by Inara Scott
That bastard.
“Can I go up to my room now?” Luke, the devil with glasses and glowing red cheeks, glared at her.
She nodded. “Absolutely.” Even though she was more than ready to have him disappear, her better instincts wouldn’t let him get dehydrated. “But first you’ve got to drink this.” She held out the first bottle.
Luke eyed it with disdain. “No thanks.”
“Sorry,” she replied, maintaining a cheery smile. “Refusal is not an option. You drink it or no DS.”
With a mutter, he took the bottle and sucked down a few gulps. Then he turned and pounded his way up the stairs.
Kelsey realized as she watched his retreating back that she’d come a long way. On Monday, she would have second-guessed their interaction and tormented herself with the fear that she had been too strict. Things were different now. She knew how to say no and how to ignore Luke when he was in one of his moods. She had learned how to tune out his grumbling and trust her instincts when it came to managing him.
If only she could do the same with his father. She had no idea how to manage him. Or more precisely, her reaction to him.
Julia tugged on her sleeve. “What should I do?”
Her dark braids were plastered to the sides of her head. She’d gamely tried to bike up the hill to the house, but had given up halfway. Kelsey was proud of her for getting that far. It was pushing ninety degrees outside, and the park had offered little in the way of shade—not to mention that Julia had ridden hard for nearly an hour, and it was late afternoon, and everyone probably needed a nap. Kelsey had hoped to get out in the morning, but she had discovered that every single task—from making breakfast, to packing a lunch, to applying sunscreen—took ten times as long when you had to do it with a collection of unruly kids.
Kelsey handed Julia the second bottle of water. “First, drink some of this. Then you can go upstairs to read.” She indicated a stack of picture books, which Marie had taken out from the library and delivered to Kelsey at the park. “You can take these up with you to your room.”
She was more than ready to have a break. The battle with Luke had started raging the moment she mentioned the bikes. Still smarting from Ross’s concern about her taking the kids on something as simple as a bike ride, she’d called the kids together and suggested they go to the park as soon as Ross disappeared into his office. Matt and Julia had been thrilled.
Luke, not so much. Once they started out, she realized exactly why he dreaded riding his bike. Luke rode like he was terrified that he’d fall down at any moment. He wove back and forth on the sidewalk, stopped abruptly at curbs, and had a hard time starting on an incline because he was so tentative. He banged his shins on the pedals, scraped his leg on the chain, and even fell over onto the grass once when he slipped off the concrete.
She’d convinced him to come with them only by promising that he could play his video game for an extra half hour when they got home. Once at the park, he’d done nothing but complain about being hot and bored, and hating Colorado.
Marie had suggested she treat Luke as she did members of her climbing teams when they became oxygen-deprived and hostile: give him clear commands, brook no argument, and expect him to comply. It had worked, but it certainly hadn’t endeared her to the boy.
And now she was dreaming of ways to kill his father, who could have warned her that Luke had the bike-handling skills of a two-year-old, and that their outing to the park was practically guaranteed to result in a fight.
“Can I take my grapes up to my room?” Matt asked. He held up the bowl of fruit and the climbing magazine Kelsey had snagged for him from her car. He had started begging her to take him out as soon as he’d heard that she was a climber. She’d told him she didn’t have equipment that would fit him, knowing full well she could have taken them to a rock gym and rented equipment if she thought their father would approve. But she was pretty sure the guy who didn’t trust her to teach his kid to do cartwheels wouldn’t want her to take his kids climbing.
“Sure,” she replied, not even caring if they had some kind of “no food upstairs” rule, because it was late and she was hot, and having the kids upstairs would make it less likely that they’d hear her screaming at Ross. “But take this with you, too.” She handed him the last bottle of water.
He sucked down a mouthful off the top and headed up the stairs. As soon as she heard his door close, she marched over to Ross’s office and knocked on the door.
“What?” he barked.
He sounded tense. Kelsey momentarily considered retreating to the kitchen. Then she remembered that she’d been left to squirm in the hot sun with an incredibly annoying child who hated biking. And she wasn’t even supposed to be doing this. She was supposed to be carefree and unattached, doing her own thing on her own time. She was not supposed to be taking care of grumpy kids for an ungrateful jerk of a man.
Her hand, through some incredible force of will, turned the knob.
“Ross?”
He spun around on the leather chair from his contemplation of the computer screen. “What?” He wore his usual faded T-shirt and jeans, his hair rumpled as she now knew it always was by the end of the day. The shadow on his chin set off the bright blue of his eyes in a way that was as sexy as it was disarming.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” When he didn’t immediately say no, she stepped inside the room and turned the lock on the doorknob.
He narrowed his gaze. “Do I have a choice?”
“No, actually, you don’t.”
“I had that feeling.” He laced his hands behind his head and leaned back in the chair. The movement momentarily gave her pause, as it emphasized the width of his shoulders and the narrow taper of his waist. “So go ahead. What did you want to say?”
