On one hand, it felt demeaning, both to him and Shanna, to have to do something like this. On the other hand, it was just sex. How many one-night stands did he have in his semi-wild college years? How many relationships that proved pointless once his partners got over the thrill of dating Simon Montague? Sex, in its base form, didn’t have to mean much. It was simple.
But Shanna wasn’t. And Simon was beginning to think that this relationship, as much as it shouldn’t even exist, wasn’t, either.
“Let’s not think about it.” Shanna’s faux-dismissive tone indicated how desperately she wanted to steer the conversation back into normalcy. “We’re not in a hurry. Milford Sound is still a few days away. And even then, who knows if we’ll find the Mercurial Crystal there, or we’ll have to continue on and figure out where Mom died and where she left it …”
“Okay.” He stood and gave her a comforting smile. Regardless of his uncontrolled desires, he’d be damned if he’d force anything onto her.
“Shall we go check on Chris?”
“Sure. I hope she hasn’t emptied the bar by now.”
They found Chris at one of the tables in the outside eating area, munching on nachos and reading a thick book. She lifted her eyes to them. “So, we going gold-panning, or what?”
Shanna and Simon looked at each other. Washing out river sand in hopes of catching a sliver of gold sounded mindless and most likely fruitless. But at the moment, he could go for mindless. “If you’re up for it, let’s do it.”
The repeated process of sinking the rented, plastic gold pan in the milky-blue waters, then shaking it to find the non-existing gold, should have been boring to no end, but somehow, Simonfound himself relaxing more and more over the three hours they spent at the river bank. It was not the same as tampering with the electric components of a device to arrive at something new or making predictions on a computer, but it came to the same conclusion. It was satisfying, in that calm sense he also got when he sat down to design something without pressure, without having a specific purpose in mind.
And a few times, when the fine river sand glittered just so, he also got the same kind of thrill.
The glittering was not uncommon. All three of them had seen it, but collecting those little specks of gold would be a fool’s errand. Then, as they were all shaking their pans in the same rhythm, Chris suddenly stood up, jumping on the spot. “I got it. I got it!” She picked a tiny golden nugget out of her pan; so small that, if the sun hadn’t hit it just right and made it glint, Simon wouldn’t have even noticed it.
“I got gold! Ha, suckers!”
He’d never seen Chris so excited and animated as now, when she ran down the rocky river bank, continuing to jump and yell.
Shanna sat next to him, an amused smile on her face. “How little it takes to make someone happy, huh?”
“Little? We spent three hours on this,” he said, matching the amusement with his tone.
Shanna laughed and hugged her knees. “It was three hours well spent. In the company of friends.”
It really was.
“Listen,” he said after a moment of silence. “We’ll have to fulfill that condition at some point.” Even if she had nowhere urgent to be, surely, she didn’t want to be bonded forever. It worked, for the most part, while they were traveling together, but for regular life, a hundred-foot limit was too inconvenient.
“I know.”
“Let me suggest something.” He tilted his head, glancing at her from the side. “I don’t want it to be awkward. Between us. So let’s imagine it as that night in Vegas. Let’s be strangers. Meet today, gone tomorrow. Whatever happens in between, it wasn’t us. It was Jason and Anneliese, or whoever else you want to be.”
Shanna slowly nodded. “I think I get it.”
“And still, I’m not forcing you into anything.” Even if his relationships sucked, being intimate without consequences was usually easier for men than for women. “If you’re ready tonight, give me a tug. We’ll meet at the bar. Talk. See what happens. If it doesn’t, we’ll think of something else. Yes?”
She stared over the river, her eyes the palest, softest blue in the mild afternoon light. “All right,” she said. “Let’s try.”
Chapter 14
Sex on the beach came after dark ‘n’ stormy, and Shanna was beginning to feel a pleasant buzz from the cocktails. Just enough to make her relaxed—which she needed. She’d never sat down at a bar with a stranger for an impromptu date before.
If this was a date.
“I can only assume you’re a dog person, having handled Jinx so well,” she said to Jason.
He gave her a lopsided, irresistibly charming smile. “I think he was playing wingman.”
Shanna stared at him, dumbstruck. “No, no! I don’t send my dog out to get me men!”
Jason laughed, drawing an inch closer. “I didn’t mean for you. Forme.”
