by Ruthie Knox
And that was good. Really good.
11
Walden, Colorado, to Steamboat Springs, Colorado. 1,842 miles traveled.
It was time to begin Lexie’s lessons in spontaneity.
When they’d passed into Colorado, the trees came back, and the scenery mellowed out. Now they were mostly riding through grassland, crossing the occasional stream, rolling by the tidy fences of one cattle ranch after another. Very nice.
This morning, however, Colorado also had a headwind that was blowing so hard it made riding a form of torture. Bent over the handlebars, wind howling in their ears, they crept forward, fighting for every revolution of the tires. Tom had thought half a dozen times of proposing they turn tail and let the wind push them back to Walden. They could always try again tomorrow, and in the meantime he wouldn’t mind spending the rest of the day in the tent with Lex. He could think of some pleasurable ways to pass the time.
If he’d had the faintest hope she’d agree, he would have suggested it an hour ago. He knew her better than that, though. Today, her little book said they were going to Kremmling, and Lex did what the little book said. There were no restaurants or convenience stores between here and their destination, which meant she intended for them to spend the entire day grinding along at a snail’s pace, stopping only to eat peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches by the side of the road.
He had a better plan.
He’d spent some time in this part of Colorado back when he was married—Haylie’s family had a cabin outside of Steamboat Springs—and a glance at the map this morning had told him there were more interesting places to spend tonight than some campground in the middle of nowhere. When he spotted a familiar-looking intersection, he pulled off the road and leaned his bike against a fence.
A few longhorns meandered over to investigate as Lexie followed his lead and dismounted. She clicked through a few screens on her bike computer, then groaned. “We’re averaging seven miles an hour. Seven. At this rate, it’s going to take us nine hours to get to Kremmling, and that’s if we don’t stop.”
“Let me see the map.”
Lexie handed it to him, and he smiled as he studied it. He’d been right. The road coming in from the west went exactly where he’d thought it did. He and Lex were going to take a little detour.
“Come here,” he said, hooking an arm around her waist and drawing her closer, ignoring for the moment the way his body responded to her. If he tried to do something about that response every time it flared up, he’d be a dead man by now, because there was something about Lex that got him hard every single time she was in range. He figured it would wear off eventually, but so far it showed no signs of flagging. If anything, it was getting worse. She was a very addictive woman.
“You know how you said you wanted me to teach you how to tour properly?”
Lex shot her glare at him, though there was no fire in it. “I never said that! I said I needed some practice being a little more spontaneous.”
“Right. Well, we’re going to start now.” He reached past her to slide her bike computer out of the clip that held it in place on her handlebars. Then he cocked his arm, took aim, and threw it as far as he could out into the field of cattle.
“What the hell, Tom! I need that!” She moved to the fence and climbed the bottom rail as if she were actually considering vaulting over it to retrieve her useless thirty-dollar piece of technology. Gripping her hips with both hands, he forced her to turn back around to face him. She was just high enough off the ground to put them eye-to-eye, so he took advantage of the opportunity and kissed her, gratified when she yielded after a few seconds’ resistance and made that little hitching, moaning noise in her throat that never failed to get him going. Tom deepened the kiss, drawing her closer until they were plastered together and panting.
“Tom?” Lexie said when they stopped to breathe, glancing to the side.
“Yeah?”
“The cows are kind of creeping me out.”
He followed her gaze and saw a big group of longhorns gathered behind the fence, watching him and Lexie with their huge, stupid eyes. “Maybe this isn’t the best place to make out.”
“Maybe not,” she agreed, hopping down off the fence. “Are you going to tell me why you threw my computer in there?”
“You don’t need it.”
“I do! I have to keep track of how far we’ve gone and how fast we’re moving, and I have to track my cadence, too, or else …” She looked at him and trailed off. “Could you please not smirk at me like that?”
