Long Summer Nights (5 page)

But in the end, he turned and swore, and she was alone on her rock, exactly as she’d asked.

After he disappeared, Jenn picked up her phone, prepared to get lost in the stars. Sadly after he had gone, the stars seemed to disappear, as well.

B
ACK IN HIS CABIN,
Aaron pulled off his shirt, dragged off his jeans and stalked out to the lake. It was a rare moment when he yearned for the privacy of a cold shower. She had done this to him, and at the moment, the lake was all he had. The water was icy cold, enough to freeze a man’s desire, diminish his libido. Didn’t work.

Shit.

Aaron lectured himself as he swam from one shore to the other, his arms stretching as far as they could. He didn’t know anything about her. Only knew she was a reporter and that she was here to write the story of her life. A story, she so candidly admitted, about which she had no subject or no plan. No, she expected her story to hit her between her curious eyes, or perhaps, even more serendipitously, she wanted the damn story to squander itself between her creamy thighs like some sordid porn flick, exploding in his face like old history. A reporter?

And stupid moron that he was, all he could do was flutter around her like a mindless moth, risking his existence for the light of the flame. He’d nearly cracked open his head, and did he stop touching her? Shouldn’t he have been smart enough to walk away? Oh, hell no. Instead,
she
ended up being the one lecturing him on the problems of a liaison. Liaison. Such a pompous word for such a basic need. A man’s insane compulsion to spend a moment with a woman in exchange for his soul.

His arms cut through the water, his legs pumping until
his muscles were on fire. Much smarter to work himself into exhaustion.

All he could think about was her splayed on the rock, nude, her arms reaching for him like some goddess of the earth. She, who worshipped at the altar of communication and technology, instead of the pleasures of the flesh. Dammit.

The cold water was killer on his skin, completely useless on his dick. As he neared the shore of his cabin, Aaron dove under the water, then came up, before his feet settled on the unsteady shallows. He shook out his hair like a mongrel dog, and stalked toward the grass, feeling his head throb with every step and not caring. A concussion would be preferable to life-altering lust.

When he got to the dirt path, his still-tormented body stopped and turned to face the woman nearly hidden in the trees. Slim, with moonstruck hair and starlight eyes.

Aaron felt his body swell, his mouth dry, and he idiotically imagined that he could hear the shallow rasp of her breath.

His curse was loud and intended to chase her away, but she didn’t move, as if she expected him to run to her, to plunder her, ludicrously believing that he was incapable of restraint.

In spite of everything he knew, every mistake he’d learned from, every calculated step that he prided himself on, still,
still
he wanted to taste her again, absorb her undaunted breath, and gulp in great, greedy gulps of her being. She, with the bright, eloquent eyes that desired him, that mocked him, that dared him.

Right, he assured himself, while his merry cock gave truth to the lie. Still lying to himself, still believing himself completely in command, he took one hungry step toward her, toward the siren’s whisper of her allure, but then,
because he wouldn’t go back to that life, sanity resumed. He stopped himself, putting his well-tended restraint back firmly in its place.

Her swollen mouth curved, twitched, because she knew what it cost him to walk away. But no matter.

Soulless, heartless, he made his way back to his cabin, pride and self-control precisely back in place.

J
ENN STAGGERED BACK
against the trunk of the nearest tree, because she needed to stay standing, and she needed to breathe.

She’d never seen a man more beautifully built, more perfectly arranged. He had no accordion abs sculpted from a love affair with weights. He had no bowling-ball biceps artfully crafted from tedious curls. No, he was lean and loose-limbed and heavily aroused.

Oh, that was the worst. He was thick and powerful, and she could feel him between her thighs, inside her, and she wanted that, wanted him.

She rubbed her arms, feeling the night breeze on her skin, warm and damp. The air had hovered around him, steamed with his desire.

In the city, men didn’t want like that, they didn’t ache with it. They didn’t suffer with the very thought of it. Something out here stripped away the polish from the surface, or maybe it wasn’t this place. Maybe it was only him. Aaron.

She’d come to his cabin to apologize, at least that was the story she’d invented, but then she heard the sounds from the lake. Safe behind the cover of the trees, she watched him swim, watching all that untapped energy.

It was unnerving. It was arousing.

She was in such big trouble. Instinctively she knew he was a mistake. Yes, she’d had more than her share of them.
Even when she tried for safe and easy, it was still a mistake. For example, the senior financial analyst from Tribeca, with the great apartment and nervous smile. There was no women’s magazine that would call him a Dating Don’t—unless it was
Playgirl.
To the uneducated eye, he appeared completely normal and tending to boring. Two dates later she learned that the nervous smile was due to a compulsive tendency to shoplift. He’d stopped in a drugstore for aspirin, and she’d nearly been arrested in the process.

