A Mad Mood Suddenly Turned Manic.

A macho pass suddenly had a complete shift of power, and became her kiss instead of his. Her taking a mood out on him, instead of the other way around. His knees knocking. His hands unsteady. His lungs begging for oxygen in gulps…when it was supposed to be her, bowled over by his experienced sexual prowess.

The damn woman didn’t have any prowess.

But man…could she kiss! Lexie could make a man believe he was the hottest thing ever to emerge from a Y chromosome. The only guy in her universe. The only man she ever needed or ever wanted in her universe. The only man…

Aw, hell.

Dear Reader,

As we celebrate Silhouette’s 20th anniversary year as a romance publisher, we invite you to welcome in the fall season with our latest six powerful, passionate, provocative love stories from Silhouette Desire!

In September’s MAN OF THE MONTH, fabulous Peggy Moreland offers a Slow Waltz Across Texas. In order to win his wife back, a rugged Texas cowboy must learn to let love into his heart. Popular author Jennifer Greene delivers a special treat for you with Rock Solid, which is part of the highly sensual Desire promotion, BODY & SOUL.

Maureen Child’s exciting miniseries, BACHELOR BATTALION, continues with The Next Santini Bride, a responsible single mom who cuts loose with a handsome Marine. The next installment of the provocative Desire miniseries FORTUNE’S CHILDREN: THE GROOMS is Mail-Order Cinderella by Kathryn Jensen, in which a plain-Jane librarian seeks a husband through a matchmaking service and winds up with a Fortune! Ryanne Corey returns to Desire with a Lady with a Past, whose true love woos her with a chocolate picnic. And a nurse loses her virginity to a doctor in a night of passion, only to find out the next day that her lover is her new boss, in Doctor for Keeps by Kristi Gold.

Be sure to indulge yourself this autumn by reading all six of these tantalizing titles from Silhouette Desire!

Enjoy!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

Rock Solid
Jennifer Greene

www.millsandboon.co.uk

JENNIFER GREENE

lives near Lake Michigan with her husband and two children. Before writing full-time, she worked as a teacher and a personnel manager. Michigan State University honored her as an “outstanding woman graduate” for her work with women on campus.

Ms. Greene has written more than fifty category romances, for which she has won numerous awards, including two RITAs from the Romance Writers of America in the Best Short Contemporary Books category, and a Career Achievement award from Romantic Times Magazine.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

One

The Idaho sky was a brilliant blue, the mountain scenery breathtaking, the spring afternoon as seductive as a lover’s kiss…and Lexie’s heart was slamming with panic.

She’d always loved flying, and this bitsy single-engine Piper was more fun than a roller-coaster ride. Flying wasn’t the problem. Her recent bout with insanity was.

For several months now, she’d tolerated these silly symptoms. She was old friends with insomnia; that wasn’t new. It was this other stuff. On a perfectly wonderful day, her heart would suddenly pound, her palms turn cold and clammy, her stomach twist and tangle up with nerves. Her doctor had diagnosed the symptoms as an anxiety attack—which was total bullcracky.

She had nothing to be anxious about. At twenty-eight, her life was luckier than a dream—she was making money hand over fist, success charging her way faster than she could keep up with it, her work a joy and challenge both. Every day was filled with a frenzy of excitement, commotion, risk, everything she loved. There was no excuse whatsoever for these sudden attacks of panic…yet she could feel it starting again—the lump of anxiety welling up in her throat, the stupid roiled-up feeling in her stomach, the loneliness of fear nipping and nagging at her normally cheerful nature.

“Hey, you okay, Ms. Woolf?” The pilot of the Piper Cub was named Jed Harper. Jed was quite a character, with his unshaven white whiskers and wrinkled face and Hawaiian shirt. She strongly suspected that the wad in his cheek was tobacco.

“Just fine,” she assured him. Or she would be. She’d signed up for a month at Silver Mountain specifically to solve these idiotic health problems of hers.

“Well, we’re headed down, ma’am. Be on the ground in five more minutes, now. Silver Mountain’s one of the most beautiful places on earth. You’re gonna love it.”

“Uh-huh.” Mountains. Trees. Fresh air. It was enough to make a girl nauseous. Momentarily Lexie closed her eyes, fantasizing about her Victorian office with the red velvet office chair and the draperies dripping fringe and the billowing, delicate Boston fern…and the giant TV in the background with nice, soothing CNBC shooting the ticker tape past every second of the stock market day.

Perhaps this particular anxiety attack was justifiable, Lexie considered. Not only was she suffering from Dow Jones withdrawal, but she considered a stay in the country on a par with grape cough syrup. A tough, strong woman, of course, bit the bullet and took her medicine without whining…but that didn’t mean she had to like it.

The baby-size plane hit the grass landing strip, bounced, hit the ground again and finally settled into a jog-skipping-pace before wheeling into a turn. God knew where it was turning. There was nothing in sight but endless sharp, spiked pine trees covering endless sharp, spiked mountains. She saw no buildings, no telephone poles, no asphalt—nothing comforting or familiar.

The wizened-faced Mr. Harper—Jed—turned off the engine, grinned at her and then hustled to open the door. “Now don’t you worry about a thing, Ms. Woolf. We handle city folks like you all the time. You’ll feel like a new person after a month here. I guarantee it…and here comes Cash now. You’re going to love Cash. All the women do.”

Lexie ducked under the door frame and climbed down. She wasn’t here to love anyone. She was here to get over these anxiety attacks—or die trying—yet her first second in all the blasted fresh air made her stomach buck uneasily. Everything smelled…green. Suspiciously, verdantly green. As if she were in the middle of a jungle of overgrown Christmas trees that just went on forever. This high, this far from anything civilized, the air was so pure it stung the lungs. How was a woman supposed to breathe without pollution? Where was the comforting carbon monoxide, the diesel fumes, the traffic stinks? Where were the malls?

“Hey, Jed. You made record time. And we’ve been waiting for you, Alexandra—welcome to Silver Mountain.”

It wasn’t that she didn’t hear the warm masculine tenor. For a couple of seconds, though, she was so distracted by the view of all that appalling, petrifying green that she couldn’t seem to look away. Swiftly she reminded herself that she was not only willing to be here—she’d paid a fortune to be here—so it was no one’s fault but her own if she felt plunked down on an alien planet in the middle of a Star Trek episode. Quickly she spun around with her smile on and her hand out. “Thanks, Mr. McKay—Cash. And let’s forget that Alexandra business. No one calls me that. It’s either Lexie or Lex…”

Her voice petered out faster than a stalled engine. She knew the man reaching out to shake her hand was Cashner Aaron McKay, the owner of Silver Mountain. She’d have known his voice from their telephone calls even if the pilot hadn’t identified him, and he’d been so natural and easy to talk with that Lexie had been looking forward to meeting him. Still was. It was just that the blazing sun had first shadowed his face, and from their phone calls, she’d just assumed that McKay would be someone like Jed Harper—someone older. Someone with skin leathered by a hundred million years in the sun who wore cowboy boots. Someone who didn’t slap her snoozing female hormones wide-awake.

But now he was closer. So close the sun wasn’t blocking her vision. So close that she realized two startling things simultaneously. Her host for the next few weeks was the Marlboro man come to life—sans cigarette. The hunk was take-your-breath adorable, tall and lean and blue-eyed and downright edible. And the second thing she realized was that she was standing downhill…which meant that the hand she’d shot out to shake his was coming perilously close to poking the hunk in the crotch.

Faster than lightning she yanked her hand up to an appropriate height. Humor seemed to responsively glint in his eyes—not that she had time to analyze his reactions. They did the handshaking thing, which thankfully gave her throat a chance to swallow some of that saliva before she drooled all over him. She’d already resigned herself to the month of torture ahead…but being able to regularly look at McKay was definitely going to lighten her suffering significantly.

