“What?” I whispered, like talking louder might break the spell of how close he was sitting, leaned in even closer, talking to me, but doing it with his attention centered right…on…me.
Yowza.
“That glass dome glamp sitch in Joshua Tree,” he answered, reminding me what we’d been talking about. “Never thought I’d say those words, glamping is better than not camping at all, but it isn’t my gig. But it was just that fuckin’ awesome. Bedding down under the stars at night…”
Oh my God!
He was into sleeping under the stars just like me!
“Waking up with the sun…”
That wasn’t as great as stars, but it was cool.
Something happened to his eyes which saw results in specific parts of my body before he finished.
“The shower that was top and sides all glass. Getting wet and clean with a near-on three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the Joshua trees and the desert. Only thing missing was I didn’t take a woman with me.”
He stopped speaking.
Shoot!
That meant it was my turn.
“You’ll have to…” My voice was clogged due to the fact my mind was on Rix in a shower that was all glass. Rix…wet and slick and slippery…in a shower that was all glass. So I cleared my throat, and when I did, his lips hitched in a way that those specific parts of my body, already perked, became veritably primed. “Text me the deets for that. I, uh…don’t usually glamp but…”
I let that trail off, not because I didn’t have more to say, but because I’d lost the ability to speak.
This was because his eyes were watching my mouth while I was doing it.
“Text you,” he murmured to my mouth, like that wasn’t where his mind was going.
I also had a sense of where his mind was going.
As in, he didn’t want to text me the info.
He wanted to personally show me the site.
With the glass shower.
That he would be using.
With me there.
Or, perhaps, in it with him.
Lordy!
“Yeah,” I forced out, and it did, indeed, sound forced.
No, that wasn’t right.
It sounded breathy and strangled.
As you could probably deduce, I was generally no good at flirting (or chitchat, or mingling, or social situations on the whole, but definitely top of that heap was flirting).
However, with Rix, I was a mess and not only now. All the time.
I didn’t think in the time I’d known him we’d ever had a single one-on-one conversation.
This was the first of those too.
His attention returned to my eyes. “Yours?”
“Uh…sorry?”
“Coolest place you ever spent the night,” he reminded me of the subject we’d been discussing.
It had been my question, and it might have been the ballsiest question I’d ever asked any man, not just Rix.
“I go off route,” I told him.
“You mean off trail?” he asked.
I nodded, but then shook my head, which meant I ended up making a circle, which made Rix’s lips hitch again, this time just with amusement. And making him smile like that, I felt like throwing my arms out and arching my back, like I was breaking through the tape at the finish line, coming in first, winning the prize.
“That too,” I made myself say. “But I meant off route. I’m a byway person, not a highway person. And I was on a byway, outside Ouray—”
“Colorado.”
I nodded.
“One of the prettiest places on the planet,” he stated my personal opinion.
“Yeah,” I said softly.
He let that soft sound float between us for a second.
I felt weird about it, weird in a wonderful way, like the sound I’d made was pretty and the word was meaningful, and he was getting off on riding it and the feeling behind it, before he prompted, “You were on a byway…”
Good God.
He was.
He was paying complete attention to me.
Listening to every word I said.
So this was how it felt to be the center or Rix’s attention.
I’d wondered for a very long time.
I’d been a lot of beautiful places (a lot, a lot), but none was as heavenly as that right there.
“I was on a byway,” I repeated, “and I pulled into this diner. Cool place. Had a counter with a pie under glass at the end of it and everything. Sat next to an old-timer, we got to talking, and he told me about some hot springs not many people know about. I remembered the conversation, what he said. So, on a long weekend, I drove back up in the winter, snowshoed in where he said to go, and he was right on the money. It was exactly as he described. Trees and snow and this tuft of steam coming up from the spring. Pristine, not a footprint, no one around. Pitched my tent close to the rocks around the spring, barely had to use my sleeping bag they were so warm. Sat in the spring until my fingers wrinkled. Slept with my head out of the tent, gaiter pulled up over my nose, listening to the burbling of the water, staring through the evergreens up at the stars.”
I stopped talking, and Rix didn’t start. He didn’t move. And somewhere in sharing this memory with him, I’d missed his eyes had slid back down to my lips.
When he continued not to move or say anything for a long time, I finished, “So that’s the coolest place I’ve ever spent the night.”
“Heaven,” he murmured, not shifting his gaze.
A shiver trailed down my spine.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “Heaven.”
He still didn’t move.
I started freaking out, my lips with his attention on them beginning to feel tingly, and not thinking, I caught the bottom one with my teeth.
When I did that, his gaze came up to my eyes, and he had such a cocky look in his own, knowing just how hot he was, knowing just what reaction he was causing in me, it was not only mesmerizing, it was akin to about twenty minutes of foreplay.
Great foreplay.
So great, I almost moaned.
I did whimper (slightly and horrifyingly, because he heard it, and I got another hitch of his lips, and not the amused hitch this time, the other one).
Holy crap.
I might orgasm…
From flirting!
I instantly stood.
He sat back as I did, his brows snapping together as he looked up at me.
