by Ruthie Knox
Tom could really warm a girl up fast.
This close to him, she could hardly think. It was all she could do to keep drawing air into her lungs, one breath at a time, willing herself not to react. But her body wasn’t listening to her brain. His hand cupped her ribs an inch below her breast, and she ached for him to slide his fingers over her nipple. The throbbing between her legs grew insistent and wild. She had to concentrate hard to keep her hips from pushing back toward him, closing the only gap he’d left between them.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Don’t do anything stupid.
She didn’t know how long they lay like that. A few minutes? Half an hour? It felt like an eternity—an eternity in which every muscle in her body tensed with awareness and she battled her arousal. Her crotch was slick and hot, jungle drums were pounding in her blood, and she had to keep reminding herself why it would be a bad idea to turn in his arms and beg him to kiss her. She was pretending to be married. More important, Tom was actually kind of a jerk, and she needed to avoid jerks. The TransAm mattered more than getting this man between her legs, feeling all that heat moving over her and into her and Omigod this is torture.
The whole time, she kept trying to figure out what Tom was thinking. Was this just Wilderness Survival 101, or was he feeling it, too? And if so, was he going to do something about it?
Please, please let him do something about it.
Wait, no, cancel that. That was her libido talking. She didn’t want him to do anything about it. She didn’t even want him to know there was an “it” she wanted him not to do anything about. Though if he didn’t know, and this was a one-woman party, how pathetic was that?
She was pretty sure he knew. He was still as stone behind her, but he was breathing awfully fast for a guy who was lying down in a tent. She guessed there was a good reason for those two inches between her butt and his pelvis. A big, hard reason.
But even without that intimate contact, the heat between their bodies kept building until she couldn’t even remember what it had felt like to be cold.
When she was sure she couldn’t take it for another second without embarrassing herself, his arm tightened around her, and he whispered in her ear, his voice a husky rumble that made her toes curl. “See, Lex? I can be nice.” She felt his mouth on her neck, trailing nibbling kisses along a path to her shoulder, melting her bones and leaving her weak.
She knew she ought to put up a fight, but her body surrendered to him without so much as consulting the control center. She arched her neck to one side, offering him new territory to explore, and she was sorry to feel nothing but cool air against her skin. He’d drawn away. The sleeping bag rustled as he sat up. His hand slipped to her waist and stroked over her hip, moving down her leg to squeeze her toes. She couldn’t help it, she moaned a little.
“You’re warm now,” he said in a choked voice. “Sleep tight.”
And then he turned his back to her and moved as far away as he could get without leaving the tent.
She didn’t know whether to be relieved or hurt. She was both, about equally. She was also wide awake and deeply conflicted about what had just happened.
He’d kissed her like a lover, and she’d nearly been ready to beg. Was he just messing with her? Most of the time, he treated her like an irritation, but then there were these moments where she thought she saw something in his eyes—something that sent her blood racing through her veins and made her knees a little wobbly.
Part of her wanted to think all that stood between her and Tom was the husband she’d invented, but then she reminded herself why she’d invented a spouse to begin with. Tom was off-limits. What on earth was wrong with her that she couldn’t seem to remember such a simple thing? It had been a long time since she’d had sex, but that couldn’t explain why her body and her brain turned to mush around Tom. She’d never met somebody who could make her fall apart like this.
It was just her luck that she felt this way about a guy she didn’t even really like, a guy she’d decided not to get involved with. A guy who thought she was married.
What a mess.
Even if she rode all the way across the country with him and back, she was never going to figure out Tom Geiger. But damn if she didn’t want him with every cell in her body.
7
White Bird, Idaho, to Grangeville, Idaho. 797 miles traveled.
With a rock the size of a baseball clutched in his fist, Tom pounded the tent stake into the hard ground. He always intended to buy one of those plastic stake hammers, but he never quite got around to doing it. It didn’t seem like a big deal when you were at home, but on a tour you found yourself pounding in eight stakes a day, day in and day out, and you cursed yourself for being an idiot. It was hard to get good leverage with a rock. Plus, every now and again you aimed wrong and ended up smashing a knuckle to pulp.
