Project Virgin

by Megan Crane

  Because there had been a second—a split second between waking up and realizing she needed to answer that call—where there had been nothing between them but the flimsy layer of clothes they wore and the frank male appraisal in his eyes.

  Oh, and need. Need like an imperative. Even more pointed and ravenous than the night before.

  She could only imagine what he’d seen on her face.

  The only sound as they walked now—and slid and jumped and climbed and sank—was their boots and their breathing against the endless carpet of white. There was the intermittent hint of the mountains all around them, tall and imposing, but mostly hidden by the weather.

  And inside of Michaela, one avalanche after the next.

  It had been a relief to talk about Amos and her work at Burkeville, and Michaela almost never talked about either of those things to strangers. She was fiercely protective of Amos and his privacy, on the one hand, but she’d also discovered through the years that it was better not to let people form their inevitably erroneous opinions about things they could know nothing about. Strangers thought whatever they wanted about her or about Amos and her relationship with him, and they posted about it all over the internet. Michaela certainly didn’t have to give them any ammunition.

  She lost her balance then, and had to throw her arms out to keep herself from toppling down—

  And then Jesse was there in an instant, his strong hand at her elbow, holding her up.

  It occurred to Michaela that she didn’t think of this man as a stranger at all.

  That revelation almost took her knees out from under her all over again.

  She couldn’t look at him, so instead she trained her attention behind him, realizing that what she’d thought was more of the oppressive cloud cover was in fact a sheer mountain slope coming down hard behind the small cluster of buildings on the far side of the road.

  “You okay?” Jesse asked, that low rumble that sounded something like treacherous out here, in the shockingly intimate clutch of so much desolate white and cold.

  “It’s amazing that a mountain can hide so well,” she said without thinking, staring up at the briefly revealed sweep of dark rock above the little roadhouse in front of them. “I had no idea there was anything there and then all of a sudden, there’s a whole mountain where you least expect it.”

  She felt her cheeks heat up the moment she spoke. Terrence hated when she said things like that. He’d roll his eyes and mutter something in reply, usually about how her fanciful nature was one more indication that her brain was already mushy and silly—a consequence of both her steady diet of romance novels and her, in his view, mindless devotion to her job. She expected Jesse Grey—who was, by any objective standard, from his profession to his obvious comfort both driving and walking through a Montana winter storm to every inch of his hard-packed body, much more of a man’s man than Terrence—to scoff outright and not try, as Terrence often did, to smooth it out later with claims that he was only looking out for her best interests.

  She blinked at the stream of uncharitable thoughts. Where had that come from?

  “Mountains are wily,” was all Jesse said, tilting his head back to look where she did, and pausing while he did it. Not indulging her—listening to her, and something thudded into her at the distinction. He dropped his hand from her elbow and she missed it instantly, felt adrift without it, when she was perfectly steady on her feet. And couldn’t possibly have felt his hand through all that winter wear and cold weather performance fabric anyway. “Always trickier than people give them credit for. You can see why some cultures assumed they must be slumbering giants. Maybe they are.”

  Michaela didn’t know how to respond.

  Her throat felt tight and achy, and she was afraid the tears in her eyes that she’d been ascribing to the bitter slap of the wind had an entirely different source, suddenly. But Jesse started walking again, and she followed because it was that or something terrible—something huge, like an actual avalanche except all of it inside of her—right there in the snow-covered road.

  And then she didn’t have to worry about it, because they made it the last little way, and Jesse tossed open the door to the bright, cheerful heat within. A woman with a big smile, bigger hair, and an air of great frenzy called out a greeting as they walked inside.

  “Anywhere you like!” she said. Michaela dutifully looked around.

  There were coats and scarves thrown over almost every chair and hanging from hooks near the door, wood and mounted antlered creatures everywhere, big screen TVs, and a well-stocked bar. There were cozy tables near a roaring fire, big platters of food in front of the people sitting there with the smell of bacon thick in the air all around them, and the kind of buzz of accidental camaraderie that came along with finding oneself a pawn to the weather like this.

  Michaela had never been happier in her life.

  “This is perfect,” she told Jesse, throwing back the hood of her parka and grinning up at him, heedlessly. Recklessly.

  He stared down at her, the suggestion of an answering grin on his hard mouth and something far too male and much too hungry in his dark eyes.

  She flushed again, a sweep of crimson that rolled out from that gaze of his and flattened her, making every square inch of her skin prickle and come perilously close to itching. He made her want to tear everything off. And she didn’t understand how he could do that. How he could stand there in about seventeen winter layers and look at her and make her feel naughty and dirty and naked and needy in a way she’d never imagined she could feel.

  Michaela had never thought she was frigid or anything. But she read books that talked about passion and desire in terms she thought were fun, but excessive. Orgasms were nice, sometimes very nice, but not cataclysmic or life-altering. Everybody knew that.

  But maybe not everybody was Jesse Grey, who could do more with a fully-clothed glance in a busy restaurant than some people could do with a wholly naked weekend retreat on a California king-sized bed.

  She gulped. Audibly. And so obviously Jesse couldn’t fail to notice it.

