Mountain Man

by Jules Barnard

  My eyes dart to Lewis—why, I have no idea. But he’s waiting for my answer along with the rest of them.

  “No.” I shake my head and smile.

  “Are you looking for one?” the guy next to me asks with a saucy grin.

  “Back off.” Zach thumps the guy’s shoulder. “Gen’s on our team, which means she’s off-limits. Think of her as your little sister.”

  “After the race?” the guy quips.

  Lewis rises and walks over. “Move it, Jake.” He squeezes in between Jake and me, and my body tenses.

  The rest of the team switches to other topics, but I get the sense they’re observing. Not in an obvious way—just like the conversations have gone down a notch in volume and each guy takes turns glancing.

  With Lewis so close to me, I’m feeling flushed and a bit hot. I unbutton my white shirt and wrap it around my waist.

  The table goes silent.

  I wore a silky tank underneath my shirt that I didn’t think was sexy, but maybe it is. I have actual cleavage in this top. Cali and my mom would be thrilled.

  Lewis’s gaze strays to my bare arms, then shifts quickly to the beer he’s cupping.

  Time for a subject change. “No Mira?”

  His eyes narrow. “She’s not my girlfriend, Gen.” He rubs a condensation bead off the side of his glass. “She’s a close friend, but I don’t record her every move.”

  “You fight like you’re in a relationship,” I say, to flush out the definition of the two of them.

  A part of me wants him to be in a relationship. If he has a girlfriend, I can convince myself to stay away from him. The way I respond to Lewis scares me. It’s too intense.

  He angles toward me, shutting out the others, though I’m pretty sure they’re listening. They can’t seem to talk and listen at the same time, so there’s not much conversation going on. “No relationship—not in the way you think. She’s like a sister to me.”

  I look at him incredulously. “Does she know you think of her this way?”

  “Yes.”

  “How does she handle that knowledge?” I’m acting like a psychologist, but seriously, I must figure this out.

  He lifts his shoulder in a lazy shrug, as if it doesn’t matter.

  It matters, dammit. What they have together is so confusing, and I need to know what it means. “How did she deal with your past girlfriends?”

  He doesn’t answer. His gaze wanders nervously away.

  An uneasy feeling sweeps down my spine. “Lewis?” I’m almost afraid to ask. “When was the last time you had a girlfriend?” Maybe his last relationship ended badly and Mira is overprotective?

  “A few years ago.”

  I sip my beer to steady the shudder threatening to unhinge me. Not what I wanted to hear. “Sooo… Mira was okay with that one, but now she can’t handle you talking to other women?” I’m not going to beat around the bush. It’s obvious Mira has issues with Lewis paying attention to other women, specifically me.

  Another smile, this one a bit mischievous. “She didn’t know about that relationship. I was away in college.”

  My eyes bulge. It’s been going on since college? “Why are you keeping your girlfriends hidden?”

  He shifts in his seat. “Girlfriend. There was one.”

  “One?” I squeak. Lewis is polished mountain man candy. No way he’s only had one girlfriend. He’s gotta be a player, only that image doesn’t fit either. He hasn’t checked out a single girl tonight, unlike his counterparts. “Sisters don’t cockblock,” I point out. His mouth curves up. Did I say that out loud? “I mean… You know what mean.” I glance nervously at the guys.

  Half are openly staring.

  This conversation is one of the most awkward I’ve ever experienced, so of course it’s with Lewis and half a dozen eavesdroppers. “Why is she like that?” I ask in a low voice.

  He checks his watch. “We should get going. It’s late.”

  He’s dismissing me? Again?

  I asked probing questions, but it’s not like he wasn’t answering. I guess I should be happy he answered as many as he did.

  Lewis downs the rest of his beer and shoves the glass to the center of the table. He stands and raises his hand toward Jake beside him. Jake gives him a manly handgrip. “I’m gonna take off,” Lewis says. “I’ll catch you guys later.” He peers at me. “Next week, team training. Tomorrow—be ready. I’ll pick you up at eight.”

  “Eight? Why so early?”

  He grins as he turns toward the door. “Special obstacle work,” he calls.

