by Cara Colter
Suddenly, she felt she wasn’t going to be relegated to the stick-in-the-mud who needed carefree Jonas Boyden to bring her to life. She was not going to be the wilting daisy, waiting for him to water her! She was suddenly not prepared to buckle up and hang on for dear life. Let Jonas buckle up and hang on for dear life!
She leaned over and took the Frisbee from Chance. Then she reached up and kissed Jonas full on the lips. Any Goody Two-shoes kind of girl that she had ever been, she now banished firmly.
“So,” she called to Jonas, she and Chance already running, “let’s do it, then. Let’s have some fun.”
Jonas hardly even hesitated. He ran after her onto the sprawling, carpet-like lawn of the mansion that neighbored hers. She kicked off her shoes.
“Aren’t we trespassing?” he asked her, but he was already kicking off his shoes, too, and peeling off his socks.
“They’re hardly ever home. I keep an eye on their place, so I’m pretty sure they’d be okay with it.”
Chance begged her for the Frisbee. She threw it to Jonas. It was a terrible throw and he had to run really fast and jump really high to beat Chance to it. He grabbed it out of the air. Really, he looked so magnificent that she saw many bad throws in his future!
He threw it back to her. His throw, naturally, was perfect, and, to the distress of the dog, she snatched it out of the air. She deliberately threw quite wide of Jonas, hoping to see that wonderful demonstration of athleticism again, but this time it was Chance who grabbed it out of the air, ecstatic. They ran after him, and finally—if briefly—retrieved the toy. They played until they were breathless with laughter and exertion.
Finally, they could run no more. Krissy collapsed on the grass first, and Jonas came beside her. The dog was content to lay his big head across Jonas’s belly and chew on his Frisbee as Jonas toyed with his ears.
In comfortable silence, they lay in the grass as night chased the last light from the summer sky and the stars winked on, one by one.
Jonas leaned up on one elbow and looked at her.
“You’re not drunk, are you?”
“Not even a little bit,” she whispered. Maybe she had been. She wasn’t sure. But if she was drunk now, it wasn’t on wine.
He traced the line of her face with his hand. “I can’t stop myself,” he said with wonder. He dropped his mouth over hers.
She could not stop herself, either. She welcomed him back to her. His mouth was now both familiar and dangerously unknown.
And then the automatic sprinklers came on.
Jonas leaped off her and held out his hand to her. Under a star-studded sky, they ran hand in hand through the sprinklers, gathering up their shoes, laughing joyously.
He never let go of her hand. They found themselves at her front door once again. Her dress was plastered to her. His slacks and shirt were plastered to him.
She reached up and touched the droplets on his soaked face and then took them from her fingertips with her lips. He moaned and dropped his head over hers.
She took the moistness of the sprinkler water from the fullness of his lips with her tongue, one droplet at a time. And then he did the same to her.
And then that was not enough. The kiss deepened exquisitely, tortuously. She could feel every muscle of his body tensing beneath the wetness of his clothing, which was not really a barrier at all. Their kiss deepened yet more. With discovery. With exploration. It was exhilaration. With pure ecstasy.
It was life itself that she tasted when she tasted so fully of him. The force of it rippled through him, surged, enveloped her. Some slumbering part of her stirred awake, sputtered to life and then roared like a fire being fed oxygen. She knew this powerful thing unleashed between them could not be put back to sleep again.
“Are you coming in?” Krissy murmured helplessly against the rough whiskers of his cheek. She wanted him. She wanted him as much as she had ever wanted anything—anybody—in her entire life. No, it was not want. It was need. She needed him with the hunger of someone who had been starving; she needed him like a wintered plant needed sunlight to live.
The kiss between them reflected all of that and became ferocious with the tender violence of their mutual need.
He reared back from her, his eyes taking in her face.
“I thought,” he reminded her roughly, “you weren’t that kind of girl.”
“I’m not,” she whispered, “but maybe I have always wanted to be. Maybe the right person never came along before.”
And then he scooped her soaked body up in his arms, and she felt deliciously consumed by the scorching heat of him. He found the handle and nudged open the door with his foot.
The three of them. Krissy and Jonas tumbled through it, Chance bounding past them into the house.
CHAPTER TWELVE
JONAS WOKE UP the next morning with the dog laid out across the foot of the bed crushing his feet and Krissy nestled against him, her hair scattered, a sheet covering some, but not all, of her curves.
Her hand was resting on his chest—his naked chest. Something sweetly possessive about that.
Looking at her without her awareness, he took in the thick sweep of her lashes, the delicate roundness of cheek and shoulder, the beautiful bow and slight movement of her lips as the breath moved in and out of her.
Jonas felt the searing and shocking memory of what had unfolded, white-hot, between them last night.
But another feeling overlaid that one, and it was more powerful: he felt the most exquisite tenderness for this woman whose sensuous warmth was pressed against him. And he felt enormously protective of her.
