While still trembling, just a little, on the outside.
He stood as she approached, his mouth curved in an assuring smile that nonetheless delivered a jolt of nervous anticipation. Surely she’d never felt this dichotomy around a man before. There was a familiarity about him—as if he were someone she recognized—that was at odds with her wary response to the immense attraction he held for her. He pulled out her chair and touched the small of her back to direct her into the seat. It sent a flurry of chills up her spine that tumbled down the front of her in a hot wave.
For a full five seconds, she couldn’t breathe.
There were no martinis. Nor birthday cake or gin rummy. Instead they shared a bottle of wine with an appetizer platter that was a delicious mélange of carmelized Brussels sprouts topped with shavings of a tangy, salty parmesan cheese. Then it was two dinners of seared halibut, rice pilaf and crunchy steamed vegetables.
They didn’t talk of anything consequential, including themselves. At one point he said he was on the verge of asking her name—but that “Birthday Girl” had kind of grown on him. So she didn’t say a word about it. Instead, they made up stories about their fellow refugees. That man in the opposite corner was an antler chandelier salesman, Jay proposed: he sold them off the rack.
The grandmotherly woman at the bar was a Mafia boss’s wife on the lam for offering counterfeit knitting patterns on the internet. Shay added, she’d bought herself a skein of trouble.
Finally it was getting late and the tables were cleared and those patrons without rooms were collecting blankets and arranging themselves for the night. When someone took the extra chairs at their table in order to create a makeshift bed, Jay cleared his throat. “I guess it’s time to turn in.”
During dinner, he’d told Shay he’d spent the night before in his car. She cleared her throat, too. “You know...”
“I know what?”
Her fingertip made an aimless pattern on the tablecloth. She pretended it fascinated her. “The bed upstairs is king-size.”
Silence welled between them when she didn’t say any more.
Then Jay broke the quiet. “Birthday Girl,” he said, his voice low. “Can you look at me?”
Of course she could. It was easy, because he still really didn’t know her—not even her name. But it took a couple of seconds before she managed to comply. His golden eyes studied her, but she couldn’t read the expression in them.
Her face heated as she forced herself to continue meeting his gaze. “I’m saying we could just share it...you know, sleep,” she clarified. “Nothing more than that.”
He reached over and captured her wandering finger, then took her whole hand in his. His thumb, that work-roughened thumb that had pressed against her mouth the night before, rasped over her knuckles, back and forth, making the journey down the shallow valleys and up the low hills slow and hypnotic.
Shay felt the touch everywhere. Feathering along the groove of her spine, ghosting over her tight, tingling nipples, teasing the tender insides of her thighs. Her body was melting, and if something didn’t happen soon he’d have to scoop her out of the chair with a spoon. “Jay,” she whispered. It almost sounded like a whimper.
“We could try sleeping, I suppose,” he mused. “But we should probably be realistic about our chances of ‘nothing more.’”
Who wanted to be realistic? Who wanted to calculate odds? Not Shay. She only wanted him and this time, this time out of her normal world, her usual ordered, good-girl, scandal-averse existence.
Rising to her feet, she turned her hand to clasp his. To tug him up, too. “Let’s go to my room.”
It was near dark inside the space that seemed dominated by the bed. The only illumination came from the glow of the night-light in the attached bathroom. They halted just inside the entry door and Jay cupped her face in his warm hand before lowering his head.
At the touch of his mouth, she jerked, her body moving into his of its own accord. His other arm curled about her hips, keeping her against him and the hardness that pressed into her belly.
She shivered, and he murmured something soothing as his lips feathered over her cheek, down her neck, before returning to her mouth. This time, the kiss went from gentle to greedy. Shay made a low sound in her throat and stood on tiptoe to get closer to him.
He made an approving noise and then swung her into his arms and strode with her to the bed.