  Crap, he’s going to torture me. More than he already has.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chances are good I washed my hair in the shower this morning. Considering I’m not fully awake, I can’t say for sure. It’s wet, that’s all I know. There’s always the possibility I rinsed and forgot to shampoo, but it smells floral, so I think I’m good.

  My arms shake, muscles unused to functioning at what I consider an ungodly hour, as I pull damp strands into a ponytail. I left the pizza joint after Lewis threatened me with his butt-crack-of-dawn training, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t fall asleep, too used to staying up late for work. I ended up watching bad reality television with Cali for a couple of hours.

  Lewis pulls into the driveway in his red Jeep and I stumble out the front door. The only reason I don’t snap at him for scheduling our training this early is that he brought doughnuts—and a slice of wheat bread with peanut butter and bananas.

  I snarl at the bread after I enter his car. “What’s that for?”

  He pulls out of the driveway and heads for the main road. “You. Eat it and you can have a doughnut.”

  I bite the corner of my lip, attempting to remain calm.

  You know what? I’m not even going to argue with him about the bread bullshit, for two reasons. One, it’s not worth the mental energy, and I’m half-awake as it is. Two, I’m hungry and can eat the cardboard bread, plus three or four of the doughnuts, without a problem.

  I eat the bland wheat-banana thing in a few bites, gulp my coffee, and go in for a glazed swirl.

  He glances over. “Is that decaf? Because you shouldn’t—” His voice dies at the look I level at him.

  Oh, yeah, don’t push it, buddy. Grumpy morning person here. Not. In. The. Mood. I take a massive gulp and cock my head to the side. Bring it.

  A smile plays at the corner of his mouth, his focus returning to the road.

  I wolf a couple more doughnuts down and we approach Camp Richardson, which is pretty far out. “Where are we going?”

  “Fallen Leaf Lake. The cascades.”

  Sightseeing? “I thought the purpose of this torture—I mean, lovely morning gathering—was for training?”

  He pulls down a narrow road south of the Camp Richardson store. “The cascades are the obstacle.”

  Why does that sentence sound alarms inside my head? I gingerly return doughnut number five to its box. Maybe I should ease up on the sugar. Plenty of time after the workout.

  Several minutes later, Fallen Leaf Lake glistens through the trees. It’s dramatically smaller than Lake Tahoe, but just as beautiful—and probably equally freezing. I really hope this outing doesn’t involve swimming. I’d like to keep my ass where it’s located and not freeze it off.

  We pass the marina and Lewis pulls up a winding hill beside a creek that supplies water to the lake. He eases onto the shoulder and sets the brake.

  Lewis reaches behind my seat and his hard chest brushes my arm. A frisson of attraction spreads through me, the scent of pine and Lewis making my mind go blank.

  He hauls a backpack forward. “Ready?”

  “Uh, yeah.” No. So not ready. I climb out of the Jeep.

  The stones of the cascades are gray and brown, like earthen paper crumpled and laid at an angle with shallow streams running through. I glance over the edge. I have a terrible feeling I’ll be getting to know these rocks intimately.

  “Wait here.” Lewis climbs
over the side and down to the cascades without explaining what the hell we’re doing. He makes his way up the steep rocks, his backpack secured.

  It doesn’t look difficult with his long legs eating up the distance across the rocks, but that doesn’t reassure me. He’s at home in this place. I’m used to exercising on sidewalks and whatever urban setting I call home. This is the wild, untamed part of life I try to avoid.

  When he finally stops, Lewis is a small speck in the distance. He pulls off his backpack and waves me over.

  And here we go.

  I climb down, attempting the same path he took, and as predicted, it’s not as easy as it looked. I’m sweating and breathing heavily when I finally reach the cliff he’s standing above. “Now what?” I pant.

  He punches something on his phone. “Too slow. Took you ten minutes to get here.”

  I glance around. The rocks are sharp with a severe incline. This can’t be safe. Running stairs would be better. “Why the cascades?”

  He pauses from fidgeting with his phone and spears me with a look. “Half the mudder terrain includes a steep climbing element. The cascades are part of your conditioning.”