They both knew she wasn’t that kind of girl. What had she said last night?
That she had always wanted to be. She had proved that in spades: by turns playful, demanding, ferocious, giving, gentle.
It was the second part of her statement that a better man would have paid attention to.
That maybe the right person had never come along before. Jonas was well aware he was no one’s right person.
He waited for panic to set in, and the self-recrimination. What the hell had he done? He hadn’t even been drunk. And neither had she.
But intoxicated, yes. On her laughter. On her wet body in that little black dress pressed against his, on the look in her eyes.
And oh, yes, on the taste of those incredible lips.
But, oddly, no sense of recrimination came.
Krissy stirred and then her eyes opened and then opened wider. She didn’t look upset; she looked the very same way he felt.
Happy to be waking up beside him in the same way he felt happy to be waking up beside her, as if something that had been missing from their worlds—without their awareness—was suddenly there.
She came fully awake and was suddenly shy. He couldn’t resist cupping her face in his hands and kissing her on the lips with all that tenderness he was feeling toward her.
The dog whined.
“I think he needs to go out,” she whispered against Jonas’s mouth. “Why don’t you take him?” she suggested. “I’ll make us some breakfast.”
There were many things on his mind besides the dog and breakfast, but she was right to put the brakes on this thing unfolding between them before they were both so swept away with it that not one other rational decision could be made. Hopefully a walk would be a great way to get his head back on straight. He put on his crumpled clothes and went out the door. Instead of getting his head back on straight, Jonas found he couldn’t wait to get back to her and couldn’t stop thinking about her. He stopped and plucked a flower from a garden that bordered the walk.
When he got back, Krissy was showered and dressed in a pair of yoga pants and an oversize T-shirt. She was very focused on making pancakes. He let the dog off the leash and went up behind her. He wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in the sweet curve of her
neck.
When she turned into him, he gave her the flower.
“Oh,” she said, blushing crimson, “how lovely!”
That blush reminded him of what he was dealing with. It had been a long, long time since he had been with a woman who blushed.
It was a little late for this, but Jonas realized he needed to take things slowly. He was dealing with grief. He knew from experience how intensely vulnerable she was right now. He should just give her—and himself—some space.
“We should—”
She turned and looked at him, and he saw what she was expecting in the sudden vulnerability of her expression.
If he asked for space right now, she would not see it as being for the greater good of both of them. She would see it as a brush-off.
“We should go get that ring today,” he heard himself say.
What? a voice inside him asked, shocked.
“What?” she asked, shocked.
“There’s a jewelry store in a little town north of here. It’s close to one of my favorite hiking trails. Have you got sturdy boots?”
* * *
Krissy stared at Jonas.
He’d brought her a flower. Snatched from someone’s garden, but a romantic gesture nonetheless.
Now he wanted to go ahead with the ring? The whole time she had cooked breakfast she had thought he would arrive back with the dog and a zillion reasons to bolt out of here.
She had a zillion reasons she needed him to leave. This was all becoming exactly as he had predicted! Terribly complex.
For instance, she couldn’t even look at him without wanting to touch him, kiss him, drag him back down the hall... Shop for a ring when she was feeling some dangerous hope zinging in the air between them. Wouldn’t that be utter madness?
Still, he had put ring shopping into perspective really quickly. For him, the ring shopping was a casual outing—it had nothing at all to do with what had transpired between them last night. In fact, it could combine with a hike! Sturdy boots, indeed!
That was the proper outlook.
“Can I use your shower?” he asked. “And maybe pop my clothes into the dryer for a bit to loosen the wrinkles?”
Krissy gulped.
Jonas Boyden had been in her bed. Now he was going to be in her shower. Part of her longed to be as bold as she had been last night and get in that shower with him.
But another part of her held back. They barely knew one another. Wasn’t this how her parents had gotten into such difficulties? They had hurried into a relationship when they didn’t even understand each other’s core values. Their legacy had been that Krissy grew up fast and learned to depend on herself from a very young age.
She had to take this lesson now and back this thing up. It felt as if it would be way too easy to start depending on Jonas. Already, her safe and tidy little cottage felt as if it would never be the same, as if some part of Jonas would linger here tantalizingly, so could you go backward once you had gone there?
She heard the shower turn on. She imagined the water sluicing over that gorgeous body that she had owned last night. But then she also heard the dryer thumping.
Was this a man who was accustomed to waking up in a strange bed? He seemed very practiced at getting wrinkles out of clothes that had been left in a hurried heap by the side of the bed.
Tell him to go home, Krissy ordered herself. But already she wasn’t that strong; already she was prepared to ignore the lessons life had given her. She wanted to spend the day with him. She wanted to see where all this was going to go.
No doubt, straight to a heartbreak, she warned herself. But even with that warning inside her head, while he was still showering, she quickly chose a suitable hiking outfit: a pair of denim shorts and a plaid shirt. She braided her hair.
