Chance Encounter

single time he’d looked at her, from the very first day, from that very first moment she’d stepped off the plane. That heat had always been there, and it’d only gotten stronger as the days had passed.

Yet now, right this minute, it…died.

“Maybe we can take another ride. Off trail this time,” Brian said into the charged silence.

“You’re not ready.” Chance was still looking at Ally with a disturbing lack of…anything.

It makes no difference to me… His words echoed in her head, but she pushed away the hurt because he’d never mislead her.

She’d mislead herself.

“I am ready,” Brian insisted. “That last ride we took, we raced down. You showed me how to get the most speed out of it, remember?”

“I also showed you how to do it without killing yourself,” Chance said. “Do you remember that part?”

“Yes. But-”

“No buts. Takes practice to be better than good.”

“You said I was.”

“Compared to any other fourteen-year-old, you are. You know that. Be different. Get better than good. And get to school. Only idiots ditch.”

“Don’t need school to be a pro boarder. Or a biker. Don’t need school for any of that.”

“Wrong,” Chance said firmly, looking ticked. “Trust me on this one, you gotta finish high school to become a professional anything.”

“Who says?”

“I say.”

Brian shrugged and amazingly enough, headed toward the parking lot instead of back on the trail.

Chance shot Ally one last undecipherable look before he walked away.

“You’re not going to your office?” she asked his back.

He shrugged, mirroring Brian’s attitude, and kept walking.

With no idea why, she followed him, though she had to run to keep up with his long-legged stride. “What’s your problem?”

“What makes you think I have one?”

“Because you won’t even look at me.”

He stopped so short she nearly plowed into the back of him. Her hands came up automatically, sliding over the sleek, taut muscles of his back. She snatched them back.

“I’m looking at you now,” he said, turning to face her.

He was…hurt, she realized with shock, when she was the one who should be hurt. “But why are you looking at me like that?”

“Drop it.”

In her not-too-distant past she might have meekly let it go, but she was no longer a mouse. She was big, bad, strong Ally who did as she pleased, when she pleased. “Tell me.”

Temper flashed in his eyes. “I saw you, Ally. I heard your thoughts as if you’d screamed them. You actually thought I would let Brian do whatever the hell he wanted. Ride recklessly, ditch school, whatever. You seem to have this preconceived notion of me and how I live my life, and I don’t like it.”

“At least you have to admit, you live up to it.”

He stepped close. “There you go again, assuming you know me.”

Refusing to back up, Ally kept her eyes on his. “Then help me know you, Chance.”

Lifting his hands, he shoved his fingers through his hair. The muscles in his arms were taut and strained. “This lifestyle is not for everyone. It’s…dangerous.”

“Are you trying to scare me off? Is that your new tactic to discourage me?” She laughed. “I’m not very frightened.”

“You should be,” he growled. “This kind of life can cost you big.”

There was something more than temper in his gaze now, but even as she watched him back away from her, all emotion-and pain?-vanished behind hooded, watchful eyes. Her stomach knotted, because this man, this brooding, edgy, dangerous man, drew her as no other ever had, and despite everything, she wanted to know him. “How can it cost, Chance? What has it cost you?”

“A friend.” He paused and his voice lowered a fraction. “A close friend.”

“What happened?”

“She underestimated the elements and it cost her everything. Her life,” he said flatly.

She. Ally’s stomach knotted again.

“I know you think I’m wild and out of control, but I have more control than you’ll ever know. If I didn’t, I’d have had you by now-and circumstances be damned.”

She actually had to lick her lips and clear her throat to talk. “Circumstances?”

“Yeah.” His eyes went hard. “You’re leaving, remember?” Then he turned and walked away before she could tell him she wasn’t going anywhere.

Not yet.

CHANCE HAD KNOWN she’d leave eventually. All along, it’d been what he’d wanted.

So why did he feel so empty?

“What’s your problem?” Jo asked, when he’d been sitting at his desk, brooding, staring out the window for thirty minutes.

“Nothing. Where’s Ally?”

“Ah.” She let out a secret smile.

“What the hell kind of answer is that?”

She just grinned. “Why do you want to know where she is?”

To wring her neck. “Why do you keep answering my questions with more questions?”

“It amuses me.”

“I need her,” he said tightly. “We have work to go over.”

“Uh-huh. Hard to do that with your lips locked.” And at the look on Chance’s face, she roared with laughter. “Well, you’re the one thinking it, not me.” Having pity she patted his arm. “And you ought to know, I didn’t figure this one out entirely by myself. Brian helped. You’ve got the ‘hots for her,’ I think he said.”

He let out an expletive.

She laughed at him some more. “Try rentals. Oh, and you might want to hurry.”

“Why?”

“You’ll see.”

CHANCE DID INDEED find Ally in rentals, arranging to rent a kayak for the rest of the afternoon. “What are you doing?”

She fumbled with the helmet she’d thankfully put on correctly, blew the hair out of her face and didn’t answer him. When she hoisted the kayak and went outside, he followed, amazed at her strength. Her bare arms were tanned and toned with muscle. So were her legs. Gone was the fragile, vulnerable woman he always imagined her to be.

When exactly had that happened?

“Ally, I asked you a question.”

“Go back to your cave, Chance.”

He took the kayak from her and put it on the ground. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Oh, I know what I’m doing. Tim’s been giving me lessons all week.”

He stared at her, wondering when his world had turned into a Twilight Zone remake. “I told you to stay out of the river.”

“And I told you I don’t take demands well.”

“I thought you were leaving, going back for your sister’s party.”