  He jerks his head in the direction we came. “There and back, eight minutes. Eight repetitions.” He holds up his phone to the zeroed time clock. “Beginning now.” He presses the start button and tenths of seconds fly upward.

  Shit.

  I spin around and go back the way I came as fast as I can. I’m not even going to consider how many times he wants me to do this. That number shall not be repeated, because it causes doughnut bile to rise in my throat.

  Minutes—hours?—later, my quads are a mix of fire and sludge. Lewis holds up his finger in what I assume indicates the last lap. I’ve climbed the cascades close to a thousand times by my estimation. All the while, he’s exercised from his perch, performing push-ups, sit-ups, and other calisthenics, while shouting that I’m going too slowly, not watching my center of gravity, using my back instead of my legs… Really, I’m about to hurt him.

  “Time,” he calls as I creep below his mountain-god cliff. He holds up the stopwatch, also known as his phone. “Scale this last rise and you’re done.”

  “The one that’s five feet above my head?” I gasp.

  He nods.

  He really is trying to kill me. My face is blazing hot from overexertion, my legs quivering, and I’m pretty sure I’m medically dehydrated. Lapping up water from the cascades sounds reasonable right now. “I can’t. Too high.” He knows I have no upper body strength.

  “You can. If you’re afraid to try it, you should quit the race. Climbing walls litter the mudder course.”

  He had to say the one thing that would get me to scale a sheer rock.

  I’m not backing out because of fear. It’s why I’m in this, to take risks and build self-confidence—and he challenged me again, damn him.

  Bracing a squirrely foot on a ledge the width of a pencil, I reach for a crevice above my head and pull by my fingertips. Forearms burning, I slide a shaking palm up the stone several more inches.

  My fingers slip and I’m falling away.

  My mouth parts on a scream a second before a strong hand grabs my wrist and I’m being lifted like a helicopter basket. I scramble over the top and roll onto my back, heaving for air.

  My gaze cuts to Lewis, his breaths slightly elevated, eyes wide, crouching on his toes beside me. He pulled me up like I weighed nothing.

  “You’re not supposed to help,” I croak, my throat dry and sore. I could have seriously injured myself—so I don’t know why those are the first words out of my mouth.

  Lewis reaches into his backpack, unscrews the top off a stainless steel bottle, and hands it to me. “I won’t let you fall.”

  I sit up and gulp water until my throat constricts and I cough. I gasp in air and take another swig. My head clears. “I have to do it on my own,” I tell him. Doesn’t he get it? I need to save myself. That’s the point of this stupid race. To prove I can.

  His jaw flexes. “I won’t let you get hurt.”

  No, he’ll simply torture me with early morning wake-up calls and muscle-tearing exercises, not to mention the emotional strain his presence puts on me. Who does he think he is? Not my brother, not my father—oh right, because I don’t have either of those—and he sure as hell isn’t my boyfriend.

  “You will if I want.” On an unrestrained impulse, I shove his knee.

  Carelessly crouched on his toes, he’s not expecting it. His face blanks as he falls back, catching himself on one hand.

  I jump up and lean over him, because apparently dehydration has made me insane. “You’re not the boss of me.” I poke him in the chest. “You’re not going to tell me what to do, or walk all over me because you’re bigger.” I realize how crazy I sound, but it doesn’t seem to stop the insanity.

  Lewis’s eyes flash surprise, then anger, and then they do the worst thing imaginable: They fall to my mouth, his chest rising and falling more rapidly than it was a few seconds ago.

  I lean down until our breaths mingle. He smells so good; even his breath is minty and clean. He doesn’t clear the half-inch to my lips. He waits, like he’s giving me permission to make the first move.

  My gaze drops to the scar on the corner of his mouth. I know what I want. It’s what I’ve silently obsessed about ever since he told me Mira wasn’t his girlfriend, and what I’ve imagined since we first met.

  I feather the scar with my lips. Puffs of Lewis’s choppy breath brushes my skin. I kiss his bottom lip, then the top, slanting my mouth over his.