What happened next was hot and sweet. He was a tender lover, and gentle, despite the size of his hands and the strength of his body. She supposed he was holding back—a man like him would have ravenous appetites, yes?—but that was all right with Shay, because she was holding back, too.
It felt as if they were encased in a fantasy and she didn’t want to pop its soap-bubble exterior by holding too tight or crying out too loud. With slow, patient touches, he rolled her up and over the orgasm, and when he followed, he buried his face in her neck, his big body shaking against hers.
They drifted to sleep without words.
In the gray light of early morning, they came awake to the sound of car engines revving. Shay gathered the covers close around her shoulders as his eyes opened and he looked at her from the other pillow. “Sounds like the roads have reopened,” she said, her voice quiet.
He ran a hand through his hair, and she remembered the cool, thick softness of it as she’d held his head to her breast the night before. Her nipples sprang to life against the cotton sheet and her face heated, but she didn’t make a move and hoped he didn’t sense her kindling desire.
Their time out of time was over.
He sat up, the sheet pooling at his hips. Through the screen of her lashes, she ran her gaze over the ripples of his chest and abs and stifled a sigh. She’d had her night with all that muscle and skin. It was time to let it go.
Let him go.
He took a shower and while he was occupied she rose from bed and wrapped herself in her robe. When he emerged fully dressed from the bathroom, she was standing at the window, staring into the street and the cars that were cruising by.
The world moving again. Moving on.
He stood close behind her, not touching. “Well,” he said. “Thanks for sharing your evening with me.”
“You’re welcome.” Shay refused to let herself look at his handsome face.
“And your bed,” Jay went on. “I think I owe you for sharing that with me, too.”
Melancholy tried tugging at her, but Shay refused to give in to its grasp. “Maybe someday I’ll demand payment,” she said, keeping her voice light. “Have you lift a hammer or something at our family cabins.”
“Sure,” he said, then he swept her hair off the back of her neck and pressed his lips there in an obvious farewell. “You name the time, Birthday Girl.”
The nickname, of course, just underscored how that would never happen. They didn’t have any way to make further contact. He had no idea who she really was. She considered changing that. One side of her wanted to grab a pen and write her name and number on that wide, calloused palm of his. The other side of her, the wary side that didn’t trust easily, hesitated. And while she was arguing with herself, he left the room.
Like that, it was decided. By him, who hadn’t pushed to know any more about her.
She made her own decision as she heard the quiet click of the door swinging back after he exited. Not regretting a moment of what they’d shared. Her neck still tingled where he’d placed that goodbye kiss. The memories of their singular attraction and single night together would last a long, long time.
It might have been her best birthday gift ever.
CHAPTER THREE
SHAY TOOK THE highway turnoff that led to the family land and traveled the four miles of private road, all the while pushing the Deerpoint Inn adventure into the far recesses of her mind. It was time to go back
to normal, become the unruffled, circumspect woman who mostly kept to herself—and who held her fears and dreams close to the chest, too. A precocious and sometimes impossible fifteen-year-old was under her care and Shay needed a calm temperament to do her best for the girl.
Maybe she’d done something out-of-character on her birthday, something self-indulgent and possibly a little reckless, but it was over now. In the very short period of their acquaintance, Jay couldn’t have made any permanent change to her.
Pressing her foot to the accelerator, her car climbed the steep drive that led to the cabins. Her sister Poppy had exchanged her battered SUV for another in decent shape—at the insistence of her fiancé, Ryan—and it was parked near a cluster of five cabins. Shay braked beside it.
Climbing from her vehicle, she took in the view. The last time she’d been out here had been weeks ago, just as winter was giving way to spring, when the snow was melting on the ground around the dwellings, but still abundant on the tree-free slopes rising above them. It was the last of the property held by the Walkers that had been secured one hundred and fifty years before, when the pioneering men and women came to the area in search of timber to harvest. In recent times, before the fire that took out the chairs, lifts and lodge, the family had run a small but popular ski resort.
