Reconsidering Riley (19 page)

He shook his head and took another sip of
coffee. "You were there. We ran through this several times at the
lodge. They all know how to do this. They're just a little nervous
right now."

Riley glimpsed a flustered Jayne, staring at
the heap of her tent as though it were a particularly recalcitrant
hairstyle on date night. She seemed to be having the most difficult
time of all. After her adventures in navigating, he guessed he
shouldn't have been surprised. Jayne belonged in the Great Outdoors
like klieg lights belonged in a darkroom. Not at all.

Although he'd suspected as much, Riley was
disappointed. A part of him had hoped Jayne would love the
wilderness. It would have been something in common between
them...something besides a tendency to talk around the truth.

He didn't really believe she meant to go to
Antigua with him. He figured she didn't really believe he meant to
seduce her. One of them was wrong. Only time would tell which
one.

Alexis nudged him. "You and Jayne make an
awesome
couple, Uncle Riley. You should have told me about
you two."

He choked on his coffee. "What?"

"I saw you on the trailside this afternoon.
You're having a fling with Jayne, right? Doing the mattress
mambo?"

"I'm
not
having a fling with Jayne."
Yet
. "And don't say 'mattress mambo.'"

His niece grinned. "Well, I think you
should. You need someone like her in your life. Someone
nice
. With
friends
. And a makeup kit the size of
Wisconsin."

Was it just him, or did that last sound a
little self-serving?

He should let the whole matter drop, he told
himself.

"What makes you think that?" he asked
instead.

"That you guys should be a couple? I dunno."
Alexis picked at her glittery nail polish. She flopped the heels of
the sport sandals she'd changed into upon making camp. "Maybe it's
the way Jayne talks about you. And looks at you."

Suspiciously, Riley frowned. Then he snuck a
glance at Jayne, still swamped amid her tent.
She was watching
him
! Feeling a completely idiotic surge of excitement, he
averted his gaze.

"She talks about me?" he asked in a low
voice.

Alexis nodded. "All the time."

All the time
. "What does she
say?"

His niece shrugged. "Girl stuff. I can't
say."

"Could you say for—" He reached for his
wallet. "A ten spot?"

"Uncle Riley! Do you think I can be
bought
?"

"Do aspens grow at four thousand feet?"

"Uhhh..."

"Yes." Making a goofy face, he handed her
the money. "So what does she say about me?"

"Well..." Alexis looked both ways, then
leaned nearer to cup her hand around his ear. "She says..."

Listening, Riley felt his eyes grow wide. He
knew
he'd been right about Jayne. There
were
still
feelings between them.

And it
wasn't
just him.

"And you've seen her watching me?"

Alexis nodded knowingly. "Like Nana watches
Gramps eat ice cream."

"Huh?"

"When she's on a diet."

"Ahhh." He nodded, unreasonably pleased by
this news—and unwilling to reveal as much to Alexis. Riley hunkered
forward on the hillside they were seated on and caught her eye.
"So, since we're already talking about this stuff...how are things
with you and Lance?"

"Lance?" She made a face. "He's a jerk."

"He's a nice boy."

"
All
boys are jerks," Alexis said.
Then she got up, grabbed a jacket, and headed for the edge of
camp.

Riley couldn't help but wonder which
particular
jerk had given her that philosophy. That
"Brendan" she'd mentioned, maybe? He didn't know, but he did know
who could help him find out.

"I need your help," Riley said to Jayne.

She paused in the middle of wrestling her
two-person tent into submission. She glanced up, panting. Her hair
was in her eyes, a crazed expression was on her face, and she
didn't exactly look like a woman who was ready to help someone.
Nevertheless, she nodded.

"What can I do for you?"

"It's Alexis. I think she has...issues with
boys."

"Every thirteen-year-old girl has issues
with boys. Do they like her? Does she like them? Will a nice one
ask her to the dance on Friday? It's normal. But I think it's
really
very
sweet of you to be concerned."

Jayne flashed him a smile. Riley rubbed the
back of his neck, uncomfortable with her sentimental assessment of
him.

"She says all boys are jerks."

"Don't worry." She wrestled her tent poles,
trying to make their shock-corded joints snap into position. "In a
few years, she'll upgrade her opinion to 'all men are bozos.'"

