by Edie Claire
Ri looked to see two roosters posturing as they moved their argument back into the bushes again. She breathed a sigh of relief, closed her eyes, and fell forward against his chest. “Please tell them not to do that again,” she murmured. Her hands crept to his waist and felt their way around his back. She leaned in and held him.
“You heard her, guys!” Wolf called out in an admonishing tone. “Knock it off back there!”
Ri smiled. His arms had come around her, too. He was holding her back. It felt so natural, so right. The world could stop turning now. Time could freeze in this very second and her life would be complete. Surely he could feel that same sense of primal, unqualified bliss. Of comfort. Of contentment…
“I wish you weren’t leaving so soon,” she blurted.
Crap. She hadn’t planned to say that. The words had just slithered out.
She squeezed her eyes shut with angst. He had tensed up a little. But he hadn’t let go.
“I’m sorry,” she amended. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
A beat passed. “You shouldn’t have to apologize for saying the truth,” Wolf said quietly. “I wish I wasn’t leaving so soon, either. I was just in such a rush to get that plane ticket…”
It seemed as though he meant to say more. But he did not.
After a moment, Ri raised her head. She looked in his eyes and tried her damnedest to get a read on how he was feeling. But the man’s emotions were a multilayered jumble of nonsense.
“But I am leaving,” he said even more quietly, his voice barely above a whisper. “I don’t have any choice. Not anymore.”
His gaze held hers, and Ri could see that he meant what he said. He did want to stay. And he did have to go. His time on Frosty Peak was nonnegotiable, as was the conclusion of her internship on Maui. But when, if ever, would he open his mind to seeing past the next three months? Why was looking beyond the immediate future so unthinkable for him?
She could point out the obvious. She had been tempted, more than once, to casually drop into conversation the fact that the University of Fairbanks had a fabulous grad program in marine science. But if they weren’t on the same page emotionally, her hints would serve no purpose. If and when his feelings became as strong as hers, he would be wracking his own brains figuring out how they could be together.
She steeled herself for patience. What could she do besides give their relationship more time? Never mind how little time they had. Perhaps it was a good thing he’d taken the physical aspects of romance off the table. It would force them to communicate their feelings in other ways.
If only the prohibition weren’t so painful. She wanted to reach up right this second and run her fingers through his wavy locks, cradle his head in her hands, and kiss those gorgeous lips of his until he was breathless and begging. But that would be cheating, dammit. And Sriha Mirini Sullivan always played by the rules.
Wolf Markov, on the other hand, did not. He’d been studying her eyes every bit as thoroughly as she’d been studying his, and although she’d made the mental decision to resist her impulses, her face was broadcasting unequivocal, raging lust. She could hardly fault him for accepting that invitation as his arms tightened around her and the lips in question lowered hungrily over hers.
No. Stop. I can’t.
She said nothing. She only thought the words. Even silently in her brain, they were half-hearted. She was enjoying herself too much. Her one hand explored his solidly muscled back while the other lifted to twine her fingers around his soft, wavy hair. She had not exaggerated her memory of their time in the grove. Kissing Wolf was amazing. She felt as though both her body and her being were melting. She wanted to get closer to him. She could not get close enough.
He clearly felt the same. His kiss grew more heated. His muscles felt so firm, his skin so warm. He was beginning to sweat…
A siren sounded.
Wolf released her so suddenly she almost fell backward. “I’m sorry,” he said immediately, reaching out and steadying her. He looked around them. “I forgot I was supposed to be keeping an eye out. Fine bodyguard I’d make.”
Ri took a second to catch her breath. The siren was getting louder, but its source still wasn’t visible. As soon as Wolf seemed satisfied that the coast was clear, he turned his attention back to Ri. He smiled at her and reached up to reposition her headband.
His smile was very happy, very sweet. The look in his eyes was tender and only a few pegs short of loving. But he also looked damnably smug.
Practically victorious.
“That didn’t count, you know,” Ri said obstinately.
He lifted an eyebrow. “What?”
