True Confessions

Chapter Twelve

The knot beneath Dylan’s fingers slipped free, and the straps of her dress slid from her shoulders. Dylan looked deep into Hope’s eyes, and saw exactly what he needed. It was there in the slight lowering of her lids and the spark burning like a clear blue flame. He cupped her breast and felt her pucker beneath his touch. She ran the tip of her tongue across her lip, and he kissed her, tasting desire on her mouth. Her desire for him. His desire for her. The same desire that had kept him up last night and had turned him hard as stone.

He pushed down the straps and the dress fell to her waist and stayed there. Then he leaned back to look at what he held in his hand. Perfect. Soft. The shape of a pear, her nipple like a tight little raspberry. Her breast filled his big hand, and he squeezed softly. He felt the intake of her breath; she held it.

How could he have ever thought one night with her would be enough? After one night he wanted her more than before, when she’d been just a fantasy. Now he knew she was better than a fantasy. Better than anything he’d ever held in his hands. And he knew that as long as she was within his reach, he would reach for her.

She grasped the end of his T-shirt and tugged it from his jeans. He took over and pulled it over his head, and before the T-shirt hit the floor, her hands were on him. On his sides and shoulders and moving down his chest. She leaned forward and kissed his throat. Her warm, moist tongue sent shivers throughout his body and made him so hard he throbbed.

Her fingers combed through the hair on his chest, leaving a path of fire to the waistband of his pants. She unbuttoned his fly, reached into his jeans, and took him out. That was one of the things he liked about Hope. She wasn’t shy about going after what she wanted.

Dylan looked down between them, between her breasts to his penis resting in her soft white hand. He didn’t know how things would work out for them, and at the moment, he didn’t care. His blood pounded in his veins, his head, and his groin. Lust pulled his gut into a hard knot. He wrapped his hand over hers and moved it up and down, sliding within the soft velvet of her palm.

He knew there would come a time when he would not be able to touch her. When she wouldn’t be here to touch him, but she was here now, and he wanted this. He wanted the ache in his gut and the heavy throb in his belly. He wanted the feeling of being hit by a runaway train. Of being flattened by something he couldn’t and didn’t want to stop.

He kissed her mouth, the side of her face, and her throat. He untied the back of her dress and it fluttered to her feet. She stood before him in nothing but silky blue panties. She brushed the head of his penis across her smooth stomach, and his knees about buckled under him. Even though he knew better, he wanted this to last forever.

“Make love to me, Dylan,” she whispered.

He placed both her hands on his shoulders. “You city girls,” he said as he lifted her from the pool of her dress. “You’re always in a hurry.” Slowly he lowered her, sliding her down his body. The hard points of her breasts grazed his chest, and he held her against him. Nipples to nipples, their groins pressed together, his erection shoved up against her thigh and crotch. “We have all day. All night, too.”

With her mouth poised just above his, she asked, “You don’t have to be anywhere? No pressing responsibilities?”

“Nope. I already talked to Adam today, and I left his dog at my mom’s.” He ground his hips into her. “The only place I want to be is right here.” He would have stood like that longer, but she wiggled from his grasp. With his body painfully aroused, he watched her walk away.

“What are you doing?”

“Don’t go anywhere.” She looked over her shoulder and smiled. “I’ll be right back.”

He glanced down at himself, at his erection jutting from his pants like a piece of driftwood, and wondered just where in the hell she thought he would go.

Hadn’t she just asked him to make love to her? He reached for his wallet and pitched it onto the coffee table.

“Do something useful,” she called from the dining room. “Take off your clothes.”

He kicked off his boots and stuffed his socks inside. As he shoved his pants down his thighs, the sounds of a steel guitar and a fiddle filled the house. He tossed his jeans by his boots and looked up. Hope reappeared, walking to him, her breasts bouncing a little with each step. From the other room, Dwight Yoakam sang about a wild ride. Damn, he wasn’t going to be able to hear Dwight any more without thinking of Hope moving toward him in nothing but her little panties.

“I’ve never listened to country-and-western music,” she said. “I want to broaden my horizons. Experience something new.”