  He did, of course. His gaze seemed to get both brighter and darker at once, or more sharply male, somehow, but he only inclined his head toward an empty table over near the big stone fireplace. And Michaela was racking up a long list of reasons to hate herself on this road trip, but the fact she all but scurried across the restaurant floor to take her seat—and to put a little distance between them before she burst into scalding flames where she stood—probably topped the list.

  They unpeeled themselves from their heavy layers as they sat, and that didn’t help anything. Jesse shrugged out of his coat and then pulled his fleece up over his head, exposing a strip of his ridiculously flat and muscled abdomen as he went. And then he was just a shockingly beautiful man with unruly hair he only raked a hand through, an unshaven jaw that should have made him look unkempt but really, really did not, lounging in front of the fire with his long legs out in front of him like an aspirational advertisement for outdoor living.

  Outdoor adventures and then far sexier indoor ones, and Michaela had no idea what was happening to her. What was turning her into someone she hardly recognized, a stranger from the inside out.

  You know exactly what’s happening to you, that voice inside of her whispered. Jesse Grey is happening to you. But she didn’t want to follow that line of thought. She was too afraid he could see it.

  They ordered large mugs of strong coffee first and then, as the caffeine worked its magic, larger platters of home-style cooking. Flapjacks and bacon, farm-fresh eggs and sides of potatoes made three different ways. Then they settled in, both tending to their mobile phones and the Monday morning workday happening somewhere outside the veil of the harsh Montana winter. Jesse took a quick call that clearly related to his own business, and she liked the sound of his voice, quietly commanding and not the least bit blustery as he talked. There was the buzz of the other patrons all around them, the local news on the big screens, showin
g white-out conditions farther north, and beneath it all, the hum of something else. Something that vibrated like a tuning fork deep inside of Michaela.

  Something she didn’t want to identify.

  But she knew what it was. Contentment.

  It made her shudder, and she thought he knew it, too.

  Their food arrived, heaping platters piled high, and they both dug in. For a while there was only the scrape of utensils against their plates, and Michaela thought she’d never tasted anything better.

  Soon enough the first frenzy of eating passed, and Jesse sat back in his chair across from her, that gaze of his cool and assessing. Michaela wondered if this was the tycoon version of Jesse she’d glimpsed on the phone earlier. And if it was, which one was the real Jesse? The lazy, too sexy guy she’d woken up with? Or the one she’d heard order the person on the other end of his phone call to sort out a deal or prepare for the repercussions if he had to do it himself. Nicely, of course, but the steel had been there and very real. Or maybe he was both, she thought as she met that gaze of his, sipping at her coffee—lazy steel and commanding masculinity, all wrapped up in a sinfully wicked shell. That was Jesse Grey. Not a mystery. Just… too much.

  “Why did your family think they had to buy me?” he asked.

  Michaela allowed herself a smile that, if she was honest, was far closer to a smirk. “You were for sale, Jesse. Someone had to do it. It was us or that drunk woman who kept singing ‘It’s Raining Men.’”

  His mouth curved. “You work for Amos Burke. Seems like he’d be a better, easier, and cheaper option than some random guy in a bachelor auction, if your family was that worried about Terrence and his prospects.”

  He said Terrence’s name as if it was distinctly unpleasant on his tongue, and then took a swig of his coffee as if he had to wash it down. That shouldn’t have been so… fascinating. Maybe because it was, Michaela spoke without thinking.

  “Amos hates Terrence.”

  Jesse’s gaze met hers. “Ah.”

  “What does ‘ah’ mean?”

  “It means you can put your knife down, killer. That seems to be a popular take, that’s all.” He settled back in his chair, but the way he was looking at her across the table suggested he was anything but relaxed, even after she obeyed him and let go of her utensils. “Patterns are always interesting.”

  Michaela felt small and disloyal. If she were a good person, surely she would rush to Terrence’s defense. That had always been what Terrence wanted her to do when it came to the tricky subject of Amos. He’d felt Michaela never chose him and that she didn’t defend him very well, either. But the thing was, she saw Amos’s position, too. Because he pays you to see his position, Terrence had accused her. You put him first, but he doesn’t do the same for you, does he? Or you wouldn’t have to ask him to help you.

  And she’d never known how to point out to Terrence that it wasn’t Michaela Amos flatly refused to help. That it was Terrence.

  And there were so many complex layers to these issues back in Seattle. She had to defend Amos to Terrence and Terrence to Amos and she was tired of both, sometimes. She worked with a difficult man and she was engaged to a polarizing one, and she sometimes wished she could spend some time, somewhere, at work or at home, where the men in her life weren’t the topic of conversation. Where she was who mattered, and not because she was expected to solve any kind of problem. Where people cared about her, not them.

  But even here, in a roadhouse in a snowstorm in the middle of nowhere with a complete stranger, that wasn’t in the cards.

  “Amos hates everyone,” she told Jesse briskly, when what she usually said to explain Amos was a good deal softer and more positive. More eccentric genius and less misanthropic ass. She didn’t know why she couldn’t seem to muster that up here. She shrugged. “That’s what he does. His goal in life is to create ways people can communicate with each other fully without having to actually interact in the flesh. He’s not a great judge of character.”