  His response is immediate and devastating, his tongue inside my mouth, his lips running over my chin, my neck. He could sit up, grab me, but he doesn’t, he keeps his elbows locked, holding himself up.

  So I climb on top and straddle his waist.

  Lewis moans, the deep sound sparking fire through my belly. Hard angles below my ass and bare legs, his length swelling against my thigh—it conspires to drive me nuts.

  I grip his shoulders, run my fingers up his strong neck and through his soft hair. His mouth covers mine, deliberate, sensual, the rest of him wound tight. His body beneath me, the way he tastes and smells, and because he’s holding back when no other guy I’ve known would have, sets my body on fire. I rock my hips.

  Another growl tears from his throat, but he still doesn’t grab me. I run my hands down his shoulders, his sexy forearms, to his wrists, and pull until he releases his hold on the ground. He sits forward and I place his hands on my hips.

  The restraint breaks. Lewis winds his arms around me, leans me back, and runs his mouth down my throat, over my chest. “Genevieve.”

  My brain halts. What?

  He called me…

  No one calls me Genevieve, except my mom—and Drake.

  I push and shove and scoot off Lewis’s lap, frantic to get away like that day in the suite. I stare at him like he’s the wild animal and not me—the instigator of this seduction. My reactions are all wrong, but it’s unavoidable, the shock of unwanted memories so sharp, I can’t catch my breath.

  Lewis holds up his hands, the question on his face obvious. What’s wrong?

  “Don’t call me that.”

  He looks away and breathes in deep. Rolling to his feet, he runs tense fingers through his hair, his gaze flickering to me. “We should go.” He holds out his hand.

  I attempt to rise without his help, but with my sexual adrenaline doused, I’ve lost all energy, and by energy I mean my muscles have called it quits. My legs give out and I land on my ass with a soft thump. “Give me a minute… I need a minute,” I say on a shaky exhale.

  Lewis slings on his backpack, squats, and helps me up, securing my weight with his arm wrapped around my back and holding my waist. I should have a problem with him helping me—it goes against everything I’m trying to do these days—but I’m too screwed up in the head to care. I freaked out because he called me by my birth name. What the hell?

  He guides
me a few paces away to a section of the ridge slightly shallower than the area where I nearly killed myself, and climbs down, carrying most of my weight. “My fault,” he says. “I pushed you too hard.”

  Is he talking about the cascades or the kiss? The cascades were absolutely his fault, but I needed the kick-in-the-ass to show me that I’m a long way from prepared for the race. As for the kiss, I freaked out, plain and simple, the reminder of Drake like a slap in the face.

  I turn my forehead into his chest, because I can’t tell him how I feel inside. That I’m messed up. That I really like him. And our kiss… I’ve never experienced anything like it.

  My legs are moving but I’m not paying attention, and honestly, he’s doing most of the work anyway. When I look up, we’ve managed to climb to the other side. He shifts his hold on me slightly and his car horn beeps.

  “I can walk on my own now.” I attempt to step away and my quad cramps. I rub it with the heel of my hand.

  Lewis tucks me in close and opens the Jeep door for me, easing me onto the seat. He rests his hands on my knees for a moment, remorse flickering in his eyes. Does he regret kissing me? He said he pushed me too far, but he didn’t.

  He backs away, leaving me feeling chilled. I want to say something to bring him back, but I have nothing.

  On the way to my house, I try to talk to him. “Lewis, I’m sorry. Back there was my fault.”

  His jaw clenches. “No it wasn’t, Gen. You need…” He pauses. “Tell someone.”

  We both know what he’s referring to.

  “Like a psychiatrist?” I laugh bitterly. I don’t know why I find it ironic that the psychology student needs to see a psychiatrist, but I do.

  “That’s not what I meant. Though you could. Talking to someone might help. I meant that you should tell the casino about this guy.”

  “I’ll think about it.” I don’t want to talk about what happened to me, but I’m not the only person at risk. Every woman who works at Blue is in danger around Drake.

  I waited to find out what was going on at the casino before I took action. I’m still not entirely sure what management is up to, but with Cali getting fired after her run-in with Drake, something has to be done about him. It’s time I stepped up.