Tempted Page 4

  Yeah. Nothing’s going to happen. That’s fine. I have no expectations.

  “I think he looks hot,” Jolie’s smooth voice says, shutting down the incessant talk about my face.

  My eyes find hers, and suddenly I don’t give a damn what the guys think.

  Chapter 3

  Jolie

  I can’t take my eyes off Jameson. For one, he’s fucking haute. Beards can be misleading. He was hot with a beard, but without it… Girl. Bye. He has that whole square jaw thing going on and I want to nibble him. He’s all dark brooding energy too. So different from what I’m used to, and I think I like that most.

  Nothing wrong with a little fling while on location, is there? Beth and Chloe wouldn’t care. I think it’s fine if I want to find out what it’s like to kiss him.

  “How’s your ankle?” he leans over as the group returns to some lower-key get-to-know-you banter.

  I lift it up, examining it. It’s throbbing, but I don’t admit as much. It’ll heal. “Fine.”

  “It’s badly swollen and purple. What is your definition of fine, woman?” The deep rumble of his voice makes my belly tighten.

  “No bones sticking out, no gushing blood, nothing turning black… things could be worse.” I shrug, trying to play it cool. Trying to pretend like this man I just met doesn’t affect me.

  Jameson stands, walking away suddenly, and then returns with what looks to be a good fifty-pound stump slung over his shoulder. He sets it down in front of me.

  “For your ankle,” he nods and takes his seat, tugging the thighs of his jeans to adjust.

  My mouth waters at thoughts of what’s under those pants. Despite the frigid temperature, I’m getting hot thinking about it. That’s a nice change of pace from being pissed about my ex-boyfriend, Heath. Heck, I’m a modern gal, I can embrace a hookup.

  Not that I’m quite sure he’ll want to close the deal with me, especially after how we met. I mean, I did have pee on my pants. Not a lot, in my defense, but enough to matter.

  Fuck it though. He’ll either bite or not, no harm no foul.

  Jameson seems done waiting for me to use his footrest, leaning down and pulling my leg up onto it.

  Okay then.

  As the group roars with a tale of Evie catching a mouse in her hand in a hoarded house on her first-time filming with me for that particular show, I lean in to Jameson, “Hey. Question…”

  He eyes me.

  “And you can totally say no… I’d get it. It’s a huge reach. Shit, I probably shouldn’t ask. It’s definitely out of line…” Okay, now I’m mumbling nonsensically.

  “Yes,” he says matter-of-factly, eyes on fire with want. I know that look.

  “Really?” I ask.

  “When?” he asks.

  “Now?” I say, looking around, wondering if we could get away with disappearing.

  “Well, I already smoked them,” he tells me, brows lowering a bit.

  I shake my head. “Wait, what are we talking about?”

  “The salmon we caught?” he questions. Why on earth would his mind go there?

  I snort a rather ungrateful laugh. “Uh… no. I’m trying to suggest we sneak away and… get to know one another?” I croak the words slowly, gritting my teeth and shrugging my shoulders.

  “Oh,” his mouth forms a little circle.

  I lick my lips, wondering if I’ve read all this completely wrong.

  His eyes close and he takes a breath. I’m pretty sure he’s going to say no, but instead, he seems to abandon our conversation.

  He turns to Beth, nudging her shoulder. My stomach sinks. Oh balls. He’s not going to tell our team leader that I’m perving on him, is he? Fuck. Me. Or don’t. Whatever doesn’t get me fired.

  “I think Jolie should get some rest. Her ankle needs elevation. I’m going to take her back to kick her feet up on a couch.”

  Beth puts her hand on his thick bicep. “That’s so nice of you.” Then she leans around him and looks at me. “See you in the morning?” She winks.

  If he thinks his words slyly went over Beth’s head, he is dead-ass wrong. But that doesn’t matter right, because, holy shit! Am I really about to find out what it’s like to smooch on this hot-as-hell mountain man?

  I smirk at her, cheeks pressing into my eyes I’m smiling so awkwardly. Beth tries not to laugh.

