Chapter 4
4
I f Taryn’s ass had not been on the line, Sarah would’ve packed up in the dead of night and driven back to New York out of sheer embarrassment. Without the fog of lust, she was mortified. She’d practically climbed Beckett like a tree, and if not for the harness and his own heroic restraint, she was pretty sure they’d have ended up naked on that table in the equipment shed. That was…appalling.
She didn’t have issues with sex. She liked sex—or had in the dim, dark recesses of her memory when she’d last had it. But she wasn’t in the habit of going to bed—or table—with men she barely knew. Okay, she’d never been so carried away that she’d been tempted by the nearest horizontal surface. Beckett Hayes packed quite the sexual punch. And dear God, those shoulders. Damn. Sex appeal aside, she liked Beckett. He was focused, dedicated, thoughtful, and he had a helluva laugh, when he cut loose. He interested her more than anyone or anything had in more years than she could count. He was temptation embodied, and for the first time in her life, her first instinct wasn’t to question or wait or do anything but dive in headfirst. Like Taryn would.
And you’re leaving in ten days.
That made last night a terrible idea, exactly as he’d said before they’d mauled each other. It had been unquestionably mutual. Which was the only reason she managed to make herself turn toward the equipment shed a quarter after sunrise the next morning, instead of veering toward the parking lot.
The campus was silent but for the twitter of a few birds, who didn’t respect the holy rule of coffee before noise. Lake Waawaatesi was still and smooth as glass, reflecting the watercolor sky. Even in her uncaffeinated state, Sarah could appreciate that it was gorgeous. Somehow, that made the insult of being up at this hour a little bit less harsh. When was the last time she’d been somewhere this peaceful? At home, she’d be waking—unwillingly—to street construction or the honk and hum of traffic. This was better. So she paused, firing off a few shots with her camera to capture the moment for home. A snapshot of peace and tranquility.
Lights were already on inside the equipment shed. Bracing herself, Sarah pushed the door open. Beckett stood at the table, sorting through a bin of ascenders. No doubt he was rechecking her work from yesterday. A fresh wave of embarrassment hit, and with it came gratitude that he’d figured it out. If something was wrong with any of the equipment she’d been meant to inspect, she’d prefer it be discovered rather than someone getting hurt because of her incompetence.
He turned. The smile started in his eyes, more blue than gray this morning, spreading like sunrise to the lips she’d dreamed about. And that, too, was a lovely way to start the day.
“Mornin’,” he said. “I brought coffee.”
The sweetest three words in the English language.
Zeroing in on the to-go cups emblazoned with the camp logo, Sarah made a beeline across the room. “You might be my perfect guy.”
She met his gaze as she lifted her cup, and suddenly that didn’t feel like joking flirtation. It felt like unavoidable truth.
Ridiculous. It’s just chemistry.
But it didn’t feel like just chemistry as she leaned back against the table and remembered his lips and hands on her. Skin buzzing with want, Sarah crossed her legs at the ankles and cleared her throat. “So what’s on the agenda this morning? Knots?”
“It can wait a few minutes. Drink your coffee and let your brain come online.”
“Bless you.” Maybe then her brain would catch up with her mouth and keep her from saying anything stupid. She sipped. “Do you regret last night?”
What? No! Coffee fail!
Beckett lifted a brow. “Do you?”
“I—” She opened her mouth. Closed it again. “Not exactly. I’m just embarrassed, I guess. I don’t normally… It’s been a while, and…”
He just stared at her, waiting.
Sarah’s cheeks went tight and hot. “Never mind. Forget I asked. Pre-coffee brain can’t be trusted.”
Beckett added another ascender back to the bin. “I don’t regret it, no. And I don’t think we have anything to be embarrassed about.”
She liked that he said “we.” And yet…
Another ascender went into the bin. “You don’t look like that made you feel any better.”
“It did. It’s just—” Sarah sighed. “We barely know each other.”
