Love is a Battlefield: Games of Love, Book 1 (25 page)

“He’s perfect,” Kate said to Jada. It was the truth.

“So?”

“So, I’m sort of waiting for the catch, to be honest. We’ve technically only had the one date, but he sent roses, and he’s dutifully called or texted me almost every day. He’s thoughtful and considerate—”

“And really pretty?”

“Too pretty. Prettier than me, even. How am I supposed to compete with that?”

Jada laughed and hooked her arm out the window. “You don’t compete with it, silly. You revel in it. Roll in it like a dog with a dead fish.”

“Is this where you start hitting me with fish euphemisms?” Kate asked skeptically. She loved Jada to death, but all this time spent with her was starting to wear thin. Solitude was a necessary component of her daily life. Whenever she went home to Seattle or her parents came to visit her here, she made up appointments with imaginary people to get a few minutes to herself. Communal living wasn’t exactly her style.

“I’ll restrain myself, Kate, for your sake. But tell me this—did you kiss him?”

Kate shifted uncomfortably. “Well, yes. Just a little one.”

“Was it good?”

“It wasn’t bad,” she hedged. And it wasn’t. By most definitions, it had been a good kiss. A very good kiss. The right amount of pressure. A touch of moisture but not too much. But that was the thing. She measured it in terms of pressure and moisture, like she was a meteorologist and Duke was a cold front. Kissing Julian had no such easy definition, and she couldn’t break it down or put it to words. His touch had taken hold of every single one of her senses and left her reeling long after his lips pulled away. He wasn’t like a storm at all—but she could safely say that he transformed her insides into one.

“Are you going to go out with him again?” Jada pressed.

“I guess so…if he asks.” When Jada looked over, her eyebrows raised, Kate sighed and added, “He’s kind of mellow.”

“Mellow? What is this, 1972?”

Kate laughed and tapped a disco beat on the steering wheel. “Okay, not mellow. Just gentlemanly. He’s very attentive and complimentary, and if you read all the signs, he’s definitely interested.”

“
And
he showed up at the site today.”

“Yep. That too. But I can’t help feeling he’s a little detached.”

Jada gave a horrified gasp. “Like maybe his equipment isn’t all there? Oh, dear Lord, Kate. Run. Run as fast as you can.”

Kate laughed. “Not like that, Jada. I’m sure his man bits are in perfect working order. It’s only that there’s a fire or something missing there, you know? He’s interested, and he’s sweet, and he’s, well, perfect. But—”

“But he doesn’t want to haul you off into the woods and ravage your body.”

“He might. We don’t know each other that well yet.”

That wasn’t the real problem, even if Kate would never say so out loud. The truth was that he wasn’t Julian. Julian, who fought so hard for the things he wanted but still hadn’t shown a glimmer of fight for her. Julian, who opened up and told her his whole life story only as a way to get her to back down from the land. Julian, who kissed her like he meant it.

Oh, God, how she wanted him to mean it.

“Don’t be silly, Kate,” Jada said. “There’s no need for you and Duke to know each other in order to want to know each other. If you know what I mean.”

Kate blew out a long breath. Jada would never understand, so she had to give her something she could latch on to. “Let’s just leave it at the ‘it’s not him, it’s me’ scenario, okay? Maybe I’d just like to see a glimpse of fallibility in there or something. You know, like if he has a temper or webbed feet or is scared of snakes or something.”

“Scared of snakes? Katy-did, where do you get such ridiculous ideas?”

“It’s not ridiculous. Julian—” She stopped herself before she said more. Something about how vulnerable he’d seemed when he’d shuddered in the moonlight, fearful of garter snakes, struck her as deeply personal. He wasn’t a man who let down his guard very often, and his guard had definitely been down that night. She’d felt it, in the trembling fingers that clutched the back of her neck and the velvet mouth that melded with her own.

“Julian what? You don’t mean…” Jada grinned in that uniquely malicious way she had.

