by Jill Shalvis
behind him, her arms coming around him. You are not having sex with her, he reminded himself. Not unless she strips naked and throws you to the bed and—
No. Under no circumstances were they having sex. Period. He couldn’t, not without getting his heart involved. Even though there was already an entire section of his heart with her name engraved on it.
Darcy’s body brushed his and he stilled in order to catch every single second of it.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Yes.” No …
She settled the blindfold against his eyes, during which time her hair brushed his jaw and her scent filled his head. He actually caught himself trying to inhale her whole.
“Don’t get any ideas,” she murmured in his ear.
Too late. He had all sorts of ideas. “About?”
“About doing this to me.”
With his eyes covered, his other senses kicked into gear, like the feel of her mouth so close to his ear, her breasts pressing into his back. “Turnabout is fair play,” he said, voice low and husky even to his own ears.
She laughed but her voice was just as low and husky as his. “Maybe if you’re very lucky.”
Damn. She was only teasing him, he knew this, but … damn.
She led him into the boardroom, shutting the door behind them. She was told to climb up the platform and call out directions to her partner from there.
“The first station’s about six feet,” Darcy said. “But there’re boxes right in front of you, haphazardly stacked. If you even brush them, they’re going over. Take a big step to the right.”
He took a big step and crashed into what felt like netting.
“Sorry!” she gasped. “I meant my right, your left!”
He corrected and she said, “Good. Now you’ve got to go up and over what looks like one of the things that construction workers use for their saw.”
“A sawhorse?”
“Yeah,” she said. “That. Go over it because you can’t go around without knocking over a set of foam bricks.”
AJ felt out in front of him, gauged the height and swung a leg over.
“Duck low,” she said.
He crouched.
“Crawl forward five feet to the first station.”
His hands hit something that felt an awful lot like snakes. His fears hadn’t yet played into this whole trustbuilding game they’d been playing all morning, but they were about to. Logically he knew damn well he wasn’t crawling through a pile of snakes, but the mind was a funny thing and his instantly rebelled. “What the hell is this?”
“Four more feet,” she said. “Hurry, there’s only one minute left and I want to get to ask my question!”
He was starting to sweat. “Darcy—”
“Yeah? Hey,” she said, her voice suddenly soft. “AJ? You okay?”
“Peachy. Next move.”
“Okay,” she said, gentle but firm, as if she knew. “You’re almost there. It’s almost over. Just stretch out in front of you. You’ll feel the platform. Pull yourself up on it. You just need to move forward a few feet, that’s all.”
He sucked in a breath and surged forward and up onto the platform. On his knees, he gulped air in like he’d been running a marathon.
A set of arms came around him and squeezed. “You rocked it,” Darcy said in his ear. “You’re all done.”
Ripping off the blindfold, he stared down into the large kiddie pool he’d just climbed out of.
Filled with rubber snakes.
“Jesus,” he breathed.
Darcy, on her knees facing him, was running her hands up and down his back, her eyes worried. “You’re not peachy at all.”
“Sure I am,” he said, swiping the sweat from his brow. “I’ve never been better.”
He’d dislodged her arms from him but she didn’t move away, just kept looking into his face. “So … snakes, huh?”
He shuddered. “Little bit.”
Without another word she offered him one of the two bottles of water that had been waiting for them on the platform.
He gulped it down.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t know.”
“Ask your question.”
“It can wait.”
“Just ask your damn question,” he said.
“Alright.” She met his gaze. “Who’s Kayla?”
Darcy let herself into her hotel room, plopped down on the bed, and stared at the ceiling.
They’d finished the trust workshop but hadn’t won. She couldn’t be surprised. After she’d asked her question, she and AJ had sat on that first platform staring at each other long enough to fall into last place going into the second round.
She’d had to prompt him again about her question and he’d answered with one of his own.
“How do you know about Kayla?” he asked.
“You said her name last night. In your sleep.”
And that had been the last thing they’d said to each other because someone in the next boardroom over chose that moment to have an anxiety attack in their “snake” pit and had to be taken out on a stretcher.
AJ had checked the roads on his phone and showed her the app. “The summit’s closed, even to four-wheel-drive vehicles with chains.”
Just her luck. Karma was a bitch.
They’d lunched with a large group, including Trent and Summer. And then Trent and AJ had gone to the gym while Summer and Darcy had hit the spa and had mani-pedis while looking out the sixteen-foot-high windows as the snow continued to dump out of the sky in lines so heavy it looked like a cartoon of a storm.
They’d all had a drink and hors d’oeuvres in the bar and then Summer had claimed exhaustion. Trent had taken her upstairs, leaving AJ and Darcy free to hit their own rooms.
Alone.
Which was fine. Great. Darcy blew out a sigh and looked out her window.
White.
As in a complete whiteout.
Which meant another night here …
She pulled out her phone and texted Xander: Not going to make it back for tonight’s poker game.
His reply was immediate: WTF?
Look out the window, she texted back. Mother Nature’s on a rampage.
Not here, he responded.
Perfect, she thought. The storm was only exactly right over her head. There had to be an analogy in there somewhere …
And then another text came in from Xander: So you’re sleeping with him.
She nearly choked on her gum. After staring at the words for a moment, she thumbed: Wow. Really?
He was quick to reply: Hey, if I’d taken you off to some “conference” I’d be making up lines about being snowed in, too. And I’d make sure we had only one room. And you’d be in my bed, sleeping with me.
She stared at her phone. He’d had plenty of chances to try and sleep with her this past year. He’d never made his desire for her a secret but nor had he pushed. Not once.
