by Jill Shalvis
Axel jumped a little, as if realizing what he’d just said. Then he let out one of his low easy laughs. “Oh, listen to me rattle on. Keep up now.”
He started walking down that trail we’d trudged up only yesterday. That time, my biggest worry had been carrying our stuff. Now…I glanced up at the sky again. Still pure azure.
I hoped it stayed that way.
After a few minutes, Axel stopped, and pulled the map out of his breast pocket.
Uh-oh. Bad sign that he needed the map already.
“Marilee drew this for me,” Axel said. “And also this.” He flipped the map over and began to read. “Alaska is a land of immense beauty and diversity. Behind us, you’ll see dramatic capped mountains. Follow me for a morning of fly-fishing that will be an unforgettable experience.” He looked up. “Damn, I was supposed to read that part before we left the B&B.”
“How about info on other areas,” Kellan said.
“By the water,” Axel said, then began moving down the trail again. “It’s peaceful there.”
Kel’s expression said he’d find peace wringing Axel’s neck.
I had to admit, I felt the same way. “Axel—”
“Hang on. Almost there.”
Indeed, within another few moments, we were back on the banks of the river where Jack had left us yesterday. The water rushed over the rocks and sediment, glinting in the sun, steaming into the early air. If I hadn’t been so on edge with all that was happening, I might have actually stood there in awe of the beauty around us.
Axel handed Kel a fishing rod.
“I want answers, Axel.”
Axel patted him on the shoulder. “All in good time, dude.” He also handed me a rod, which might as well have been a power tool, for all I knew what to do with it.
“Now,” Axel said. “Putting on the flies.”
“No,” I said, and shook my head. “No torturing flies for me, thanks.”
Axel laughed, then pushed us down to sit on the rocks along the shore. “Not real ones. Look.” He pulled out handmade “flies,” and I had to admit, their colors and feathers and materials were interesting.
Kellan took a fly and copied Axel, his fingers working deftly, the tendons and cords of muscles on his forearms fascinating me as he applied the same easy concentration that he did to every task he took on.
I tried to do the same, and poked my finger. “Damn it.”
Axel laughed. “Don’t rush it, dudette.”
Easy for him to say. He never rushed anything. I tried again. Another stab into my finger. “Damn it!”
“Here.” Kellan took over, doing it the way Axel had showed us, his head bent, the material of his shirt stretched taut across his shoulders, his arm brushing mine. “See, like this.” He turned his head and caught me staring at him, caught me thinking, Even though you make me mad and sad and crazy, omigod I want you.
So much…
“Here.” He handed me back the rod.
I looked down at the feathery fly. “Pretty.”
Both men laughed, united for that one moment in my ridiculousness. Kellan was smiling at me in a way that started my heart beating faster, and when I dropped my gaze, I could see that his heart had sped up, too. In complete opposition to that, time seemed to come to a stop, and for that one lovely beat, I had the most inane thought.
It was going to be okay.
Somehow, despite everything and the insanity that went with it, it was going to be okay, because Kellan was here, and he would make it so.
Or so I could only hope.
Chapter 11
“O kay, dude and dudette, it’s easy stuff. Angling is all in the flick of your wrist, see?” Axel demonstrated with his fishing rod, winging his pretty fly and line way out into the water. “Let’s get some dinner for tonight.”
Kellan went next, and with little-to-no effort, sent his fly and line sailing out like Axel’s.
On my first try, I caught the seat of my own pants. While Kellan nearly busted a gut over that one, I tried again, and then snagged his shirt, which was an accident.
Mostly.
On my next try, I did get the fly into the water, but it caught on something, and when I tugged, the only thing that moved was me, toward the river. I’d have fallen on my ass if Kellan hadn’t snagged me by the back of my shirt and held me up.
“Thanks,” I said. “That was a little scary.”
Kel shook his head. “Rach, your entire life is scary.”
