by Ruthie Knox
Well. Maybe she ought to have been a little more discreet, but it wasn’t like there had been anybody around.
Tom appeared and squatted down beside her tent. He didn’t say anything right away, but those dark eyes raked slowly over her, and she had the horrifying sense he knew exactly what she’d been up to before he showed up.
“No luck with the nap, then?” he said finally, his voice the same low rumble that had just featured in her fevered imagination. It set all her nerve endings vibrating.
Not good. Strike the earlier plan—there could be no more fantasies about Tom. Because that little escapade ought to have taken the edge off, but instead it had made her attraction to him stronger, as if she’d really done the things to Tom she’d been thinking about, and now she wanted the next course.
“No. It’s too hot.” Her voice was a little throaty, and she coughed and reached for a sip of water.
“Yeah,” he said slowly. “Well, I was going to ride into Prineville, and I thought maybe you’d want to come along and get a beer. I’d show you the sights, but there really aren’t any.”
“You’ve been here before?”
He nodded. “I lived here for a few summers.”
More clues to the mystery of Tom. He seemed to know something about everywhere they’d been so far, but this was the first place he’d lived, as far as she knew.
“Sure. Anything to get out of this tent for a while. I’m getting stir-crazy.”
One corner of his mouth curved up in the ghost of a smile, and she was certain then Tom knew exactly what she’d been up to. “Really? You look like you’ve been enjoying yourself.”
She rolled her eyes, deciding to pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about. “Just let me grab some water, and I’ll be ready to go.”
“I’ll wait on you,” he said, and then he walked away.
Lexie dropped her head onto her pillow and closed her eyes. Pull yourself together, Lexie. The man is out of bounds.
Not for the first time, she thanked her lucky stars she’d thought to invent a husband on the beach in Seaside. She just hoped it would be enough. Because right now, she was feeling downright adulterous.
6
This was going to be a disaster.
He’d gone over to her tent intending to ask her out for a friendly beer—all part of the Be Nice to Lexie Project—but the scheme had abruptly derailed when he found her lying back on her elbows, her breasts pushing invitingly against that too-thin top she always wore, her cheeks and throat flushed, hair mussed, chest heaving. If he’d needed confirmation of what she’d been doing before he walked up, the look on her face would have given it to him. All the tension had drained out of her, leaving a smile of pure satisfaction. She looked like sex, she smelled like sex, and in that moment he wanted to bury himself inside her more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life.
Jesus. Where was her good-for-nothing husband when Tom really needed him? Someone had to kick his ass, and he couldn’t do it himself.
Still, he’d already walked up to the tent, so there was nothing for it but to invite her for the beer and try not to think about it.
Yeah, he’d just put that image of her out of his mind. No problem.
It would help if she’d bothered to change her clothes. The little white shorts she was wearing weren’t doing him any favors.
They pulled up to the bar and locked their bikes. Tom led the way inside. He didn’t recognize the bartender, but he’d worked on the same crew with a guy over in the corner. Jim, if he remembered right. He nodded in response to Jim’s wave and led Lexie to a table in the back.
“Corona okay?” he asked, recalling it was what she’d ordered in Corvallis.
“Yeah, fine,” she said, not seeming to be paying attention. She was taking the place in. It wasn’t much of a bar, small and kind of dim, but it was the best Prineville had to offer within shouting distance of their campsite. Plus, Tom was used to the place. He’d come here with the Hotshots a few times to unwind.
He bought a couple of beers and a basket of chips and salsa and brought them over to the table.
“So when did you live here?” Lexie asked, squeezing her lime and pushing it down into the bottle.
Tom did the same and took a long pull on his beer, grateful for the smooth, cold slide down his throat and the artificial chill of the bar after so many hours in the sun. “Three summers ago? No, four.”
“What brought you to Prineville?” The way she said the name of the city made it clear that she didn’t think much of it.
“A job.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, and he grabbed a chip from the basket, dipped it in the salsa, chewed slowly. He went out of his way to get the glare now. She used it whenever he was making her uncomfortable, and it was kind of fun to get under Lexie’s skin. She was cute when she was all hot and bothered.
“There are only two reasons to move to Prineville,” he said finally. “There’s the Les Schwab headquarters,” he said, referring to a regional chain of tire centers, “and there’s the Prineville Hotshots.”
“I’m going to guess you weren’t working for Les Schwab.”
He just cocked an eyebrow at her.
“So what are the Hotshots?”
He was a little surprised. Most people in central Oregon had heard of them. “A firefighting crew. They get shipped out all over the West during wildfire season.”
She leaned back in her chair and drank about half her beer, staring at him over the bottle. “Huh,” she said finally.
He mimicked her posture, slowly knocking back the rest of his own bottle. “Huh.”
“Why firefighting?”
He thought about asking her why anybody did anything, but instead he told her the truth. Some of the truth. “I wanted to do my part for the environment, I guess. And I was bored.” He’d also been trying to make amends for the part he’d played in running a company that had done a grotesque amount of damage to the forests of the western United States. Sure, his father was the one who’d broken the law, but Tom should have known it was happening. Should have done more, sooner.