Oh, sure, the cop had been very nice and understanding with flirty eyes. In fact, the cop was so nice that he’d let Jenn off with only her promise to call him. If she hadn’t been careful she wouldn’t have noticed the wedding ring on his finger.

Jerk.

But the cop was different from the man she’d met today. Aaron wasn’t flirty, wasn’t fun and would never pretend. Hide, yes, but there was something that drew her to him….

Still not being smart, her eyes searched out cabin number three, nearly hidden in the woods, a dim light in the window. Not an invitation. Not even close. She heard a furious clacking sound, fingers attacking the typewriter keys. A typewriter?

Unable to resist, she smiled.

The torture of it suited him, with no room for mistakes or edits. No. Whatever words he allowed on the page would have to be perfection.

Feeling far from perfection herself, she went back to her lonely cabin number five. There she pulled on her favorite T-shirt, falling back on her uncomfortable mattress,
still feeling the hard fingers on her breast, the burn of his kiss.

That night, she didn’t worry about mice or snakes. Instead she dreamed of a man with passion-fogged eyes.

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
there were no garbage trucks, or honking cars, or the clangs and clanks of the city. This was an odd song. Musical. Cheerful.

Birds. Yes, that’s what that sound was. For a second she lay there, listening, waiting for the noises to begin.

The quiet bothered her, the idea that she could hear the aimless rattles in her brain. The great thing about Manhattan was that it was impossible to feel aimless. There were always directions to be found if you were looking. Uptown, downtown, north and south. In the city, everyone always had a focus, always had a destination. But here, in Harmony Springs, it was easy to second-guess her own footloose life-navigational skills.

Like last night for instance? Making out on a rock with Mr. Dead Poets Society.

So why didn’t it feel like a mistake? Why was she contemplating going back for more? Yes, that was the smoking orgasm talking there.

However, before there would be more orgasms, there needed to be focus, direction and actual pursuit of her assignment.

It would have been easier if there was coffee, but alas, in
her cabin there was none, no Starbucks, but her well-trained java-jazzed nose told her that somewhere in this veritable island of dystopia, coffee was brewing. Excellent coffee. Full-bodied, highly caffeinated. It wasn’t long before she tracked the ambrosia to the campground office, where she found Carolyn hard at work, squinting at the computer monitor and muttering to herself.

“Fudge. Fudge. Floundering fudge.”

“Problem?” asked Jenn politely, and felt guilty when Carolyn jumped.

“Sorry,” Carolyn said, rubbing her neck. “You’re very quiet.”

“Not usually. What are you doing?” Casually, not meaning to pry, or actually not to look as though she was prying, she peeked at the screen. “What is that?”

“E-mail.”

Now, that Jenn understood. The link with the outside world, the unbreakable bonds that connected the people of the planet. And judging by the screenful of messages, Carolyn had more messages than she did. Yes, it was petty to notice, but it didn’t make it any less true. “You have a lot of friends,” Jenn said casually, as if everybody had that many friends.

Carolyn laughed. “These aren’t for me. It’s for my boss.”

Jenn smiled, because ha-ha, of course she’d known that nobody could have that many e-mail buddies. “Who’s your boss? I thought you owned the campground?”

“No, I’m a virtual assistant.”

“Wow, that’s so cool. What do you have to do?” asked Jenn, wanting to know more, because at this point it was wise to consider all vocational options—in case she needed them later, for instance.

“Read e-mails, answer e-mails and manage finances.”

“Do you have a lot of clients?” That many e-mails, that much stuff, that much obligation… It boggled the mind.

“Only one. He’s a writer.”

One? Wow. “So how’d you get the gig?”

“I get a referral from a friend. It keeps Emily in shoes.”

Self-deprecating but also content. Jenn mulled the paradox.

“What about the rest of your family?” she asked, because an absent family could explain the disconnect. No hovering parents, no need to worry about excessive expectations.

Carolyn shrugged, sucked in her lip, and patiently Jenn waited for the answer. “Not so happy there. Dad, well, he wasn’t exactly the picture of responsibility. Mom thought he had life insurance, he didn’t. Left her with a mess of problems. I help out with what I can, but I guess good fiscal sense doesn’t run in my gene pool.”

“You don’t seem upset.”

“I don’t let myself worry. It’s self-destructive and Emily catches on and gets cranky.”

“But don’t you get mad at your dad?”

Carolyn cast her a sideways look. “Are you kidding? All the time. But you have to work past it.”

