by Tawna Fenske
A cold trickle of ice slides through my veins, but I keep my smile in place. “What do you mean?”
“Police dispatch notes are public records,” Austin says. “Let’s just say my comment about the horse bridle wasn’t pulled out of thin air.”
Oh. And holy shit.
I stare at Austin with new respect, not sure if I’m more impressed or fearful about the realization that I’m driving a hundred miles into the middle of nowhere with a guy so skilled at using someone’s dirty laundry against them.
I know I should be careful. I know there are a million reasons to keep my heart and my hands away from Austin Dugan. But I can’t help sliding my palm over the smooth muscles of his thigh, curling my fingers around all that coiled heat. “Thank you,” I say. “I owe you for that.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” he says. “Just doing my job.”
And there it is, that reminder of who Austin is. What he does for a living, and how it’s a part of him no matter how close we get.
I take a deep breath and will myself to remember that.
“Grab the pole and slide it in nice and slow.”
I confess I’ve spent several nights with my hand in my pajama pants imagining Austin Dugan murmuring something like that in my ear.
But this isn’t how I pictured it.
“There you go,” he says as I guide the tent pole through the little sleeve thingy and out the other end. “This is really your first time camping?”
“Yes,” I admit, sticking the little peg thingy into the hole on the end of the pole the way Austin showed me earlier. I should probably learn some terminology that doesn’t involve the word thingy.
I blow a curl off my forehead and wonder if I should have dressed more casually. I got the jeans down okay, but I hope he can’t tell these boots are the designer variety instead of something more practical.
“My dad took my brothers camping when it was their turn to visit him,” I continue. “But I got horseback riding and spa appointments instead.”
“Huh,” Austin says. “That’s something, I guess.”
Shit, did I sound like poor little rich girl again? “I’m not complaining,” I assure him. “But I wouldn’t have minded sleeping outside. Or learning to fish or use power tools or all the other things my brothers were coached on before they could even drive.”
Austin grins and finishes pounding one of the tent stakes into the ground. His shoulders bunch as he brings the hammer down, and I wonder why I never dated an outdoorsy guy before. Or a cop.
Okay, I know why I didn’t date cops.
“You know how to make a campfire?” he asks as he stands up, brushing his hands on his jeans.
“That I can handle.” I don’t tell him I spent hours poring over YouTube videos to figure it out so I could show guests at the resort how to run their fancy fire pits.
We set to work building the fire together, crumpling paper and adding bits of kindling until the flames start to grow. We work well together, and I can’t help wondering what it would be like to do this sort of thing all the time.
“I think I would have liked learning this stuff as a kid,” I admit. “Learning how to make fire instead of how to distinguish a fish fork from a dessert fork.”
“There’s a special fork for fish?”
“Absolutely.” A twinge of self-consciousness needles me, but Austin’s not looking at me like he’s judging. He seems genuinely curious. “There are salad forks and dinner forks and deli forks and fruit forks and ice cream forks.”
He snorts and arranges a log on the pile of glowing embers. “Rich people eat ice cream with a fork?”
“I guess it’s sort of like a spork,” I say, surprised to discover I’m not bristling at all about the ‘rich people’ comment. There’s no snideness in Austin’s voice, no trace of nastiness at all. Just curiosity. “You’re supposed to use the tines to break apart the ice cream before you spoon it into your mouth.”
“And to think I’ve been missing out on these special fork experiences.” He grins. “I had no idea.”
I should probably drop the whole fork issue, but Austin seems genuinely intrigued. Today’s visit with Bob gave me a glimpse of the inner workings of his world. I suppose I can offer a small glimpse of mine.
“There are even special forks just for oysters,” I admit.
“Let me guess—they’ve got a built-in shell cracker or something?”
“Not quite,” I say. “They’re about four inches long and they have three curved tines that follow the shape of the shell.”
Austin laughs and shakes his head. “I learn something new every day.”
“I have a ridiculously-huge collection of flatware I got from my mother,” I tell him. “I don’t know why I still have it, but you can call me anytime you want a fork.”
Shit. Did that sound filthy? I didn’t mean for it to, but the way Austin’s looking at me suggests the same dirty thought just fluttered through his brain. Is it wrong that I kinda want him to say it?
Instead, he sits back on his heels and smiles. “I didn’t bring any fancy forks, but I do have hobo bundles in the cooler.”
“If that’s something to eat, I might love you. I totally forgot about food.”
A look of intense hunger moves across his face, and I wonder if he’s thinking about more than campfire chow. “I thought we’d make dinner first and wait for the sun to go down,” he says. “Then we can check out the hot springs.”
“When it’s dark?” I glance toward the rustic timber and corrugated-metal building and wonder if it’s lame to ask about wild animals lurking around here.
Virginia Woof must sense my uncertainty because she stands up from her spot next to the cooler and ambles over to nudge my hand with her nose. I stroke her soft ears, which soothes me instantly. “Are the hot springs inside or outside?”
“Both,” Austin says. “There’s a bigger pool in that barn-looking structure, but I like the smaller ones outside. I thought it would be nice to have your first time be under the stars.”
