Reconsidering Riley (20 page)

"Jayne," he said. "Jayne...you're a
fraud."

"
Arrgh!
" She wrenched awake, and
found herself mummified in what felt like her apartment's
comforter, only slipperier. She thrashed around, identified several
mysterious muscle aches, and stilled in confusion.

"What's happened to me?" she wailed. "I
think somebody beat me all over with a long-handled body
loofa!"

Beside her, Kelly smiled. She brushed her
bangs from her eyes. "We all feel that way. It's the hiking, I
think. We're not used to it yet."

The hiking
. Everything came flooding
back to Jayne. The fact that she
wasn't
in her familiar
apartment. The trail. The going in circles, the re-hydrated beef
stroganoff she'd been too hungry to refuse at dinner last night,
the lack of a soak in a hot tub or even a shower. She remembered
sitting beside the small campfire Mack had built, dozing off with
exhaustion, lying rigidly awake afterward in the inky scariness of
her tent.

She remembered Riley...opening up the stars
to her.

No. Better not to dwell on Riley's kindness,
Jayne told herself firmly. She was supposed to be resisting
him.

She yawned. Peered into the reddish light
caused by the sun struggling to penetrate their tent's nylon walls.
"What time is it?"

"Just after sunrise. The guides say we have
to get an early start if we want to make it to the halfway point
between the Hideaway Lodge and the canyon lodge by this
afternoon."

Ugh
. A pre-dawn wakeup call had
almost been tolerable yesterday, when the excitement of beginning
their trip had livened things up a little. But two days of crawling
out of bed before the sun had reached a reasonable
skyscraper-height was pushing it.

Jayne flopped onto her sleeping bag again.
"I'll catch up."

"Come on, sleepyhead." Kelly tugged at her
arm. "I hear the guys are making breakfast."

Mmmm. Breakfast
. Pancakes, waffles,
omelets...even cornflakes. Okay, so getting up might not be
so
bad. She was
starving
. And yesterday's hike must
have offered up plenty of those fat-burning benefits Riley had
promised, so she had some room to splurge. Picturing a nice morning
meal al fresco, Jayne pushed upward.

"'Atta girl," Kelly said.

Jayne rubbed the sleep from her eyes,
straightened her abundance of layered outdoors wear, and then
whipped her hair into a ponytail at the top of her head. She
stuffed her stockinged feet into her unlaced ATSes. Trailed by
Kelly, she crawled from the tent and shuffled into the chilly
campsite.

"'Morning, ladies." Red-haired Mack smiled
and waved from his position crouched beside three compact camp
stoves. He had an oven mitt on his waving hand. "Breakfast will be
ready in a jiffy."

He was so sweet, Jayne thought. And—even
though he wasn't her hazel-eyed, dark-haired, constantly teasing
type—so darn cute, too. She turned to say so to Kelly, and saw that
Kelly apparently already agreed. Wearing an eager expression, she
approached Mack with hesitant steps. "Need any help?"

The guide's smile broadened. His gaze
softened when he looked at Kelly, and Mack gestured for her to sit
beside him. "Sure! I could use some company. Why don't you join
me?"

Jayne lingered a moment. Kelly sat beside
Mack. They looked companionable, snatches of their conversation
drifting on the
non
-pancake-scented breeze.

Where were those pancakes, anyway?

Wanting to be ready for them, and assured
that Kelly was in dependable hands, Jayne headed into the bushes. A
few minutes later, she'd performed her most basic morning duties.
Muscles gradually unkinking, she trudged sleepily back to the
campsite. She wished she had a nice triple latte. A nice chocolate
chip scone. A nice roof and walls and central heating, and a nice
old-fashioned bathtub and—

"Good morning," Riley said, interrupting her
thoughts. He strolled across the clearing with a handful of plastic
bowls and spoons, looking bright-eyed and happy. "Sleep well?"

"Like the dead, thanks to you." Her smile
was split with another yawn. She stretched, feeling the pull of
post-hiking soreness all over her body. "Those stars were just what
I needed."

He nodded, his gaze lifting from its
appreciative perusal of her stretch. "There's nothing like being
out in the great outdoors for a good night's sleep. I can hardly
manage it in the city these days. It seems twice as noisy to me
now."