“You know what I mean,” she said playfully. “I was taken advantage of in a weakened state. But if your policy still stands, then nothing’s changed.”
Wolf appeared confused. “Taken advantage of?” he repeated. “Did I miss something?”
Ri took pity on him. “I don’t mean—” She shook her head with a smile. “You interpreted my feelings correctly. But we’re supposed to be following your stupid-ass ultimatum, remember?”
He stared at her.
“No strings or nothing?” she reminded. “I’ll say it again if I have to, just to clarify. I want strings. Casual sex doesn’t work for me. So by your rules, Mr. Markov, that means no making out in deserted parking lots.”
He continued to stare at her, his face slowly reddening, as a Maui County police van at last pulled up the road and turned into the gravel lot behind him. Wolf stood still, not even bothering to look over his shoulder until the vehicle had parked. He said nothing else to Ri. But when he turned towards the arriving police officers, she could hear perfectly well the words he muttered to himself.
Stupid-ass is right.
Chapter 28
“Here,” Wolf said, pulling a square, lightweight tarp from his backpack and handing it to Ri. “You’ll need to keep this handy. If there’s a deluge, you’ll need to throw it over the instruments I’m carrying. My poncho might not cover them and I don’t want to take any chances.” He glanced up at the solid gray sky with a grimace. The weather did not look good. Passing showers were a near-daily occurrence on Maui, and he could carry out his work in light rain without too much difficulty, although doing so was both tedious and slow. But risking a heavy downpour was usually a nonstarter, and he had known the forecast when he and Ri headed out this morning. He just didn’t have the heart to put off finishing up the job till tomorrow. Not when she’d been planning all week to spend the entire day Saturday driving the road to Hana and back.
Ri looked at him speculatively. “If we get caught in a torrent, are your instruments going to be at risk?”
He smiled a little. He liked that she cared. He liked everything about her. He just didn’t know what to do about it.
“They’ll be fine as long as we’re careful,” he answered. “But we’ll have to take a break whenever the rain gets too heavy or the wind kicks up, which could make for a pretty long day.”
“So long as I can still get Maddie and Kai to the ferry on time,” Ri replied, looking concerned.
Wolf nodded in reassurance. “You’ll get them there on time, whether we finish the job or not. We’ll come back in the dark with a flashlight if we have to.”
Ri gave him a brilliant smile, and its effect was wholly unexpected. His gut felt like it was simultaneously twisting and on fire. And if that weren’t enough, he felt sad, too.
He turned away from her and began moving silently along the trail again. He was exhausted, that was all. He hadn’t slept well for days. He’d been tied up forever in Kahului last night, wrangling endlessly with the truck leasing outfit and the insurance company, not to mention the police. The damages to the truck would be covered, but there was no way to get a replacement vehicle for the weekend without paying market rate, which he couldn’t afford. He felt terrible about leaving Ri short of the promised set of wheels, but thank God, Maddie had come through for them. She had picked Ri up at the scene while Wolf
rode on the tow truck into Kahului, and after hearing their tale of woe Maddie had offered Ri the use of her own truck while the engaged couple spent the weekend with Kai’s family on Lana'i, which they had been planning to do anyway. The only catch was that Ri had to drop them off and pick them up at the ferry port in Lahaina.
The whole arrangement worked out well for Ri and let Wolf off the hook completely. But that only made him feel worse. He felt like he’d taken advantage of her skills as an assistant. She’d never actually taken his truck anywhere by herself, and it turned out she could have driven Maddie’s truck this weekend anyway.
The least he could do was buy her a nice dinner or something before he left. Right?
He felt a splat against the thin plastic poncho that covered himself and his gear. Then he felt another seventy. The storm had begun. He felt Ri throwing the tarp over his shoulders, and he grasped it in his own hands, then spun around. “We’re not going to make it to the next site,” he told her as the rain pounded down. “But Hosmer’s right up the hill from here. Let’s wait it out there, okay?” He had to shout the last words. The rain was pelting them violently and her ears were covered by the hood of her own poncho.
