Jill Shalvis - Instant Temptation

“The job is yours as long as you want it,” he said.

Relief and guilt swirled in her gut, and she set her plate down, suddenly not hungry. “I don’t know how to do this, Nolan.”

“How to be friends? That’s easy enough. We call and say hi just because. We go out to lunch. We talk, smile…” He touched the corner of her serious mouth.

She blew out a breath. “You’re going to make this easy on me.”

“On both of us,” he agreed. He took her drink and set it down. “Now come on. This is my favorite song. Maybe we’re not going to be kissing, but we sure as hell can be dancing.”

They danced for three songs, and when Harley spun off the makeshift dance floor and grabbed a soda, still smiling, she nearly plowed right into TJ.

He was wearing jeans and a soft, black sweater with the sleeves shoved up his forearms, looking big and bad and sexy as ever, and…

And she wished that she’d waited a few more days before taking a stand to protect her heart. She could have been with him, could have spent a few long, very hot nights together, and it would have given her memories for a lifetime.

But it was too late for regrets. They’d both made choices that were taking them away from there and from each other. His choices were far more temporary than hers, and he’d probably always be back, but never to stay.

As for her, well if she was having doubts about leaving, she’d face those without letting him complicate things.

He held out an envelope.

Her paycheck for the kayak trip, which was just about double what she’d expected. She gaped at the total. “TJ, it’s too much.”

“No, it’s not.” His warm but fathomless gaze met hers. “It’s your cut of what we made. Your disk with all the pictures was a huge success. I have no idea why none of us ever thought of having a photographer around sooner. You made that trip a success, Harley. I wish you’d go on more. I think you know that.” His smile held things that only made her cracked heart ache all the more. Her resolve about handling it the way she had took a further hit when he tilted his head toward the door, silently asking if she wanted to go outside.

He opened the door for her and lightly touched her back as he guided her down the porch steps. By silent, tacit agreement, they walked around the side of the house to stand at the top of the bluff at the end of the yard. They were surrounded by a 360-degree vista of sharp, rugged mountain peaks that Harley never got tired of looking at. The moon was high, casting the landscape in that iridescent pale blue glow she loved so much.

They stood there and just watched the night. Or she did. She was looking at the silhouette of the mountains and he was looking at her. “You’re staring,” she finally said.

“Yeah. You’re so goddamn beautiful you make it hard to breathe.”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t…make my knees wobble.” She pressed her fingers to her eyes, then dropped her hands and turned to him. “I realize my change of heart must seem sudden and ridiculous given the mixed…sexual messages I’ve sent you over the past few weeks, first at Desolation, and then in my house. And then, um, on the river as well.” For two nights running, thank you very much.

He arched a brow at the list of places where they’d gotten quite intimately acquainted with each other’s body parts. “You forgot the closet.”

“Right, the closet.” As if she’d really forgotten. She’d never forget any of it. Chances were those memories were going to highlight her sexual fantasies for years to come. “My point is…”

“You’re done. You’re over it.”

“It’s not that.” As if she could be over it, over him. “It’s that I can’t play anymore.”

“What does that mean?”

She stared up at the inky black sky, littered with stars sparkling like diamonds as far as she could see. All her life this wide, huge, gorgeous sky had given her escape and peace, and she wondered where she’d find that escape and peace once she left there. Wondered if Colorado would fulfill her the same way. “I should have stuck with my instincts, that I’m not cut out for this. If I’m going to leave here, I have to go with my head and heart clear.” Although it was probably already too late for that.

“I know,” he said very quietly. “You can’t let an old crush get in the way of your dream.”

She felt her throat tighten. “You’re more than some old crush, TJ.”

His eyes looked dark, so very dark.

“You are,” she whispered. For so many years, she’d thought of him as big and bad and impenetrable. Invulnerable. But in fact, he wasn’t a superhero. He could be hurt. She’d managed that. She hadn’t expected to be able to, and the ache in her chest spread. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have started something I couldn’t finish.”

“There were two of us in this,” he said. “And I’m a big boy. I knew what I was getting into. And let’s be very clear. I wanted to get into it.”

