One-Click Buy: September 2010 Harlequin Blaze

by Lori Wilde

  “Okay,” she replied, not knowing what else to say.

  Trent went around the desk and through a door behind his sister. The minute he disappeared from sight, Emma’s shoulders sagged. “I can’t do this, Izzy.”

  “Scared you’re on the way to losing the bet?”

  “No, terrified I’ll make the same mistakes I made ten years ago.”

  “You’re tough. You can resist him.”

  “Bringing me here is like putting chocolate cake in front of someone who’s been on a low-carb diet for a year.”

  “Yep.”

  “And you’re not the least bit remorseful.”

  “Nope.”

  “If you weren’t my best friend I’d call you something that rhymes with witch.”

  Izzy was impervious. “Hey, do what you gotta do.”

  “Witch.”

  “Hopeless romantic.”

  “Heartless love ’em and leave ’em.”

  “Sticks and stones.”

  “You owe me big-time.”

  “All right, I’ll grant you that. I promise to do your laundry for a week when we get home.”

  “No way. You’re taking me out to eat somewhere really expensive.”

  “Okay. I’ll have that fifteen hundred dollars from you guys after you all lose the bet to me,” Izzy chuckled. “I can swing that.”

  “I’m not losing the bet.” Emma gritted her teeth. This wasn’t about the bet at all. This was about her past and the way she’d fallen into the same tender trap. Picking men who looked like Trent. Both Ryan and her college boyfriend, Doug, had possessed the same dark hair, tall stature and rugged attractiveness as Trent. Apparently, he’d gotten into her blood and, as much as she believed she’d put the past behind her, one glance at him was enough to prove her completely wrong.

  Once Izzy had signed them in, Angie gave her a list of do’s and don’ts for successful white-water rafting, then instructions on where to pick up their gear and directions to the launching dock. Deciding that she was going to view this as a positive and let go of her anger and anxiety, Emma followed Izzy to the lockers where they could store their purses and luggage and pick up sleeping bags and backpacks.

  Once they were outside again, the sheer beauty of the place bowled her over. The river stretched out to their left. She could see glimpses of it through the trees. Myrtle, Deanna and Jessica had already picked up their packs and had started walking down a narrow path to the dock where Trent Colton stood surveying everyone like the captain of his domain. Which, she supposed, he was.

  He grinned and waved at Emma.

  Stupidly, she grinned and waved back. What in the heck was wrong with her? She couldn’t rewrite the past. How had she gotten here?

  Oh yeah, Izzy. Her friend could think again if she thought she was going to win that bet. Emma was strong. She was resolute. She was not going to cave simply because the one-who-got-away was strutting around on the dock like a runway model.

  Stop watching him!

  Ah, but she couldn’t. He moved with such agile grace, she was mesmerized. Compelled by a force beyond her control, caught in a whirlpool of emotions, all she could do was stare.

  No, no that was wrong-headed thinking. This was not beyond her control. She was here on vacation. She planned on learning how to raft white water and start a campfire and all that other good survivalist nonsense. She was just going to forget that Trent had once held her in the protective circle of his arms, that she had once rested her head on his shoulder and dreamed of being Mrs. Emma Colton. That was the stuff of fairy tales. Romantic and unattainable. A fantasy.

  And this was her chance to stomp it out once and for all.

  2

  She was sexier than ever.

  Lust, hot and hard, grabbed Trent in a death grip as he watched her come down the hill toward the dock.

  He stared at her feet and raked his gaze up to that pretty face that still occasionally haunted his dreams. Trent swore under his breath. At twenty-eight Emma was in the prime of her youth. She wasn’t even dressed sexily, but to him, she would have rocked a potato sack with those luscious curves. She had her wheat-colored hair pulled back in a ponytail, topped off with a pink baseball cap. She wore a matching pink T-shirt that nipped in at the waist to show off her body, a pair of faded jeans and brand-new hiking boots. Blisters were in her future.