He frowned. "As a former boy—and current
man—I resent that."

She shrugged, then went back to glaring at
the collapsed heap of the geometric dome tent she'd later share
with Kelly. "You guys reap what you sow, big boy."

"It's wrong to let one bad apple spoil the
whole bunch." Reminded of the lame-ass loser who'd sent Jayne to
heartbreak camp, Riley let his frown deepen. "There are lots of
decent men out there. Men who are trustworthy. Fun to be around."
He followed her around her tent's edge. "
Teeming
with sexual
prowess."

She glanced over her shoulder. "I thought we
were talking about Alexis' boy problems."

"Uh, we are."

Her brow arched. "You really want her to
hook up with a kid who's 'teeming with sexual prowess?' I'm not
sure I can help you with that."

"Look, all I know is, it kills me to know
she's hurting. And she's too young to be this jaded. There must be
something that would help." Absently, Riley glanced around the
campsite, where the other guidance groupies were crawling inside
their now fully-assembled tents or setting up camp stoves. A series
of electronic beeps drew his gaze to Lance, who was playing Game
Boy. "I've got it!"

"I wish I had it." Jayne stared dispiritedly
at her tent as it sank onto itself. "I
suck
at camping."

"You need practice, that's all," Riley
assured her. He'd had an idea, and he felt better already. "And
we
need...to set up Lance and Alexis. It's perfect. They'll
have a little teenaged trailside romance, it will have a natural
ending when the trip ends, Alexis will feel better about boys, and
nobody will get hurt."

"Are you serious?"

"Sure. Nothing cures a broken heart faster
than getting wrapped up in a new relationship. No matter how
short-lived. So long as it's good."

He waggled his eyebrows teasingly, thinking
of how
good
their rekindled fling would be, once Jayne let
down her guard a little. She gawped at him, mouth open.

"Maybe I should just talk to Alexis," she
disagreed.

"Yes." Riley nodded, giving her a grateful
shoulder squeeze. "Talk to Alexis. Good idea. I'd really appreciate
that. Talk up moving on. Talk up Lance. Hell, talk up the good
qualities of mankind while you're at it."

Feeling almost jubilant, he prepared to make
his first round of the campsite. He needed to make sure things were
set up properly, offer help where it was needed. Now that he had a
plan of action in mind, he was ready to move forward.

"I'll do what I can," Jayne said
doubtfully.

"Great!" Riley leaned forward and planted a
quick kiss to the silky hair at the top of her head. She seemed
stunned when he released her, staring up at him silently. "Good
luck with that tent!"

Then he headed onward, ready to do his
duty.

Chapter Twelve

That night, Jayne lay in her tent—finally
erected after about a million consecutive attempts—beside a snoring
Kelly. All around her, blackness closed in. She'd never been
anyplace so dark, except maybe a movie theater in the few seconds
after the lights went down but before the feature rolled. It was
spooky. And scary. And it was keeping her awake—frightfully
awake.

She palmed her key chain flashlight. Keeping
it aimed away from Kelly's side of the tent, she carefully flicked
it on. Its small beam of light illuminated her fingers and created
a small comforting circle on the red nylon of her tent. Jayne
breathed a sigh of relief.

No horror movie creature lurked in the few
inches between her sleeping bag and the tent wall. Nothing had
morphed in the night, no critters had crept inside, all was well.
Girding her courage, she turned off the light.

Uneasiness gripped her. She flicked the
flashlight back on. Then off. On. Off. On, just for a few more
minutes, until she felt sleepy...

A rustling at her tent's zippered entrance
made Jayne freeze. A bear! A crazed serial killer! Another
lizard!

"Psst. Jayne, it's me."

"
Riley
?"

She squeezed out of her sleeping bag, the
air mattress tucked beneath squeaking in protest. Careful not to
wake Kelly, Jayne knee-walked over her slippery "bed" and unzipped
the tent's outside flap. Then she fluffed up her hair, pinched her
cheeks for emergency color, and poked her head outside.

