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“Your mom. She wrote to me. You were probably fifteen by then. She wanted to know how you were doing.”
“But…why did she write to you? ”
Leaning forward, he rested his forearms on his knees and stared at the floor. “She was too ashamed to write to your dad, maybe. I wrote back to tell her how amazing you were. Smart and hardworking. I never heard nothing after that.”
Lori cleared her throat. “You don’t think she ever got in touch with my dad?”
His eyes rose quickly to meet hers. He held her gaze for a long moment. “He never said anything about it.”
“Yeah.” Nodding, she kicked the cement with her boot. “I guess she never did. Thanks for telling me, Joe.”
“You bet, darlin’. Anything else you want to know?”
“No. I’m gonna head up to Quinn Jennings’s place. If there aren’t any calls in the next thirty minutes, you can go. Just forward the phone to my cell.” She grabbed her book to head for the door, but Joe cleared his throat and stopped her.
“Say, before you go…Have you thought anymore about selling your dad’s lot?”
Lori managed not to groan. What was it with that piece of land? Sure, it bordered a good stretch of the river, but it didn’t hide access to an old silver mine. Or maybe it did. “Joe, I’m sorry. I’m just not ready. I know it’s been a year now, but my dad was so happy when he bought it. You know what I mean.”
Joe held up his hands and offered a sad smile, the sympathy in his eyes a familiar comfort. He’d made an offer on the land soon after the accident when he’d realized she was having financial problems, and if she was going to sell to anyone, it would be to Joe. He loved that place and fished there all the time, even though his fishing buddy was gone.
She joined him sometimes, and it was as if her father was there with them, too. Just like the old days. Her two favorite people in the world.
Joe’s scarred fingers closed over her elbow. “No pressure, Lori. You just say the word when you’re ready to discuss it. Say, whatcha reading there?” He stood, starting to reach for the book, but Lori danced out of his way.
“I’ll see you Monday!” she called, grabbing her keys to head for Quinn’s cabin.
After rolling down the window and speeding out of the lot, Lori shoved a CD into the player and turned it up way too loud. The wind wreaked havoc on her hair, but for once, Lori didn’t care. The loud music and the beautiful day chased away her ghosts, mostly because she wanted them to.
Whatever had happened in her life, whoever she was, she needed to be free of it, just for a moment. Her hair, the one thing she loved about her looks, bounced and writhed in the wind. The music thrummed a sexy beat through her body. And the cool air made her cheeks glow pink.
She was twenty-nine years old. An orphan, sure. A single woman with no prospects. But she was hardly dried up and done. What she needed was a distraction.
Ben had stirred up dusty memories, and if she didn’t distract herself, she’d find herself living with ghosts. It wouldn’t be a long trip for her. She was living in her dad’s house, driving her dad’s trucks, doing her dad’s work. If she wasn’t careful, she’d turn into a fifty-nine-year-old man with a salt-and-pepper beard and hairy arms.
She needed a distraction. She needed to be a girl. No, not a girl. A woman. A fling would offer that much at least, and give her something pleasant to think about while Ben screwed with her life.
Or would it? She’d had casual sex before, and fireworks hadn’t exactly exploded behind her eyes. Firecrackers, maybe, down a little lower. Pop! And that was it. Night of adventure over. What the hell kind of distraction would that be? She needed… more.
In all honesty, Lori had never been as aroused in a man’s arms as she was reading the erotica that Molly had her hooked on. And despite the rumors around town, she wasn’t the least bit interested in women. So what did that mean? Did she need more…kink? Did she want a stranger to treat her with rough force like that last story she’d read?
“God, I don’t think so,” she muttered to her steering wheel.
Did she want to be tied up, spanked, or passed around a werewolf pack? Because she’d liked all those stories, too. Laughter bubbled up and made her snort. That werewolf fantasy would be a hard one to pull off. She’d have to troll through the forest in high heels, just praying one of the scruffy campers was actually a raving beast.
Her truck roared as it strained up the steep climb to the summit, but Lori barely noticed the impressive view. She was too busy analyzing her sexual needs.
No werewolves then, but what about all the other stuff?
She hadn’t been at college long enough to go out with more than one boy, no time for experimentation, and since then she was just…dating. Barely. Her frustrated groan broke in two when she hit a rut in the road. Dating. She’d only met a few men she’d even wanted to sleep with and couldn’t imagine asking any one of those guys to spank her.
