by Alison Paige
He shook his head, a smile tickling at the corner of his mouth. “No.”
Joe wasn’t the one forever getting hurt in his relationships.
“C’mon I told you my humiliating ride down love’s terrifying highway. Your turn. Besides,” she said catching his gaze, her voice softening, “I could use the distraction.”
Her eyes were greener than he’d ever seen them, the pupils glistening. She was scared and hating it. But that wasn’t his problem. Not his job.
She leaned a hip against the tall queen bed, old lace decorating the canopy overhead. The maroon flowered comforter looked thick and heavy, pillows piled three deep along the headboard. His mind flashed on an image of her sprawled naked on that bed, her dark cinnamon hair curling around pillows, the thick comforter a tangled roll at the end of the bed. His body warmed, chest tightening. How easy would it be to undo the distance they’d put between them? How great would it feel to tumble back into her bed?
Didn’t matter. For her sake, they couldn’t go back. “Got nothin’ to tell.”
“You’ve never been in love?”
Joe took less than a second to consider the question. “No.”
“Never?”
“Not once.” He dropped his army-green canvas duffle on the floor next to the wingback chair behind him. He turned and set the silver gun case beside the duffle. He’d take them to his room next door when Kate was settled.
“What about your mother?”
Joe straightened. “What?”
“Your mom. How were things with you and her?”
Joe ignored the twisting feel in his gut and shrugged. “Fine. Why?”
“Well, if you’ve never been in love then the only significant, influential woman in your life was your mom.”
“She wasn’t.”
“Wasn’t what? Significant or influential?”
“Both.”
“Right,” Kate drawled. “So tell me about her.”
“No.”
“Joe…” she said, pleading with her greener-than-green eyes. Damn. Those eyes would get them both killed one of these days.
He folded his arms. “What’d you want to know?”
“Everything. Anything. When’s the last time you saw her?”
“Twenty-seven years ago.”
Kate snorted. “And…”
“She waved from the back window of a cop car. Arrested for drunk and disorderly. We were shopping for school clothes.”
“How old were you?”
“Eleven. Anything else?” His gut twisted tighter and he couldn’t keep his jaw from clenching when he closed his mouth. Rip off his fingernails one by one and he’d enjoy it more.
Kate didn’t seem to notice or was too lost in the imagery to break free. “Eleven. You never saw her again?”
“No.”
“What happened? Where was your father? They just leave you there?”
“Never met him. She was too drunk to tell the cops I was with her. When the store closed the manager found me and called social services.”
“That’s when you went into foster care.”
“Right.”
“Wow, I hadn’t put it together.”
“Uh-huh.” The knot in his stomach wasn’t Kate’s fault, but he wanted the conversation over. He grabbed his bags. “Gonna put my gear next door.”
“So you didn’t really have a mother. No one to help you relate to women.”
Joe stopped, the weight of the duffle and gun case sagging his shoulders more then they should. His head lolled back, staring at the ceiling while he found the tolerance to continue.
He looked at her. “I had a mother. She was a drunk. She was a woman who blamed every man she slept with for her fucked-up life until there weren’t any men left. Then she started blaming me.”
“What’d you do?”
He shrugged. “Nothin’. I was kid.”
His gut pinched so hard bile shot up the back of his throat. He fought it down without letting on. The years he’d spent trying to please his mother burned through his mind. He couldn’t make her happy. He’d never make anyone happy, least of all her. So he stopped trying.
“Joe…”
He shook his head. “Forget it. I survived.”
“Yeah. But at what cost?” Kate made another little feminine snort. “And I thought I had issues.”
Joe faced her. “I don’t have issues. I relate to women just fine.”
“Oh, obviously.”
“Trust me, dollface. I get no complaints.”
Kate blushed all the way up to her ears. She looked away, recovering, then looked back. “There’s more to it than being good in bed.”
He flashed a crooked smile he was only half feeling. “But I am good in bed. Aren’t I?”
Their eyes met. She smiled. “Yeah.”
