Chapter 10
CHAPTER
TEN
ALLY
T he sun had dropped behind the mountain and the sky took on a dusky blue. I returned from the kiddie pool Clay had filled by his side door to serve as our fake lake and proudly held up the pot of water I’d filtered with a hand pump. It was practice for filtering mountain lake water so we could drink it without needing to boil it first. “Ta-da. Water.”
“Nicely done,” Clay said, taking the pot from me and pouring off some of the water into a bottle for drinking.
What I did not tell him was that I’d gotten into a wrestling match with his portable pump and almost ended up taking a bath in the kiddie pool. As it was, my shirt sleeves were soaked and my hands wet.
“So, tell me about the wilderness thing,” Clay said, poking at the fire with a stick. Tiny sparks danced into the air as the logs slid into a slightly different position, making the flames climb a bit higher. As I sat next to Clay, I immediately felt the increase in heat warm my face and hands, which I had fanned out over the fire.
“What wilderness thing?”
“Why do you hate it? Did you watch the black bear movie?”
“No. It’s the dirt and bugs...I don’t know. I’ve just always avoided camping.” I balled my hands into fists and stuffed them under my chin. Before I even realized I’d taken such a protective stance, Clay was leaning over and gently lowering my fists into my lap. “What black bear movie?” Did I even want to know?
The feel of his hands on my skin both calmed me and sent a warning flare blazing through my chest—I shouldn’t have liked the feeling as much as I did. At this point, I needed to give in and accept that I’d keep feeling these little twinges and pangs for the duration of our camping exercise, but I needed to ignore them. Just like I always did at work.
Scooting his chair closer, Clay uncurled my balled-up fists. “Holy hell, your hands are freezing.”
“I know, that’s why I was warming them over the fire.”
“But they’re not getting any warmer.” He turned my hands over, looking at the way my fingers had gone white at the tips. “You have Raynaud’s.”
“Yeah.” Raynaud’s was a fancy name for poor circulation. The first time my hands had gone numb and white like this had been on a sixty-five-degree day after I’d come out of a hot yoga class and run an errand for my mom before going home and showering. The effect of my rapid cooldown and my not-great circulation was hands that felt ice cold to the touch and needed to be submerged in warm water at my mom’s house in order to get the blood flowing again.
“Does it happen often?”
I shrugged. “Mostly it happens if my hands get wet and then I get cold.”
Or if I get nervous around a hot guy and all my blood rushes to the muscles in my chest.
“I’m sorry. I should have offered you gloves.”
“Not your job. I’m learning to be a self-sufficient camper, remember? Note to self: always bring gloves.”
But I didn’t want gloves, not when his hands were rubbing mine to warm them. Massaging the ends of my fingers, his calloused hands were creating friction along the smoothness of mine. His palms dwarfed mine, and the gentle touch of his large hands infused my skin with warmth. The friction sent heat to parts of me I hadn’t known were cold.
I couldn’t help thinking about how those rough hands would feel gliding down other parts of my body. It was dangerous territory.
My body was begging me to give in and believe these hints of feeling could lead to more. My heart wanted the romance I’d only read about in well-crafted novels. Every surge of electricity across my skin, each flutter in my heart, all the heightened senses felt like something real.
And yet, my brain maintained a firm hold on reality. This man was not my reality.
He couldn’t be. Not when he only did temporary relationships, if you could even call them relationships. If I was going to dip a toe back into believing in love, thereby giving up on my self-sufficiency principles—my principles!—it wasn’t going to be for a man who all but guaranteed heartbreak. No. Not him.
I pulled my hands back, rubbing them together myself because I didn’t need a man to do that for me. Even if it felt amazing.
“Tell me about the bear movie.”
He chuckled and leaned back in his camp chair, which sat so close to mine that our knees were touching. Even leaning away, he still overwhelmed my senses—muscled forearms resting on his thighs, sexy stubble on his jaw, that heady scent of masculine woodsman mixed with fresh soap. I inhaled a shaky breath and hoped he didn’t notice.