“It’s nothing,” Kate stammered. She turned the wheel—and the conversation—sharply to the right. “I’m going to stop at the store before we get home, if you don’t mind. I think I owe Gretna at least three cans of cat food to make up for all the neglect. The poor little thing is starting to make friends out of my socks.”

Jada didn’t offer an objection. Instead, she nodded and beamed, releasing a sigh and Duke’s name every couple of minutes to try to get Kate to react.

Admirably, she didn’t.
 

Chapter Thirteen

The Age of Chivalry

“Sorry, bro, but if this is the way things are going to unfold for the next week, I’m not staying around.” Michael lifted a weight in a bicep curl, grunting with the effort of it.

They were working out at the camp site that day—Julian’s idea, since he was afraid to leave Kilroy here alone for any length of time. There was no telling what damage might occur. An hour and the whole place might be under new zoning laws. Half a day and Kilroy might even be able to turn it into a golf course.

Julian also had to do something to keep the guys from making more trouble than was necessary. Michael and McClellan had been pouting because Kilroy stole their women. Jada, Anne, some new girl and Kate had been circling around him for hours, catering to his already enormous ego.

Let them.
Maybe they’d get off his back and distract Kilroy from his training for a little while.

“Some sidekick you are,” Julian admonished between sit-ups. “You’re not going anywhere. You had no problem with the camping plan before Kilroy showed up yesterday, and you can’t abandon me now.”

“Easy for you to say. You have your bitter hatred to nurse like a baby at its mama’s teat. I, on the other hand, haven’t been near a nipple for days.”

“I say Kilroy has even less of a chance lasting out here than Kate,” Julian muttered. He meant it. Kilroy was a strong man, but he wasn’t a tough one. The guy had to wear gloves when he threw a weight or hammer, for crying out loud. Couldn’t damage the baby-soft skin of his palms.

“Are you ready?” Kilroy asked from right behind him.

Julian jumped to his feet and whirled around, always ready and about to say so. But Kilroy wasn’t talking to him. He was talking to Kate, who’d shown up with her shapely legs clad, for once, in khaki-colored shorts and a sensible pair of hiking boots.

“You’re going hiking?” Julian asked, unable to resist, even though it was obvious no one was talking to him. “You surprise me, Kate. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

There was an appreciative twist to her smile. “It’s walking. On dirt. You’d be surprised how adept I am.”

“Well, take water. And a compass. Kilroy might look like a Boy Scout, but I doubt he could find his way out of hell with ten of the apostles as his guides.”

“Very funny, Wallace.”

A crease worked its way down Kilroy’s forehead as he tried to come up with a suitable retort. He didn’t get to one in time, though, and Kate’s lips quivered as she shot Julian a quelling look.

Julian one, Kilroy zero.

And then she took Kilroy’s hand in a nauseating display of affection.
Damn.
Maybe he wouldn’t keep score, after all.

“It’s not very romantic for our second date, but Duke has promised to take me fishing when we get to the river,” Kate said. She added proudly, “We’re going to catch our dinner.”

Julian broke into a full, rumbling laugh. The dam a few miles upland turned this part of the river into a tumbling fountain of rocks and waves. It would be almost impossible to catch anything without a large net and a whole lot of patience.

“Now that is something I’d like to see.”

Kate leaned on one of her feet and cocked her head, surveying him casually.

“Why don’t you see it then? Come with us—I’m sure Duke won’t mind. It’ll save you the trouble of putting on a dark cloak and hiding in the trees.”

So that’s how it was going to unfold.
She probably didn’t think he’d dare take her up on the offer—and common sense told him not to.

Common sense was overrated.

“I’d love nothing more,” Julian said, flashing his teeth. He took a step back, gesturing for the lovebirds to lead the way. Kilroy mumbled something incoherent, but there was no real need to hear his words. His expression was enough.

“Um…aren’t you going to take fishing poles?” Julian asked when they started heading for the trailhead by the field’s edge. They carried nothing more than a water bottle and a pair of jackets Duke had tossed casually over one arm.