  The sweat trickling between his shoulder blades had nothing to do with the warm weather and everything to do with the gorgeous blast from his past. He ran the back of his hand across his brow and blew out a pent-up breath. Why was she here? Had she known this was his outfit when she’d signed up? Or was it just an interesting coincidence?

  She struggled with her bag. It was forty pounds and she looked as if she didn’t weigh much more than a hundred herself. It was all he could do to keep from rushing over to help her. But the point of this retreat was to help women find their inner strength. The concept had been his mother’s brainchild when she’d been forced to find her own power after his father’s death. A year ago, after he’d sold his start-up company specializing in eco-friendly outdoor wear to a big corporation for several million dollars and Mom had a new love in her life, she’d turned over the reins of Wild West Adventure Tours to him.

  Trent shook his head. He still couldn’t believe Emma was here on his river. Emma Jacobs.

  The girl he’d lost his virginity to the summer after his senior year in high school. She’d been pretty then, but now her beauty was striking.

  But he didn’t have a second to sort out his feelings, because here she was, pink-cheeked and slightly out-of-breath from exertion.

  He couldn’t resist the temptation any longer and reached to take the pack she lugged with both hands. “Here, let me get that for you.”

  She held on to it. “That’s okay, thanks, I’ve got it.”

  They stood on either side of the backpack, their hands just inches apart, their eyes engaged. Her full, kissable lips were glossed with a sweet shade of pink and her blue eyes were disarmingly wide. Her fragrance tangled up in his senses—she smelled like yellow roses in full bloom. Trent clenched his jaw against the sudden surge of lust rushing pell-mell through his blood stream.

  The passing of a decade hadn’t done a damn thing to quell his desire for her.

  He was so absorbed in staring at her he barely noticed the other guests piling up at the dock waiting for instructions. Snap out of it. He pulled his gaze from Emma’s face and started doing his job.

  Once everyone had taken their places, it was only him and Emma left standing at the launch site. “You might want to take off your clothes,” he said.

  Her eyes widened. “What?”

  “I mean,” he said, feeling like ten kinds of fool. “Jeans and a T-shirt aren’t the best materials to wear rafting. You need fleece or synthetics that whisk water away and keep you dry.” He tugged on the material of his pants. “Like these. Didn’t you read our brochure?”

  “Obviously not. I didn’t bring anything close to that.”

  “My sister Angie has some loaner fleece you can borrow.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Hurry,” he urged. We’re suppose to leave promptly at ten.”

  Five minutes later she returned, this time dressed appropriately. She climbed down into the raft where they were all waiting for her. Trent tilted his head for a clandestine view of her behind. Damn, but she had a fine ass.

  Completely thrown off his game, Trent forced his attention to the business at hand, clambering into the rear of the raft and going through the launch preparations. Five minutes later, they were on the river. The beginning of the trip was a leisurely drift and he took the opportunity to give the usual safety briefing followed by a spiel about the geography of the river, the flora and fauna and what was coming up over the course of the next week. They would go ashore at dusk at a campsite where Angie and her husband David had left tents and food. The guests would set up their own tents, start a
fire and cook their own meals. Trent would be on hand if they required help.

  The summer sun was already hot, but the river was cool. It was sourced from mountain run-off, so it never really got warm. The air was clean and crisp. Not a cloud in the sky. Trent’s kind of morning. He loved the outdoors. He loved what he did for a living. Loved working with his sister and her husband. Enjoyed people. He’d been born for this life.

  He watched Emma, who was sitting in the front of the raft beside Myrtle. The older woman was regaling her with stories about her grandchildren. Emma turned her head to look over her shoulder at him as she paddled and their eyes met. He felt it again, that heat, the chemistry that time had not erased. If anything, the attraction was more potent. The wind tousled her ponytail and he noticed there were three small opals nestled in each of her earlobes. She shouldn’t have been sexy wearing the bulky yellow life jacket, but she was. When the tip of her pink tongue flicked out to moisten her lips, his body grew hard.

