Hooked

by Elizabeth Hunter

  Tobin blinked. “That sounds like… Dare I say it?”

  “Don’t be a shit, Tobin.”

  “It sounds like a relationship.” He took her hand and pulled her closer, staring into her eyes. “Who are you, and what have you done with Tayla?”

  “Didn’t I tell you to not be a shit?”

  “I do what I’m good at, which you’d know if you slept with me.” He shrugged. “So tell me about Mr. Wonderful.”

  “No.”

  “Why? Are you embarrassed? Is he a cowboy? Please let him be a cowboy.”

  “He’s not a cowboy.” Though his grandfather was. “He owns a comic and game shop. He’s an old friend of Emmie’s. He likes the outdoors a lot. He’s a mountain climber. He—”

  “Hold up.” Tobin smiled. “He does what now?”

  “He’s a mountain climber. And he likes the outdoors.”

  “Oh my God, you’re dating someone crunchy.” His eyes went wide. “Does he wear deodorant? Does he have back hair? I’m so curious now.”

  “Of course he wears deodorant.”

  “There is nothing of course about the crunchy kind! I hooked up with a rafting guide once when I went up to Tahoe. She was superhot, but you should have seen the hair on her legs.” He shuddered.

  Tayla finally got the server’s attention and ordered another drink. “You’re such an ass, Tobin.”

  “Why?”

  “When was the last time you shaved your legs?”

  “Uh… never.”

  “But a woman has to or she’s…” Tayla pantomimed his shudder. “You suck. That is another reason I’d never hook up with you.”

  “Fine, I suck. But does your mountain man wear deodorant or not?”

  “Yes. He smells very nice.” She leaned closer. “And he smells even nicer when he’s worked up a sweat.”

  “Lucky bastard,” Tobin muttered.

  She’d only said it to irritate Tobin, but Tayla realized it was true. Jeremy did always smell nice. Even when they’d been hiking. She put it down to good body chemistry and diet, because no man she’d ever met smelled nice all the time.

  And now she was thinking about Jeremy after she’d just had one of the best business meetings of her life. The server set down another dirty martini. Jeremy liked dirty martinis.

  Shit.

  Tobin must have picked up on her sudden melancholy. “So what is your mountain man going to think about you working at SOKA, huh? You think you could get him to move to San Francisco with you?”

  Jeremy in San Francisco? Tayla let out a hard laugh. “Yeah… no. I don’t think that’s on the table.”

  “Poor little rich girl.” Tobin leaned back in the booth as Tayla started her second drink. “So many choices. Looks like you have some decisions to make.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  After Tobin propositioned her, Tayla hadn’t wanted to crash at his place. She’d racked her brain for more options, but she couldn’t come up with anyone who would let her stay with them at the last minute, so she decided to remain at her parents’ house. She’d been there for three days before she saw her father.

  They nearly ran into each other walking out their bedroom doors.

  “Oh.” Tayla blinked. “Hi.”

  “Tayla.” Her father frowned. “I didn’t realize you were home.”

  “I didn’t realize you were home either. How’s the club?”

  He was oblivious to sarcasm, as usual. Or he simply didn’t acknowledge it. “It’s fine. Why are you in the city? Have you moved back?”

  “No. I was here for a job interview with a new fashion company.”

  He straightened his cuffs. “That sounds fun. Does it pay as much as an accounting position at my firm?”

  “I have no idea, but since I’m still not interested in an accounting position at your firm, I don’t really see the relevance of your question.”

  His stiff smile was as familiar to her as his indifference. “I noticed you haven’t touched the balance in your trust fund lately.”

  “Not since I bought the car.” The trust fund was something her father brought up often and she tried to ignore. “Did you have a question about the management of my personal finances?”

  “Just a curious inquiry.”

  “I see.”

  Her father resented that her maternal grandparents had set up sizable trust funds for their four grandchildren and Tayla had no need for her parents’ money. She didn’t have any resentment about her trust fund—her grandparents had been good people and had earned honest money—but she didn’t think about it much.