“I realize that you don’t have a lot of respect for me and don’t particularly trust me,” she started. When he began to make a halfhearted protest, she raised a hand to stop him. “No, don’t. You made your position very clear Tuesday morning. But that doesn’t give you the right to deliberately set me up to fail.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
From the poorly executed note of surprise in his voice, she could tell he knew exactly what she was talking about. “Your son,” she said deliberately, “hates to bike. And when I say hates, I mean, would rather burn in the fires of hell than put his butt on the seat.”
“Oh. That.”
His failure to even look chastened emboldened her. “Yeah. That. See, having just met the kid a few days ago, I didn’t know that. All I knew was that Julia thought he wasn’t very good on a bike. Even I know you don’t trust a six-year-old to assess her brother’s skill level. I figured if it had been a big problem, his dad would have mentioned something. Which you didn’t.”
He shrugged. “Luke’s a big boy. I figured he could tell you himself.”
“Bullshit,” she snapped. “You knew once I mentioned the ride to Julia and Matt, they wouldn’t let it go. So not only did Luke have to go for a bike ride, he had to be forced to go after fighting about it with his siblings.”
“Parenting’s a bitch, isn’t it?” he said.
She marched over to his chair and poked him in the chest. “You are one sick bastard if you think that’s funny. You with all your talk about keeping your kids safe. Safety apparently wasn’t much of a concern when you sent Luke off to the park with me, knowing he rides like an unsteady preschooler.”
He grabbed her hand and sat up slowly. “I would never, ever put my kids in jeopardy,” he said, suddenly stern. “Luke’s a crappy rider, yes, but there’s zero traffic between here and the park. He goes so slowly, I knew the worst that would happen would be he’d fall over and end up with a few bruises.”
“So you admit you knew I was headed for disaster?”
“Maybe just a little.” He pulled his mouth into the barest hint of a guilty look. “I probably should have warned you.”
“Probably?”
; “Okay, I almost definitely should have said something. But you were all ‘I’ve got a gold medal in cartwheels, what do you have?’ and ‘I’ll check the brakes and make them wear helmets.’” He raised his voice to mimic her, then dropped back to his usual deep baritone. “I was provoked.”
“You provoked yourself.” She pulled on her hand, but he made no movement to release it. Tingles shot up and down her arm, goose bumps springing up in their wake. “You were being an asshole.”
“You could be right about that,” he admitted. He stood up then, in one fluid motion, bringing them just a few inches apart. She couldn’t help but notice that he hadn’t let go of her hand. “I suppose I owe you an apology.”
“Ross,” she said, swallowing hard to clear the lump from her throat. “I realize I’m not the traditional nanny, and I know I was your last choice for a babysitter. But I can’t do this anymore.”
His gaze flickered from her mouth to her throat.
Her bones began to melt. All at once, her skin seemed to tighten, and her stomach began to fall as her brain fogged over.
He shook his head. “You’re absolutely right. I can’t keep doing this, either.”
“What?” She narrowed her gaze suspiciously.
“Looking at you.” His voice dropped. “Staring at your lips. And wondering if they can possibly taste as good I remember.”
Chapter Seven
Kelsey swayed. His words sent heat racing through her body, flushing her face and sending a rush of warm honey between her legs. “Don’t say that.” Her voice was little more than a whimper, as she fought the urge to melt against him. “We decided to forget about that night, remember? It never happened.”
He finally let go of her of her hand, but instead of stepping away he moved even closer, raising his hand to brush her hair back behind her shoulder and caressing the soft skin along her collarbone. “That’s what I keep telling myself. This is all wrong. You’re all wrong.”
Alarm bells sounded in her head, but they were strangely incapable of forcing motion into her legs. “That’s right,” she heard herself say, as if from some great distance. “Exactly right.”
“I have three kids,” he continued, his eyes pinned on the hollow at base of her throat. “If I’m going to be with someone she needs to be boring. Reliable. Predictable.”
“You have three kids,” she agreed, angling her head back slightly and closing her eyes. He cupped the back of her neck in his palm, and she felt his lips brush lightly, like the wings of a butterfly, against her neck. “You live a life I can barely imagine. I couldn’t invent someone who would be less compatible with me.”
The touch was too sweet, too familiar. Her nipples hardened in an instant. How was it possible to want someone so much, so quickly?
“Damn it, Kelsey,” he continued, breathing against her skin as he kissed her again, this time just below her ear. “Why do you do this to me? Why can’t I walk away from you?”
Her hands found his waist and then slid up his back until they rested on top of his shoulders, where his muscles tensed and flexed under her fingers like the wings of a great bird. Her breath was swallowed in a gasp as he nipped the end of her earlobe.
This is crazy…
He’s going to break your heart…
The words flashed and shouted in her brain, but her body ignored them all. She turned toward him, their lips met, and she lost her language, her reason, her logic. They were kissing as though the world had stopped, leaving nothing but lips and tongue, wet invitation and heated, aching promise. He licked and then sucked on her bottom lip before diving deeper, the hand on the back of her neck tangling in her hair and holding her captive to him. She dug her nails into his skin and held on tight, feeling that at any moment she might dissolve into him. The memory of their night together and the pleasure he could bring overwhelmed her. The scent of his skin, the perfect fit of their bodies…it was all too familiar.