Lexie and Paul were in a huddle by her bike, swapping intel about tomorrow’s climb. She’d picked up Paul a few days after the incident in his tent. A hefty older guy in a bike jersey and the regulation tight black shorts, he’d come right over to them at the café in Richland where they’d stopped for lunch, making himself at home at their table. He and Lex had swapped stories all the way through the meal. Paul was a faux-humble retired insurance adjuster from Washington State, so full of himself Tom had wanted to throttle him inside of ten minutes.
Lexie seemed to like him though. She’d ordered pie for dessert and ended up in a three-way conversation with Paul and the waitress, whose mom had run a café in nearby Mitchell during the Bikecentennial days. Lexie had, of course, told the story of how her mom and dad met, and the waitress had shared her memories of those wild and crazy times, when at least fifty riders had come through every day in the peak months and the staff at the café had to mix up salad in garbage cans and bake two dozen pies every morning to keep up with the demand. Tom had pushed back from the table at this point, knowing that once they got started with the Bikecentennial crap they’d be talking for half the afternoon. “Where are we supposed to end up today?” he’d asked Lex, interrupting Paul in the middle of another self-important remark.
“Oxbow. There’s a commercial campground on the far side of town.”
“I’ll see you there.”
He hadn’t waited to gauge her reaction. It didn’t matter. He was through with being nice to Lexie.
That night in the tent had come so close to wrecking him, he flinched whenever he thought about it. He was no paragon of morality, but he had a few rules about women he’d never even considered breaking, number one being that you did not touch another man’s wife. Ever.
Better yet if you could manage not to covet at all, but he was only human. He coveted the hell out of Lexie.
He’d told himself she needed him to warm her up, but it was a feeble excuse. It wasn’t like she’d been close to hypothermia. He’d just wanted to get his hands on her. And the way she felt curled up against him with nothing but a thin sheet of silk separating them—the way she smelled, all minty shampoo and luscious woman—had driven him straight past the limits of his self-control.
He hadn’t been able to stop himself from tasting her. He’d needed to know if her skin would feel as soft against his mouth as he imagined. He’d needed to know how she’d respond to his touch, half-hoping she’d be outraged, that she’d put him in his place. But when she’d melted against him with a soft sigh, the knowledge that Lexie wanted him had nearly made him do something incredibly stupid.
Only the thought of her husband had stopped him. Tom hated the bastard, but he was never going to do to another man what Haylie and Craig had done to him. Moving away from Lexie had just about killed him, but he’d managed to recover. Sort of.
Being around her now was torture. He couldn’t stop watching her, thinking about her, wanting her. And hating her, too, for not loving her husband enough to tell Tom to take a hike.
Not that she was coming on to him or anything. In fact, she seemed pretty pissed off, and he aimed to keep her
that way. But even though she was angry with him, even though he could never have her, he still wanted her.
So when she’d shown up at the campsite in Oxbow with Paul in tow, he’d started thinking it was his chance to escape the whole sorry situation. Paul was an idiot, but he was a married idiot, and he was by all appearances a decent enough human being. Tom had been watching him over the past few days, and it seemed clear that he posed no threat to Lexie. When she’d changed into a little red bikini to soak in the pool at Zim’s Hot Springs the other night, he’d about had a heart attack, but Paul had barely given her a second glance. You almost had to wonder if the guy’s hardware was operational anymore. Tom was going to be thinking about Lexie in that bikini until the day he died.
The last stake finally in, he threw the rock aside and wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his wrist. Any way he looked at it, she and Paul made a good team, studying the map every night to get ready for the next morning’s ride, cycling along side by side and talking about daily mileages, cadence targets, hydration, and all that other shit that was so important to Lex. He’d have a talk with Paul tonight, make sure he was okay with taking over as her riding partner. She and Paul would be better off without him, and it would be a relief to put at least a hundred miles between himself and Sexy Lexie.
