скачать книгу бесплатно
“Ready. What’s the deal? Give.”
“You have to wait and see,” he said, moving behind her, placing his hand low on her back as he led her to the gate and out onto a narrow path that wound through a thick canopy of trees and opened on an expansive green lawn.
“Are you kidding me?” she asked, stopping, her eyes widening.
There were two elephants in the field, one equipped with a harness that had small, cushioned seats on top. He was large enough he looked like he could comfortably seat at least four.
“Elephant rides are a big tourist draw in Chiang Mai,” Zack said, the corner of his mouth lifting. “And I’ve never done it before, so I thought I would take advantage of the offer.”
“First time for you?” she asked. She’d intended it as a joke, but it hit a bit to close to that sexual undercurrent they’d been dealing with since they left San Francisco.
A slow smile spread across his face. “Just for the elephant ride.”
“Right. Got it.” She was sure she was turning pink.
“You?”
She just about choked. “The elephant?”
“What else would I have been asking about?”
Her virginity. Except, no he wouldn’t have been asking about that. It wasn’t like she had a neon sign on her forehead that blinked red and said Virgin on it. Unless she did. Maybe he could tell.
She really hoped he couldn’t tell.
“Yes, first time on an elephant,” she said drily, aiming for cool humor. She wasn’t sure she made her mark, but it was a valiant effort.
“Mr. Parsons.” There was a man in white linen pants and a loose white shirt approaching them, his hand raised in greeting. “Ms. Davis, I believe,” he said, stopping in front of her, his dark eyes glittering with warmth.
“Yes,” Clara said, extending her hand. He bent his head and dropped a kiss on it, smiling, the skin around his eyes wrinkling with the motion.
“Isra Amudee. Pleasure.” He straightened and shook Zack’s hand. “Very glad you could make it. Especially after what happened.”
Zack put his arm around Clara’s waist and Clara tried to ignore the jolt of heat that raced through her. “Really, it didn’t take me long to discover it wasn’t a problem. Clara … well, I’ve known her for a long time. I don’t really know how I missed what was right in front of me.”
Mr. Amudee’s smile widened. “A new wedding in your future, then?”
Zack stiffened. “Naturally. Actually I’ve already asked.”
“And she’s accepted?” Amudee looked at her and Clara felt her stomach bottom out.
Zack tightened his hold on her. “Yes,” she said, her throat sandpaper dry. “Of course.”
“And you, I bet, will have the good sense to show up. Now, I’ll leave you to the elephants. I have to go and take a walk around the grounds. But I’ll see you later on.”
Clara watched Amudee walk away and tried to ignore the buzzing in her head as the man who was with the elephants introduced himself in English as Joe. He explained how the ride would work, that the elephant knew the route through the forrest and up to a waterfall, and she wouldn’t deviate from that.
“They’re trained. Very well. Safe. You’ll be riding Anong.” Joe indicated the elephant who was harnessed up. “And I’ll follow on Mali. Just as a precaution.”
He tapped Anong on her back leg and she bent low, making it easy for them to climb up onto the seat. Zack went first, then leaned forward and extended his hand, helping her up onto the bench.
“Seat belts,” he said, raising one eyebrow as he fastened the long leather strap over both of their laps.
“Comforting,” she said, a tingle of nerves and excitement running through her.
“Ready?” their guide called to them.
“I have no idea,” she whispered to Zack.
“Ready,” Zack said.
The elephant rose up, the sharp pitch forward and to the left a shock. She lurched to the side and took hold of Zack’s arm while Anong finished getting to her feet, each movement throwing them in a different direction.
“I think I’m good now,” she whispered, her fingers still wrapped, clawlike around Zack’s arm.
“Just relax, he said this is a path she takes all the time. New for us, but not new for her.”
She didn’t actually want to know the answer to the question, but she asked it anyway. “Accustomed to calming the nerves of the inexperienced?”