“I’ll be back!” I cried.
I was unnecessarily loud. Thus, I felt Judge and Chloe’s startled attention come to me too.
But I raced away.
Straight to the bathroom.
I didn’t have to use the bathroom.
I had to give myself a pep talk.
Because this was Rix, finally, Rix and me talking, flirting, and I couldn’t muck this up like I did practically every interaction I’d had with him (and we worked together at River Rain Outdoor stores, before Hale Wheeler swept in and offered Trail Blazer, new titles and pay raises, Rix and me were not in the same department, but now we were on the exact same team, so not only would I see him every day, I’d be working side by side with him…every day).
I was in luck, when, upon a panicked check, I saw the bathroom was empty. Therefore, as I tried to instill myself with some courage, I wouldn’t have an audience of some pretty, mountain-fresh, tanned, boho goddess washing her hands or using the facilities (which would, as every shy girl knew, have the opposite result when it came to courage).
It was just me in the restroom.
Me and my insecurities.
I stared at my hazel eyes in the mirror (a tortoiseshell brown around the pupil, leading to a marbled green that filled out the rest of the iris, not the violet of my sister and mother, not the green of my father, plain-Jane hazel (as my sister described it)).
Then I took in the big, fat, dark pigtails that contained my curly hair and fell either side of my neck, down my chest.
Prescott
, Arizona, where we all lived, was not a bustling metropolis.
I’d been here a while.
So had Rix.
This meant I not only worked with him, but I saw him out and about.
He was who he was, how he was. Those wide shoulders. That dark hair, short at the sides, sweeping high at the top, most of the time messy and sexy, but sometimes sleek (and sexy). The square jaw. Those thick eyebrows that traveled to the corners of his eyes.
And the brown eyes that said he had a thousand stories to tell, some you wouldn’t like, others that would leave you breathless.
Being all he was, he was never out alone.
What I meant was, unless he was with his buds, he was always with a woman.
He had a type.
Tall. Slender. Leggy. Athletic.
I was not tall.
I hiked. I paddleboarded. I kayaked.
I also ate.
So I did not have a svelte bod.
And those women I saw him with, they might all be mountain-fresh, tanned, boho goddesses who could keep up with him on a trail run (something he still did, on his running blades, even after he tragically lost both legs below the knees while fighting a wildfire in his previous occupation as a firefighter—see? totally the coolest guy I knew). But they also wore flowy dresses or Daisy Dukes and billowy blouses with flat sandals with tons of straps and mascara and maybe a winged eyeliner if they were feeling feisty, accompanying all of this with funky-chic wide-brimmed felt fedoras.
I’d look like a moron in a fedora.
I could just imagine what my sister would say if she saw me in a boho fedora.
As I was wont to do, the instant a thought that included my sister hit my brain, I shoved it aside.
But when I did, I was stuck with me.
Staring at my round face with its rounder cheekbones which was, indeed, tan, I tried to see myself with broad, tanner, muscled Rix, and I couldn’t even conjure the image.
“What am I thinking? I work with this guy,” I mumbled to my reflection.
I had no business flirting with a co-worker.
That was stupid. Crazy.
Embarrassing.
Maybe I was wrong.
Maybe it wasn’t even flirting.
(Though I didn’t have a ton of experience, it felt like flirting, not to mention, Chloe knew I was crushing on him, and she’d winked at me.)
“But this is Rix,” I kept mumbling.
And it was.
Rix.
My perfect man.
He camped. He hiked. He kayaked. He came to work in the morning after a trail run or a ride on his handcycle. He headed out to parts unknown on his days off with his tent in his truck, coming back to work practically shimmering with the rapture of spending time in nature.
I did not trail run or ride, but I definitely came in from the outdoors shimmering after spending time in nature (at least, I felt like I did).
I’d never asked, I’d been too shy, but I’d bet actual, real money Rix had often fallen asleep under the stars, and not just in a glass glamping dome among the Joshua trees.
I bet he knew how to cook an entire meal under the earth.
I bet he knew what an impending thunderstorm smelled like, that certain snakes were threats (if you’re caught by surprise…or being stupid), but bats and coyotes and bears were usually not (unless you caught them by surprise, or you’re being stupid), and that you never, ever drank water from nature unless you went through the process of treating it.
Was all that not worth the risk?
Worth the risk of being embarrassed should I not be reading the current situation right?
Worth the risk of feeling the thrill?
The thrill of finding someone, and being with them…
Someone who got me.
Someone like me.
It was.
It was totally worth it.
To have Rix’s big hand (I’d noticed his hands—his big, rough hands—and I’d noticed them about seven hundred thousand times in the exactly two and one-eighth years we’d been working together) wrapped around mine as we picked our way across a natural stone bridge over a creek.
To zip our sleeping bags together and whisper (and do other things) to each other under the cover of night.
Yes, even someone to cozy up with by a fire with cocoa and read on snowy days when we weren’t under a ceiling of sky.
But to have those moments, say, to look into his eyes over coffee in the morning, and know he felt like me.
He was like me.
