Just a Summer Fling (10 page)

It was a big cottage and it took a while to do all the measuring. The sun was warm, even filtered by the trees, and when Ashley handed the clipboard back to him at the end of the job, Josh noticed a gleam of sweat on her neck. He wanted to lick it, and then follow its path down beneath the fabric of her shirt. He wanted to know if her breasts were channeling the moisture, if there was a trickle running down toward her belly button. He wanted to know if her bra was damp, and then, of course, his mind started thinking about other damp undergarments. . . .

“Kevin!” he bellowed. Ashley jumped, and he stepped a little away from her and peered down toward the lake. “I’m done,” he yelled. “If you want a ride, it’s leaving now!”

There was a moment in which he could see their two heads bobbing in the water, facing each other, discussing it
all, then Kevin yelled back, “Come for a swim! Ashley wants to know where the waterfall on the other side of the inlet is—you could kayak over and show her.”

Josh took another few steps toward the lake. “Ashley’s up here, asshole. How do you know what she wants?”

“I have a spy. Come for a swim.”

Seeing Ashley in a bathing suit, warm and smooth in the sun, her skin slick from the water? There was no way he could expose himself to that; he was still trying to forget the sight of her from that morning on the McArthur dock. “It’s the middle of the afternoon. I have work to do. If you want a ride, let’s go.”

Another brief conference on the dock below, then Kevin raised a hand and waved Josh off. “I’ll catch up with you later,” he called.

Yeah. How much later and how messed up Kevin would be by then remained to be seen, but Josh wasn’t surprised by the answer. The siren was singing and Kevin hadn’t learned how to block his ears.

“Looks like you’re back to being a third wheel,” Josh said as he turned toward the truck.

“I’m going to find that waterfall,” Ashley said. “I can kayak over on my own.”

The waterfall wasn’t too big in the dry summer months: enough to tantalize with its sound, but not enough to disturb the water beneath it after it hit the lower rocks. And the sound echoed strangely against the cliffs, so it wasn’t too surprising that someone would have trouble finding it if they didn’t know where to look.

“Just west of the point, there’s a grove of cedars with their branches stretched out over the water,” Josh said. He felt like he was giving away a local secret. “If you can make it past their outer branches, there’s a sort of cave closer in to the trunks. Not a real cave, just a hollow in under the branches. You can see the waterfall from in there.”

She beamed at him as if he’d given her something worth having, which made no sense. This woman had travelled the world. She’d probably seen half of its listed wonders, had almost certainly been shown huge waterfalls that would make the little trickle across the lake look like someone’s leaky faucet, and she was this excited about it? Was she just acting?

Maybe. It was her profession, after all. But it felt real. Real and bewildering.

Josh didn’t like being bewildered. “Good luck with it,” he said, and he got the hell out of there. He hadn’t been lying about having lots of work to do, and he knew he was doing the smart thing by staying away from Ashley. Just because she was appealing didn’t mean he should spend time with her. In fact, it was the main reason he knew he needed to stay the hell away.

Ten

ASHLEY BROUGHT AN
apple for Rocky on Friday. Actually, she brought him two apples, two carrots, and a bag of special horse treats she’d ordered on the Internet and had arranged for the store to express-courier to the cottage. Josh eyed the bag full of goodies skeptically.

“After you ride,” he said. “And not all of that!” His voice softened a little. “You don’t really need to bribe him, you know. He likes being around people. You can scratch his neck for him and that’s all the thanks he needs.”

“They’re not for him, they’re for me.” She saw his expression and grinned. “I mean, he’s the one who should eat them. But I want to give them to him because
I
want to. But I won’t if you say no. He’s your horse.” She wasn’t sure she should push it, but she shrugged and said, “I guess if you want to deprive him, it’s your business.”

“One apple, one carrot, a couple of whatever the hell those things are, and all of it after you ride.” His frown
wasn’t as sincere as it usually seemed. “That’s the kind of deprivation my horses have to endure.”

Charlotte swooped into the conversation then. “Sunny can have the leftovers, right?”

“You two are going to leave me with two fat, spoiled horses,” Josh grumbled, but he didn’t say they couldn’t feed them the treats.

He also didn’t stalk off, stare angrily into space, or swig his beer as if it were poison and he was hoping it would carry him away from the frustrations of his world. He just leaned against the wooden railing, watching them as they groomed their horses, and only looked a little put out when Kevin led a light grey horse in from the field. “You’re riding?” Josh asked.

“You said I could,” Kevin retorted. Then, as if realizing that he sounded a bit like a rebellious teenager, he added, “Is it a problem?”