  The trust fund wasn’t enough to live on for the rest of her life or anything—especially not in San Francisco—but it meant she could take a shit job every now and then without having to worry about it. She’d always imagined that when she wanted to buy a house, she’d tap into it. Until then, it sat quietly accruing interest.

  She wasn’t an idiot. She knew how fast money could fly away. No one outside her family knew about her money. Not even Emmie.

  “So what are you doing today?” she asked her father. “Mom was talking about an exhibit she wanted to see at the botanical gardens.”

  “That sounds like a nice thing for you to do.”

  “What about you?”

  Her father looked at her as if she were speaking a foreign language. “I’m working, Tayla.”

  “Of course you are.” Tayla often wondered if her mother left the house if her father would even notice. “Okay, see you.”

  He frowned. “How long are you staying?”

  “I’m leaving tomorrow.” Or maybe today if she couldn’t take it anymore. She’d talked to Emmie last night, and she missed her best friend. She missed the bookshop, and she’d missed Friday lunch with Daisy and Emmie. She didn’t want to go out to another club and play Tobin’s wingman. She didn’t need to see another concert. She didn’t want another silent brunch in the morning room.

  She wanted to sleep in her own bed.

  She wanted to see Jeremy.

  She wanted to think about this whole SOKA thing without her mother’s depression hanging over her like a cloud.

  Tayla got on her phone and reserved a ticket for the afternoon train, breathing a sigh of relief when her email dinged in confirmation.

  Emmie met her at the train platform. It was already nighttime, and Tayla didn’t feel like walking the eight blocks to the store in the dark, so she was grateful.

  “Yeeeeah!” Emmie ran toward Tayla. “You’re back. Were you bored? Please tell me you were bored.”

  “Your encouragement is overwhelming. Stop. Please stop.” Tayla hugged her back and tried to act annoyed, but she was too happy to see Emmie. “I wasn’t bored. You know the train is a nightmare on Sunday afternoon. I just wanted to beat the rush.”

  “Sure.” Emmie picked up her bag. “Come on. I borrowed Ox’s truck. How did the interview go?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  Emmie took a deep breath. “Yeah. I do.”

  Tayla waited for Emmie to throw her bag in the truck bed. They hopped in the cab and buckled up.

  “It was great,” Tayla said. “It was really, genuinely great. The owners are amazing. The office is super chill and really friendly. Honestly, I know it’s not what you want to hear, but I really hope I get this job.”

  Emmie’s smile was tight, but Tayla could tell it was sincere. She swallowed hard and nodded. “I’m happy for you. I really am. And I’m excited for you. I’m thrilled you found something that sounds so perfect for you. Did they offer the position to you?”

  “Not yet. And thanks.” She leaned over and gave Emmie a hug. “The worst part about this job would be leaving you.”

  “And Jeremy.”

  Tayla sighed. “I’m not thinking about that right now.”

  “You have to stop pretending this isn’t real.” She started the truck and headed toward the exit of the parking lot. “He was mopey the whole time you were gone.”

  �
��I texted him.”

  “Yeah, he told me.” She turned left, then made a quick right. “What are you going to do?”

  “Nothing yet,” she said. “They haven’t offered me the job. There were up-front about interviewing other people. They had a list of five or six, I think. It’s entirely possible that I won’t get this, and then I’ll never take another job because nothing will ever compare with the perfection of working for SOKA. I’ll stay in Metlin forever and slowly be consumed by a massive cloud of pollen.”

  “Ha ha.” Emmie stared at the road.

  “Just say it.”

  “I don’t have anything to say. Honestly. I’m thrilled you found something so incredible that makes you sound happy and excited. And I’m also heartbroken because Metlin can never compare with the perfect job in your hometown.”

  “I’m not… I’m not being sentimental about the city.” She stared into the oncoming lights. “Trust me, that’s not it.”

  “How’s your mom?”

  Tayla shrugged. “The same.”

  “And the paternal unit?”