Within a mile of starting the climb, Paul’s face had turned the color of a tomato, and he was sweating buckets. Lexie managed to endure it for the first half-hour, but there was no way she was going to ride all seven miles to the top of White Bird Hill at a snail’s pace next to a guy who was huffing and puffing like a steam train. It was just … gross.
“I’m going to pick it up a little, okay? If I don’t see you at the top, I’ll catch you in Lowell.”
Paul just nodded, too out of breath to respond. He already looked totally defeated. It was going to take him a lifetime to get to the top, and she wasn’t planning to hang around waiting for him up there. She’d already heard all of his stories twice, some of them three times, and if she had to babysit him for another day she was going to lose her mind.
Tom was no help, of course. He’d dropped them within a couple miles of the campground this morning after asking where they were supposed to finish up. Ever since that night in his tent, she’d had this sinking feeling he was looking for a way to get rid of her. He’d stopped talking to her almost entirely, stopped riding with her, and at the campsites he either secluded himself in his tent or went off somewhere alone. Before—even after Prineville, when he’d gone back to being Angry Tom—he’d still usually eaten dinner with her. Now, he was a ghost.
So help me God, if he takes off and sticks me with Paul, I will track him down and kick his ass.
Not that Paul was such a bad guy. He was actually more or less what she’d imagined Tom would be like before she met him—older, jovial, and totally obsessed with all the details of how to have the optimal TransAm adventure. He bored her to tears.
What Tom had said to her at the bar in Prineville kept nagging at her. She could follow the rules or have fun, but not both. So far, she hadn’t been having much fun on her great TransAm adventure. Hanging out with Paul was giving her a taste of what she must seem like to Tom, and it tasted bitter. But she didn’t know any other way to be. Since Tom was hardly speaking to her, it didn’t look like he’d be giving her any pointers.
A gust of wind pushed her bike toward the shoulder. While she’d been lost in thought, a storm had rolled in. She glanced around, not seeing anywhere to take shelter. She’d just have to push on through it and hope there wasn’t any lightning when she was at the top of the pass.
A couple of miles later, the rain started to fall, rapidly soaking her to the skin. The spray off the road filled her shoes with water that squelched out with each stroke of her pedals. She couldn’t see more than a few feet in any direction, and she couldn’t hear anything but the rain. The wind was gusting so strong it almost knocked her over more than once.
It was awesome. Her heart raced, and she broke out into a huge smile, feeling alive, free, and somehow part of everything. How long had it been since she’d been outdoors in a downpour? Since she’d tasted fresh rainwater on her tongue and smelled the green scent of desert plants gratefully soaking it up? She could remember being sent outside to play in the rain with James as a kid. They’d stomp in puddles and stick their hands under the gutter spouts and dance around yelling like banshees, and then when they were done Mom would meet them at the door with dry towels and cups of hot chocolate. It had been one of Lexie’s favorite things.
This was why she was riding her bike across the country. Not for the miles, not to see the towns, not even to meet the people. Just this. The rain, the wind, the hill, and her legs powering her up toward the summit.
When she crested the top, she didn’t even stop. The rain had slowed, and she was craving the descent. She worked up a little speed, bent over the handlebars, tucked her body into a crouch, and let her hands off the brakes. Inside of a minute, she was flying, her bike computer clocking upward of thirty miles an hour. Her front tire pulled water off the road to wet her cheeks, while the rear threw a spray of wet grit up the center of her back. It didn’t matter. Below her, the Camas Prairie stretched out for miles, the intense bright yellow of rapeseed set off by purple-blue patches of camas flowers. She could see forever, and forever was breathtaking.
Some hick in a pickup truck nearly ran him off the road coming down the pass, and Tom’s bike hit the guardrail hard enough to shear off his derailleur hanger. He’d managed to stay upright, but he had to limp into Grangeville with one gear, his fingers crossed for a bike shop.