He grabbed her and folded her into his chest. With the length of her pressed against the length of him, he figured it was his duty to give her a new experience. While Dwight sang about a woman rubbing her hand up his thigh, Dylan created a little friction, rubbing against Hope Spencer’s thighs and filling his hands with her little behind covered in those thin, silky panties. Her breasts were pressed into his chest and he ground his pelvis into her. He kissed her hard, a long, wet tangle of tongues and smashed mouths gasping for breath. He slid one hand around her side and down into the front of her panties. She was wet, and when he felt her where she was warm and slick, a long, rough moan sounded deep in her throat.

She wiggled from his embrace once more, but this time she didn’t leave him. “Sit down,” she ordered, her voice sounding as drugged as he felt. She didn’t wait for him to follow her request. Instead, she shoved her hands on his chest and pushed until he sat on the couch. She stood between his widespread knees and pushed her panties down her thighs. As she kicked them behind her, he ran his gaze up her legs to her bikini line. Just last week, he’d wondered if she was a natural blonde. Now he knew she was, and Jesus H., walking around with that kind of knowledge had nearly killed him already. Just that morning, he’d been picturing her crotch and had driven a tractor into the side of his mother’s barn.

Just looking at her now made it hard to breathe. “I need a party hat,” he said.

“What?”

“There’s a condom in my wallet.”

She took his wallet from the table and slid the gold foil-wrapped condom from inside. “I thought you didn’t come over here for sex.”

He smiled. “Well, a guy can hope, Hope.”

One brow lifted as she unwrapped the condom and slipped it between her lips. Then, before his astonished eyes, she put it on him with her mouth. “Oh, God,” he groaned as she broadened his horizons and gave him a whole new experience.

By the time she straddled his lap, he was very close to the point of no return. She positioned the head of his penis, then slowly sat until he was buried deep inside her. Through the thin layer of latex, her hot flesh surrounded his erection as if she’d been custom-made for him. She shuddered and he felt every ripple of her tight passage. She grabbed his shoulders and leaned back. Her lips were parted, her breathing shallow, and her head fell to one side. Her cheeks were flushed pink. The hunger in her clear blue eyes focused on him as if he were the only man who had exactly what she needed.

She sighed his name and he placed his hands on her back. He kissed her breasts, and when she squeezed her tight muscles, he had to fight to keep from coming before she did. He tried to think of something else while every cell in his body was focused on her. On the way she felt inside. On the warmth of her contracting muscles. On the sharp pain and dull ache twisting his groin.

She straightened and pressed her forehead to his. He breathed the air from her lungs as she moved up and down, touching him with a slow and steady rhythm that built a fever for more. He grabbed her behind and brought her down hard, moving her faster.

He didn’t think anything could feel as good as the inside of Hope, but with the next push, it did. It got a whole lot hotter. And wet, like her mouth, only better. Heat swept across his flesh like a raging fire. Hope moaned and squeezed him tight, pulsing, constricting around him. The strong contractions of her orgasm wrung a release from him that twisted his vital organs and left him without air in his lungs.

He came deep inside where she was hot and slick, and even as he pumped into her one last time, he knew why it suddenly felt so damn good.

The condom broke.

Hope rested her head on Dylan’s shoulder while the music from her CD player filled the silence, broken only by their gasps of breath. She hadn’t thought sex with Dylan could get better than it had been the other night. She’d been wrong about that. Perhaps it was better now because she was more relaxed. More at ease with her body and his. More comfortable acting like herself.

She waited until her breathing returned to normal before she spoke. “I think you’ve ruined me for any other man.” When he didn’t say a word, she pulled back and looked into his face. He didn’t look like a man basking in afterglow. “What’s wrong?”

“Hop up,” was all he said.

As soon as Hope rose to her knees, he grasped her hips and stood her in front of him. Without a word, he grabbed his jeans and headed to the bathroom.

Hope stared after him until he was out of sight. The bathroom door shut, and her own afterglow bubble popped like a balloon. She stood in the middle of her living room, suddenly feeling very naked and exposed. What had happened? What had gone wrong? What had she done?

She grabbed her dress and slipped it over her head. She didn’t know what had happened or what she’d done. Everything had been wonderful until afterward. Until she’d made that crack about him ruining her for other men. Maybe that was it. Maybe that had sounded like a commitment to him.

Hope tied the dress behind her neck and glanced toward the hall. That had to be it. She’d made him angry. He’d probably leave now. The thought of him walking out her front door left her cold.

The CD stopped and the toilet flushed. Dylan appeared in his black jeans, but he didn’t look any happier than when he’d left. “Are you taking birth control?” he asked.