It was because of her. She knew this. She’d held back. She loved him, she really did. But she also knew that while he loved her back, he happened to love a lot of women. They flocked to him and he enjoyed it. Thrived on it. She’d never be his one and only.
Not that she wanted to be someone’s one and only. Because she didn’t.
But it was more than that. She’d watched Xander work his way through women like some men worked their way through new tires, and she realized that he had the same problem she did.
He didn’t love himself enough to really love anyone else. That, and then there was the biggie—she knew in her heart of hearts that she wasn’t going to ever be in love with him.
She debated on what to say and finally settled for: Cocky much?
Nice evasion of the question.
She blew out a breath. She owed him answers. She texted: There’s nothing to say. Nothing’s going on between AJ and me.
That she wanted there to be was none of his business.
Xander didn’t respond.
&nb
sp; She was still staring at her phone when the wind kicked up, battering at her windows.
Raising the hair on her arms.
The night of her accident the weather had been like this. Just like this.
The wind hit again and her room creaked, and this time she shivered and wrapped her arms around herself on the bed, staring out the windows into the dark, black night.
When the lamp at her bedside flickered and nearly went out, she jumped up and strode straight to the minibar. She could almost hear AJ’s horror, but she’d just have to owe him for it.
The lights flickered again and she gasped out loud. Maybe she’d just pay AJ back right now, she thought, and, grabbing her wallet and the bottle, she headed out the door.
The elevator was empty, for which she was grateful. So was the hallway on his floor. At his door, she knocked once and stared down at her feet.
Bare.
What the hell was wrong with her?
The door opened and she lifted her head and sucked in a breath. AJ wore a pair of black sweatpants and nothing else except a whole lot of testosterone. She tried to swallow but her mouth was too dry.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yes.” No. “Maybe.”
He leaned on the doorjamb, arms crossed over his broad chest, feet casually crossed, watching her. “Miss me?”
“In your dreams.”
A slight smile appeared at the corners of his mouth. “Yeah. You missed me.”
“You fit you and that big head of yours in that room okay?”
His smile spread. “Come in and see for yourself.”
She contemplated her options. If she left now, she’d look like an idiot. If she stayed, she’d have to admit that she’d manufactured a reason for being here.
She felt his fingertips under her chin as he pulled her gaze up to his. She knew he was waiting on her to speak, but something was wrong with her and she’d lost her words. Scratch that. She knew exactly what was wrong with her.
It was called lust.
And she had it bad, too, possibly even a terminal case. Forget it, she decided. Forget this, and she whirled away to go.
Sixteen
“Turning tail?” AJ asked Darcy. “That’s unlike you.”
“Not turning tail,” she answered. “A tactical retreat.”
“Also unlike you.”
Yeah, but she definitely needed a retreat here. With a sigh, she turned back to him. “I came because …” Crap. Why had she come? What had been her excuse again? “I owe you money,” she remembered.
“For?”
She waved the bottle of scotch. “They restocked my room.”
“So you’re here to … pay me,” he said, his voice carrying more than a whisper of disbelief.
“Yep.” She was sounding more and more lame but her ego wasn’t ready to give up the façade. “And also I thought you might be thirsty after all that exercising we got in today.”
His mouth twitched. “Did you just refer to the trust workshop as exercise?”
“Yes,” she said. “It hurt my brain the way real exercise hurts my body, so it makes sense in my head.”
Just as she said this, a heavy wind battered the hotel, making it creak and—she would swear to this—sway. Going still as stone, she stared over AJ’s shoulder at the window in his room and the black night beyond.
She felt his hand slip around her elbow and pull her in. He shut the door behind her, bolted it, and then gestured for her to precede him the rest of the way into the room.
The only light came from the muted TV. The blue glow cast over the room, illuminating the bed, which was mussed up. The pillows had been shoved up against the headboard like maybe he’d been sitting up.
Also unable to sleep.
She headed straight over there and sat on a corner of the mattress. “Scotch or …” She eyed the two bottles in her hand. “Scotch?”
Not answering, he sat at her side and met her gaze.
“Don’t judge me,” she said.
He reached for one of the bottles, opened it, and handed it back to her. Then he took the other, opened that one as well, and clicked it to hers in a toast. “Never,” he said.
“Never’s a pretty strong word.”
“Never,” he said again.
Okay. She could deal with that. They clicked bottles again and tossed back. The storm continued to rage outside, making her heart pound. To distract herself, she spoke the first thing on her mind. “So,” she said.
“So.”
“You ever going to answer the question I won?”
And just like that his face closed up. “Not going there.”
“Not going there?” she repeated.
“That’s what I said.”
She stared at him, more than a little stunned. “Seriously? My life’s an open book to you. You brought me here to be an open book for you.”
“Doesn’t mean mine’s open to you.”
This was such an unexpected hit that she had to work at sucking in enough air for her lungs. Not that it beat back the pain. Shaking her head, she stood and headed to the door.
“Darcy.”
Nope. They were done here. She shut the door behind her—not quite a slam, in deference to the others on the floor, but definitely a statement.
Out in the hall she took one step before she realized she’d left her wallet—with her hotel keycard—back in his room with her liquor.
Dammit.
The only thing worse than being a drama queen was being a stupid drama queen. Note to self: Think through your next temper tantrum.
With great reluctance she turned back. She lifted her hand to bang on AJ’s door just as he opened it. She nearly knocked right on his nose.
He held out her wallet, but not the scotch. Whatever. She snatched her wallet without making eye contact and bolted for the
