Jill Shalvis - Instant Temptation

“Easy enough for you to say.” TJ pushed away the food, having lost his appetite to the niggling pain in his gut. Or was that his heart? “You all have someone to sleep late with. Be lazy with.”

Nothing came from the peanut gallery except the proverbial chirping crickets.

With a sigh, he took in the shocked and dismayed faces of his family. “I didn’t mean that like it sounded.”

“Yes, you did,” Katie said gently. “We’ve been pretty sickening lately, I imagine.”

A corner of Cam’s mouth quirked. “The upcoming wedding isn’t helping.”

They felt the need to be nice to the poor single guy. Great. With an oath, he stood up. “Look, you guys do what works for you. Cut back. Hell, quit if that’s what you want. But I’m not ready.” He grabbed his keys. “I’m going for a ride.”

“A ride?” Cam asked. “Or an escape?”

“Shut up, Cam.”

“Oh good, a fight,” Annie said entering the room. She wore her usual jeans and angry chef apron, which today read:

IN THIS HOUSE TWO RULES APPLY.

1) I’M THE BOSS.

2) SEE RULE #1.

She looked right at TJ. “Is this about Harley and whatever happened between the two of you last night at the party?”

“Nothing happened.”

“Nothing made you rip out there and go for a four-hour bike ride, where, I’m assuming, you rode all sorts of stupid trails by moonlight, since you came back muddy as hell.” When TJ just looked at her she lifted a shoulder. “I couldn’t sleep. I was on the front porch of our cabin eating a bag of chips when you drove past me to your cabin. At four in the morning.”

“Baby,” Nick said to Annie. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

“Because you were snoring like a buzz saw. Besides, I wanted the whole bag of chips to myself.” She looked at TJ again.

Everyone did.

He sighed. “Look, I’m leaving, and then so is she.” It was Harley’s excuse and it was a crappy one, but it was all he had.

Just as apparently, it’d been all Harley had.

There was silence in the room as his words were absorbed.

“It can’t end like this,” Katie finally said. “You love her.”

Stone turned to TJ. “Did you tell her you love her?”

“Jesus.” TJ scrubbed his hands over his face. “We’re not doing this. We’re not talking about it.”

Cam shook his head. “He didn’t tell her.”

“Look, I’ll…work it out.”

“You’ll work it out?” Stone asked as if TJ was a moron. “How? What have you got?”

TJ didn’t say anything. Because he had nothing. Jack shit.

Except the truth-that he was helplessly, 100 percent gone over Harley. Moving to the refrigerator, he grabbed a bottle of water and downed it, which did nothing to help his suddenly parched throat. Swiping a hand across his mouth, he turned and nearly plowed right into Cam, who’d somehow gotten the idea it would be okay to get all up in TJ’s face. He stood so close that TJ could see the brotherly annoyance and affection swirling in Cam’s green eyes. “What?” TJ snapped.

When Cam didn’t respond, TJ nudged him for some space.

Okay, a shove. He gave him a shove.

Cam held his ground, though he did smile. “Let me guess. You’re looking to kick someone’s ass, and since I’m in your face and wanting to know what’s wrong, it might as well be me.”

Because that was true, TJ didn’t bother to respond.

Cam’s smile spread to a grin. “There you go with the silent shit. Man, you always had that down.”

“Do you have a fucking point, or are you just enjoying the sound of your voice?”

“Actually, I have plans with the sexy woman at the table over there, so yeah, you’re right, I’ll get to my fucking point. After my accident, I lost it. Completely.”

Some of TJ’s irritation and frustration drained right out of him at that. “I remember.” They all remembered when Cam had nearly gotten himself killed during a snowboarding race. For a long, terrifying year afterward, he’d been nothing but a shell of himself, and Stone and TJ and Annie had felt helpless watching him suffer.

“Stone tried to bully me into getting better,” Cam said softly.

“Hey,” Stone said from the table.

“You meant well,” Cam said, eyes still on TJ. “But you were relentless. Annie, too.”

Annie, looking grim, nodded. It was the Wilder way. Bully, bug, bulldoze. She hadn’t known what else to do.

“Not you,” Cam said quietly, putting a hand on TJ’s chest. “I told you that the accident had taken my heart and soul and shredded them into pieces. I was done, man. Ready to check out, and you knew it. Do you remember what you told me?”

TJ let out a breath, his throat feeling tight. It’d been dark and terrifying times, trying to reach Cam, save him, when he hadn’t wanted to be either reached or saved. “I told you that your heart and soul might be shredded, but they were still beating. They weren’t destroyed.”

“And?”

“And that all you had to do was take your head out of your own ass long enough to put yourself back together.”

“And?”

TJ grated his back teeth together. “Gee, Cam, maybe you should tell me.”

“Not as much fun that way. What else?”

TJ sighed. “And that maybe you’d have to do as you’d never done and actually work hard at something.”

Cam nodded. “Because up until that moment, I hadn’t had to work hard for much in my entire life. Also thanks to you, by the way. You always took care of me.”

Behind them, Annie sniffed. “Goddammit. No one warned me this would be a tissue day. I’m actually wearing mascara!”

Nick pulled her into his lap, wrapping his arms around her, settling his hands on the bump of Not-Abigail.

Cam nudged TJ in the chest again. “It was good advice, Teej.”

“Yeah. But my heart and soul aren’t shredded.”

“Maybe not, but they haven’t been whole, not for a damn long time, maybe not since Sam died.”

“Not the Sam card again.”

“Not Sam,” Cam said very quietly. “You. You’re finally back to letting someone in other than us.”

“This isn’t about me. Harley doesn’t want-” TJ broke off. She didn’t want casual.

