by Lori Wilde
Men. She was sick of the lot of them.
“Hey, Ms. Garrett,” one of the male students said, yanking her distracted thoughts back to the present.
She blinked at the small group of summer-school students seated before her. “Yes?”
“I heard on the news this morning that a Taiwanese billionaire was charged with hiring orchid smugglers to steal rare orchids from around the world.”
“Oh? I hadn’t heard that.”
“What do you think about the practice of orchid-smuggling? Honestly, what’s the big deal? I mean come on, it’s just a flower. It’s not like it’s drugs or anything.”
Madison launched into a lecture on why the illegal trafficking of orchids was detrimental on so many levels, but in the back of her mind she kept considering what the student had said.
When the class was over, she dismissed the students and bent to collect her things to get out of the way for the next class. She heard footsteps in the auditorium, but she figured it was just a student coming back for something they’d forgotten. Until a deep masculine voice said, “How you doin’, Maddie?”
She whirled around, her heart suddenly pounding. When she saw Jake standing there looking deadly handsome and uncharacteristically serious, she felt her grip loosen on the books and papers in her hand, felt them tumble to the floor. She stood frozen, unable to move to pick them up, pinned to the spot by Jake’s wistful gaze.
“What are you doing here?” she asked sharply.
“I came to see you.” He sauntered toward her.
“Well, I don’t want to see you. I thought I made that clear enough in Costa Rica.”
“You did.” He nodded, coming up onto the lectern with her. “But I can’t stay away. I know I hurt you and I’m more sorry than words can ever say. I hope you’ll give me a chance to make it up to you.”
“Why should I?” she demanded, crossing her arms over her chest in a desperate bid to protect her melting heart.
“I’ve already made a start.”
“You turned Liu in.”
“Yes. Someone taught me the importance of protecting the orchids. I understand now how inconsiderate I’ve been. She also taught me something else.” With his eyes holding hers, he reached out to take her hand, interlacing their fingers.
“What’s that?” she whispered, wanting so badly to believe him.
“I’m never going to find joy gallivanting around jungles.”
“No?”
“Joy comes from the heart, Maddie. And my heart is here.”
Her pulse leapt. “What are you saying, Jake?”
“These kinds of feelings don’t come along every day, and I think we owe it to ourselves to see where it might lead.”
“I’m sorry, but I promised myself I was never going to get involved with any more ne’er-do-wells. And poaching is a big deal to me.”
“Then you’re in luck.”
“Oh?”
“From now on, I’m going to be an always-do-well. I’m doing my best to make amends and I hope you’ll give me a chance to prove it to you.”
“You’re going to change, just like that?”
“I’m going to try. I’ve taken a regular job.”
“Doing what?”
“Eco-tourism. I’ll be working for a company based here in New York that sends out experienced guides to lead conservation-minded individuals interested in doing their part in preserving endangered species. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?”
“You’re really going to do that?”
“Maddie, I’d do anything to redeem myself in your eyes. You’ve shown me the error of my ways and I’m praying you won’t walk away from what we could have because of my mistakes.”
“I guess there’s no sense in being a hard-ass,” she whispered, wanting so much to forgive him. “I think I can give you another chance.”
Relief crossed his face, immediately replaced by the impish grin she knew so well. “Hey, I need a hard-ass to make me toe the line, but from what I remember, your fanny is not too hard, not too soft, but just right.” He reached out to splay a palm to her backside. “You keep me on my toes, Madison Garrett, and it’s one of the things I love most about you. I need someone like you in my life.”
“And you keep me from being too much of a pointy-headed intellectual.”
“Who knew,” he murmured, lowering his head to steal a kiss, “that the daring adventurer and the calculating professor would turn out to be the perfect match?”
“Who knew?” she echoed and kissed him back.
“Now about that heart-shaped birthmark you teased me with…. It was too dark in the jungle for me to find it that night we made love. Are you ever going to show it to me in the light of day?”
She glanced toward the door, saw they were alone, then coyly raised her shirt and inched down the waistband of her pants to reveal the birthmark.
“I spy with my little eye something very, very sweet.”
Then Maddie took him back to her apartment, showed him her bedroom postered with photographs of the amore orchid she’d taken in Costa Rica and there with the smell of passion in the air, they made love all night long.
And then there were two.
NO TURNING BACK
1
Emma comes face to face with the one that got away….
“YOU’VE BROUGHT ME to the ends of the earth to die,” Emma Jacobs accused her best friend Izzy Montgomery.
“Ends of the earth? What are you talking about?” Izzy said. “It’s just Colorado.”
Emma—who was a city girl through and through—stared at the vast expanse of trees and sky and land and water. No taxis honking. No smell of hot-dog carts. No crowds jostling. No smog. No hot asphalt. Nothing to remind her of home.
“Come on,” Izzy urged. “Stretch your wings. Try something different. Don’t be afraid to expand your horizons. That’s what I was telling Hunter before we left New York. His girlfriend broke up with him.”