While the snow was completely gone now, the cabins didn’t look much different than in March. They were run-down, with dirty windows and sagging porches. Shay assumed the seven she couldn’t see, those nestled in the surrounding woods, weren’t in any better shape. Still, she smiled as her sister emerged from the closest bungalow. Poppy and her five-year-old son, Mason, had lived there until a torrential rainstorm had destroyed part of its roof and sent her into the arms of the man she was now promised to marry.
“Hey,” Poppy said, the smile that, of late, seemed to reside permanently on her face brightening a few more degrees as she caught sight of Shay. Her honey-and-brown hair hung around her shoulders and she slipped dark glasses over her gray eyes as she stepped into the sun. “You made it.”
Shay nodded. “Once the roads reopened I left as quick as I could.”
“Did you get my Happy Birthday text?” her sister asked as she came closer. Then she hesitated, tipping up her shades to send Shay a sharp look. “What’s happened?”
“Happened?” She hoped guilt—and why should she feel guilty about a single night of commitment-free passion?—wouldn’t show on her face like a blush. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You look different,” her sister said, now nearly toe-to-toe with her.
Shay shuffled back. “How was the premiere?”
“We talked to you on the phone about that,” her sister reminded her.
“Yes, but I only heard about it from Mason’s little-dude, naturally hyperbolic point of view. How’s London?”
Poppy propped her glasses on top of her head, an appraising light in her eyes. “Let’s see. She was Memphis the first day, Raleigh the next. Today she’s Omaha.”
Meaning she was much the same. The teen had taken a keen dislike to her first name and Shay had indulged her request to try out different city names as alternatives, telling herself it was good geography practice. Not to mention she would be heeding the old adage about choosing one’s battles. “Where is...Omaha, did you say?”
“She and Mason are exploring the woods.”
Shay looked over her shoulder to peer in the direction of the close-growing trees. Pines and oaks and dogwoods covered the landscape surrounding the cabins. As a girl, she’d loved to hike among them herself. Until the fire thirteen years before. A shiver rolled down her spine and she rubbed her hands over her suddenly cold arms. She still had ugly dreams about that day.
“Shay, what’s wrong?” Poppy demanded.
“Not a thing,” she lied. “What’s been going on around here?”
With a grimace, Poppy glanced about the clearing. “Maybe now that we have decent weather, I can make some real progress.”
“That’s got to be a little tough, what with you being busy with your fancy Hollywood fiancé.”
“Ryan realizes how important this is to me.”
“And Ryan loves you so much he’ll do whatever it takes to make you happy.”
“I know.” Poppy smiled, clearly delighted that Shay had noticed. “But I want to do what makes him happy, too, which means a lot of shuffling between here and LA, so I can’t work on the cabins as much as I might like.”
“You’re not the only Walker able to wield tools.”
Poppy’s mouth turned down. “The three of you aren’t enthusiastic tool-wielders when it comes to this place.”
“I...” Shay hesitated. Poppy had good reason to believe that. When Mac and Brett had put down their sister’s idea to tackle the decrepit cabins and make them into something good, Shay had stayed on the sidelines, aware it wasn’t a legacy that came to her through DNA.
Poppy’s eyes narrowed again. “You...?”
For some reason, the truth spilled out. “I do like it here. Love it. I always have.” But she’d always felt the destruction of the resort was partly her fault. “Seeing it come alive again...if your father was still here it would make him so happy.”
“Our father,” Poppy corrected. “But are you serious? You’d stand with me in the face of Brett and Mac’s opposition?”
“They’re persuadable, I think,” Shay said.
A small smile curved Poppy’s lips. “So if you explained to them it’s as important to you as it is to me—is it really?”
Even though she knew the land wasn’t her birthright, Shay couldn’t refuse her sister again. She nodded. “Really.”
Poppy swooped in for a fierce hug. “Thank you. Thank you!” She pushed Shay away, her fingers still curled around her biceps. “See? That wasn’t so hard. Telling the truth. Saying what you want.”