A shudder of excitement runs through me before my brain catches up and reminds me he’s talking about my first time soaking in a hot spring.
Or is he? Maybe the fact that I agreed to an overnight stay makes it a foregone conclusion we’re going to sleep together. Or maybe not. He did bring two sleeping bags. He’s arranging them in the tent now, along with some sort of inflatable camping pad. I resist the urge to peer inside to see how close he’s positioning them to one another.
On top of each other might be nice.
“I’ll grab the food,” I tell him, conscious of the heat in my cheeks. I open the cooler and let the chilled air cool my face. “What do hobo bundles look like, exactly?”
“They’re foil packets filled with peppers and onions and sliced up sausage, plus some herbs and secret sauce,” Austin calls from inside the tent. “My dad’s special recipe.”
“You and your dad seem pretty close?”
“For sure.” He emerges through the door flap and turns to zip it shut. Then he joins me beside the fire, settling into one of the camp chairs he brought.
Camp chairs, that’s a thing. I can’t believe how much stuff is involved in an activity that’s basically just sleeping outside. Or maybe Austin’s trying to ease me in gradually by bringing all these accoutrements from home.
“He’s a good guy, my dad,” Austin says. “A little old-school, but he taught me everything I know about law enforcement and life and—well, everything.”
“I envy you.” I offer a small smile, so he knows I’m not crazy-jealous, but I see concern in his eyes anyway. “I know my dad loved me, in his own way,” I continue, pushing past his pity. “And my mom is—well, my mom.”
“You see her much?”
“Not a lot,” I admit. “She still hasn’t seen the resort. She’s been busy.”
“What does she do?”
“For work?” I laugh at the idea of my mother having a job. “She marries ri
ch men with commitment issues, then takes them to the cleaners when they cheat.”
“Seriously?”
I nod as Austin arranges the foil packets in the fire. “Sometimes I think she only had me so she could milk the extra money out of my father,” I admit. “A little child support to go with the alimony.”
“Huh.” He doesn’t say anything else, and I remember his words to Bob.
It’s not our place to judge, is it?
Maybe not, but I can tell Austin is mystified by my upbringing.
“I love my mother,” I say. “I do. But honestly, we never had a chance to be close. I was at boarding school for most of the year, and summer camps when school wasn’t in session. I could probably count on one hand the number of nights my mother and I spent under the same roof after I turned five.”
“That’s so crazy to me,” he says. “No offense. It’s just a lot different from how I grew up.”
“Most of my brothers were raised the same way I was,” I say. “Not Mark, but Sean and James and Jonathan and—”
“How many brothers do you have again?”
“A lot. Way more than you’ve met.” I frown. “Probably more than I’ve met.”
“I can’t believe you turned out so normal.”
“You think I’m normal?” I grin like he’s just told me I’m pretty. “That might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
Austin laughs and nudges the foil bundles with a long stick. “Relatively speaking.”
I lean back in my camp chair and look out at the horizon. The sun is sinking low into a nest of pink and orange clouds while crickets sing songs about it from somewhere in the wavy brown field to our right. Virginia rolls onto her side and sighs.
“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful,” I tell Austin. “I grew up with a lot of privilege, and I know that.”
He looks up and his blue-gray eyes search mine. “Did you have close friends there?”
“Where?”
“Boarding school. I guess I’m picturing it like in the movies where there are all these little cliques and clubs and stuff. Just wondering where you fit in.”
I swallow hard and remind myself this is an innocent question. He’s just curious about a world that’s as unfamiliar to him as camp chairs and hobo bundles are to me.
“It was—challenging, socially.” There’s the understatement of the year.
“I see.”
That’s what I’m afraid of. That he really does see, that he knows all my secrets. That he’ll find out what I’ve done.
“It got better in college,” I tell him, desperate to fill the silence. “That’s where I learned some social skills, started figuring out who I was and where I fit into the world.”
“You seem like you’ve nailed it now.” He smiles and pokes at the foil-wrapped bundles with a stick. “How old were you when you graduated?”
“From college?” I nibble the edge of my lip and wonder why he’s asking. “Twenty-three when I finished undergrad. Why?”
“Just wondering. I was poking around your website the other day trying to piece it all together.”
“Piece what together?” I hold my breath, afraid of the answer.
I’m grateful Austin’s looking at the fire, that he can’t see the nervous energy that’s making a nerve twitch beside my right eye.
“Whether we were in school around the same time,” he says. “If you were off at college while I was off at the police academy. It’s this game I play sometimes.”
“Game?”
He looks up a little sheepishly and shrugs. “Like what’s the closest we ever came to meeting each other before? I was in Connecticut in third grade for a Boy Scout trip. What if we crossed paths at the grocery store and never knew it?”
There’s something so adorably earnest in his expression that my breath catches in my throat. “You got your degree in criminology at Portland State, right?”
“How’d you know that?”
I smile, relieved to be on safer ground. “You’re not the only one who can stalk a company website.”
Austin grins and flips one of the foil packets in the fire. “Touché. Yeah, I got my undergrad there. Why?”