  She lowered her lids and her long, light-brown lashes cast a whispery shadow on her smooth, sun-burnished cheeks. Then she shifted her gaze again. Her blue-green eyes were the color of a cool mountain pool. No, he took that back. Her eyes put mountain pools to shame. Even from this distance, he could smell her scent. It hadn’t changed in ten years—yellow roses tinged with a hint of green apple.

  Finally, she glanced away. Feeling edgy, he focused on paddling the boat with the big oar and steering them down the river.

  He remembered Emma as being amazingly feminine, not the outdoorsy type at all. But here she was embarking on a wilderness rafting trip. It was nothing he would ever have expected of the teenaged Emma. His admiration for her went up.

  What was she searching for? Most of the people who came on the “women-only” trips were in the process of reinventing their lives. Newly divorced or widowed, or just ready to push themselves out of their comfort zones. It was rewarding to see them come away from this experience transformed. What was Emma seeking to overcome?

  The rest of the morning passed pleasantly. They had a couple of days before hitting the real white water and he used the time to teach his passengers about how to navigate the waves. They went ashore mid-afternoon for a simple lunch of fruit and sandwiches and to stretch their legs.

  Emma went off by herself and perched on a large, flat rock underneath a shady oak tree, while the other women went wading. He noticed she had a book with her and he had to smile. This was the Emma he remembered. His little bookworm.

  He scaled the rock to sit beside her. “So.”

  “So,” she answered back.

  An intimidating silence stretched between them. Her skin looked baby-soft, as if she pampered it nightly with creams and lotions. He ached to stroke his fingers over it.

  “What are you reading?”

  She held up the cover for him to see. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. “I thought it was fitting, given the river setting.”

  Another awkward silence.

  “How are your parents?” he asked.

  “Good. How are yours?”

  Getting conversation out of her was like getting water from a stone. “My dad died a few years back,” he explained. “Aneurysm. One minute he was here, the next minute he was gone.”

  Sympathy pinched her features. “Oh, Trent. I’m sorry to hear that. I always liked your dad.”

  “Do you remember what he used to call you?”

  “Peanut,” she said, “because I was so small.”

  “He underestimated you.”

  Emma raised her head. “He wasn’t the only one.”

  “What brought you on a rafting trip with your friend?” He gestured toward the water where Emma’s gregarious friend was laughing with the other rafters.

  Emma shrugged. “Vacation.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I needed a change.”

  “From what?”

  She met his eyes. “Men.”

  “Romance gone bad?”

  “That really isn’t any of your business.”

  “Here I’ve gone and made you mad.”

  “I’m not mad, I just don’t want to talk about it.”

  “He hurt you that much, huh?”

  “Not as much as you did.” She snapped her mouth shut as if she’d said far more than she wanted to.

  The awkward silence returned. Trent couldn’t stop himself from staring at her. The woman always had mesmerized him with her wavy wheat-colored hair and those large blue-green eyes that seemed to see the best in people. She’d once seen the best in him and then he’d gone and blown it all. He cleared his throat, swallowed, uncertain of what he should say next. Having her on the trip was unnerving and unexpected and he was unsure how to proceed. “Did you come on this trip to reconnect with me?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself. I didn’t even know you worked here. Izzy made all our travel arrangements.”

  “Maybe it’s fate, us meeting again like this.”

  “Naw, it was Izzy trying to win a bet.”

  “Excuse me?”

  She waved a hand. “It’s a long story. Short version: Izzy was trying to play matchmaker and she set me up.”

  He cocked his head. “Why did you stay?”

  “Huh?”

  “You could have left. Used the excuse that I wasn’t a female guide on your women-only tour and gotten your money refunded.”

  Emma shrugged, lifting one slender shoulder. “I guess when I saw you I realized a lot of the mistakes I’d made with men could be traced right back to you. Maybe I’m supposed to face my past in order to move beyond it.”

  He didn’t care for the sound of that. He didn’t want her moving beyond him.

