What happened next was hot and sweet. He was a tender lover, and gentle, despite the size of his hands and the strength of his body. She supposed he was holding back—a man like him would have ravenous appetites, yes?—but that was all right with Shay, because she was holding back, too.
It felt as if they were encased in a fantasy and she didn’t want to pop its soap-bubble exterior by holding too tight or crying out too loud. With slow, patient touches, he rolled her up and over the orgasm, and when he followed, he buried his face in her neck, his big body shaking against hers.
They drifted to sleep without words.
In the gray light of early morning, they came awake to the sound of car engines revving. Shay gathered the covers close around her shoulders as his eyes opened and he looked at her from the other pillow. “Sounds like the roads have reopened,” she said, her voice quiet.
He ran a hand through his hair, and she remembered the cool, thick softness of it as she’d held his head to her breast the night before. Her nipples sprang to life against the cotton sheet and her face heated, but she didn’t make a move and hoped he didn’t sense her kindling desire.
Their time out of time was over.
He sat up, the sheet pooling at his hips. Through the screen of her lashes, she ran her gaze over the ripples of his chest and abs and stifled a sigh. She’d had her night with all that muscle and skin. It was time to let it go.
Let him go.
He took a shower and while he was occupied she rose from bed and wrapped herself in her robe. When he emerged fully dressed from the bathroom, she was standing at the window, staring into the street and the cars that were cruising by.
The world moving again. Moving on.
He stood close behind her, not touching. “Well,” he said. “Thanks for sharing your evening with me.”
“You’re welcome.” Shay refused to let herself look at his handsome face.
“And your bed,” Jay went on. “I think I owe you for sharing that with me, too.”
Melancholy tried tugging at her, but Shay refused to give in to its grasp. “Maybe someday I’ll demand payment,” she said, keeping her voice light. “Have you lift a hammer or something at our family cabins.”
“Sure,” he said, then he swept her hair off the back of her neck and pressed his lips there in an obvious farewell. “You name the time, Birthday Girl.”
The nickname, of course, just underscored how that would never happen. They didn’t have any way to make further contact. He had no idea who she really was. She considered changing that. One side of her wanted to grab a pen and write her name and number on that wide, calloused palm of his. The other side of her, the wary side that didn’t trust easily, hesitated. And while she was arguing with herself, he left the room.
Like that, it was decided. By him, who hadn’t pushed to know any more about her.
She made her own decision as she heard the quiet click of the door swinging back after he exited. Not regretting a moment of what they’d shared. Her neck still tingled where he’d placed that goodbye kiss. The memories of their singular attraction and single night together would last a long, long time.
It might have been her best birthday gift ever.
SHAY TOOK THE highway turnoff that led to the family land and traveled the four miles of private road, all the while pushing the Deerpoint Inn adventure into the far recesses of her mind. It was time to go back to normal, become the unruffled, circumspect woman who mostly kept to herself—and who held her fears and dreams close to the chest, too. A precocious and sometimes impossible fifteen-year-old was under her care and Shay needed a calm temperament to do her best for the girl.
Maybe she’d done something out-of-character on her birthday, something self-indulgent and possibly a little reckless, but it was over now. In the very short period of their acquaintance, Jay couldn’t have made any permanent change to her.
Pressing her foot to the accelerator, her car climbed the steep drive that led to the cabins. Her sister Poppy had exchanged her battered SUV for another in decent shape—at the insistence of her fiancé, Ryan—and it was parked near a cluster of five cabins. Shay braked beside it.
Climbing from her vehicle, she took in the view. The last time she’d been out here had been weeks ago, just as winter was giving way to spring, when the snow was melting on the ground around the dwellings, but still abundant on the tree-free slopes rising above them. It was the last of the property held by the Walkers that had been secured one hundred and fifty years before, when the pioneering men and women came to the area in search of timber to harvest. In recent times, before the fire that took out the chairs, lifts and lodge, the family had run a small but popular ski resort.
While the snow was completely gone now, the cabins didn’t look much different than in March. They were run-down, with dirty windows and sagging porches. Shay assumed the seven she couldn’t see, those nestled in the surrounding woods, weren’t in any better shape. Still, she smiled as her sister emerged from the closest bungalow. Poppy and her five-year-old son, Mason, had lived there until a torrential rainstorm had destroyed part of its roof and sent her into the arms of the man she was now promised to marry.
“Hey,” Poppy said, the smile that, of late, seemed to reside permanently on her face brightening a few more degrees as she caught sight of Shay. Her honey-and-brown hair hung around her shoulders and she slipped dark glasses over her gray eyes as she stepped into the sun. “You made it.”
Shay nodded. “Once the roads reopened I left as quick as I could.”
“Did you get my Happy Birthday text?” her sister asked as she came closer. Then she hesitated, tipping up her shades to send Shay a sharp look. “What’s happened?”
“Happened?” She hoped guilt—and why should she feel guilty about a single night of commitment-free passion?—wouldn’t show on her face like a blush. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You look different,” her sister said, now nearly toe-to-toe with her.
Shay shuffled back. “How was the premiere?”
“We talked to you on the phone about that,” her sister reminded her.
“Yes, but I only heard about it from Mason’s little-dude, naturally hyperbolic point of view. How’s London?”
Poppy propped her glasses on top of her head, an appraising light in her eyes. “Let’s see. She was Memphis the first day, Raleigh the next. Today she’s Omaha.”
Meaning she was much the same. The teen had taken a keen dislike to her first name and Shay had indulged her request to try out different city names as alternatives, telling herself it was good geography practice. Not to mention she would be heeding the old adage about choosing one’s battles. “Where is...Omaha, did you say?”
“She and Mason are exploring the woods.”
Shay looked over her shoulder to peer in the direction of the close-growing trees. Pines and oaks and dogwoods covered the landscape surrounding the cabins. As a girl, she’d loved to hike among them herself. Until the fire thirteen years before. A shiver rolled down her spine and she rubbed her hands over her suddenly cold arms. She still had ugly dreams about that day.
“Shay, what’s wrong?” Poppy demanded.
“Not a thing,” she lied. “What’s been going on around here?”
With a grimace, Poppy glanced about the clearing. “Maybe now that we have decent weather, I can make some real progress.”
“That’s got to be a little