“That’s such a weak come-on.” She laughed. “It’s a good thing you’re rich and adorable, because your flirting game is trash.”
“It’s the best I can do with a tree knob jabbing my ass.” He turned the dial up a notch on the heater. “And what’s up with calling me adorable? Adorable is for koala bears.”
“Sorry.” She hunched her shoulders in apology. “It’s not my fault you’re adorable. Take that up with your parents. You know, when you can look them in the eye again.”
“That’s not funny.”
Taylor bit her bottom lip in an effort not to laugh, but she couldn’t hold it in. “I’m so sorry. I promise to never tease you about it again. Unless you end up with a new little brother or sister, then all bets are off.”
“That was brutal,” he said, doubling over as if she’d punched him in the gut. “If I didn’t think I’d get lost on my way to the car, I would leave you out here.”
“No you wouldn’t,” she said. “That was the last one. I will never bring up that subject again.” She held up her pinky finger. “I swear.”
“I don’t believe you. Get that old stank finger away from me.”
Now she was the one doubling over. Taylor laughed until her sides hurt. The fact that his face remained stoic just made her laugh harder.
“You done?” he asked.
She wiped tears from her eyes. “I am,” she said. She was relieved to see the hint of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth.
“So, what do we do out here in the wilderness?”
“That’s what we’re supposed to figure out, although I’m not sure we’re doing the best job of it. True survivalists wouldn’t have a tent, or a heater, or a backpack full of turkey jerky, protein bars, and wine in a can.”
“You have wine? Crack that shit open.”
Taylor hooked the toe of her hiking boot under the strap of her backpack and dragged it closer. She unzipped it and pulled out two cans of cabernet and a bag of pistachios.
“This is only a trial run, so it’s not as if we have to do everything the people who sign up for the experience will do. I just wanted to get a feel for the area.”
“I think you wanted to get me out here in the wild so you could have your way with me,” Jamar said.
“Your jokes are still corny, but you are getting better at flirting,” she said. “As for the survivalist workout, I think the three-mile hike, along with having to put together a shelter—with materials that I’ll bring in ahead of time, of course—and foraging for food will be enough. That sounds like fun, doesn’t it?”
“There you go again with that twisted idea of fun. Your family must love when it’s your turn to come up with the holiday activities.”
“Yeah, as if they would ever allow me to do that,” Taylor said with a snort.
The amusement faded from his expression. “Why wouldn’t they?”
She shrugged. “They just wouldn’t. I’m kind of the black sheep, so when it comes to family fun, I’m usually not consulted.”
“What did you do? Try to force them to eat kale too?”
“Ha,” she deadpanned. “You’re still not funny.”
“Come on. You have to give me credit for that one.”
“Nope.”
“Well, at least tell me why you’re the black sheep of the family.”
“You don’t deserve the story.”
He caught one of her braids and brushed it along her cheek. “Please, my life will not be complete until I hear how you earned the title of the Powell Family Black Sheep. I’ll bet it was joyriding. You probably took the car out for a spin every chance you got.”
“I did,” she confirmed with a laugh. “But my reign as the black sheep began long before that. I probably was five years old.”
“You became the black sheep of the family at five?”
“Will you let me tell my story, please?”
He motioned for her to continue. “I promise not to interrupt again. Unless you say something that’s completely outrageous, like you being labeled the black sheep of the family at five years old. Because that’s a pretty messed up thing to do to a kid.”
“No one treated me like a black sheep when I was five, but that’s when the foundation was laid. It started when my mom decided to go to law school.” She tucked her braids behind her ears. “How much do you know about military life?”
“The only people I know who are active duty are a couple of classmates from high school. I’m not close to them or anything.”
“The thing most civilians don’t realize about military life is that it can be just as hard on the families of service members as it is on those who are serving, whether in wartime or peacetime.”
“Is there even such a thing as peacetime? Seems as if we’ve been in one war or another for as long as I’ve been alive.”
“That’s true,” she said ruefully. “My dad has served in most of them. He received a Bronze Star and continues to dedicate his life to the military. But he would be the first to say that he didn’t reach that level of success on his own. While he was off fighting wars, my mom was taking care of the family while moving from one military base to another.
“For most people in that situation, the idea of obtaining a law degree would feel impossible. But not for my mom. She earned her degree and never missed a beat.”
“I guess those are some extremely high standards to live up to.”
“I’m not sure ‘extremely high’ is adequate to describe just how hard it is to measure up to those standards. She’s Wonder Woman, but with just a little more wonder to her. My brother and sister are in a competition to see who will reach Gail Powell status first.”
“What do they do?”
“My brother is a lawyer, of course. You only have to be in his presence for five minutes to know that nothing brings him more joy than arguing that he is right on just about every subject.”
“He sounds like a bucket of laughs,” Jamar said in a flat tone. “What about your sister?”
“Jesamyn. She’s an architect. She’s a lot more mellow than Darwin, but her analytical brain is always running at full speed. It’s intimidating to even start a conversation with her.” She gave him a playful nudge with her elbow. “I think you would do okay, though. She can be a bit of a snob, so she would automatically think you’re a dumb jock. I’d love to see you go head-to-head with her while watching Jeopardy!”
