by Jill Shalvis
“Morning.” His voice wasn’t any more steady than hers, which was interesting.
And unnerving.
Nothing new. They’d been playing this casual game for weeks now.
“Busy day,” she noted.
He simply nodded and bit into the middle finger of his cycling glove and tugged it off. Then did the same with the other. He tossed them to the ground and planted his hands on the wood fence behind her head. “Were you on the river?”
He spoke so evenly. She would never have guessed at the bad temper behind that casual voice—except for the heat of it in his eyes. “Tim was showing me how to kayak.”
“I thought you weren’t a strong swimmer.”
“Tim was right there.”
“Stay out of the river, Ally.”
“I don’t respond well to demands.”
“Too bad. Stay out of it. And suppose you tell me why you’re wearing my jacket.”
“Your jacket?” She shook her head. “No, Jo gave it to me to borrow.”
“Yeah, from my office closet.”
“I—” His eyes were dark and unreadable as ever, and she bit her lip, thinking she would have to kill Jo personally. Slowly. “I didn’t know.”
“Now two of my jackets will smell like you.”
It embarrassed her that she had thought she’d been so independent here, and hadn’t been at all. “Nothing a little detergent won’t fix.” Frustrated, she ducked from beneath his arms and went to pull off Jo’s—his!—jacket. It was a pullover, with wide bands of rubber around the neck, waist and wrists, to keep out the water.
The bands also kept her in. Darn it, but it was hard to get off. She wriggled and writhed and pulled, but all that happened was she got caught, her arms up and over her head, the jacket holding her locked in that position.
She wriggled and writhed some more, but it was no use, she was good and truly stuck. “Um…Chance?”
He said nothing, but now that the jacket was over her face she couldn’t see him. Great. With as much dignity as she could muster, she tried to escape again.
To no avail.
She really hated to have to ask him for anything, especially help. But she had trussed herself up like a pre-packaged chicken. “Chance?”
“Yeah.” He sounded like he was strangling.
“Do you think you can help me pull this thing off?”
A long second later, she felt his hands on her. Her waist, then her shoulders as he tugged on the material. Beneath the jacket she wore the top of her two piece bathing suit, which meant he had to touch her bare skin. By the time he freed her, she had goose bumps over her entire body and it wasn’t from the cold morning air.
Chance tossed the jacket down next to his gloves, his blue eyes touching her everywhere.
“Thanks.” She backed up a step. “I’m sorry about—” Her words ended abruptly when he followed her, once again trapping her against the fence.
“I’m…um…pretty busy right now,” she managed, her breathing coming in funny little pants.
A wicked smile lit his eyes and one corner of his mouth lifted as he studied the way her breathing made her breasts lift and fall. “Busy doing what, Prim?”
Trapped within his arms, she felt like a butterfly about to be pinned alive. Then, when he leaned closer still, so that his shirt brushed her nearly bare chest, so that only a breath of air separated their mouths, she felt more like a sacrificial lamb.
A willing one.
That mouth of his barely, just barely, brushed hers. “What are you busy doing?” he repeated softly.
She’d forgotten. Her entire world slipped away when he was near her like this. He turned her inside out, and knowing that, knowing he was amused by it, gave her the strength to turn her head to the side. “Work…stuff. I’m busy doing work stuff.”
He slid his warm, work-roughened fingers under her jaw and brought her back around. His eyes went to her mouth and she thought—hoped, wished—that he might kiss her anyway.
“You’re cold.”
“No, I’m—” She bit back her sigh of pure pleasure when he cupped her cheeks in his big, warm hands.
His eyes were positively wicked. “Anything else you need warmed up?”
Oh boy. “N-no.”
He lowered his gaze to her breasts, zeroing in on the way her nipples were pressing against the material of her bathing suit, and she wanted to punch him for making her stomach leap in anticipation. Instead she put her hands to his chest, meaning to push him away, but she felt the bunching of his muscles and the quick leaping of his heart, and knew that he was as affected by their closeness as she. If she moved, shifted a bit, his body would rub against her. Unable to help herself, she did just that, and encountered full contact.
He was completely aroused.
She raised her gaze to his face and found him looking back at her from beneath lowered lashes.
“I’ve been this way since you got here,” he said.
She winced in sympathy. “I’ll just…go then.”
“I meant since you came to Wyoming.”
Her eyes flew wide. “Oh. Oh.”
“Yeah, oh.” For a moment he stayed close, then backed up imperceptibly. “You’ve got a message from home.”
Thinking had become nearly impossible. Her heart was racing, her brain seriously impeded by the rush of blood from her head to all her erogenous zones. “My sisters again?”
“Yes.” He cocked his head to the side. “Dani said don’t forget next Tuesday is Maggie’s party. Come early and give her a hand, she said.”
“Oh.”
“You use that word a lot.”
She’d already told her family she wouldn’t get back that soon, but obviously Dani had wanted to pressure her, not realizing Ally could no longer be pressured.
“When were you going to tell Lucy?” he asked. “After you’d left?”
