He smiled and took a step backward. “Please, come in.”
“Don’t mind if I do. May I freshen up?”
“Not at all. My house is your house.” He stopped and grinned. “Literally.”
She went into the bathroom and nearly screamed at the sight of her hair, mussed and barely contained by its French braid. If the forest ranger hadn’t guessed what they’d been doing behind those fogged windows, he was unbelievably naive. Undoing the braid, she combed her hair as much as possible with her fingers.
When she came out, the connecting doors between the two rooms were open and Jake was examining his wallet. “I’m going to run downstairs for a moment,” he said, looking up.
Oh, great.
He needed condoms. It was a good thing they’d been interrupted earlier; she could imagine his reaction to a potential pregnancy. She wasn’t sure how she’d feel about it herself. While she wanted another child, she didn’t have a future with Jake, and it wasn’t easy being a single mother of one kid, much less two. And would she be making the same mistake she’d made with Steven? Hadn’t she learned anything in the past eight years?
Hannah showered quickly and changed into a nightshirt from her bag. It wasn’t romantic or sensual, but better than clammy jeans. She turned back the bed and sank back on the pillows, hoping Jake would hurry...and that the hotel gift shop carried what he’d gone looking for.
* * *
JAKE WALKED AROUND the small shop in the lobby and finally located a discreet display of condoms. There were several different kinds, and he grabbed a box without paying attention to which one it was. Protection was protection; the important thing was using it. And normally protection was something he was very careful about, which made the interlude at Artist Point disturbing for more than one reason. He hadn’t been carrying anything with him, and he wasn’t convinced they would have stopped if they hadn’t been interrupted.
Of course, Hannah might have had a cooler head and put the brakes on, but there were no guarantees.
Hannah was different from the women he’d known before...though he didn’t want to think about those differences too much. Nevertheless, surely she understood that he wasn’t someone to plan her future around. He frowned as he waited in line to pay for the condoms. Maybe he should talk to her and be sure they were seeing the situation in the same way, even if it cast a chill on things.
Back at the room he walked in and saw Hannah in the bed.
“My clothes were still damp,” she said, gesturing to the oversize T-shirt she wore. Clearly she’d discarded her bra along with the rest of her clothes, and his mouth went dry.
“Uh, Hannah,” he said, sitting on the edge of the mattress. “You remember that I’m...well, not permanent. Right? This is a break...a vacation from our real lives.”
She rolled her eyes. “Just shut up and kiss me.”
“Is that a movie quote?”
“I think so.” Hannah frowned. “Probably. Hell, I don’t know. Ask me when I care.” Wiggling a little, she pulled off her T-shirt and threw it across the room.
Any thought of doing the prudent thing flew instantly out of Jake’s head. His view of her on the hood of the Jeep had only been a taste of better things. He sat on the bed and fastened his gaze on the rounded slopes of her breasts, her quickening breaths causing them to rise and fall.
He put his finger on the hollow of her throat and slowly drew it down, tracing each responsive peak in turn.
Her hands reached for his arms and she arched backward into the pile of pillows. He teased her nipple with the tip of his tongue, then blew on it. A satisfying squeak sounded in Hannah’s throat. Jake opened his mouth around her, drawing hard on the sensitive crest, loving the restless shifting of her legs.
He trailed his right hand down along her waist, finding the curve of her hip and sliding his fingers between her thighs.
* * *
HANNAH GASPED.
It had been so long since she’d been with a man that she instinctively clenched her legs before relaxing them. He brushed the apex, teasing and tempting before easing into her core. Almost instantly wave after wave of pleasure shuddered through her body.
When her heart finally slowed, she opened her eyes to see Jake watching her intently.
“Don’t get too smug,” she ordered. “And you’re way overdressed...except for a condom. You did get condoms, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I got them, and it would be a shame if they went to waste.”
Hannah levered her way to a more upright position, using extra shoulder action, which drew his attention back to her breasts.
“I agree. About all those clothes...?” she said deliberately.
“You want to help?”
“I’d rather watch.”
Jake slid off the bed and pulled his shirttails free at the waist before beginning to unzip his jeans, at which point Hannah started humming.
He stopped. “What’s that?”
“A striptease deserves music. That’s ‘Let Me Entertain You’ from Gypsy. It’s a movie about a famous stripper.”
“Another movie, huh?”
“Growing up I used to regularly spend weekends at Huckleberry Lodge, especially after my great-uncle passed away. Great-Aunt Elkie loved movies. She had all the cable channels, and the guy from the video store would come out every week to show her the list of new releases. She ordered a lot of them.”
Kicking his pants across the room, Jake stood with his boxers only.
“Why don’t you help me? I dare you.”
The sexy glint in his eyes was part laughter, part white-hot heat. Hannah climbed to her feet and had the satisfaction of seeing Jake’s chest contract as she deliberately brushed her breasts against his arm. She slid her fingers under the waistband of his boxers.
Jake clearly had more experience than she did, but she refused to show any uncertainty.
“Do you enjoy this?” she asked, stroking down the lower part of his belly, finding his erection and exploring it, then tugged his shorts free until they dropped to the floor.