Ri nodded, and they headed toward the grove. A few minutes later, they tracked a hefty amount of mud into the small picnic shelter that sat on the other side of the parking lot from the Hosmer Grove campsite. The shelter was open on one side and not much wider than the two picnic tables it contained, but by huddling in its center Ri and Wolf could at least get themselves and their unloaded gear out of the rain. Wolf felt gratified that his habit of saving the easiest and most accessible sites for last had once again paid off. Everything they had left to do was within hiking distance of the field station; they wouldn’t have needed his truck today anyway. Even the section they did yesterday was a leftover; he’d been giving The Beard some extra time to cool off. Too bad it hadn’t been enough.
The rain was coming down in sheets. It hit the paved parking lot in pulses, creating multiple ripples that moved down the asphalt surface like waves.
“Impressive,” Ri remarked. She pulled off her headband and shook her whole head forcefully, wringing out her sopping curls by shooting a spray of droplets everywhere, including into Wolf’s face.
“Ugh! What are you, a husky?” he joked, wiping his cheek with his splint.
Ri laughed. “Whiner. You sound like Mei Lin. Except she just calls me a dog.”
“I thought you were wearing a hood!” he chuckled.
“I was,” she confirmed. “But the curls had other ideas.” She smiled back at him as she replaced her headband. She was still wearing the poncho, but Wolf could see through it. It could be made of lead and his imagination would do the rest. Damn, she was gorgeous. He had always thought that Maddie was gorgeous; and objectively, the picture-perfect redhead still was. But looking at the two women side by side the other evening, it struck him that Maddie’s star had inexplicably dimmed. Maybe the tall, big-busted ecologist was too perfect? He didn’t know. All he knew was that he’d never wanted any woman as much as he wanted Ri.
And he was leaving her the day after tomorrow.
Ri made a sudden gasping sound, and Wolf tensed, expecting to see a bear or a moose popping out of the bushes. He’d been on Maui four months now and still couldn’t kick the ingrained reaction, although at this point, he figured he should stop trying. He’d be back in Alaska soon enough.
“Oh! You know what I want to do?” Ri exclaimed.
Wolf was pretty sure they both wanted exactly the same thing.
“I want to go camping tonight!” she finished with a bounce. Her dark eyes shone with excitement and her cherry cheeks dimpled to the max. “That would be so much fun!”
Wolf found himself speechless. He looked from Ri’s glowing face to the sea of mud on the opposite side of the parking lot. They definitely did not want the same thing. “You want to go camping?” he repeated with disbelief. “In this?”
Ri made a face. “Well, maybe not in this,” she clarified. “We’d need a dry spell long enough to get the tent set up, at least. But I love sleeping out and listening to a light rain pattering over my head. Your tent is waterproof, isn’t it?”
“My tent?” he repeated hopefully. Maybe they were on the same page after all.
“If it’s big enough for two sleeping bags,” Ri continued, bursting his bubble. “And Bella, of course. We’ll need a chaperone.”
Wolf found himself speechless again. She was teasing him, but then again, she wasn’t. She was playful by nature, but there wasn’t a deceptive bone in her body. He couldn’t complain that she was leading him on. She’d been clear as a bell. She wanted him, but only if they had a relationship with a future. He had no future to offer.
Did he?
No. He didn’t. How could he? If he was staying on Maui, then hell yes, he’d go for it — his policy and his mantra be damned. He kept forgetting why he’d come up with them in the first place. But he had to go back to Alaska and she had to stay here. She had no idea where she was going after that — she’d said so herself. His own doctoral work would take him all over the state — it would be years before he’d settle down to a steady job, and even then he’d probably be traveling. How she thought any “strings” could fit into that picture was beyond him. Wasn’t that why he’d sworn off relationships in the first place?
No. Not really.
Wolf diverted his mind. Whatever he was starting to think about, he didn’t want to think about it.
The point was that he couldn’t offer Ri a future. But if that’s what she wanted, that’s what she deserved. And he had no business pressuring her into accepting anything less.