Beckett nodded and stayed silent for a few moments, checking and clearing another two ascenders. “So what do you want to know? What’s your minimum threshold of knowledge that will make you more comfortable with this?”
She laughed a little. “I don’t know.”
Abandoning the ascenders, he caged her against the table, planting his hands behind her. He didn’t touch her, but Sarah was aware of every hard inch of him as he leaned in, close enough that it would barely take more than breathing to brush her mouth to his. He smelled of soap and cedar. Delicious.
“Look, I figure a spark like this doesn’t come along every day. To my mind, it’s worth following up to see if it fizzles or catches. So, what do you want to know?”
When you’ll kiss me again. But that wasn’t what he was asking. “I guess I can’t say ‘everything,’ can I?”
Beckett’s lips curved, and he stepped back, returning to his bin of equipment. “Okay. I’ll start with a mini-bio. I’m originally from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Non-smoker. Social drinker. Coke over Pepsi. Dogs over cats. Morning person, which I hope you won’t hold against me. Did my undergrad at USC, then grad school at Dartmouth, where I met Michael and Heather.”
“Dartmouth?” She hoped her sincere shock didn’t show in her tone. Nothing about this rugged man gave any hint of that world.
“Eh, don’t be impressed. I left before I graduated.”
Getting into an Ivy League graduate program was an achievement unto itself. She knew. “What were you studying?”
“I was getting my MBA.”
“Really? I would’ve imagined—I don’t know—environmental science or something.”
“That would’ve been a better fit.” He finished one bin and grabbed another. “I could have stuck it out, I guess. I was in the last year.”
Sarah couldn’t imagine being so close to finished and not following through. Just the idea of leaving such a thing dangling made her twitch. “Why didn’t you?”
“They’re big on group work in MBA programs. I found out in the middle of a presentation that my partner had plagiarized his entire half of the project.”
“Oh my God. Did your professor fail you, too?”
“Nope. He just said that kind of thing happened in the real world, and I needed to get over it.”
Her mouth fell open. “You’re kidding!”
“Wish I was. I figured if that was what the real corporate world was like, I’d never be happy, and I wanted none of it. I walked straight out. Didn’t even finish my half.”
“Ballsy.”
That gorgeous mouth of his twisted into a wry smile. “The word my parents used was ‘stupid’. But that was later. There’s a trailhead for the Appalachian Trail about a mile from campus. I packed a bag and hit the trail. By the time I made it to Virginia, I’d decided the National Park Service was my next step.”
He said it casually, as if hiking what had to be around three hundred miles, give or take, was no big deal.
“You said you were at Yosemite the last three years?”
“Yeah. Stints at Conagree, Shenandoah, and Hot Springs before that.”
“So what are you doing here at Camp Firefly Falls? I’d think summer would be high season for a park ranger.”
“It is. I’m not a park ranger anymore.” Though his tone was easy, a muscle jumped in his jaw.
Something sensitive there. “I’m guessing that wasn’t as easy a decision as leaving Dartmouth.”
“Wasn’t my decision. Budget cuts,” Beckett grunted. “That’s how I ended up here. Michael did me a favor.”
That must’ve been the chance he’d been given.
God bless Michael Tully.
He put the second bin of ascenders back on the shelf and grabbed two lengths of rope. “What about you? You said you collected degrees.”
“Oh, well, it’s possible my parents—proud though they were of the first three—might also be veering toward a different descriptor of my pursuits at this point.”
“Three?”
“Working on my fourth.” When he went brows up in expectation she sighed. “I’ve got bachelor’s degrees in psychology, art, and nutrition. Right now I’m finishing up my master’s degree in neurobiology and behavior.”
“One of these things is not like the other.”
Sarah laughed. “I love photography. I really wanted to be a photographer when I was younger, but, sadly, I have zero desire to shoot weddings or be a photojournalist, and as my parents are fond of reminding me, there’s not really any other great way to make a living as a photographer. But I threw in as many photography classes as I could for fun all through undergrad. Enough that it gave me another degree.”