“Try it my way for a week. If you find you can’t live without it, I’ll buy you a new one in Kansas. I’ll even put it on the bike for you.” This was a major concession. Tom hated installing the things, and at the shop he always refused to do it for people, not so much on principle as because it was a pain in the ass futzing around with all the little cables and magnets and zip ties.
She thought for a minute, then agreed. “Deal.” Pulling her helmet back on, she grabbed a drink of water, then said, “We’d better get moving, or else we won’t make it to Kremmling before dark.”
“We’re not going to Kremmling.”
“We’re not?”
“Nope, we’re turning here.” She automatically looked down at her map, and he snatched it away before she could figure out where he was taking her. “You’re not going to need this for a few days.” She looked at him beseechingly, unable to hide how nervous it made her to lose control of the map. He felt sorry for her, but he had a responsibility here. Lexie was never going to relax and enjoy herself on the road until she learned to roll with the punches. When the headwinds sucked, the smart cyclist turned.
“Just trust me. It’ll be fun.”
Trust him. The man had her tangled in knots so bad, half the time she didn’t know if she was coming or going, and he wanted her to trust him.
Not that it was precisely his fault she was a mess. Tom was keeping up his end of the deal. It was just, he was … Tom. Sometimes he was sweet, brushing her hair off her face and kissing her so tenderly it made her heart hurt. Sometimes he was a predator, imprisoning her across the lunch table with this I’m-coming-for-you-babe look in his dark brown eyes that could crank her up from neutral to desperate for it in about three seconds. He could even be playful, like the time he’d caught her on her way out of the campground showers and tickled her mercilessly until she was breathless and giggling, at which point he half-dragged her back to the tent and had his way with her.
But then there were the times when the smile disappeared and he hardly spoke from sunup to sundown. Or when he did talk, but he spent the whole day making grouchy speeches about just about everything: litter, global warming, corporate privilege, offshore tax shelters, lobbyists, polar bears, grade inflation, illegal extradition, food additives. She’d tried playing devil’s advocate a few times, but it was a waste of breath. When Tom was in a mood, he pushed her away so hard it wasn’t worth trying to cheer him up.
It was like touring with half a dozen different people. Cheerful Tom. Angry Tom. Clever Tom. Sexy Tom. Bitter Tom. Silent Tom. Throw in Sneezy and Doc and she’d have the whole damn menagerie. And she never knew which Tom was going to be there when she woke up beside him in the morning. Since she found all of them as impossible to ignore as the weather, it was kind of exhausting. Lexie had always been a pretty sunny, even-keel kind of person, and being so tuned in to Tom’s moods upset her equilibrium.
Regardless of his mood, though, he wanted her in his bed at night. She’d found this out on the first of his silent days after they’d left Montana behind. Figuring his standoffish attitude meant he would want his own space, she’d pitched her little tent and left to do some laundry at the campground office, only to discover when she returned that he’d taken her tent down and packed it away. When she crawled in beside him and turned off her headlamp that night, he’d pulled her close and nuzzled her neck, eased her shirt off, and kissed her over and over again, his hands buried in her hair, t
he cool mountain air creating a delicious contrast to the heat of his bare chest brushing against her skin. His hands and mouth moved over her slowly in the black cocoon of the tent, his patient tongue seducing her, teasing her, pleasuring her until she was desperate for him. When he’d finally taken possession of her, it was with an intensity that left her feeling shell-shocked and vulnerable.
It was too much. She didn’t want desperate or intense with Tom. She wanted to stick with what they’d agreed to—sex and only sex. Steamy sex, blistering-hot sex, rough sex, slow sex. After she’d told him she was on the pill and they’d had an awkward talk to establish they both had a clean bill of health, they’d ditched the condoms, and that had only served to make the sex better. With Tom, it was all amazing. But she could do without the emotional subtext behind their every interaction—a subtext usually so incomprehensible to her, it might as well have been written in Swahili.
