Sleigh Bells in the Snow(50)
“Who told you that?”
“No one. I have impressive self-insight. I know what I’m good at. I know what I’m bad at. I’m bad at relationships. Not just bad, terrible. The truth is I find work more interesting than any man.” There. She’d said it. And he was still standing there. Still watching her with eyes that saw far, far too much.
“Surely that would depend on the man.”
“I’d rather check my emails than go on a date. And if I do go on a date, I still check them.”
“Is that right?” He reached out and tilted her chin, and she froze, but all he did was zip her jacket to her throat and smile at her. “The internet connection is pretty unpredictable up here. You might have to find another way to occupy yourself on a date, Kayla.”
“I don’t intend to go on a date. I’m here to work.”
“So your plan for dealing with chemistry is to pretend it doesn’t exist?”
“Chemistry?” The word came out like a croak, and his eyes creased at the corners.
“Yeah, that chemistry. Seems to me we have two choices here. We can try to ignore it or we can go with it and see where we end up.”
“Option one works for me.”
“That could give me a problem.”
Her mouth was dry. “Why?”
“Because I’m leaning toward option two.” For a crazy, heart-stopping moment she thought he was going to kiss her. Then his smile widened and he stepped away. “The snow is likely to be deep up ahead. Hold on tight.”
That was it? He was going to throw out a statement like that and then just leave it there? Leave her all jumbled up and thrown off balance?
Feeling as if she’d stuck her hand into a naked flame, Kayla climbed on behind him.
She hesitated and then curved her arms around his waist. The hardness of his thighs pressed against hers, and she was torn between pulling back and falling off or drawing closer. In the end she drew closer and found herself pressed against masculine power and strength. Her heart was banging against her ribs, and her hands were shaking so much she was sure he was going to feel it.
And no doubt he’d say something, because he wasn’t a man who backed down from anything. Instead of ignoring the chemistry, he’d addressed it. Instead of being frozen out by her lack of response, he’d seemed amused.
As they traveled along the snowy trail she ceased to think about the forest or work, and thought about him.
She was so lost in the moment she didn’t even realize they’d stopped moving.
“This is it. We walk the rest of the way.”
“Walk?” She slid off the machine, conscious that it was just the two of them. They were alone, and out here in the wilds of the forest alone meant alone. “Just how far away is this ice waterfall?”
“Through the trees. This is as close as we can get on the snowmobile. We have to walk a little way down the trail. It’s groomed so you shouldn’t have trouble.”
She didn’t.
Her feet crunched on the surface of packed snow and soon they were enveloped by the silence of the forest. Jackson was slightly ahead and she was gazing at the width of his shoulders when he stopped suddenly. She crashed right into those shoulders and would have fallen again had he not grabbed her hand and hauled her against him.
“Look.” It came as naturally to him to touch as it did to her to keep herself at a distance, but she didn’t have long to dwell on that because they’d reached a break in the trees and there, towering above them was a cascade of ice, a frozen sculpture formed by nature and cutting between the rocks.
“That’s a waterfall?” She tried to imagine how such a force of nature could ever freeze.
“During the summer the water tumbles down here, but in exceptionally cold winters it freezes over.”
“It’s astonishing.” And it was. Not just the spectacle of an entire waterfall frozen in front of her eyes but the detail, the colours and textures, from opaque to translucent, silver threaded through bright white with shimmers of green and blue as the sun hit the surface.
“Sometimes we climb here.”
“You climb up the ice?”
“It’s fun. And challenging because the conditions change constantly as the outer surface of the ice melts.” His gaze shifted from her face to something behind her and his expression changed. “Kayla—”
“What?” Turning her head, she saw a large moose watching them through the trees. “Oh, crappity crap. That is big.”
His fingers tightened on hers, his hand warm and strong. “Don’t panic. He isn’t going to be interested in you.”
“That isn’t flattering.” Heart pumping, she stared at the moose. “The design is wrong. The legs are too long for the body, the body is too short for the face, and the antlers are the wrong size and shape for anything, but I’m willing to bet they’d hurt if he chose to drive them into someone.” She hoped that someone wasn’t her.