  She was trying to appear nonchalant, reabsorbed in her book, but unless he missed his guess, she was far more aware of him than she wanted him to know. “I’m on this trip to forget about a guy,” she said. “If you’re wondering.”

  “I was,” he admitted.

  “So I’m not looking for romance. In fact, I’m looking for the opposite of romance. I spent way too many years searching for my knight in shining armor. It’s taken me ten years to realize there’s no such thing and that fairy tales don’t come true.”

  “What are you saying? That you don’t believe in love?”

  “Love? Maybe. But I no longer believe it’s all about hearts and rainbows and slow dances and flowers and chocolates and long walks along the beach holding hands. That’s stuff for greeting cards, not real life.”

  Honestly, he agreed with her. Reality was a lot messier—and much more fun—than a silly picture on a greeting card.

  “So what about you?” she asked.

  “What about me?”

  “You ever been married?”

  He shook his head. “Why not?”

  “Came close once, does that count?”

  “Close only counts in horseshoes. What happened?”

  “It wasn’t any one thing. Just a lot of little missteps.”

  “Maybe you need to face your past, too,” she whispered.

  A feeling grabbed hold of Trent. A feeling he couldn’t deny or ignore. A possessive sensation that defied all logic, but it was there nonetheless. Taking them both totally by surprise, he leaned over, cupped her face between his palms and kissed her the way he’d been wanting to kiss her since he’d seen her standing in the office.

  “Oh.” She breathed in the word, parting her lips, letting his tongue slip deep inside the sweet, hot recesses of her mouth and glide lazily over her tongue. Desire raged inside him, fierce and demanding—all from a simple kiss.

  He could only remember the incredible sensation of slipping his cock into her tender folds, her legs thrown over his shoulders, his fingers threaded through her hair and his hungry mouth at her nipples.

  Trent barely suppressed the groan of lust rising in his throat. He imagined how tight she’d feel closed around him, so hot and wet. His testicles drew up tight at the thought.

  Without even t
rying, this woman could still bring him to his knees.

  STUNNED, Emma sucked in a deep breath of air, amazed, embarrassed, exhilarated. Huckleberry Finn dropped from her hand. Omigod. Trent was kissing her. On a rock by the river, in nowhere, Colorado. Trent. Her first love. The man she hadn’t seen in ten years. It was surreal.

  So what was she supposed to do now?

  Ignoring it was out of the question. This wasn’t an innocent kiss. No friendly peck for old times’ sake. This kiss meant business. And Emma was completely unprepared for it. Her heart skipped a beat, did a somersault, landed upside down and skipped another beat.

  Disoriented, Emma raised a palm and splayed it against his chest, meaning to push him away. She could feel his heartbeat through the material of his all-weather garment, absorbed the radiating heat of his masculine flesh. He was warm and alive and solid against her hand. She recognized that he was tense, his chest muscles hard and strong from hours of rowing on the river.

  And he was still kissing her.

  Emma tried to tell him to stop, but the only thing that escaped her lips was a soft whimper of air that sounded more like a plea than a protest.

  Suddenly, Trent let her go.

  She gulped, blinked and gingerly lifted a finger to trace her feverish lips. Her body had gone all melty and wet and she would have slipped right off that boulder and tumbled headlong into the river below if he hadn’t draped his thigh over her legs. Hemming her in against a rock and a very hard place. He made her feel small and vulnerable and that was scary.

  One look in his eyes and she was burned to a crisp. Her blood was pumping on pure adrenaline.

  Dear God, she thought, what did that kiss mean?

  IT TOOK all the strength Emma had to stay cool around Trent. Every time she glanced at him her heart lurched drunkenly.

  The man still affected her and his kiss proved it. Even after ten years. He’d been the template for all the relationships that had followed as she’d chosen one wrong guy after another. Well, she was breaking the pattern, shattering the mold. Izzy had actually done her a favor, tricking her into this trip. It was the perfect way to face her past and finally let it go.