  “Shall we go now?” Jameson casually suggests, or so he thinks. I peep that little crack in his voice. Good. I’m not the only awkward one here.

  “By all means,” I say, using the borrowed walking stick as I hobble from the light of the fire. It’s instantly getting colder as I move away from that wonderful heat.

  “That’s my dead grandfather’s walking stick, by the way.” Jameson nods, eyes shiny.

  I pause in my tracks. “Oh shit, really?” I look at him with wide guilty eyes.

  A smile takes over his face. “Nope,” he laughs.

  “Good one,” I fake chuckle as we continue on a few steps. “You gonna offer to carry a lady, or what? I mean, why be a giant and not haul people here and there.” I tease after a few beats of silence.

  Without a word, Jameson dips around and then ducks behind me, scooping me up in one smooth motion until I’m high up in his arms and he’s hugging me to his chest.

  “Whoa, okay then. I was only kidding,” I laugh.

  “No, you weren’t,” he says, his broad chest rumbling against me.

  “I know,” I admit, biting my lip as our eyes connect again. “Golden,” I whisper.

  “What?” he asks as we approach his cabin.

  My voice breaks with nerves. “Y-your eyes.”

  “Yours are aqua,” he says in a low rasp.

  I blink at him, drunk on the feeling of being in his big warm arms, hauled around like a fucking princess. My ex wasn’t built enough to be able to haul my ass uphill, I’ll say that much.

  He stops just shy of his cabin door and looks into my eyes. “I’m probably going to regret this. Does that bother you?”

  My brow gives the slightest crease before I correct it. I think over his words, and they are music to my ears. That last thing in the world I want is for anything lasting. I’ll be gone in two shakes. Hell, even if he regrets it tomorrow, I’m cool with that. I don’t need every hot hookup to become a boyfriend. I’m evolved beyond that, I think.

  “Do you, boo,” I lift my finger and boop his nose.

  His chest bubbles with a laugh that comes out as a scoff. “Weirdo.”

  “Ey, you like it,” I tease, hoping it’s true.

  As he brings me inside, and up the stairs, I point as he passes the chair. “Sit me down here, please.”

  He backs us up a few steps and complies. “Do you want a tea? We should get ice on that ankle. What have you eaten since the salmon?”

  His assault of questions sends my eyes wide. “Umm…”

  He pauses and huffs a breath, waiting for my reply.

  “I had some stew Nina made. I hate tea. And I don’t need any ice,” I reply, leaning back in my chair. The pulsing heat between my legs is very distracting. I’m trying to be smooth, when all I want to do is shout, take your shirt off and let’s see those biceps! Or something smooth and mature like that.

  He nods, looking around, uncertain. A hand scrubs down his face.

  “Everything okay?” I ask.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he looks around.

  “Like, in life? In this conversation?” I offer, rising out of the chair, hopping toward him like a pirate missing her peg leg. AKA, smooth as heck.

  The sight makes him pause, a smile blooming on his face.

  “Your ankle,” he starts.

  I shake my head, pressing a finger to his lips, which is quickly replaced by my lips. I can smell him this close, his lips are so soft and the kiss.. Well, the kiss is… not magical.

  It’s awkward.

  Tentative.

  Like, he’s not really kissing back. I pull away and look at the man in front of me.

  “Did I read that wrong or something?” I ask, gracefully hopping back a step. I cock my head and study him.

  He’s silent, eyes staring me down with an intensity I don’t understand.

  “Regret this already? I can hop back to my tent,” I conclude, because this is quickly getting awkward as fuck.

  When he doesn’t reply still, I take a breath and set off at a hop around him toward the stairs. Grabbing the banister, I maneuver down a step at a time. This is definitely not my smoothest exit. It’s taking forever. It’s loud. And I’m quickly developing a bruise on my ego, not to mention the lady equivalent of blue balls. Blue boobs? Blue labia? I don’t know, something is blue though.

  As I reach the bottom of the stairs, I feel arms wrapping around my belly, hoisting me up. Jameson’s dragging me back upstairs.

  “Um… What is happening?”