“What?” Her gaze locked on the grim line of his mouth. She shook her head. “I mean, no.”

“Shit!”

Hope jumped. “What?”

“What?” He ran his fingers through the sides of his hair. “Didn’t you feel the condom break?”

She thought for a moment. Thought of the exact second when everything suddenly felt a whole lot better than it had. “Oh,” she said.

His hands dropped to his sides. “When are you due for your period?”

He was worried about pregnancy. Something that she hadn’t thought about for so long, it never entered her head. “Not for a long time,” she assured him.

“How long?”

“I’m not pregnant.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“Take my word for it.”

He moved to the couch and sat with his elbows on his knees. His bare foot landed on her balled-up panties. “Jesus, what a mess.”

“I’m not pregnant, Dylan.”

“You don’t know that, Hope. At this very minute my DNA is swimming upstream, millions of happy little tadpoles gearing up to knock at ground zero.” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “Fuck!”

Hope tried not to take it all too personally, but she didn’t succeed.

“I can’t have another illegitimate child whose mama lives in another state. I just can’t do that again.”

He shook his head and looked up at her. “I won’t do that.”

Hope tried not to let her surprise show on her face. She didn’t know if he realized what he’d just told her. “Trust me. I’m not pregnant.”

“How do you know?”

It was no big deal, she told herself. It didn’t matter, but just when she’d begun to feel comfortable with him, telling him would bring up every insecurity she had about her body. “There is no ground zero.”

His gaze lowered to her stomach, and he drummed his fingers on the back of the couch. “What do you mean?”

Hope moved to the fireplace and stared at the cold stone mantel. She stood with her back to Dylan, her toes curling in the bearskin covering Hiram’s bloodstain. She didn’t know exactly how to tell him. It shouldn’t matter, but for some men, it did. “Remember when I told you that the scar on my abdomen was from a tummy tuck? Well, I lied about that. When I was younger, I had a condition that was so bad, I missed a lot of school. Doctors were afraid it might spread to my other organs, so when drug therapy didn’t work, I had to have surgery that left me unable to have children.”

“Cancer?”

She looked over her shoulder at him. “No, endometriosis.”

“Jesus.” He sighed. “Why didn’t you just say that? You made it sound like you were one breath away from death.”

“Have you heard of endometriosis?”

“Sure. My mother had it and had to have a hysterectomy when I was about sixteen.”

“I was twenty-one.”

He rose and went toward her. “That must have been rough.”

She shrugged and looked down at the bobcat on the hearth. “I felt so much better afterward, it was worth it to me. I had so much more freedom. I didn’t have to spend half a month dreading the other half. I thought that if I ever wanted children, I would adopt. Having my own biological child was never an issue for me. Maybe because I thought it wouldn’t matter to a man who loved me.”

“It shouldn’t.”

She knew better. “But it does.” She felt him move behind her.

“I gather it mattered to your ex-husband,” he said, crowding her personal space with his big, solid body and intimate questions.

She’d never talked to anyone about what had happened in her marriage. She really didn’t want to talk about it now, but he rested his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. She looked up at him and he was looking back through patient green eyes, like he was prepared to wait all day for her answer. “He thought it wouldn’t matter, but it did,” she said.

His thumbs brushed her bare skin. “Then he’s an ass.”

“Yes, for a lot of reasons, but not for that.” Again Hope found herself in the position of defending her ex-husband to Dylan, but if he was to hear the truth, he had to hear everything. “When we were first married, I really do believe that it didn’t matter to him. He was busy with his practice and we traveled a lot. We told each other that our lives were full and our marriage was wonderful because we could just pick up and go and spend the weekend in Carmel if we wanted. We told ourselves our life was better than the lives of our friends who were tied down with children, and that we could make love in every room of our house if we wanted. We could hop on a jet and fly to Scottsdale or Palm Springs to play golf. And we did do all those things, but it wasn’t enough. At least not for him.”

“He left you for a nurse, right?”

“No. I lied about that, too.”

His thumbs stopped and his brows rose up his forehead.

“I certainly didn’t know you well enough to tell you my husband had an affair with my good friend. It was too embarrassing.” She looked away, but he placed his hand on the side of her face and brought her gaze back to his.

“He’s an ass,” Dylan repeated.

