Jill Shalvis - Instant Temptation

“On the opposite side of the clearing from where I came in.” He paused, his eyes on hers, still calm, but just behind it, she could sense anger. “It wasn’t here when I left you.”

She let out a low breath. So someone had been with her last night, watching her. “Another hiker?”

His silence said he didn’t know. “Come on. Let’s do your thing, then get the hell out of Dodge.”

They sat on the plateau waiting for the sunrise. Harley pulled out her binoculars. “Still too dark to see down to the meadow floor,” she murmured.

TJ dug into his backpack and handed her…

“Night-vision goggles?” She stared at him, then grinned as she took them. “Okay, I take back all the bad things I ever thought of you.”

“But bad good, right?”

“Ha.” And yes. She slipped on the goggles and hummed in pleasure. “Wow! These are amazing! Think the Forest Service would ever issue these?”

“At nearly four g’s a pop, I doubt it.”

Holy shit. She turned to him, able to see him perfectly. “Why do you have them?”

“It’s a new toy that just came in. Stone brought them to me.” Reaching out, he tugged at a strand of hair. “We like to play.”

No kidding! Even in the dark she could feel the force of his personality, the heat in his dark gaze. “Too bad playing with you is more dangerous than playing with matches.”

He said nothing to that, but the gleam in his eyes suggested her assessment might be true. He turned and looked out into the dark, leaving her to her thoughts.

Suddenly, she had to know. “TJ?”

“Yeah.”

“So we’re doing this, becoming…friends?”

“Yeah.”

He sounded a lot more sure than she felt. But if they managed it, she knew she couldn’t have a better man for the job. He was intelligent, funny, strong hearted, and steady as a rock.

And yet…

And yet she didn’t see them being just friends. Not with this crazy heat between them. Eventually, he’d wear her down with his sexy innuendos, with the sheer magnitude of his hotness.

He’d ruin her for all other men.

She’d never be the same.

He’d ruin her for Nolan, whom she hadn’t thought about all night. With a grimace, she adjusted the goggles and watched for any movement in the meadow below. In the distance she caught sight of three deer, leaping through the bush, bounding gracefully with mind-boggling speed.

Something had startled them.

Probably something that had set sights on them for breakfast. Coyotes?

Or maybe whoever had been drinking from that Styrofoam cup.

She didn’t want something ominous there in her favorite place on earth, but it happened. It happened everywhere, and if she was being honest, it especially happened there in the Sierras, in real time. It was called the circle of life.

They’d seen it yesterday in its most vicious form when they’d come across the shot coyote. The irony didn’t escape her, that the mountains she loved with all her heart, the place that she needed in order to be happy, could also bring death so swiftly.

But the fact remained. Those mountains were deadly, and the rescue last night had almost proven that. Every single season at least one tragedy occurred because someone got stupid, lazy, or lost their concentration while doing something dangerous. Hell, even TJ and his brothers weren’t immune. A year and a half ago, Cam had nearly killed himself in a snowboarding accident. Stone had had a couple of close calls on S &R. And TJ had lost Sam.

What would she lose, she wondered.

First you have to actually have something to lose, she reminded herself. Her life hadn’t lent itself to that, but she was working on changing it. She was getting herself where she wanted to be, and for the first time she could honestly say she was trying to move toward a life she could enjoy.

“Deep thoughts?” TJ asked.

“Did you know how much your work would come to define you?”

He looked at her for a long moment. “Are you looking for definition, Harley?”

“Maybe.”

He was quiet a moment. “When we first started Wilder Adventures, it was about getting food in our bellies and keeping a roof over our heads, doing the only thing we knew how to do well. Getting paid to play was a bonus.”

“And now?”

“And now…now I can’t imagine doing anything else.” He paused. “Is that how you feel about wildlife biology?”

It was her turn to pause, as she looked at the blazing glory of dawn. She handed him back the night-vision goggles. “Yes. But I don’t think I have the job right yet.”

He smiled and slung an arm over her shoulders. “You will.”

“You sound so sure.”

“I am.”

The sun continued to slide up the horizon, quietly spectacular. “You must be exhausted,” she murmured. “Why aren’t you home in bed again?”

He turned his head. The bright rays of the sun slanted over him, lighting his hair, his eyes. She braced for the assault on her senses, especially the sensual ones. If he kept it up, he’d wear her down in no time, and she knew it.

“I wanted to walk you out,” he said simply.

The words, softly and genuinely uttered, gave her a flutter a hundred times more devastating than she’d anticipated, and she sighed, softening as she slid a hand around to the back of his neck, her fingers playing with the ends of his unruly, silky hair.

His eyes dipped down to her mouth, then back up again in question.

She lifted her other hand to his chest, and felt the very welcome heat of him, his muscles hard beneath her hand. His heart was steady and strong, like the rest of him. “What’s it going to be like for us?” she asked. “In the real world, I mean. Because there’s all kinds of…friends.”

One corner of his mouth slowly curved up. “Like the naked kind?”

A laugh bubbled out of her at his hopeful tone. “Maybe we should go with the kind that doesn’t necessarily ignore or bicker.”

He let out a breath. “Not as good as Naked Friends.”

No, it wasn’t. And that thought shimmered between them for the rest of the hike back.

Back at the lodge the next day, TJ was sitting at his desk, not at all happy. A few kittens were working on his shoelaces as he went through a mountain of paperwork that Stone had deemed his to handle. Normally he got through such a boring task by fantasizing. The fantasies varied in length and levels of sexual explicitness, depending on his mood. Could be a stacked brunette on her knees beneath his desk one day, or a curvy redhead riding his motorcycle in nothing but thigh-high boots the next.