A few summers as a firefighter were hardly a drop in the karmic bucket, but it had felt like the least he could do.
She drained her bottle, had a few chips, kept staring at him.
“What?” he asked finally.
“Oh, I’m just trying to fit all the pieces of the Tom Geiger puzzle together. You seem a bit miscellaneous, you know? I wouldn’t have figured you for a firefighter. Or an environmentalist.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not anymore.”
“Not which?”
“Either.”
“Why not?”
“Same reason for both, actually. I got tired of busting my ass to put out fires that would never have gotten so big in the first place if we had sensible fire management policies. But we don’t, because even though you have to do controlled burns to keep down the fire risk out here in the West, people are afraid of fire, so it’s politically impossible to get permission to set them. Most of the fires that do start ought to be left to burn themselves out, but they aren’t, usually because they threaten houses owned by rich people in places where there shouldn’t be houses to begin with. And that’s basically why I got sick of being an environmentalist in general. It’s a lost cause trying to fight for good policies when rich people with no sense are pulling all the strings.”
He pushed back his chair. “Want another beer?”
“Sure.”
He started walking toward the bar.
“Tom?” she asked from behind him.
“Yeah?”
“How many beers does it take before you’re capable of having a normal conversation?”
He smiled, since she couldn’t see him. “A lot more than two.”
He wondered how many beers it took before Lexie looked as relaxed as she did after an orgasm. It would be fun to find out.
Over their second beer, she quizzed him about firefighting,
and he got her to talk about how she kept control of a classroom of unruly high school juniors with that glare and her iron fist. The thought of Lexie disciplining seventeen-year-olds amused him. He bet half the guys fantasized about their English teacher in the privacy of their bedrooms.
Three-quarters of the way through their third beer, her cheeks started getting pink, and her eyes lit up with amusement as she peppered him with questions about a tour he’d done in South America. She gave him a hard time about his bike, his clothes, his technique, his tent—pretty much everything about the way he toured—and he gave it right back to her for being so uptight in the saddle. She told him there was a right way and a wrong way to ride, and he was doing it the wrong way. He laughed and countered that she could follow the rules or have fun, but not both.
A big group of Hotshots came in then. Half a dozen of them were guys Tom knew, and he introduced Lexie around. The guys flirted with her, and with four beers in her she started to laugh at the least provocation. Tom provoked her. She was pretty when she laughed.
When somebody put money in the jukebox, she asked Tom to dance. But four beers hadn’t made him stupid enough to touch her, so she danced with a few of the other guys instead, and he just watched.
She was, hands down, the sexiest woman he’d ever met. She seemed to have no idea.
She stopped at four beers, but Tom didn’t. After five, he had to admit to himself that he wasn’t just attracted to her, though that was bad enough. He wanted her more than he could ever remember wanting a woman. What was worse, he actually liked her. He enjoyed talking to her. Wanted to know what she thought about the world. Wanted to see her smile.
Worst of all, the sight of her dancing with anybody but him was making him jealous as hell, even while it made him angry on her absent husband’s behalf.
Five beers was how many it took to convince him he needed to put as much distance between himself and Mrs. Lexie Marshall as possible.
Lexie woke up wet and confused. Flailing around in the dark, she could tell at once there was a lot of water in her tent. Her sleeping bag and pad were soaked, and when she reached into the corner where she kept her headlamp, her fingers trailed through a puddle.
What the hell? She hadn’t heard any rain, so where had all the water come from? The only water in the tent was in her—
“Oh, shit.”
Her water bag had leaked. The bag she’d filled right before bed with nearly half a gallon of fresh water for the next day. Just before she’d fallen asleep, she’d heard a noise she thought might be an animal getting into their food, and in her hurry to get out of the tent to scare the little bugger off, she’d stepped on something. She must have squished the valve.
She searched the tent with her fingers until she found the bag and lifted it. It was nearly empty. Not good.
She sat up, turned on her headlamp, and took stock. Her sleeping pad and bag were a lost cause, and the flat nylon tote that contained all her dry clothes was lying in a lake by her feet. She unzipped it and rifled through the clothes. They were all sopping wet … just like everything else she had with her.
She found her camp towel and started soaking up the biggest puddles, but it was useless. There was nothing for it but to pull everything out of the tent and dump out the water, but that would have to wait until morning. It was pitch black and surprisingly cold. She wouldn’t be able to get anything dry enough to make her efforts worthwhile.
She’d just have to try to get back to sleep.
Switching off her headlamp, she lay back down. The sleeping bag was filled with down, which didn’t have much insulating power when it was wet. The cold soon started to seep in, chilling her through her damp clothes until she was shivering and miserable.
Could you freeze to death in a tent in June? Surely not. This was really freaking unpleasant, but it wasn’t going to kill her. She just had to suck it up. Sitting up, she rearranged the sopping sleeping bag in an attempt to find some warmer configuration.
