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The hands she’d wanted on her last night.
But he’d refused her.
Whipping her head around, she stomped up the steps. Until she was free to head back to Blue Arrow, she’d hide out between the four walls of her room at the inn. Inside, she flipped on the television and found the channel offering fire coverage. At the bar, she’d learned the road closures were still in place, but there could be better news at any moment...
Ten hours later, nothing had changed.
Not her confined circumstances, not her humiliation over last night’s rejected overture.
She bounced on the mattress, she punched a pillow, she flung her body across the bed and hung her head over the side. The actions didn’t alter the news on the television—but they did serve to underline her restlessness. If she didn’t get out of this room—soon—she’d go stir-crazy.
But he might still be downstairs. The jerk.
Several times between last night and this afternoon she’d replayed their moments together: her nervous chatter, his birthday cake, the card battle. Too bad the hangover she’d been suffering from hadn’t obliterated her memory. For hours, she’d had a dry mouth and an aching head, as well as instant recall of his amused smile at her half-drunken ramblings, the heat in his gaze as he’d stared down at her before his “many happy returns,” his calloused touch against her upturned mouth.
Without thinking, she pressed her fingertips there. It was as if a brand still pulsed on her lips.
Damn man. He’d walked away from a tipsy stranger and likely considered himself the hero in the scenario.
Jerk.
Her conscience tried to reason with her ire—in truth, wasn’t it actually a decent-guy move?—but she shut down that part of her brain. It was her birthday and a girl should get a pass on logic for at least one twenty-four-hour period a year.
Still, she had to get some fresh air. In her jeans, a simple T-shirt and a pair of sneakers, she crept down the stairs, a bottle of water in hand. The bar and dining room held a scatter of refugees, but no Jay. On a sigh of relief, she pushed open the front door and set out along the quiet streets of the tiny hamlet surrounding the Deerpoint Inn. While she’d never been to the town, which was little more than a crossroads, she’d seen enough of the fire coverage to have gained a general sense of direction. She took every turn uphill and hiked along the narrow roads while committing her route to memory.
Though she didn’t actually venture far, she was moving steadily upward, surprising chipmunks and squirrels who skittered across the asphalt to ascend the trunks of the towering conifers lining the road. Black ravens sailed among the top limbs while blue jays flitted at the lower levels. If she wasn’t used to elevations that were over five thousand feet, she might be laboring for air. As it was, she appreciated the cool breeze on her sweat-dampened skin and welcomed the chance to pause when she came to a break in the trees that offered a glorious view.
From here, there was no sign of fire. The wind must be carrying the scent of it away, too. And spread out before her were miles of craggy pine-covered peaks and a slice of blue that signaled one of the many local lakes in the distance. She breathed in double lungfuls of the air that was just starting to come down from its afternoon high temperature. It had probably been seventy-five at some point today.
Already she felt calmer, she thought, as she took in more fresh oxygen. She might not have true Walker blood in her veins, but the mountains were still her place. The foundation beneath her feet.
A twig snapped, the sound loud enough to make her whirl and her heart jump to her throat. She put her hand there as she stared at the man who last night and this morning had been seated on the neighboring stool. “You,” she managed to choke out. “Did you follow me?”
Jay held up both hands. “Not exactly. I wanted to stretch my legs. I thought by trailing you I could have a guide of sorts.”
“Unwilling guide,” Shay muttered under her breath.
“Yeah. Sorry.” He paused to suck in air, then half turned. “I’ll go.”
“Wait.” Narrowing her eyes, Shay took a closer look at him. His breath was more ragged than it should be for such a fit man. Altitude, she thought. Clearly, it was getting to him. Stifling a sigh, she held out her unopened bottle of water. “You need a drink.”
He inhaled sharply again. “I think that’s where one or both of us went wrong yesterday.”
Ignoring that comment, she stepped closer. “Seriously,” she told him. “You need water. You’re feeling the effects of the elevation.”
He took the proffered bottle but his expression was dubious. “It wasn’t that long a walk.”
“We’re near seven thousand feet here. Where you came from...?”
“Sea level.”
She nodded. Beach. His tan already announced it. Glancing around, she saw a fallen log a few feet away and gestured to it. “Sit down. Drink. Rest a little.”
He didn’t look happy as he followed her direction.
Shay shook her head, reading his mood. “Don’t worry. Your macho will bounce right back once you descend a few hundred feet.”
“I don’t know,” he grumbled. “Last night I lost at War. Now this.”
His disgruntled tone made her almost smile. “I’m lousy at gin rummy,” she said. “If we played that it would shore up your ego in an instant.”
He glanced over as he settled on the log and stretched out his long legs. “You’re offering another round of cards? Thought you were mad at me.”
Shay shoved her hands in her pockets. She was mad at him—except when her conscience reminded her that he’d done the more honorable thing by refusing her. She’d been under the influence of birthday and booze.