Axel had moved down the bank a bit, giving us some privacy. We were standing pretty close, and Kel was still holding onto my shirt. His hair was falling into his eyes as always, and without thinking, I reached up and pushed it back. He caught my hand in his, and looking pained, leaned in. Eyes open, on mine, he shook his head, and then kissed me.
Oh yeah. That worked for me. And when his tongue touched mine, every erogenous zone in my body perked up and stood at attention.
Then he let go, and turned away.
It took me a moment to get my brain to click back on. “What was that for?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No!”
I studied his face, filled with carefully banked frustration. “If you figure it out, are you going to let me know?”
“Rach, with you, I never figure anything out.”
I tried again to cast out the line, or whatever it was called, and nearly got Axel in the face. He came back and took the rod from me, casting it himself before handing it back. “Safer that way,” he told Kellan.
Kellan’s lips curved at that, and I rolled my eyes. Axel began to move away again, but Kel stopped him. “Where are those answers?”
“Uh, yeah.” He scratched his head. “They’re…coming. Listen, it’s chilly here. Hang tight. I’m going to walk downriver a little bit and see if there’s a warmer spot in the sun.”
Kellan looked at me as Axel walked away. “He’s good at avoidance. Must have learned it from you.”
“Me? I’m not the one who won’t talk.”
“Ha.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing.”
The length of his thigh pressed against mine, warm and solid. He was warm and solid all over; I had reason to know.
“Kel, what if I told you that what happened between us last night had nothing to do with the lightning?”
“I’d say you weren’t thinking clearly.”
I grabbed his sleeve and tugged until he turned from the water to face me. “I’m thinking plenty clearly.”
He was quiet. All around us was the sound of rushing water, the buzz of insects, the dry warmth of the sun. Thankfully no kamikaze squirrels though.
“I’m glad it’s you with me,” I whispered.
That got a ghost of a smile. “Don’t tell Dot.”
I managed a smile, too, but suddenly my throat felt tight as I stared into his beautiful eyes. “We’ve never really spent a lot of time alone.”
He slowly shook his head.
“It’s nice.”
“Rach.” He took the rod from me and recast, his movements easy and graceful, the muscles in his arms and shoulders flexing as the line flew in an arch to the water. When he handed the rod back to me, our fingers touched, but he pulled back. “Don’t mistake the adrenaline from all the fear and excitement for something more.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that up until about twenty-four hours ago, you weren’t interested in me this way.”
“Things change,” I said.
He was shaking his head. “Not that fast.”
I thought of the lightning. “It can happen in a second. In a blink.”
“We’ve had a lot of seconds, a lot of blinks, and it’s never happened before,” he said stubbornly.
“You’ve never kissed me before.”
Or sent me skittering into a mindless orgasm…
He stared at me. Then, as if he couldn’t help it, his gaze dropped
to my mouth. I could almost see him remembering last night, how amazing it’d been, how it had escalated out of control with one touch of our tongues, how he’d pressed me into the floor, his hands…God, his hands.
Seeing it all in my eyes now, Kel closed his, and swallowed hard. “Okay,” he murmured, “we’re going to have to agree to disagree here, or I won’t be able to think rationally.”
I ran my gaze down his body and saw his reaction to where his thoughts had taken him. “Thinking rationally is overrated.”
He was shaking his head. “I’m not going to have an affair with you.”
“Well, don’t look now, because it’s too late,” I pointed out. “Besides, you were long past due.”
His eyes narrowed. “Are you keeping track of my sex life?”
“You went nearly a year without sex before you started seeing your last girlfriend. I don’t think that even qualifies as a sex life, Kel.”
He flushed. “So, I’m not a smooth operator. I work with dolphins all damn day long. What do you expect?”
I put my hand on his chest. Beneath my fingers, his muscles leaped, and so did my belly. “Maybe you’re smoother than you think.”
He met my gaze, his own dark but getting a little hotter by the second, which in turn heated me up.