Too good.
He found her waist, slipped below her shirt, and then with a bare hand touched the flesh of her back. “You’re warm,” he observed.
“Your fault,” she responded.
“I’m sorry.” He trailed a line of kisses down her neck as his hands slid along her spine. With a single, deft gesture, he released the clasp of her bra and then slid his hands around to cup her breasts.
“Ohh.” She released a long, trailing breath.
Could a person die of pleasure? Might she explode, right then and there, from the touch of those fingers? From the trail of his rough calluses against her hard, pebbled skin?
She slipped her hands under his shirt, finding bare flesh and hard, male muscles to trace. His body was fuller, broader, and more solid than other men she’d known. He was raw male, with the promise of power and strength in the hard flex and movement of his rocklike biceps and the thick plane of muscle that was his back. She leaned against him, her hips beginning to move. He slid his hands lower, cupping her buttocks. Then he paused, tracing the outline of the bandage she’d applied that morning.
“What’s this?”
She flushed. “I fell while I was running a few days ago.”
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you running is supposed to be a safe sport?”
The memory struck her of the injury she’d had on her arm the night they met, and how she’d lain in his hotel bed and shown him the scars from her various accidents. Did he remember everything that had happened between them? Everything she’d told him?
“It’s just a little scrape. Nothing serious.”
He gazed at her steadily, the deep blue of his eyes seeming to grow darker and more intense. “That’s a big bandage.”
“I slid on my backside down a steep part of the trail,” she said, waving off his concern. “The bandage is much more impressive than the injury.”
He appeared unconvinced. “Right.”
She grabbed the front of his shirt, pulled him close, and administered a long, hot kiss. With a slow circle of her fingers, she teased the hair at the base of his neck. “The kids won’t be occupied forever,” she breathed. “How about you stop talking and get back to kissing?”
“That’s not fair, you’re trying to distract me.” He eased up her shirt and applied his mouth to the skin he’d already left throbbing and needy.
Giving in to the pleasure, she threw back her head and arched toward him. Silently, she offered him everything he would take.
“From what?” she gasped.
He circled. Licked. Sucked. Waited until she gave a soft moan, and then did it all over again. “From the evidence. That you’re dangerous.”
Frustration surged inside her, the fun of the crazy, mixed-up moment slipping away. She pushed him back and straightened, glaring into his eyes. “Damn it, stop making me into something I’m not. You keep thinking you understand me, but you don’t have a clue. I spend half my life planning and training, imagining worst-case scenarios and finding ways to address them.”
Passion lingered in the soft line of his mouth, and his breathing was no steadier than her own. But when he spoke, his words were deadly serious. “I looked it up, Kelsey, three years ago. Annapurna is the deadliest mountain in the world. Forty percent of the people who try to climb it die. Are you going to tell me that’s not dangerous?”
“Thirty-three percent since 2010,” she corrected him, her voice faint as she pulled down her shirt. “It gets safer every year. And I’m not saying it’s something you do lightly. But it’s something I have to do. Something I’ve been working toward all my life.”
“You were scared that night. You thought you wouldn’t make it back.”
She flinched. “Anyone in their right minds would be a little scared. That doesn’t mean anything. And I didn’t die, obviously.”
“Did you summit?”
“No. There was a storm.”
Wind like a freight train, whipping the sides of the tent. Bitter cold, seeping through layers of clothing, sleeping bags, insulated boots and gloves. Bitt
er arguments, even colder than the weather.
“It’s not our year. We’ve got to head back down.”
“She would have stayed. She wouldn’t have turned back.”
“Were you hurt?”
Kelsey pulled herself out of the memory. “A little frostbite. Nothing serious.”
“Are you going back?”
She nodded. “In a month.”
That evidently surprised him, because he blew out a breath as he closed his eyes. “Damn it, Kelsey, you may not be dangerous to my kids, but you’re dangerous to yourself. Why the hell would you do something like that?”
The words were piercing. She flinched and turned away from the unexpected attack. The benefit of living in a place like Boulder was that people didn’t judge the decisions you made. They understood that some things didn’t make sense. That some choices weren’t really choices at all.
“It’s hard to explain.”
His gaze caught and held her. “Try.”
“I… It’s just something I have to do.” Her fingers found the clasp of her bra, and she fumbled with the twisted elastic. How in the world could she begin to explain it? How could she explain about her mother…or her father? He could never understand the responsibility she carried.
“Because of the adrenaline? The excitement? The danger?”
His questions were so utterly wrong that she couldn’t imagine going any further. “Let’s forget this happened,” she said, taking a step toward the door. “You were right in the first place. None of this makes any sense.”
He stopped her with a hand on her shoulder, and then turned her to face him. “No, wait. I didn’t mean…”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Ross, this is silly. We had a really great night together, but that doesn’t mean anything. You don’t want to get mixed up with someone like me. You said so yourself. We’re from different worlds. I don’t know why we would drag it out any further.”
He blew out a long breath. “Just listen for a minute, okay? Let me explain.”
She paused, wishing she could just walk out the door. “Fine. Go ahead.”