She pulled away because she couldn’t think when they were touching. It was hard enough when he was merely standing in front of her, all tall, intense and attitude-ridden. “Why does it matter to you?”
His eyes glittered dangerously. “It doesn’t. I happen to want you, yes, but it makes no difference to me whether you stay or go.”
“You…want me?”
“Don’t let it go to your head. I want a lot of women.”
“Oh, man, I really don’t want to hear this.”
Both Chance and Ally turned in unison to face a scowling Brian. He stood there wearing jeans five sizes too big, and a shirt that went to his knees. His tattered bike leaned against his hip.
Chance was still looking at Ally with heat, frustration and promise, and she had no idea what any of it meant.
I want a lot of women.
She had no doubt of that. Or that he’d find those women with one crook of his finger.
It makes no difference whether you stay or go. Ally tried to let that roll off her back and failed.
Brian thrust out his chin toward Chance. “Riding today?”
With annoying ease, Chance changed gears. “Already did, Slick. What happened to school?”
He got the Brian shrug. “Stupid assembly.”
Ally struggled to shift with the conversation. She knew Chance wasn’t the type to be held by the rules of society. But she hoped to God he knew enough to send this kid back to school. Brian desperately needed to learn to live by the same rules as everyone else, and she was certain he wouldn’t ever learn that from Chance, a man who’d never followed the rules at all.
Not that she was trying to save him, of course. Or anyone. But she couldn’t stop the thought. Please, don’t be reckless with Brian.
Chance looked at her, and as if he’d heard her thoughts, he went still. There’d been a heat in his eyes every single time he’d looked at her, from the very first day, from that very first moment she’d stepped off the plane. That heat had always been there, and it’d only gotten stronger as the days had passed.
Yet now, right this minute, it…
died.
“Maybe we can take another ride. Off trail this time,” Brian said into the charged silence.
“You’re not ready.” Chance was still looking at Ally with a disturbing lack of…anything.
It makes no difference to me… His words echoed in her head, but she pushed away the hurt because he’d never mislead her.
She’d mislead herself.
“I am ready,” Brian insisted. “That last ride we took, we raced down. You showed me how to get the most speed out of it, remember?”
“I also showed you how to do it without killing yourself,” Chance said. “Do you remember that part?”
“Yes. But—”
“No buts. Takes practice to be better than good.”
“You said I was.”
“Compared to any other fourteen-year-old, you are. You know that. Be different. Get better than good. And get to school. Only idiots ditch.”
“Don’t need school to be a pro boarder. Or a biker. Don’t need school for any of that.”
“Wrong,” Chance said firmly, looking ticked. “Trust me on this one, you gotta finish high school to become a professional anything.”
“Who says?”
“I say.”
Brian shrugged and amazingly enough, headed toward the parking lot instead of back on the trail.
Chance shot Ally one last undecipherable look before he walked away.
“You’re not going to your office?” she asked his back.
He shrugged, mirroring Brian’s attitude, and kept walking.
With no idea why, she followed him, though she had to run to keep up with his long-legged stride. “What’s your problem?”
“What makes you think I have one?”
“Because you won’t even look at me.”
He stopped so short she nearly plowed into the back of him. Her hands came up automatically, sliding over the sleek, taut muscles of his back. She snatched them back.
“I’m looking at you now,” he said, turning to face her.
He was…hurt, she realized with shock, when she was the one who should be hurt. “But why are you looking at me like that?”
“Drop it.”
In her not-too-distant past she might have meekly let it go, but she was no longer a mouse. She was big, bad, strong Ally who did as she pleased, when she pleased. “Tell me.”
Temper flashed in his eyes. “I saw you, Ally. I heard your thoughts as if you’d screamed them. You actually thought I would let Brian do whatever the hell he wanted. Ride recklessly, ditch school, whatever. You seem to have this preconceived notion of me and how I live my life, and I don’t like it.”
“At least you have to admit, you live up to it.”
He stepped close. “There you go again, assuming you know me.”
Refusing to back up, Ally kept her eyes on his. “Then help me know you, Chance.”
Lifting his hands, he shoved his fingers through his hair. The muscles in his arms were taut and strained. “This lifestyle is not for everyone. It’s…dangerous.”
“Are you trying to scare me off? Is that your new tactic to discourage me?” She laughed. “I’m not very frightened.”
“You should be,” he growled. “This kind of life can cost you big.”
There was something more than temper in his gaze now, but even as she watched him back away from her, all emotion—and pain?—vanished behind hooded, watchful eyes. Her stomach knotted, because this man, this brooding, edgy, dangerous man, drew her as no other ever had, and despite everything, she wanted to know him. “How can it cost, Chance? What has it cost you?”
“A friend.” He paused and his voice lowered a fraction. “A close friend.”
“What happened?”
“She underestimated the elements and it cost her everything. Her life,” he said flatly.
She. Ally’s stomach knotted again.
“I know you think I’m wild and out of control, but I have more control than you’ll ever know. If I didn’t, I’d have had you by now—and circumstances be damned.”