Joe’s smile widened. “Never had problems pleasing a woman in that department.”
“But what happens when you get out of bed? You said you’ve never been in love, but love, for a lot of people, is the reason for sex.”
Joe tried to follow her logic. It wasn’t easy. “Satisfied is satisfied. In bed or out.”
“No. There’s a huge difference between physical and emotional satisfaction. You know that, right?”
“You fall in love every time you have sex?” He didn’t know what answer he was hoping for, but his gut wobbled.
“No. But that’s taken practice. It’s not the same for me.” Kate toyed with a cream-colored tassel on the comforter. “I’m not that kind of person.”
“Neither am I.” He readjusted his grip on his bags. “Sex is sex. The women I’ve been with were satisfied. Afterwards…yeah maybe I screw that part up sometimes. But not because I don’t care. Not because of my mother. Some women are just impossible to please. What’s the point?”
“But that’s not—”
“Enough.” He didn’t mean to bark, but the tension pinching between his shoulders and roiling through his gut was starting to make his skin crawl.
The tick-tock, tick-tock of her wall clock announced the passing seconds.
Joe exhaled, like letting steam off a boiling pot. His voice was calm when he spoke. “I’ll be next door. Don’t go anywhere without me. Understood?”
Kate nodded, her eyes a little wider than they should be, a little greener.
Not his job. Joe turned and left her room.
*
The mile-long trail ride along the winding Youghiogheny River was an end-of-camp treat. After nearly four weeks the campers were normally confident enough in their riding skills to make the trip without difficulty. The kids who’d attended camp before charged the anticipation for the new kids with vivid descriptions and fun stories along the way.
“You goin’ down the bum slide?” Tony asked, wedging his horse next to Sunshine. There was plenty of room for two horses on the path but Joe and Sunshine both looked out of sorts.
“Hey, kid, pick an end,” Joe said. “Front or back. The horse doesn’t like you squeezin’ in beside her like that.”
Kate smiled and swung her gaze forward again. Almost two weeks of riding lessons and Joe still looked as though he was holding on for dear life.
“Yeah, okay, but are ya?” Kate knew without looking Tony had stayed right were he was.
“Uh…I don’t know, kid. What’s a bum slide?”
“It. Is. Awesome!” Tony squealed.
Kate glanced back to make sure the other kids and horses following in line behind them weren’t spooked by Tony’s exuberance. Single-line trail rides tested a child’s restraint and patience. These kids more than most. Kate tried to be lenient.
“See, the river gets really slow and wide where we can go swimming. It’s not deep. Except in spots.”
“That right?” Joe said.
“Yeah.” Like he’d open a floodgate Tony spoke in a gush. “There’s one place that’s real high and you can jump off ’cause the water’s deep, but you gotta jump straight down or you get squished by the rocks,
then there’s this other part where the water runs down over rocks into the wider part and the rocks are all smooth and the water runs real fast and it’s like a trench and you can sit and slide all the way down into the wider part, that’s the bum slide. Get it? Ya sit on your bum and slide—bum slide.” Tony took a breath.
“Got it.”
“Single file, Tony.” Kate met Joe’s gaze for a half second before she turned back around. Her belly tingled.
Their talk the night before shed light on the inner workings of Joe’s all-male mind. Still, Kate couldn’t help thinking, no matter what Joe said, he knew what it was like to be in love. Even if he didn’t, he had to feel the chemistry between them. It couldn’t all be in her mind. It was more than sex, more than the job. No one pretends that well.
Fine. He had issues. Who didn’t? But it was as though Joe was doing everything in his power to keep the yawning distance between them. The more he pushed away, the more Kate was willing to risk to bring him back. Sure she could get him into her bed, but she wanted more than his body this time. She wanted him there on her terms, because he had feelings for her, not because she paid him. All or nothing.
She couldn’t be the free milk, the open candy dish. Not with Joe. Not anymore. It’d been years since she risked her heart to win someone’s love. This time it just might kill her.