“He said the affair was an accident, but I don’t think so. He said her pregnancy was an accident, too. I didn’t believe that, either. He might not have even known it until it happened, but I think he wanted what I couldn’t give him. He wanted his own child.” She lowered her gaze to his bare chest. “I think it’s biology. I think men want their own children.”

“Maybe it’s just more important to some men.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You have Adam.”

“Yeah, I do, but that doesn’t mean I was always sure he was mine.” He slid his palm down her arm and took her hand in his. “Julie and I weren’t even living together at the time Adam was conceived, and I wasn’t so sure she didn’t have other boyfriends.”

“But Adam has your eyes.”

“He does now. When he was born, they were dark blue and all swollen. He kind of looked like Winston Churchill, to tell you the truth. He had a hard time and was an ugly little spud. But the second I looked into his tiny face, and the second he looked at me, we were buddies. And biology didn’t mean squat. He was mine. He was my son.”

Hope looked in Dylan’s eyes, and her silly heart swelled. She was proud of him and didn’t really know why. Maybe for being a real man. Maybe just for being him. She leaned forward a little and laid her head on his bare shoulder. “You’re a good man, Dylan Taber.”

“Why, because I do what I’m supposed to do? Most men are like me. You just happened to marry a guy who was hung up on the wrong things.”

“I think somewhere in our marriage he changed. He looked at me different, I think. At first he thought I was enough for him, but I wasn’t.” Everything inside Hope stilled. She hadn’t meant to say that. Hadn’t meant to confess her soul. Dylan made her feel too comfortable.

“You’re kidding me. You’re about the most perfect woman I’ve ever had the pleasure to touch.”

She wanted to believe him. She wanted it more than she could remember wanting anything. But she didn’t. Not really. “No, not quite perfect.”

He was silent for a moment, then said, “Why, because you don’t have a uterus?”

The way he said it sounded so clinical. “You make it sound like we’re discussing an appendix.”

“Just about.” He placed his hands on the sides of her face and raised her gaze to his.

“No, it not the same thing. It’s not a reproductive organ.”

“I don’t mean to sound insensitive here, but there is a hell of a lot more to being a woman than reproducing. A hell of a lot more to being a man than knocking up women. If you ask me, your ex-husband sounds like a jerk, and he did you a real favor by having that affair with your friend. I know he did me a favor. Otherwise, you’d be in Carmel or playing golf in Palm Springs. Instead, you’re standing here with me without your panties on.”

She laughed. “That’s true.”

He slid a hand beneath the back of her dress and grasped her bare behind. “And I wouldn’t have ruined you for other men.”

“You heard that, huh?”

“Of course.” He brushed his nose against hers. “Anything else you want to tell me you’ve lied about before I ruin you some more?”

No, she’d confessed enough for one day. “That’s it.”

Wind whipped Hope’s ponytail about her head as she pawed through the cassette tapes in Dylan’s truck. More Dwight Yoakam, Aaron Tippin, John Anderson, Garth Brooks… and AC/DC. She took the latter out of the case and held it up. “Highway To Hell?”

He looked over at her through his mirrored sunglasses and grinned like he was sixteen. “Partied a lot with those boys.”

“I thought cowboys listened to country.”

He shrugged and turned his attention back to the road. “I used to listen to Blue Oyster Cult, too. And, of course, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson.”

“I remember my brother listening to AC/DC.”

“I didn’t know you had a brother.”

“Yep.” She plugged in the tape and said, “Evan lives in Germany with his wife and kids. I don’t see him much.”

Suddenly the inside of the truck was assaulted with an electric guitar and screeching vocals. Hope turned the volume down several notches below earsplitting and sat back to enjoy the ride into the Idaho wilderness. Earlier, Dylan had woken her up from a sound sleep with the wild idea of backpacking to a lake he wanted her to see.

Since she needed pictures for her alien stories anyway, she hadn’t been opposed to a hike. Until he’d told her they would spend the night and return tomorrow. She’d refused to even consider sleeping in a tent, but then he’d sat on her and kissed her neck and told her he wouldn’t let the bears get her. It hadn’t been his promise of safety that had swayed her, but she’d discovered days ago that she was sucker for the way he kissed her neck.