“Lexie…” His gaze was direct, the slow grin friendly, but the callused palm that had so warmly gripped hers abruptly dropped. She never sensed any negative vibes, just that he hadn’t noticed her in any particularly personal way. Possibly he didn’t go for short-haired, sprite-size brunettes with city pale skin. “Glad to finally meet you in person. And I hope you’re going to love our Silver Mountain. We’ll get your gear, get you settled in. Jed, you coming up to the house for an iced tea?”

“You bet. And where’s our favorite hellion?”

Cash let out a low, easy chuckle. “Sammy’s still doing that home-schooling we set up out of Hammond’s…but he’ll be raring home in another hour or so.”

“Sammy?” Lexie asked.

“Sammy’s my son. Well, I guess technically he’s my nephew, but he’s my son in every way that matters. You’ll meet him at dinner, if not sooner…although he’s a little more shy around the women guests. At least you can hope he’ll be shy. Otherwise you’re at risk of his talking your ears off.”

Again, that slow, easy grin. Jed grabbed two of her designer bags and loped on ahead. Cash grabbed four. Neither remarked on the amount or size of her luggage. “That’s it, Lex? Anything else you need carrying?”

“No, no sweat.” Briefly Lexie wondered what he meant by referring to this Sammy-child as being both nephew and son, but right then she stumbled over a gnarled root. There was nothing particularly new there. She’d always been able to trip on thin air—athletics weren’t exactly her strong point—but she really did need to promptly change clothes. Her Italian sandals had been comfortable for flying, but lacked a certain sturdiness for this type of terrain. Worse yet, the hike was all uphill. The strip where the teensy plane had landed was the only flat spot anywhere in sight. A stitch in her side was screaming by the time they’d gone a hundred yards, and the only things she was toting were her purse and laptop. “I’m not too used to exercise,” she huffed.

“That’s okay, no one is when they first come here. That’s the point. That you get a serious break from constant work and the stresses of city life, right?”

“Right.” Although no one had warned her about all this ghastly fresh air.

“Even if you’re not normally into country life, I think you’ll find it grows on you. There are no bottom lines here, no deadlines, no tests to pass…”

She knew all the reasons why she’d signed up to come here, so there was no particular reason to listen. Besides, she could have looked at his back all day. My. At fourteen, she’d thumbtacked posters of hunks on her bedroom wall like every other hormone-driven adolescent girl. Then, of course, she’d grown up and realized that looks were no measure of character or anything else that mattered. By twenty-eight, she’d come to another realization milestone. Maybe heartache was the pits, but just looking was a lot of fun and didn’t cost a dime.

Over the years, she’d tried picking out potential lovers with the same meticulous care she picked stocks—studying assets, start-up costs, long-term growth potential, how long one needed to be patient before seeing a return, that kind of thing. Her analysis methods worked fabulously with stocks. But with men…well, temporarily she’d sworn off gambling with anything so high-risk.

As she told her friend Blair, vibrators were just a whole lot less aggravation.

But that wasn’t to say that she didn’t enjoy looking. On a scale of l to l0, McKay easily had a l0 fanny—and Lexie had always been a fanny type of woman. Still, eventually, she got around to noticing the rest. The flannel plaid shirt looked straight out of L. L. Bean; the boot-cut jeans were old and loose and worn-in like an old friend. His hair was short and as straight as mink fur but tawny, a mix of sun-streaked caramel and butterscotch. Even this early in May, his skin was sun bronzed, that tan incredibly striking against his light blue eyes. He had a man’s-man look all day, his jaw looking cut out of stone, the cheekbones jutting out to give him an even more rugged profile. And there was that cute itsy-bitsy guy butt again—

“Not too far, now, Lexie. The house is just around the corner.”

“No problem,” she sang out. She was loathe to tear her eyes away from the only seriously interesting view—his butt—but around the last curve, the lodge loomed in sight. The big, fat log house stood three stories high, with a wraparound veranda graced with porch swings and wooden rocking chairs. She clumped up the porch steps behind Cash—stumbled on the doorjamb, but thankfully didn’t fall—and then stepped in. Jed had already dropped her two bags and disappeared from sight when the screen door clapped behind her.

Whew. The place made her think of a movie set for a Western oil baron story. The front door led into a square foyer with a giant staircase, but off to the right was a living room with sprawling couches and groups of oversize chairs in forest-greens and honey-leathers. Man-size windows opened on the mountain view, and nests of thick-pile rugs were scattered around. She glimpsed a gaming table in a dark, scarred mahogany. An upright piano. An oil painting on the far wall, almost as big as the wall itself, a mystical painting of the mountains bathed in a morning mist in ghost-whites and whisper-greens and blues.

A stone fireplace dominated the great room, smoke-scarred and full of character. The chestnut floor and oak ceiling beams looked equally well-worn and well loved.

“This is the hangout place in the evenings.” Cash led her through, either because they had to go that way, or to help familiarize her with the layout. “If you’re bored, you can usually find a game of poker or pinochle going on after dinner. Even summer nights, it’s cool enough that we usually light a fire here. Then in here’s the dining room….”

She poked her head in, saw an oblong pine table with a million leaves and a wagon wheel chandelier.

“Meal hours are posted in your room, but if you get hungry other times, you can always raid the kitchen on your own. We’re not running this place like an inn. We want you to feel it’s your home while you’re here…with one little exception. Before we go any further, we need to make a stop.” Past the dining room, he popped a door on another room, this one stashed with the desk and file cabinets of a no-nonsense office. Temporarily he thumped her luggage down. “Afraid you need to strip here, Lex.”

Not that she wasn’t willing—for him—but the suggestion still startled her. “Did you say strip?”

“Uh-huh.” His expression was so deadpan that she almost missed the unrepentant twinkle in his eye. “This room locks up, tight as a bank vault, so you don’t need to worry about anything getting stolen. And I don’t want to have to do a strip search, but I will if I have to.” He waggled his fingers in a come-on gesture. “I’m afraid this is the place where you have to come clean. I want all your loot. Portable computer. Pager. Cell phone. Everything electronic you’ve got.”

She wanted to chuckle at his strip routine—the devil!—and normally she would have. Just then, though, her sense of humor seemed to be suffering a short gasp. “Everything?” she asked weakly.

“Well, if you have to have a pacifier, I guess you can take the cell phone to snuggle in bed with. You can’t get any reception here anyway, so there’s really no harm—but that’s it. Everything else gets locked up. If you just can’t stand it, you can come in and stroke the computer every now and then.” Even the twinkle was unrelenting. And those fingers kept saying “gimme.”

For a moment she stared at him in numb panic. Yes, of course, this was exactly why she’d come. A month forced away from work. A place where she couldn’t do business or get into stress no matter how hard she tried. For that matter, she was paying a near fortune for Mr. Cashner McKay to take charge of her life and boss her around just like this, so it didn’t make any sense to balk. “But you have a TV somewhere, don’t you?” she asked bravely.

“Yup. In my living quarters. But nowhere any of the guests can see it.”

She was reassured that at least some proof of civilization existed and was close by. Still, she gulped again. “I, um, haven’t been separated from my daily dose of the Dow Jones for almost nine years.”

“I understand,” he said patiently. “One of our longtime guests is a doctor who always hyperventilates for the first few days without his pager. The first few days are the hardest, but I promise, it really does get easier after that. If you panic, I’ll let you in here to see your stuff, okay? But I want you to give it a chance.”

“Of course I’ll give it a chance. In fact, I can’t wait to get started on your whole program.” But she struggled with him for a minute when he tried to take the lizard computer case. It was like being severed from her own, personal, life-giving umbilical cord. “You have a phone somewhere in the lodge—?”

