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The face went with the name, all cocky dimpled smile, two-day stubble, and tanned skin. He was beautiful but compact in the same way movie stars spotted in the real world are always just as gorgeous as they are on screen, but much smaller.
Oddly, he was also glistening.
“Why are you so shiny?”
He laughed, running his hand through his tousled blond locks. “A woman named Linda is giving wicked massages up the street at the craft fair. I couldn’t resist.” It was the Fourth of July, and there were festivities going on all over town.
“Oh.” That wasn’t as weird as some of the possibilities that had crossed her mind. “I’m Lexie.”
“Nice to meet you, Lexie. Are you sticking around for the parade?”
“When does it start?”
“About an hour. There’s an ice cream social after.”
She just wanted to ride, alone, but she knew feeling sorry for herself wasn’t going to do her any favors.
Plus, she needed to learn how to loosen up. This guy had just bought a massage at a craft fair and was staying in town to attend an ice cream social. Maybe he could give her a few tips.
“Sure, why not?” she’d said.
They didn’t make it to May Creek that night. Instead, she took in the tiny Fourth of July parade with Lance, ate ice cream, and chatted with the locals about cycling and wild horses. With Lance’s encouragement, she ended up buying a straw cowboy hat from a vendor at the craft fair, line dancing at Hamilton’s one bar, and pitching her tent next to his in the backyard of Linda the masseuse.
All told, it was a pretty fun day.
It was also a good preview of what touring with Lance was like. He was a party on wheels, pretty much the exact opposite of Tom. He didn’t know an osprey from a blackbird, and when they crossed the Continental Divide his carefully neutral response to her exclamations of delight made it plain he didn’t understand even the basics of geology.
Tom had been great about all that stuff. When you could get him to talk, anyway.
But Lance made up for not being the brightest light on the patio with his easygoing charm and zest for adventure. He made a new friend everywhere they stopped, usually someone interesting who would end up offering to give them a horseback tour or a dinner of homemade chimichangas or the best root beer in Montana. And when they rode, they rode fast, easily hitting Lexie’s mileage targets.
There was only one problem: he kept flirting with her. She wished she’d told him she had a boyfriend or a husband, but she’d been honest, so he knew she was single. And really, the attention should have been flattering. Lance was a good-looking guy, if a little young for her at twenty-five. Under normal circumstances, she might have slept with him that first night in Hamilton, when he made a pass at her under the stars in the masseuse’s backyard.
But she hadn’t. Because no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop thinking about Tom. The jerk had ruined her for all other men.
It was what he had wanted all along—Montana spread out before him, one pass after another rising and sinking under his front tire, the blue skies, the silence. He camped on federal land and didn’t speak to a soul for four days after he left Lexie behind.
It should have been peaceful. Instead, it was lonely.
Lonely was a new feeling for him, and he didn’t like it much. It suggested a dependence he was uncomfortable with after so many years on his own. But it wasn’t as if he could deny it. There was little point in trying to bullshit yourself when it was just you and your thoughts, day after day, mile after mile.
No, the truth was he missed her. He missed the sound of her voice, the way she’d strike up a conversation with the guy who rang up her groceries or compliment a campsite manager on his well-tended property. Hell, he even missed hearing her talk to her husband on the phone. It had made him jealous hearing how easily James could make her laugh, the comfortable way she teased him, but it had also been kind of nice to know what she sounded like when her guard was down and she was 100 percent unfiltered Lexie.
She’d only ever sounded that way with him a few times—most memorably a few minutes before he walked away from her, when he was pressing her up against a wall and kissing her senseless.
Now there was a memory he couldn’t shake. The ecstasy written all over her face, the feel of her body pressing against his, the heat of her, the throaty sound of her voice. He relived it a hundred times a day, and every time he came to the same conclusion. He never should have kissed her back. He never should have touched her. And once he had, there hadn’t been any choice but to leave, because nothing short of leaving was going to keep him from doing it again.
Having principles was for suckers. He’d learned that lesson well six years ago. And here he was learning it all over again. If he weren’t such a sucker, he’d have Lexie—for a little while, anyway—and he was pretty sure having Lexie would make him a hell of a lot happier than having principles was making him.
But he was who he was, and if he’d been able to do a
nything about it, he would have done it a long time ago. So he watched his front tire eat up the pavement, and he rode as hard and as long as he could every day, trying to keep his mind blank—and failing.
By the time he got to Dillon, home of the University of Montana Western and not much else, he was sufficiently sick of the nonstop loop of longing and recrimination in his head that he called Taryn.
“So I’m standing outside the Patagonia outlet store wondering what you want for your birthday,” he said when she picked up.
“My birthday’s not for three months.”