“Don’t.” His voice was hoarse now, barely audible over the water. “I’m not going to play with you. Not like this. Not now.”
“Because it would be bad?”
Those eyes positively flamed as he pressed his lower body hard against mine, letting me feel the hard bulge between his thighs. “First of all,” he said, sliding a hand up my torso to find the soft mound of my breast, “it would be great.”
I had to let out a breathless laugh, even as I arched up into his touch, my nipple begging for more attention. “Yeah. Um, Kel? I think you’re far smoother than you give yourself credit for.”
“Shit.” Voice hoarse, he stepped clear of me, reeling in his line, recasting like a pro. An extremely frustrated one.
“Forgot for a minute you don’t want me there, huh?”
“Damn it, I do want you, and you know it. What I don’t want is a casual thing. Not with you.” His motions were uncharacteristically jerky. “I’m not going to risk the best relationship in my life for one night of…” He searched for a word, and apparently, given the sound that escaped him, failed to find it.
“Greatness?” I whispered in jest, even though what he’d just confessed had hit me with the impact of…a lightning bolt.
A shadow of a smile crossed his mouth. “Yeah. But I mean it, Rach. We’re not doing this.”
“Not, as in never?”
He didn’t answer, and I stared down at the rod in my hands. “Never’s a long time. That’s all I’m saying.”
I didn’t get a response to that either. “What if I was the only woman on an island with you?” I tried. “Then would you still say never?”
His jaw jumped. “Jesus, Rach.”
“I mean, there’s just some things you can’t put a time limit on, you know?”
“Where’s Axel?” he asked, clearly needing to be saved.
“He said he’d be right back.”
“No, he didn’t. He said to wait here—Shit.” Kellan glanced up the path. “He’s not coming back. This was all a stalling technique to keep us busy so he wouldn’t have to come up with answers.”
“And it worked.”
“Shit,” he said again.
We both looked at the trail and knew we had to go back up it. Again. We walked mostly in silence. Well, Kel was silent; I kept asking questions, because I couldn’t help myself. “What do you think Dot is doing right now?”
“Not asking me a million questions.”
I decided not to take that personally. “I bet she’s eating cookies,” I said.
Kel just sighed.
When we got back to the inn, we went straight to the kitchen, where Axel was sitting on the counter doing his “ohhhmmm” thing again.
“You always ditch your guests on a fishing expedition?” Kel asked him.
“I thought you two wanted to be alone.”
“What we want is answers. You know that.”
“Huh. Sorry.”
Kel put the fishing gear down on the table. “What the hell is with you?”
“Like I said, just trying to give you two some privacy.”
“We don’t need privacy!”
“Don’t mean to contradict you, man, but if anyone ever needed privacy, it’s you two.” Axel waggled a brow. “I mean, you look at each other with such heat that trees spontaneously combust when you two walk by. You might want to do something about that.”
Kellan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just tell me what happened to us yesterday.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, when that storm hit, something weird happened, and you know it. Marilee knows it, too.”
I’ve never seen Kellan demanding like this. But slacker dude didn’t seem to respond well to demanding, and remained in his yoga pose on the counter, his smile fading.
Marilee walked in, took in the unusually tense expression on Axel’s face and did an about-face, ready to walk right out again.
“Oh hell no.” Kellan slapped a hand on the kitchen door above her head, holding it closed so she couldn’t escape. “Someone’s going to start talking. Now.”
Marilee bit her lower lip and looked at Axel, who shrugged, sending the tassels on his hat sailing. “Maybe we should—”
“No, Ax. We promised we wouldn’t. You know we did. It’s not up to us.”
“Whom did you promise?” Kellan broke in.
Marilee and Axel stared at each other, silent.
“I’m sorry,” Marilee finally, said. “but there’s nothing we can say.”
Axel, gaze locked on Marilee, nodded slowly.
