Chance Encounter (7 page)

“Can I go with you, or what?”

Chance shoved his fingers through his hair, wondering why he couldn’t just say no. He was going soft, no doubt. “Yeah. Fine. Whatever.”

He hadn’t realized the tension that had held Brian rigid, but the boy relaxed now, enough to let out one cocky grin. “Yes!” He ran up the trail toward him, half carrying his bike, half dragging it.

Chance watched, torn between the need to groan with frustration and the need to smile at the enthusiasm he recognized all too well.

Still, he’d rather be alone. He was a simple man with simple needs. He wanted to live his life the way he wanted, when he wanted—without restraint. Work
wasn’t considered a restraint, he loved his work. But Brian on the other hand, the kid was a definite restraint.

As was Ally, with a capital R.

And as if he’d played with fate at just the thought, he summited the mountain with Brian dogging his heels and came to an abrupt stop.

There at the top, pretty as a picture, smiling with hope and excitement, stood Ally, a mountain bike leaning against her hip.

“What in the hell are you doing here?”

“Inappropriate language,” she tsked, picking up the helmet dangling from her handlebars and putting in on her head.

Backwards.

Swearing, then biting his tongue at the grin Brian gave him, he strode forward and pulled it off. His fingers slid through her silky hair as he turned the helmet around. The scent teased him and he scowled. “How did you get up that trail and why are you here,
here
where
I
am?”

“I walked up the trail,” she said. “Same as you, soon as I heard you tell Jo on the radio what you were going to do.” She smiled sweetly and something inside his chest did a slow roll. “I waited for you. As for why, it’s because here is where you are.”

How did he respond to that? With one look into her wide, guileless eyes, his usual sarcasm failed him. “You don’t know how to ride. You hit things. You fall.”

“I’ve been practicing. Every afternoon in the parking lot.”

“The parking lot is flat.”

“I’m doing this.
We’re
doing this.” She turned to Brian. “Now I want you to be extra careful, do you hear me?”

Brian was still grinning. “I hear you. Can I lead?”

“If that’s okay with Chance,” she said demurely.

Oh,
now
she was being meek. “Go ahead,” he said tersely, wondering if he purposely lost both of them up here, if they’d make it down on their own.

He wouldn’t bet on it.

So together the three of them came down the newly redone trails, the wind in their faces, trees whizzing by, the earth crunching beneath their wheels, and though everything inside Chance screamed to race down the trail at eye-popping speed, he restrained himself.
Barely.

It helped that Ally’s T-shirt was white and snug. It helped that the wind left her chilled, which meant her nipples were clearly defined. It helped that she had the best butt he’d seen in a good long time—

“Let’s go off trail,” Brian yelled.

It was exactly what Chance wanted,
needed,
to do, and he warred with himself, but in the end, he shook his head.

“Why not?” Ally asked.

Yeah, why not?

“It’s against the rules,” he said, wincing at his militant tone. He took the lead and stayed on trail. While pedaling, watching his world go by, he took a good hard look at himself and didn’t like what he saw one bit.

How had
he
become the pansy and
Ally
the wild thing? He couldn’t help but think about how she’d felt
in his arms, lush and warm, eager and pliant, whimpering into his mouth for more. Passionate. Uninhibited.
Ready.
At that thought, his foot slipped, and the next thing he knew, he was face down in a heap, eating dirt.

“Wow.” Brian leaped off his bike and ran toward him. “That was an awesome fall. You okay?” The kid looked over his shoulder, then leaned close. “Were you trying to show off?” he whispered. “You know, for Ally?”

“Oh, Chance!” From behind them came Ally, still riding, her legs pumping for all they were worth, her hair flying, her mouth opened in a little “Oh!” of concern. She came closer and braked—too late.

She was going to crash, hard, and all Chance could do was watch in horror as she skidded past him, screaming like a banshee.

A small bush broke her fall.

Surging to his feet, Chance rushed toward her, sinking to his knees at her side as visions of her dying choked him so that he couldn’t even breathe. “Ally,” he managed, only to have her get up on her own, laughing at herself as she dusted herself off. “I’m fine,” she said, an innocent hand to her breast. “How about you?”