“Of course we do. Several. You’re not really cut off from anything, Lexie. Jed flies in with supplies a couple times a week. Guests come and go. And my private quarters have all the technology you’re used to if we need to contact a doctor or civilization or if relatives happen to need you. Now, are you ready to see your room?”

He took her toys. All of them. Even the palm reader. Even the headset for her disc player.

And then he motioned her toward a back staircase and led the way up. “Last week, the place was full—for us, that means ten guests, the max we can handle at a time. Or the max we want to. For the next couple of weeks, it’ll be extra nice, though, just you and a few others. Come summer, we’ll be extra busy again. Now…the library’s on the third floor in the back, and it’s well stocked. Workout gym, massage room and hot tub are in the square building off the north— Bubba comes in three times a week to do the masseuse thing. You’ll meet him tomorrow, and you’ll meet Keegan at dinner tonight. Keegan’s working on his Ph.D. as a naturalist, and in the meantime trading cooking and some bookkeeping for room and board. And George makes up the last of the staff, he’s the housekeeper…he’s a little on the gruff side, but he gets the job done, comes in around four mornings a week and we cope the rest of the time on our own. You leave the house, let someone know. Or check out at the desk in the kitchen. Lots of great places to wander, but we don’t want you getting lost….”

The more Cash informed her about the lodge setup, the more Lexie kept thinking: lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Maybe this was a mistake. Back in Chicago, coming here had seemed like such a foolproof idea. Since she was too much of a workaholic to force herself to rest, she’d chosen to go where she simply had to. And this place certainly fit that bill, except that she’d never envisioned anywhere so uncivilized that it actually had bears and cougars. And no malls.

“Here, you go.” At the top of the stairs, Cash motioned her inside the first room to the west, then stepped in himself and lined up her luggage as obediently as Catholic school children. After that he pushed open the sash of the far window, letting in another gush of stinging fresh air. “Okay now…the bathroom’s through that door. Dinner’ll be served around six, so you’ve got some time to unwind, unpack, wander around. If you need anything before then—”

“No, honestly, I’m fine.”

“No questions at all so far? You like the room?”

“No questions. And the room’s wonderful.” She saw the four-poster bed and bureau in wild cherry wood, the country quilt and feather mattress. The bed alone could have slept three people her size. Maybe four.

The bedroom window in her Chicago apartment—her $2,000 a month Chicago apartment—viewed someone else’s bedroom in someone else’s pricey Chicago apartment. Here she looked out on mountains that were too damn breathtaking to make a picture postcard. Nobody’d believe they were real. Yet somehow she was the one who felt unreal, just trying to look around and believe she could possibly fit in around here.

“Lexie?” When his hand touched her shoulder, she spun around with a city woman’s instincts honed against getting too close to strangers. His hand jerked back, yet his shrewd blue eyes suddenly rested on her face, something warm and evocative and completely unexpected in his eyes.

Cash had been nothing but kind and friendly from their first phone contact, and certainly since she’d arrived here. Still, his attitude had been exactly what she’d expected and exactly what it should be—completely impersonal. That he might see her differently from the other city slickers who came to his Silver Mountain hadn’t occurred to her…until she suddenly felt his gaze on her face, the connection in his touch.

“You’re feeling like a fish thrown in the desert, aren’t you?” he asked quietly.

“Yes.” There was no point in denying it.

“So did I, once upon a time. But I’ve been in your shoes, Lex, working so hard and so furiously that I didn’t realize I was forgetting to stop and take a breath. And this mountain has magic, I swear. You don’t have to be an outdoor person to get the benefits…you don’t ever have to do anything like this again, either. But we both have the same goal—not to send you back home until you feel rested and recharged again. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said, and decided then and there that she was in love with him.

Having only known him for less than a half hour, of course, she didn’t exactly mean a death-defying type of love—but she wasn’t looking for that, anyway. She’d come here expecting the next month to be a penance, though, and instead McKay was not only kind and perceptive, but as a bonus, he had a quick sense of humor. Maybe the next few weeks weren’t going to be as terrible as she’d dreaded.

Once Cash disappeared downstairs, she opened suitcases and closets, pushed off her sandals and started settling in. Yet only minutes later, she heard the distant high-pitched squeal of a child, and she wandered over to the window to investigate.

The boy bounding up the mountain path, yelling for Cash, was easy to identify as a McKay. He had Cash’s same tawny hair and long legs. The urchin was maybe eight? Nine? Not so old that he cared a hoot if his hair was wind-tangled or his jeans dirt-dusted from the bottoms up.

And right below her bedroom window, Lexie suddenly saw the child leap in the air—obviously trusting without question that he was going to be safely caught. And Cash was suddenly there, swinging him around and high as if the boy weighed nothing. She heard the child’s joyous, “Guess what, Cash? Guess what?”

And then Cash’s low, rumbling laughter before both of them lowered their voices and ducked out of sight.

For a few moments, Lexie couldn’t seem to budge from the window. Something old and aching swelled in her throat, the way listening to an old love song could trigger potent longings sometimes. There’d been so much love and laughter in Cash’s voice…and so much trust and love in the little boy’s voice, the same way.

With a sudden impatient sigh, Lexie pushed away from the window and forced herself to finish the unpacking job. There was no excuse for letting that longing feeling get to her. God knew, she’d been blessed in her life. Sometimes, though, as much as she adored her adoptive parents, she still remembered her mom and dad, remembered that kind of secure, natural, joyous love, remembered feeling as if she belonged. Once upon a time, she’d been a fearless, sassy kid who’d never doubted for a second that she owned the whole world.

She was still fearless. Still sassy—or so the investment guys she worked with regularly teased her. And she’d always been loved, even if she had lost her real parents at a vulnerable young age. But somehow, since that time, she’d never gotten back that feeling of belonging.

As she finished the last of her unpacking, her gaze drifted around the room, from the oil lantern on the bureau to the rag rug to the big, varnished door with the thick brass latch. It was a good, sturdy room. Comfortable. Safe-feeling. But she didn’t belong here any more than she did anywhere else. And at twenty-eight, sometimes, the feeling of loneliness just seemed to overwhelm her.

Lexie headed for the door, doing what she always did when old, disturbing shadows started chasing her. She thought about money. It was the one subject on the planet that she was unquestionably fabulous at. Making it. Hoarding it. Amassing it. Other women dreamed of lovers. Lexie dreamed of taking a bath in silver dollars, luxuriating naked in all that cool, smooth silver, letting it rive and flow and tickle and cool her overheated skin.

Sure, love was nice. But when you lost people, it ripped out your soul. Money was far more effective security. Lose some money, and there was always more to be made.

Of course, for the next few weeks, she was stuck in this godforsaken wilderness and couldn’t make a dime. But as she glanced at her watch and then headed downstairs for dinner, she thought that at least there was no possible threat to her of any kind here—unless one could overdose on too much fresh air.

And both McKay males looked as if they were going to be interesting company and a lot of fun.

No worry for her, in any possible way.

Two

Talk about trouble.

Cash scooped up another serving of lasagna, even though he’d barely tasted the first serving. All through dinner he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off Ms. Alexandra Jeannine Woolf. Any other time, that big name of hers would have amused him. The first time he’d heard it—on the phone—he’d unconsciously assumed that she’d be physically substantial like the size of her name. Instead Lexie couldn’t weigh much more than a sack of potatoes…but that wasn’t to say she wasn’t one potent female package.

One worrisome potent female package.

He’d already inhaled the physical details. Lips like ripe-soft peaches. Eyes like luscious, liquid chocolate. Nothing exactly unusual about her hair—it was short and wildly curly—but the color was a glossy raven-black, a striking contrast to her porcelain pale skin.