“No,” Josh said. But he ducked under the railing and headed for the gate Kevin had just closed.

“So where are you going?” Kevin asked.

Josh didn’t answer because he didn’t have to. A gorgeous chestnut horse was galloping toward them across the field Kevin had just come from. They all watched the chestnut as he approached, and when it seemed as if the horse wasn’t going to stop, Ashley took a step forward in alarm, as if her movement would make any difference. He was going to charge right into the gate, right into Josh. . . .

But he didn’t. The horse skidded to a stop, his whole body moving back over his haunches so it looked like he was almost sitting down, then straightened up and waved his head over the gate, his eyes rolling and showing white around the edges.

Then Josh touched him. A calming hand on his neck, a few murmured words, and maybe most significantly, a halter
slipped over his head with a lead rope attached under his chin. Ashley drew a little closer, near enough to hear Josh saying, “Did you think you were going to be all alone, Ember? Did you think they’d all left you?”

He glanced over when he realized she was watching, and shrugged. “My horse is a bit of a baby,” he said. Not apologizing, not embarrassed, just speaking the truth. “And a drama queen,” he added, this time apparently speaking to the horse. Then he looked back at Ashley. “And clueless. He wanders off, away from the others, and doesn’t keep good track of them. So we’ll go to get them and he won’t know about it. Sometimes it takes him half an hour before he figures out he’s alone, and he’s still just as panicked as he was this time.”

Josh led the horse to the side of the gate and swung it open wide enough for the animal to fit through. “I’ll just hang on to him until his buddies come back.”

“You should get him a goat,” Kevin suggested. “Goats are good company for horses.”

“But then I’d have a goat,” Josh replied. He turned toward Ashley and quietly told her, “Goats creep me out.”

“Their eyes,” she agreed. She wasn’t sure what this new dynamic was, couldn’t quite remember how she’d come to be standing next to Josh instead of grooming her own horse, but she wasn’t complaining. She liked being on Josh’s side of things. Given the amount of time Charlotte and Kevin had been spending together over the last couple of days, she figured neither one of them was too hungry for her companionship, so she could spend time where she pleased. Which apparently meant right next to Josh. “You’ll just hold him? You don’t want to ride with us?”

“He’s still young; he’s not much good at standing still yet. And I have a hard enough time thinking of things to teach you guys when I’ve got my full attention on the job.”

“You have a hard time? My God, Josh, I feel like every time you open your mouth you’re teaching me something super useful and important!” She wasn’t just flattering him. She’d taken riding lessons before, but her instructors had focused mostly on the what and the how. What she should be doing, how she should be doing it. Josh was all about the why. Why the rider might want to do something, why the horse responded the way it did . . . It was fascinating. She was pretty sure she could have a useful riding lesson from Josh somewhere far from any animals, just sitting in a couple chairs talking about why horses behaved the way they did.

But he didn’t look convinced. “Well, your lesson for right now is that Rocky’s really good at untying knots and it looks like he’s getting started on your lead rope.”

“Rocky!” she scolded, and headed back over to the animal she’d been neglecting.

She managed to tack him up without any help, even recalling the arcane knot for the girth—no, the cinch and the latigo—without prompting. She was pretty proud of herself, and was tempted to give Rocky a contraband carrot as a celebration, but she managed to hold back. Rocky wasn’t her horse, and she hadn’t even figured out a way to pay his owner for letting her use him.

Which was a conundrum she had time to think about, since Charlotte and Kevin were apparently tacking up together, with lots of giggling and groping and other annoying behavior that slowed them right down. She snuck a glance at Josh, who seemed to be working on Ember’s ground manners, and tried to figure out how to thank him for his reluctant cooperation.

No grand gestures, she reminded herself firmly. No surprise dinners and no drunken advances. No stupidity of any sort. She shouldn’t buy him a new horse. She definitely shouldn’t buy him a goat. Probably she shouldn’t
buy
him anything, which made the whole problem a good bit trickier.

“Do you need help in the barn?” she blurted out.

Josh stared at her for a moment, then turned and looked at the building. “I don’t think so,” he said cautiously. “Is something wrong with it?”

And then she remembered the secret strategy that had worked so well for Charlotte at the cottage. She was going to try it. Honesty. “No, of course not. I’m sure the barn is fine. I was just hoping to find a way to repay you for your help. The part I’m trying for, in the movie? I really want the part. Really a lot. And I need every edge I can get. Char and I are going over the lines like crazy women, and I’ve talked to my agent and manager and I’ve got them lobbying hard, but I really think it’ll give me a leg up if I can go in there and tell them I know a bit about Western riding, too. And it’s good for me. It helps me get into the right mind-set. So, you know . . . I really owe you. I know you didn’t want to do this, and I totally understand why.” She caught herself. “Well, I understand why you wouldn’t want to spend time with me, as an individual. I’m still figuring out why you don’t like summer people in general. But I figure I’ve done enough stupid stuff all by myself to make it totally natural for you to not want to do this. But you did, and I just . . .” She knew she’d said far too much, but it was too late to take any of it back, so she closed with, “I’d just really like to thank you.”