But today his fantasy wasn’t make-believe. He had a specific face in his head, a very specific woman.

Harley.

In a sleeping bag-

He hissed out a breath when a gray kitten climbed up his leg. He no sooner extracted her claws out of his skin when her sister did the same thing to his other leg.

“Mew.” The soft cry was accompanied by the sweet batting of clear baby blue eyes.

“Try ouch.” He plopped both kittens to the floor. Where was he? Oh yeah, fantasizing about Harley…Doing so was even better since their trip, because thanks to Desolation he knew exactly how her soft skin felt under his fingertips, beneath his tongue. He knew how she squirmed when he kissed the spot beneath her ear, how her breathing changed when he stroked his fingers between her thighs, and he knew how she sounded when she came, those sexy-as-hell breathy little whimpers driving him right out of his mind.

Christ. He shifted in his chair and nearly stepped on a kitten. Bending, he pulled them both out from beneath his desk, set them on his chest, and looked at them.

They stared back up at him solemnly. “I’m not fooled,” he said. “You’re both menaces to society.”

They yawned in innocent tandem. Innocent his ass. They’d destroyed three important files and dumped his trash in the last five minutes alone. With a sigh, he set them back down and they curled up in a pile and went to sleep; cute and dangerous.

Like Harley. He’d told her he could fall hard and deep, and he’d been completely serious.

“TJ? Line two,” Katie called from down the hall. “Prospective hiree.”

They’d had the ad in the paper for weeks, and so far they’d gotten no serious contenders. This guy was no different. Within two minutes TJ figured out he’d never hiked or climbed above seven thousand feet and had no winter experience. That wasn’t going to work, not in the Sierras, where most of their climbs were well over seven thousand feet-try ten thousand-and in certain years, winter could last for six months out of the twelve.

TJ hung up and went back to the Mt. Everest of paperwork in front of him. It wasn’t even noon and already he was bored off his ass. By evening he’d be in the loony bin.

Stone came in and dropped into the chair in front of TJ’s desk. “Little glitch. In two days, Cam and I each have a trek.”

“So?”

“So someone let Annie answer the phone, and she accepted an unscheduled two-day kayak trip down Snake River.”

“And?”

“And you’re going to have to take it.”

“Why is that a glitch?”

“Because it’s the sort of trip that probably we should send Cam on so that Katie could go with him, but he’s already inked on a project, and he was specifically requested.”

“Still not seeing the problem.”

Stone’s eyes were laughing, but his mouth didn’t so much as twitch. “It’s four sorority girls. Cal Berkeley students looking to experience nature on the river. They want to see deer, rabbits, and wildflowers, that sort of thing.”

“Disney does Snake River?”

“Not exactly Disney. Sorority sisters. Which means it’ll be more like Girls Gone Wild in the Wild.”

Ah, hell. They’d been down that road. “You mean they want to be scared shitless while living their version of the Blair Witch project in the big, bad, wild Sierras.”

“Yep.” Stone stopped trying to hide his smile. “And have a big, bad wild trek guide there to protect them.”

“Christ.” TJ shook his head. Those trips had been lots of fun several years back, but somewhere along the way they’d lost their entertainment value. “I’m not taking that one alone.”

“Agreed,” Stone said, opening his phone.

“What are you doing?”

“Booking you a co-guide. A biologist and a photographer. Harley,” he said when TJ just stared at him.

TJ opened his mouth to protest, then shut it again. “Just two nights?”

“Surely you can handle four coeds for that long.”

“Yeah.” Except it wasn’t the coeds that worried him.

Harley was once again attempting to balance her bank account when her cell phone vibrated. It’d been buzzing on and off all day. Seemed she and TJ had been seen coming off the mountain together and word had gotten out. Just about everyone she knew had called her to ask if TJ Wilder was as good as women claimed.

Since she happened to know he was even better than good-try amazing-she wasn’t in a great mood. So when her cell buzzed for the dozenth time, she picked it up and said “I’m not talking about the time I spent with the Wilder sex god, and you can’t make me.”

There was a beat of silence, then “Hey, Beautiful.”

Oh, God. Perfect. It was Stone. The sex god’s brother. She winced and set her head to the table.

“Anything you want to tell me?” he asked.

“No.” Most definitely not.

“Okay, but for future reference, I’m the sex god in the Wilder family.”

“Good to know,” she said weakly in tune to his laugh. “Everything okay?”

“No complaints. Got a favor, though.”

How many scrapes had Stone, or any of the Wilders for that matter, helped her out of over the years? Too many to count. “Anything.”

“Glad to hear that. You still love to kayak?”

“Yes. Why?”

“We have a group of students coming in from Cal Berkeley. They want a two-day kayak down Snake River. They’re hoping to experience some wildlife and get pictures of them doing it. Think you can go along as a co-guide and photographer?”

“TJ put you up to this, right?”

“No. Actually, it’s Emma. She’s afraid the coeds will eat me up for lunch.”

She laughed. Stone was one of the most easygoing guys she’d ever met, with an utter will of steel. He loved Emma more than his next breath. He wasn’t going to stray, ever. “I don’t have any guiding experience, Stone. You know that.”

“No, but you’re an advanced kayaker and you know the wildlife. Plus, you’re a great photographer.”

Much as she loved Stone, she didn’t really want to spend two days listening to him wax poetic on his love life with Emma. Or that, apparently, he was a sex god, at least in his own mind. Plus, she needed to put some hours in at the garage for the sake of her checkbook.

“We’re paying,” Stone said. “And trust me, it’ll be worth your while. Let me bring over the employment app and papers I’d need to hire you, and you can think about it, okay?”