“No. I don’t mess around with women who need comforting in the bedroom. That’s not what I’m there for.”
She felt a heavy blush spread over her cheeks. “I guess not.”
She was alternately relieved and disappointed by that bit of news. Relieved, because she didn’t really like to think of her friend as some crass seducer of innocents, and she really couldn’t picture him in that role, anyway.
If he was the big bad wolf, it would be because the woman he was with wanted to play Little Red Riding Hood.
But it was disappointing, too, because that pushed her even farther outside the box that Zack’s “ideal woman” resided in.
Ideal bedmate.
Sure, maybe it was more that than any sort of romantic ideal, but she would like to just fit the requirements for that. Well, really, being the woman he was sleeping with was very far away from what she actually wanted, but it would be a start.
A wonderful, sexual, amazing start.
She jerked her thoughts back to the present, not hard to do with the pitch-and-roll gait of the elephant rivaling a storm-tossed boat. It was a smooth, fluid sort of motion, but it was a very big motion, to match the size of the animal.
It also wasn’t hard to do when she remembered that, as far as their host was concerned, she and Zack were now engaged.
“A tangled web, isn’t it, Parsons?” she asked.
“What was I supposed to say?” he countered. “Ah, no, this is just my best friend that I brought along for a roll in the hay.”
“The truth might have worked. He seems like a nice man.”
“Look, it’s done. I’m sure his assumption works even more in my favor, in favor of the deal, and that’s all that really matters, right? We know where we stand. It’s not like it changes anything between us.”
She felt like the air had been knocked out of her. “No. Of course not.”
They moved through the meadow and down into the trees, onto a well-worn path that took them along a slow-moving river, the banks covered in greenery, bright pink flowers glowing from the dark, lush foliage.
She tried to keep her focus on the view, but her mind kept wandering back to Zack, to his solid, steady heat, so close to her. It would be easy to just melt into him, to stop fighting so hard for a moment and give in to the need to touch him.
But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Nothing had changed between them, after all. His words.
There was a reason she’d never made any sort of attempt to change their relationship from friends to more-than-friends. The biggest one being that she didn’t want to jeopardize the most stable relationship she had, the one closest to it being unable to stomach the thought of being rejected by him.
Of having him confirm that everything her mother said about her was true. Of having her know, for certain, that a man really wouldn’t want her because she just wasn’t all that pretty. Her mother had made sure she’d known men would still sleep with her, because of course, men would sleep with anyone. But she wasn’t the sort of woman a man would want for a wife. Not the type of woman a man could be proud to take to events.
Not like her sister. Gorgeous, perfect Lucy who was, in all unfairness, smart and actually quite sweet along with being slender, blonde and generally elegant.
Lucy actually would have looked more like Hannah’s sister than like her sister.
A sobering thought, indeed.
She should make sure Zack never met her sister.
The sound of running water grew louder and they rounded a curve in the path and came into a clearing that curved around a still, jade pool. At least twenty fine steams were trickling down moss-covered rocks, meeting at the center and falling into the pool as one heavy rush of water.
Anong the elephant stopped at the edge of the pool, dropping slowly down to her knees, the ground rising up a bit faster than Clara would have like. She leaned into Zack, clinging to the sleeve of his T-shirt as Anong settled.
“All right?” he asked.
She looked at where her hand was, and slowly uncurled her fingers, releasing her hold on him. “Sorry,” she said.
He smiled, that simple expression enough to melt her insides. He was so sexy. Time and exposure, familiarity, didn’t change it. Didn’t lessen it.
Just another reason for her to leave Roasted. If exposure didn’t do it, distance might.
Zack moved away from her, dismounting their ride first and waited for her at the side of their living chariot, his hand outstretched. She leaned forward and took it, letting his muscles propel her gently to the ground. Her feet hit just in front of his, her breasts close to touching his chest, the heat from him enticing her, taunting her.
“Do you want me to wait for you?” their guide asked.