“Would Bella run off, do you think?” he heard her say, as from a distance. She’d been talking for a while. “Maybe we could bring a stake out.”
Wolf forced his thoughts back to the present. “We can’t bring Bella here. Dogs aren’t allowed. She can’t leave the field station grounds or Kenneth will get grief from the park service.”
“Oh, right,” Ri said, disappointed. Then she smiled with mischief. “Well, we’ll just have to behave ourselves, then. How big is your tent?”
Wolf tried to get hold of himself. The images in his head were way too vivid and he was developing a gnawing pain in his gut. “You’re a smooth one,” he praised. “But I don’t remember agreeing to lend you my tent, much less join you in it.”
She smirked. “Caught me. Can I borrow your tent?”
“Yes,” he answered. “But it’s a bivy-style. Strictly one person.”
Ri’s lips pursed. “Maybe Maddie or someone else at the Hilton has a real tent. Something big enough to stretch out and play cards in. Have a midnight snack. Make shadow animals with a flashlight. That sort of thing.”
Wolf stared at her sparkling dark eyes and realized for the first time that they weren’t completely brown. Although the majority of her irises were a rich coffee color, the outermost edges were a stunning emerald green. A little gift from her Russian mother, he supposed. Along with the crazy curls. But her Filipino father was to thank for her luscious lips and the smooth bronze of her tantalizingly soft skin. Whoever her birthparents were, wherever they were, the two of them had given the world a very precious gift, indeed. Not that he would ever leave her real parents out of the equation. They had taken the raw material and raised a woman who was as exceptional in spirit as she was unique in genetics.
He’d forgotten what they were talking about. “What?”
Ri cracked up. Her laughter was mellow and pleasing. “If I find a tent, will you join me?” she invited. “At least for a little while? If you get scared after dark, you can go back to the Hilton. I promise I won’t make fun of you.”
Wolf tried to reset his foggy brain. The rain was slowing down. The sky was looking brighter. They should get back to the site as soon as possible. He didn’t want Ri to lose any more of her promised free time.
“You want me to beg?” she asked. �
�Look, Wolf, don’t overthink this. It’ll be a Friday night, and I have nothing else to do. Maddie and Kai will be gone, and I hardly know anyone else on Maui. I’ll camp out by myself if I have to, but solitaire isn’t my favorite, and making shadow animals without an audience would be seriously lame. You think Kenneth is busy tonight? Maybe he’d—”
“All right!” Wolf broke in with a laugh. “Yes! I will… hang out in a tent with you. For a while, anyway. But I’ve got to get some sleep tonight.”
Ri beamed in triumph. His last words hung in the air, striking an odd chord in his ear. Why exactly had he tacked on that last part? It was true that he could and would get no sleep in her presence, whether he tossed and turned three feet away or whether he was pleasantly occupied. But he had no reason to say so. And now she was smiling at him with that damnable sharing-a-secret look in her eyes again.
Over lunch he’d take some antacids. Maybe he was getting an ulcer.
A gust of wind blew his hair around his face, and the force of raindrops striking asphalt picked up again. He sighed. “We might be stuck here for a while.”
“I love the rain,” Ri replied. Her voice turned wistful. “There was a house some of my relatives used to rent for family reunions in Bar Harbor. It had the cutest little cupola at the top, and the kids would all pile in it when it stormed. Rain would splatter all the windows, and you could see lightning flashing out over the water. Sometimes the floor would even shake with the thunder. It was dramatic and scary but I always thought it was beautiful, too.”
Wolf turned to look at her. “You sound like Frieda,” he heard himself say.
“Who?” she asked with a smile.
“My dad’s—” He paused for a beat as he searched for the correct word. Then he chastised himself. “Wife,” he finished with some embarrassment, hoping Ri hadn’t noticed.
Ri smiled. “I didn’t know you had a stepmother. That’s nice.”
Wolf frowned. “She’s not my stepmother.”
“Oh,” Ri said thoughtfully. “How long have they been married?”