It had been a week since that Wednesday afternoon when he’d barged into her house and assured her he hadn’t come over for sex. A week since the condom incident. A week since they’d bothered with one. She’d seen him every day. Slept with him every night. He’d taught her how to do the two-step and taken her night fishing. He’d told her about his life as a homicide detective. How and why he’d come to hate it, and how much he enjoyed his life now. She told him about college and writing obituaries for The Los Angeles Times, and how she was trying to enjoy her life again. They discussed the article about Hiram she was working on. She asked him questions and he answered. No, he hadn’t been the FBI’s informant and he didn’t know who it had been. No, he hadn’t been first on the scene the night the old sheriff had killed himself, although he’d arrived shortly after the FBI agents. He’d seen the photographs and videos and the dead body of a man out of control.

She’d asked for his perspective.

“He had a sickness that got too big for him. When you cheat and steal and risk everything, you have a problem. The more he got into it, the more he wanted. In California, it’s not that difficult to find a place that caters to that sort of thing. But this is Gospel, honey. If you want to get tied up, you have to go to where the talent resides. And that takes money.” He smiled and winked at her. “Unless you find someone who enjoys that sort of thing as much as you do.”

Hope felt herself blush at the reminder of his tying her to a chair the night before. She’d never mentioned her job with The Weekly News of the Universe. He’d reacted somewhat negatively when she mentioned she’d queried People magazine about her article. She didn’t know if he’d cop a patronizing attitude, but she wasn’t sure. It was better for now that he thought she wrote for a Northwest magazine.

Mostly, they watched movies, or just held hands and didn’t do anything. She liked that best of all. Just sitting still, being quiet, knowing he was there.

Shelly thought things were getting serious between the two of them. Hope knew better. Whenever he came to her house, he parked behind the Aberdeens‘. Sometimes he came across the lake in his boat. When they were at his house, he parked his truck in his barn. His reasons all sounded perfectly logical. If people knew he was home, they’d stop by. They’d want to chat and gossip and bring him food, and he wouldn’t have as much time to spend with her. Yeah, it sounded reasonable, but it didn’t feel like the whole truth. It felt like there was something he wasn’t saying, and Hope wondered again if he was embarrassed to be seen with her. She knew he didn’t like to be the subject of gossip, but she wondered if he would mind so much if the gossip weren’t about his relationship with her.

She looked at him now, at his Stetson resting on his head, fingers tapping the steering wheel to the beat of hard rock, and she wondered exactly how he did feel about her. She knew what she felt for him, and it frightened her. It sneaked inside her chest and gave her heart panicky palpitations. She wasn’t in love with him, not yet, but it could happen if she weren’t careful. And she planned to be very careful.

Dylan slowed and turned onto a dusty, bumpy road. They quickly rolled up the windows, and Dylan ejected the tape from the player. The rolling meadows gave way to a lodgepole forest and within three miles the road ended at the Iron Creek trailhead. Before they’d left that morning, he’d insisted that she borrow Shelly’s hiking boots and down parka. The boots on her feet were made of waterproof mesh and Gore-Tex and were lighter than she would have expected. The puffy coat had been rolled like a sausage and stuffed in her backpack. Presently it was ninety-four degrees beneath a cloudless sky, and Hope wore a pair of camouflage shorts and a green tank top. She’d applied a few swipes of waterproof mascara, and Dylan had given her a tube of SPF 15 Chapstick, which she had in her pocket. She felt a little naked without blusher and lip liner, but Dylan told her he liked the way she looked. She didn’t believe him for a second, but he’d certainly seen her in the morning when she looked her worse.

The truck rolled to a stop in a parking area sectioned out of the forest by logs. There was one Jeep and a pickup and camper parked on the far side. Earlier, Dylan had mentioned that the area wouldn’t be busy because it was the middle of the week. He’d been right.

Dylan was dressed in his usual Levi’s, blue T-shirt, and hat. There were two notable differences: He’d traded in his cowboy boots for hiking boots much like Hope’s, and he’d strapped a pistol to his hip.

“What are you going to do with that?”

“Keeps the bugs away,” he said, then took off his sunglasses and sprayed himself down with insect repellent.

There had been a time not too long ago when she would have thought he meant to shoot flies, and he would have had a good laugh at her expense. Now she thought she knew him better than that. “No. The gun.”

“Cover your face,” he said and sprayed her, too. “I told you I’d protect you from bears, didn’t I?”

“Oh, my God,” she said from behind her hands. “You didn’t tell me you were going to shoot bears.”

“You didn’t ask.”

