Jill Shalvis - Instant Temptation

“Are you kidding me?”

“Look, I let her think I love my adventures more than I love her. I have to tell her that’s not true. That I’d rather be with her than on a damn mountain. It’s cold here, man. I should be in my warm bed with my warm almost wife.”

“You could call her.”

“No, we’re going in person and tell her I’m an ass. I want to see if she’ll marry this ass. On Squaw Peak like we planned. Take me home, man.”

TJ let out a breath and pulled out his phone to make the calls necessary to get them out of there. Because home sounded like a damn fine place to be.

Two days later, Skye was mooching breakfast while Harley was still looking at her e-mail, specifically the one asking her to confirm she wanted the job.

She really needed to respond.

She’d actually started to a hundred times, pressing REPLY, then typing “yes, thank you!” but then her finger would hover over the SEND.

And then it’d hit DELETE instead.

But the truth was, there was only one thing she really wanted to type and that was, “I can’t take the job because there’s no TJ Wilder in Colorado!”

Sitting back, she closed her eyes and let it all wash over her, giving herself permission to listen to her gut instincts, her emotions, the truth…

“Are you meditating?” Skye whispered.

“Shh.”

“You’re supposed to be sitting cross-legged and chanting ‘ohmmmm.’”

“Quiet. I’m listening to myself.”

“Are you asking yourself for guidance about the job, or about how you let the hottest guy on the planet get away?”

“Skye!”

“Sorry.” Skye spooned in another bite. “Carry on.”

Harley closed her eyes again. Turned out her heart did have something to say. It said that she already had her answers, that possibly she’d always had her answers, from way back since that long ago night in the back of TJ’s truck. She stared off into space as she let that terrifying and life-altering realization echo through her.

She wanted him. She needed him.

She loved him.

She always had. Suddenly it wasn’t so confusing after all. Not when she added everything up, including some of the things he’d said to her.

Sometimes you have to take a risk.

There are all kinds of love.

You make me feel alive.

I love you.

She stood up and paced the length of her kitchen.

“You okay?” Skye asked.

“Yeah. I just realized I left something unfinished.”

“One of your reports?”

“Something bigger.”

Much bigger.

Skye stared at her, and then let out a slow smile. “You’re going for it.”

“I’m going for it.” Harley pulled out her phone and tried TJ’s cell. It went directly to voice mail. She wondered what message to leave. I forgot to mention that I don’t need you for just one night, but for all my nights?

She laughed a little softly at herself. “Hey,” she said. “I…ah, hell. I’ve had an epiphany, I guess you’d call it. Painful sucker, too. Call me.”

Now she just had to be patient.

Problem was, she’d never really mastered the act of patience. So she called Stone. “I need a favor.”

“Good,” he said. “So do I.”

Harley’s conversation with Stone rang in her head for the rest of the day. They’d made a deal. She’d take a temporary job with Wilder until she figured out what the hell she wanted to do with her life, but she wanted to start by going to Alaska to meet up with TJ. Unpaid, of course.

Stone had countered her offer. He was hiring, temporary as she insisted, but she would be paid starting immediately, and she had to trust him because there was a quick little trip she had to help him out with first.

She was taking a small group up Squaw Peak for an impromptu sunset wedding. Her job was to get the bride and the pastor there and be the photographer for the happy event. Nick flew them up and landed on Eagle Rock, a gorgeous plateau, then flew off again to go pick up the groom at some undisclosed location.

Harley led Lydia-the bride-and the pastor to a higher, smaller plateau, where watching the sun set would be like sitting on top of the world. There she sat on the five-hundred-foot-high cliff and fiddled with her camera as she absorbed the view.

Behind her, Lydia was sitting, chatting quietly with her pastor. Harley had already taken several nice shots of them. She heard the chopper and knew Nick was back with the groom. It would take them thirty minutes or so to climb up there.

Harley took some shots of God’s glory spread out before her, then slowly lowered the camera as the truth hit her. She’d heard people talk of life-altering decisions before, but until that moment, sitting in the late afternoon sun with the whole world at her feet, she’d never really gotten it.

She belonged there.

She belonged there with TJ.

Even more of a revelation-she was irrevocably, desperately, 100 percent in love with him.

And he hadn’t called her back.

To be fair to him, he was out in the middle of nowhere, literally, no doubt with absolutely zero reception. He probably didn’t even know she’d called him yet. “You are such an idiot,” she said out loud. “A very slow idiot.”

Just then, a set of unbearably familiar battered boots and two long, denim-covered legs appeared in her field of vision. “If I agree, are you going to argue with me?”

With a gasp, she looked up and faced…who else…the only man who’d ever stopped, and then kick-started, her heart with a single look. “TJ! What are you doing here?”

He squatted in front of her. “Thought I’d drop by, say hi.”

She choked out a shocked laugh. “But your client-”

“He’s the groom. He decided he was crazy not to follow his heart.”

She felt her heart surge. “I know the feeling.”

His eyes warmed. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She drew a deep breath. “I missed you. I’m so sorry I left your cabin like I did. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“You mentioned an epiphany.”

“I don’t want to say good-bye.”

He nodded, and ran a finger over her jaw. “Is there anything you do want?”

“You.”

“You already have me.”

“No, I mean…more than just…”

“Casual?”

“Yes,” she whispered, talking fast, as if that could help her make him understand. “Here’s the thing. I can’t seem to breathe without you. And I really need to breathe, TJ.”

