by Lily Danes
“You really aren’t much of a bad boy, are you? First you won’t steal the canoes, and now you’re scared of a little zip line.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, then leapt off the preparation deck, racing down the line. Protesting, Rudy waited for the counselor to attach her own harness, then jumped after him.
As soon as she was in the air, she started laughing. It was the closest she could ever come to flying. Her hair whipped back, and the breeze brushed her skin as she picked up speed.
She closed her eyes, spread her arms wide, and let herself fall.
It was over too soon, but she felt giddy even after she landed. The counselor came to help with her harness.
As soon as she was free, Josh wrapped his arms around her waist and drew her closer. “You look so damn happy,” he murmured, then kissed her. It was soft and sweet, but his lips lingered long enough for the counselor to clear her throat.
When he pulled back, Ruby suspected she was wearing a dopey expression. “Let’s do that again.”
“Kiss or the zip line?”
“Yes.”
Laughing, he pulled her back to the beginning. They rode it twice more, then headed for the aerial park. The park was a series of narrow wooden bridges high above the ground. It required another harness and safety gear, in the very likely case the person couldn’t make it all the way across without falling.
“I must really like you,” Josh muttered as he pulled on the equipment. Ruby tried to ignore how warm and fuzzy the statement made her feel.
He carefully navigated the highest bridge, and Ruby heard him grumble something about stupid masculine pride being the downfall of better men. When he got to the end, he climbed to the bottom and vowed he would remain on terra firma until she was ready to join him.
As much as Ruby wanted to be near Josh, she wasn’t ready to be grounded. Though some of the bridges didn’t feel especially stable, she crossed them with ease. The fear of humiliation that had lived with her for months vanished under Josh’s admiring gaze.
When her arms grew sore from holding the guide wire, she joined Josh on the ground.
“What now?” he asked. “Hang gliding? Sky diving? Or should we just go to the top of a really high building and stare over the edge?”
Ruby wiped sweat from her brow. “There is a rock-climbing wall.” She laughed at his horrified expression. Good to know Mr. Perfect had a few faults. “How about a swim?”
Josh perked up at that. “Will you wear a bikini?”
Heat settled in her core. The interest in his eyes was almost enough for her to take him up on his previous offer to fool around behind a tree. The way he looked at her, she felt wanted. Simply, truly desired with no ulterior motive.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her body to his. “I think that can be arranged.”
9
Ruby did her best not to tug at her bikini top. The red string bikini had once been relatively modest, but that was fifteen pounds ago. No one was going to arrest her for indecent exposure, but a bit more skin was on display than before. At least the denim cut-offs provided some coverage.
When she emerged from the cabin, Josh was gazing absently at the lake. At the sound of the door closing, he faced her—and froze. His nostrils flared on a sharp inhale.
“Turn around.” His voice was raspy. “Back in the cabin. Now.”
“Emma's in there.” Her laugh was a little shaky. The way he was looking at her, her entire body felt shaky.
“Tell her to go swimming. The water will soothe the poison oak.” His gaze was too hot for the words to be entirely a joke.
“Golf course tonight?”
Josh groaned. “That is many hours away. Are you trying to look like a teenage boy’s fantasy?”
She glanced down at herself. “You mean guys like boobs and Daisy Dukes? That’s good to know.” She blinked up at him with innocent eyes.
His eyes narrowed. “You’re going to pay for that later.” He glanced around to make sure no one was watching, then quickly adjusted himself. “Let’s get in the lake. I need cover before I embarrass myself in front of the whole camp.”
Pleasure bloomed in her chest, that earlier sense of freedom returning. For the last year, her body had been a commodity. A topic of discussion, business meetings, and sessions with lawyers to determine exactly when she had gained enough weight to break the contract. It felt like her body became something separate from herself.
Worst of all, it became a reason for shame.
But now, with Josh staring at her like she was a gift he very much wished to unwrap, she felt herself again. The heat centering between her legs, the fullness of her breasts, the warmth of the sun on her skin. It was all hers, and he was drawn to her not in spite of her body, but because of it. No meetings necessary.
God knew she was drawn to his, as well. He’d removed his T-shirt, revealing a chest and abs that deserved their own song. There was a tattoo over his heart, a simple round design she planned to explore later. She itched to run her fingers along the thin line of hair that began on his strong pecs and disappeared under the waistband of his shorts.
Yes, a quick swim might be what they both needed.
The water park was busy, filled with people cooling off after their morning activities. Ruby and Josh grabbed inner tubes and found a quiet spot to float.
“It’s so beautiful here,” she murmured, looking at the clear blue sky. “I miss nature.”
“Central Park doesn’t do the job?”
She laughed at the reminder of how little they knew each other. “I’m not from New York. I spent the last three years in Los Angeles.”
Josh spun in a lazy circle, using his arms to paddle. “What were you doing there?”
“I worked in the entertainment industry.” It was as vague as she could get without telling a lie.
She braced for the barrage of questions. What she did, who she met, what she worked on. It was the sort of interrogation she often faced in Los Angeles, where everyone in the industry wanted to prove they belonged.