Though Jean-Paul probably knew how to spank a girl. He’d probably done it dozens of times. Maybe she should call him. Maybe—
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Lori growled. She didn’t even want to be spanked. She just wanted to have a spectacular orgasm or two. She wanted spark and sizzle and a whole damn conflagration.
Her life was about to speed past thirty, but a real relationship was out of the question. She might not have a plan to escape her life, but she wasn’t ready to surrender to it completely. Someday she would leave Tumble Creek, find a way to move on. But for right now she wanted…more. Any excuse not to think about her problems.
Instead of worrying, she wanted to be glowing, moaning, panting. Wet. Just like the women in those books.
New shoes definitely wouldn’t do that for her, but it would be a start. A signal that she was ready and willing. And maybe, just maybe, the perfect stranger would come along and coax her to slip those shoes off. Or, better yet…order her to keep them on.
Lori gunned the engine and climbed toward the sky.
“H I , Q UINN ,” a voice said from right beside him. Much as he wanted to keep taking notes for his latest idea, Quinn resolutely put the pencil down and turned toward his visitor. When he saw her familiar curly brown hair and green eyes, he smiled.
“Lori!” He pulled her into a hug.
“Oh…Hi!” she squeaked, and Quinn quickly let her go.
“How’ve you been?”
“Good. You know…the same.” She shoved her hands into the pockets of her gray coveralls as a gust of wind blew up from behind her. Her curls bounced, tugged by the breeze, and her cheeks turned pinker as he watched.
“Well, you look great. Want a cup of coffee?”
“Um, no, I don’t think so. I’d better just get to work. I got those parts in last night.”
“Come on. Have coffee with me. I feel bad about last time.”
“What about last time?” she asked, though she walked into the cabin when he waved her on. With her hands in the pockets, Quinn noticed the way the baggy coveralls pulled tight across her ass. He was pretty sure he hadn’t seen her in anything but coveralls in the last five years. Maybe ten.
He edged past her to start up the small coffee machine he’d plugged into the generator line. When he spun back toward Lori, she was turning in a slow circle.
“Are you actually living here?”
He glanced toward the bed. “Sometimes.”
Her boots clomped against the scarred wood floor. Quinn looked from the steel-toed leather up to the delicate shape of her face and shook his head.
Lori frowned. “Why are you shaking your head at me?”
“Nothing. Yeah, I’ve been staying up here most of the summer.”
She cast another doubtful look around the tiny one-room cabin. “Where do you keep your suits?”
“Back at my place in Aspen. I head there every morning to shower and dress. The solar water heater isn’t particularly effective after a cold night up here.”
“I guess not! I can’t believe it’s so cold up here in the middle of August. It was nice in Tumble Creek.” She shuddered, eyeing the coffeemaker.
Quinn laughed and grabbed a mug to pour her the first cup.
She glanced out the window. “You must get a lot of bears up here.”
“Bears? I don’t know…”
She waved a hand. “They’re all around here, Quinn. So…what did you mean about being sorry for last time?”
“When you came by to look at the backhoe I was a bit absorbed in my work.”
“A bit,” she said with a grin.
“I didn’t even realize you were here until you were gone, then I felt like a complete idiot.”
Lori waved a dismissive hand. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve known you long enough not to be offended. You’ve always been that way. What did your dad used to call you? Doctor Distraction?”
“Yeah.” Quinn grinned.
“But I am glad you emerged from your daze long enough to offer me coffee this time.” She raised her cup in thanks and then gulped half of it. “Nice. I’m almost warm enough to go back out in that wind.”
“Hold on.” Quinn knelt down to rummage through the wooden box he kept next to the counter and dug out a knit cap. He tugged it over her hair. “This will help,” he murmured, as he concentrated on tucking a dozen stray curls under the cap.
“Stop!” She tried to duck away. “I don’t like hats.”
“It’s cold.”
“The coffee is enough.” She finally evaded his hands and yanked the stocking cap off, then stood, straightening out her hair and glaring at him.
“And I’ve always thought you such a simple woman. Who knew you were quirky and irritable?”
Lori rolled her eyes and tossed back the last of the coffee. “I should be done in about forty-five minutes.”