Zack shook his head. “We’ll walk back. Thank you for the ride. It was an experience.”
He nodded and whistled a signal to Anong, who rose slowly and turned, going back with her owner and friend. She watched them round the corner, a smile on her lips. Yesterday, she was at a beachside hotel in San Francisco, expecting to lose half of her heart as Zack married another woman.
Today she was with him on his honeymoon. Riding elephants.
“An experience,” Zack said, turning to face the water.
“It was fun,” she said.
“Not relaxing exactly.”
“No,” she said, laughing. “Not in the least.”
“Mr. Amudee informed me by phone this morning that this is a safe place to swim. Clean. They don’t let the elephants up here and the waterfall keeps it all moving.”
She made a face. “Good to know. I liked the elephants, don’t really want to share a swimming hole with them. It looks pristine,” she said, moving to the edge, looking down into the clear pool. She could see rocks covered in moss along the bottom, small fish darting around, only leaving the cover of their hiding places for a few moments before swimming behind something else. “Perfect.”
Zack tugged his black shirt over his head, leaving him in nothing more than a pair of very low-cut white board shorts that, when wet, she had no doubt would cling to some very interesting places.
Her mind was a filthy place lately. And the sad thing was, it was hard to regret. Because it was so enjoyable.
“Swimming?”
“No.” She shook her head and gripped her sarong.
“Why?”
“It looks cold.”
He put his hands on his lean hips and sighed, the motion making his ab muscles ripple in a very enticing fashion. “It’s so hot and muggy out here it could be snowmelt and it would feel good. And I guarantee you it’s not snowmelt.”
“It just looks … cold.” Lame. So lame. But she didn’t really want to strip down to her swimsuit in front of him, not when he looked so amazing in his. She was. There was too much of her for a start. She was so very conscious of that. Of the fact that she had hips and breasts, and that she could pinch fat on her stomach.
Zack’s girlfriends had hip bones and abs that were just as cut as his.
“Ridiculous.” He walked over to her and scooped her up in his arms, her heart climbing up into her throat as he did. His arms were tight and strong around her, masculine. Lifting her seemed effortless. His large hands cupped her thigh and her shoulder, his heat spreading through her like warm, sticky honey, thick and sweet.
She realized what was happening a little bit too late, because sexual attraction had short-circuited her brain. She put her hand flat on his chest, another bolt of awareness shocking her even as Zack took two big steps off the bank and down into the water.
The hot and cold burst through her, her body still warm from his touch on the inside, the water freezing her skin.
“Zack!”
He looked down at her, smiling. She sputtered and clung to his shoulders, his arms still wrapped tightly around her. His skin was slick now, so sexy, and it took everything in her arsenal of willpower to keep from sliding her palms down from their perch on his shoulders and flattening them against his amazing, perfect pecs.
She wanted to. She wanted to press her lips to the hollow of his throat, lick the water drops that were clinging to his neck.
She wiggled against him and managed to extricate herself from his grasp. Fleeing temptation.
She walked up to the shallow part of the pool, her pink sarong limp and heavy now, clinging to her curves like a second skin. She untied it and looped it over a tree branch. There was no point in it now.
She felt exposed in her black one-piece. It was pretty modest by some suit standards, but anything that tight tended to make her feel a bit exposed.
“Well, that’s one way to get me in the water. Brute force,” she sniffed, walking back to the water and sinking into the depths quickly, desperate for the covering it would provide.
“Brute?” Zack swam to where she was, treading water, his eyes glinting with amusement.
“Uh … yeah. You took advantage of me.”
He paddled closer, his face a whisper from hers. “I didn’t take advantage of you. If I had, you’d have known it, that’s for sure.”
Strangely, with her body half submerged in water, her throat suddenly felt bone-dry. “I feel um … taken advantage … You … picked me up and threw me in and I’m … wet.”
His expression changed, his eyes darkening. “Interesting.”
