“I’ll stay away from snakes, I promise.”
Lily’s pretty eyes were narrowed when he shut the phone. “How did you get service up here?”
“Satellite.”
“No cell phones on this trek.”
“Is that a hard and fast rule?”
“It’s just that you’re paying me a lot of money to take you away from all that. If you’d wanted to talk to the girlfriend, you should have just brought her with.”
“Assistant, not girlfriend.”
“Oh.”
Was that just a smidgen of relief on her face, he wondered, or his own healthy imagination? “Don’t worry, Lily. I’m ready to be taken away.”
She looked at him for a long moment, then back at the others, who’d slowed to their own various paces. He knew she was going to move away from him and go check on each of them in turn, that he was nothing special to her, but he wanted to be. “I’m curious. Why do you guide?”
“Uh…” she looked back at him, distracted. “Because they pay me?”
“I doubt it pays that well, which means you must really love it.” He looked around at the towering trees, the mountains, the sky. “I admit, it’s beautiful, but you probably end up dealing with a lot of spoiled people.”
“Yes, but I get paid to wander the wilds all day long…trust me, the pros outweigh the cons.”
“I bet. Especially for a person with wanderlust.”
She glanced at him, a long stray strand of hair across one eye. “Judging the book by its cover?”
His finger itched to touch that silky strand, to stroke it back behind her ear. Instead he laughed. “Are you going to deny you’ve got wanderlust?”
She looked away. And then, after a moment, sighed. “You have a way of seeing things I don’t want you to see.”
“Thank you.”
“That wasn’t a compliment.” That said, she gestured him ahead of her, then slowed to talk to the others.
Rock stopped her, pointing to his boots. Lily slipped out of her pack to bend down and take a look, saying something that made Rock relax a bit and even smile.
Above them, the sun continued to warm.
Lily straightened with a hand on her back and a wince on her face, which made Jared take a good long second look at her. She was hurting more than she’d let on. Hadn’t he seen her do her best to hide a limp that couldn’t be hidden? The woman clearly had pride in spades.
He knew all about pride. After the cancer there’d been people who looked at him differently, with pity and constant worry, treating him with kid gloves, and he hated that, so yeah, whatever her issue, he understood, and when she glanced at him, he looked away to give her a moment.
It wasn’t a hardship to take in the scenery. Despite having lived in San Francisco all his life, he’d actually never been in the Sierras before. Funny, considering he’d been to Europe, South America, even Australia…But those trips had been all business and little else.
Up until recently, his entire life had been about business and little else. A classic workaholic, he’d worked around the clock, running his world with easy precision.
Now for the first time, he was allowing someone else to run his world, at least for the next four days. He glanced back at Lily, still messing with Rock’s boots. If he could have drawn his fantasy woman, she’d have been it. Five-sevenish, she was fit and tight and toned. He doubted if she had an extra inch of flesh on her. And yet something about her was soft, warm…with that dash of vulnerability amongst the secrets she held.
As he watched, she hoisted her pack back up, which he knew damn well weighed a great deal more than any of theirs. Another wince as she set the thing on her shoulders, adjusted it, clicking the straps in just above her breasts and around her waist.
Jack and Michelle approached her about something. Lily reacted with some doubt, then went around to behind Michelle, adjusting her pack for her, while Jack just shook his head.
Rose had stopped to rub some suntan lotion on her legs, bending over in that short-short skirt, which had even his eyes crossing.
Rock’s eyes didn’t just cross, they about popped out, and he turned his head, glancing up at Jared with a sort of helplessly caught expression.
Lily walked past them all, moving back to the lead. “Rose, if any of the guys walk off this trail and fall, you’re going to conduct their rescues.”
“Oooh,” she responded with glee. “Do I look that good? Really?”
“Yes,” Rock said reverently.
Jack nodded.
Michelle smacked him. Then she looked at Lily. “How far are we going today again?”
“Seven and a half miles,” Lily said.
“That sounds far. How much of that have we already done?”
“Uh…maybe a half mile.”
“Maybe?”
Jared pulled out his PDA, thumbed a few controls, then looked up. “Point seven.”
Lily gave him a long look, and with a smile, he slipped the PDA away.
She sighed, then turned back to Michelle. “Look. See way out there…” She pointed across to a neighboring peak, a long rock formation jutting out of the hillside. “We’re going to camp there. It’s got a grass floor. Very soft, very comfy.”
Michelle looked intrigued. “Really?”
Lily smiled, though it looked a little bit like an athlete on a losing team trying to be a cheerleader. “And wait until mile two, you’ll see huge trout in the river below. Dinner is going to be amazing.”
Michelle swallowed hard. “Trout.”
Jack leaned in. “Vegetarian alert.”
Lily’s cheerleader smile didn’t slip. “Right. So you’ll skip the trout. I have lots of food, never worry. Soon we’ll be walking beneath hundred-year-old lodgepole pines, through big-buck country. Trust me, you’ll love it.”
“Okay.” Michelle zipped up her raingear. “I’ll trust you.”
They all kept moving, up, up, up. Now they were several hundred feet off the meadow floor, with the river winding far below.
As the sun rose, the heat made little pillars of steam rise off the rocks, vanishing into thin air. They passed several impressive waterfalls that thundered and crashed to the valley floor. It was all both alien, and gorgeous. Jared inhaled deeply, the air feeling sharp and pure against his lungs. He’d never imagined himself doing this. As a confirmed city rat, he’d never given it much thought.
But, as he’d learned recently, life was about changes. Thankfully, he thought, this was a good one.
And still they walked…
It actually took him a while to settle into doing nothing with his brain, but once he did, his mind finally slowed. Relaxed.
Enjoyed.
He drew in another breath, and the scent of pine and sage and clean, fresh air filled his lungs again, without a hint of smog or gasoline, without the noise of traffic on busy city streets, without pain.
He really liked that part.
But the part he liked the best…was being right behind Lily. She practically quivered with determination, which he now knew to be a facade for her own nerves.
The woman was a walking marvel.
Even with her pack on, even with the limp, he enjoyed watching her body move. She had a way about her- utterly economical movements, no time wasted, nothing unnecessary, and yet she was so innately feminine, he just wanted to nibble on her.
But more than that, he wanted to hear her story. He had a feeling it would only strengthen her attraction for him.
The trail began to come down a bit in altitude, and he welcomed the easier going. They all settled into the
