Miss Adventure (6 page)

“I know they won’t go for the idiot gear. Not unless I can prove its viability first.”

I stare at him.

“I’ve had this idea for the new line for a while,” he explains, “but no good way to test it. It's a potential gold mine and I want to pounce.”

“And that’s where I come in?” My voice is as sharp as a Ginsu knife.

“Yes.”

“You want to hoodwink your snobbish company?”

“Not hoodwink,” he says. “It’s just that I didn’t realize—”

“That you’re just as big a snob?”

He seriously does a double take. “What? I’m not—”

“You called it ‘idiot gear,’ Jack. To my face. And you want
me
to be your undercover idiot.”

He looks so busted that he doesn’t even try to spin it. “Everyone’s an idiot at something,” he finally says.

And his voice is just rational enough, just sympathetic enough, to make me REALLY hate him. “Oh yeah?” I challenge. “What about you? What’s something you’re an idiot at?”

Even in the shadows cast by the streetlights, I swear I see his eyes darken. Okay, maybe not his eyes, but definitely his expression, like he’s sinking back into the dimness of a dark, evil emperor hood. He opens his mouth to answer, looking as resigned as Mr. Darcy trying to confess that he’s socially inept. “I…It’s just that…”

Holy caramba. He actually has an answer. The wind dies out of my self-righteous sails, making me feel deflated for having brought him down to my level.

“I….” He looks right at me. “I guess I’ve always had a knack for avoiding things in life I would be bad at,” he explains. “So I’d never have to deal with being an idiot at something.”

WHAT?
This
is his big confession? That he’s purposely perfect?

“But you want
me
to deal with it? You want me to jump right in blindfolded?”

His lips quirk up. “Having spent one afternoon with you on a mountain,” he says, “I have to say, a blindfold couldn’t hurt.”

I give him a tight-jawed Not Funny look.

“Remember,” he reminds me, “going out with me into the wild was your idea in the first place.”

“‘Going out with you?’” I simper, batting my lashes. “Gee, do I get to wear your ring?”

“Say yes to this deal, and to keeping it secret, and the ring is yours if I can find it.”

D
oin’ it our way
!
On your mark, get set and go now
….

My heels make this totally sexy
click
click
click
as I stride in rhythm, making my way across the cold cement of the parking garage floor.

Despite the downpour and the worse-than-usual Friday morning traffic crush, things are going my way. Sure, I’m getting ready to become Jack’s undercover idiot, but I will do so responsibly and capably. After all, I’m not really an idiot.

I’ve lubed myself into my slickest black business suit and sharpened the look with a pair of deadly four-inch heels so that Jack will see that I take my association with his new gear seriously. I may know little about outdoor adventuring, but I am a confident professional woman ready to conquer the world.

I check my cell before dropping it into my chic black bag. 8:40. Perfect. Jack and I have a meeting at nine o’clock, even though he wanted to keep me hidden away like a teenager’s copy of
Playboy
. But I wouldn’t stand for it. I insisted on this meeting so I could see his company and ask him questions.

It’s not practical to be some airhead like Goldie Hawn in
Protocol
who almost gets bamboozled into marrying a sheik because she doesn’t know any better and never paid attention.
I
want to know better. You can bet good Burger Barn money that I won’t get tricked into marrying anybody.

Jack told his staff we were working on a project together for class. That’s my cover, and it makes me feel super-sexy like I’m a spy or something. As I walk into the glass-enclosed foyer in the middle of the garage to call the elevator, I catch a glimpse of myself in a tall pane. I check out the silhouette of my butt and—

Ding.

The elevator doors swoosh open, so I step in and push the button that will take me up to the offices. The elevator starts moving, on its way to the top floor of the converted warehouse that has become the hub of Into the Wild. I am on my way to a braver me.

I look around to see if I can catch my reflec—

“AAAAAAAHHH!”

I clamp my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming again. As I do, all my joints unbuckle, causing me slump into a duck-and-cover position on the floor of the elevator.

A GLASS elevator.

You have to be kidding me! A glass elevator? In a converted warehouse? WHY?

I huddle against the metal doors, keeping my head down, but I still catch terrifying glimpses from underneath the crook of my arm. Levels of the converted building flash by. I see what look to be loading docks, then storage bays, then work stations….

Ding.

Oh! I jump up but not fast enough. A damp, sandy surfboard knocks into me. “Hey!”

I see wet, dark hair then the edge of a face peer around the board.

“Sorr—”

“Jack?”

“Lisa.” Jack and his surfboard crush into the small space with me. “You’re early.”

The elevator lurches into motion. I freeze, locking my knees. Only my heart moves, beating at the speed of Secretariat. My eyes stay fixed on Jack.

“Lisa?”

Oh, God. He’s going to know I’m terrified. Of an elevator. He’s going to fire me! On my first day!

“Lisa?”

I tear my eyes from his face and rake them down his body, careful not to look
anywhere
near the glass walls.

“Why are you all wet? And sandy? Were you surfing? In the rain? Today?”