She actually had to lick her lips and clear her throat to talk. “Circumstances?”
“Yeah.” His eyes went hard. “You’re leaving, remember?” Then he turned and walked away before she could tell him she wasn’t going anywhere.
Not yet.
CHANCE HAD KNOWN she’d leave eventually. All along, it’d been what he’d wanted.
So why did he feel so empty?
“What’s your problem?” Jo asked, when he’d been sitting at his desk, brooding, staring out the window for thirty minutes.
“Nothing. Where’s Ally?”
“Ah.” She let out a secret smile.
“What the hell kind of answer is that?”
She just grinned. “Why do you want to know where she is?”
To wring her neck. “Why do you keep answering my questions with more questions?”
“It amuses me.”
“I need her,” he said tightly. “We have work to go over.”
“Uh-huh. Hard to do that with your lips locked.” And at the look on Chance’s face, she roared with laughter. “Well, you’re the one thinking it, not me.” Having pity she patted his arm. “And you ought to know, I didn’t figure this one out entirely by myself. Brian helped. You’ve got the ‘hots for her,’ I think he said.”
He let out an expletive.
She laughed at him some more. “Try rentals. Oh, and you might want to hurry.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see.”
CHANCE DID INDEED find Ally in rentals, arranging to rent a kayak for the rest of the afternoon. “What are you doing?”
She fumbled with the helmet she’d thankfully put on correctly, blew the hair out of her face and didn’t answer him. When she hoisted the kayak and went outside, he followed, amazed at her strength. Her bare arms were tanned and toned with muscle. So were her legs. Gone was the fragile, vulnerable woman he always imagined her to be.
When exactly had that happened?
“Ally, I asked you a question.”
“Go back to your cave, Chance.”
He took the kayak from her and put it on the ground. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Oh, I know what I’m doing. Tim’s been giving me lessons all week.”
He stared at her, wondering when his world had turned into a Twilight Zone remake. “I told you to stay out of the river.”
“And I told you I don’t take demands well.”
“I thought you were leaving, going back for your sister’s party.”
“You thought wrong.” Her eyes were completely void of temper now. “Look, I know you think I’m speaking in tongues when I say this, but I want to be a real manager. I’m trying to be a real manager. And despite the fact that we’ll never get along the way I want to, I’m smart enough to know you’re the best person to teach me.”
Well damn if that didn’t both defuse his temper and humble him to the bone. Unable to help himself, he lifted a hand to her face, using his fingers to tuck her hair better into the helmet. At the feel of her smooth, soft, precious skin, he felt that now familiar ache from deep within him. He couldn’t seem to stop touching her. Nor kissing her, apparently, because he leaned in, cupped her jaw in his hand and put his mouth against hers.
She kissed him back, slipping her fingers into his hair at his nape, drawing him closer, deeper, and when she made a sound of pleasure and desire mixed in one, he was lost. He might have stayed that way forever, locked in her arms, if the smell of smoke hadn’t finally penetrated his swamped senses.
Smoke.
He looked up and his heart nearly leaped right out of his chest. Above them, the summit once again raged with flames.
8
WITHIN AN HOUR they had ground support, air support, and more of both on the way for the flare-up. There were firefighters on the backside of the mountain, digging their way through a firebreak, and more on the west and east side, attempting to gain quick c
ontrol this time.
Ally watched Chance quickly and methodically make sure every guest and employee was safe and accounted for. She witnessed his anguish, his fear, and felt it as her own.
“All staff members on duty are on the radio,” Ally told him as she caught up with him in his office. “They’re just waiting for directions.”
“The only direction is to stay the hell out of danger and let the firefighters do their thing.” He shouldered his backpack, checked his radio and headed toward the door.
He was going up there, she realized with a shock. She grabbed his arm. “What happened to staying out of harm’s way?”
“I’m going to see what’s going on.”
“No!”
A pained look crossed his strong features. “Ally, standing down here, over a mile away, torturing myself with what’s happening to the land, again, is killing me.” Abruptly, he shrugged her off. “I’ll radio you with whatever news I get.”
“No! Stay here, stay where it’s—”
“Safe?” He whirled on her, eyes hot and fierce, jaw tense. “Not if there’s anything I can do to help.” Then, shocking her further, he kissed her, hard, and on impulse, she clung to him.
For just a moment, he clung back.
“Be careful,” she whispered.
Without another word, he vanished out the door.
ALLY’S HEART REMAINED firmly in her throat, until the fire was fully contained and everyone was safe and accounted for.
Including Chance.
By midnight, things were finally quiet again. That was the good news, but there was bad as well. The fire chief didn’t think the fire was a flare-up of the old one, which meant it could either be the unusual heat wave or arson, and they’d be looking for answers come daylight.
Just the thought had Ally burning with fear and fury. It wasn’t Brian, she knew that much. She’d witnessed his joy in this place. It had become his home. He wouldn’t hurt it.
She turned off her office light, intending to go to her cabin and collapse in bed, but a light down the darkened hall drew her.