The disturbing thought that enjoyment wasn’t an integral part of his everyday life put Jake on his feet and had him moving toward the cabin door. “C’mon, Spitwad,” he commanded as he strode onto the porch. “Time to go jogging. And you better keep up or I’ll leave you out in the woods to find your way home. Or get eaten by a bear—whichever.”
The mutt stared at him, then glanced at the half-eaten chunk of meat between his front paws.
“If I’ve gotta hang out here in the boonies, then you’ve gotta hang out with me, Fuzzball,” Jake told the mutt. “Get off your lazy butt and let’s go.”
The pup defied him and went back to gnawing on the meat.
Jake stamped over to snatch the food away, tucked it in a napkin and then crammed it into his shirt pocket. Left with nothing else to do, the pup followed at Jake’s heels.
Left with nothing else to do, Jake thought as he jogged along the footpath that wound through the hills. Boy, if that didn’t just about say it all!
MORIAH HAD JUST returned to the lobby after chatting with the guest in cabin number three, when a baritone roar gushed through the open window. She had a pretty good idea who let out that booming shout. She made a beeline for cabin number seven.
Before she got within a hundred yards of the cabin the offensive smell of skunk closed in around her. Moriah covered the lower portion of her face with her hand, then glanced this way and that.
“Jake?” she called to the darkness at large.
“Over here, damn it to hell!” he bellowed like an outraged moose.
Moriah veered toward the hiking path, relying on the golden shaft of light that streamed through the cabin windows. She heard the pup’s abrupt yip and Jake’s muttered growl.
“C’mere, you idiotic mutt!” he snarled.
The bushes shook, then Jake, clutching the little pooch like a football, came into view. Moriah reflexively stepped back several paces when the foul odor grew more potent.
“What happened?” she asked without daring to take a breath.
“Spitwad thinks he’s a damn bloodhound,” Jake muttered irritably. “He flushed out a damn skunk and we both suffered a direct hit. You’ll have to go into my cabin and fetch some clean clothes for me.”
It wasn’t a request, she noted. It was a direct order. She suspected Jake was accustomed to barking orders, which was probably why he balked and brooded after being forced to do as he was told at the resort.
“There’s no way that I’m going to enter my cabin in these smelly clothes,” he grumbled. “The whole place will stink to high heaven. I’ll have to bathe in the river first.”
“I’ll be right back with clean clothes,” she said as she whipped around and sprinted to the cabin.
Hurriedly, Moriah grabbed a blasé-brown shirt and blue jeans. She rifled through the luggage to locate underwear. Her sense of urgency screeched to a halt when she spotted the sexy bikini briefs. Moriah snickered right out loud, envisioning Jake prancing around in this leopard-print underwear—and nothing else….
Moriah quashed the tantalizing vision and stifled the alarming thought immediately. It shocked her to no end that she could so easily imagine what Jake would look like in this leopard-print garment. It also unsettled her to the extreme to realize that the initial attraction she’d felt—and tried to suppress—had come through for the second time today. Well, okay, she corrected grudgingly, for the fourth or fifth time today.
Of course, nothing would come of this flare-up of physical awareness, she reminded herself. She had no intention of getting personally involved with any of her guests. Most of the businessmen—and the occasional female executive—who came to her resort were in their sixties, so the problem hadn’t actually arisen.
And then along came Jake, she mused as she headed toward the door, with his jeans and shirt tucked under her arm and those skimpy leopard-print briefs hooked over her index finger.
Okay, Moriah, she told herself on her way across the front porch, you aren’t going to get involved with Jake for several reasons. Number one: it goes against your personal rules and regulations. Number two: Jake is an intense workaholic, who’s allergic to the concept of free time, and you advocate a carefree lifestyle. The list went on, but Moriah wasn’t one for making lists. That was probably one of Jake’s habits.
She and Jake viewed life from entirely opposite perspectives. No, she wouldn’t become romantically involved with Jake because she’d learned the hard way that she wasn’t good at relationships unless they were built on the need and dependence of the other party—like recreational director to guest, or daughter to ailing mother or father. She had accepted the fact that love was not going to play a dominant role in her life and that she could make her contribution to humanity by providing recreational activities and hobbies for her stressed-out guests.
However, that didn’t mean she couldn’t have a little fun with the blustering Jake Prescott, she decided as she twirled his bikini briefs around her forefinger. The man needed to lighten up and learn to laugh and smile occasionally. Moriah made a pact with herself, there and then, to ensure Jake did exactly that!
3
JAKE INWARDLY GROANED when Moriah sashayed toward him, twirling the ridiculous underwear around her finger and grinning mischievously. He also noticed Moriah had a naturally provocative saunter when she let her guard down. “That happens to be my sisters’ idea of a joke,” he was quick to inform her.
Moriah halted a safe distance away. Not that he blamed her. The stench surrounding him had to be mega-offensive. Of course, Jake’s olfactory senses were in traumatic shock, so he couldn’t smell much of anything at the moment.
“You realize, I’m sure,” she said with an entirely different kind of smile than he was used to getting from her, “that knowing you wear leopard-print bikinis will make it difficult for me to take all your snarling and growling seriously from here on out, don’t you?”
“I wasn’t aware that you were taking me seriously before,” Jake murmured distractedly. He stood there, studying Moriah’s enticing profile, which was enhanced by the backwash of light streaming from his cabin windows. He wasn’t sure at what precise moment he became intently aware of Moriah—probably the first time he piled into the vehicle with her—but he could easily detect the difference between her neutral smile and the impish grin she was wearing now. He wasn’t sure what this new smile meant, but it was doing crazy things to his pulse.
Jake stiffened—especially in places that had no business whatsoever getting stiff—and battled his attraction to Moriah. “If you’ll leave my clothes draped over a bush near the river I won’t have to touch them until I rid myself of this offensive smell.”
“Sure, be glad to,” she said, still twirling his undies and grinning devilishly. “I’ll show you the best place to bathe without worrying about stepping into an unseen hole and going under.”
With Spitwad tucked securely under his arm, Jake followed a safe distance behind Moriah. He didn’t know why he was being courteous. He shouldn’t be. He should share this stench with her, just for spite.
“I’m not going to have to fight off alligators and snakes in here, am I? The skunk was enough excitement for one night.”
“No, you should be relatively safe. Here you go, Jake.” She gestured to the narrow footpath that led to the sandy bank. “Soak to your heart’s content.”
Jake squatted down to remove his sneakers, then walked into the river. Although the October