“Testing is half the design process.” He hefts the board as the elevator comes to a stop but looks back at me and smiles. “I'll be ready for our meeting by nine.”

Ding.

“You’re going to clean up and be ready to meet me in fifteen minutes?”

The doors open. “Watch me.”

Jack takes off, striding through an oatmeal-carpeted open office area bathed in recessed light. Leaping out of the elevator, I trip along in his wake. Some workers at their desks turn and stare, but I hold my head high as if I belong right where I am. At the end of the hall we sweep into a spacious office with pear green walls, but he doesn’t even slow down.

“Peg,” he says, nodding at the woman with stainless-steel gray hair sitting at the desk. “This is Lisa.”

She smiles at me, but before I can say anything, I pull up on a dime as Jack stops at a big black door set into the far wall. The portal to his sacred lair.

Totally acting like I’m not even here, Jack turns back toward Peg. “Why don’t you continue the appraisals on the loading docks?” He says it like it’s a suggestion, but then again, it’s clear it’s not.

Peg stands up. “No,” she says. “I can’t.”

“Ah.” Jack leans his surfboard against the wall and turns to face her. “Haven’t found your iPad yet?” Even I can tell that his voice is too casual to be anything but smug.

“Jack,” Peg says soothingly. “Soul Caliber isn’t for everyone.”

Jack folds his arms and shrugs. “Well, without the iPad, I guess you’ll just have to start the appraisals over from scratch.”

Peg stands at attention, her nostrils flaring. “Fine,” she says. “A rematch.”

Jack tilts his head and gives a ghost of a smile. “Filing cabinet under ‘I’.”

She retrieves the iPad, then leaves.

Still ignoring me, Jack turns back to his office door and puts his eye next to a panel that whirs, lights up, then disengages the lock. A retinal scan? Adventure gear must be some high stakes game. How cool am I? Jack is through the door and I stumble in behind him.

He surges through the office, yanking his wetsuit top over his head. “I’m going to take a quick—”

He stops talking. And walking. He just stands there in the middle of the room in black wetsuit shorts down to mid-thigh and a wetsuit top, half on, half off. This pose exposes an incredible set of abs, his lower back and an amazing pair of hipbones beneath taut skin—I have this total weakness for a guy’s hips. But I can’t see his head, which is buried somewhere inside the wetsuit shirt. I think he’s stuck.

Jack tugs. He yanks. Yup. He’s stuck. The thin, rubbery fabric of the wetsuit looks welded to the skin halfway up his back. He’s in the dark, and it must smell yucky in there, like the sea at low tide.

He flexes his muscles, trying to break free. “Damn!” This from inside the shirt. “What good’s a wetsuit if you can’t get it off when you need to?”

He’s asking
me
?

He tries to yank the shirt over his head by pulling at the back of the collar, but gets nowhere. His head stays covered, with his arms kind of stuck stretching forward.

“Hmmm…” I say, making it clear that I’m trying not to laugh, “Is this what Superman’s like behind closed doors? Getting all tangled up in his tights?”

“Laugh it up, Lois,” he says. “This is a new neoprene blend I’ve been working on for making the best pockets. Now, I’ve discovered a flaw. So this is all good.”

“Right.”

Giving up the fight, he turns toward me. “Help me out here, will you? Just grab the back of the shirt and pull it over my head.”

“What? You want me to, uh,
help
you?” I throw the word
help
in there at that last second, just so he doesn’t know how freaked out I am that he wants me to
touch
him. To touch him. On the bare skin.

His voice gets quiet but serious. “Lisa, our plan is never going to work if we can’t help each other out.”

I bite the inside of my cheek. Hard. “What do you want me to do?”

He bends forward. “Just grab the back edge and pull it over my head,” he coaches patiently.

I reach out, getting a grip of the dark, thin fabric. I try to ignore the scrape of my fingernails across his skin as if this is no big deal. Really. Touching Jack Hawkins and deliberately taking his clothes off is hardly the scariest thing I’ve ever done. Really. I mean it.

Holding my breath, I tug, starting to undress him.

And I get chills.

I’m the one touching him, and
I
get chills. Good lord, this is too bizarre. He’s totally hot, yes, but in a lust-after-him-from-afar-like-you-lust-after-George-Clooney kind of way. Not in an actual feel-a-rush-of-close-up-tingles kind of way. How dumb can I get? I’m starting to work for the guy today, as his own private idiot.

The dynamics are so wrong.

I flex my fingers, and
Jack shivers
.

OH. MY. GOD.

“Damn, I’m cold,” he says. Then in a singsong voice, “I know, I know—that’s what I get for running around barefoot in a rain storm.”

I stupidly look at his feet. No socks or shoes.

I try to shake myself out of my steamy trance. I’m hot, he’s cold. I really AM an idiot.

I give the shirt a sharp yank, and Jack pulls back. The rubbery fabric stretches up across his back, loosening its grip on him. With a wrenching jerk of his shoulders, he breaks free from the suit and stumbles back.