Riley was there in the moonlight, dressed in
the same kind of head-to-toe insulated gear she had on to combat
the evening chill. She'd resented its necessity. She'd never before
worn a week's worth of wardrobe to bed. But somehow, on him the
layered clothes looked natural and rugged and appealing.
He
looked appealing.

"I saw your light," he said in a low voice.
"Can't sleep?"

His voice comforted her to a ridiculous
degree. His
presence
comforted her, even though she couldn't
see his features clearly in the darkness. Jayne was embarrassed to
feel so cowardly, especially when she was supposed to be providing
a positive role model for her breakup-ees.

She shook her head. Unwilling to reveal any
weaknesses to a man who'd once left her behind, she searched for a
believable insomniac's excuse. "It's the quiet. It's just
so...quiet."

His grin warmed her. "It's not all
that
quiet. Maybe you should listen harder."

Intrigued, she did. She heard the breeze as
it swooshed through the bushes and grasses nearby, heard crickets
call, heard an owl hoot. A small smile edged onto her lips. "Hey,
that's kind of nice. Like one of those 'nature sounds' CDs, only
free."

Kelly's next snuffling snore all but
vibrated the tent walls.

"And with interesting sound effects, too,"
Riley joked.

They shared a smile. A cozy feeling
enveloped them, a feeling both familiar and, alone here in the
dark, very welcome. Then Riley's gaze dropped to the flashlight
still gripped in Jayne's palm. A thoughtful expression passed over
his face.

He knew!
Deeply embarrassed to be
caught in a fear so childish as hers, Jayne bit her lip. In this,
she couldn't stand teasing. There had to be some excuse she could
offer him, some rationalization, some—

He sent his gaze upward, then returned it to
her face. "Well, I just stopped by to make sure you were okay.
Since you are, I'll just be...going back to my tent."

Longing filled her. They were so close...
"Wait."

In the midst of his turning-away crouch,
Riley paused. He kept one hand on her tent's outer flap. "What's
the matter?"

I want to talk to you. To touch you. To
catch hold of the magic we had once, and keep it safe this
time
.

"Um, will our next campsite have bathing
facilities?"

His eyes sparkled. "I can rig up something
for you, if you want."

"I mean a bathtub." She dreamed of hot
water, clean porcelain, lots and lots of Bathing Beauty Bubbles.
She
craved
them. Jayne hadn't gone more than a day without a
bath in years, and this stressful trip made her yearn for her
restorative routine more than ever. "A real bathtub."

"Sorry," Riley said. "I can teach you
survival skills, hike you all over the wilderness, even show you
the things I love about being out here. But I can't deliver Mr.
Bubble and company."

It was nearly the same thing he'd told her
when she'd pined for a bath earlier this evening. Jayne's shoulders
slumped.

"Thanks anyway," she said. After all, it
wasn't his fault her publicist had sent her on this deprivation
detail. Somewhere in Manhattan, Francesca was probably holding a
cosmopolitan in one hand and a decent pillow in the other, laughing
her head off. "And thanks for stopping by."

"You're welcome." Another thoughtful look.
"You know, I
can
make your sleeping arrangements a little
more comfortable for you."

Riley stood. Unzipping sounds followed, then
the
whish
of nylon against nylon. Overhead, the tent's mesh
"skylight" flipped open to offer a breathtaking view of the stars.
Jayne crooked her neck to see them, and felt a little better. She
already knew which one she'd choose for her next wish.

"Thanks, Riley," she said when he lowered
near the tent's entrance again. "I thought the zipper was stuck. It
was impossible to open."

"Nothing's impossible if you want it bad
enough." He winked, then cupped his hand over her
flashlight-grasping fingers. "Good night, Jayne. Sleep well."

He strode into the darkness, leaving her
alone.

"Psst, Jayne. Wake up," Kelly said.

Jayne heard her, but felt too groggy to
respond. In her sleep-drugged mind, Kelly's repeated "Psst, Jayne"
transformed into Riley's greeting from last night. It meshed with
the dream she'd been enjoying, a dream frothy with soapsuds and
steamy with a naked man rising from the bubbles. He held out his
hand to her, inviting her closer. Her dream self drew nearer. She
recognized Riley, slick and strong and sensitive enough to make
sure she had stars to fall asleep beneath.