Instead, Josh squinted at her. “Really? Huh.” He paddled closer until their black inner tubes bumped against other. “But not anymore?”
Her laugh was harsher than she intended. “No. That’s definitely in the past.” Before he could ask for more information, she changed the subject. “What do you do?”
“I am a responsible, tax-paying member of society.”
It was clear he had no more interest in discussing their outside lives than she did. “Hot,” Ruby teased.
His expression relaxed. “I run the hardware store in town. It’s fine, but right now it feels so far away. I don’t want to think about work.”
“Hardware store? Wait, is that a tattoo of a bolt?”
Josh glanced at his chest, as if he needed to remind himself it was there. “Yeah. The store was my dad’s. It felt right, getting inked with something I associate with him. I figured a bolt was simple. Easy enough to pretend it’s a basic design with no meaning. Better than a flat-head screwdriver, at least.”
“You miss him a lot.”
Josh tilted his face toward the sun and closed his eyes. “Every day. So what are your parents like?”
She couldn’t help smiling at the thought. “My dad was seven in 1968, and he’s still angry about that. He thinks he was meant to be a 60s rock god. Instead, he was a music teacher who played shows every weekend. His band had a small following in the Bay Area, enough to stay busy. He met my mom when they were auditioning singers. She got the gig, and nine months later they got me. They’re still together.”
“Do they still play shows?”
“Sometimes.”
They fell silent, disappearing into their own thoughts for a bit.
Josh chuckled, low and rueful. “We’re talking about our parents. We’re not good at this casual fling stuff, are we?”
“Maybe we just need practice.” Ruby stretched toward him, trailing a finger along his right arm. Ru
by exhaled as the muscles contracted beneath her hand. There were so many things arms like that could do. Hold her against a wall. Lift her hips easily while she straddled him. Brace on either side of her while he thrust into her.
Her thoughts must have shown on her face, because Josh’s lids grew heavy. He rolled over, into the water, then braced his forearms on the inflatable surface.
“Want to tell me what you’re thinking?” he asked. “Your skin is tan, so it’s hard to tell, but I think you turned red here”—he brushed his thumb over her left cheekbone—“and here.”
Ruby leaned into his touch as he stroked her right cheek. “I was thinking that I want you,” she admitted.
Josh tugged on her leg, urging her into the water. Keeping one hand on the inner tube to stay afloat, he wrapped his other around her waist. She sighed at the skin-to-skin contact.
“Thinking you want me, generally speaking, or that you want me now?” Josh drew her to him until her breasts met his bare chest. She twined her legs about his waist and aligned her hips with his. His thick erection ground against her through the thin fabric of her swimsuit.
She pressed herself tighter to him. “Both,” she managed.
Josh slid his hand along her swimsuit, pausing to toy with the strings along one hip. He pressed his forehead to hers. “You have no idea how much I want to untie this. Feel your naked pussy rubbing against my thigh.”
She was dangerously close to letting him do just that—and a lot more. All around them, campers were laughing and playing, and Ruby barely registered their presence.
This might be a blow-out, anything-goes kind of camp, but she suspected they still frowned on public fornication.
She studied the camp, looking for isolated spots. “Where can we go?”
Josh’s expression was as frustrated as her own. “I don’t see anywhere private. I can ask Max about secret spots, but that doesn’t help us right now.”
The insistent ache in her core protested. “The forest will be empty. I’ll take my chances with bears and poison oak.”
He laughed, low and throaty. “Right there with you, but we have another option. My truck’s at base camp, and it will take us anywhere we want to go.”
There was a good chance she might straddle him before they made it out of the parking lot, but it was a good place to start. “What are we waiting for?”
Josh snorted. “My dick to stop pointing directly north so I can walk again.”
Ruby drew back. Cool water swirled around skin that had been warmed by Josh’s body. “I’ll give you a moment. Meet me on the beach?”
His need was so raw she almost flung himself back at him, witnesses be damned. “I’ll need more than a moment,” he muttered.
She swam backward, putting more distance between them. “I’ll be waiting.”
10
In the end, it took Josh three minutes of thinking about the least sexy things he could imagine. Statistics textbooks. Late-night World War II documentaries. Appliance repair.
When he finally emerged from the lake, Ruby wasn’t alone. The guy from the first night’s party was talking to her, though she looked uncomfortable as hell.
Josh scowled. In that bikini, of course she wouldn’t be alone for long. What was his name? Corman, Cordon… It was definitely a stupid name. Josh was sure of that much. Cory, that was it.
The guy was speaking as Josh approached, his voice high with excitement. “It is you, right? I knew I recognized you. What are you doing here?”
Who the fuck was this guy? The way he was talking, he sounded like someone from her past.
Ruby shuffled backwards, away from Cory. Her shoulders were hunched, like she was trying to make herself smaller.
Josh wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her tight to his side. Ruby remained tense.
“Are you ready to go?” she asked.
Cory greeted Josh. “Did you know? You must have.”
“Know what?” Josh asked. Ruby pushed him, like she wanted him to move before he heard the answer.
Josh ignored her. He was too curious to leave now.
“She’s Ruby Holland.” The man’s eyes were round with wonder. Obviously, the name was supposed to mean something.