And there we stand. Me, looking like a million bucks, and Jack making me feel seriously overdressed.

I hold his icky shirt by two fingers, keeping it well away from my Gucci threads. I cock one eyebrow. “
Voila
.” I hope I sound oh so cool and blasé. That’s my intention. Because the truth is, I’m scared down to the tips of my split ends.

Jack is totally lean and defined and squeezed into nothing but a pair of maritime hotpants. I try to remember to breathe. I’m really scared of good-looking people. Isn’t everyone? I mean, everyone except the people who are actually gorgeous?

Jack takes his wetsuit top from me. “Thanks.”

He heads over to a closet built into oak paneling, pulls out some clothes, and then disappears into a bathroom set in the far corner of the gargantuan office. He shuts the door behind him and in a second I hear the shower start.

I need to sit down.

I push some books, newspapers, and two and a half pairs of socks aside to sit down on a roomy brown plaid couch pushed against the far wall. I slump back, take a few deep breaths, and try to relax.

Jack’s lair is part sporting goods store, part rec room, part county clerk’s office, part garage workbench. His desk is littered with a computer, a phone, papers, gear-looking things, a bike tire, strips of cloth, and what looks like a chicken alarm clock. And this is the guy who's going to make me stronger than a locomotive?

The bathroom door opens. Jack steps out, wearing an untucked white button down shirt with the cuffs undone and a faded pair of Levi’s. His hair is wet and his feet are still bare.

I swallow. He’s wearing more clothes than I’ve seen him in so far today, but seeing him fresh from the shower and in the process of getting dressed is so...intimate.

“What were you testing this morning?” I try my hardest to sound truly interested in the work. Not the man. Definitely not the man.

Jack breaks his stride and looks up. “I need seriously choppy waves to test the accessibility of pockets in the suit,” he says with a complete command I envy. “We’re supposed to get rain on and off from now through Halloween, but I have to take advantage of days with no lightning.”

I feel like I black out while staying conscious, if that’s possible. Did he say
choppy
waves
? And…
no
lightning
?

Sudden sweat beads my spine. I will myself not to shiver as I picture the reality of what he does on a daily basis. Of what he did this morning while I was blow-drying my hair. I try to breathe, feeling all gummy-like in my limbs and ready to slide off the couch. He was in the turbulent ocean where he could have been drowned by a riptide or electrocuted by an unexpected flash of lightning or eaten by a shark or sucked to the bottom by the tentacles of a giant squid—good God! What have I gotten myself into?

Jack flicks the switch of a coffee maker sitting on the windowsill. “Lisa? You okay?”

“Um, how do you know a certain rainy day won’t have lightning?” I make my voice sound all interested and chirpy.

“Generally, if I don’t see any.”

Maybe I really am an idiot. And I'm making it really obvious. He's going to fire me if I don't shape up.

“Hang on.” He goes to the outer office and gets the surfboard, so I race to be helpful and pull the door open wider for him. As Jack and the board brush past me, I feel something move through my hair. A jellyfish!

“Aaaah!” I scream. “ Get it off! Get it off! Get it off!”

I hop up and down and shake and shake and shake my hands.

Jack shoves the surfboard aside and steps toward me.

“Stand still.”

But it’s crawling down my collar! “Eew eew eew eew eew!” I hop back and rip off my jacket. “Get it off get it off get it off!”

Jack rips my jacket out of my hands and throws it across the room, saving me from the slime.

“Jesus!” he rasps in a gruff whisper.

“What was it? Is it in my hair?”

“Seaweed,” he says, sifting a hand through my hair. “You’re clear.”

I breathe and blow like I’m having a baby. Thank God. I’m safe.

It’s then that I realize I’m standing there in my bra. And not a chic, sexy black one that matches my skirt, either. Not even a nice silky one with flowers or wide satin straps. I’d like to be wearing a bra like any of those, but I haven’t done laundry in a while, what with securing my apartment, going to Connecticut, and becoming an undercover idiot. Plus I hate chores.

So, today, I’m down to wearing The Beige One from the very back of my underwear drawer. You know—that way un-sexy tannish-nude color that you only ever see as a functional underwear color. Bras that your great aunt can buy in a box come in this color and so do girdles.

I look up at Jack to see if he’s noticed, but he’s not even looking at me. He’s looking right past me.

“Excuse me,” someone says behind me.

I whip around toward the door. But with Jack standing so close, the turn is more like a sweetheart move that tucks us closer together. Jack is half dressed—no belt, no shoes, shirt all disheveled. And I’m in my nude-colored bra, with my jacket flung across the couch.

In the doorway, a young man wearing a pencil-thin tie looks like he’s smirking.

“I was scared of the seaweed!” I blurt.

He just looks at me and blinks.

“Alan, what is it?” Jack’s voice pulses with complete control, and he doesn’t move. Like there’s nothing irregular at all about this fix. Of course, he’s not the one caught wearing mom-colored underwear.