“I’ve been in the wilderness before,” Emma grumbled. “Had a couple of bad experiences there. I went to summer camp when I was a kid and it was awful.” She’d been stung by angry bees and broken her arm falling off a ledge during a hike. “Speaking of awful, I’m sorry to hear that about Hunter. He’s a nice guy. One of the few.”
“He’s better off without her. She kept complaining about the amount of time he spent at my apartment. She couldn’t get it through her head that Hunter and I are just friends.”
“Well, I understand where he’s at right now—that just-broken-up hell. I’m still hurting over Ryan,” Emma said.
“Hey, you told me you wanted to go somewhere you’d forget all about Ryan. Well, there’ll be no sign of him here.”
Ryan Andrews. The guy she’d met on a Bahamas cruise last year. The same guy who’d broken things off with her because he’d found someone he liked better. Emma gritted her teeth. Izzy was right. Okay, so this place was a god-forsaken wilderness, but there was absolutely no chance of running into metrosexual Ryan in these rugged parts.
“You’re thinking about Ryan,” Izzy said.
“How did you know?”
“You’ve got this expression on your face like you’ve been eating lemons.”
Emma blew out her breath. “I’m totally over him,” she said. “I view him as a necessary speed bump on my road to stop romanticizing every relationship the way I’ve done since…”
Well since Trent Colton. She thought of how he’d looked at eighteen, cocking a deadly grin and leaning in to steal a kiss from her in the hallway of her high school in Terrytown, New York. There were some things a girl never forgot. Her first kiss, her first love, the first man she’d ever slept with. Trent had been all three. Emma gulped, feeling her cheeks color as she remembered her youthful mistake. It had all started with Trent—her tendency to romanticize love. If she could go back in time, she’d do a lot of things differently.
“C’mon,” Izzy said, slinging her backpack over her shoulde
r. “Let’s get registered.”
Izzy started for the small log cabin situated at the end of the road where the bus had dumped the group, joining the four other women headed in the same direction. This particular tour was advertised as women-only. The point was to get out in the wilderness, hike some mountains, raft some white water and learn a few survival skills.
When Izzy had first posed the trip while Madison and Bianca were off jetting the world and falling in love, Emma had been all for it. She’d needed something to take her mind off the fact that as a librarian she didn’t possess the funds for flying off to Brazil or Costa Rica. Plus, she’d wanted to get as far away from the opposite sex as she could. But now that she was here, she wasn’t so sure. Where were the comfy hotels? The spas? The room service?
“Ah,” Izzy said, taking a deep breath and then expelling it. “Smell that crisp, pine-scented air? It’s a good twenty degrees cooler here than in Manhattan.”
It was, but that wasn’t a selling point. Emma liked heat. As soon as the temperature dipped into the sixties, she hauled out sweaters and jackets.
“At least we’re not going to have to worry about the bet while we’re out here,” Izzy remarked, slowing down so Emma could catch up with her. “No hunky guys around to distract us from our goal.”
“Which is?” Emma asked, mincing carefully around a collection of rocks that had fallen from the rise onto the path.
“To become stronger women.”
“Oh, yeah, that goal.”
“Did you wear your special lingerie?” Izzy asked.
“Of course I did,” Emma replied, shifting her mental focus to the lingerie she had on underneath her jeans and T-shirt. “Madison and Bianca are monitoring us. But shh, please don’t call it that in public.”
“I’m going to win, you know,” Izzy said smugly.
“Not likely. I don’t jump into bed with guys the way you do.”
“Ouch, the kitten’s got claws.”
“Okay, sorry, that sounded mean, but come on, Izzy, you have been with a lot of guys.”
“Which is why I’m sure I’m going to win the bet.”
“I’m not following you. If you have trouble controlling your libido—”
“You’re the one who has issues. You fall in love with every guy you sleep with.”
Guilty as charged. She’d slept with three guys in her twenty-seven years and she’d fallen in love with all three of them. Trent hardest of all.
“I know that I can go without sex, but I don’t know if you can go without falling in love.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“We’ll see,” Izzy said. “May the best woman win.” With that, she opened the door to the log cabin and stood aside for Emma to go in first.
The other four women who’d been on the bus with them were chattering like bees in a hive. Excited, intense. In contrast, Emma was depressed, a bee without wings. She was not looking forward to this vacation. She’d just wanted out of the city, away from places she’d visited with Ryan.
“Hi!” greeted a cheery woman in her mid-thirties. She had short dark hair and a perky way of bouncing on her toes. “I’m Selena. I just got divorced and I’m ready for the next chapter in my life. How ’bout you?”
“I’m Emma, I just got out of a relationship, too.”
“Married?” Selena asked.
“No.”
“You dodged a bullet. Stay single.”
“Um…thanks for the advice.”
Besides Selena there were Deanna and Jessica, traveling companions from Ohio. They shared a house in Cincinnati and loved taking active vacations together. They’d been wanting to take a white-water rafting trip for years and they were “so enthused to be here.” Emma guessed them to be in their late thirties, early forties. And there was Myrtle, sixtyish, slim. She was recently widowed and her daughter had bought the trip for her. Myrtle’s mood seemed to match Emma’s. Unsure about the whole thing.