It didn’t ring a single bell. Josh tried to deflect. “Are you famous?” he teased. “Do you have a sordid past I should know about?”
Her smile looked stiff. “I probably shouldn’t have knocked over all those banks.”
Cory glanced between them. “It’s not like it’s a secret. I mean, you were on—”
“Hey Cory.” She rested her fingers on the man’s arm, and he quieted. “We skipped lunch, and I’m starving. I need to eat before I pass out.”
Before either man could respond, she strode away, leaving Josh to follow.
He hurried to catch up with her. “What was that all about?”
She grimaced. “It’s nothing.”
Ruby walked so fast he had to work to keep up. “Then why are you running from that guy like he has a contagious disease?”
She veered a little to the left, toward the Grub Shack and away from the parking lot.
It looked like their afternoon delight had been canceled, but that bothered him less than Ruby’s current mood. He searched his mind for the last name Holland, but nothing came up.
Ruby grabbed a turkey sandwich and a bottle of water and sat at a picnic table. Though she didn’t invite him to join, Josh picked up a ham and cheese and sat opposite.
She chewed slowly, keeping her head down. One bite at a time, the sandwich disappeared. She washed it down with a long swallow of water.
Josh said nothing. She already knew he was waiting for her to talk, so there was no point pushing.
When she finally raised her head, she looked both resolved and defeated. “I wanted to forget about this for a week. I thought maybe no one would recognize me. My hair used to have blonde highlights, and I wore full makeup in public. I thought going back to my natural color and dropping the eye shadow would be enough.”
“Should I have recognized you?”
“Depends. What music do you listen to?”
Josh took a swig of his soda. “Country, mostly. I like the old stuff more than what’s on the radio now. I don’t pay much attention. I just put on Pandora and let it pick my music.”
“Then you probably wouldn’t have heard of me.”
He struggled to keep the surprise from his face. He’d thought Cory was exaggerating. Ruby was genuinely famous in some circles?
“I mean, most people wouldn’t have heard of me,” she hurried to clarify. “I’m not a household name, not even close. I didn’t make the top ten or anything.”
“Then who would have heard of you?”
When she hesitated, he nodded at the lodge behind them. “You know I can Google you right now?”
Her eyes popped wide in horror. “Don’t do that. Please. Hear my version first.”
“Which is?”
“I used to be a singer.” She took a deep breath, like even admitting that much was a struggle. “I wrote my own songs, and I spent years playing them anywhere I could find an audience. I was a regular at every open mic night at every coffee shop in San Jose. That’s where I want to college.”
“I’d love to see you play.”
She waved him off. “I didn’t even bring my guitar. The point is, I worked my ass off, because I was good. Eventually, someone in Los Angeles agreed. They heard my demo, saw my photos. I dropped out junior year and flew south to sign with a record label.”
“That’s amazing.”
Her mouth twisted. “It was, at first. They got me right into a studio. I’d already written most of the songs, so there was no reason to wait. The album was recorded in a matter of weeks.”
“Is that normal?”
“It is for a debut album the label doesn’t want to sink a lot of money into. There was a shakeup between the time I signed and the time I started recording. A new CEO came in with a new v
ision, and that vision wasn’t ‘girl with an acoustic guitar.’ They released the album, but they didn’t put a lot of money behind it.”
Josh didn’t know much about the music business, but any fool knew how competitive it was. “It sank?”
“Like a stone. Pop was on the way up at the time, and I was a niche artist.”
“You had at least one big fan.” Josh nodded toward the spot where they’d encountered Cory.
Her laugh was humorless. “I doubt that. See, I was contracted for two albums. The label had three choices. They could drop me, they could release another album like the first one, or they could remake me. They decided I was pretty enough to go the pop route, and since I could sing, they wouldn’t need to bother with auto-tune.”
Josh’s gaze took in her large brown eyes and lush mouth. She would be gorgeous on camera. “Pretty is an understatement.”
Her smile was small but genuine. “I’m glad you think so, but it’s different in L.A., which is full of gorgeous women. My looks weren’t something they appreciated. They were something to package. I was assigned a dance instructor for six months, because what good is a pretty girl if she can’t shake her ass in a video? My hair was lightened. They put fake nails on me until I could barely play guitar. I was handed over to a stylist and a makeup artist, and then they took me to some Hollywood event where I was sure to have my picture taken. I went into the studio with the hottest new Swedish producer and a bunch of songs I didn’t write.”
“That sounds miserable.”
“I didn’t think it would be that bad. I could have refused. I should have. But everyone kept telling me how huge I’d be. There was talk of an opening slot on a national tour, and a publicist was already booking major interviews. I told myself it would be fine. I was just taking a different path to get to the place I’d always wanted to be.”
“What happened?”
“These days, labels often release an EP, or sometimes just a single, to gauge interest in the artist or build early buzz. The first song they put out was some bouncy bullshit about how I was the hottest girl in the room. Nine months ago, I was driving down La Brea when it came on. The DJ said I was an artist to watch. It was the first time I ever heard myself on the radio. It should have been the best moment of my life, but I pulled to the side of the road and cried for ten minutes.”