She heard rustling, and then Tom’s deep voice from outside the tent. “What’s going on, Lex?”
Fantastic. All her moving around must have woken him up. In the close quarters of the commercial campsite, privacy after lights out was a fiction, but it was one they normally pretended to believe in. Leave it to Tom to pick this moment to abandon the pretense. It was embarrassing enough to have spilled half a gallon of water in her own tent, but it was ten times worse to have to tell him about it.
After their night out in Prineville, Angry Tom had returned with a vengeance, and she didn’t know why. For a few hours there, she and Tom had actually been having fun together, and now he wouldn’t even ride with her. She only saw him first thing in the morning and at the campsite in the late afternoon, and even then he kept to himself.
She’d reminded herself over and over that it was better this way. All she needed was somebody to pitch her tent next to. She didn’t need to make nice with Tom. Making nice with Tom was dangerous.
But she kind of missed him, and that bothered her so much, she was sharp with him on the rare occasions they did speak.
Also, if she was being honest, his abrupt retreat had hurt her feelings. But she was trying not to think about what that meant.
“My water bag leaked all over. It’s fine, though, I’ve got it covered. I can dry everything out in the morning.”
“You’re not fine. I can hear your teeth chattering from ten feet away.” The wall of the tent jerked, and then Tom was unzipping the flap. She reached for the zipper, hoping to keep him out, but she wasn’t fast enough.
“What got wet?” he asked. She couldn’t make out his expression in the dark, but he sounded irritated with her, as usual. Why didn’t he just leave her alone? This was not his problem. She was not his problem.
“Everything,” she spat.
“Do you have any dry clothes?”
“No.”
“Come with me, then.”
“What? No, I’m fine, seriously. Just go back to bed, and I’ll see you in the morning.”
He sighed heavily. “You’re not fine. You’re already cold, and the temperature’s going to keep dropping for hours. There’s plenty of room in my tent. We’ll get you warmed up, and then we can take care of drying out all your stuff in the morning.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. There was no “we” here. “I don’t need you to rescue me.”
His hand closed over her biceps in the dark, and he pulled her up to her knees. Man, he was strong. “Yes, you do. Now come on, I’m freezing my ass off out here.”
Lexie gave up. It didn’t seem like Tom was going to take no for an answer, and it would be stupid to turn down the prospect of a dry place to sleep. Plus, his grip on her arm was pretty firm, and she didn’t feel like getting into a wrestling match with the guy in the middle of the night. She followed him into the darkness.
He unzipped his tent flap and ushered her inside. Tom had what the outdoors industry generously referred to as a “four-man tent,” which meant it was big enough to sleep two adults comfortably. She knew from peeking inside during the daytime that he’d set it up to be cozy. He had a much bigger sleeping pad than hers, and he covered it with a sheet and his unzipped sleeping bag.
It was a palace compared to her little red sarcophagus. She could barely sit up in her tent, and Tom’s had a roof high enough at the peak for her to stand up straight. She’d scoffed at the waste of carrying so much weight just to sleep a little more comfortably, but she was starting to see the point.
“Get undressed,” he said gruffly.
“What? No!” There was no way she was getting naked in front of Tom.
“For Christ’s sake, I’m not coming on to you. Your clothes are wet. Get undressed, and I’ll give you my sleeping bag liner to wrap up in. I’ll turn around so I can’t see anything.”
It was a nearly pointless gesture toward chivalry anyway, considering how dark it was inside Tom’s tent, but it eased her mind. “Okay, fine.”
A white shape emerged in front of her eyes, and she grabbed it, brushing Tom’s fingers in the process. The brief contact was enough to send a little shock wave through her body, making her nipples ache and the breath catch in her lungs. Get a grip, Lexie. She’d never been so aware of a man in her life. It was ridiculous.
She moved as far away as she could within the confined space and laid down to wriggle her way into the bag. Tom’s sleeping pad was downright cushy compared to hers, and she sank gratefully into it, turning away from him. The liner bag was silk, light as a feather and soft against her skin. And it smelled like Tom, a blend of practical soap and musky male skin she’d grown familiar with over the past weeks—but never like this. His smell filled her head and surrounded her in a way that made her skin tingle and her crotch start to throb. Did he sleep naked in this liner beneath his sleeping bag? Did he think about her in his tent as often as she thought of him in hers? She shuddered again, for entirely different reasons this time.
Down, girl.
Rustling noises from Tom’s direction told her he was lying down and arranging the sleeping bag. “Come here,” he said roughly, and she felt a strong forearm wrap around her torso. “I’ll warm you up.” Before she understood what he was trying to do, she was curved against his body under the covers.
Oh, no. No, no, no. She struggled to pull away, but he kept his arm clamped tight around her waist, and she had to give it up.
God, he was radiating heat. And he was right, she needed to warm up. This was how they did it in the survival books, wasn’t it? Another person’s body heat was the best way to raise your core temperature. And Tom had body heat in spades. She could feel it burning through the thin silk that separated them, feel his legs molded to hers, his hard chest against her back, his breath on her neck.