Now that she thought about it, she and her half-tipsy offer had probably been less than flattering—and she had maybe been not all that alluring. Great. The pulsing sexual energy she’d sensed was likely a one-sided figment of her own inebriated imagination. “Can we forget about that?”
His eyes on her, he took a long swallow of the bottle, then lowered the plastic. “I probably can’t forget a moment of it,” he admitted.
Heat crawled up Shay’s neck and she looked down. Okay, so not one-sided? “Um...”
“And I also can’t help thinking it would have been damn good,” the man continued.
The words had her gaze leaping back to him. She stared at his face and into his golden eyes as the sexual attraction spun between them again, the line of it thrumming with energy. She could feel the heated effect of it in her chest, in her belly. Lower.
With a wrench, she cut the connection and turned away, to once again take in the view. Say something, she thought. Something inconsequential. Something to cool this down. She was sober now, and this wasn’t a safe or sane sensation.
“So...” Shay swallowed. “What is it you do at sea level?”
“Construction, mostly.”
Of course. Just as she’d figured. He was a man made to wear low-slung carpenter bags.
“Yourself?” he asked.
“This and that. I’m mountain-born and-bred. Lots of us have to do a variety of jobs in order to meet the alpine-resort prices.” This was all true. The schools in the area were small and though she had a credential, a teaching job had yet to open up. So she kept herself busy—and paid her bills—by tutoring and running some college test prep boot camps. Sometimes she helped out with her sister Mac’s maid service. The temporary live-in tutor job she’d scored until summer’s end was kind of a combination of all three.
Redirecting her gaze to the northeast, she thought about her sister Poppy’s pet project. “And my family has a tract of land and some cabins we’re refurbishing there. We’re hoping to create a quiet and very exclusive retreat for people who want to get away from it all.”
It wasn’t clear whether the idea would come to fruition, though. Her brother and Mac were still unconvinced, claiming to hold on to the outlandish idea that the property was cursed. Shay was on Poppy’s side, but as the non-Walker Walker, she kept quiet about her wishes on the subject. Because that outside-the-circle feeling was impossible to leave behind. The whispers she’d first heard on her fourteenth birthday had rooted deep in her heart and it didn’t help when to this day she caught old-timers going over the old gossip.
Behind her, she sensed Jay rising. “Well,” he said, “I guess I’ll head back.”
She swung around, risking another glance his way. “Are you going to be—”
“I’m better now. Fine.”
Looking him over, she decided on a small suppressed sigh that yeah, he was fine. Very fine. Tall, broad, all heavy muscles and long bones that came together in one package that just...just hit her someplace deep. Someplace...private. “Goodbye,” she said softly as he moved onto the road.
One stride away from her. Two.
Suddenly, he turned back. “Let me buy you dinner.”
Her heart jerked at the command in his voice. “I—”
“You owe me that game of gin rummy, remember? My macho needs shoring up. You said it yourself.”
She couldn’t help but roll her eyes. He was at least six feet four inches of hot-blooded male, elevation effects or no. “I don’t think—”
“It’s still your birthday. We’ll have more cake.”
Oh, there was that pull again. Her mouth was curving upward and inside she felt a dangerous fever jacking up her temperature and overriding her good sense. “And fewer martinis?”
“Whatever you want.”
Shay sucked in a breath, remembering what she’d wanted last night. What she’d offered, and how he’d rejected her. How low that had brought her.
Now, though, with him looking at her with those warm golden eyes, she felt light, free, like a kite that could soar over the mountaintops and float through the blue, blue sky.
Then the expression in his eyes became more intent as his gaze roamed her face. She was no kite, now, but a woman, sexy and beautiful.
Rubbing her damp palms against the side of her jeans, she moved toward him, unable to do anything but. “All right,” she said. “Dinner.”
Upon their return, they made arrangements to meet in the grill in an hour. Though he still didn’t have a room, the inn had opened up an employee area where the refugees could wash up. Shay took a quick shower then appraised her outfit choices. It was a replay of the jeans or a repeat of last night’s dress. And while she knew it would be wiser to stay casual—and more fully covered—she put on the filmy garment anyway.
When she took the stairs to the restaurant and turned the corner to see him waiting at a secluded corner table, she was glad she’d changed. He was in slacks and a dress shirt, an expensive watch strapped around one strong wrist. He looked confident and successful and when he lifted his gaze to her, once again she felt lit up inside.
While still trembling, just a little, on the outside.
He stood as she approached, his mouth curved in an assuring smile that nonetheless delivered a jolt of nervous anticipation. Surely she’d never felt this dichotomy around a man before. There was a familiarity about him—as if he were someone she recognized—that was at odds with her wary response to the immense attraction he held for her. He pulled out her chair and touched the small of her back to direct her into the seat. It sent a flurry of chills up her spine that tumbled down the front of her in a hot wave.
For a full five seconds, she couldn’t breathe.