“You think I’d have a chance?”
“I think you’d give her a pretty good run for her money,” Taylor said. “And when she discovers that you aren’t a dumb jock, she would spend the next hour talking your head off. Me and Chester—that’s my brother-in-law—have this special signal we send to each other when Jesamyn gets going. You see, Chester is of average intelligence like me, which is probably why I feel more of a kinship with him than with my blood relatives.”
“Average intelligence? I think you’re smarter than you let on.”
“Hey, I’m not saying that I’m a dummy or anything,” she said. “But I know I’m no Einstein either.”
“Einstein had an IQ of one sixty. Less than one percent of the world’s population is an Einstein.”
“And probably less than that can rattle off Einstein’s IQ and the number of people who share it,” Taylor pointed out. “And there’s nothing wrong with being average. Did you know that Walt Disney never went to college? He took a few night classes at the Art Institute of Chicago while in high school, but he didn’t get a degree. I’ll bet people considered him average before he created Oswald the Rabbit and changed the entertainment industry forever.”
Jamar reached over and captured her chin with his fingers. They were warm after being tucked inside his jacket pockets.
“I repeat, there is nothing average about you,” he said. His eyes fell to her lips and Taylor forgot how to pull air into her lungs.
“Taylor.” His voice was a whisper. “We have to eventually talk about that kiss and what it means.”
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Her head snapped back. “No, we don’t.”
“Taylor—”
She shrugged off the blanket and stood. “I need to gather firewood.”
“We’re not building a fire,” he reminded her.
“Then I need to go to the bathroom,” she said as she took off for the toilets again.
Let him think she had a tiny bladder, or irritable bowel syndrome, or whatever.
You are such a coward!
Fine, so she was a coward. She’d wear the label this one time if it meant evading talk about that kiss. Taylor knew she’d have to face the implications of it sooner or later, but she was willing to do all she could to avoid it for as long as possible.
She walked around for twenty minutes, collecting twigs and other kindling that could be used to start a fire if they really were stranded in the forest. If Jamar asked why she’d been gone for so long, she could use the excuse of wanting to give clients a more authentic experience by gathering fire-making materials.
She returned to their campsite to find an orange and gray tent that resembled a space pod set up near the downed tree sofa. Jamar was nowhere in sight, but he had unfolded her army-green tent and laid it on the ground, its metal poles and stakes strewn across it. Was this his way of telling her that she was sleeping in her own tent and she had to assemble it herself?
Taylor was upset at just how upset she was. Sure, she’d told him that she wanted to do this on her own, but it was the principle of it. He was her pretend boyfriend, for crying out loud!
“Hey, you’re back,” he said.
She whipped around and tracked him with her gaze as he made his way to the orange tent.
“I did try to put yours together, even though you wanted to do it yourself. But it was too complicated.” He hooked his thumb at his tent. “I had this overnighted from Amazon too. It’s even bigger than I thought it would be, and only about the size of a roll of paper towels when it’s stored away.”
“Hmm, how nice,” Taylor said, walking to her tent.
“Where are you going? I’m not sleeping in this tent by myself. Body heat, remember?”
“So you want me in there with you?” Taylor asked.
He gave her a look that said, What do you think?
The rush of relief and exhilaration she felt was so annoying. She wasn’t supposed to want him to want her.
Taylor took a step toward the tent, then stopped. “I shouldn’t have to say this, but I’m saying it anyway. Nothing is happening in there except for sleep.”
“Is talking allowed?” he asked.
Smart-ass. “It depends on what you want to talk about.”
“Fine, Taylor. Can we please just go in there before the hypothermia sets in?”
“It’s not even that cold out here,” she said. Once again, the elements chose that moment to prove her wrong as a stiff breeze whipped up the leaves around their feet.
Taylor grabbed her thermal blanket and scrambled inside the tent’s arched opening. Jamar crawled in behind her, bringing the battery-operated heater.
“What now?” Taylor asked.
“I would tell you my suggestion, but I don’t want an elbow to the gut,” he said as he arranged his unzipped sleeping bag on the floor of the tent, making a bed for them. He stretched hers out on top of it.
“I know what we can do,” he said. He slipped between the sleeping bags and turned down the top edge so that she could get in. “I have season two of Stranger Things on my phone. We can watch that.”
“Don’t you need Wi-Fi to stream TV shows?” She held both hands up. “Please don’t tell me you brought a Wi-Fi hub.”
“I did, actually, but we don’t need it. I downloaded it to my phone.” He patted her side of their makeshift bed. “Come on.”
Taylor knew she should feel more reluctance at crawling underneath the covers with him, but the fluffy sleeping bags looked too inviting for her not to do it. She settled in next to him, taking care not to brush against him. He immediately negated her efforts by shifting over a few inches so that their arms touched from shoulder to wrist.
Halfway through the first episode, Taylor said, “I’m not sure this is the best thing for me to watch while out in the woods alone.”
