Jessica laughed.
“How’s your knee?” Mark asked.
“Sore.” She glared at him in the darkness, annoyed with him for bringing it up and reminding her how he’d swept her off her feet yesterday when she’d twisted it.
“You should have it looked at. You might have torn something.”
“If it’s still bothering me in a week or so, I will.” She paused. “Have you named her yet?”
“Named who?”
It was unsettlingly intimate to be standing up here on this platform in the dark with him. If she didn’t strangle him first, she might end up kissing him again. “The dog, of course. She looks like a Penny to me. Maybe Maggie.”
Mark made an unintelligible sound.
She decided to take a page from his book and say nothing. Then it was her turn on the zip-line again. As she soared off into the darkness, something huge flapped over her head, and she screamed, just as Nicole had done.
By the time they’d made it to the end of the course, she could officially say that the haunted zip-line was awesome. She got scared out of her wits several times, which was totally her idea of a good Halloween time. The guys had outdone themselves. She wasn’t even sure how they’d done some of the stuff that had jumped out at her during the course. There was something extra thrilling about whizzing through the night sky, unable to stop or even slow down, never knowing what lay ahead.
This was her first visit to Off-the-Grid as a customer, and she definitely would have come back for more if not for the tall, brooding man walking beside her as she and Nicole made their way along the trail from the final zip-line platform to the office.
Naturally, they’d installed a few booby traps along the trail too.
By the time they made it back to their car, Jessica and Nicole were clinging to each other, laughing. “That was so much fun!” Nicole said as they got back into her car. “But the thing that surprised me themosttonight?”
“What?” Jessica asked, sensing a trap.
“The tension between you and Mark.”
Jessica made a face. “So we don’t exactly get along anymore.”
“That’s not what it looked like to me,” Nicole said, giving her a sly look. “From where I was standing, it looked more like you wanted to get naked together.”
“Well…” Crap. It was no use lying to her sister. “Fine. We kissed yesterday, which was a really stupid mistake because the chemistry is definitely still there but the relationship potential isn’t.”
“Whoa!” Nicole was staring at her, wide-eyed. “You and Mark kissed yesterday? And I’m just finding out about it now?”
Jessica lifted one shoulder halfheartedly. “I wasn’t eager to rehash it.”
“Well, he is,” Nicole said, a gleeful glint in her eye. “He was looking at you like he wanted to eat you up. And you looked pretty hot and bothered around him too.”
“Not going there.”
“But why not?”
“I already told you—there’s no future for us so there’s no way I’m going to make things even more awkward by sleeping with him, especially now that we co-own this land.”
“Why are you so sure there’s no future for you guys?”
“Because he’sMark. He’s a loner. He’s so closed off he doesn’t know how to be any other way. He’s just passing through life, always in search of his next adventure.”
“Are you sure?”
Jessica remembered the way his eyes had shuttered yesterday after their kiss.It’s forgotten.“Yes, I’m sure.”
***
Mark spent the next week neck-deep in work. Between regular hours at Off-the-Grid, the haunted zip-line, prepping for the Adrenaline Rush, and initial construction on the mountain bike course, he was too busy to do much of anything but work and sleep.
