by Lindsey Hart
“What’s the name of it? I can probably look it up. Or maybe there’s a video tutorial we can find. I’m sure there is. That would make this all easier. Does it come with instructions? What’s that white booklet over there?”
Adam grabs it and passes it over with the typical wounded male bravado. So he’s okay with me getting his laundry done and his house cleaned and everything else, but he’s not okay with me looking at the instructions manual?
He mutters something under his breath that lets me know he’s not just pissed off with the tent he’s been struggling with for the past thirty minutes. So far, nothing has bitten me yet, and I haven’t seen any killer snakes, bears, wolves, foxes, beavers, or anything that looks like it might do me in. There have been a few crows in the trees overhead, looking at us suspiciously. And also some smaller brown birds. Sparrows? They’re probably sparrows. They’re kind of cute, and they sound pretty. The crows, on the other hand, are magnificent. I always liked them, and I don’t get to see them in the city very often. I like their shrill call, how it kind of sounds like they’re screaming at the top of their lungs, and the strange corking noises they make with each other.
“Excuse me?” I gently take the instructions from Adam’s hand. “What did you just say?”
“Nothing.” He leans back on his shoes. He’s wearing a pair of twenty-three hundred dollar designer shoes, but then, I haven’t taken out the hiking boots I bought him yet.
“No, I heard you.” I walk the instructions over to the picnic table. It violently creaks when I sit down. The thing has just about none of the original brown paint left. At least, I think it was brown. It might have been red at one time. “I did say the tent was going to be shitty, so I don’t want to hear you say dumb things.”
Adam sighs. “Just forget you heard anything.”
“Nope.” I open up the tiny booklet. This thing is way too small for the degree of difficulty of that tent. “You’re not useless. You run a billion-dollar company that sells socks all over the world. Last year, your company donated over ten million dollars to charities. And on top of that, you yourself started a foundation so homeless people in major cities across the US can have socks to keep their feet warm. It’s the number one thing they asked for to meet their needs. Socks. You do that. You. You’re the head of it all. Do I need to make you another list of positive attributes?”
Adam ducks his head. I wish he’d look at me because he’s one of those people you can pretty easily read since his face displays pretty much his entire range of emotions.
“Okay?”
“Did you figure out where the first pole goes yet?”
My lips curve into a grin as I flick open the second page. Actually, these instructions are pretty good. I get up and take the book over to the tent. “I think,” I point at the longest pole. “That one goes first. Then the other poles slip into each other and just cross through the loops in the tent. It shouldn’t be too hard.” I drop down beside Adam and hand over the book, pointing at the picture.
“Right. So, this one goes in the front?” He picks up the long pole. “I think if we stand at opposite ends, and if you take the other two, slide them into each other, get them threaded, and pass them over, we can get them in through the loop at the bottom.”
“That sounds like a plan.” We both reach for the long pole at the same time, and our fingers brush. I move my hand away casually, but inside, something weird happens. I feel like I ate too many chips or something. You know, that sick kind of sloshing and burning that happens for a few hours after? Except this is slightly less sick but with a whole lot more burning. I felt the same way in the car too, when I touched Adam’s hand.
I gulp. It’s a strange physical reaction. I’ve never had one like that before. Not for Adam. I mean, for other guys, sure. Not that it’s gotten me very far. I’m not even going to talk about my disaster of a love life. Let’s just say my comment about not having a date for the past six months (if I don’t count the terribly failed ones) is totally accurate. I breathe in hard and let Adam have the pole before scooting away.
We’re friends, kind of. I work for Adam, but we’ve also known each other for quite a long time. The way we work together, there’s a ton of intimate details (not that kind of intimate—the pool incident was a mistake) that I take care of. I manage all his laundry, separating them into what the maid needs to wash and what I need to take to the dry cleaners. So yes, I’ve seen his underwear before. I’ve also bought him underwear before. I do lots of things like that as his “life assistant.”