He sank to his butt, the adrenaline catching up with him. Then, because he was too weak for even that, he lay back on the ground, studying the sky, waiting for his heart rate to return to normal, which it probably wouldn’t do until Ally left Wyoming.

“
Chance?
Are you okay?” She leaned close and peered curiously into his face. “How are you?”

How was he? Crazed.

Brian was trying to hold back his amusement at having watched his idol fly over the handlebars like an amateur, but he failed as a laugh escaped him.

Chance glared at him. “Oh yeah, this is just hysterical.”

“You’re not supposed to think about a chick when you’re doing something dangerous.”

“Gee, thanks for the tip.” He looked at Ally, who was applying lip balm to the mouth he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about for days.

“Can we go off trail now?” she asked, a branch in her hair, dirt on her cheek.

“No.”

“But you do it all the time.”

“I have terrain to check out.”

Brian gave out that snort again.

Ally just looked at Chance, her huge eyes filled with disappointment, though why it mattered what she thought, he had no clue. By her own admission she didn’t want to care about him, she had enough on her plate.

So did he.

Still, he made them all stay on trail, despite Brian’s grumbling. He stayed on trail and watched Ally’s nicely rounded bottom as it bounced in her seat. He’d never ridden with an erection before, and learned the hard way it was a definite detriment to his well being.

D
ETERMINED TO FIT IN
,
Ally exercised every night. She worked hard every day as well, doing all the paperwork in the office, helping on the mountain, replanting. And with Lucy’s request in mind, she made sure to fit in lots of fun as well. Every lunch hour she spent learning something new.

This week it was kayaking.

It took a lot of convincing, but she got Tim to take the same lunch hour, which he spent showing her the basics.

One morning they got up early and hit the river for an hour before work. Afterwards, exhilarated, still wearing the neoprene river jacket Jo had lent her, and a pair of small men’s swimming trunks, she stood on the path between the lodge and her cabin. She was wet, and she needed a hot shower, but it was a glorious morning. There were heavy woods on either side of her, so that if she looked up into the amazing sky she could almost believe she was all alone on earth.

Birds sang. Trees rustled. Branches crunched beneath her feet. All sounds that only weeks ago had made her so nervous. Now she thought them lovely. Essential. She hadn’t heard them often enough in her city.

She had to laugh at that, because San Francisco had never been
her
city, but a place where she’d parked herself and let life pass her by.

She couldn’t fathom doing that now. Over the past three weeks she’d felt more vibrant, more alive than she’d ever felt, even in her precious library. Yes, she missed take-out food. She missed a good shopping mall. But breathing in the fresh, clean air, Ally suddenly couldn’t imagine the crowded freeways, the pollution.

A female giggle pierced the air and the woods went completely silent.

“Anyone there?” Ally called down the empty path, imagining a clandestine meeting between destined-but-tragic lovers. Maybe they had sneaked away into the forest, overcome by passion. Maybe they were fated to steal moments in time, trapped by circumstance, by a family feud, by social differences…

The only tragedy here was her imagination, though she couldn’t deny the little sigh and the wish that
she
had a lover to meet. A lover like…oh darn it, she might as well admit it. Like Chance. Just the thought of him, all dark and brooding, heated and aroused, made her weak.

As if it could ever happen. Laughing at herself, she started walking again, but didn’t get two feet before she heard another giggle, followed by a distinctly male “hush.”

“Okay, I definitely heard that,” she said to the trees.

More unnatural silence, though she could have sworn that “hush” had sounded like…
Brian?
But it
was a weekday, which meant he’d be getting ready for school.

Or he’d better be.

Not that she was worrying about him. No, that would mean she wasn’t following her new pattern for life—
Ally first.
But there was something about him, so tough yet so vulnerable, that if she
had
been the old Ally—and that was a big if—then she would have ached to help him.

As if he’d ever let anyone do that for him.

Hopefully he’d find his own way, and that it would be a safer, more grounded path than the person he so clearly idolized—T. J. Chance. Because while she was enjoying living the wild life during her time here, she knew it couldn’t last, just as she knew it wasn’t the lifestyle for a fourteen-year-old. Not with his fondness for adventure, his dislike for authority, and a definite penchant for danger. Even his girls weren’t picked with care. Jo had told her Brian was “hanging” with one whose father was an owner of a competing resort, a man who’d undoubtedly look at Brian’s baggy clothes and sullen expression and hate him on sight.