  “People with Amos Burke’s level of success are always good judges of character,” Jesse said quietly. “By definition. Or they couldn’t possibly achieve what he has.”

  She assumed he was talking about himself, and couldn’t have said why it made her feel so funny.

  “That’s what he hired me for.” She shoved her hash browns around on her plate as if they’d suddenly gone uppity on her. “I deal with the people. Amos deals with the code. Everybody wins.”

  “You and he never…?”

  “That’s everybody’s favorite question, of course.” Was that bitterness in her voice? She’d never been bitter before, surely. She had no idea what was happening inside of her, and she thought that alone might drive her over the edge. Maybe she was simply too full, after a breakfast better suited to a team of lumberjacks. Or maybe the hash browns really were getting snippy. “No one can believe that a man and a woman could work together without years and years of sexual tension. People are more multi-dimensional than that, you know. They’re not reduced to their sexual organs, careening around helplessly, humping each other’s legs like untrained dogs.”

  Jesse blinked. Then grinned. “You obviously never spent any time trolling the local Seattle bar scene on a given Friday night.”

  “The answer is no,” she said, resentfully. Why was she resentful? She put down her fork with a certain savagery. “Amos and I have not only never hooked up, it’s never been even the tiniest glimmer of a possibility between us.”

  “No worries if it was, though, right?” Jesse’s low voice was too dark to qualify as teasing then. And that gaze of his had gone unreadable. Moody, but unreadable. “You have an open relationship. You could theoretically have Amos at work and Terrence at home seven days a week.” His lips crooked. “But you don’t do that.”

  That danced down the back of her neck like a touch, light and worrisome, then pooled at the base of her spine. It took her a moment to pull herself back to the table, back from that little trip to their bed last night and all the things she shouldn’t have let herself say or do or feel.

  “Sometimes,” she said in a voice that sounded too obvious, too raw, “I have whole thoughts that aren’t about any man at all. Much less any kind of sex with any of them. At home or at work.”

  That crook of his lips went lethal. “Like now?”

  “Getting back to the point,” she said crisply, ignoring her competing urges to throw something at him or maybe throw herself at him, “Amos is the stereotypical geek who never spoke to a girl in his life, until he made all this money and they fell all over him.”

  “So you seem like you’d be exactly his type. Female.”

  “Amos’s tastes run to nine foot tall, one hundred pound gazelles who giggle at everything he says, do exactly what he tells them, and never, ever talk back. I’m like the annoying little sister who is and does absolutely none of those things.” She smoothed a hand over her hair, feeling the static reaction that reminded her there was a whole winter outside, and beyond that, an entire world that had nothing to do with the things this man stirred up inside of her. “Plus, he likes it when I run his company and his life and that would be tough to do if there was romantic drama between us. We’re purely platonic. We always have been.”

  Jesse eyed her. “But?”

  “But what?”

  “It sounded like there was a ‘but’ coming.”

  “Not from me,” Michaela said and it was possible, she realized, that it all came out a little bit defensive.

  Yet Jesse looked like he could listen to her forever, no matter how defensive she might or might not sound. “I’m guessing Terrence doesn’t buy that?”

  She knew she should shut this conversation down. It had never occurred to her before today how fluid and confusing betrayal was. She’d identified that having sex with Jesse Grey, while seemingly perfectly okay according to the promises Terrence and she had made each other, would actually involve a whole lot more than what she’d always imagined “casual se
x” might entail. And there was no way that was good for her relationship. She might have talked around the subject last night, but that was the heart of it, wasn’t it? Terrence and she had agreed on that a long time ago—nothing that threatened their bond was allowed, but everything else was fine.

  Michaela had simply never considered how much ground everything else covered. Or how slippery the slopes were, how uneven the ground, between what was fine and what was dangerous. She hadn’t had sex with Jesse because she’d known in her heart that if she did, it would ruin her. It would ruin more than just her. It would be like a sledgehammer against all she’d held dear these last two years and the future she’d hoped to build.

  But conversations like this were water damage, there was no pretending otherwise. Drip by drip, while Jesse watched her with those unfathomably beautiful eyes of his. While she said things about her life, about Terrence, knowing full well what his take was likely to be. This wasn’t a safe space. Jesse wasn’t a safe man. Not for her. Certainly not for her engagement.

  She should stop this right now.

  “Terrence doesn’t like the demands on my time,” she said instead. “I don’t think he believes there’s anything going on between me and Amos, really, but he certainly doesn’t like how much of my life Amos takes up. Terrence thinks that if I’m merely an employee, I should have more time to myself.”

  Jesse shifted in his chair. “I want to take a moment to enjoy the irony here. The guy who doesn’t believe in jealousy is jealous of how you spend your time?”

  Michaela waved a hand in the air. What she did not do was mount a defense, which she normally would have. Which she should have. And she knew that later, when she was out of this confusing little space the blizzard had carved out of her life and away from this man, she would judge her failure. Harshly. She knew and she still didn’t rein herself in.