“It’s a movie they make people watch if they’re first-time campers in the Smoky Mountains and they’ve never used a bear cannister before. It’s maybe a bit over the top in its focus on bears. The reality is people are much more likely to get food stolen right out of a daypack by a squirrel or marmot. But bears are scary to most people, so they play up all the cautionary tales of people getting their tents mauled because they stashed granola bars in them.”
I felt like he was trying to protect me by downplaying the threat. Even if I hadn’t seen “the bear movie,” I’d grown up in Green Valley, which meant I had a healthy appreciation for the damage a black bear could do. “One of these times, a bear will show up.”
He studied me for a moment, and I allowed myself to gaze at him uninhibited. All masculine energy, stubble on a firm jaw, mouth turned up almost enough to look like a smirk. But it was his eyes that drew me in, the hazel tipping into chocolate territory, like they’d been melted by the fire and produced their own heat. I felt it down to my bones.
We kept getting caught like this, eyes locked, words unspoken, emotions coiled tight below the surface.
Right now it was new. Interesting enough that I let myself have this moment without forcing myself to look away. I let myself enjoy the sight of him without worrying about whether it meant anything.
It didn’t. It couldn’t. I’d keep telling myself that because it was the only safe option. I knew what happened when I allowed fantasies to unfurl. I got hurt, every time.
“Not tonight.” The quiet gruffness of his voice startled me.
Was he answering my thoughts?
No, he was still talking about bears. I tried not to let myself think he meant anything else.
“Alexandra.” When he said my name, I realized I hadn’t heard half of what he’d just said.
“Sorry. Yes?” I refocused my gaze on him. His expression was soft, eyes roaming over my face like a delicate touch. I felt a rolling wave through my body.
“I’d throw myself into the jaws of a bear before I’d let it hurt you.” The quiet rumble of his voice stirred something deep inside me. I felt my jaw go slack.
“I...” I should have thanked him for having my back. Or just left the moment alone. Instead I blurted out a nonsensical story I’d never planned to tell another soul. “My mom used to say a bear ate my dad.”
That did it.
Any romantic tension was blown away with Clay’s sharp exhale. “Come again?”
“It was a story my mom told us after our dad left. Of course, we knew he’d moved out, but my mom insisted that wasn’t the case. She had...some issues handling reality.”
“Huh,” Clay said, nodding.
“Yeah. Jefferson must’ve given you the impression she was a little batshit crazy. She moved to an all-female commune in California. We haven’t seen her in years.”
“I guess, sure, he told me some odd stories now and then, but I never heard this one.”
Didn’t surprise me. I hadn’t told anyone either. Because it was nuts. But despite the number of times I tried to suggest a different scenario, my mom stuck to her version of events, even if it didn’t explain why my mother seemed to distrust men more than bears.
My mom tried hard to pound the message into my brain: men were never going to stick around, and I needed to rely on myself to get through life. Unfortunately, my brain had other ideas, preferring to be stuffed full of swoony suitors from Regency romance novels.
Each time I went into a new relationship with an open heart, I promptly got it crushed. “Told you so,” she’d say. “Men are like that. Best you learn that now while there’s still time to get your priorities straight.” My mom was there to pat my head and tend to my wounded heart, her message now proven, her work now done.
After my most recent relationship ended, I relented and acknowledged that my mom was right—I’d been looking for a happily ever after instead of relying on myself for my happiness. So I doubled down on being self-sufficient and capable, strong with an impenetrable heart. This independence had served me well.
And men like Clay Meadows, they were exactly the type my mom had warned me about—the kind who were pretty enough to lure an unsuspecting woman into their clutches, the kind who feasted on them and walked away two dates later.
Better to get eaten by a bear than left by a man.
With the cicadas chirping in the surrounding trees, it was hard to pretend I wasn’t outside, but I was trying. The sky was getting darker by the minute, and through the canopy of trees, I could see tiny dots of stars.
We were really doing this—staying out here all night long.
Despite my fear of things grungy and buggy, this little foray into the backyard wilderness was growing on me. How could it not with Clay sitting here beside me wearing form-fitting denim and smelling like cedar, smoke, and Irish Spring? If this was camping, sign me up.
