Lured In (9 page)

“You sound distracted; do you need to go?”

“Yeah, sorry, I, uh…” Looking down at her desk, she straightened the pencil so it lined up perfectly next to the pen. “Finn and I have some work to do, is all.”

“Okay, I'll let you go. It'll be good to see you again, Jess.”

Jess?
He'd never called her Jess before, always Jessie. So why did it sound so weird for him to call her that now? And why was she overthinking every single thing that came out of his mouth?

From the corner of her eye, she caught Finn waving at her, and when she looked up, he thumbed over his shoulder.

“Meet you down there.”

And that's when it hit her. Finn always called her Jess, never Jessie. Finn, who was backing slowly out of the room, brows raised, waiting for her to acknowledge his statement. Finn, whose smile always made her smile back without even thinking about it. Finn, who she could sit and talk to for hours or not say anything and still be perfectly comfortable.

Finn, whose voice made her gender-neutral name sound feminine and soft. Sexy.

What?

Oh no, that's not what she meant to think.

No no no no no.

She needed to scrape that ridiculous notion from her brain right now, and for the love of God, she needed to stop blushing.

And somehow she needed to sort out the two different conversations she was having without letting on to either one of them what had just swirled through her obviously half-crazed brain.

Right.

Covering the mouthpiece of the phone, she nodded briefly at Finn.

“I'll be two seconds.”

Then she turned away from him and nodded against the phone as if Sam could somehow see her.

“It'll be good to see you, too.” Why did that sound so hollow? A cute-as-hell great guy who she liked was looking forward to seeing her—so why couldn't she be excited to see him, too?

“I'm really sorry,” she mumbled. “But I have to run.”

“Right. Okay. I'll talk to you later. 'Night, Jess.”

She closed her eyes and tried to ignore how much she hated him calling her that.

“ 'Night.” Exhaling slowly, she held on to the phone for a few seconds after she'd set it back in its charger, trying to calm the crashing waves of chaos in her gut.

“You okay?” Finn's voice, so unexpected, made her jump, squealing as she spun to face him.

“God almighty, Finn,” she sputtered, brushing her hair back from her face. “I thought you'd gone.”

Any hope she had that he'd forget his question was immediately dashed when he took a step toward the office again and repeated himself.

“You okay?”

“What? Oh…yeah, I'm fine.” She waved a dismissive hand toward the phone, then reached for her sweater. “Shall we?”

No matter what Jess might think, Finn wasn't as stupid as he looked. Something about that call with Sam bothered her, and that, in turn, bothered him, especially when she shooed him off ahead of her before he could press her for the truth.

The surrounding old growth blocked all but a few thin streaks of dying light that somehow managed to break through the thick branches and shimmer across the near end of the lake. It wouldn't be long before they lost those bits of light, too, but with any luck it would last long enough to get Jess into the water for a while.

He was already knee-deep when she arrived, but instead of waiting for her to get into the water by herself this time, he waded up to the shore and held out his hand.

She hesitated a second, then started to reach her hand out before suddenly snapping it back and fisting it against her chest.

“Sorry,” she muttered. “Just give me a second here.”

“No rush.”

Closing her eyes, she took a couple of long slow breaths and reached for his hand again. It couldn't have been more than a fraction of a second that her hand hung free, but it was enough to make her start clawing the air as though scrambling for him.

He folded his fingers around hers; the clawing instantly stopped and her breathing evened out, but Finn didn't say a word until she opened her eyes.

“There you go,” he murmured, loving how the fear in her big brown eyes gave way to a tiny burst of hope.

Everything about her right then—her fear, her strength, the way she looked in those old cutoffs—made him smile. And for some reason, that made her smile, too.

“You ready?” he asked.

“No.” The word fell off her tongue as she contradicted herself by taking her first step into the water, then her second.

Just as it had last night, the first tiny wave across the top of her feet made her suck in a breath, but this time she seemed to force her fear back and kept moving, slowly, carefully, until she was shin-deep and quivering.

The whole time she kept her eyes locked on Finn's, as he moved backward in time with her steps. He had to be out of his mind to do this, to put himself in a situation like this, where the feel of her hand wrapped so tightly around his was slowly driving him a little bit crazy. And where those trembling ChapSticked lips of hers, trying so hard to smile, were only making him want to lean in and kiss her until
he
was the reason she trembled.

“What?” she asked. “You look like you've got something to say.”

He had a lot to say, actually, but none of it was going to help either one of them at the moment, so he forced his mind somewhere else.

“For the record,” he said, quirking his brow as he smirked at her, “camping's damn romantic, and it'd be the perfect way to honeymoon.”

“Is that right?” Her words came out as a croak as the water crept slowly up toward her knees. “For a guy who'll never have to worry about that, I'm kind of surprised you've given it any thought.”

“How do you know I'll never have a honeymoon?” Finn did his level best to sound offended, but it was an effort wasted on Jess.

“Seriously?” She half-choked over a short laugh. “You, of the ‘all women are the devil' attitude? You, who's never given a woman a chance to get close enough to find out for herself that you're not such a bad guy, that, aside from the obvious flaws, you're actually pretty great?”

His grin, which had started to fade, widened again. Leave it to Jess to point out he wasn't perfect.
“Obvious flaws?”

“Cha,” she grunted. “Your snoring rattles the walls and, no, I'm not exaggerating.”

Her grip tightened around his hands as they stepped a little deeper, and even though she didn't say anything, he could see the panic growing stronger in the depths of her eyes.

“Breathe,” he whispered. “Just keep breathing.”

“Right. Breathe. Okay. Crap oh crap oh crap oh crap.”

“You're doing great. And my snoring's not that bad.”