Because he was the one soul on this planet who got me.
“It’s so worth it,” I whispered.
A toilet flushed.
I jumped.
Someone was in there?
Yes, someone was.
A pretty, mountain-fresh, tanned, boho goddess wearing a felt, wide-brimmed panama hat and a big smile came out of a stall and headed with that smile aimed at me to the sink next to mine.
“Just to say, sister, it is,” she declared. “If you’re talking about that hunk of tall, dark and handsome who was up in your space out there, it is so worth it,” she declared. “Especially if he looks like that, is as into you as that and has a kickass name like Rix.”
“I’m a nature nerd,” I blurted, why, I did not know.
She shrugged even as she rubbed soap into her hands. “I’ve read The Shell Seekers thirteen times, and if a dude is not down to read it, even if he might not like it, he’s out. We all got our thang. And by the by, that guy didn’t look like a banker to me.” She turned off the tap, shook water off her hands and turned to the dryer, exclaiming, “Killer! They have an Airblade!”
She then stuck her hands into the Airblade.
I stood staring at her attractive, sinewy back and shoulder muscles exposed by her spaghetti-strapped, oversized, muted-but-dizzily-printed dress, and I did this so long, the Airblade had worked its magic, and she’d turned.
“What are you still doing in here?” she demanded. “Go get ’im, tigress.”
“I work with him.”
She tipped her head to the side the same time she hitched a hip and put a hand on it. “So?”
“That could get messy.”
“A non-messy life totally sucks.”
This might sound crazy, but I knew she was right.
I got into a Zen state when I cleaned my house, and I dug it.
Nevertheless, when it was done, a part of me I always missed the boots thrown by the door, the coffeepot upended in the drainer, the Oxo pouring canister filled with homemade granola left on the counter, the throw tossed wide over the couch, the book spread open and lying on its pages, the jacket thrown over the back of a chair. All the signs that said, “Someone lives here, and they’re not here tidying, they’re out, busy living.”
Did that translate to relationships?
To romance?
“I’ll tell you what, a guy was that into me, I’d be all the way down with getting messy,” my new bathroom friend announced.
Had Rix been that into me?
“I’m shy,” I whispered.
“No shit?” she asked. “Girl, I noticed you two a while ago. At first, I wanted to walk by and high-five you for the way you were playing that player. Then I realized, well, hell. This is no play. This bitch is scared out of her brain about this dude, and it’s so cute, I could just die.”
I was back to staring, this time at her mountain-fresh face.
“He thought it was cute too,” she proclaimed. “But he thought it was so cute, he was itching to pounce.”
Rix.
Pouncing.
Oh Lord.
Now I was in danger of a standing-up, Rix-nowhere-near-me, bathroom orgasm.
“Really?” I breathed.
“Hi, I’m Dani.” She stuck her hand out.
I took it. “I’m Alex.”
To that, she for some reason shared, “Your hair is goals. I’m about to go and do what no woman under seventy has done in t
wenty years. Schedule a perm. Only so I can plait thick, fat braids like yours. You could play tug of war with those bitches. They’re glorious.”
I couldn’t stop my smile.
She let my hand go. “Now we know each other, I can tell you, I’ve had my fair share of experience with players.”
She was seriously pretty (and sinewy and tan and could pull off a panama hat, even in a ladies washroom), so I bet she did.
She kept talking.
“And as such, being a self-proclaimed expert, I could regale you with many tales of my field experience, so I know that man is seriously into you.”
“I know him, and I’ve seen him with other women. He’d be more into someone like, to be honest…you.”
She shook her head, came to me, hooked arms, and guided us to and through the door.
“This is what shy chicks don’t get,” she started. “Guys like that have had me, over and over again. If they wanted girls like me, they wouldn’t throw us back.”
She seemed very sage, however, it should be noted that was a sad thing to say, but she didn’t seem sad at all in saying it.
Maybe she’d found one who didn’t “throw her back.”
“Are you with someone?” I asked.
She made a scoffing noise, complementing it with, “Hell no. Hark back to aforementioned field experience. But also, I’m not settling down. I don’t have a hold on even half my own shit. I don’t need to take on some guy’s shit too.”
I pulled on our arms before we exited the back hall that led back into the bar so we’d come to a stop, and considering what she heard in the bathroom before she came out, I shared, “I don’t think I have to tell you that I’m leagues away from owning anywhere close to half my shit.”
Dani grinned. “Okay, what I didn’t say was, even if that’s the case, if a big, broad, hot, seriously-into-me guy got up in my space, and we clicked, like, bones and hearts and souls and stars aligning clicked, and he wanted to be along for the ride as I figured it out, I would not say no.”
Stars aligning.
“I’m twenty-six,” I told her. “And I’ve never had a long-term boyfriend.”
She swayed back. “You a virgin?”
At this question, I started to pull away because it was in that moment it hit me how much I was baring to a complete stranger.
She held on tight.
Even so, I said, “We’re getting kind of deep. I think you’re cool, Dani, and I appreciate you cheering me on, but I just met you.”
Chasing Serenity Page 46