Cash gulped down some iced tea. He’d been baby-sitting executives and business hotshots for almost a decade—long enough to recognize the labels she was wearing. More men than women came to Silver Mountain, but the women who chose to stay here invariably had The Look. Expensive. Tasteful. Whatever they wore, you never saw on anybody else. And nothing, naturally, was ever practical for outdoor mountain life.

Because he never forgot his responsibilities, Cash glanced around the dining table. A half hour before, dishes were heaped groaning-full, scents steaming around the long trestle table. A quiet was starting to fall, though, as the group filled up. Instinctively he picked on his shyest guests and said something to Mr. Farraday—the banking mogul seated to his left—and then something else to Stuart Rennbacker, the CEO on his third stay at Silver Mountain, who was still wolfing down the lasagna as if there was no tomorrow.

Cash wasn’t about to neglect the guests, and dinner was when everyone loosened up and got to know each other. Still, part of his attention never left Lexie.

For the third time since dinner began, she dropped a fork. On this cool May night, she was wearing a white angora sweater that snuggled her breasts better than a guy’s fantasy…but no pricey sweater was going to help make her unklutzy.

She laughed at something his son said, and Cash felt his stomach clench. Not with nerves—because he was never nervous—but with worry.

Maybe she was wearing two-hundred-buck slacks, but there was nothing about her laugh that sounded snobbish. She was skinny, short and built skimpy upstairs and down—which, damn it, happened to be his favorite shape on a woman. Even more aggravating than that, she laughed from the belly. In fact, her laugh took up her whole face, crinkled her eyes, showed off a mouthful of superb white teeth—except for the tiny crook in her eyeteeth, which actually only made her look more adorable. And that damn laugh could make any guy’s head spin around—even if it weren’t for the cute little boobs and the dark-chocolate eyes and that sexy mouth. She laughed like she meant it. She laughed like she loved life. She laughed like she would exuberantly let go once the lights were out with the right man.

Get a grip, McKay.

He tried. He said something to Farraday and Rennbacker again—then Whitt, one of the guests who was leaving tonight. By the time his gaze strayed back to Lexie, she was dribbling a forkful of peas, half on her plate, half on the floor, because she was bent down, giving all her attention to his son. She didn’t care about the peas. She looked straight at Sammy when she talked to him. Other people didn’t always do that to a kid. Grown-ups—especially the executive type of upper class grown-ups—had a habit of saying nice, polite things to a child while their eyes wandered around the room seeking more adult interests. Not her.

She liked kids.

Hell, Cash thought morosely. She wasn’t just a little trouble. She was potentially Serious Trouble.

He never had to warn himself to be careful around women. The female of the species had always been the bane of his life. That wasn’t to say his hormones couldn’t go into a wild tailspin for a woman with looks and brains—and brains were usually his worst downfall. He did turn on for a woman with a quick mind. But he was thirty-four, after all. Women-battle-scarred enough to recognize heartache before it had the chance to level him.

His weakness, though, was how people treated Sammy. And Lexie, so far, was treating Sammy like he was the most terrific boy she’d ever laid eyes on. As if the kid were more important and more interesting than anything or anyone else on the planet—which he was, Cash thought. Only what that half-pint brunette didn’t know was that Sammy never—repeat, capital n Never—took to a strange woman.

Sammy, at age eight, was as woman-battle-scarred as Cash was.

Suddenly Keegan stood up at the far end of the table, his ponytail neatly clipped at his nape, a kitchen towel hooked in his belt loop in lieu of an apron. “Anyone up for dessert? I’ve got a big fancy chocolate mousse. Or a blackberry pie.”

Although Lexie demurred from dessert, the others nearly rioted with enthusiasm—no surprise. Everyone except Lexie knew that Keegan could bake dirt and make it taste delicious. The kid was being wasted, working on his Ph.D., when guys were paying a fortune for someone with his old-fashioned wife qualifications. But once dessert came in—typically—the room instantly quieted down, which enabled Cash to watch her in action with Sammy again.

And again, worry started pumping adrenaline through his veins. It wasn’t that he minded her talking to Sammy in any way. The problem was that the inconceivable was happening. Sammy was actually initiating conversation with her, too. And seemed happy to be talking to her besides.

Cash had to strain to catch some words, and finally hooked into part of their conversation. Lexie was obviously answering a question.

“Well, sure, I’ve got a picture of my family that you could see…just a second.” When she started digging in her wallet, naturally, her napkin whisked down to the floor. Then a spoon dropped.

Sammy filched the photo she handed him, and then blinked in surprise. “Like this is your mom and dad? Are you kidding? You look way different than everybody else.”

Cash happened to accidentally glance over just then, and he blinked, too. Usually there was nothing exciting in anyone’s family photos, but this one really was startling. The snapshot framed a family picnic in suburbia somewhere, summer, a hot day, with Lexie sitting cross-legged on the grass. She was flanked by four people her own age—two young men, two young women—and then two older adults standing up. Everyone looked related except Lexie. The others were all Nordic blondes, unusually tall and noticeably athletic and broad shouldered. And then there was Lexie—small, slight and dark, a changeling with those exotic oval-shaped eyes….

“Well, Sammy, the reason I don’t look like them is because we’re not related by blood. I’m adopted. I lost my mom and dad when I was really little, like three years old.”

“You’re adopted?” Sammy repeated, making Cash immediately tense, his slice of blackberry pie forgotten. She had no way of knowing this was an uneasy subject for the kid, but he did.

“Yes, hon.”

“So…what happened to your mom and dad? Did they die or leave you or what hap—?”

“Hey, champ.” Cash’s voice was as lazy and easy as a western summer breeze, not clipped, not showing even a trace of nerves. “I’m sure Ms. Woolf understands that you’re just being curious, but it makes most people uncomfortable to be asked personal questions. You can ask her where she lives, stuff like that. General questions.”

Cash tried never to duck a parenting issue just because there were outsiders around, because outsiders were around their lives all the time. So when he had to correct Sammy, he did his best to teach and explain a reason rather than to make him feel criticized. This time, though, Sammy wasn’t up for hearing any lessons.

“But Cash, I just wanted to know how she got to be adopted—”

“It’s all right,” Lexie said swiftly, before Cash could say anything else. And to Sammy, she bent her head again. “It’s not a secret or uncomfortable thing for me, hon, even though your dad’s right. It could be for some people. But I don’t mind answering you. My mom and dad died. They were killed the same night in a robbery—and it was pretty terrible—but after that, a wonderful family took me in, the Woolfs. They loved me as much as my first mom and dad did, and I love them enormously the same way, so everything turned out just fine.”

“Well…” Sammy shoveled in a giant spoonful of mousse, some of which even made it inside his mouth, while he seemed to think this over. “I wasn’t just being curious. I was int’rested because I’m almost an orphan, too, only not exactly. I never had a dad. ’Course, I never wanted a dad, either.”

“No?” Lexie asked gently.

“No. Because I have Cash, and nobody’s dad could ever be better’n Cash. It’s just us guys against the world. We can do anything because we help each other.”

“That sounds really wonderful.” Again, Lexie’s voice had softened to butter.

“Yup. It’s wonderful. But I can’t be an orphan like you because I have a mom. In a way it’s the same, though, because you lost your mom, and my mom doesn’t want me. Sometimes she calls and pretends to be nice and all, but she never comes here. What I think is, I’m so much trouble that she just doesn’t want nuthin’ to do with me—”

Swiftly Cash scraped back his chair and stood up. “Well, I want you, champ. In fact, I couldn’t run this place without you. Come on and help me in the office for a minute, okay? If you’ll all excuse us.”