“Bullshit,” said the man who used to be so laid-back. “Total and complete bullshit.”
“Look,” Marilee said softly, “the timing of your arrival was bad, and I’m sorry for that, but what’s done is done.” Again she reached for the door. “Now, if I can arrange some fun for you, a hike or maybe bird-watching…”
Kellan slapped his hand back on the door, holding it closed over her head. Or that’s what I think he meant to do, but instead, his hand went right through the door, leaving a perfect handprint in the veneer.
Everyone stared at the hole.
“Wow,” Marilee whispered, and looked at Kellan as if seeing him for the first time.
“Holy shit, dude,” Axel said much more eloquently. “Sweet.”
“Oh, you think so?” Kellan’s voice was silky quiet but vibrating with frustration. “Because I don’t think it’s sweet. I think it’s pretty damn freaky.”
I had a lot of thoughts going through my mind, but I couldn’t help being utterly fascinated by Kellan’s display of temper and strength, not to mention his new forcefulness. Of course, I’d never admit such a ridiculous thing out loud, but I was thinking it plenty.
The silence between us all began to go from stunned to extremely awkward. And then another of those odd and inexplicable thumps sounded, from the other side of the door that Kellan had just put a hole through.
Kellan glanced at Marilee and Axel, then at me. Everyone in the house was supposedly accounted for. Narrowing his eyes, he whipped open the door, and there stood a young couple—the same couple I’d seen yesterday looking out the window at me when we’d first arrived.
The guy was tall and thin, and still resembled a grown-up Harry Potter. Holding his hand was the pretty blonde, with a sweet, relaxed smile. In fact, they were both smiling, as if completely unconcerned with the hole that had just been punched through the kitchen door not two inches from Harry’s nose, not to mention the four of us standing close, the tension in the air so thick you could cut it with a knife.
There was something off about the two new people, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. They were dressed
as one would expect out here, in jeans and T-shirts—normal clothes—but all their clothes, right down to their matching athletic shoes, looked shiny, brand new. They were no longer glowing, as I’d clearly imagined yesterday, and they had their arms around each other.
“Hi, there,” the guy said. “We were just wondering…is breakfast going to be served soon? We’re hungry.”
The young woman wrapped herself around him like a pretzel, and giggled. “Starving.”
Marilee moved past Kel, and smiled the smile of someone who’d just been delivered a get-out-of-jail-for-free card. “I just baked a special breakfast casserole. You’re going to love it!” She beamed and expertly nudged the couple down the hall. “I’ll serve it to you in the dining room,” she called after them. “I’ll be right there…”
“You’ve got guests,” I said when she turned back to us. “You told us there weren’t any.”
“No, I didn’t. When you asked, I didn’t say anything either way. You just assumed.”
“Not a good thing, assuming,” Axel said to me. “A-S-S-UM-E makes an ass out of you and me. Get it?”
“I get it,” I said through my teeth. “What I don’t get is why you both tried to hide from us the fact that we have guests.”
“I didn’t want to upset you,” Marilee said primly.
“Why would it have upset me to have paying guests?” I just couldn’t fathom the reasoning.
“Well, you seemed so uptight. I didn’t want to make things worse.”
“I was upset because I was hit by lightning! And, as it turns out, so was Kellan.”
Both Axel and Marilee looked at Kel.
“We don’t have lightning here,” Marilee said after a full minute of silence.
If I could have torn out my own hair, I would have. Kellan put a hand on my arm, probably trying to tell me to keep my cool.
But I didn’t have any cool!
“Look, I need to serve breakfast,” Marilee said. “If you’ll excuse me?”
“I’ll help you,” Axel said quickly.
“But I want some answers,” I said, watching as Marilee bent to the oven, Axel helping her pull out two casserole dishes, which I sincerely hoped he’d helped put together.
“Rach.” Kellan tugged me out of the kitchen and into the hallway. We took a moment to stare at the handprint he’d left in the wood.