I dropped my arms and took her hand. “Funny, cuz I was just thinking of telling him the exact same thing about his office staff.” I led her to the end of the pond where the water was only three feet deep, and the bottom was soft sand. There were a few stray logs, bad ones that the scaler had determined as unusable, floating in the shallow water.

I dropped her hand and hopped onto one of the logs. She watched as I spun it around several times.

She pointed to my feet. “See, I want to do that.”

I laughed. “Turning them takes a little time to learn. I don’t know about this, Woodstock.”

Again she shoved her hands in her back pockets to remind me of her beautiful breasts. Not that I needed any reminding. “You do realize there’s a good chance that I’ll get all wet out there.” She pushed out her bottom lip in a seductive plea. Just the kind of expression any guy dreamed about coming across a pillow.

“Well, since I’ve been spending a huge chunk of the day thinking about pleasing you, darlin’, I’m definitely not going to turn you down. Of course, I was thinking of a different kind of pleasure, but we can start with this.” I rolled the log closer to shore. “It’s really just a matter of concentration, predicting which way the log will turn and keeping ahead of that prediction. Use your arms for balance, and don’t look around. Just stare down at one spot on the log.”

She held her hand out. Her nervous, enthusiastic smile reminded me of a kid just about to hop on their first amusement park ride. She took a deep breath and put her hand in mine. She stepped across to the log. I held her hand and steadied the log beneath my feet.

“Find a spot to focus on. It will help you concentrate on your center of balance.”

She held up her free arm and got a feel for the movement under her feet. Twice, she gripped my hand harder. “I feel like a kid learning to roller skate.” She stared down at a place on the log, and I had the fun of watching her concentrate, lip biting and all. Her small button nose twitched as she inched forward and back on the log.

“O.K., I think I’m ready for you to let go.”

I slowly released her hand. She held mine for a few seconds longer. Something about her holding onto me like that pushed on my chest. God, she’d managed to take complete control of my heart in just a few weeks. No one else had ever made me feel this way. Scared the shit out of me plenty.

Tashlyn held out her arms and kept focused.

I was keeping the log as steady as possible. “You’re nailin’ this. Maybe you should join me out here. I probably wouldn’t get any work done, but it sure would make the hours go fast watching you nibble on that plump bottom lip.”

“This isn’t as hard as I thought.” She made the grave mistake of looking up at me as she spoke. Her balance was thrown off. She swayed backward and then overcompensated too far and fell forward. She was half in the water by the time I stopped her fall.

“Shit, this water’s cold.” She draped herself over the log and glanced up at me. “I just sent this log reeling backward and forward, and yet, there you are still standing on top of it as if you have some secret key to gravity.”

I lifted up one foot to remind her of the short spikes on my boots. Then I did a quick dance on top of the log.

“Showoff. As much fun as that was, I’m now freezing my butt off.” She reached up to me. “Let’s get out of here.”

I lowered my hand and popped her back up onto the log and onto her feet. “Bet you’ve never been kissed standing on a log before.” I wrapped my arms around her. The cold water from her clothing seeped through my shirt as I kissed her. A shiver went through her, which was probably from the cold but I decided to let myself believe it was the kiss. I balanced on the log as I swept her into my arms. “I can officially say that you are the best damn thing I’ve ever caught on a river.”

She looked down at the water. “Jeez, you really must have found some magic key to manipulating gravity.”

I rolled the log to move us closer to the shore and hopped onto the bank.

Her chin was trembling.

I put her down and turned my back to her. “Hop on, I’ll give you a ride to the locker room. I need to change my shoes, and I might have one flannel shirt stuck in the dark, forgotten corner of my locker. It won’t be laundry fresh, but it’ll be dry.”

She hopped on my back, and I jogged her back to the office. By the time we reached the locker room, her whole body trembled with cold.

“I guess I didn’t really think this out,” she said through chattering teeth.

I opened my locker and dug out the flannel shirt. I held it out but then yanked it back. I motioned for her to take off her shirt. “This was all part of the deal, right?”

She smiled and pressed her hand against her face. “Oh my gosh, I think my face muscles are frozen. And that last sentence, coupled with the way you are hungrily staring at me right now, should be making me blush.” She patted her cheeks. “Nothing. Too cold to produce a respectable blush.”

“Woodstock, you’re stalling for time, and in the meantime, your lips are turning blue.”

“All right.” She reached for the hem of her shirt and looked up at me. “Turn around.”

I shook my head. “Not going to happen.”

She lifted her shirt, revealing the lacy, pink bra beneath. I held the flannel shirt up out of reach. She huffed and reached back to unhook the bra. Her blue eyes gazed back at me. The round swells of her incredible breasts rose and fell with each breath as she slid the bra off.

“Fucking hell.” The words came out without me thinking about them. I stepped in front of her. “There’s that blush, darlin’.” Her nipples tightened as I stared down at her. She pushed her breasts up toward me, begging me silently to touch her, and I wanted to badly. “Not here. I want to take you home with me tonight. If you’ll come. I leave it up to you. But if I touch you right now, I won’t be able to stop, and I don’t want it to be here in this shitty locker room.”

It seemed that she held her breath as I reached around with the shirt. Her gaze stayed on my face as she pushed her arms through the sleeves. My thumb grazed her naked breast as I pulled the panels of the shirt shut. She sucked in a breath, a sound that nearly made me change my mind and take her then and there up against the cold plaster wall of the room. I held it together and wasn’t completely sure how.

She buttoned the shirt as I changed my shoes. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Even soaking wet, she was fucking breathtaking.

Her nose twisted to the side as she finished the last button.

“Told you it wouldn’t be too fresh.”

She wrapped her arms around herself. “It’s warm though. I actually like it. It smells like pine and river water and—and man.” She pressed the collar to her nose. “Oh wow.”

I laughed. “Too much man?”

“Actually no, it smells like stale pot.”

I finished tying my boots. “Yeah, guess that might be on there too. How does a pure and natural girl like you know what stale weed smells like?”

“Perhaps you weren’t listening when I mentioned my upbringing in the commune. I think some of our neighbors were breathing weed more than oxygen.”

“Sounds like a fun place to grow up.” I took her hand. “Let’s blow this joint. Did you catch my play on words there?” I led her to the door and stopped. I looked questioningly at her.

She hopped on her toes and kissed me. Her long lashes fluttered open as she dropped back to her feet. “I want to go home, Jem . . . with you.”

Chapter 19

Tashlyn

The ride home was a blur. Not a terrible blur like this morning but a good, giddy blur. I’d even, for the time being, managed to dismiss the threatening note as a benign warning, a prank of some kind. I’d decided not to worry Jem about it yet. If there was one thing that could keep my mind from dwelling on depressing, confusing stuff, it was the man sitting next to me. And something about wearing his shirt on my bare skin on the ride home made me nearly breathless with a need for him to touch me.