Sammy charged into the office, his face all lit up as if he were hot-wired to a joy button. Come hell or high water—or work—Cash spent private time with the boy every day, and before Sammy spilled any more private family information to strangers, he figured it was a politically good time to do their male bonding thing. Not that he was protective of Sammy…but he’d have used an elephant gun on a mosquito that dared threaten the boy. And not think twice.

So first, there was Sammy-time. And then he had to sit down with Keegan to go over the week’s schedule. After that, George was driving Whitt into Coeur D’Allene, which meant that Whitt’s bill needed settling and the guest seen off and George given directions. Then the bills needed to be pawed through. Hell, there was always a ton of stuff that needed doing at the end of the day.

But the new guest preyed on Cash’s mind. It wasn’t because he felt any unsettling, special pull for her—at all. In any way. But Sammy seemed to, and Sammy hadn’t talked to a woman like that in three months of Sundays. Probably longer. And since it was her first day, it was natural enough that he’d try to track her down and make sure she was settling in.

Only she wasn’t in her bedroom.

He tried the lodge living room, where the boys were playing pinochle. When he didn’t find her there, he checked the barn, the gym and hot tub building, the general grounds. Sammy had been stashed in bed by then, tucked safely in their private quarters, Cash wearing a pager so the squirt could always reach him…but in the meantime, he was running out of places to track down Lexie.

Eventually he found her—on the third floor in the library. When he first poked in his head, he saw the lights turned on, but no sign of a body. Once upon a time the library had been an attic, but he’d put up skylights and shelves and then a widow’s walk balcony with a mountain view. From then on, the room had become a favorite for everyone. Sammy had unearthed the one-horse sleigh in one of the old barns—which was completely worthless as a sleigh—but they’d fixed it up together to make a couch-type seat for reading. The old claw-foot bathtub was stuffed with giant pillows—that was Sammy’s favorite reading spot. And most of the men seemed to either pick one of the Abe Lincoln rockers or one of the clunky, chunky Morris chairs. Not her.

There was no hearth or wood-burning stove up here, because the threat of fire was too high, but Cash had wired in abundant electric heat and added rugs to warm up the place. It was her feet he spotted first. They happened to be naked feet, distinctly girl sized, with the toenails painted a candy-apple red—such a sassy, sexy red that he had to grin. There was just no way this one was ever gonna go for a flannel-shirt type of lifestyle.

He strode in and peered over the couch edge, his gaze tracking the trail of bare feet waving in the air to where she was lying flat on her back on a scruffy old rug. She’d bunched the couch blanket under her head, making it into a pillow, and her expensive white sweater and fancy slacks looked as out of place as china at a rodeo.

“You had to lay on the floor? All the chairs too big for you?” he asked humorously.

“What can I say? I’ve always been a floor-sitter.” She smiled at him over the spine of a beaten-up old book. “Were you looking for me?”

“Not to bug you if you’re happy reading. But I wanted to be sure you were settled in okay.” Hell, his pulse was already rattling from just looking at her. Those small breasts disappeared completely with her laying flat, but there was just something about that lithe, compact body that made his hormones buck. It wasn’t some out of control thing. He was no adolescent. But damnation, there was something about her that really soared his wings.

“I’m settled in fine. Although I’m glad you stopped by. I was worried about you.”

“Worried about me?” Cash hunkered down in one of the Morris chairs, leaning forward, not getting too comfortable—but the idea that this half-pint city vamp could have worried about him couldn’t help but arouse his sense of humor.

“Yeah.” She eased up to a sitting position, leaning back against the old corduroy sofa. “I picked Silver Mountain carefully. You have an outstanding reputation. The way I heard it, even the most burned-out, exhausted executives leave here feeling recharged and reenergized. Two of the men claimed they felt as if you’d shaved ten years off their lives.”

“Big exaggeration,” he said wryly, “but you’ll get some experiences you can’t get in an office. I promise you that.”

She nodded. “I like your whole program or I wouldn’t be here. But I’m afraid you’re going to fail with me. And I don’t want you to feel badly when that happens. It won’t be your fault.”

He raised his eyebrows. “How come you’re so positive the program isn’t going to work for you? You haven’t even given it a shot yet.”

“And I will. Believe me, I’ll try two hundred percent. It’s just that I’ve never been able to do anything athletic…so I don’t want you to worry that your teaching skills or your program ideas are at fault. It’ll just be me screwing up. Not you.”

Well, if this wasn’t a damnably strange conversation—but she’d sparked his competitive spirit now. She was right. He hadn’t failed with anyone yet, and he certainly didn’t intend to start with one half-pint brunette. “How about if we don’t worry about failures or successes quite yet? We’ll just take it slow, see how you do tomorrow.”

“Okay. Sure…although maybe I should mention—the only thing I just know I couldn’t handle in your program is the mountain climbing.”

“Heights aren’t your thing, huh?” He cocked his head. “A while back, maybe last year, I think I saw an article about you. The Pixie with the Midas Touch, something like that?”

She winced. “Man, I hate that label. But yeah, that article was about me—except that the journalist slanted it to make me sound way more hotsy-totsy than I am. I started investing in the stock market when I was fourteen. Just birthday money. Nothing extraordinary. But somehow any stock I bought developed this nice habit of doubling, until that ‘Midas Touch’ tag started to follow me around. I couldn’t shake it. Anyway…” She motioned around the library, as if hustling to divert the conversation away from herself. “This is an incredible home you have here. Was the lodge in your family? Is that how you happened to create this retreat for executives?”

From a stranger, he usually minded nosy questions. But not from her. He’d specifically tracked her down—not just to feast his eyes on that sassy mouth or skinny little body. But to clear the air on where he was coming from—and find out for sure where she was. “Yeah, the house was in the family. My great-gramps trekked to Idaho back in the Silver Rush. There’s still a petered-out silver mine on the property, although it was never worth much.”

“So you grew up here?”

“Yes, although not by choice. When I was a kid, the only thing on my mind was city lights and getting out of here. But we lost both my dad and my gramps in the same logging accident, so I grew up as the only male around. My grandmother gave me a sense of honor I couldn’t shake. Family first. That was her cardinal principle, and about the time my mom died and left me the property, I was stuck with it. No point putting it on the market—who in his right mind would want to buy it? There’s nothing up here but mountains and eagles. And I was living in Boise then, making good money—and spending it even faster. In fact, that’s how I got my Cash nickname, because I never could hold onto a dime. And to tell you the truth, I never cared.”

The start of a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. She was enjoying the yarn spinning. “So the lodge was in your family…but you had absolutely no reason to want to be here.”

“Exactly. Except that I have one younger sister, Hannah. And somehow she missed all the family lessons about that honor-first business. She got pregnant with Sammy. Took off to find her so-called fiancé after Sammy was born and it seems she still hasn’t found him, because Sam’s eight now and he’s still with me.”

Compassion seemed to soften and darken her eyes. “I loved watching you two together. You’re obviously close.”

“Cut-and-dried, there is nothing I wouldn’t do for him. He may only be my nephew, but I love him like a son.” He used his drawling, lazy voice. Reliably that tone tended to relax people, which helped when he had to say something tough. “Somehow the place has turned into a real male bastion. I swear I’d hire women—there’s no reason in hell the staff has to be all male—but there just doesn’t seem to be any females dying for jobs in this neck of the woods. And yeah, for sure, we have women guests, but they’re only here for a short time. Which is why I brought this subject up, so I could tell you the lay of the land as far as Sam. He can be a little sensitive around women.”

“He’s a darling.”

“Yeah, I think so. But with females, he’s not long on trust. He just doesn’t believe any woman is going to stick around for him. The guests come and go. His mother’s flightier than wind. And when I saw him talking to you at dinner—”

“You got worried?”

“Not worried. But he doesn’t do that. Warm up to women strangers the way he did with you. He usually avoids all females like they had cooties. So if he starts to form an attachment, I’m just asking you to be careful. He acts like a pretty tough little kid, and he is. But he can still get hurt.”