“That’s one of the universities I looked at for grad school,” I tell him. “I didn’t end up going there, but maybe we stood in line together waiting for coffee. It could have happened.”
“No way.”
His words are so definite, so certain. “How do you know?” My defenses prickle again as I contemplate Austin’s super-secret spy powers.
He grins, dissolving all the icy little shards in my veins. “Because I would have talked to you,” he says. “I would have seen you there with those green eyes and that knockout body, and I would have introduced myself and asked you out.”
“Really.” I infuse my voice with just enough skepticism to downplay the flirtatiousness of the word. And the fact that I desperately want to jump him. “What makes you so sure I’d have said yes?”
“You might not have,” he admits, smiling as he nudges one of the bundles out of the fire. “But you’d have remembered me. I would have made sure of it.”
The words would sound almost ominous coming from anyone else, but from Austin, they’re the truth. They’re charming and sweet and the absolute, one-hundred-percent truth.
God.
What if it were as simple as that? The truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. I open my mouth to say it. To blurt out everything, the whole ugly story.
But Austin stands up and gestures with a goofy flourish at the foil bundles. “Dinner’s ready, madam. I trust you brought the appropriate fork?”
I close my mouth and swallow, nodding as I force my mouth into something resembling a smile. “But of course.”
Chapter 11
AUSTIN
I bring a flashlight for our walk from the campsite to the hot springs, but we don’t need it. The moon is plump and silver with a million stars shimmering around it like tiny disco balls.
“I can’t believe this.” Bree grips my hand tighter as a shooting star flickers past. “I thought the skies were clear out at the ranch, but this is insane.”
“No light pollution whatsoever.” I glance back at the campsite where Virginia is curled next to the extinguished embers of our campfire. The wildfire risk is minimal out here this time of year, but my dog’s not taking any chances. “It helps not having city lights anywhere nearby. Not many people live close.”
“Or hang out at the hot springs in the dark?” She shoots me a knowing look as she tilts her head toward the totally vacant pools. “I like how you timed this so no one else is around.”
“Guilty as charged,” I admit. “I wanted you to see it at night. But I also knew we’d have the place to ourselves at this hour on a Tuesday in late September.”
“You don’t sound too guilty to me.” She grins. “Besides, I think it’s a totally forgivable offense.”
She’s wearing a soft green sweater and a pair of sweatpants so roomy, I wonder if she borrowed them from one of her brothers. She looks utterly adorable, and I’d want to strip them both off her if I hadn’t just pictured her brothers.
Fine. I want to strip her anyway.
But she takes care of it for me. Crossing her arms at the waist, she grabs the hem of the shirt and lifts it over her head. I hold my breath like a teenager watching his first skin flick, praying someone doesn’t show up and change the channel. Bree’s face reappears as she tugs the shirt off her bun and grins at me. “You going to strip, Officer Studmuffin, or are you going to stand there gawking all night?”
I manage to get my jaw closed, but barely. Holy shit, Bree looks amazing in a white bikini top. It’s one of those stringy kinds with the little laces crisscrossing around her ribcage and back. The straps in front form a picture frame for her cleavage, and holy God in heaven, I’ve never seen anything as perfect as Bree Bracelyn’s cleavage.
“Gawking,” I reply. “If gawking all night is a
n option, I choose gawking.”
She laughs and tosses the shirt at me. I catch it with one hand, loving the feel of her body heat trapped in the warm sweater. “I’m getting in,” she says. “You’re welcome to join me if you want.”
She puts one hand on my arm, steadying herself as she shimmies the sweatpants over her hips and steps out of them. She drops them onto the bench beside me but doesn’t let go of my arm right away.
“Which one’s your favorite?”
I’m looking at her breasts, and it takes me a second to realize she’s not asking an opinion on right versus left. “The big one,” I manage, then clarify. “The larger pool closest to us.”
She stands there bathed in starlight, pale skin glowing like she swallowed the moon. I can’t stop staring at her, not even as she walks to the edge of the first pool and dips a toe into the steaming water.
“Oooh, it’s perfect.”
So is she, but I don’t say this out loud. She already called me out for gawking, so I should probably quit doing that and join her in the water. I somehow manage to peel off my own sweatshirt and kick my flip-flops aside before starting for the pool. I remember I’m still holding Bree’s shirt, so I fold it neatly and set it on the bench beside her sweatpants.
She’s already lowered herself into the rock-lined pool, and I look down at her through the water, admiring the ripple of moonbeams on her breasts. Fuck, she’s beautiful. And I’m already half-hard, so I’m glad she’s looking at the stars and not me.
I sink down beside her, sighing as the silky water folds around me.
She looks up and smiles. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself.”
Swirling her fingers through the water, she grazes my chest with her wrist. I wonder if it’s intentional. If she’s even half as eager to touch me as I am to touch her.
“The water feels different,” she says. “Slippery or something. Like silk.”
“It’s silica,” I tell her. “The hot springs have all kinds of minerals in them, but silica’s the main one.”
“I love it,” she says. “It’s like floating in a pool of melted butter.”