Jayne thought of the typical sounds she
awakened to. Traffic, auto alarms, her neighbor's TV, a car stereo
booming rap music on the street below. She had to admit, bird calls
were much nicer. While doing her duty amid the twitter of wild
birds this morning, she'd felt almost like a Disney cartoon
heroine. The ones who set bluebirds chirping and bunnies hopping
and all manner of cute woodland creatures following them.
Tra-la-la-la-la
.

"Nature has its appeal." Jayne wrinkled her
nose. "I guess."

Riley smiled, as though delighted by her
opinion. Why that should be, she didn't know. Obviously, he'd never
intended to share "the great outdoors" with
her
. This joint
expedition had been an accident.

She wondered if he'd ever taken a girlfriend
on one of his adventure photography expeditions. Probably, he'd
taken someone tomboyish. Someone capable, like him. Someone eager
to test her mettle against squirrels, sand, slimy fish, and
civilization deprivation.

Someone, Jayne thought morosely, like the
person her father and brothers must have hoped
she'd
become.

"I'm glad to hear you say that," Riley told
her, "because we'll be in the thick of it today."

At her blank look, he elaborated. "Nature,
that is. We'll be climbing more this morning, doing some fishing,
making our way up into the canyon. By this time tomorrow, we'll be
two-thirds of the way to the canyon lodge."

"Does it have a bathtub?" she asked
hopefully.

"Yes." He looked at her—leisurely, as though
mentally stripping away her multiple layers of clothing and sliding
her naked body into said bathtub. "It does."

Nirvana
. She could hardly wait. She
said as much, only to see Riley's interested expression grow even
more...interested. She couldn't resist adding, "How big is it? Big
enough for two?"

His gaze rose from her midsection, lingered
for the merest instant where her breasts were shrouded in
Polarfleece, and stopped on her face. She tried not to show how his
attention made her tingle, even as he cocked an eyebrow.

"Is that an invitation?"

Damn
. She should have known better
than to flirt with him.
She
halfway meant what she said, but
he...didn't. "It's an innocent inquiry. I have a bottle of Bathing
Beauty Bubbles, two wild berry bath bombs, a tin of honey body
balm, and a whole assortment of herbal bath beads, all going to
waste in my pack."

Thoughtfully, Riley stepped nearer, close
enough for her to catch the mingled scents of fresh air
and...soap?...clinging to his skin. Soap, in the wilderness. How
had he managed that, when she couldn't hunt down a bath to save her
life?

She angled her chin for a closer view, and
realized the slightly antiseptic fragrance she'd detected was
really shaving cream. There was an overlooked scrap of it still
visible just beneath the rugged edge of his jaw. For some reason,
that tiny sign that Riley did, indeed,
sometimes
miss a
detail reassured her.

Maybe that meant he wouldn't realize she was
succumbing to his love 'em and leave 'em appeal, all over
again.

Jayne stifled a tender urge to thumb that
shaving cream away. Instead, she stood steady as he spoke. She had
to be strong. Ignore his nearness, and its effect on her.
Especially since Riley was probably coming closer just to deliver
another lecture on packing in only essential items.

He hesitated, as though reluctant to spoil
their early-morning repartee with serious adventure travel
business. Or maybe as though trying to fathom why one woman needed
the equivalent of a bath-and-body shop in her backpack. Then, Riley
lowered his head intimately.

"What,
exactly
," he asked, "does a
person do with honey body balm?"

The husky note of intrigue in his voice made
her shiver.
Rub it all over me
, she thought instantly,
crazily.
Rub it all over you. Rub it all over each other, until
we're sweet and soft and hard and needful...

Boy, would she never learn?

"I guess that's for me to know and you to
find out," Jayne said saucily.

Maybe her teasing would divert his attention
long enough for her to escape with her pride intact. She
did
thumb the shaving cream from his jaw, with a hopefully-lighthearted
gesture. Then she straightened her fleece and trouped to her tent
to finish getting ready for her day...this time, leaving Riley
staring after
her
.

Holding a packet of pre-moistened body
towelettes, Riley strode through the campsite. He passed Lance and
Mack and Bruce, each of them diligently working either to prepare
the morning's meal or to teach one of Jayne's guidance groupies how
to operate her camp stove. He shook his head at Bruce's continued
(and obvious) flirtation with Mitzi, as the guide tried to talk her
into skinny dipping in a nearby creek.