“I’m glad you told me.” Her eyes met his. “Just for the record, I’d shoot myself before deliberately hurting a child. Just in case that was the message you were trying to get across in that gentle way of yours.”

She cut her gaze away from his so fast that Cash felt a sharp slash of guilt. “Hell. Did I hurt your feelings? Keegan says I’m as subtle as a sledgehammer on my good days.”

“I was teasing you, not complaining. And it wouldn’t matter if you hurt my feelings or not. I’d do the same thing in your shoes—say whatever needed saying to protect a vulnerable child in my care. I loved watching the two of you together.” Swiftly she glanced at her wrist. “Good grief, it’s almost midnight. I’m keeping you up, and me, too. I just came up here to find a book.”

She grabbed the book, then uncoiled and leaped to her feet, then swooped back down—apparently—for her shoes. Cash saw her suddenly flying around, but when he stood up from the chair, she seemed nowhere near him. He wasn’t exactly sure how a shoe suddenly hurtled out of her hand. Or why the book dropped. Or how the crown of her head somehow managed to ram into his chest, throwing both of them off balance.

Instinctively he grabbed her, his hands closing around her upper arms until she steadied. And she steadied fast enough, but she was still red-faced and laughing when she tilted her face.

“Cripes, I’m so sorry. I warned you I was clumsy, didn’t I?”

“Don’t worry about it—um…” She started to bounce down to reach for the fallen shoe again, and almost jabbed a sharp elbow in his crotch. Startled, he grabbed her arms again—as gently as he could—and tried to tactfully lift her a few inches safer distance from him. “How about if you let me get your shoes and the book? And don’t move for a second.”

“Scared I’ll do you injury, huh?”

“I think you’ve got incredible potential as a defensive end. Although I’m afraid defensive ends don’t usually come in your size.”

She chuckled. But then her laughter faded. As if someone flipped a switch, Cash was suddenly conscious of the sudden hush in the room, the dark shadows and intimacy of lamplight, the scent of books…and her perfume. It wasn’t pixieish and gamine like her, but a soft, sexy, exotic scent, spices he didn’t know, flowers he couldn’t name. The perfume made him uneasy, but that wasn’t why he shifted on his feet.

An embarrassed rose was still brushed across her cheeks from her near tumble. But at that second, her face was still tilted toward his, her lips barely parted, those liquid chocolate eyes fastened on his face.

He had the craziest sensation that she wanted to kiss him. Or to be kissed. By him.

That first lunatic sensation was followed by another. He wanted to kiss her. The way he hadn’t wanted to kiss a woman in forever. Not a let’s-get-it-on kiss. Not a hi-there-honey kiss. Not a let’s-test-these-waters kiss.

But a kiss that communicated Damn, I’ve been waiting for you forever. I didn’t know I’d ever find you. I really didn’t believe you even existed. Not for me.

His throat was suddenly too dry to swallow, his pulse galloping like a colt’s in spring. He couldn’t remember ever having this stupid a reaction to a woman. Naturally, though, he recovered swiftly, smiled, moved. Especially moved. “Well, you’re not going to have any trouble finding your way back to your room, are you?”

“I don’t think I’ve memorized the whole layout, yet, but I know I can find my room, no problem.”

“Well, I’ll see you in the morning then, Lexie.”

“I’ll turn out the lights—”

Again she spun around, so fast—again—that her incredibly lethal elbow almost landed a hook in his ribs. “I’ll get the lights, don’t worry.”

“Did I—?”

“No, no, you didn’t do a bit of harm. I just don’t want you walking in the dark in an unfamiliar place. I’ll follow you in a minute, and clip the lights off after that.”

But he lied, Cash mused. She was harm. He couldn’t explain how she’d done that ooga booga thing with him a few moments before, but for damn sure, he didn’t respond to normal women that way. Something about her was different.

And worrisome.

Three

At 6:29 a.m., Lexie’s right hand poked out from the cocoon of blankets, lifted midair and waited. When the alarm clock buzzed 6:30, her palm slammed on the sucker almost before it had a chance to screech.

Blearily she opened her eyes. She was used to insomnia, used to surviving for days on end with short-sleep. She was also used to getting up at insanely early hours. But she wasn’t used to dreaming about strange men, and it put her off her stride.

She swung her legs over the side of the unfamiliar bed, switched on the light, winced at the glare and then tested her body for complaints. A lack-of-sleep headache pounded in her temples. Her feet hurt from too many hours of traveling the day before, wearing impractical shoes. The muscles in her neck were painfully tensed from too many hours of tossing and turning. All in all, Lexie figured she should be good and miserable.

Instead, an image of Cash McKay pounced in her mind like a charge of fresh, delightful, invigorating lightning. Instantly she forgot all the creaking body parts—or else they self-healed with amazing speed. She couldn’t wait to get up and see what the day brought.

Yikes. The terrifying thought bounced through her head that she was losing what little mind she had left.

By the time she’d slipped on pale jeans, a pastel shirt and new hiking shoes—the leather soft as butter—she was scowling…and feeling more like herself. How could she possibly be looking forward to this day? If she were at home, by now she’d have made three phone calls, checked her home fax and inhaled early-morning CNN before her teeth were brushed. She didn’t know how the Dow or NASDAQ had closed yesterday. She could hear birds, but not a single sound of anything electronic anywhere. It wasn’t natural.

She wasn’t going to make it here four weeks. Heck, she wasn’t going to make it four days.

And downstairs, there he was—and not just Cash, but his sidekick. Actually, through the thick red-stone door of the dining room, a number of male bodies were milling around the laid-out buffet, but it was only the dad and son team who snared her attention. One of them was practicing spelling words for a test that day, and all Lexie could think was how adorable they were, both in worn-in jeans and dark long-sleeved T-shirts and boots, both with a cowlick, both with the same swaggering walk. The pair of them could have a matching sign on their foreheads—Cash and Son, two against the world, no women wanted.

Since she wasn’t looking to be a woman in anyone’s life, Lexie felt unsure why the two McKays put such a darn lump in her throat. They were just so…darling together. So fierce. So obviously a family, with love they wore like a protective shield. They so obviously belonged together and watched out for each other. But then the one with those sexy, battered eyes spotted her in the doorway.

“Morning, Lex, come on in and grab a plate. You met Slim Farraday and Stuart Rennbacker last night, didn’t you?”

She greeted both the guys, and yes, she remembered them from dinner the evening before. Slim was the banking mogul, a little man with kind eyes of around sixty who walked with the frailty of someone who’d recently been ill. She’d instinctively wanted to mother him, and they’d had a great time talking capital gains and futures the night before. Stuart was on his third stay at Silver Mountain, and was a blustery, gruff man in his forties, with the look of an executive and worry built-in around the eyes. They’d both been welcoming to her yesterday, but since it’d been a long sleepless night, she wasn’t capable of being friendly until she’d mainlined a couple cups of the obvious.

“Sorry, babe, no coffee.”

She spun around at the sound of Keegan’s voice. Judging from looks, the scruffy-faced kid couldn’t be more than a few years younger than her, but Lexie felt as if she were worlds older in life. Keegan was just one of those perpetual-student types of people. Sweet. Idealistic. Full of good cheer and endless ideas—which meant he was annoying first thing in the morning. She narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean, no coffee?”

Keegan motioned to the tray he was carting in from the kitchen. “I’ve got a high energy drink made for all of you. It’ll give you all the zoom that coffee does but without any of the negative side effects. Trust me, you’re going to love it.”