  “Only saw him once.” She glanced at Emmie. “In passing.”

  “His loss.”

  “No loss. You can’t feel a loss if there was never a relationship to begin with.”

  Emmie sighed. “Yeah. You can.”

  They drove in silence back to the bookstore, and Tayla waited for Emmie to pull around to the east entrance. Ox usually parked his truck on the side of the building in a spot reserved for residents. Tayla parked her tiny Fiat next to it. Emmie jokingly called the two cars David and Goliath when they were both at home.

  “Anything exciting happen while I was gone?” She hopped out of the truck and immediately felt her eyes start to water.

  Ah, Metlin.

  “I texted you about the bike race downtown this morning, right?”

  “Yeah. Sorry I wasn’t here to help out.”

  “That’s okay. I didn’t even know about it until Friday when they started cordoning off Main. We got some good traffic, but nothing Ox and I couldn’t handle.”

  “He helped out in the shop?”

  Emmie chuckled. “Dude. He sells so many books. So many. Especially anything he suggests in romance.”

  Tayla grabbed her bag so Emmie could open the door. “Do you ever feel like you’re taking advantage of your boyfriend’s many muscles and tattoos for purely monetary purposes?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” She turned to Tayla. “It’s for literacy.”

  “Keep telling yourself that, you pimp.”

  “Hey, I didn’t know you’d be back today, so we kinda planned a morning hike for tomorrow with Cary and Jeremy. They want to scout out a new camping spot that has a rock nearby they’ve been wanting to climb. It’s not far, maybe five miles total. You want to come?”

  Hmmm. Did she want to spend all morning staring at Jeremy’s ass as they hiked up a trail in the mountains? “How much up and down is there?”

  “The trail? It’s fairly flat, but there’s some slope going up. Would be downhill on the way back.”

  Tayla nodded. “I can do that. I might bring that new yoga mat and gear Outdoor Om sent last week. That’s right up their alley, and I’m sure there’ll be a good location at some point.”

  “Oh! Great idea. I could pack a couple of those middle grade adventure books too. Do some pictures of great outdoor books in the great outdoors. Ox is reading Hatchet with the kids in book club next month.”

  “Emmie, what have you done? That man is getting so wholesome he could be a dairy product.”

  The first thing Jeremy did when he hopped out of his truck Sunday morning was head straight to Tayla and pull her around the corner of the building to kiss her. He pressed her against the red brick, warm from the morning sun, tilted her chin up, and took her lips in a long, slow, lazy kiss.

  Her heart was racing by the time he let her go. “Hi.”

  He smiled. “Hey. Missed you. How was San Francisco?”

  She almost said who? “Uh, it was fine. Great. The interview went really well.”

  “How’s your family?”

  “Ha. The same. How’s Pop?”

  “Up at my parents’ place still. I think he and my dad have been hitting the spring fishing hard. They’ve both been muttering about bass for weeks now.”

  “Your family cracks me up.”

  “There’s nothing funny about bass fishing, Tayla.” He teased a piece of her hair that had fallen out of the messy bun she’d created that morning. “This is cute.”

  “I’m going to take some pics with the new yoga stuff.”

  “You know, if you learned how to rock climb, you could do yoga at the top of the cliff.”

  She pursed her lips. “Hmmm. Let me think about that. Balancing in sometimes precarious positions along the edge of a very tall cliff…? No thank you—I like my skull intact.”

  He slid his hands down her back to cup her ass. “I’d hold on to you.”

  “That would make for a very different kind of Instagram account.” She couldn’t stop her smile. “I’m doing all the outdoorsy things now, you know. I’m practically a nature girl. Can’t you just be happy with that?”

  “I am.” He bent down and kissed the side of her neck. “Very happy.”

  “Hey!” Ox yelled from the truck. “Can we get going please? Cary’s meeting us at the trailhead.”

  “Spoilsport,” Tayla muttered. “I never liked him.”

  “Yeah, you do.” He took her hand. “We can make out later. After we climb to the top of the hill.”