Then she looked at herself in the mirror, hoping she had achieved a nice, casual outdoorsy image. Good grief. A little too Daisy Mae? But it was too late; she could hear him emerge from the shower.
He came out of the bathroom with a towel tucked around his waist and water beaded in the strands of his hair, turned dark gold from water. Her helpless eyes trailed to the perfect, muscled body.
He paused and looked at her. He smiled. “Hey, you look awesome in braids. Very wholesome.”
A reminder to them both that they were in totally different leagues?
He got his clothes out of the dryer and put them on. It was his business attire from yesterday—minus the suit jacket—and yet he looked like a poster boy for an outdoor excursion being featured in Men’s Fitness. There was nothing Li’l Abner about him, except maybe for the broadness of his shoulders.
Considering what had occurred between them last night, did she want to look wholesome? Considering that, wasn’t it the safest thing? Considering their mission today—an engagement ring—wasn’t it a good thing he was setting the tone by treating the hike as the main event?
Soon Chance was loaded into the back hatch. The dog was over the moon to be having an outing with them.
As they took to the highway, Krissy felt some tension leaving her. It was that perfect kind of day that only late June had: warmth without too much heat, the crispness of summer, spring freshness still in the air, the world bright green with growth and lushness that sang of possibility.
The vehicle filled with the heady scent of his shower-washed body.
He glanced at her, smiled that smile that made her feel cherished, as if she mattered to him. “Cat got your tongue, Krissy?”
She didn’t think any talk of tongues was a very good idea right now!
“Tell me something wonderful about your week,” he said to her, and she loved it that he had sensed her awkwardness and was prepared to work at easing it.
Well, there was the picnic. And then there was something quite wonderful crowding out all the other wonderfuls.
“Something I don’t know about,” he said softly, reading her mind. “Maybe something from work.”
So Krissy found herself telling him about Georgie, her very adorable five-year-old class miscreant.
“He brought worms for show-and-tell. Then he chased Emily all over the class with one. I think it’s the five-year-old way of saying I like you. But then, when I told him to lose the worm, he ate it. I think his chances with Emily are over for good now.”
“Note to self—don’t eat worms in front of the girl you are trying to impress.”
Krissy gulped. Was that girl her? “I think you’re way past the eating worms stage of impressing a girl,” she said. She thought of his mouth. Way past.
“You are way overestimating the sophistication of the male species,” he said, and the laughter that rose up between them was deliciously comfortable and companionable.
“What about you?” she asked. “Best part of your week.”
He gave her a lazy, sexy smile that turned her insides to mush and made her happily aware there was no question about what had been best about his week.
“I acquired a resort about a year ago that’s been an extraordinary challenge. It’s in the Florida Keys, more run-down than we thought it was going to be. Usually, I have a pretty good sense of how the resort will feel specialized, but for this one every single thing about it has been a grind, including the mission statement. But it all came together last week. I haven’t run a resort in conjunction with a charity before, but one of my executives is a military veteran, and he was telling me about some of the challenges military families have during—and sometimes especially after—their service.
“So we’re going to work with veteran’s groups, and provide getaways for these really stressed and sometimes not very well off families.”
Krissy could not even look at him. She was sure the admiration she had for him—the growing sense of connection, the desire to know this man, completely, to be a part of his life—would just be too evident i
n her face.
“You should come,” he said after a moment, “to the opening.”
She nearly quivered with pure longing. He had just opened the door to a future beyond this, and beyond the weekend with his family.
“Wouldn’t that be, um, kind of complicated?” she asked, trying to strip the helpless sense of longing from her voice. “It would mean extending the charade, wouldn’t it?”
They needed to address that. Didn’t they? The charade part?
She was hoping he would say it wasn’t a charade, not anymore. But he didn’t.
He frowned. He sighed. “Yes.” And then almost to himself, “It’s not as if I didn’t see it coming. Complications.”
The silence between them did not seem comfortable anymore.
The town that was their destination was a village, much like Sunshine Cove, only smaller. The day was cool enough to leave Chance in the vehicle with all the windows open, but now that they were actually in front of the tiny jewelry store, sandwiched in between a bookshop and an antique store, Krissy felt reluctant to go in.
“Are you sure you want to leave the vehicle unsecured?” Krissy said. She suddenly did not want to do this. It was too personal. Too crazy. Too much a lie. There was too much potential to feel things she did not want to feel. Especially after last night.
Like her growing attachment to Jonas. There was this sense in her of wanting to know him so completely. And that was without the further complication of the fact that she couldn’t look at his lips without thinking of kissing him. Of his hands claiming her. Of her hands exploring him. Like how much she enjoyed making him laugh.
How could she possibly go look at a ring with Jonas—an engagement ring—and not have the lines she had drawn around him blur even more than they already were?
She could not do this!
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“MAYBE WE SHOULD go hiking first,” Krissy suggested to Jonas.
He gave her a puzzled look. “The store is right there.”