  “You need proper rest. Port Providence is unforgiving. You can take my bed, I’ll sleep on the couch.” He says this all as he carries me like a sack a potatoes, a tone of minor annoyance in his voice.

  “I’m really fine. You don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with.”

  “We protect our neighbors here. You are, for now, my neighbor, so I will offer you proper shelter.”

  He sets me back on the kitchen chair. “I can just sleep on your couch,” I try for a compromise.

  “It’s uncomfortable, has a wonky spring in it.”

  “Or… you can share your bed with me. I promise, no funny business,” I say with a wink. I don’t know what happened to kill the vibe between the campfire and his living room. I was sure he wanted to at least do a little kissing, but whatever. I’m not going to push anything on the guy.

  His eyes fall closed slowly and then flutter bef
ore he leans down to untie the long laces of his boots. Still not replying to my suggestion, he peels off his coat, hanging it on a lone hook.

  He comes to me and unzips my coat. I watch him in fascination as he moves to untie my single boot.

  It falls to the floor with a clatter, his big hands wrap around my cold toes, warming me instantly. This man is all sorts of confusing.

  Frowning, he scolds me. “Your boots are not insulated enough.”

  I repeat what is clearly becoming my mantra with Jameson. “I’m fine. It’s not like they’re going to fall off. I didn’t even notice they were cold.” But damn, his hands around my toes, it feels… real nice.

  Mourning the loss of his heat when he pulls his hands away, I watch in fascination as he stands and heads to the kitchen area. He unbuttons his flannel and rolls the sleeves up over his large forearms. There is some kind of tattoo, maybe something related to his military service. It’s hard to tell in the low light of his cabin. He heats some water in the kettle, throwing glances my direction. I watch him and calm washes over me. He’s somehow relaxing to study. The sure way he moves… he knows his place in the world, knows what he wants to do. At least, that’s the vibe I get from him.

  “It must be nice, being out in nature, away from all the people and traffic and bullshit,” I say absently as I imagine myself in his shoes.

  He pours the now steaming water into a large tub and brings it over to me, placing it at the floor by my feet. “That’s what most people like about it.” He peels off my sock. It feels shockingly intimate having a man peel off my sock. Why is that so sexy? I need to calm the eff down.

  I take a breath. “Thank you,” I sigh as my toes slip into the warm water. They tingle with life as they reheat. Maybe they were pretty cold out there. It’s just that my ankle throbs so bad, it’s hard to feel much else.

  Without another word, Jameson disappears for a while, returning with the cold bladder of water he used before for my ankle.

  “What do you like about Port Providence?” I ask as he sits across from me in the spare chair, propping my other leg up in his lap, peeling off the plastic bag and towel wrap concoction I created this morning to protect it from the elements. He lays the cold-water bag over the swollen part carefully.

  “I don’t belong anywhere else. My dogs don’t either. We’re wild. Here, we can be wild, like nature intended.”

  I study his handsome face, which looks rather soft without his beard. I want to reach out and stroke that freshly shaved cheek. I mean, he’s absently feeling my injured foot right now. Or assessing the damage, but dammit, he’s touching me. What an odd and confusing man. But, no, hands to myself.

  “Your dogs?” I say, amusement clear in my tone.

  He shakes his head. “My squadron, crew, men… we’re ride or die. We learned that quickly, pretty much from the time when we were formed into a unit and that was it. We’re brothers to the death. Maybe even beyond that too.”

  Except the one who didn’t make it, Teddie. I want to ask about him, because I have a nosey mind, but I have no right.

  He closes his eyes, shaking his head.

  Feeling a little guilty for trying again, and hearing dramatic awooga noises in my head, I switch topics. “What did you mean by wild? I have a feeling your definition is different from mine.”

  A sad look crosses his face. “We learned to live on the edge of comfort and chaos, between life and death in this cruel world,” he says thoughtfully.

  “Damn,” I remark, pausing to soak in the haunting beauty in his words. Letting out a whoosh of a breath, I slap my knee. “Wish I was filming that. That’s quotable. Maybe say that again in front of a camera this week.”

  He shakes his head, seeming to come back to reality. “Television is trash. It’s watching people live life. Why not just go out and live it yourself?”