“So the passion is neurobiology?”
Sarah thought of the thesis she was ready to set on fire. “‘Passion’ is, perhaps, not the right word.”
“You don’t like it?”
“I’m not sure you like anything by the time you get halfway through your thesis. I think despising your topic is part of the graduate school process.” At least, that was what she was telling herself to get to the end.
Beckett hummed a noncommittal noise. “So you finish your master’s degree. Then what?”
She thought longingly of the cabin she was sharing with Anna Garcia, a lovely girl from Arizona who was using Camp Firefly Falls as a stopover before joining the Peace Corps in the fall, and wished she were going to be here longer than two weeks. “A vacation would be nice, but a Ph.D. is the plan.”
“More graduate school in a subject you just admitted you despise?”
“A career in research seems to demand it.”
“Is a career in research what you want?”
The practiced answer she’d been giving her parents for years hovered on the tip of her tongue. But this was a man who’d walked away from Dartmouth . “I don’t know what I want. Not business. I don’t like that any more than you do. But I’m kinda too far down this path to jump off.” Lord knew, if she changed fields again, her parents might kill her, even if they’d long since stopped paying her way.
“It’s never too late to jump off.”
The idea of it was simply mind-boggling. “I’m not as brave as you.”
“I think you’re plenty brave. Look at what you’re doing here for your sister.”
Sarah grimaced. “That’s not brave. It’s foolhardy, as we established yesterday.”
“Still. Deciding to admit you’re on the wrong path—if you are—” he qualified, “takes guts. It’s not for me to say one way or the other. But seems to me if you’re not happy doing it, if you don’t get excited about going in to do the job or the class or whatever, you’re probably not in the best field for you.”
When was the last time she’d been excited about her studies? Her first semester of grad school probably. Before they’d put her through the hell classes meant to weed out those who couldn’t hack it. She’d proved she could more than hack it, staying at the top of her graduate school class, but everything since then had been a grind. Especially this last semester. But if she didn’t stick with neurobiology, if she didn’t go on for her PhD, then what the hell would she do with her life?
Not comfortable with the direction of her thoughts, she declared, “This is way too heavy a conversation for this hour of the morning.”
“Fair enough. It’s time we got started anyway.”
Sarah set her empty cup down. “Teach me, oh wise one. What are we doing today?”
“You’re going to practice your knots, and then you’re suiting up and we’re going to practice falling.”
As she watched him grab the equipment, she didn’t think she needed any more practice doing that.
“—and ascenders are mechanical devices used for directly ascending a rope or as a braking component within a rope hauling system, often used in rescue situations. How’d I do?”
Beckett smiled. “Perfect score.”
Sarah pumped her fist, her big doe eyes lit with triumph and something else. “What do I get for my reward?”
“A reward, huh?”
Her mouth quirked into a grin. “You know I appreciate positive reinforcement.”
He set his clipboard aside and moved to cage her against the equipment shed table, dropping his voice low. “I think we can come up with something.”
Her hands came to his shoulders as he slid his over her backside, behind her thighs to lift her onto the table.
“I’m amenable to this kind of something.”
“For every right answer, you should get a kiss somewhere new.” Beckett skimmed his lips across her jaw, down the length of that lovely neck, lingering when she dropped her head back on a sigh.
“Mmm, I had a lot of right answers.”
“So you did. It happens I have quite a few spots I’m dying to taste.” He brought his hands to her breasts, brushing his thumbs over her taut nipples until her eyes went dark and molten.
“Beckett.” His name on her lips was something between a prayer and a plea as she wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him tight against her center.
They both moaned as she rocked her hips against his erection.
“I want to finish this,” he gasped. “I want you naked and under me, over me. Properly. In a bed.”