He didn’t say anything, but his groan told Hannah all she needed to know.
“Not bad, Mr. Hollister,” she murmured. She pushed him onto the middle of the bed and studied his body the way he’d examined hers. There were the scars, some jagged, some others straight and even. His body was also lean and muscular and incredibly well formed. Dropping to her knees next to him, she deliberately let her hair trail up his legs, a strangled sound coming from Jake’s throat.
* * *
JAKE COULDN’T STOP another groan from escaping his chest. Hannah wasn’t behaving the way he’d expected. She’d looked at his scars, but hadn’t expressed sympathy or shown any particular curiosity. Instead she’d gone straight to seductive moves that were making his blood boil.
Opening the box of condoms, she pulled one out and dropped it on his stomach with a challenging smile.
He pulled her down on top of him, wrapping his arms around her slender waist and fastening his mouth on hers. Hannah tasted sweet, and he slowly rolled on his side to look at her as the condom slid against her belly.
Picking it up, he brushed his fingers against her neck, across her breasts and down to tease the soft curls at the apex of her legs. She squirmed.
“Slowpoke,” she gasped. “I’m one up on you.”
“Watching your pleasure is...pleasurable, as well.”
“Sadist. Right now, you’re just torturing me.”
Suddenly unable to wait any longer, he jerked the package open.
“Let me.” Hannah rolled it over his erection, and the minute she was done, he tugged her on top of him. She was hot and ready, and they moved together like waves surging and ebbing, yet the pressure inside only grew and grew until he couldn’t restrain it any l
onger.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING Hannah woke up before dawn and quietly tiptoed into the adjoining room with her bag. Having sex with Jake couldn’t be repeated. It was exactly what he’d said: a vacation from their real lives.
Yet when she looked back at him lying sprawled naked on the mattress, her abdomen tightened all over again.
Look at the scars, she reminded herself. Death wish or not, there were plenty of them, a clear indication of the risks he willingly took.
Jake’s leg, broken in the plane crash, was punctuated with red lines where the surgeon had pieced it back together. A six-inch jagged mark on his opposite thigh had the earmarks of a horrific gash that had probably healed without benefit of stitches. There were three long white slashes over his right ribs that looked suspiciously like claw marks. His knuckles and hands had dings and bashes, some older, some looking more recent.
There were other scars as well, but she didn’t want to look closely. She’d felt them, though, as their bodies had moved together, her hands exploring his lean, hard length. It wasn’t the marks themselves that she minded, it was what they represented.
Damn it.
It had been the best sex of her life, but she had to put some distance between them before she started thinking foolish things.
Just lust, she told herself firmly, going into the other bathroom and stepping into the shower. The worst part about lust was that there was no good way to get it out of her system. She could pretend it didn’t exist, that they’d scratched that itch last night, but she knew it would sneak back in when she wasn’t paying attention. And now she was going to compare every other man to Jake for the rest of forever, and they’d probably come up short. On the other hand, it was now more obvious than ever that she’d made the right decision breaking things off with Brendan.
Hannah shampooed her hair and rinsed it, wincing as she encountered a mass of tangles. Normally she braided it before going to bed, but hadn’t gotten around to the task the previous night...though they’d made serious inroads on the box of condoms Jake had bought, in between ordering a late dinner from room service and finding it offered avenues for sensual play, as well.
Forget him, she ordered.
She stepped out of the shower and wrapped her hair in a towel, only to look up and see Jake watching her, his boxer shorts doing little to conceal his renewed arousal. Her breasts tightened in response, but she couldn’t weaken her resolve.
* * *
FROM THE COOL expression on Hannah’s face, Jake was fairly certain she wasn’t interested in returning to bed with him. On the other hand, maybe her reserve had more to do with his coming in uninvited while she was showering. Modesty after the way they’d made love all night seemed a little odd, but he didn’t understand the female psyche any better than he understood the U.S. And despite his claims to the contrary, he obviously didn’t understand America or Americans.
Somehow that made him feel lonely, though nothing had changed except his perception. But part of him had always clung to the thought that he had a country where he belonged, even if he was never there.
“What are you thinking?” Hannah asked, sounding suspicious as she wound a larger towel around her body. While it provided coverage, it also teased and tempted, revealing the upper slopes of her breasts and an expanse of thigh.
“That you were right.”
He almost laughed at the shock on her face that he’d admit such a thing.
“I’m a mother—I’m right about a lot of things. What particular thing are you referring to?”
“That I really don’t know the customs of my own country. In some ways I feel more like a foreigner here than in Nepal and Tibet.”
“You’ve probably spent more time in Nepal than here.”
It was true. When he was a kid, the U.S. had been a stopping place on the way to somewhere else, not a destination in its own right. And he was in the States even less often as an adult. There hadn’t seemed to be any point in coming here, though he was starting to recognize that he might have missed a few good things about the place.
Hannah walked past him out of the bathroom.
