His silence said he didn’t know. “Come on. Let’s do your thing, then get the hell out of Dodge.”
They sat on the plateau waiting for the sunrise. Harley pulled out her binoculars. “Still too dark to see down to the meadow floor,” she murmured.
TJ dug into his backpack and handed her…
“Night-vision goggles?” She stared at him, then grinned as she took them. “Okay, I take back all the bad things I ever thought of you.”
“But bad good, right?”
“Ha.” And yes. She slipped on the goggles and hummed in pleasure. “Wow! These are amazing! Think the Forest Service would ever issue these?”
“At nearly four g’s a pop, I doubt it.”
Holy shit. She turned to him, able to see him perfectly. “Why do you have them?”
“It’s a new toy that just came in. Stone brought them to me.” Reaching out, he tugged at a strand of hair. “We like to play.”
No kidding! Even in the dark she could feel the force of his personality, the heat in his dark gaze. “Too bad playing with you is more dangerous than playing with matches.”
He said nothing to that, but the gleam in his eyes suggested her assessment might be true. He turned and looked out into the dark, leaving her to her thoughts.
Suddenly, she had to know. “TJ?”
“Yeah.”
“So we’re doing this, becoming…friends?”
“Yeah.”
He sounded a lot more sure than she felt. But if they managed it, she knew she couldn’t have a better man for the job. He was intelligent, funny, strong hearted, and steady as a rock.
And yet…
And yet she didn’t see them being just friends. Not with this crazy heat between them. Eventually, he’d wear her down with his sexy innuendos, with the sheer magnitude of his hotness.
He’d ruin her for all other men.
She’d never be the same.
He’d ruin her for Nolan, whom she hadn’t thought about all night. With a grimace, she adjusted the goggles and watched for any movement in the meadow below. In the distance she caught sight of three deer, leaping through the bush, bounding gracefully with mind-boggling speed.
Something had startled them.
Probably something that had set sights on them for breakfast. Coyotes?
Or maybe whoever had been drinking from that Styrofoam cup.
She didn’t want something ominous there in her favorite place on earth, but it happened. It happened everywhere, and if she was being honest, it especially happened there in the Sierras, in real time. It was called the circle of life.
They’d seen it yesterday in its most vicious form when they’d come across the shot coyote. The irony didn’t escape her, that the mountains she loved with all her heart, the place that she needed in order to be happy, could also bring death so swiftly.
But the fact remained. Those mountains were deadly, and the rescue last night had almost proven that. Every single season at least one tragedy occurred because someone got stupid, lazy, or lost their concentration while doing something dangerous. Hell, even TJ and his brothers weren’t immune. A year and a half ago, Cam had nearly killed himself in a snowboarding accident. Stone had had a couple of close calls on S &R. And TJ had lost Sam.
What would she lose, she wondered.
First you have to actually have something to lose, she reminded herself. Her life hadn’t lent itself to that, but she was working on changing it. She was getting herself where she wanted to be, and for the first time she could honestly say she was trying to move toward a life she could enjoy.
“Deep thoughts?” TJ asked.
“Did you know how much your work would come to define you?”
He looked at her for a long moment. “Are you looking for definition, Harley?”
“Maybe.”
He was quiet a moment. “When we first started Wilder Adventures, it was about getting food in our bellies and keeping a roof over our heads, doing the only thing we knew how to do well. Getting paid to play was a bonus.”
“And now?”
“And now…now I can’t imagine doing anything else.” He paused. “Is that how you feel about wildlife biology?”
It was her turn to pause, as she looked at the blazing glory of dawn. She handed him back the night-vision goggles. “Yes. But I don’t think I have the job right yet.”
He smiled and slung an arm over her shoulders. “You will.”
“You sound so sure.”
“I am.”
The sun continued to slide up the horizon, quietly spectacular. “You must be exhausted,” she murmured. “Why aren’t you home in bed again?”
He turned his head. The bright rays of the sun slanted over him, lighting his hair, his eyes. She braced for the assault on her senses, especially the sensual ones. If he kept it up, he’d wear her down in no time, and she knew it.
“I wanted to walk you out,” he said simply.
The words, softly and genuinely uttered, gave her a flutter a hundred times more devastating than she’d anticipated, and she sighed, softening as she slid a hand around to the back of his neck, her fingers playing with the ends of his unruly, silky hair.
His eyes dipped down to her mouth, then back up again in question.
She lifted her other hand to his chest, and felt the very welcome heat of him, his muscles hard beneath her hand. His heart was steady and strong, like the rest of him. “What’s it going to be like for us?” she asked. “In the real world, I mean. Because there’s all kinds of…friends.”