On the plus side, there was a shop. But it was a one-man show, and he’d had to wait for the guy to get back from lunch. Which had left him sitting on the building’s front stoop with nothing to do but twiddle his thumbs, watch the midday traffic along Grangeville’s main drag, and hope he could get out of there before Lexie turned up.
No such luck. Just as he wheeled his bike back out of the shop, he saw her—riding into town alone, soaking wet, with a radiant smile on her face. She must have been caught in the storm at the top of the pass. It had been threatening when Tom had hit the summit, but he’d made it down before it broke.
He waited for the smile to fade when she caught sight of him, but instead it widened, and his heart sped up.
How about that? Lexie was happy to see him.
He was pretty happy to see her, too, unfortunately. Her white jersey was plastered to her skin, outlining the sweet curve of her waist and clinging to the divot of her navel. She pulled off her helmet and yanked out her ponytail holder with a few quick tugs, squeezing the water out of the rope of her hair with her hands, then shaking her head like a wet dog. Her arms had broken out in goose bumps from the rain and wind coming downhill. Somehow, she managed to be totally innocent and scorching hot at the same time, his Eve in the Garden of Eden. Tom was uncomfortably aware of her. Uncomfortably hard for her.
You’re not Adam, asshole. You’re the snake.
Either way, he had to get out of the garden before all hell broke loose.
“Where’s Paul?” he asked.
Lexie jerked her head toward the mountain she’d just descended. “Back there somewhere. He was too slow.”
Tom frowned. Of course he was too slow. Pretty much everybody was too slow for Lexie. Everybody but him. Still, she was supposed to be riding with Paul. He’d talked to him privately last night, and Paul had agreed to take over as her riding companion. Now Tom just needed to figure out how to tell Lexie that.
She was peering at him curiously. “Take off your sunglasses,” she ordered.
He obliged, a little amused she was bossing him around. Lexie was a woman who was used to getting what she wanted.
“Come with me.” She stuck out her hand.
He didn’t take it. Even standing out here on Main Street, it wasn’t safe for him to be alone with Lexie. Anywhere else would probably be even worse. “W
here?”
“Just come with me, you stubborn bastard. I want to talk to you.”
That coaxed a smile out of him, and he gave her his hand, knowing even as he did so that she would be his downfall. Her skin was clammy from the rain, but it didn’t matter. If she touched him, he got hard. It was like a law of nature.
She pulled him down the side of the building and around the corner to the back, where nobody could see them. When she had him where she wanted him, she let go, fixing him in place with a glare. “When were you going to tell me?” She didn’t sound amused anymore. She was angry enough to spit.
“When was I going to tell you what?”
“You’re leaving me with him.”
Surprised, Tom crossed his arms over his chest. “He told you that?”
“I worked it out. You look guilty, and you’ve been avoiding me. Were you even going to ask me if I wanted to ride three thousand miles with that blowhard, or is my opinion irrelevant?”
Hell no, he hadn’t been planning to ask. If he’d asked her, she might have said no, and he needed to get away from this woman soon, before he did something stupid, like kiss her. Tangle his fingers in her wet hair. Peel that jersey off her stomach and find out if she had goose bumps there too, and if she didn’t, whether he could give her some with his tongue.
He shook his head. This was why he needed to go. “I was never sticking around for the long haul, Marshall, and you know it. We agreed to this in Seaside. I don’t need your permission to leave.”
“I don’t even like Paul!” She was nearly shouting, her cheeks blazing red.
“You don’t like me, either.” This was bullshit, but it was necessary bullshit. She might be irritated with him, but Tom knew if he touched her she’d come to him willingly. She knew it, too. The attraction between the two of them was a wildfire, and pretty soon it was going to crown and start spreading so fast they’d be helpless to stop it. He needed to leave before that happened. Before he did something he’d regret for the rest of his life.