“The Himalayas above Kathmandu are incredible,” he said, following her. “An endlessly shifting environment of sunlight and mist. You should consider going there one day.” He resisted calling it magical, though it had seemed magical when he was a boy, mist covering a mountain peak or stream as if an unknown force controlled how and where it moved.
“I’ll put it on my to-do list. But schoolteachers’ salaries usually don’t lend themselves to trips like that. Especially ones with a kid to send through college. I’ll be happy if I can take Danny to Europe or Japan someday.”
She sat on the edge of the king-size bed and pulled the towel from her head. Jake smiled ironically. His preconceptions about schoolteachers had never included a sexy, scantily clad woman with damp ropes of hair tumbling almost to her waist. Lady Godiva, he thought. He just had to get that towel away from her and the image would be complete. Well...except for the horse in the legend.
“Ouch.” Hannah had been combing her hair with her fingers and had tried to yank through a knot.
“Do you have a comb? I’ll help. After all, I’m partly responsible for those tangles.”
She regarded him for a long minute. “On the bathroom counter.”
He fetched the comb and sat behind her, easing the teeth first through the ends of her hair, gradually working out the snarls as he moved higher. Working on a woman’s hair was another new thing for him, and strangely satisfying.
“Aren’t you anxious to get back into the mountains?” she asked eventually.
“We’ll get there, but I don’t think they’re going anywhere.” Jake paused and thought of the horrific eruption of Mount St. Helens. “Not today, at least.”
“What about our plan to drive the North Cascades Highway?”
“Maybe another trip.”
“Summer won’t last forever. The road is closed part of the year, and I’ll be teaching after Labor Day.”
He didn’t like thinking about it, though if he hadn’t been working around Hannah’s committee meetings and parental needs, he’d be getting a hell of a lot more accomplished. Jake thought about the previous day when he’d packed up his gear because rain was coming. In the past he’d gotten soaked, half-frozen, nearly struck by lightning, even attacked by animals in his search for the perfect photograph. He never quit while there was an opportunity for a good photo, but yesterday he’d stopped because Hannah Nolan might get wet.
Yet his brain shied away from thinking too much about it. He liked Hannah and respected her, but he couldn’t let her become too important to him.
Remember Toby, his self-protective instincts reminded him.
Toby had quit because Vera didn’t want him traveling so often. Still, Toby hadn’t looked unhappy about it, either. And as much as his former assistant had complained, he’d enjoyed the travel almost as much as Jake himself.
“There’s something I don’t understand,” Hannah murmured. “You love the high villages of Nepal in the Himalayas, but I understand the Sherpas are very spiritual, offering prayers in a multitude of different ways. You don’t believe in anything like that. How can you love the place and the people and not have any appreciation for their beliefs?”
Jake’s hands stilled in Hannah’s hair.
“It’s not a question of appreciation,” he said carefully. “I simply accept it as their way of life. And sadly, a good deal has been lost or changed since Sagarmatha was first climbed by Sir Edmund Hillary.”
“Sagarmatha?”
“It’s what Mount Everest is called in Nepal. In Tibet it’s Chomolungma...‘goddess of the world.’”
“I like those names.”
“Me, too. Tourism has changed the Sher
pa villages. They were once so isolated. It’s a strenuous two-week walk over mountain trails to climb to the Khumbu highlands of Nepal from Kathmandu, but now there are landing strips for small planes, and it takes under an hour. Thousands of people arrive yearly, some who just want to see the country, and others who want to challenge Sagarmatha or other peaks.”
“Are you saying the Sherpas have lost their spirituality?”
“No, they still pray. They burn juniper with their morning prayers and in small shrines. They make prayer wheels and carve stone tablets and rock walls along trails. It’s part of the face of Nepal. Prayers are written on flags and banners and hung from trees or poles or stretched ropes. I think the people believe they’ll be carried to heaven by the elements.”
“It sounds beautiful.”
It did have a curious beauty, yet Jake no longer knew how he felt about it. Was it simply a charming tradition of people who lived in a harsh land and needed a primitive crutch to survive? Or was it a genuine sensing of something greater and more powerful around them?
Abruptly he recalled Josie’s anger when he’d written a few words and hung it with the other prayer flags, thinking of the climbers who’d lost their lives. She’d ripped it down, angry her son would participate in an “archaic ritual.” It was the only time she’d shown any emotion about the disastrous attempt to climb Sagarmatha and he’d wanted to scream at her. At least he’d done something by writing the words; he hadn’t just drunk coffee and silently stared at the mountain as if resenting the defeat.
Jake realized he’d suppressed the memory for years, and an ache grew in his gut.
Somehow the disastrous expedition when he was eight was getting mixed up in his head with the crash in the Arctic. Death had followed both, and he’d never talked to anyone about it...just attempted to take part in a custom that seemed to comfort the Sherpas. And curiously, he didn’t think Gordon would mind a prayer being written for him in a distant land. He’d seemed to have a universal acceptance of the world and how he was connected to it.
“Do you think they have pancakes on the room service menu?” he asked, determined to change the subject. “Or French toast?”
Jake's Biggest Risk (Those Hollister Boys) Page 23