“Switch out bridles for halters and leads, campers, then tie your horses,” Kate said when they reached the swimming hole. She dug out Wizard’s halter from the saddlebag. “No one leaves their horse until a counselor checks your knot.”
The tie rail ran over a long wooden trough, overflowing with hay to keep the horses busy. Agnes, Hickory Farm’s head chef, had brought lunch to the picnic tables around the bum slide in her modern-day chuck wagon—a restored concession truck. The sun was out, the skies were clear and the air was hot. The day was gearing up to be a much-needed fun-filled escape.
Joe tied Sunshine next to Wizard. He and Kate stood back to back. Ginny was on Wizard’s opposite side and the other counselors were spaced between the campers on both sides of the tie rail. The only person who’d opted out of the trail ride was Clayton.
Kate didn’t push him when he’d looked her in the eye and said, “I can’t.”
She knew there’d been a wealth of meaning in those two words, and a day spent river wading wouldn’t change anything. They’d find their place with each other though. She could see it in his eyes. Clayton wouldn’t walk out of her life—ever.
“Bum slide,” Joe said over his shoulder. “How painful are we talking?”
Kate turned. “I’ve seen jean butts worn straight through in one afternoon.”
Joe winced and shook his head. “You going down?”
“I already did about four weeks ago with the first group of campers to come through.”
“Ah. You’re swimmin’ though, right?”
“Is that a professional inquiry?”
Joe met her gaze, his face coloring. He smiled. “Right.”
Her cheeks went hot and she looked away to hide her ear-to-ear grin.
By the time she finished checking knots on lead ropes, Kate was the only one left at the tie rail. Children squealed over the rush of water, and a line had formed for people waiting to jump off a precipice into the deepest section of the swimming spot. Ten feet to the right or left could be a deadly leap. Counselors assured above and below the children were safe. They called it the high dive, though no one actually dove. Cannonballs, however, were aplenty.
Kate had just stepped out of her shorts and was undoing the buttons of her blouse when a male voice startled her from behind.
“Change your mind?”
Kate spun, hands clutching the edges of her blouse to her chest. Never mind she had a bathing suit on underneath. “Wha? No. I was changing.”
Joe’s gaze traveled over her body, making her skin tingle and her heart pound too fast. When their eyes met again, he smiled and Kate felt it all the way to her toes.
“Need help?”
“No,” Kate said hotly and finished unbuttoning. It felt too much like a striptease the way he watched her, but she motored on, refusing to meet his eyes until she’d folded the blouse into her saddlebag. “I’m good.”
Joe’s left brow shot to his hairline. “Right.”
Kate laughed, nervous, and for the first time really looked at Joe. He was wearing a bathing suit. Not cutoffs or old shorts but an actual man’s bathing suit.
The blue suit was snug, square cut, and hugged around his muscled thighs and narrow hips. With lighter stripes around his waist that came to a V in front, the elastic material shaped like a second skin over the firm muscles of his ass and clung to the tennis ball round of his cock.
“You mind?” Joe said. “There’re kids around. Bad enough I’m listing baseball stats in my head already. Cut me some slack.”
Kate snapped her gaze to his, but from the corner of her vision she could see the swell at his groin continued.
“Racing suit looks good on you,” he said.
She looked at herself. “Thanks. Need a different body type for bikinis.”
Skimpy two pieces made her look like Arnold Schwarzenegger on estrogen, too many muscles, too much flesh, not enough material. The racing suits fit better, felt better and stayed on a hell of a lot better. Until now nothing else had mattered.
“Green’s your color.” His gaze fixed on hers.
“You noticed?” She hugged herself. “Didn’t think that was part of your job.”
“It’s not.” Joe held out a hand to her, his eyes dark, his face relaxed, confident, sexy.
Kate blinked at his hand. Her belly fluttered. Maybe Joe was more open to exploring the feelings between them than she’d thought.
She couldn’t stop the smile blooming across her lips. “You sure?”
“Absolutely.”