On a scale between grape cough syrup and castor oil, Keegan’s high energy drink fell about in the middle. Disgusting. And it had no caffeine. In spite of the bulging buffet table, the offerings were primarily granola and fruit. No eggs Benedict, no toast slathered with guava jelly, no nice, fattening, cholesterol-stuffed doughnuts. Ten minutes later, Lexie was hustled outside with the guys, her stomach whining from starvation and deprivation both.

She wasn’t into nature—and didn’t want to be—but even a hard-core morning grump couldn’t help but savor this one. A lake cupped between two mountains gleamed like sterling silver in the morning sunlight. A whisper of fog danced around the trees, the scent of wet pines so strong it was almost a perfume. Squirrels scampered out of their path. A deer frolicked so close that Lexie tripped and almost ran headlong into a tree because she couldn’t stop staring at the darling. And the sky was downright scary. It was such a stinging-fresh blue that she suddenly realized how long it’d been since she’d been anywhere that city pollution hadn’t grayed and diluted the sky’s natural hues.

The best part of the view, though, was watching their leader. Cash hiked the group up a hill so steep that Lexie started suffering oxygen deprivation…but she still felt the emotional tug that she’d experienced the night before. She’d loved how he’d confronted her about Sammy—it wasn’t about her personally, she understood that, but about anyone who could potentially hurt the boy. She loved his protectiveness, loved the look in his eyes when he talked about Sammy, and yeah, she’d liked that personal pull between the two of them, too.

He hadn’t kissed her…but he’d wanted to. And she hadn’t kissed him…but she’d wanted to. It had been a long time, if ever, since she’d felt that kind of rope-tug for a stranger—particularly for someone so completely unlike herself.

Right then, though, he was herding his minigroup in a circle. “Okay, everybody…Lexie, you’re our new man today but as you’ll discover, we start every morning the same way, with some kind of problem-solving exercise. It’s kind of a way we warm up together, and first, we pair up. I’ll work with Stuart, and Lexie, you pair up with Slim Farraday…Slim really knows the ropes.”

Lexie immediately smiled reassuringly at the frail-looking Slim, thinking nothing sounded too tough so far. The “problem-solving” business sounded interesting rather than athletic, and surely anything that Slim could physically do, she could do as well? She pushed up her pastel shirt to the elbows as Cash continued talking.

“Okay. Lexie and Slim, this is your problem for the morning. You see the creek beyond the trees there?” Of course they saw the creek. Impossible to miss anything so dazzling in the infernal morning sunshine. “All right. You two have a half an hour to get to the other side of it. That’s all you have to do.”

“Just hold on a minute, Geronimo.” Lexie waved her hand to catch his attention. “There’s no bridge. And you didn’t give us any tools or ladders or anything—”

“That’s right,” Cash affirmed. “In fact, that’s the point. You’re going to have to use whatever you can find in nature to solve the problem.”

Hands on hips, Lexie wandered over to the dazzling creek in question. The water was so clear that she could easily see the creek-middle had to be waist deep. The distance couldn’t be eight feet, more like seven, but still too far to jump, and certainly too challenging a distance for Slim to try jumping. One dip of her finger announced that the water temperature was sub zero—if that warm—so wading across was completely out of the question.

Mr. Farraday sidled up next to her. “Cash always seems to give us what looks like an insolvable problem. But every morning so far, we’ve managed to find some way to solve it in spite of ourselves.”

“And we’ll solve this one, too,” Lexie assured him. She’d made her first paper million before the age of twenty-two, hadn’t she? How hard could it be to cross a little creek? And Cash—the cad—was already out of sight. Some gentleman he turned out to be, pairing the two husky macho guys, and leaving an undersized Ms. Klutz with Mr. Frail.

“I know we can do it,” Mr. Farraday affirmed, and then scratched his chin. “But…how?”

“Hmm…” Again, she pushed up her sleeves. Her system was still offended at being deprived of caffeine, CNN and her ticker tape, yet somehow her pulse was picking up a charge. Challenges had always been one of her favorite things. Inexplicably it made her feel…safe…when she took on something that was supposed to be impossible for her to do.

Firing up on the problem, now, she motioned to the woods behind them. “God knows, I’ve been tripping over fallen branches since we started walking this morning…so how about this. Slim, you scout out the longest branches you can find. Don’t lift ’em. I’ll lift ’em. And we’ll just make ourselves a bridge out of the fallen branches, secured by those rocks in the middle of creek…and then we’ll just walk across. Piece of cake, right, partner?” She lifted her hand.

Slim gave her a gentle high-five. “Right, partner.”

When Cash heard the sound of a female shriek, he took off at a dead run—knowing, of course, who had to be doing the shrieking.

He charged around trees and brush, barreling to the creek edge…only to see Lexie—still caterwauling—sitting on her butt in the middle of the creek, soaked right up to her neck.

Even as he clomped in the water to fetch her, he was mentally shaking his head. There was a reason he’d paired Lexie with Slim this morning for this particular problem-solving exercise—and blast it, the reason was that she couldn’t fail. The only logical way to cross the creek was to make a bridge of branches—and the terrain had the whole winter’s worth of down pine branches to make that easy. And they’d done that. Made a darn secure little bridge across the water. And Slim Farraday, with no problem at all, even with his arthritic hip, had made it to the other side with no difficulty.

But then there was Ms. Klutz.

“Cash! Help me! I’m going to die of hypothermia! It’s so cold I can’t breathe and I can’t move and I can’t—”

“You’re not going to die and it’s not that cold.” He bent down and grabbed her. For a drowned rat—and a miniaturesized drowned rat at that—she weighed a ton. The branches and mud in her hair didn’t help. And when she hurled her arms around him in a monkey-hold, she almost tipped both of them back in the water—not to mention that her soaked, clinging body completely drenched his in two seconds flat.

God knew why he had the sudden, desperate urge to kiss her. There wasn’t a hormone alive that could conceivably wake up in these temperatures or conditions, and his mind wasn’t on sex but on frustration. The first exercise he gave clients was always intended to give them a feeling of success and confidence, and he’d wanted that even more for Lexie, because she’d been so damn clear that she already expected to fail. Only damnation, no one had trouble with this exercise. Ever. Before. Her.

“I’m freezing, I’m freezing—”

He knew. He could feel her tight, wrinkled nipples, through his drenched shirt and hers. He could feel her fanny under his hands as well, maybe even feel her goose bumps. God knew, she was clutching him tighter than glue. “I know you’re cold. But you’re going to be back at the lodge and climbing in warm, dry clothes in ten minutes, tops, I promise. And after that, you partner with me,” he said irritably. Hell, his teeth were starting to chatter now, too.

“With you?”

“Yeah. With me.”

She lifted her chin so she could look in his eyes. “Um, Cash? This was my fault. Not yours. I told you I wouldn’t do well with the program, didn’t I? I don’t do well with anything physical. It’s just reality—”

Maybe it was her reality, but it wasn’t his. Any other client who’d taken a tumble, he’d give them the morning off, let them soak up some sunshine with their feet up. But a principle was on the line here.

Cash wasn’t sure what the principle was, but there had to be one. He hadn’t built Silver Mountain into a first-class executive retreat by letting clients fail. That was part of it. His whole program was based on making sure every dad-blamed exhausted executive got something good out of it, and he sure wasn’t breaking that record for her. And somehow she’d done something to him so that he couldn’t get his mind off her. That had gotten tangled up in the principle, too.

Bottom line was, an hour later, Keegan had been sent out to handle the program for the others, and Cash was fresh-showered, dry-clothed and pacing the front lobby, waiting for her. Spare minutes after that, Lexie bounced down the stairs, wearing a new pastel pair of jeans and another cute little pair of tennies and what looked like a raw-silk shirt to him—even if the pattern was a country plaid. Her hair was dry already—how long could it take to dry a couple of inches of bouncy curl? And she was smiling up at him before he’d even had a chance to erase his scowl.