  My eyes go wide. “I guess you’re not the one who filled out the application to be a part of a TV show, I take it?” I say with a laugh. “Maybe don’t mention that sentiment on camera, come to think of it.”

  “You like TV?” he asks.

  I nod. “It’s fine. I like reading, too. It’s like living a thousand different lives. You get to see new places, new cultures, new ideas, especially in documentary film-making. I swear, behind the camera, I don’t see as much, but in the editing room, they take hours of footage, and they pull this tendril of a story from it, a story you would otherwise miss watching it live firsthand. It’s brilliant.”

  “And what story will they pull here, do you think?” he asks.

  “Maybe the neighbor support angle, if I had to guess. Most places I’ve been too… you don’t talk to your neighbors, don’t know their names.”

  He nods, stroking the arch of my foot slowly. “I’ve heard.”

  “So, you can appreciate how special it is, what you people have here.”

  “We are fighting to survive everyday here. It’s brutal. That forces us together.”

  “Pretty powerful stuff,” I nod, my mind somewhere far off processing his words, and his touch.

  With one foot now freezing from the cold pack and another happily warm, I wiggle my toes. “Maybe I could dip these guys in the warm bucket, for a second.” I retract my foot from his deliciously muscular thigh and sink it into the water. Heat isn’t good for this type of injury, but fuck it.

  “I’ll prepare the bed for you.” He stands suddenly.

  “No. Please. If one of us is sleeping on the couch, it’s me. I did it last night, didn’t I? Wasn’t so bad,” I lie. It was bad, but it’s better than the tent and I don’t want to put him out. He’s too tall for the couch.

  He pauses in his tracks for a beat, but he must decide to give up trying to argue with me, because he continues on down the hall. The light in his room cuts on and floods out into the hallway. I can just make out his form in the shadow, moving around his room, grabbing a change of clothes from his drawers.

  “Aww, are those for me?” I say, leaning on his doorframe.

  He jumps at my words, spinning to look at me. “How’d you get over here so quietly?”

  “Magic,” I say, wiggling my fingers like I’m on stage presenting an amazing feat of sorcery. In reality, I hopped over here, which was loud. Maybe his hearing is fucked from too many loud bangs in the military. Is that a thing?

  Jameson snort-laughs and shuffles past me, handing me the shirt and pants, our warm bodies very close as he squeezes out the door. When he closes himself in the bathroom, I hop toward the living room, changing quickly into clothes that smell a heck of a lot like fresh pine.

  “Sleep well, Jolie,” he says, voice almost sad.

  “You too.”

  I toss the old fleece blanket over my legs and situate the best I can around the offensive broken spring. In the distance, I hear the toilet flush. A light cuts off. The creak of a bed dips under two hundred pounds of hunky man meat.

  Okay, none of that hunky man-meat talk, especially not when I have his scent in my nose, wrapped up in his damn clothes. I have to remember to grab my bag tomorrow from the tent if I’m staying here another night.

  Closing my eyes, I toss and turn, working my way around the spring, balancing my ankle on the armrest… I try every position over the course of an hour, but I can’t get comfortable.

  Tired, desperate, and not all are driven by the throbbing between my legs, I swear, I get up with a sigh and hop to his room.

  He’s left the door open. There’s a little flickering candle by his bed, and he’s reading… Little Women.

  “Jo’s my favorite,” I say, startling him for the second time tonight.

  He snaps the book closed.

  “Can’t sleep?” I ask, head cocking to the side in question.

  He eyes me curiously. “Not usually. Reading helps.”

  I nod. “You were not wrong about that couch. Any room for me in there? Again, I completely swear upon my Nana’s grave that I will keep my hands to myself.” I hold up two fingers in the boy scout’s salute. Little does he know, Nana was a badass woman who got it on during her years in the retirement community in Arizona and would totally approve of me breaking such a promise.

  “Fine, but you should know I sleep in the nude.” His words shock me, but I’m too eager for a warm comfy spot to sleep to think too long on it. I hop around to the free side of the bed without another word, lift the covers and quickly slide in.