On the road, he’d been doing a better job of staying true to their agreement. He made a good riding companion now. There was no more taking off in the morning and meeting up at the campsite at the end of the day. These days, Tom was consistently three feet off her front tire, which meant the view was always agreeable, regardless of their surroundings. But the itinerary had remained her department. She’d decided where they were going and how they were going to get there each day.
Until now. Now, he’d thrown her bike computer into a muddy field, stolen her map, and turned them onto a road to who-the-hell-knows-where. And that was no big thing. All in the name of fun, right? Except it felt like a huge thing to suddenly have no idea where they’d be sleeping tonight, or if this was an out-and-back detour or a whole different route, or when they’d get to Kremmling, if at all. She had the entire trip planned out on paper, and skipping Kremmling messed with that plan. Which left her where, exactly? Somewhere in Colorado with Tom. And she was just supposed to trust him.
Honestly, if he hadn’t been so cheerful this morning, and if it hadn’t been so freaking windy, she probably wouldn’t be going along with it. But he was, and it was, so she was. For now.
“You can’t afford this.”
“How would you know what I can and can’t afford?” Tom asked, his eyes amused. “I’ve got money in the bank. Being a recluse is cheap.”
They were in the lobby of the Bismarck Hotel, which gave every appearance of being Steamboat Springs’s finest, and Tom was insisting he was going to get them a room. She’d never been here before—she’d never been to Steamboat at all, though she had to admit from the little she’d seen so far that the tiny mountain town was totally charming and breathtaking in that way Colorado mountain towns seemed to specialize in. But if the lobby was anything to go by, the boutique hotel had to be expensive. It was tricked out in the old-fashioned luxury western style Colorado also did so well, with comfortable, rough-hewn leather furniture, authentic-looking Navajo rugs on the walls, and a vast expanse of glass offering an incredible mountain view.
Of course he couldn’t afford it. Money in the bank or not, he was a bike mechanic, for crying out loud. He probably made minimum wage. She tugged on his hand, a little uncomfortable in the opulent surroundings. “Come on, we can go back to that motel on the edge of town. It looked fine. You don’t have to do this just to—” She caught herself.
“To impress you?” Now his smile was mocking.
She nodded, embarrassed by the admission. Smooth, Lexie. Way to insult the guy who’s going out of his way to be nice to you.
“That’s not why we’re here.”
“Then why—”
Tom put a finger to her lips, stepping close enough to ramp up her awareness of him until she had trouble remembering what she’d been about to say. When he was this close, she always found herself zooming in on the details—the stubble on his jaw, his dimpled chin, his full mouth—and losing the ability to converse. Some choice words to describe this condition had floated into her mind, words like “besotted” and “infatuated” and “starry-eyed,” but she’d ushered them right back out. It was just hormones or pheromones or something. Anyone who could do the wicked things to her body Tom knew how to do would have the same effect on her.
“Humor me,” he said in the low, rumbly tone that would be his bedroom voice if the two of them had ever had sex in a bedroom. Then he winked at her and strode purposefully to the desk to check in.
Winked at her. Tom.
Seriously, who was this guy, and what had he done with her riding companion?
They ended up in a suite approximately the size of her apartment, an opulent room with a vast bed made of twisted juniper and covered in soft white linens that felt decadent against her skin when she gave in to the temptation to run her fingers over them. The windows lining the back wall looked out on mountains, blue sky, fluffy clouds—a Colorado postcard come to life. The tiled bathroom had a walk-in shower big enough for a football team that was equipped with enough spray heads to accommodate at least the offensive line. It was about as far as it could be from the don’t-look-too-closely-at-the-carpet motels where they’d stayed the few nights they hadn’t been camping.
She couldn’t help feeling like some terrible mistake had been made. They didn’t belong here. She didn’t, anyway. And Tom—how did Tom even know this kind of place existed, much less have the money to pay for it?
“What do you think?” he asked from behind her.
“I think this room must cost more than my rent.” She stopped herself from asking again how he could possibly afford it.