“Okay. I’m warmed up and ready for the next torture,” she said lightly.

“Good.” He didn’t fill her in on the next plan until they’d hiked a good distance up the mountain. She spotted the outside climbing gym, but obviously had no idea what it was.

He unlocked the storage shed and started gearing up, first choosing the right helmet and harness for Lexie, then sorting through the obvious hexes and cams and lobster claws for the exercise…but he kept a wary eye on Lex. He knew she wasn’t going to go for this easily. Temporarily, though, the view just seemed to both bewilder and confuse her. She’d perched her hands on her hips and kept spinning around.

“This is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. What on earth are all those ropes and poles and boards for? It looks like a playground in the sky,” she joked.

“That’s exactly what it is. A playground in the sky. It’s where we teach the ropes course, the basics of mountain climbing.” He motioned to various sites over their heads. “There are about thirty different exercises you can do up there. The climbing wall is just what it looks like. So is the rope ladder. But then there are other spots, where you can practice using anchors and belaying techniques—”

“Whoa.” Her smile died faster than a switched off faucet. “Double whoa. Cash, didn’t we talk about this yesterday? I’d never have come here if I wasn’t serious about giving your whole program a go. Just because I’m lousy at athletics doesn’t mean I’m not willing to try almost anything. But climbing is honestly different—”

“Yeah. So you said yesterday. Climbing was the only thing you didn’t want to do.” He tried fitting a white helmet on her head, only to discover that it was way too big. He clipped back to the shed for the children’s sized helmets.

“Yes. For real. Because I’m afraid of heights.”

“I understand.” The red helmet fit her perfectly, even if it did smoosh down the riot of dark curls. Those soft dark eyes staring up at him were bleak with dread. “That’s exactly why I want you to do this, Lexie. Because you’re scared. When you came here, you agreed that I’d be the boss, remember? And I’m not asking you to try climbing to make you miserable. I’m asking you because of what happened this morning.”

“You mean my falling in the creek?” she asked in confusion.

“Uh-huh. I gave you the easiest exercise we have. And you flunked it. So now we’re going to try the opposite—giving you something that’s tough for you. And you’re not only not going to flunk this one, you’re going to ace it.”

“Uh, Cash. I don’t think so. In fact…see my hands? They’re already getting sweaty. And my stomach. Even thinking about heights is making my stomach turn over. The thing is…”

She never finished that sentence. She stopped talking when he started fitting the climbing harness on her. There was nothing suggestive about putting a helmet on her head—but the harness was necessarily more intimate. She was fully clothed in jeans, of course. But each leg had to be fit in a stirrup, and secured around her upper thighs. He did the securing.

Then the harness had to be worked over her hips and secured at her waist.

He did that securing, too.

He’d done it for a zillion women. And men. It was part of his job, for Pete’s sake. It was one of the ways he could guarantee a client’s safety, because he supervised the equipment use every step of the way. Only that’s what he was always thinking about. Safety. Not thighs and fannies. Not specifically the way her slim thigh tensed when he buckled the harness snug. Not specifically the way his knuckles accidentally brushed against her pelvis. Not specifically the way his fingers curled around the harness as he adjusted the leather around her hips and fanny. Not the way her eyes suddenly shot to his when he adjusted the buckle at her waist.

Since Lexie seemed to have quit breathing altogether, Cash figured he’d better finish that sentence for her. “The thing is…rock climbing is about trust. Not blind trust. Proven trust. There are different kinds of rock climbing, Lex. What we’re doing isn’t ‘free’ climbing. It’s called ‘technical’ climbing.”

She didn’t answer. When she looked down, though, to where his hands were still fumbling at her waist, she very likely saw his zipper jutting out as if someone had stuck a long, smooth rock in his jeans. Well, hell. It was a knee-jerk biological response. Nothing a guy could help. How could a man possibly touch a woman like Lex and not feel a volatile response?

“Technical climbing is especially about trust,” he said gruffly. “Because I’m going to be attached to you with equipment the whole time. You’re afraid of falling, right?”

Suddenly she was looking straight in his eyes and not an inch lower. “Yes.”

“So that’s what we’re going to do, Lex. You’re going to climb up a bit, and then we’re going to make you fall. Only I’m going to be attached to you with equipment the whole time. Nothing dangerous is going to happen. There is no possible way I would let you get hurt, do you hear me? And I’m going to prove that to you. Because when you fall, I’ll be there for you.”

Somehow anything he said seemed to be coming out wrong—as if he were talking about falling in love instead of falling off rocks. And there was this look in Lexie’s eyes that amounted to a violent “no” no matter what he was talking about.

“It’s not that I don’t believe you, Cash. I do. I met you and I trusted you on sight,” she assured him. “Only I’d rather eat snails than be suspended from any height. Look. Maybe I’m just not cut out to even try your program. Don’t take it personally. It’s not—it’s me. I’m fabulous with money, it’s my thing, but get me around anything physical—”

He never meant to kiss her. Didn’t even know he was going to do it. It was about her trying to be funny about being scared. It was about his feeling bad about her falling in the creek. It was because she’d gotten Sammy to talk to her yesterday, and because she looked so cute in the helmet, and because he was already turned on from fitting her in the harness stirrups, and…hell. He didn’t really have a clue why he reached for her.

He just did.

She must have guessed a millisecond before it was coming because her lips parted—as if in shock. Or as if she planned to say something. As far as Cash could tell, Lexie had something to say about almost everything.

That was about the last coherent thought he had for quite a while.

She tasted like something expensive and forbidden and desired. Her lips…nothing was that soft. Nothing in this life. Although the morning had been cool, now there was the barest breeze in the air, sweet and heavy with spring scents. The scent of longing. The scent of young dreams. The scent of yearning.

It wasn’t that Cash forgot that every single damn woman in his life had caused him nothing but trouble. It was just…he didn’t care right then.

There was a hush in the air. It was coming from her. There was a drumroll of need pounding in his pulse. It was coming from her. There was a willingness floating through his bloodstream, a willingness to do something damn stupid—like get involved with her, a woman who was leaving no later than four weeks from now…and that was rashly assuming she made it four days. But the desire punching him in the gut suddenly made all that common sense seem no-account foolishness.

Amazing. That he’d needed her all this time and hadn’t known.

Amazing. He pushed off the helmet and got his hands in her hair—amazed that he’d survived this long before giving in to such a fierce need. The texture of her wily, unruly curls, the look of the silky sunlight on her cheek, the sound of her sudden yielding sigh…ah, hell, there was no analyzing any of it.

He took her mouth and then again, tasting her, sampling her, then coming back for the whole feast. Tongues touched tongues, then tangled. He swooped her closer, half lifting her, not trying to be crude, not wanting to be, but if he couldn’t feel her breasts and pelvis layered intimately against him, he wasn’t positive he’d managed to survive another second.

Those small, slim hands suddenly willingly slid around his neck. Another sigh whispered from her throat, caught between kisses, trapped between kisses. She was still wearing the leather climbing harness, which in no way inhibited movement but only protected her from danger. Only they weren’t climbing now, and he had no harness to protect himself, not when she surged up on tiptoe and robbed him of a kiss that he wasn’t necessarily planning to give away. She could convince a saint to take up sin. And oh, man.

She was good.

Sunlight speared in the middle of the forest, washing them in that magic light. He didn’t give a damn. His work—forget that, too. The two clients finished their morning exercise, the lodge, the bills, his missing sister, Hannah—he didn’t care about any of it. When he finally yanked his head up to haul in some air, he wasn’t sure where he’d just been—where they’d just been—but it sure as hell wasn’t his Silver Mountain lodge in Idaho.

He was going to worry about that kiss. A lot.

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