“Wait. Don’t storm out.” He pasted on a mock serious look. “This is turning out even worse than last time. I’m sorry I tried to put a hat on you. I apologize. That was inappropriate and horrible. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Amusement immediately replaced the annoyance on her face, and Lori laughed. “I just don’t like hats, okay? Drop it.”
She’d always had a great smile. In the rare moments on the school bus when both of them hadn’t had their heads stuck in books, Quinn would sometimes hear her laugh and turn to see her brilliant, wide smile. Not often, but that only made the smiles seem more important. And now? Now she was just a mystery. Unknowable and completely self-contained.
But she still had that smile.
He realized just how glad he was to see her. “Thanks for coming up to fix my machine, Lori.”
“You’re welcome, Quinn,” she called sweetly as she stomped toward the door in her big boots. “Give me an hour. Then we can discuss my bonus.”
L ORI PULLED a few more curls back into sproinginess as she stared at the backhoe’s engine. She made very sure that she appeared irritated instead of slightly excited. Those hands she’d wondered about had stroked over her forehead, her cheeks. Elegant as they looked, Quinn’s fingers were slightly rough, raspy from the work he’d done here on the mountain.
But it had been a fraternal sort of touch. As it should have been. Quinn was her best friend’s brother. He thought of her as a little sister or possibly not at all.
“More likely the latter,” she muttered, and forced herself to get to work.
“You say something?”
She jumped and banged an elbow on the angled hood. But Quinn didn’t notice. He was already back to staring down at his drafting table. “What are you working on?” Lori couldn’t help but ask.
He looked up, blinking as he always did when he surfaced for air.
She repeated the question.
“Oh, plans for the house.”
“But you’ve already started building.” She glanced toward the gray lines of concrete she could just make out at the edge of the meadow. “The foundation looks set.”
“Yeah, I’ve completed all the floor plans. Actually, I had everything done, but now I’m stumbling over the design details. I keep changing them.” He smiled in a self-deprecating way. “I do this every day for other people, but it’s much harder working on a house I plan to live in for decades. A brilliant new idea will come to me, then the next morning it’s clearly crap. I think I have a new sympathy for clients and their ever-evolving ideas.”
“That’s probably a good thing.” Lori looked around at the meadow and the trees and the blank expanse of sky suspended above the cliff. “You come here for inspiration then?”
His eyes lit up. “Exactly! The light, the color…shades and hues that change from minute to minute. I need to get the windows just right, the height and shape of them. The texture of the walls against the light. I need to know what the views will be in morning and afternoon and evening.” His hands gestured, and Lori greedily watched every arc, every twitch.
“That evening you were here,” he continued, “right after you left, the sun burst through the aspen, and I finally realized just the type of window I should place above the front door. The exact grade of stone to use on the fireplace where it rises up to the second floor…Shit, I’m sorry.”
Lori shook off the spell he’d cast with his bright eyes and deep voice. “What?”
“Sorry. I know I tend to go way past the boredom mark for most people. Not just computer engineers are nerds, I’m afraid.”
“No, I think it’s amazing! You look like you’re in love.”
“Oh.” He actually blushed. This tall, successful man standing in front of a log cabin in a flannel shirt. He blushed.
“It’s sweet!” Lori assured him.
“Yeah, great. Sweet. The ultimate nerd compliment.”
She couldn’t help but laugh. When he scowled, she laughed harder. “Give it up, Quinn. I’m not going to feel sorry for you. Even if you could convince me you’re a nerd, you’re still hot and rich and successful. Poor baby.”
Shaking her head, she set to work on removing the old starter. Maybe he was nerdy in the strictest sense of the word, but she knew plenty of girls in her junior high class who’d thought him tantalizingly mysterious before he’d gone off to college. Bookish and distracted took on a whole different meaning when the boy in question was also gorgeous and kind.
“Hot?” she heard him ask, and looked up to see him leaning against the porch rail watching her.
“Huh?”
“Hot. You said I was hot.” He kept his mouth serious, but his hazel eyes danced with laughter.
This time Lori’s face heated. She waved her wrench in his general direction. “I was just stroking your ego.”
“Well, nice work. It felt good, your stroking.”
She growled in frustration. “Go away. I can’t work with you staring at me.”
“You mentioned a bonus earlier. What did you mean?”