“It's what keeps the bears away from the lodge at night.” She'd completely ignored his praise and looked like she was concentrating more on her breathing than on what she was saying. “You have an atrocious temper, even if it does only flare up around your brothers.”

Finn couldn't deny that.

“And
…”
The water was halfway over her kneecaps by now, and each breath seemed to be more and more of an effort. “You have—crap oh crap oh crap, whew—serious trust issues.”

“Me?” he choked.

“Y-yes, you.”

Finn laughed again, soft and low, and was halfway to ecstatic when she finally smiled back at him, her next breath significantly easier than the last.

“Well, okay, then, Pot,” he chuckled. “You want to go there? Let's go.”

“Oh, don't even.” Her gaze dropped toward the water, making her cheeks pale, before she blinked hard and looked at him again. “I'm here, aren't I?”

He didn't say anything for a few seconds, and when he did, it was all he could do to force the words out in a murmur.

“Yeah, you are.”

“And I'm trusting that you're going to get me onto dry land sometime soon. Like really soon.”

“Soon enough.”

“You'd never—” One more step and her knees were underwater. This time she moved straight past shivering and was in a full-on body shake, but she didn't back up; she just closed her eyes again and focused on her breathing. “Never trust anyone this much.”

“Sure I would.” It sounded weak even to him, and even though she didn't call him on it, the small frown puckering her forehead said everything she didn't.

She wasn't wrong, but she wasn't exactly trusting him completely, either. She hadn't said a single word about why she was so terrified of water in the first place.

And as much as Finn wanted to know, as much as he believed she'd need to talk about it to truly get over it, he also knew that standing here in the lake with water lapping over her knees, and her fingernails carving semicircles into his hands, was not the best time to bring it up.

So instead he let his gaze drift to her lips, to the way she pressed them lightly together with each intake of breath and then made them into a small “o” with each exhale.

He'd about give his right nut to find out if her mouth was half as soft as it looked. It'd be easy enough to kiss her right there and then. With only about a foot of space between them, he could easily pull her up against his chest, wrap his arms around her, and—

What the fuck?

Wasn't more than half an hour ago that she'd been on the phone with Sam—who might or might not be her boyfriend again—so what the hell was Finn thinking?

Besides the fact that he'd never horned in on another guy's girl, this wasn't just any girl—it was Jess! She'd probably bust his balls if she had any idea what he was thinking, and if she didn't do it, Liam had made it pretty clear he would.

“What's wrong?” Jess's worried voice jarred him back to reality.

“What? Nothing.”

“Didn't look like nothing.”

Great.
He'd been so busy staring at her lips, he had no idea she'd opened her eyes again.

Jess started moving again, not any deeper but sideways, keeping the water just shy of the hem of her shorts.

“Kinda seemed like you were looking for something to punch,” she said.

She wasn't far wrong on that, but there was no way he was going to cop to anything. Instead, he chuckled quietly as he turned her around and started walking back the way they'd come. They'd only gone a couple of steps before he stopped so suddenly that water sloshed up the front and back of her shorts.

Silencing her with a raised finger, he strained his ears, trying to decide if he'd actually heard something or not. It was a little hard to hear anything over the sound of his heart thrashing in his chest, but, yup, that was definitely a twig snapping. And that was most definitely a voice.

“Someone's coming.” He didn't even wait for Jess to react, just scooped her into his arms and hustled up to where she'd dropped her stuff.

He refused to think about how stupid he must look hauling her out of the water as if he were a character in one of those What's-His-Name Sparks movies she liked so much. 'Course, if he really was the dude in one of those movies, he'd be rolling around with her on that damn towel right about now instead of dumping her there and running off, barefoot, down the trail.

It took him all of about twenty seconds to convince Marlene and Norma that they'd better turn around and head to their cabin, but by the time he got back to Jess, she'd already pulled her sweatpants over her shorts and was tugging on her boots.

“Do you not have pain sensors in your feet?” she asked, pointing down at the rocks. “You walk over them like you're walking on plush carpet instead of on the razor-sharp little bits of hell that they are.”

He knew exactly how sharp the damn things were, but he wasn't about to tell her that, because if he did, she'd lose that slightly amazed expression on her face. And he liked it when she looked at him like that—even if it was only for something stupid like this.

But holy mother of God, his feet were happy when he finally slid them back into his sneakers.

“It was just Marlene and Norma out for a walk,” he said. “I turned them around.”

“What'd you do, tell them they weren't allowed down here?”

“No. I told them there's a bear and her cub wandering around down here.”

“So you lied.”

“Wow,” he laughed. “Again with the trust issues.”

Dropping to a squat, he pulled her down next to him and pointed out across the lake, about a quarter of the way around from them. It was hard to see anything but shadows at first, then slowly, as they watched, the low-growing bushes started to move, until, sure enough, the sow's big black head moved into the last weak thread of daylight.

He knew the instant Jess saw her, because she wrapped her hand around his forearm and sucked in a breath.

The funny thing was, she was the one who'd made Liam add the bear-aware info to his welcome speech, and she'd be the first one to stand up and tell everyone who set foot on their island that the best thing to do was to make lots of noise so the bears know you're around and to give them as much space as possible.

But what she told guests to do and what she did herself were usually two different things, and if Finn didn't get her out of here, she'd no doubt stay all night—or at least until the bear ate her.

“Come on,” he said. “Before they realize you smell better than that berry bush.”

For a second there, he let himself believe he hadn't actually said that out loud, but then Jess's gaze met his and she snorted as she pushed to her feet.

“Well, jeez, I sure as hell hope I smell better than something every animal on the island has probably peed on.”

Laughing, he tugged her towel out of her grasp and waved her toward the path ahead of him before he said something else stupid.