  She spotted Ox securing a bundle of ropes in the back of the pickup truck. “You’re climbing today? I thought we were just hiking to the place where you were climbing later?”

  “Cary and I wanted to scope it out some. See what kind of permanent anchors are there and what their condition is, what we might need to bring if we wanted to take a new route. Stuff like that.”

  “So you are climbing today?” For some reason, the thought gave her a shot of panic.

  “Just a little bit. Cary’ll lead. He’s more experienced than I am.”

  “Hey!” Emmie called. “You guys ready or what?” She was wearing a pair of long hiking shorts and a T-shirt that said I’m Sorry for the Things I Said when We Were Pitching the Tent.

  “Yeah, we’re coming.”

  “Too much information,” Ox muttered.

  “Ha ha.” Tayla whacked his arm as she climbed into the back seat of the pickup. She always volunteered to sit in the back since she had short legs and didn’t get carsick.

  Jeremy climbed in beside her.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Emmie’s feeling sick,” he said. “I can sit back here.”

  “With those legs?”

  “I’m not feeling sick,” Emmie said. “He completely made that up.”

  Jeremy stretched his legs across to her side. “I guess we’ll have to cuddle.”

  Tayla smiled and decided to go with it. Ox pulled away from the curb and put James Bay on the radio. They drove into the light as the sun rose behind the mountains in the east.

  Tayla closed her eyes and felt all the tension from the visit home dissolve. Her mother’s misery drifted away. The pressure of her father’s expectations flew from her mind. Lounging against Jeremy Allen’s chest in the crew cab of a pickup truck while he played with her hair wasn’t something she could complain about.

  The morning was cool, and the mountains would be cooler. Tayla had dressed in the clothes the Outdoor Om had sent her—long, stretchy shorts with pockets, a long-sleeved shirt, and a thin vest that moved easily with her body. It was comfortable in the valley, but she knew she’d be chilly until the hike started.

  “This is cute stuff.” Jeremy plucked at her shorts. “You taking pictures?”

  “Yeah, it’s kind of perfect. I just got this box of stuff from a company that specializes in outdoor yoga gear. A whole bunch of it. It’s really cute.”

  “Wh
at’s the difference between outdoor yoga gear and regular yoga gear?”

  “Heavier-duty mats, for one. More cushioned. And specialized backpacks that have a pocket for a yoga mat. And this.” She gestured to her clothes. “Clothing that’s flexible enough to move easily in but also sturdy enough to hike in. I wouldn’t want to hike in most yoga pants.”

  “They kind of remind me of climbing pants.”

  “That may be where they got the idea. I think some climbers do yoga, right?”

  “Lots.” He bent down to her ear. “You’d love climbing.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “Just you and the mountain. The quiet. The wind. The views.”

  She shivered. “So you’re saying that I can’t blast my K-pop playlist while you’re stuck to the side of a mountain?”

  “What if I promised to teach you fun things to do with ropes?” he whispered.

  Her eyes went wide. Was Jeremy revealing a kinky side? “Uh…”

  “You know, climbing harnesses—”

  “You know we can hear you back there, right?” Ox broke in. “No offense, J, but I do not want to hear where this conversation is going.”

  “Jealous much, Ox?” Tayla asked.

  “Intrigued.” Emmie tapped her chin. “Tayla, let me know if you want book recommendations.”

  She laughed as Jeremy covered his face.

  “I’m shutting up now,” he said.

  “No, no,” she said. “I’m very curious where you were going with that.”

  His cheeks were dark. “I’ll tell you later.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll remind you.”

  They arrived at the trailhead an hour and a half later. The air was cool and crisp, and the dogwood trees were blooming along the road.

  Tayla squeezed out of the truck and took a deep breath.

  Fresh air. Pine. A little dirt.

  “No pollen.” She sighed in relief. “Okay, this is my favorite place to be in the spring.”

  Jeremy bent and kissed her cheek. “My mom says the same thing. She lectures me about the air quality in the valley all the time.”