He moved up behind her, and then his stubbled chin was scraping a tingling path along her neck as one powerful arm wrapped around her waist and drew her close. “I wasn’t always a bike mechanic,” he said, using his tent voice again.
“No?” she asked, giving in immediately to the urge to melt back against him.
“Nope. I used to be charming for a living.”
“Sounds like hard work,” she said, playing it light but wondering at the same time what that other Tom had been like. The Tom from before.
“It was, but it paid well.” His hand sneaked inside her jersey, found her bare stomach, and rested there, teasing only in its heat and its proximity to all the places she wanted it to go.
“So you were a professional escort? I hear the tips are good,” she joked, hoping he’d tell her something more.
“Worse. I was a suit. Vice president of development at twenty-five, with a good shot at running the company by the time I turned thirty.”
“Wow. You really must have been charming,” she said, covering while she scrambled to make sense of what he was telling her. Tom as a corporate guy was impossible to swallow. He had to be the most anti-corporate person she’d ever met … which made its own twisted kind of sense, right? Because something had obviously gone wrong to change him from the man he had been to the man he was now. Apparently, that something had to do with his job.
“So what happened?” she asked, knowing it was the wrong thing to say and still not able to keep her mouth shut. He stiffened behind her, withdrew his hand, and she fought back the feeling of abandonment that always accompanied Tom’s withdrawals.
She tried telling herself what she told herself every time. Tom wasn’t hers. He couldn’t abandon her if she’d never had him. She didn’t even want to have him. Tom was great at physical intimacy, but he was about the least likely candidate for emotional intimacy she’d ever met. Lexie would have to be a complete fool to want an emotionally intimate relationship with him.
She refused to be a complete fool.
He didn’t reply for so long that she’d finished shoring up her defenses and was fully braced for the return of Silent Tom when he finally spoke. “I grew up” was all he said, and she could hear in his tone that the conversation was over.
When she turned around to look at him, his expression was grave, but his eyes lacked the black anger she’d expected. He wasn’t going to tell her anything more, but he wasn’t going to freeze her out, either. For the fi
rst time in the six weeks they’d been riding together, he’d told her a tiny portion of his secrets. She decided he deserved a reward.
“I could really use a shower,” she purred, stepping closer to rub suggestively against him. “Want to join me?”
He didn’t bother to answer this time. Instead, he lowered his mouth to hers and backed her toward the bathroom.
12
The next step toward getting Lexie to embrace her inner wild child was going to take place in the shower.
Insisting on the Bismarck had been part of his plan. He’d wanted to knock Lexie out of her comfort zone. It was the same reason he’d ditched her bike computer and arranged for the detour. She needed to learn how to have more fun on the road, and that meant figuring out that some of the best times were the most spontaneous. Plus, after so many weeks pitching their tents on one patch of parched lawn after another, he figured they deserved a night in a nice hotel.
But the shower figured heavily into his plan, too. As did the bed. And the back of the couch. Not to mention the walls. There were a lot of things he wanted to do to Lexie that he hadn’t been able to do in his tent. The suite had been as much a concession to his overactive imagination as it was to their comfort.
Telling her about his corporate days had not been part of the plan. Not that he’d said much, but still—he didn’t talk about that time in his life. Ever. Hell, he tried not to think about it. So why bring it up with Lexie?
It would be the last time, he told himself as he found her mouth and ran his tongue along that delicious, plump lower lip of hers. His secrets were going to stay locked up nice and tidy. This was about pushing Lexie to be more open, more spontaneous. It had nothing to do with him.
Still backing her into the bathroom, he pulled her hair free of its ponytail as he kissed her. Her hands were inside his shirt, running lightly up his sides, down his stomach, over his back, firing him up the way her touch always did. “Get undressed,” he ordered. As she complied, he turned on several of the shower heads and stripped off his own shirt and shorts. Lex came up behind him and reached for him playfully, but he evaded her grasp. He had plans, and if she got her hands on his dick, they were going to go up in smoke.