Shay couldn’t resist returning her sister’s sunny smile. “I guess not.”
Poppy’s grip tightened. “All right, then. Spill the rest.”
“Spill?”
“You have another secret. What happened on your birthday? What happened to you at that inn? Something did. I can see it.”
Another guilty flush heated Shay’s skin. “Noth—”
Her denial was interrupted by a young boy’s shout. Mason came rushing out of the woods and into the clearing, his hair disheveled and his hands clutching a ragged collection of weeds. “Flowers!” he said, shoving them at his mother. “I brought you flowers, just like Duke.”
“Duke” was his name for Poppy’s groom-to-be. London, aka Omaha, sidled up behind him. “Mace,” she said, “I told you not to squeeze them so tight.”
Shay looked over at her charge. She wore her usual black jeans, a black T-shirt and black high-top sneakers. Her hair was dyed black and she wore such thick black liner and mascara that just looking at her could make Shay’s own eyes itch. There didn’t seem to be one soft thing about the girl...except for the gentle way she treated Poppy’s son.
If only for that, she would have been endeared to Shay forever. But London/Omaha had other qualities, too. Her parents had divorced when she was small and she’d lived with her mother in Europe. From what Shay had gleaned, the woman had put little time into parenting, and the teen had largely raised herself with the aid of household help.
Now her mother was dead and her father absent from the scene. Yet the fifteen-year-old was keeping it together, despite the dark wardrobe. Shay had to imagine London felt alone. But Shay understood loners because of her own outsider feelings, and so tried to give the girl space, as well as boundaries. Companionship when the teen would tolerate it.
The girl tousled Mason’s hair, the smallest of smiles tipping up the corners of her lips. Yes, London was a survivor, and Shay had to admire that, too.
“Did you have a good time?” she asked her now.
Her mask of boredom resettled firmly in place. “Sure.”
“Are you ready to go home?”
“Whatever.” But the world-weary facade again slipped a little as they said their goodbyes. Mason was impossible to ignore when he gifted her with a ferocious little-boy hug, and she again ruffled his hair while expressing polite thanks to Poppy.
The four drifted toward Shay’s car. As London stowed her belongings and then climbed into the passenger seat, Poppy stayed by the driver’s side. “We need to have lunch,” she said through Shay’s window.
“To discuss the cabins?”
Poppy shook her head. “To discuss you. Something’s different about you.”
Buckling her seat belt gave her an excuse to avoid her sister’s comment, and soon she had the car turned in the direction of Blue Arrow Lake. Her sigh of relief was lost in the hum of the car engine and for the first time she actually appreciated her teen charge’s usual dour silence.
So she was completely gobsmacked when the girl shifted in her seat and willingly addressed Shay for maybe the first time ever. “Yeah,” she said. “What happened to you? Something’s changed.”
* * *
SHAY AVOIDED THE teen’s question by employing a trick she’d learned from her mother: she pretended she didn’t hear it. Lorna Walker had used that ploy often and it was easy to understand why. What with four children, a spouse who’d wandered away and then wandered back, and a daughter conceived in scandal, Shay’s mom had likely been often plagued with uncomfortable—or just plain nosy—queries.
Luckily, London didn’t seem interested in bestirring herself to insist on an answer, so the ride home continued in silence. It gave Shay time to think over their upcoming schedule. After a couple of eventful days that had relaxed their usual routine, it was time to get back to normal.
Soon they were passing through the small town of Blue Arrow Lake, with its European village atmosphere that drew tourists up the hill from the big Southern California cities in the valleys and the beaches below. Small shops, boutiques and bistros catered to a crowd with money to burn on fine cheeses, fancy wines and casual, yet chic, designer apparel. The businesses appeared to be busy, even midweek, though on Saturday and Sunday they would be packed when the owners of the mansions surrounding the lake visited their vacation homes at the end of the workweek.
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