A twig snapped.

“Darn it!” She stopped again.
“Who’s there?”

More silence greeted her. No reason to feel this frustration. So there were two people having a grand old time in the woods, when she had a deep longing to have a grand old time in the woods herself. So what? It didn’t mean she had to become irritable simply because the only man she wanted didn’t
want
to want
her back. She began walking again, faster, frustrated. “Damn him anyway.”

“Talking to yourself again?”

She nearly fell over. That very man she’d been thinking about stood on the steps of the lodge as she came out of the woods. His big body blocked the sunlight, but she refused to let him know he intimidated her, even when she backed herself against the wooden fencing guarding the resort’s equipment.

Chance merely stepped close and penned her in. She looked up past his broad chest, his tanned throat, past his full, sensuous mouth and into his dark, hooded gaze. She didn’t know if it was the early hour or the intoxicating scent of him, but her brain sent mixed signals.

Wrap your arms around him.

Run like hell.

He’d clearly just come off the mountain, maybe from a ride. His black biking shorts and matching damp shirt clung to every inch of him, and every inch was pretty amazing. No fancy gym body for this man, no his came custom-made from his lifestyle. Still, it was his eyes that drew her now, those fathomless eyes.

Both she and Chance had pointedly ignored what had happened between them. They’d both danced around the fact that if they so much as touched each other, they would most likely implode.

And yet he was nearly touching her now. Slowly, he took his gaze on a leisurely stroll down her still wet
body, taking in her messed up hair, the borrowed jacket, the shorts…her bare legs.

And despite the fact that she was dressed quite modestly, the way he looked at her left her feeling…naked. “Good morning,” Ally said, meaning to sound upbeat and confident, as if he didn’t affect her at all, but her soft, whispery voice betrayed her.

“Morning.” His voice wasn’t any more steady than hers, which was interesting.

And unnerving.

Nothing new. They’d been playing this casual game for weeks now.

“Busy day,” she noted.

He simply nodded and bit into the middle finger of his cycling glove and tugged it off. Then did the same with the other. He tossed them to the ground and planted his hands on the wood fence behind her head. “Were you on the river?”

He spoke so evenly. She would never have guessed at the bad temper behind that casual voice—except for the heat of it in his eyes. “Tim was showing me how to kayak.”

“I thought you weren’t a strong swimmer.”

“Tim was right there.”

“Stay out of the river, Ally.”

“I don’t respond well to demands.”

“Too bad. Stay out of it. And suppose you tell me why you’re wearing my jacket.”

“
Your
jacket?” She shook her head. “No, Jo gave it to me to borrow.”

“Yeah, from my office closet.”

“I—” His eyes were dark and unreadable as ever, and she bit her lip, thinking she would have to kill Jo personally. Slowly. “I didn’t know.”

“Now
two
of my jackets will smell like you.”

It embarrassed her that she had thought she’d been so independent here, and hadn’t been at all. “Nothing a little detergent won’t fix.” Frustrated, she ducked from beneath his arms and went to pull off Jo’s—his!—jacket. It was a pullover, with wide bands of rubber around the neck, waist and wrists, to keep out the water.

The bands also kept her in. Darn it, but it was hard to get off. She wriggled and writhed and pulled, but all that happened was she got caught, her arms up and over her head, the jacket holding her locked in that position.

She wriggled and writhed some more, but it was no use, she was good and truly stuck. “Um…Chance?”

He said nothing, but now that the jacket was over her face she couldn’t see him. Great. With as much dignity as she could muster, she tried to escape again.

To no avail.

She really hated to have to ask him for anything, especially help. But she had trussed herself up like a pre-packaged chicken. “Chance?”

“Yeah.” He sounded like he was strangling.

“Do you think you can help me pull this thing off?”

A long second later, she felt his hands on her. Her waist, then her shoulders as he tugged on the material. Beneath the jacket she wore the top of her two piece bathing suit, which meant he had to touch her bare
skin. By the time he freed her, she had goose bumps over her entire body and it wasn’t from the cold morning air.

Chance tossed the jacket down next to his gloves, his blue eyes touching her everywhere.