And he hadn’t exactly offered her anything else, had he? At the realization, he closed his gritty eyes.

It was him after all.

Skye was standing at Harley’s kitchen counter, slurping up a bowl of Frosted Flakes.

“Why can’t you inhale the crappy cereal?” Harley asked her.

“This is the crappy cereal. I left you some.”

Harley picked up the box of Frosted Flakes and shook it. Approximately three crumbs rumbled around.

“Well, you did say you didn’t want to have to run today. Consider this me doing you a favor.”

Harley sighed and poured herself a bowl of the healthy stuff. It had raisins. Hurray.

“You have e-mail,” Skye said, and gestured with her spoon to the open laptop on the table. “Colorado wants you to respond to their job offer.”

“You read my mail?”

“You have fun spam. You got two penis enlargement offers and someone named Trixie wants to meet you. What the hell’s taking you so long to get back to them about the job offer? Don’t you want it anymore?”

Of course she wanted it.

Didn’t she?

“Harl?”

“Yeah,” she said absently. “I want it.”

“Good.” Skye tipped her bowl up to her mouth and drank the leftover milk. “Since you’ll be gone, I have a question.”

“Yes, you can have my truck. I’m going to need to buy a newer one.”

“Actually, I was going for something different. Something less…inanimate.”

“Like?”

“Like Nolan.”

Harley blinked.

“Are you mad?” Skye asked.

“Nolan,” Harley repeated. “And you.”

“I know, he seems so…tame for me, right? But I have a feeling that beneath that easygoing exterior beats the heart of a real tiger.”

“But you’re leaving, too. You’re going to the city.”

“Which is only like three hours away. Far enough that I have plenty of space, yet close enough for wild animal sex on the weekends. Jeez, Harley, these days no one lets long distance keep a relationship down.”

TJ stood in his bedroom packing for the early morning flight to Seattle, then Anchorage. He’d made this particular Alaska trip at least a dozen times. It was a combination rock and mountain climbing/guided trek, and it required a high level of expert skill from his client. Normally for a trip like this, TJ would take clients out on a shorter trek first to prove their skills, but in this case, Colin West was a repeat client. He and TJ had taken the exact same trip three years ago.

Colin was a forty-year-old surgeon who rock climbed in his spare time. The reason the trip was so last minute was because he was supposed to be getting married to his longtime girlfriend Lydia that weekend, but he’d panicked.

And he’d needed an escape.

TJ had just had a late dinner at the lodge. Annie had cooked all his favorites, joking that by the time he got back she wouldn’t be able stay on her feet that long. Hell, she’d probably not even be able to see her feet. When he’d laughed and agreed, she smacked him on the back of his head. Then hugged him good-bye so tight that he’d had to check his ribs afterwards for cracks. Katie and Emma had sandwiched him with hugs as well, and he pulled them both in close, smirking over their heads at his brothers when he got lots of kisses, too.

“Hands off my woman,” Stone said mildly, and pulled Emma from him.

So TJ had held onto Katie, the both of them laughing when Cam yanked her free as well.

Then he’d been left alone in the kitchen with Annie and Nick, who were locked in each other’s arms against the counter. Annie was nuzzling Nick’s throat, and he had a hand curled low and protective on her belly, a look on his face that could only be described as bliss.

TJ walked out the back door without them even realizing he was gone. Back in his cabin, he finished packing, then stood in the middle of the living room he’d built with Cam and Stone. The place was small but the high, open-beamed ceilings made it seem much larger than it was, aided by the large picture windows. Still, it was big enough for him, and comfortable, especially since he was hardly ever home for more than a week at a time. Anyway, it’d always felt like more of a place to stay than home. He’d never really thought about that before. The cabin was more a part of his journey than his destination.

There came a soft knock on his door. Figuring it was someone named Wilder, he called out, “it’s open,” but to his surprise, Harley walked in.

And his heart kicked hard.

Harley gave up trying to explain to herself why she needed to drive out to TJ’s the night before he left. There were no words for what she needed. There were only the feelings that he’d accused her of trying to avoid.

Fat chance of truly being successful at that. She’d been feeling something for him in one form or another for too many years to count.

But apparently, for once, he didn’t have words either. He stood in the doorway between his kitchen and the living room, arms up and braced on the oak doorjamb, looking dead sexy.

And dead set on letting her make the first move.

It was her move. She knew that.

He wore a pair of ragged old basketball shorts that fell to his knees and nothing else. His hair was in need of a trim, and it tumbled over his forehead, curling onto his neck. His expression, usually calm and easy, usually amused or getting there, was something else entirely, something she’d not seen from him before.

Hollow. Bleak.

She stepped close, her heart dropping. “What’s wrong?”

He let out a low, mirthless laugh and didn’t answer. Nor did he move.

“TJ?”

“Why are you here, Harley?”

Not expecting that grim, unwelcoming response, she hesitated, nearly turning tail and running. But he cared for her, she reminded herself. Deeply. He’d shown it a hundred times. In that way, maybe in all ways, he was far braver than she.

That stopped now. She became brave now. Stepping toe-to-toe with him, she put her hands on his chest. As his gaze met hers, she let her hands slide down his ribs, to the abs that she never got tired of touching. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

Her fingers got to the tie on his shorts and she saw awareness flare in his eyes.

And surprise.

She couldn’t blame him. For the most part, he’d always been the first to touch. Okay, not just for the most part. Always. He’d always been the first to touch.

That had been her own stupid fear. Fear of rejection. Fear of not being enough. Of being hurt…

No more fear.

“Harley, why are you here?” he asked again.

“I got the job in Colorado.”

“Congratulations,” he said with no surprise.