“We both have very inconvenient roommates. And technically we still have all the hands-on work to do.” She rolled against him, and he almost swallowed his tongue.
“I’m prepared to do all the hands on work you’ll let me.”
Sarah huffed a laugh that turned into a groan. “God, you have no idea how much I want that, but I meant the actual climbing. We don’t have that much time.”
“You can think about climbing right now?”
“I mean, mostly I’m thinking about climbing you, but I still have one or two brain cells left for the practical.”
“I must not be doing this right.”
A bell began to clang in the distance, signaling an end to their study session rendezvous. Beckett dropped his brow to hers. “Breakfast. How terribly inconvenient.”
“Better than being caught at something in flagrante .” She dropped her legs and slid off the table, brushing a kiss to his lips as she began to rearrange her clothes.
Beckett hung his head for a moment, wondering if they were doomed to bad timing the entire time she’d be here.
“How do I look?”
He glanced up to see she’d refastened her ponytail and pulled on a baseball cap. Her lips and cheeks were still flushed, her eyes bright.
“Unsatisfied.”
The color in her cheeks deepened. “Well, there’s time for that yet at some point.”
I sure as hell hope so.
Shifting on her feet, she turned toward the door, suddenly avoiding his eyes. “I’m gonna head on so there’s a gap between when we show up and so you have time to deal with… well, that.” She nodded at the bulge in his shorts. “Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to?—”
“Sarah.”
“What?”
Beckett reached out to snag her hand, gently tugging her back to him until he could tip her face up to his. “I really hope you don’t think the only reason I’m helping you is because I want to get you naked. Or that that’s a requirement. If that’s not something you want?—”
“I don’t think either of us is under the delusion that I don’t want you. It’s just…”
“Complicated?”
“Yeah.”
He got it. He really did. They had a built-in expiration date, and he couldn’t blame her if she didn’t want to cross that line because of it. So they’d see what happened.
Pressing a chaste kiss to her brow, he nudged her toward the door herself. “Go ahead. I’ll join you in the dining hall. Save me a cup of coffee.”
It took him longer than he wanted to get himself under control. Didn’t help that one look at that equipment table had him imagining Sarah spread out on it naked and writhing from his tongue. But eventually, he made his way toward breakfast.
Michael was on the stage talking as he slipped in the back of the room. “One thing you’ll find out fast once sessions actually start is that campers will inevitably do something stupid and get hurt. We need to be prepared to deal with as many varieties of injuries as we’re able. Originally these emergency drills were scheduled for the end of the week, but there’s rain in the forecast, so we’re bumping them to today.”
Oh shit.
“As you can see on your schedules, we’re starting with a climbing accident scenario at Boulder Mountain, being run by Taryn Meadows. There will be other simulated injuries at various other points, all outlined in your packets. So finish up your breakfasts and meet out there at eight fifteen.”
Sarah appeared at his side, a cup of coffee white knuckled in one hand, a sheaf of papers in the other. She handed the latter over without a word.
Michael had assigned Beckett as victim in the fall scenario. And it made sense. He had the most experience and could fake everything safely. But that left Sarah wide open in front of the entire staff. She hadn’t been trained on how to stop falls yet.
Because you’ve been thinking more about getting into her pants than truly preparing her for the job. Good job, Hayes.
Jerking his head toward the door, they stepped out, moving around the corner and hopefully out of earshot of anybody who happened to be going in or out of the building.
“What are we going to do?” Sarah hissed. “I can’t do that. I don’t want you getting hurt or into trouble on my behalf.”
Neither did he. He’d agreed to put his ass on the line, so he was going to get them both through this. “Do you trust me?”
“Of course, but?—”
“Okay. Then you be the victim. When you fall, I’ll catch you. I’ll run everything.”
“But Michael…”
“I’ll handle Michael. Can you do this? Are you okay doing this climb as a relative novice and falling on purpose?”
She swallowed, then nodded.