There were no martinis. Nor birthday cake or gin rummy. Instead they shared a bottle of wine with an appetizer platter that was a delicious mélange of carmelized Brussels sprouts topped with shavings of a tangy, salty parmesan cheese. Then it was two dinners of seared halibut, rice pilaf and crunchy steamed vegetables.
They didn’t talk of anything consequential, including themselves. At one point he said he was on the verge of asking her name—but that “Birthday Girl” had kind of grown on him. So she didn’t say a word about it. Instead, they made up stories about their fellow refugees. That man in the opposite corner was an antler chandelier salesman, Jay proposed: he sold them off the rack.
The grandmotherly woman at the bar was a Mafia boss’s wife on the lam for offering counterfeit knitting patterns on the internet. Shay added, she’d bought herself a skein of trouble.
Finally it was getting late and the tables were cleared and those patrons without rooms were collecting blankets and arranging themselves for the night. When someone took the extra chairs at their table in order to create a makeshift bed, Jay cleared his throat. “I guess it’s time to turn in.”
During dinner, he’d told Shay he’d spent the night before in his car. She cleared her throat, too. “You know...”
“I know what?”
Her fingertip made an aimless pattern on the tablecloth. She pretended it fascinated her. “The bed upstairs is king-size.”
Silence welled between them when she didn’t say any more.
Then Jay broke the quiet. “Birthday Girl,” he said, his voice low. “Can you look at me?”
Of course she could. It was easy, because he still really didn’t know her—not even her name. But it took a couple of seconds before she managed to comply. His golden eyes studied her, but she couldn’t read the expression in them.
Her face heated as she forced herself to continue meeting his gaze. “I’m saying we could just share it...you know, sleep,” she clarified. “Nothing more than that.”
He reached over and captured her wandering finger, then took her whole hand in his. His thumb, that work-roughened thumb that had pressed against her mouth the night before, rasped over her knuckles, back and forth, making the journey down the shallow valleys and up the low hills slow and hypnotic.
Shay felt the touch everywhere. Feathering along the groove of her spine, ghosting over her tight, tingling nipples, teasing the tender insides of her thighs. Her body was melting, and if something didn’t happen soon he’d have to scoop her out of the chair with a spoon. “Jay,” she whispered. It almost sounded like a whimper.
“We could try sleeping, I suppose,” he mused. “But we should probably be realistic about our chances of ‘nothing more.’”
Who wanted to be realistic? Who wanted to calculate odds? Not Shay. She only wanted him and this time, this time out of her normal world, her usual ordered, good-girl, scandal-averse existence.
Rising to her feet, she turned her hand to clasp his. To tug him up, too. “Let’s go to my room.”
It was near dark inside the space that seemed dominated by the bed. The only illumination came from the glow of the night-light in the attached bathroom. They halted just inside the entry door and Jay cupped her face in his warm hand before lowering his head.
At the touch of his mouth, she jerked, her body moving into his of its own accord. His other arm curled about her hips, keeping her against him and the hardness that pressed into her belly.
She shivered, and he murmured something soothing as his lips feathered over her cheek, down her neck, before returning to her mouth. This time, the kiss went from gentle to greedy. Shay made a low sound in her throat and stood on tiptoe to get closer to him.
He made an approving noise and then swung her into his arms and strode with her to the bed.
What happened next was hot and sweet. He was a tender lover, and gentle, despite the size of his hands and the strength of his body. She supposed he was holding back—a man like him would have ravenous appetites, yes?—but that was all right with Shay, because she was holding back, too.
It felt as if they were encased in a fantasy and she didn’t want to pop its soap-bubble exterior by holding too tight or crying out too loud. With slow, patient touches, he rolled her up and over the orgasm, and when he followed, he buried his face in her neck, his big body shaking against hers.
They drifted to sleep without words.
In the gray light of early morning, they came awake to the sound of car engines revving. Shay gathered the covers close around her shoulders as his eyes opened and he looked at her from the other pillow. “Sounds like the roads have reopened,” she said, her voice quiet.
He ran a hand through his hair, and she remembered the cool, thick softness of it as she’d held his head to her breast the night before. Her nipples sprang to life against the cotton sheet and her face heated, but she didn’t make a move and hoped he didn’t sense her kindling desire.
Their time out of time was over.
He sat up, the sheet pooling at his hips. Through the screen of her lashes, she ran her gaze over the ripples of his chest and abs and stifled a sigh. She’d had her night with all that muscle and skin. It was time to let it go.
Let him go.
He took a shower and while he was occupied she rose from bed and wrapped herself in her robe. When he emerged fully dressed from the bathroom, she was standing at the window, staring into the street and the cars that were cruising by.
The world moving again. Moving on.
He stood close behind her, not touching. “Well,” he said. “Thanks for sharing your evening with me.”
“You’re welcome.” Shay refused to let herself look at his handsome face.
“And your bed,” Jay went on. “I think I owe you for sharing that with me, too.”
