the dark, bringing first a deep violet, then a lighter purple, and finally pink into the sky. TJ sat with her, and in silence they watched Mother Nature do her glorious thing.

As the sky lightened, far below a handful of coyotes moved through the meadow, looking for breakfast. TJ counted four coyotes and…“What the hell? That looks like”-he sat up straighter-“a badger?”

“You’ve never seen that?” Harley asked, looking through her camera lens. “The two breeds have a sort of symbiotic relationship when they need to. The coyote can run, but they’re not good diggers. And the badger-”

“Can dig but not run.” He grinned. “They’re working together for breakfast. Amazing.”

The only sound was the hum of insects and early morning bird chatter, since Harley’s long-lens digital camera snapped silently. “Look,” she murmured, leaning into him to show him her LED screen and a gorgeous shot of one of the coyotes up close, nose quivering in the air as the animals caught their scent on the morning air.

“You’re good,” he murmured, turning his face into her hair.

“It’s the camera.”

“It’s more than the camera.” He pulled back and looked at her. “Hell, Harley, you really should come work for us.”

“Why?”

“Well, for money, for one thing. Our clients would pay big bucks for you to document their trips.”

Standing, she pulled on her pack. “I’m going to try to fix the equipment on that west ridge.”

He pulled on his pack also, and they headed out. Normally, being on the mountain in the morning was his favorite time. The air was crisp with a hint of the warmth the day would bring, and the residual dew made everything sparkle. Far above, the majestic peaks were still snow-tipped. The ground beneath their feet was soft and spongy from the rain, everything around them bursting with fall colors.

“So,” he said after a few minutes. “Why exactly aren’t we going to follow through with this thing between us?”

“There is no thing, TJ.”

“Really? ’Cause it felt like a thing this morning when I made you come.”

She tripped, and sent him a glare. “No-talking zone.”

He grinned. She was walking with attitude, and she was sexy as hell. “You want me,” he said.

“No talking.”

“I want you back,” he told her. “I think I’ve proved that. So what’s the problem?”

“My problem?” She stopped so abruptly he nearly plowed her over when she whipped around to gape at him. “It’s you! It’s always been you!”

He raised a brow.

She blew out a breath and pushed him in front of her to walk in the lead. “You drive me crazy,” he heard her mutter.

“Maybe, but you’re watching my ass as I walk.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a great ass,” she admitted, surprising a laugh out of him. After about five minutes, she sighed. “Okay, it’s possible I overreacted back there.”

“No. Really?”

“My problem isn’t you, per se,” she said. “But more the way I seem to react to you.”

“Is that an apology?”

“For what?”

“For molesting me in my sleep.”

“I was kind of hoping we could forget about that.”

Normally that would be fine with him. After all, he never begged a woman to want him, and he didn’t plan to start now. If she hadn’t been interested, he would have let it go.

But she was interested. Interested enough to come all over him, panting his name as she did. It’d been erotic as hell.

Which left him confused. He glanced back at her. She was small and curvy, and walking with an attitude that was making him hot.

Oh, wait.

He was already hot.

Their little wake-up call might have cooled her jets, but his were still on and ready to go.

Halfway up to the impaired camera, they came to a natural gorge. Just on the other side, up about fifty more feet, was the ledge where the camera was placed. Between there and where they stood was what was normally just a low-lying creek. But the rain had it swollen and rushing like a raging river. It was a good twenty feet wide, knee-deep in the middle, and roaring over slippery rocks. Worse, on either side, the banks were muddy and unstable.

Harley was standing at the edge with a funny look on her face.

“What?” he asked.

“There are frogs.”

“There are always frogs. Especially after a rain.”

“Doing it.”

He looked down at the rocks she was staring at. Yep, she was right. There were frogs doing it.

“Don’t stare,” she said, and made him laugh.

“Maybe there’s something in the air,” he said hopefully, and then it was her to turn to laugh.

She moved a little bit downstream and then closer to the edge of the water just as a fish leapt straight up into the air and then dove back under. With a startled gasp, Harley took a step back and caught her heel on a rock. She would have gone down, but TJ caught her.

Instead of pulling immediately free of him, she turned within the circle of his arms to face him, further surprising him when her fingers fisted in his shirt.

“You okay?” he asked, holding onto her. “Your ankle?”

“I’m good.” And yet she didn’t let go. Instead she stared up into his eyes.

TJ wondered what she saw when she looked at him like that, all soft and unguarded, as if maybe she saw things in him that he didn’t, couldn’t. And suddenly he felt unguarded, and before he could stop himself, he dipped his head and ran the tip of his nose along her jaw.

“Time to cross,” she said shakily, and turned to stare at the water. Then, without another word, she started to step into it.

“What are you doing?”

“I need to get to the other side.” She looked at him over her shoulder. “You can wait here if you want. Or-”

“Yeah, yeah, or head back. Just hold up a minute.” He took her hand, and waited until she met his gaze. “Trust me?”

“With my life or my body?”

He shook his head and guided her farther up the mountain, out of their way. About a quarter of a mile later, the water slowed and narrowed, but more important they weren’t near a sharp turn, with an unsteady and precarious hillside that looked as if it might go at any moment.

She looked at the new spot, then at him, conceding. “Your knife, your Fritos, your expertise. You’re a handy guy, TJ.”

“Handy,” he repeated, and watched her expression change as she remembered just how “handy” he’d been in the sleeping bag.

“I didn’t expect the water to be this high this late in the season,” she admitted.

“Fall can be risky.” He looked around and found a wrist-thick, chest-high stick with a natural fork at one end for wedging between rocks, which he handed to Harley. “Use this as a staff.”

He searched the thick growth for another one for him, then grabbed her arm when Harley would have headed across. “Wait. Lose your shoes and socks first.”

He kicked his boots off and attached them to his backpack by their laces, then rolled up his pants. “We’ll have better traction in bare feet. Plus, having dry shoes on the other side will be a bonus.”

She bent and untied her boots and pulled off her socks, stuffing them into her pack.

He smiled at her bright pink toenails, and knew it was yet another peek into the complicated psyche of Harley Stephens. She worked as a mechanic, a woman in a man’s world. If she wasn’t covered from head to toe in coveralls and grease, then she was behind a desk analyzing data by herself. The toenails seemed to be her concession to being a woman beneath it all. “Pretty. Come on.” He went first, sucking in a breath as the icy water washed over his feet and halfway up his calves.

“Holy shit!” she squeaked, following him.

Grinning, he reached back for her hand and led the way.

On the other side of the creek, Harley shivered as they climbed to dry ground. “Nothing like a refreshing stream to wake a girl up.”

“Really,” he said dryly. “Is that what woke you up, or was it when I-”

“Stop,” she said with a low laugh, and shivered-and not from the cold.

TJ smiled at her, his eyes warm with approval as he handed her a chamois from his backpack to dry off her feet. “I’ve taken groups out here for fly-fishing in the streams, biking up nonexistent trails, rock climbing off the cliff. Tough, experienced clients in much warmer temps than this, and every one of them would have been whining at what we just did. Hell, even Cam would be complaining.”