She took his hand.
“Gotta keep up the cover, right?”
Connecting romantically with her bodyguard would be a whole lot easier if it weren’t for his annoying, and potentially life-saving, obsessive work ethic.
“Oh. Cover. Right.”
Romance or survival. Decisions, decisions.
Chapter Thirteen
“Ready?” He breathed into her ear. His stubble-rough cheek brushed against her skin, his sweet musk scent enveloping her.
Kate closed her eyes, nodded, clutching the thick knotted rope to her body. “Ready.”
Joe kissed her lobe and sent a ripple of tingles over her flesh. “One. Two. Three.”
He pushed and Kate swung out over the river, her feet perched on a fat knot at the end of the rope. She held as tightly as she could, but her hands were slipping. She ignored her stinging palms and held on until she reached the apex of her swing. Then she let go.
Freefalling twenty-some feet, Kate squealed, arms flailing. Seconds later cool water exploded around her, flooding out the light, and she was in the river. When she came up, the kids and counselors were still hooting and clapping. Who doesn’t love a good rope swing?
“Good one, Kate,” someone said.
“That was awesome, Miss Kate,” said another.
She’d no sooner brushed the hair and water from her face than a tsunami-sized wave swamped over her. Kate blinked, spitting river water from her mouth, clearing her vision in time to see Joe come back up, the ripples from his cannonball landing still sloshing around her. He flicked his head to sling his hair from his eyes and followed her toward the shore where they could touch bottom.
“Thanks for the warning,” she said.
His arms snaked around her waist, pulled their bodies together. “Warning. What fun is that?”
“Drinking a gallon of river water is not fun.”
He kissed her, pressed his mouth to hers warm and hard, then stopped just as abruptly. She gasped, her body suddenly humming with need, her mind working fast to catch up.
“Not my fault you were hangin’ out in the kill zone.”
“Right.” He shifted her in his arms, coaxed her to wrap her legs around him beneath the murky water. They could’ve been naked from the waist down and no one would know. Her sex spread open against the tight muscles of his belly. Kate hugged her arms around his neck, loving the secret intimacy of the position.
“Get a room,” Rick, a counselor, yelled from the hillside. Kate looked his way. A line had formed behind him for the rope swing, and all eyes seemed to be on her and Joe.
“Yeah. You lovebirds go make goo-goo eyes at each other somewhere else,” one of them said.
Joe nuzzled her ear, made her muscles flex low in her body. “Everyone’s buying the cover.”
Kate’s belly sank. He was pretending. Of course. She knew he was. He’d been laying it on thick all day. But there was only so much teasing her body could take. She wanted his heart to lead him back to her bed, but after a day half-naked, acting as though they couldn’t keep their hands off each other…she couldn’t.
She wriggled against him, pressing the heat of her sex along the hard muscles of his stomach. “Shall we give them an encore?”
Her wriggling inched her lower until she felt the unmistakable swell of his cock nudging her bottom. His body couldn’t lie. This was no act no matter what he said.
Kate’s heart skipped and she tried her best to sound impassive despite the surge of adrenaline zinging through her blood. “Thought you were pretending.”
“I am.”
She laughed, her breasts tingling, nipples pulling tight. “Yeah. Then I think your cock’s hoping to win an Academy Award.”
Joe glanced over his shoulder, then the other. He leaned his face close to hers, looked directly into her eyes. “This is an act, dollface. Understand?”
Kate swallowed hard, her pride lodging in the back of her throat. “Could’ve fooled me. ’Cause that’s not my hard-on poking me in the ass.”
“Reflex.”
Kate dropped her legs from around his waist, pushed off from his chest to put distance between her and his hard, ready body. “Reflex, huh?”
“Right.” He reached for her, snagged her elbow and tugged her back into his arms, his dark eyes focused on her lips. “Like the reflex that had your pussy creaming against my stomach just now.” His gaze flicked to hers, brows tight. “Reflex. That’s it. I don’t fuck my clients.”