Jenn couldn’t compute that last part. Parents weren’t supposed to be human and make mistakes. They were supposed to be all-knowing, all-loving and not capable of stupid judgment. “I think you’re doing a helluva lot better than I would.”

No hypocrisy there, because stuck out in the woods, living alone and surfing some other dude’s e-mails, no, Jenn didn’t have the strength.

“You’d be surprised. You don’t know what you’re capable of until you have to live through it. And it’s not like
I’m some Nature Nanny. Sometimes I cuss, sometimes I drink a little too much wine, and sometimes…”

Jenn lifted a brow, nodded wisely. “Mario?”

Carolyn looked around, obviously searching for people who would cruelly judge her for perhaps being overly friendly with a man. Seeing no one in the room that had any business at all in even thinking such things, Carolyn bobbed her head once.

It was very hard being a woman of certain needs, i.e. not a robot.

Making herself at home, Jenn casually strolled to the coffeepot and poured herself a cup. “Don’t you suffocate here sometimes? Everybody knows everybody. Everybody sees everybody. And if you and Mario or you and somebody else happen to hum-hum-hum-hum, then doesn’t it bother you?”

Part of the question was curiosity, and part was the devious female mind that needed to know whether Carolyn and Aaron had ever…

Carolyn was nice, attractive, and Aaron was…very efficient in the art of the orgasm.

“Nobody knows,” admitted Carolyn.

“Really?”

“Except for you.”

“Telling the reporter all your most valuable secrets? Not very bright, are we?”

Carolyn snorted. “Not even on a good day.”

Jenn took a sip and sighed as the hot joe warmed her throat and zapped her brain. “It’s men. They make us stupid. So stupid.”

“You got a guy back in the city?”

“No,” Jenn scoffed.

Carolyn watched her curiously, and then enlightenment
flashed in her eyes “Oh.” Then she frowned. Thought. Worried. “Seriously?”

Jenn flushed. “Not seriously. It was a moment.”

“Really? I didn’t think he had moments.”

“Have you tried?” asked Jenn carefully.

“Aaron?” She laughed. “Good God. No.” Then she held up a hand. “Let us rephrase. He’s my only constant renter. Money trumps all.”

“He’s lived here a long time?”

“Seven years.”

“You haven’t wondered?” It had taken Jenn one night to succumb to temptation. The idea of resisting for seven years seemed…impossible.

“No. I have a daughter. I can’t be curious too close to home.”

“Oh,” murmured Jenn, trying to sound blasé, then gave up. “Do you think he’s ever killed anyone?”

“Physically or does verbally count?”

“The criminal sort of death.”

“No. All he does is stay in his cabin. Writes. Glowers.”

“And don’t you want to know his story?”

Gently, Carolyn removed the coffee cup from Jenn’s hands and sat her down in a very maternal manner. “I can see this is going to be a problem for you, and let me tell you about this place. There are two kinds of people in Harmony Springs. The ones who grew up here and have chosen to stay. There’s about four that fall into that category. And the rest are people who came here, usually on the road to somewhere else, but they like the idea of a hideaway where people didn’t worry so much about where everyone came from, or what their story is.”

“Am I going to have problems finding something to write about?”

“Probably.”

“Why couldn’t you have told me that on Day One, and sent me merrily on my way to someplace like Hollywood or Vegas, where everybody wants to tell their story?”

“There’s a lot of dirt here, Jenn. You just got to know where to look.”

“Where do I start?”

“Browse the shops on Main. Mr. Goodnight in the antique store will talk your ear off, most of it worthless, but who knows. And don’t forget to stop in the ice-cream store.”

“Ice cream? I love ice cream.”

Carolyn only laughed.

W
ITH CAFFEINE-FUELED
courage pumping through her veins, Jenn finally broke down and braved the need for personal hygiene, aka the community shower. And to be fair, as shower houses went, the ones at the campground were not half-bad. There was gloriously hot water. The concrete floor and walls were painted an antiseptic white, and scarlet poppies bloomed all over the shower curtain.

Privacy, cleanliness and functionality. In the middle of the room, a wooden bench provided a place for clothes or sitting, or whatever else people did in shower houses. Jenn wasn’t sure, but the bench did provide a great dry spot for her things.

Yes, she had a certain
Psycho
moment when she stepped into the stall, but the hot water did a fab job of washing away dirt, dust and Jenn’s general fear and loathing of the great outdoors. Honestly this wasn’t so bad. Earlier she’d bought a bottle of tropical gardens shampoo at the store, and if she worked very hard, she could imagine herself in a lush green jungle, warm spring rain rushing over her body,
exotic birds calling high among the branches, and there in the corner was Cabana Boy, awaiting with a warm towel.