She dropped her hands as he sprayed her stomach and the front of her legs. “Okay, isn’t this the part where you tell me bears taste just like chicken?”

“Bear doesn’t taste anything like chicken.” He walked behind her and sprayed. “It’s tough as a boot and real gamey.”

She didn’t want to know how he’d come by that information. “Do you think we’ll see bears?”

“Not likely.” He stuck the can of “bug juice” into his backpack. “Chances are they’ll smell us and run away long before we see them. Black bears usually aren’t aggressive, but if we see one, we’ll just make some noise, and I’ll shoot my gun in the air to scare it off. Mostly they just want to know where you are so they can head in the opposite direction.” He grabbed the backpack that belonged to Adam out of the bed of his truck and helped her into it. Unlike the cute little Ralph Lauren backpack she’d bought at Saks last summer, this one had a metal frame and two sturdy mesh harnesses that belted across the hips and chest. Dylan widened the straps for her, then stepped back to eye the fit. Her breasts were squished together at the top, and he widened the straps a bit more. His hands lingered at the task longer than was necessary. His knuckles brushed across her tank top, and then he gave up all pretense of strap adjusting and cupped her left breast. When she looked up, he turned her face to the side and settled into a slow, soft kiss. His hand moved to her stomach, then slid around her side. “I want to show you the most beautiful place I’ve ever been,” he whispered lightly against her mouth. His tender kisses left her wanting more, but when her tongue chased his, he pulled back. “I think you’ll like it.”

Which meant, she supposed, that it wasn’t a great time to confess to him that she really wasn’t into Mother Nature.

Dylan shrugged on his own pack, a bigger version of Adam’s. Still, she wondered how he’d managed to get a two-man tent in there.

He reached for her hand. The first hour of the trip was easy. They walked the Iron Creek trail through thick lodgepole pines, and he stopped to show her flowers she might be interested in photographing for her fictional magazine article. Growing near the crystal-clear water of Iron Creek were Mountain Bluebell, Heather, and Alpine Laurel. He picked a wild daisy and stuck it behind her ear, and he seemed to be having such a good time helping her, she just didn’t have the heart to tell him there wouldn’t be any wildlife article. She snapped a few photos of the flowers, and she took a few of him, too.

The second and third hours weren’t quite as easy as the first. The forest grew thicker and the trail became a series of narrow switchbacks worn into the side the mountain. Dense vegetation carpeted the ground and all but swallowed fallen trees and rocks. Squirrels chattered as they raced across the ground and disappeared into the foliage. Birds called to one another in the trees above Hope’s head. Their songs carried on the pine-scented breeze.

Hope’s calves ached, and she thought she might be getting a blister on her heel. She had to keep her weight pitched forward as she climbed, afraid she’d tumble backward if she didn’t.

Dylan told her the names of different mountain peaks and about the time he’d hunted bighorn sheep in the White Clouds. She broke a fingernail, and he dug out his nail clippers so she could fix it with the little file.

“You’re such a girl.” He laughed and made her walk in front of him when the trail narrowed. She missed watching the backs of his legs and his behind, and during lulls in conversation, she again wondered how he felt about her. She tried to picture her life with him and couldn’t, but she couldn’t picture her life without him, either. They’d made no promises to each other. Never spoke of tomorrow, and she wondered how their relationship would change once Adam returned from visiting his mother. Dylan’s son was due to return home that Sunday, and Hope was certain that would change everything. What she wasn’t so certain about was how things would change.

Dylan helped her balance on rocks and fallen logs as they crossed a stream. They rested on a huge boulder so Hope could catch her breath, and they took off the packs and leaned them against the rock. While she ate peanuts and drank from her canteen, Dylan took his hat off and poured water over his head. It ran down his neck and soaked his shirt, and he shook like a dog, sending clear droplets everywhere. And then he finally mentioned Adam. Hope sat very still, waiting to hear his plans. Whatever they were, she would be okay, she told herself.

“He seems to like you,” Dylan told her as he sat next to her and polished a red apple on his sleeve. A breeze ruffled his damp hair and dried the ends a golden brown. “But after he’s home, I can’t spend the night with you anymore.” Dylan took a bite of the apple, then held it out for her to take a bite. “When my son’s older, I don’t think I can tell him he can’t bring girlfriends home for the night if I have. I start back to work next week, too. I want to make time to be with you, but it won’t be easy.” He took another bite of the apple. “And I don’t just mean time to have a quickie somewhere.”