“Except that you’re not alone,” he said, his eyes bright with amusement.
“Don’t go getting any ideas, Twenty-Three.” She scooted even closer to him and wrapped her arm around his. “This is for heat and just in case I get scared. That’s it. Nothing else.”
“Whatever you say,” he replied. “Will there at least be a good night kiss?”
“No! Absolutely not.”
Because Taylor knew she wouldn’t want to stop at a single kiss, not when they were both snuggled up against each other with the entire night stretching in front of them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Taylor reached over to the coffee table in Jamar’s living room and picked up the touch-screen display panel that controlled everything, from the room’s temperature, to the lights, to the television. She glided her thumb along the screen, bringing the temperature up a couple of degrees. Then she set the electronic tablet back in its cradle and returned her attention to her laptop.
“Where in the hell is it?” Taylor growled as she clicked through the five billion tabs open on her browser, searching for the article on ligament tears she’d run across this morning. One of these days she would learn to bookmark websites she wanted to revisit.
“Finally,” Taylor said as she clicked onto the article without bookmarking it.
Ever since the run-in with those drunken assholes at the sports bar Saturday afternoon, she’d turned into a woman on a mission. If Jamar thought she’d worked him hard before, he wasn’t ready for the nightmare she was about to unleash. She would do whatever it took to ensure he was in the best form possible when he tried out for those NFL teams.
From the extensive research she’d done on his knee surgery, Taylor now understood how lucky Jamar was that he could even walk. He’d undergone a massive amount of physical therapy after the operation. Yet, because of the severity of the injury and the threat of reinjuring himself, he was still considered a huge risk for any team to undertake.
But there was still a chance, and that’s all that mattered. All she needed was the slightest bit of hope.
She’d just clicked on another video uploaded by an orthopedic surgeon when she heard Jamar approaching. She twisted on the sofa to find him walking toward her with a huge smile on his face and a casserole dish in his hands.
“I finally found a brussels sprouts recipe I like. Try it.” He held it out to her with the enthusiasm of a kindergartener presenting his teacher with a finger-painting. He was as adorable as one too.
Taylor was bowled over by the memory of waking up next to him in that tent Sunday morning, his arms surrounding her, the front of his body flush against the back of hers. She didn’t know exactly when the spooning had occurred, but if things were different between them, Taylor would be just fine waking up that way for the next few decades.
Don’t go there.
She attempted to ignore his cuteness and those memories as she surveyed the dish. There was twice as much cheese as brussels sprouts.
“You could eat this if today was a cheat day—by the way, you’re out of those for the rest of the week,” she reminded him. “But unless this is a healthy vegan cheese, it won’t work with your diet.”
“I’m not eating fake cheese.”
“Well, say goodbye to these cheesy brussels sprouts.” She grabbed at the casserole dish, but he stretched it aloft, just out of her reach.
He gestured at the screen with his chin. “What are you watching?”
“I’ve been doing more research on your injury.”
“Hmm…that looks like my orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Hoffman,” he said.
“I know. He’s pretty fancy,” Taylor said.
“Yeah. The League wanted me to have the best care money could buy.”
> “So, was it Dr. Hoffman who told you that you would never play football again?”
“Actually, Dr. Hoffman was optimistic about my chances,” he said as he lifted a brussels sprout from the casserole dish.
Taylor snatched it from his fingers and popped it in her mouth. “Damn, this is good,” she said. She patted the sofa next to her, encouraging him to sit. “Come on. We’ll just add more time to today’s workout. And if Dr. Hoffman was so optimistic, why aren’t you playing?”
“Because it was the team’s doctor who made the final call. Micah and I have talked about it—Micah is my agent,” he clarified as he sat down. “And we both think that it has more to do with the team doctor thinking I wasn’t worth the risk if I were to suffer a second injury. He was looking toward the future. That’s his job. At the end of the day, he has to do what’s best for the team.”
Taylor shook her head. “It’s crazy to me that a world-renowned surgeon can declare you fit to play, yet no team will sign you.”
“The NFL is a different kind of beast. What makes sense in everyday life doesn’t necessarily fly when it comes to professional football.” Caution clouded his voice. “I’m mentally preparing myself just in case this doesn’t work out as planned. I know you don’t like to talk about failure, Taylor, but I have to be realistic.”
The compulsion to reject his words was automatic, but she stopped herself. He knew how the NFL worked better than she did. He’d told her once before that he could train as hard as possible, yet still fail to make it onto a team because of circumstances outside of their control. She would keep her objections to herself if this is what he needed to do in order to deal.
But she would also make damn sure he was as physically prepared as he could be. If he didn’t make a team, it wouldn’t be because she fell down on the job.
“I’ve been studying everything I can about what happened to your knee and developing a plan of attack that’s even more detailed than before,” Taylor said. “Those guys at that sports bar pissed me off. I hate, hate, hate that you have to put up with that kind of bullshit, and I want to personally feed them crow when you run onto an NFL field next year.” She pointed to the legal pad on the table. “This is our new game plan.”
The Dating Playbook Page 16