Having been blessed with an active imagination, Cabana Boy soon morphed into fully grown, fully aroused, fully unhappy Cabana Man, who wouldn’t have held a towel if his life depended on it.

If only he wasn’t so dark and mysterious in those ways that mothers always warned. If only he wasn’t so…large. Her body began to tingle and whirr, tiny currents of nerves that started with her breasts, moved lower to swirl between her thighs, finally gliding over her…

Toes?

Jenn glanced down and screamed.

A
ARON WAS HARD AT WORK
on the thirty-seventh draft of page forty-two when he first heard the scream. At first he thought it was only in his head. Sometimes that happened when he got lost in his book, but he wasn’t writing a murder mystery.

Realizing he should do the right thing, he rushed out the door, paused to listen, and then heard it again.

The screams were coming from the showers?

Aaron wasn’t a Boy Scout—he didn’t like being a Boy Scout—and as he ran toward the concrete building, he wasn’t happy that he was acting like one, but screaming invoked a fairly universal response. And then there was the possibility—probability—that it could be the disturbing Jennifer Dade.

A split second later he was skidding inside the woman’s bathhouse, but thankfully there was no blood on the floor, no intruder at all. Water was flowing, but the screaming had stopped. All he could see was a steam-filled room that looked quite normal and only one shower in use. Everything looked normal until he peeked underneath the edge
of the curtain and found a happy grass snake curled up on the shower floor.

Unfortunately there was no sign of Jennifer’s feet.

“Jennifer?” he asked casually.

“Aaron? Is that you?” came her voice from behind the curtain, more than a little tense.

“Are you in there?”

“Get it away.”

“Where are you?”

“Wedged between the walls. Get. It. Away.”

Aha. Now the snake’s relative contentment made perfect sense. “It’s a grass snake,” he explained in his most patient voice, instinctively knowing that laughing would be bad.

“I. Don’t. Care. It slimed across my feet.”

“Slithered,” he corrected, leaning against the concrete divider

“I don’t care if it tap-danced. Get. It. Away.”

“You don’t mind if I see you…naked?” he asked, frowning at the snake that was now the cause of bigger problems, because anonymous fondling on a rock at midnight was one thing, but gazing in a shower in the daytime was intimate and personal.

“Listen, if somebody’s going to leer at my lady bits, you beat out the snake. Are you happy?”

No, he wasn’t happy. Today he was supposed to be focused on his work, and his mind was entirely too happy for a man who didn’t like happy. However, this was the right thing to do, his luridly happy mind defended.

Slowly he took a deep breath, reminding himself that in just a moment he would be back at the keys, typing. His hand pulled back the curtain, and even then he wasn’t prepared for the shock to the gut.

Yes, there was shower-soaked Jenn, wedged between the two walls. Her feet were braced on one wall, her back
braced on the other, but it was the in-between that caused him to bite down on his tongue.

It had been a long time since he’d seen a naked woman, he told himself in way of explanation. Ten hours in fact, which felt like four lifetimes. And last night she hadn’t been completely naked, he mentally added. Why, she’d been cloaked in shadows and the clothes. Of course he hadn’t gotten a good look at her. In light of all that, a bleeding tongue was perfectly understandable since last night he hadn’t been exposed to the sparkling gleam of wet flesh, or the rosy bloom of a bare breast, or the damp triangle that beckons from between a woman’s thighs.

“There’s a snake in here,” she pointed out, because he seemed to be standing there stupidly.

Frantically Aaron remembered why he was here. Yes, there was a snake. Actually, now there were two.

“It won’t bite you,” he explained in a calm, disembodied voice that had absolutely no connection to the very explicit ideas that were fogging his brain and swelling his cock.

“Do I look like I’m going to put my feet on the floor?”

She wanted him to look? Okay. He looked. Stared. Leered. Discreetly he coughed, clearing the lust from his voice. “What do I need to get out of here? You or the snake? I can heft you out if you’d like.”

She shook her head, spraying him with water. Frankly it didn’t help. “Heft? Do I look like I need hefting?”

So once again, Aaron obeyed her instructions and looked. Last night he had tried to avoid staring, tried to avoid memorizing every touch, every curve. But in daylight, when the sun shone down on her like a flare, ignorance was impossible.

Against his better judgment he stared, and was ignorant no more. Of course he’d seen women naked before. To be
fair, he’d seen more beautiful naked women before, but they didn’t affect him quite so viscerally as this one. She was slim and freckled with a silky belly that was finished in a glistening patch of golden-blond—

“The
snake,
” she yelled at him. Deservedly.