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“No. I don’t think so,” he replied.
Lance let out a sigh of relief and stood up, stretching. “Good. I’m going to hit the showers then. Got to get ready for tonight.”
He winked at him, and it was the last straw. Tom crossed the campsite until he towered over the little twerp. “If you get her drunk and make her do something she’ll regret, I’ll kick your teeth down your throat,” he warned.
Lance swallowed visibly but didn’t back down. “Get your hands off me, dude.”
Tom realized he was squeezing Lance’s arm so hard his knuckles had turned white. “Are we clear?” he asked, his voice rough with rage.
“Crystal.”
He dropped his hand, wiping his palm on his shirt, and took a step back. “Good.”
Lance smiled again, and this time he was taunting him. “She’s not going to regret it. They never do.” And then he turned and strolled off toward the showers, whistling.
Tom returned to his tent, disgusted with himself. If he had any sense, he’d get on his bike and ride on into Wyoming as fast as he could. Instead, he was going to stick around to make sure Lexie was safe. And to let her knife him in the gut personally.
It had been a mistake to wear the dress. She could see that now. She’d bought it when they stopped at the Patagonia outlet in Dillon. It wasn’t anything fancy, just a no-fuss black V-neck T-shirt dress, but it made a nice change after wearing the same two T-shirts and pairs of shorts for a month.
Arriving at Yellowstone was a big moment, so when Lance had suggested they go to the Roosevelt Lodge for dinner instead of warming up canned food as she’d planned, she’d changed into the dress, wanting to mark the occasion by doing something a bit different.
Unfortunately, Lance got the wrong idea. He’d ramped up the flirting over the past few days, totally oblivious to her gentle attempts to turn him down, and the dress was like the proverbial red flag. All through dinner, he came on to her like they were the last two people on Earth and they needed to get going on repopulating the planet. He told her she looked beautiful. He tried to feed her bites of his entrée. Nothing she did to try to steer the conversation back to neutral ground had worked.
It was looking like she was going to need to ditch the guy. She didn’t want to, because he’d been a pretty good riding companion, but she was getting tired of being hit on every five minutes, and it wasn’t as if she was going to change her mind. There was only one man she wanted to sleep with, and he was probably in Colorado by now.
Her chest did its usual painful squeezing thing at the thought of Tom. She’d seen a tent that looked like his on her way back from the showers, and for half a minute she’d allowed herself to hope that maybe, just maybe, he was here. Maybe he’d waited for her.
But she’d forced herself to be realistic, refusing to go over and investigate the site, which was clearly unoccupied at the time. Tom had a popular tent model, and anyway, she couldn’t ride the rest of the way across the country hoping to see him again. She’d drive herself crazy that way. She just had to get used to the fact that her idiocy had driven him off.
Back at the campsite, Lance built a fire and coaxed her over with a bag of marshmallows and two sharpened sticks. While he incinerated his marshmallow and ate the goo off his stick, Lexie sat beside him on one of the logs that framed the fire pit and patiently turned hers at regular intervals until the whole thing was a uniform golden brown. It took a while, but it was worth getting it right. A perfect toasted marshmallow was all about contrast—the crisp, papery exterior setting off the hot, sticky, sugary mess inside.
Then Lance pulled plastic glasses and a bottle of wine from somewhere and opened it with a flourish. Crap. It was a seduction ambush, and she’d walked right into it. Now she had to find a way to convince Lance she wasn’t interested, ideally without hurting his feelings. He’d gone to a lot of trouble here, after all.
Ten minutes later, she decided it would be fine if she had to hurt his feelings. The guy had as many hands as an octopus, and he didn’t seem to want to take no for an answer. If he draped his arm casually over her shoulders or touched her bare knee one more time, she was seriously going to punch him.
She removed his hand from her leg and dropped it back onto his lap. “Look, I don’t know how many ways you’re going to make me tell you this, but—”
Lance cut her off with his mouth, shoving his tongue between her teeth before she had time to react. As soon as she came to her senses, she pulled her head back and pushed him away as hard as she could manage with the hand that was between them. Her other hand was still occupied with the marshmallow stick.
“Get off me!” she shouted. “What are you doing?”
He came right back at her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. “Come on, Lexie, stop playing hard to get.” While she tried to squirm out of his grasp, he licked her neck, an experience she found about as erotic as being slobbered on by a dog. All the while, he was trying to snake his hand between her thighs.
“If you don’t get off me right now, I’m going to start screaming, and I’m not going to stop until you’ve been arrested for assault.” She made this threat in her loudest voice, hoping to attract attention, but it had no obvious effect on Lance, so she also used the marshmallow stick to poke him hard in the crotch.
“Ow! Sonofabitch!” Lance yelled, pulling back. That freed up her arms, which she used to knock him off the log, sending him sprawling onto his back in the dirt.
She stood up as he scrambled onto his elbows. “What’s your problem?” Lance yelled, as if her attack had been unprovoked.
“I’d say her problem is you.” The voice came from behind her, outside the circle of light cast by the campfire. Tom’s voice.
She turned. With his face half in the shadows and his expression stern, he looked like he’d been carved from granite. Tension rolled off him in waves. His hands curled into fists. Angry Tom at his angriest.
Lexie had never been so happy to see anyone in her life.
“You okay, Lexie?”
“Where did you come from?”