I’m used to everything about Adam. The way he looks, talks, dresses, and god, even the way he smells. He smells good. He wears a cologne for men that costs ninety-eight dollars per bottle, and he goes through three bottles a year because he wears it with class, not thick and gross like some people. See? I know pretty much everything there is to know about him.
So why am I having a moment here?
Adam slips the long pole through the front while I meltdown a little bit off to the side. By meltdown, I mean that I do some soul searching. Same difference, isn’t it? When I look over, he’s standing the front of the tent up. I remember what he said about working on the other poles, so I hustle over and grab them quickly. I thread the first pole through the loops at the top of the tent and pass it over into Adam’s outstretched hand. He then feeds his poles through while I do the other one. When we’ve made an X shape, we work on sticking them into the metal grommets in the ground.
Surprisingly, on the first try, the tent stands upright.
“Oh my god,” I exclaim, a little bit shocked. “It’s standing. I think we did it.”
“Looks right to me.” Adam stands off to the side and crosses his arms. Arms that usually aren’t bare because when I see him, he typically has a dress shirt on. Hmm, he has really nice arms. They’re bulgy and striated, and the veins stick out just a little.
Now I’m having a moment again, with a pinched stomach and some strange throbbing in my thighs, so I stop studying his arms. I paste on the world’s fakest, blandest expression, and pretty much run for the car. I pull out the sleeping bags, the backpacks, the cooler, and the bin with the dry goods. The pillows, air mattresses, and other gear come last.
“I guess all we have to do is get all this stuff put away. Thank god I bought one of those battery-operated pumps for the air mattresses.”
“Did you buy batteries then?”
I nearly drop the armload of stuff I’m holding. “Shit! No!”
Adam just shrugs. He’s used to handling serious, multi-million dollar problems every single day. I realize that. But the thought of putting my mouth over a plastic, nasty mattress freaks me out. “I’ll do the honors,” he assures me.
He smiles at me, and it’s not a smile I’ve ever seen on him before. It’s kind of proud, a little bit triumphant, and a whole lot relieved. We rocked that tent. We can handle this, maybe. Jesus, I really hope so, because it’s going to be a long three days otherwise.
Adam’s smile hits me right in the lady spots—the unused, unawakened lady bits. I have no idea what’s going on with my body. Apparently, it doesn’t understand that if we even run into Adam’s ex-wife, the whole girlfriend thing is just acting.
I just haven’t seen Adam like this. I mean dressed this way, but he looks…he looks different. Different from Office Adam. Out here, he’s Wilderness Adam, and Wilderness Adam is seriously attractive.
Eek. No. No, Wilderness Adam is still Office Adam. Office Adam in just a disguise. We do not have crushes on Office Adam because Office Adam is our boss. Why the hell am I even having a mental conversation with my va-jay here? I’m losing my mind.
Adam starts taking out the air mattress, shaking it out of the box. When he successfully gets it out of the box, he puts his mouth to the little plastic part and begins blowing into it.
And now, shit. I’m jealous of a freaking air mattress.
I need some air. Not Adam’s air. Not his lips. Not his mouth. Not his h
ands. And not his…erm, anything. What I need is a walk.
Adam drops the mattress as soon as he’s done, carts all the gear into the tent, locks the car with a fancy-ass app on his phone (who the shit brings this kind of car camping anyway? I’m surprised we even had enough clearance on the damn thing to go down the campground road), and treats me to another huge, different, Wilderness Adam smile.
“I’m starved.” He wanders over and cracks the lid on the cooler, then turns to me in horror. “What is this anyway? Nothing in there is edible.”
“Sorry, I didn’t bring champagne and caviar. We’re camping, so I brought camping food. You know, hot dogs, hamburgers, bologna, cheese, pickles…”
“And you can make actual food with that?”
“I don’t know about good or nutritious, but this is the usual camping fare. I looked it up. And I have been to a few barbeques before and whatnot, so I should know. Plus, I didn’t think we’d have a full kitchen and all the latest appliances to cook gourmet meals, so I did the best I could with a cooler and a bin of dry goods.”