She let out a breath she hadn’t even known she’d been holding. “Well, we can plan fun things that include Adam,” she said and meant it. “He’s a funny little kid, and I wouldn’t mind hanging out with him.” She looked up into his eyes, the same dark green as the pine trees behind him. “And you do have a lunch hour, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he said through a smile as he tossed the core. “At least an hour.”

She ran her hands up his wet T-shirt and locked her fingers behind his neck. She leaned into him and her breasts brushed his cool, wet chest. “And what if I had to come to your office and swear out some sort of complaint? Would I get past your secretary?”

“Depends on what you have to complain about.”

She brought his head down and kissed his lips. “Maybe that I’m lonely,” she whispered. “Maybe that I miss a certain cowboy and his big-” She broke off and slid a hand to his button fly. Through the worn denim, she cupped and caressed him until he grew hard.

“Big what?”

“Ego,” she said, then teased him with her mouth and tongue. He carefully laid her back on the boulder and sealed his lips to hers. He created a tight, wet suction and gave her a hot kiss that scorched her skin in a way that had nothing to do with the sun pouring down on their heads. It had her pressing her hips into his and running her fingers through his damp hair. He buried his face in her neck. “I love the way you feel right here,” he whispered against her throat. “I love your soft skin and the way you smell, like powder.”

It wasn’t exactly a declaration of deep emotion, but it was the closest he’d come to it, and it made her heart ache. “I like you, too,” she said and shoved her hands beneath his shirt and rubbed his back.

He looked into her face, his breathing a bit labored. “Sorry, honey. I can’t show you my big ego right now.” He removed her hands and kissed her forehead. “Later. Under the stars.”

Hope’s hands stilled. “Under the stars? You packed a tent, didn’t you?”

“Nope, but I brought my big sleeping bag. It’ll be a little snug.” The grin curving his lips suggested he’d had the whole evening planned before they’d even packed. “I think we’ll manage somehow.”

Hope sat up. “What about bugs?”

“You’ll only suck in a few.” She clamped a hand to her mouth and he laughed. “You won’t even know it. You’ll be asleep. And if you get a beetle, just chew.”

She didn’t want to suck bugs and eat beetles in her sleep. She didn’t want to be a baby, either, but a little whine of distress escaped from behind her hand.

“I was kidding about the beetle,” he said, which did little to relieve her mind.

They hiked to Alpine Lake ridge and looked down into the tiny green lake nestled hundreds of feet below. Voices carried up to them, but they could see nothing for the dense sea of emerald trees. Hope almost felt as if she were standing on top of the world.

“Listen,” Dylan whispered.

“I don’t hear anyone talking now,” she said.

“Not to the voices.” He was silent for a moment and reached for her hand. “Do you hear it?”

She heard the breeze whistling through the tree-tops, the call of birds, and maybe the stream they’d crossed. “What am I listening for?”

“It’s hard to explain, but Shelly says it’s like listening to God. I think it’s more like a pulse, or like hearing beauty instead of seeing it.” He shrugged. “It’s different for everyone, but you’ll know when you hear it. You’ll feel like you’re falling and there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.”

They hiked higher, the trail now chiseled out of rock. Hope listened carefully, but she didn’t hear God. She didn’t hear beauty or anything, but she was feeling increasingly exhausted. She and Dylan crossed outlet streams and walked around tundra ponds. Her ponytail was a snarled mess, she was sure her nose was burned, and she’d had to file one fingernail a lot shorter than the others.

Just when she was about to ask if they could stop and rest again, they stood on the snow-covered shores of Sawtooth Lake. She looked out at water so crystal blue, she could see the bottom all the way across to the base of the granite mountain towering above them.

“This lake is two hundred and fifty feet deep,” Dylan told her. “But it’s so clean it looks like you could wade across it.”

She was quiet for a few moments, watching the glaciered snow drip into the lake the color of the purest sapphire. While the beauty around her was awesome, she didn’t hear God.

“This is what I wanted to show you. This is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.” He took her hand and gave it a squeeze. “It reminds me of you,” he said.

And that was when Hope heard it, and it was better than anything she’d ever heard in her life. Her heart swelled like a balloon in her chest and her pulse raced. She felt herself fall, just like he’d said she would. She fell head over heels in love with Dylan Taber, and there was absolutely nothing she could do to stop it.