“I was rude earlier. Please, let me make it up to you with some decent food.”
She swallowed. Damn, she was tempted. Hot guy who cooked like a dream? Sign her up! But she knew the truth of him from high school. Someone who was mean to the outsider as a teen didn’t grow up to have a generous soul. It just didn’t happen, no matter how well he cooked or that she could play “name the muscle” on every part of his body.
“I just need those journals,” she said. “Then I’ll get out of your hair.”
“I told you, I don’t have them. I digitized them, then gave them back…” He glanced at the calendar. “Eight days ago.”
“They’re not in our cabin.”
“Sure, they are. You just don’t know where to look.”
Actually, she did. With nothing else to do those two lonely summers, she’d learned her dad’s “filing” system by heart. “They’re not in the cabinet beneath the desk. They’re not in the pile behind his lounger or beneath his bed. They’re not in the pile by the toilet or the cabinet next to the coffee—there’s just car magazine crap.”
He turned and frowned at her. “Are you sure?”
She glared at him while desperately trying not to admire his profile. Muscled thighs, taut butt, washboard abs, and that dusky erection that had yet to shrink down. “Yes,” she bit out. “I’m sure.”
“Huh.” He turned back to his sauté pan. A moment later, he sniffed the air. Apparently, he could smell when the steaks hit the right temperature because he quickly pulled them out of the oven. Then, he set them on two plates and poured the contents of the sauté pan over them. Next came the salads with a homemade dressing, of course, plus two glasses of lemonade that was probably homemade, too.
“Join me,” he said. “Then I swear I’ll help you find your father’s journals.”
Well, hard to deny him when he was acting so polite. And when everything smelled so divine. Then her stomach growled again, which had him smiling at her. God, he even had a dimple on his left cheek.
Unfair!
A normal woman would cave gracefully. She would smile and nod prettily while she joined him at the table. She might even offer to decant the wine or something. But Julie wasn’t that smooth. Instead, she exhaled a reluctant breath and closed her eyes.
“I will on one condition,” she finally said.
“What?”
Couldn’t he guess? Hell. She opened her eyes and looked at him. He’d just put the plates and glasses on the table. He stood there—full frontal—looking as clueless as any child. But he was adamantly not a child.
“Could you please—for the sake of my sanity—put on some pants?”
He blinked at her. Two full blinks, then he looked down at himself. Yup. There he was in his full, woody glory.
She didn’t realize a man could blush with his whole body. Truthfully, she’d never had the opportunity to see it happen so clearly. Golden brown turned mottled red. And the dusky wood? That even purpled a bit.
He made a choked sound, deep in his throat, and then his hands dropped to cover himself. Where before he’d been confident and manly, suddenly, his eyes were wide and his cheeks were bright red.
Adorable.
He gave her a quick nod before he dashed past her into the hallway and downstairs. Even his ass had turned pink. And wasn’t that going to feature in her fantasies for years to come?
Julie smiled as she settled down at the table to wait for Mr. Pink Cheeks to return.
CHAPTER 3
What a bitch!
Mark pulled on his jeans, cursing Julie the Priss with every burning second of embarrassment.
He knew he was being irrational. What was a woman to do when a man opens his door stark naked? Squeal and run away? But for her to stand there and have an entire conversation with him while he was naked and erect? Had she been enjoying the peep show? Or did she just live to make him feel like an idiot?
She hadn’t changed a bit from high school. She’d spent two summers here with her father after her parents’ divorce, and the whole time, she’d turned her nose up at the uneducated hicks who lived in Gladwin. He’d done everything his adolescent mind could think of to attract her attention. Ridiculous stunts, feats of daring that could have gotten him killed. But all she’d done was turn her back on him as she buried herself in some book. Years later he learned that she’d been working for her father, doing research for his cultural anthropology papers. Not surprisingly, folktales about shape-shifters ran strong in this area. But that didn’t ease the burn of rejection.
He had hated her until that one night when lust had overcome reason. One glorious summer night when all the awkwardness was gone and they’d been just a girl and a boy under the stars. Until his bear had to surface and ruin everything. Like it had today.