The dark sky and intense quiet felt so intimate—just the two of us alone under the stars, a fire crackling and popping at our feet.
I snuck a look at his tight Henley under a half-unbuttoned flannel and reminded myself why it was a good thing that most of the time he sped around campus like a roadrunner with its tail ablaze.
Kept me from thinking things.
Dirty, inappropriate things.
But now I was thinking them. All of them.
Especially now that the intellectual Clark Kent had shown me his mountain man side. Holy Highland Hottie. In a matter of hours, he’d transformed from a friendly English teacher well-versed in classics and track and field to a relaxed, savvy outdoorsman who exuded manliness and sex. This version of Clay was not what I’d signed up for. This version was making me rethink my staunch insistence that he and I could never be more than friends.
Give me a literary quote and the one-two punch of flannel and wilderness skills and apparently I crumbled.
Clay was turning out to be nothing like the man I thought I knew. He didn’t act like someone who went around purposely breaking hearts. He was sweet, attentive, considerate. He had taken such good care of me when I got hurt.
If he was good looks alone, I could get past my pesky feelings. But the whole package—Clay’s sexy looks and his sincere kindness in trying to help me get past my camping fears—I was hopelessly falling under his spell.
“There’s a gap in the firepit.” Clay pointed to a space in the circle of stones and pushed up from his camp chair. Going over to a small pile of rocks in a corner of the yard, he returned with a rough stone in his large hands. His forearms flexed when he gripped it. I watched his careful dark-eyed assessment of the other rocks in the firepit while he decided where to place this one. And I stared as he crouched down, quads straining the fabric of his pants.
“Sap,” Clay explained, plunking back down into the camp chair. I moved my chair closer to him, seduced by the warmth already emanating from the fire, which cast an orange glow across the sculpted planes of his face. I watched him watch the fire. Then I exhaled a long breath.
“Something about a fire. Hard not to stare, right?”
“Yeah,” I mumbled. “It’s definitely the fire.”
Oblivious to the heat he was creating, Clay popped up and strode over to the cooler. He carried it back and opened it in front of us. The inside was well-stocked and organized. A frying pan tilted against the side, tongs upright next to it. A butcher-wrapped white package. A bowl of pre-sliced peppers and onions covered in plastic wrap. A blue cannister I couldn’t identify. Marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate.
“Ooh, are we making s’mores?” Even without spending time in the wilderness, I had experience with the melted campfire treat. I started unwrapping a chocolate bar and held up the bag of marshmallows.
At Clay’s head tilt, I explained, “I know it’s dessert, but I actually know how to do this part of camping. Can I make you a little dessert before dinner?”
I scooted my camp chair closer to his and bumped him with my shoulder. At this new proximity, I could feel enough heat emanating from Clay’s body to melt my s’mores ingredients. And I’d happily lick them from his bare skin.
A muscle in his jaw flexed. I could tell that doing things out of order didn’t sit right with him, but I waited patiently as he reasoned with himself.
“Fine. One. Just one.”
“Deal. Don’t want to spoil our appetites.” I unwrapped the chocolate and broke off two squares. Clay handed me a long stick with a two-pronged tip that looked expertly chosen for double marshmallow roasting. It was then that I realized how hard he’d worked to make everything go smoothly for my sake. So I’d get through my first wilderness experience in one piece. So I’d love it.
“Clay, thank you so much for taking time to do this with me.” My hand went to my chest gratefully. It touched me that the rugged, stoic, super sexy man I crossed paths with daily had such a soft heart. And it astounded me that I’d never given him the chance to show it until now.
When I met his eyes, I caught a glimpse of something I couldn’t identify—confusion, gratitude, appreciation? He was looking at me as though I was a stranger, even though we’d known each other for half our lives.
Maybe we were strangers. The version of Clay he’d shown me over the past couple hours was one I didn’t know at all. And here I was, trying to figure out what had changed in a matter of hours. Part of me wanted to change it back because the lusty urges I was having toward Clay were unnerving.
But part of me—the part that couldn’t believe how wrong I’d been about him and how much better I liked him for it—that part of me wanted him even more.