He looked completely unsure of himself. Possibly he looked like someone who thought he was in a conversation with an alien. But he managed a tentative smile. “How about if I just say ‘you’re welcome’ and we leave it at that?”

“That’s where things get frustrating!” Again, she knew she was oversharing but didn’t seem able to stop herself. “Because a ‘thank you’ should be about ‘you,’ right? And you’ve made it pretty clear that the thing you’d like best is getting rid of me. So the best way to thank you would be to disappear, clearly. But I’d feel like I was being ungrateful
if I did that, even though I know it’s what you want, so the only reason for me to try to do something else is so that I don’t feel ungrateful, so that means that just by trying to find a way to thank you I’m actually being selfish, which seems totally wrong emotionally, but intellectually I’m pretty sure it’s right. . . .” She finally managed to stop speaking.

Josh was staring at her. So was Charlotte. And Kevin. Hell, even the horses were giving her the eye. But Josh was the one who mattered. She had to lean forward a little to be sure she heard him when he said, “I don’t want you to disappear.”

She was pretty sure it would come across as obnoxious, but she couldn’t help herself. She wasn’t trying to rub anything in, she just really needed to hear that again. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice almost as quiet as his had been. “Could you just . . . could you say that once more?”

His raised eyebrow made it clear that she was walking a fine line. “I don’t want you to disappear,” he said. And for one perfect, glowing moment, they were back where they’d been when they’d first met, back when they were just discovering each other, before everything had gotten in the way and ruined it all. Then he added, “But it would be great if you’d get a bridle on your horse so we could get this ‘lesson’ started.”

She wanted to push for more. Hell, she wanted to grab him by the hand and drag him into the barn and tear that ratty T-shirt right off his hard, broad chest. But she managed to control herself for a change. “Okay,” she said quietly. “A bridle. Right. That’d be useful.”

And she tried to pay attention to poor, patient Rocky, who’d only been trying to untie his lead rope because he was lonesome, not because he was bad. Yeah, she tried to focus on her horse, but it didn’t do her any good. There
wasn’t an animal in the world that could distract her from the man she knew was standing only a few paces away. Standing there just as remote as he’d always been, but somehow not angry anymore.

Josh had forgiven her, she was pretty sure. It didn’t mean they were best friends, didn’t mean she could push for anything more from him. But at least she’d fought her way back up to neutral. Now she was just another annoying summer person, someone to be avoided because of the group she was a member of, rather than for anything special about herself. It probably said quite a bit about how messed up she was that she was treating that slight advancement as a victory.

*   *   *

ASHLEY
was born to ride Western. Charlotte was doing okay, but her default was always to go for the reins, to worry too much about the horse’s forward motion, or lack of forward motion, and treat that like it was all that mattered. Ashley understood, seemingly instinctively, about riding from her seat. A cowboy needed at least one of his hands free for working, and sometimes he needed both of them. A good Western horse was trained to respond to the rider’s weight, to his legs and his voice, even without any backup from the reins. It felt like giving up control, Josh figured, for someone trained English to start trying to ride Western. But they had to give up the light, false control of the reins in order to gain the real control of riding from their seats.

Maybe he was being too poetic. Too philosophical. He was in a weird mood, that was all. But he was starting to like the “teaching riding” business. It gave him a great excuse to stare at Ashley, after all, and that was pretty much the biggest reward he could imagine.

“Okay,” he called out to the riders who’d been loping
around him, trying to adjust their horses’ speeds without changing gaits. “I think that’s good. That’s about all I know, I think. It’s just about feeling the horse and sending the right messages back. That’s all.”

“So we can go for a ride?” Kevin suggested. “We’ve got half an hour before it’s totally dark and the horses need to cool out anyway. Can we go back to the creek?”

“The creek’s twenty minutes away,” Josh said. He was speaking to the women, not to Kevin. “And when we get there, Kevin’s going to want to swim. There’s a couple places that are deep enough, but just barely.” He didn’t bother to mention that if the creek had been deep enough for serious swimming, rich summer people would have snapped up his property before it had ever hit the market, at a price he’d never have been able to pay. “Then twenty minutes back. Which means we’re coming back after dark.”