“No need.” Kilroy sneered. “I’m going to teach Kate how to catch a fish by hand—it’s an ancient art passed down through generations of my family. My branch of the Kilroy tree is one-twentieth Spokane Indian, I’ll have you know.”

“Kilroy, you astound me—you’re going to teach Kate how to tickle her trout?”

Kate was several paces ahead of him, but Julian could still hear the half-strangled choking sound she always made when trying very hard not to laugh. Kilroy, on the other hand, whirled around.

“Are you disparaging my people?”

“Well, yes, I think I am,” Julian admitted. “I imagine
my
people have been out-fishing yours for centuries. Especially since I doubt you’ve ever even seen a fish that wasn’t on a plate and covered in lemon sauce.”

Of course, Julian had never—his people or not—done more than snag a few brightly colored fish eggs to a manufactured hook and cast a lure from a well-tended bank. But if he couldn’t put on a better show than Kilroy down there at the river…well, he deserved the shame of it, that was all he’d say.

The men tacitly agreed not to mention the matter again before they reached the river—otherwise, they wouldn’t get down there before the sun did. Julian played his role of third wheel dutifully, sauntering along down the hill behind them. True to her word, Kate did seem both able and willing to walk on dirt, albeit with a stumbling gait that made her look like a colt picking its way over the ground. At one point, Julian broke a branch off one of the trees that grew all along the side of the path and placed it in Kate’s hand.

“It’s a walking stick,” he explained when she looked at it with an odd expression.

“I know what it is,” she muttered before turning away. But she used the stick. A lot.

There was a fork about halfway down the path, which had been carved into the slope at as much of a low grade as possible. One path led back up along the top of the cliff’s edge, a favorite running spot among most of the guys, since it offered a series of peaks and valleys that were tough on the quads. The other path continued all the way down to the water. Because it wasn’t used very often, it was overgrown and rocky, with brush obscuring some of the footholds.

Julian had been down to the river only a few times before. Although most of his memories of the Scottish Highland Games had to do with Cornwall Park, he’d never spent so much time in the area before. Camping here, in the weeks leading up to the event, was turning out to be a pretty great idea. There was something about sleeping under the stars that made him feel connected to the sport in a way he didn’t know existed. He’d heard of jockeys sleeping in the same stalls as their horses in the nights leading up to the Kentucky Derby, but it had always seemed like one of those old wives’ tales generated to sell more tickets and mint juleps.

It made sense. The park was more than a few acres of scenery to set the backdrop to activity. There was history in the land, in the packed dirt where he slept. So many feet had walked there, run there, pushed themselves to the limit there.

Except now there were other footprints to contend with. Like Kilroy’s wingtip impressions, which kicked up dust and filled his mouth with the taste of grit and oil. And Kate’s feather-light tread, which was so soft he rarely heard it coming—but was still able to leave marks like a deep bruise that never materialized on the surface.

“It’s lovely down here.” Kate stood at the water’s edge. “I imagine it’s pretty amazing in the spring when the water is high.”

“I’ve never been down here in the spring,” Julian confessed, even though he wasn’t sure the remark was directed at him and not at Kilroy, who stood looking regally out over the river, one leg resting up on a rock like he was about to teabag its hard, gray surface.

“It’s better this way,” Kilroy announced. “You can’t fish when the water is high—you have to be able to wade in. Are you ready for your lesson?”

“Why don’t you two demonstrate how it’s done, and I’ll watch from the nice, dry land?” Kate suggested. She crouched down to the water’s surface and dipped a hand in before promptly pulling it back out. The river was fed right from the mountains, and even under the full heat of the afternoon sun, it was chilly.

“No way. I was promised trout tickling. We’re not leaving until someone hands me a fish,” Julian interjected.

Kate shook her head, belligerence in the narrowness of her eyes. “Once again, Julian, not everything in this world is about you. One might even argue you are the least necessary person standing on this riverbank.”