Behind the desk, a young woman Emma estimated to be about five years younger than her, was checking people in. The girl was vaguely familiar, but Emma couldn’t place her. As she and Izzy waited their turn to sign in, a truck rumbled to a stop outside the door. Emma didn’t pay much attention. She was wriggling around, trying to get the lingerie unbunched from around her waist without being obvious about it. The cabin door opened. Emma tugged. The women in the place let out a collective sigh. Emma shifted her backpack and finally glanced up.
All the air left her lungs.
A man stood in the entrance of the place that was supposed to be for women only. A tall, dark, ruggedly handsome man in scuffed hiking boots and a battered straw cowboy hat looking for all the world as though he’d stepped from the set of an Old West movie.
Emma’s stomach lurched. Not just because he cut a powerfully sexy image, but because she’d know that face anywhere. Had dreamed of it many a night. Her shoulders tensed. Her thighs tingled. Her hands curled into fists.
Trent Colton in the flesh, looking a hundred times sexier than he had been ten years ago.
Izzy nudged her in the ribs. “See, I told you I was going to win the bet.”
“YOU SET ME UP,” Emma hissed.
Izzy shrugged, grinned.
“But…” Emma darted another glance at Trent. He was busy studying a clipboard and hadn’t seen her yet. “How did you find him?” she whispered.
“Remember that night we went out to Club Sizzle?”
“The week after Bianca went to Brazil and Madison headed to Costa Rica?”
“Yeah, and you got a little tipsy and started gushing to me about your first love?”
“No.”
“Well, you did. Anyway I looked him up on Facebook and voilà, I discovered he ran a wilderness-vacation-adventures outfit. That’s when I proposed the trip.”
“How did you know he was the right Trent Colton?”
“There weren’t that many, plus he was in your age group and you listed the same high school. I took a shot.”
“What if he’s married? I mean if you lured me here thinking I’ll rekindle the relationship and you’ll win the bet, then you had to find out his marital status.”
“It said ‘single’ on his Facebook page.”
Oh gosh, oh gosh, oh gosh. It was Trent and he was single. Emma’s heart pounded so loudly she feared everyone in the place could hear it. Particularly Trent.
She gulped. Every muscle in her body urged her to sprint from the cabin and run after the bus headed back to Durango, but it was too late. Like it or not, she was stranded here.
“Hello, ladies,” Trent greeted the group. “I’m Trent Colton, your guide for this adventure.”
Izzy made yummy noises—so did Myrtle.
Deanna and Jessica looked as though they didn’t care either way.
Selena scowled. “A man? Why are we stuck with a man? I thought this was supposed to be a women-only trip. I came out here to get away from men.”
Amen to that, Emma thought.
Trent raised his palms. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, ma’am, but we’re short-staffed for the summer. My name’s listed as the tour guide on the website. My sister Angie will be happy to refund your money and arrange transportation to the airport if my gender is an issue for anyone.”
Ah, that explained why Angie was familiar. When Emma and Trent had been dating, Angie had been thirteen. She’d changed a lot, grown into her looks.
“Why can’t Angie guide us?” asked the disgruntled woman.
Angie rounded a hand over her belly. “Sorry, I’m six months pregnant.”
A sympathetic murmur went up from the group.
“My brother knows what he’s doing. You’re in good hands,” Angie assured them. “He’s a true professional.”
“I want my money back,” Selena said. “Please arrange for my shuttle to the airport.”
Here’s your chance. Take your money and hop on the bus out of here with Selena.
Emma stepped forward, but then some
thing stopped her from saying anything. Running away wasn’t the answer. If she really did want to make a clean start for the future, she’d have to face the past. And the past was standing right across the room from her.
“Personally,” Izzy whispered. “Even though I know he’s yours, I don’t mind enjoying the scenery for the next seven days.”
“He’s not mine,” Emma snapped. “Not anymore.”
“Emma?”
At the sound of Trent’s voice pouring over her, smooth as honey, Emma closed her eyes. He’d finally seen her. No running away now.
“Emma Jacobs, is that you?”
Emma suppressed a groan and turned to greet him.
“Or are you going by another name now?” Trent asked, weaving toward her.
Emma shoved a hand through her hair. It was hard to smile when she felt so shaky inside. “No, still Jacobs.”
“How did that happen?” Trent asked, raking an appreciative gaze over her body. “I would have bet even money that someone would have snatched you up and put a big diamond ring on your finger by now.”
“Nope, no snatching.”
Trent tipped back his cowboy hat, tilted his head, grinned. “His loss is my gain.”
Just as knee-wobblingly charming as ever. Emma’s heart was thumping madly now.
They stood looking at each other, and it was as if she was eighteen again and madly in love for the first time. All the bittersweet, angst-filled teenage emotions she thought she’d forgotten all about came surging to the forefront, and for a split second, she could not get her breath.
“Well…” he said, his eyes eating her up. “Well, you sure look good.”
Emma’s cheeks heated. “Um…so do you.”
“We need to catch up.”
“Um…yes…let’s do that.”
He waved his hand at the counter. “I’ll let you get registered, then come on out to the landing where we’re outfitting everyone with their gear.