“What the heck is dry goods?” Adam looks more hopeful, but his face falls when I start explaining.
“Pasta, buns, crackers, chips. Goods that are dry.” I saunter past him and reach into the cooler, pulling out various items—the bologna, cheese, mayo, and pickles. “Don’t knock it ‘til you try it.” I take a slice of bologna, slap it on some bread, insert a slice of processed cheese, put a pickle in it, and squirt some mayo on. I pass it over like it’s a rare delicacy.
Adam looks at it like it might be a venomous snake I just skewered and decided to cook up.
He takes it tentatively when I shove my hand out a little further. God, he must be hungry, because I know what he usually eats for breakfast, lunch, and dinner—healthy shit, expensive shit, and shit I hadn’t even heard of until I met him. There have even been a few times I’ve had to shop for it, when the girl, Lacy, who does all the food shopping, was sick. I didn’t know it was possible for a store to charge twelve bucks for a baguette or eighty dollars for a steak.
Adam takes a bite and shudders, but then he chews and swallows, and a look of surprise flickers over his far too handsome face. Did I mention that Adam eating the bologna, cheese, and pickle monstrosity that happens to be my midnight snack/go-to lunch is the most delicious thing I’ve seen in my entire life?
I make one for myself, and then I pop the lid back on the cooler. At least the tent is somewhat shaded. Hopefully, no bears come looking for the food we have in here.
“We should go for a walk, explore the lake beach, take a hike, or something.” Adam points to the pile of gear that he put in the other corner of the tent.
“You mean we should pretend to be doing something camping-ish or outdoorsy while we try to hunt down your ex-wife. Which is kind of, you know…”
“Yeah.” Adam runs a hand through his hair, and I swear my female bits just about burst into flames. “I know.”
“You know she’s kind of a butt crack?”
“Stephanie…”
“Yes.” I put on my most innocent smile, pretending not to understand which one of us he means. “Anyway, before we go and play amateur stalkers, I need to take a shower. I can’t do anything without a shower.”
“We just got here. You need to shower already?” But I know what he’s really saying is why the heck didn’t I do that before I left home?
“I was busy.”
“We’re going to get sweaty out there anyway. Or we’ll have to go into the lake or sit on the beach. It hardly seems worth it.”
I gingerly pull up my pant leg to reveal the approximately two weeks’ worth of growth I have going on there.
“Sweet mother of mercy,” Adam shudders. “Obviously, you haven’t had time to shower in a while.”
“I’ve been busy, okay. Busy getting ready for this, trying to keep my house’s roof from caving in, unpacking, and working for a certain demanding boss.” I let my pant leg go. “Anyway, there are way more fun things to do than stalking people. We could always find the beer store or the restaurant here and get hammered. Not that I really drink, because I don’t. I just thought it might be more fun not to remember this time at all. And if a bear comes to eat us in the middle of the night, at least we won’t feel it if we’re super inebriated.”
“Just go shower,” Adam says with an eye roll. He arranges the blow-up mattress and one of the sleeping bags. “I’ll just kick back and wait for you.”
“Oh, no. There’s another mattress to blow up.” Then, because I can’t help myself, I go in for the kill. “What are you going to say to Stephanie if we run into her anyway?” Adam’s face goes completely blank. He looks almost panicked like the aforementioned bear is tearing towards our tent with a murderous gleam in his eyes right now. I sigh. “You’re so confident about everyone and everything but her. Why is that? Oh right. Because she’s not nice, and she’s a butt crack.”
“I’ll figure it out.” Adam flops onto his stomach, grabbing the pillow and punching it to accommodate his weight before burying his face in it.
Even though that’s my cue to check out what are probably showers from hell and finally let my legs see some razor action, I can’t help but check out his ass in those jeans again.
Big note to self, the next time Adam asks me to buy his clothes, I’m not going to get ones that fit like they’re made to make every single woman ovulate out of the blue. Because it’s not cool. Not to my ovaries, not to ovaries everywhere.