"Are you nuts?" Mitzi asked. "It's
forty-five degrees out. I'm a woman, not a Popsicle."

Bruce chuckled. "A Popsicle, huh? Well,
then..."

Riley didn't want to hear whatever ribald
rejoinder his buddy would come up with. He quickened his pace. He
approached Jayne's tent at the far edge of the campsite, thinking
about his plans to give her the on-the-trail towelettes as a bath
time substitute. The disposable towelettes wouldn't be as enjoyable
as, say, honey body butter, but Riley figured they'd satisfy
Jayne's bath junkie mania better than nothing.

He neared the tent. Suddenly, Alexis's voice
came from inside the domed red nylon. He stopped with the greeting
he'd been about to call out still on his lips.

Maybe Jayne was talking with Alexis, he
thought. Telling his niece all the things Riley and Jayne had
discussed yesterday—about how boys
could
be trustworthy and
fun and non-heartbreaking. Maybe she was helping Alexis already.
Not wanting to disturb them, he turned and prepared to move quietly
away. What he heard next, though, stopped him.

"So you never—
ouch
—even knew your
mom?" Alexis asked, her voice drifting through the tent's mesh
skylight. "That's, like,
totally
sad. Ouch!"

"I knew her," Jayne said. "Just not for very
long. She died when I was three. So it was sad losing her...but not
as sad as you think. I recovered. I still had my dad and my
brothers." There was a pause. "Please hold still. I don't want to
poke you with the tweezers."

Ahh
, Riley realized.
Another primp
session
. Probably, Jayne was using that girly beauty talk to
get closer to Alexis. Very smart of her. His respect for her
touchy-feely methods rose another grudging notch.

"Anyway, my childhood is beside the point,"
Jayne went on as he listened. "All I did was ask if you wanted to
let your mother teach you how to tweeze your eyebrows. I know
I
would've liked that."

Alexis snorted. "My mom thinks racking up a
big AT&T bill qualifies as mother-daughter bonding. She
wouldn't be interested. Besides, she—
ouch
—gets her eyebrows
waxed at the salon."

Jayne murmured something in reply. Riley
decided again to leave them be. Their conversation had veered from
the interesting subject of Jayne's girlhood to feminine masochism,
and he didn't know how much of that he could take. If they started
talking about bikini waxes, he might have to run.

Then Alexis said, "It costs my mom a
huge
amount of money every month to go to that salon, too.
My dad used to
totally
have temper tantrums when he saw the
bills."

Riley nodded reluctantly, eyebrows raised.
Knowing his older brother, he could believe it.

"Sometimes," his niece went on with a sigh,
"I don't think looking good is worth it."

"Oh, but it is!" Jayne disagreed. Her
silhouette wasn't visible through the nylon tent wall, but she had
to be nodding. "Good grooming is important. After all, makeup,
tweezers, and the judicious use of hairstyling products are all
that separate us from men. Also, cute shoes. Hold still!"

"
Yeow
!" Alexis sniffled. "Is it
supposed to hurt like this? I feel like my forehead is on
fire."

"We can wait a minute, if you want. But yes,
beauty hurts sometimes." A pause. "Especially when nobody notices
it."

"When nobody notices it?"

An awkward moment passed, as though Jayne
regretted having made the comment. Then, off-handedly, "Right. Or
when nobody appreciates the effort that goes into it."

"I'll bet everyone notices
you
."

Silence. Jayne had to be shaking her head.
The realization stilled him. How anyone could fail to notice—and
appreciate—her was beyond him.

"That's whack," Alexis said.

Riley grinned, recognizing Lance's lingo. It
seemed Alexis didn't think Lance was
quite
as much of a
"jerk" as she claimed.

"
Everyone
must notice you!" his niece
continued indignantly. "You look like a model or something. I can't
believe
—"

"Not everyone values looking good," Jayne
said gently.

"Like who?"

"Well...like my family, for instance."
Jayne's voice had quieted. A muffled
ouch
from Alexis told
him Jayne still worked the tweezers. "My dad and my brothers. I
always thought—oh, never mind. You don't want to hear this."