She had that stunned-doe look on her face again. Couldn’t much blame her. He was going all hot and cold this morning. Even now, he couldn’t stop himself from looking her over, from the tips of her bare toes to the rumple of her rosy red hair, pausing lots of places in between.
“All right,” she said.
His cock twitched at her unwitting response to his thoughts.
“John’s directions aren’t great,” she confessed. “It’ll save me time if you can guide me directly.”
Cool professionalism brushed over her face like a coat of paint. Ah, yes. Dr. Vance had an obsession with work. Not him.
“I’ll show you.” He tossed the sponge to the back of the sink. “Be ready to leave within the hour.”
***
Jen adjusted the weight of her backpack and tried to concentrate on the path through the misty woods, rather than the sight of Logan loping in front of her. She’d been tripped up too many times by gnarled roots and jutting rocks beneath the layer of Sitka spruce needles. The last thing she needed was to go sprawling face first across a rock covered thick with racomitrium moss.
She should have declined Logan’s offer altogether, and she would have—had he not reacted so startled in the kitchen that morning when she’d called him out for apologizing. His awkwardness had spiked her curiosity. Her mouth had spoken before her better sense could intervene. And now Logan was here, bulldozing his way among western red cedar and hemlock. And here she was, trudging in his wake, fog dripping, her thoughts a mangled mess. She should be scouting the terrain, identifying tufts of Orthotrichum growing on tree branches, and the distinctive leaves of licorice fern Polypodium glycyrrhiza, not watching the flex of Logan’s thighs and wondering if he still wore black boxers under his khaki shorts or if he’d slipped into something that fit the hard curve of his Grade-A ass instead.
“The stream is just ahead,” he said.
“Good.” She glanced at the mist-soaked directions in her hands without reading a single line. “We must be close.”
“Three miles in, I’d say.” He glanced over his shoulder without breaking his stride. “You okay?”
“Fine.”
She couldn’t keep the edge out of her voice. He’d asked a simple question, no reason to feel defensive, but one look at her battered hiking boots and scruffy leather backpack should have clued him to the fact that she’d done plenty of fieldwork.
He dropped back to walk beside her. They strode for a while under the misty green canopy, the rhythm of their movements slowly synchronizing until his step fell the same time as hers, until he exhaled as she did. The matching of gait reminded her of when she used to ride show horses as a teenager. There’d been a connection between her and her horses, an ability to read each other’s body language with the slightest tightening of a muscle. The connection unnerved her, so she gestured to the binoculars and the long-lensed camera dangling from his neck.
“You haven’t touched your camera,” she said. “Planning to shoot anything today?”
He absently touched the lens. “Depends.”
“On what?”
“If I get lucky. Sometimes my subjects are less than cooperative.”
“Subjects?”
“I have to tease them into showing themselves.”
What were they talking about? “Teasing can send a ‘subject’ screaming for cover, in my opinion.”
“Or it can coax them out of hiding. Hear that?”
He paused and she couldn’t help it, she stopped with him. She heard nothing but water gurgling and the slow sibilance of Logan’s breathing.
“It’s a cedar waxwing.” He gestured to a netting of branches above them, to the flutter of a bird. “Hear it now? That’s its mate, calling back.”
She heard a high-pitched whistle, a trilling in the trees “You’re a birdwatcher?”
“I bet you a beer that isn’t what you were thinking.”
Birdwatching sure as hell wasn’t on top of the list of things she’d expect this guy to enjoy. He looked built for rugby and wrestling bulls.
“And here I was,” she admitted, “assuming you were a common cowboy.” She stepped over a patch of thalloid liverwort. “Profession or hobby?”
“Hobby.” He offered up a hand as they approached a fallen log by the stream, already sprouting with fruticose lichen. “Does that make me any less threatening?”
“I’m not threatened.” She swept close to him, catching the scent of rain and a warm man before she strode a few steps closer to the stream’s edge to breathe, not that she would let him see that. “You’re just annoying.”
He laughed. “I packed you lunch today anyway. A peace offering. I hope you like turkey and Swiss on a roll.”
“I’ll eat anything someone else makes me.” She didn’t know what to say, so she resorted to common courtesy. “Thank you.”
“You didn’t eat breakfast, so I figured—”
“Sure I did.”
“A glass of orange juice isn’t breakfast.” He clambered around a rock to reach the stream’s edge. “Do you often skip meals?”
“Only when I lose track of time.” He’d lived with her for less than twenty-four hours and he had her pinned. “I get involved with the work and…then it’s midnight and I’m starving.” It wasn’t like she had anything else in her life but work now, anyway. Michael had seemed to understand that when they were living together. At least, she’d thought he had.
Then a scent came to her on a gust of wind. She paused and lifted her face to draw the perfume in deeper. “That’s honeysuckle. It’s close.”
“It’s twined around a tree, just up the bank.”
She followed the fragrance upstream until she found a tree trunk twined with vines. Feathering the leaves with her fingers, she eyed the blossoms higher up. Upon first look, this species looked closely related to limber honeysuckle, Lonicera dioca, but the flowers were an unusual shade of yellow and had a different shape and lacked the hairy edges.
A trill of discovery swept through her. “John must have been