Dear lord god, what is happening to me?
CHAPTER 4
Adam
I lay in the tent on my back, staring at the domed part where the poles meet in the center. I’m thinking about Stephanie in the shower. No, not Ex-Stephanie. Assistant Stephanie. I’m imagining her soaping up her hair and shaving her legs.
Yeah, I know. Creepo alert right here. Thinking about my assistant shaving her legs shouldn’t be on my list of illicit fantasies, but at the moment, I guess I’m a little effed up.
Her not so subtle reminder is yet another prod in the butt I need about my ex-wife. Obviously, I’m being ridiculous. The whole world would probably vote yes in that poll, but still, I just can’t help myself. There are nights when I still play that last, brutal conversation on repeat, and it gets to me like an ugly pair of socks that came out all wrong from production.
I’m still thinking about how all this was probably a terrible idea when Steph slips back into the tent. Her hair looks even darker when it’s wet. She put it in a braid, which I’ve never seen her do before. She’s also wearing a pair of jean shorts and a neon pink tank top with a picture of a whale surfing on the front.
I sit up with a start. Well, if I’m being honest, I’m not the only one sitting up. Something else is sitting up too. Something very inappropriate that I nearly panic over. I consider grabbing the pillow and shoving it in front of me, but how obvious would that be? Instead, I angle my legs all strangely, away from Steph’s line of sight. A bead of sweat trickles down my temple. My cock throbs as she turns away, clearly uninterested in anything I have going on, in my pants or otherwise. She starts unpacking one of the big backpacks she brought. A minute later, a pair of hiking boots is practically thrown at me.
“Oomph,” I grunt as they hit me square in the chest. I kind of wished they’d bounced a little lower. Then at least I’d have an excuse to worry about my groin area.
“This is a stupid idea,” Steph mutters as she sits down on the still deflated air mattress and sleeping bag opposite me. She kicks off her flip-flops and tugs one black and green hiking boot on.
“What’s a stupid idea?”
“Hiking. All of this. I’ve already said it a hundred times, so I should stop saying it.”
“Probably.”
“Just, please. Take care of yourself. You don’t need someone who kicks your nuts so far up into your throat that they hit your teeth.”
“I get it.” I pull so hard on the boot’s laces that it nearly
rips cleanly out of the first three eyes at the top. “Does it bother you that you don’t have a filter?”
“No.” Steph doesn’t even look at me when she says it. “Why would it?” Apparently, she decides to screw the whole idea of a filter completely and goes on to add, “If you came here to prove you’re capable—oh wait. Of course, you’re capable. The whole world knows that. Plus, you’re funny, smart, good looking, and obscenely rich. You have a net worth of over two billion.”
“Stop.”
“I’m just saying…”
I notice Steph tugs both hiking boots on without any socks. I’m not well versed in hiking or boots, but I’m pretty sure that’s a big no-no.
“Aren’t you going to wear any socks?” I tug one boot on over my socks.
Of course, they’re my company’s socks—green with little yellow dots. Probably not really made for hiking, but they should do the trick. They’re breathable and moisture-wicking. They also last forever, can take a ton of abuse, and come in tons of different colors and styles. I might literally sound like a self-advertisement right now, but what can I say? Socks aren’t just my life; they’re my passion.
“I never wear socks.”
“Hhhhhhhhhhmmmph,” I gasp just as a strangled sound erupts from my throat. “What do you mean, you never wear socks? You know my family has practically made a fortune from socks. That you’re employed from socks, we sell socks, and socks are literally my livelihood and life.”
“I know.” Steph shrugs. Then, she stands up, testing the boots. “But I just hate socks. It’s nothing personal.”
“What do you mean, you hate socks? How can you hate socks? Socks are so essential! What do you do in the winter then?”
“Wear boots that don’t need them when I go outside, and indoors, socks would look pretty funny with high heels.”
“Depends what high heels. And you know we make dress socks for men and women.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ll take a hard pass, though. Sorry.”