She met his steady gaze, saw the truth in it, and so much more that her throat nearly closed up. She knew he deserved more of an explanation. But could she admit that she was falling and falling hard? What good would that do either of them? She’d get over him. She had once before. She’d find her happy.

She would. Somehow. “I hope you have a great trip, TJ.” She knew her eyes were suspiciously bright, that her voice was shaky. “I hope it’s a good one, and that you find-” She’d been about to say happiness. After all, the mountain fueled him, made him feel alive.

But he’d told her he thought maybe she did that for him.

Truth was, he did it for her, too. She swallowed hard, and knew by the flash of emotion in his gaze that she’d given away her own feelings in hers.

“Harley,” he said softly. “Don’t do this.”

“I have to. If I don’t, then…then I won’t be able to go.”

He just looked at her for a long moment, and she couldn’t maintain, just plain couldn’t hold it in, and a lone tear escaped.

At the sight of it, a small sound of frustration came from deep in his throat as he gently rubbed his thumb over her cheek. “Doing as you want shouldn’t make you cry, Harley.”

She sucked in a breath, which made it sound like a sob, but she shook her head and forced a smile. “It won’t…I’m fine. I just…” God. “I’ll miss it here, you know?”

He didn’t say anything to that, just looked at her as his thumb made another swipe.

“My parents are leaving. And Skye, too. She wants to transfer. So…”

“So nothing holds you here,” he said softly.

Actually, there was plenty holding her there. Memories. Friends.

Him. “You should be relieved,” she said, trying to tease. “You won’t have to babysit me out on the mountain anymore.”

She could feel the intensity of his gaze on her, but she didn’t look into his eyes, didn’t have the courage to face those green depths. Finally she felt him shift closer, felt the brush of his thighs to hers, and then he put a finger under her chin, waiting until she had no choice but to look at him.

“Harley,” he said. “You make me laugh, you terrify me, you make me worry. Sometimes you change it up and frustrate the hell out of me, and while we’re going there, I’ll even tell you that you always, always, make me ache and want, but I’ve never, not once, felt like I was babysitting you.”

She stared up at him, absorbing the seriousness of his voice and the look in his gaze. “Maybe,” she finally said, “maybe it was just a fluke. The chemistry, the heat, everything.”

“You don’t actually believe that.”

No. No, she didn’t.

Taking her hand, he pulled her along the bluff, to the other side of a clump of Jeffrey pines, where they couldn’t be seen from the house. There he molded his body against hers and kissed her. It was molten-lava hot from the get-go, and when his tongue touched hers, she heard herself moan. By the time he pulled back, she had a death grip on his shirt.

Still cupping her face, his mouth skimmed over her throat, to her ear. “Tell me again that’s a fluke.”

It took her a beat, but she knew him well. His voice had been low and quiet as usual, but also filled with an edge that matched the one in his eyes. “You know, you’re leaving, too. You’re always leaving. It’s not like you’re in a position to offer me-” She broke off, horrified at what she’d almost let slip, at what she’d almost asked for.

“What?” he asked. “What is it you’d have me offer you, Harley?”

When she just closed her eyes, caught between a rock and a hard spot, between her hopes and dreams, he shook his head. “You let me make love to you one night in my truck a million years ago, and it was apparently so bad that you spent the next decade avoiding me. Then I coerce you into spending time with me by following you to Desolation, where if I’m not mistaken, we had a much better than ‘fine’ time. Yet you back off again. So the message I’m getting is that you’re going to back off no matter what, and hide behind the ‘I’m leaving’ thing. Do I have that right, Harley?”

“You are leaving!”

His eyes narrowed, dark and turbulent. “You like to throw my lack of commitment out there, but you need to be honest, at least with yourself.”

She opened her mouth but he put a finger over her lips. “It’s not all me,” he told her. “You’re holding back, too. But the difference is that I know we could at least try to make this work.” He stepped away from her, and just like that, she felt cold and more alone than she had in a long time.

“You just don’t want to,” he said, and then was gone.

TJ took his bike for a long, mind-numbing ride. On the way back through town, he refueled, and though it was past midnight, as he drove by Nolan’s Garage, he saw that the lights were on.

Nolan looked up from his desk when TJ knocked on his office door. “TJ,” he said, his expression carefully blank.