His lips twitched, his eyes warmed. “Harley,” he said very softly, and she nearly lost it.

“No, listen,” she said. “I know you didn’t want-that we said-”

He took one of her waving hands in his and pressed it to his chest. Beneath, she could feel the steady beat of his heart, and it helped calm hers. “Me too, Harley. All of it. I want you so damn much. I want to be with you, only you. I want everything that you can give me.”

“What about your trips?”

“I can take ’em or leave ’em. What I can’t do without is you.”

She felt the smile and the tears rush together, and she became utterly and completely sure of at least one thing. “Not casual.”

He shook his head solemnly. “There’s nothing casual about how I feel about you.”

She lurched up and pretty much threw herself at him, crawling up his body. Rising to his full height, he had one arm beneath her butt, the other across her back and right there on top of the world he kissed her, claimed her. In response, she sank her fingers into his hair, pouring out everything she had, all the heat, affection, frustration, fear, love…all of it into that one kiss.

“Ahem,” Nick said from behind them. “The pastor said we’re on the five-minute countdown.”

They kept kissing.

Nick sighed. “You two do realize there’s no closet door this time, right? That we can all see you?”

TJ slowly let Harley slide down his body, taking a minute to scrape his teeth over her jaw, and when she moaned, he let out a low growl of appreciation and bent his head again, but Nick stepped close and slapped a hand on his chest.

Without taking his eyes off Harley, TJ said, “We have five minutes. You just said so yourself.”

Nick shook his head and walked away.

Grinning.

TJ pulled some papers out of his pocket. Harley’s employment papers, the ones she’d filled out earlier for Stone. “I found these.”

“Stone told you.”

“That you want to temp for us as our new outdoor specialist and photographer? Yeah.”

“Are you okay with that?”

“Do you really have to ask?”

“Actually…” She held her breath, then bent and opened her backpack, pulling out a pencil. “Can I see those? I have a change to make.”

He peeked into her well-organized pack. “Wow. Impressive.”

“You like? A good friend taught me how to organize it.”

His eyes were quiet and assessing. “A good friend?”

“The best kind of friend. My everything friend.” She flipped through the pages to the end. “It occurred to me that I’ve always had a lot of temporary stuff in my life. I’m hoping to change that, and upgrade to a more permanent status.” She erased the “temporary” on her application, then leaned in and wrote permanent. She looked up. “If there’s still a place for me.”

“There will always be a place for you, at Wilder, and in my heart. Turn it over, Harley.”

She felt a little dizzy from his words, and the deep meaning behind them. “What?”

“The application. Turn it over.”

She flipped the pages over. He’d written her name at the top, and then a list of qualifications:

Pro-makes me hot

Pro-makes me smile

Pro-makes me hot

Pro-accepts me as is

Pro-makes me hot

Pro-makes me feel whole

Con-makes me hot

She burst out laughing. “Makes you hot is a con?”

“I couldn’t think of anything bad.”

“Liar.”

He smiled and ran his thumb over her jaw. “Okay, maybe I just like you how you are, faults and all.”

Her breath caught. “Even though I have a hard time putting how I feel into words?”

“You’ve shown me how you feel. In actions.”

Her throat caught. He got her, really got her. She closed her eyes and opened her heart, and for the first time in her life, took a real risk. “You once asked me what was going on between you and me. I never answered you.”

“I know. We’ve been waiting for you to decide.”

“I’ve been a little slow on the uptake,” she admitted. “I didn’t have the words then, but I have the words now.”

He reached for her hand and brought it to his mouth. “Do you?”

“I love you, TJ.” She was a little startled at how easily the words came. “I think I always have.”

He looked stunned, and she took a moment to realize that he hadn’t been sure exactly what she was offering him. And with that, she faced something else. All along she’d understood that she was out of her element, far from her comfort zone when it came to him, but the truth was, he was just as far out of his comfort zone, and just as off balance.

She’d rendered him speechless. Before the smug smile could spread across her face, he’d grabbed her in a crushing hug, burying his face in her neck. There was no sly teasing, no sexy innuendo, nothing but him holding her like he planned to never let her go. “I wasn’t happy in Alaska,” he whispered. “For the first time, I needed out of there.” He pulled back a step and slid his hands up to cup her face so she could see his tender smile. His voice, when it came, was low and gruff with emotion. “It wasn’t home.”

“You’ve been gone from Wishful for much longer before.”

“No. Well, yeah. But that’s not what I’m getting at. I missed you next to me.”

Undone, throat tight, heart pounding, it took her a moment to respond. “Home is being next to me?”

“Now you’re getting there.” His smile warmed her from the inside out. “Yeah, home is being next to you. And on top of you. And underneath,” he murmured. “And buried deep inside…”

With a laugh, she walked back into his arms. And found her own sense of home.

Four months later

Harley sat at one of the many decorated tables arranged across the lodge’s expansive back deck. Cam’s and Katie’s wedding reception was in full swing. Guests were dancing, eating, talking, laughing.

It was a beautiful January evening, a cool thirty-four degrees, but there were freestanding heaters at every corner, and no one felt the chill.

Least of all Cam and Katie, locked in each other’s arms in the center of the makeshift dance floor. Stone and Emma weren’t too far away, swaying to the music as well.

Harley sighed in pleasure, enjoying the sense of…peace. She and TJ had just come back from co-guiding a three-week bike trip in Costa Rica. She could still feel the warmth from the long days in the sun.