“Thanks.” She backed up a step. “I’m sorry about—” Her words ended abruptly when he followed her, once again trapping her against the fence.

“I’m…um…pretty busy right now,” she managed, her breathing coming in funny little pants.

A wicked smile lit his eyes and one corner of his mouth lifted as he studied the way her breathing made her breasts lift and fall. “Busy doing what, Prim?”

Trapped within his arms, she felt like a butterfly about to be pinned alive. Then, when he leaned closer still, so that his shirt brushed her nearly bare chest, so that only a breath of air separated their mouths, she felt more like a sacrificial lamb.

A willing one.

That mouth of his barely, just barely, brushed hers. “What are you busy doing?” he repeated softly.

She’d forgotten. Her entire world slipped away when he was near her like this. He turned her inside out, and knowing that, knowing he was amused by it, gave her the strength to turn her head to the side. “Work…stuff. I’m busy doing work stuff.”

He slid his warm, work-roughened fingers under her jaw and brought her back around. His eyes went to her mouth and she thought—hoped, wished—that he might kiss her anyway.

“You’re cold.”

“No, I’m—” She bit back her sigh of pure pleasure when he cupped her cheeks in his big, warm hands.

His eyes were positively wicked. “Anything else you need warmed up?”

Oh boy.
“N-no.”

He lowered his gaze to her breasts, zeroing in on the way her nipples were pressing against the material of her bathing suit, and she wanted to punch him for making her stomach leap in anticipation. Instead she put her hands to his chest, meaning to push him away, but she felt the bunching of his muscles and the quick leaping of his heart, and knew that he was as affected by their closeness as she. If she moved, shifted a bit, his body would rub against her. Unable to help herself, she did just that, and encountered full contact.

He was completely aroused.

She raised her gaze to his face and found him looking back at her from beneath lowered lashes.

“I’ve been this way since you got here,” he said.

She winced in sympathy. “I’ll just…go then.”

“I meant since you came to Wyoming.”

Her eyes flew wide. “Oh.
Oh.
”

“Yeah, oh.” For a moment he stayed close, then backed up imperceptibly. “You’ve got a message from home.”

Thinking had become nearly impossible. Her heart was racing, her brain seriously impeded by the rush of blood from her head to all her erogenous zones. “My sisters again?”

“Yes.” He cocked his head to the side. “Dani said
don’t forget next Tuesday is Maggie’s party. Come early and give her a hand, she said.”

“Oh.”

“You use that word a lot.”

She’d already told her family she wouldn’t get back that soon, but obviously Dani had wanted to pressure her, not realizing Ally could no longer be pressured.

“When were you going to tell Lucy?” he asked. “After you’d left?”

She pulled away because she couldn’t think when they were touching. It was hard enough when he was merely standing in front of her, all tall, intense and attitude-ridden. “Why does it matter to you?”

His eyes glittered dangerously. “It doesn’t. I happen to want you, yes, but it makes no difference to me whether you stay or go.”

“You…want me?”

“Don’t let it go to your head. I want a lot of women.”

“Oh, man, I
really
don’t want to hear this.”

Both Chance and Ally turned in unison to face a scowling Brian. He stood there wearing jeans five sizes too big, and a shirt that went to his knees. His tattered bike leaned against his hip.

Chance was still looking at Ally with heat, frustration and promise, and she had no idea what any of it meant.

I want a lot of women.

She had no doubt of that. Or that he’d find those women with one crook of his finger.

It makes no difference whether you stay or go.
Ally tried to let that roll off her back and failed.

Brian thrust out his chin toward Chance. “Riding today?”

With annoying ease, Chance changed gears. “Already did, Slick. What happened to school?”

He got the Brian shrug. “Stupid assembly.”

Ally struggled to shift with the conversation. She knew Chance wasn’t the type to be held by the rules of society. But she hoped to God he knew enough to send this kid back to school. Brian desperately needed to learn to live by the same rules as everyone else, and she was certain he wouldn’t ever learn that from Chance, a man who’d never followed the rules at all.

Not that she was trying to save him, of course. Or anyone. But she couldn’t stop the thought.
Please, don’t be reckless with Brian.

Chance looked at her, and as if he’d heard her thoughts, he went still. There’d been a heat in his eyes every 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?”