They made it through breakfast and back to the equipment shed to grab all their gear. Despite her nerves, she suited herself up for the climb, and he was satisfied to see she did it properly, with no encouragement from him. Before they walked out, he squeezed her shoulders. “I’ve got you.”
“I know.” She flashed a wan smile.
At Boulder Mountain, the staff was gathered. Beckett didn’t see Michael, but he wasn’t waiting around on him to start things. His friend wouldn’t stop a training exercise in progress. After a few words with his climbing staff, he and Sarah got into position.
“Okay, so Taryn is going to simulate a newbie climber who has overestimated her capabilities. Chances are, we’ll see a fair bit of this over the summer. Now the rock climbing staff is trained to stop a fall before it becomes something to really worry about, but today, we’re going to run a scenario where that doesn’t happen and staff needs to stabilize her for transport to the parking lot, where medical personnel would be waiting.”
He turned toward the rock wall. “Taryn, you ready?”
“Belay on?”
Beckett locked her into the ropes. “On belay.”
She began to climb the intermediate path, and he began to pray. Don’t let her get hurt. Don’t let her get hurt.
Ten feet. Fifteen. Twenty.
“Looking good. Check out the view,” he called.
“What?” She twisted her head and looked down. “Oh God.”
Then came the scramble they’d discussed. But it didn’t seem like she was faking it at all as she attempted to flatten herself against the rock face. Her foot slipped and suddenly she was falling.
For one instant, Beckett’s heart leapt into his throat. In the next, he’d braked her fall. She bounced against the rock face. “Ow.”
“You okay?”
“Fine.”
Beckett hoped that was true. He addressed the staff. “Now, in this case, and hopefully in all others, rock climbing staff stopped this from becoming a problem. I’m going to lower her on to the ground, and we’re going to practice stabilization.”
He took the steps, explaining what was happening as he went and walking everyone through applying the neck collar and immobilizing her on a backboard. As members of his team were strapping her in, Michael tugged Beckett aside. “What are you doing?”
Here it came. He figured Michael would show up eventually.
“Running the rescue.”
He kept his voice quiet. “Taryn was supposed to run it. It was supposed to be you strapped to that backboard.”
Beckett jerked a shoulder. “I’ve got more SAR experience, and last time I checked, you made me senior staff in this department.”
Michael frowned, looking more concerned than annoyed. “This wasn’t about search and rescue. It was a drill. What’s the deal, Beckett? Is there something I need to know? Is she not competent?”
Beckett began to sweat. This was exactly the problem, the thing he was trying to cover up. But he didn’t want to make the real Taryn look unqualified. How the hell was he supposed to explain this? He glanced back at Sarah, as if somehow she’d be able to telepathically give him the answer.
Realization dawned on Michael’s face. “I get it.”
Beckett’s gut twisted. “You do?”
“I mean, I kinda thought you’d moved past this.”
“Huh? Past what?”
“You’re really into Taryn, and you’re just awkward about it.”
The hell? “I?—”
Michael clapped him on the back. “Let me give you some advice, man. Jumping in and taking over is not the way to woo a competent woman. I’ve seen Taryn’s profile. She is definitely not the damsel in distress type.”
Beckett didn’t even know where to begin processing the insult of all this. His buddy thought he was bad with women? Had apparently always been bad with women? What the actual hell was up with that? But Michael had inadvertently given him an answer. All Beckett had to do was throw himself under this bus to get out of it.
Fixing a perplexed expression on his face, he glanced back toward where a team of people carefully lifted Sarah and began to carry her toward the main lodge. “I guess that explains the cold shoulder the other day.”
Michael had no idea about all the extra up-close-and-personal time they’d been spending together.
“Don’t worry. You’ve got all summer to get your game back. She’ll come around.”
Except Beckett didn’t have all summer. Game wasn’t his problem, but he had mere days left, and he didn’t know if he’d be able to convince Sarah to pursue what was between them past next week.