Nobody's Lost (Rescue Me Saga #5)(18)
She pointed it out to him, but when she glanced up, she caught him focused more on her butt until caught looking, and then he turned away. She grinned. Maybe the man was more interested than he let on.
When she could no longer feel her feet, she started for the bank. “Let’s head back up as soon as my feet dry a bit.” They sat together on the bank, and she pulled out her camera, taking more photos of the water, as well as their feet against the red rocks and dark green grass.
After they donned their shoes and socks, she stood and picked up the camera. Climbing the hill was tricky as she tried to keep her camera from banging against the ground. Ryder suggested she hold the camera with one hand while he pulled her up holding her free hand. The man was wicked strong. He must not be very idle. She wondered what he did for a living, but was too focused on hauling her ass up the hill to ask. Man, was she ever out of shape.
He gave her one last pull at the crest, and they stood side by side. She gasped for breath and felt sweat trickling down her neck. Man, leather was not the thing to wear when hiking up a hill.
When she could form a sentence again, she said, “Where to next, Ryder?”
Chapter Six
Ryder tried to ignore the breathiness of her voice and the way her chest heaved as she attempted to catch her breath the last few minutes. The last half hour had been a test of his self-control as he’d been treated to the sight of her leather-encased ass on a couple of occasions as she bent over. The way the outfit molded around her breasts, too, was equally distracting.
Stop looking at her breasts, *.
He needed to get back on the bike and take her back home. But first, he’d promised to show her something on the other end of the second tunnel. “Ready?”
She nodded, and he took her hand. He told himself it was to help her over the guardrail, but he’d enjoyed walking through the tunnel holding her hand earlier. He hadn’t spent companionable time with a woman in…forever.
Megan was comfortable to be with. She didn’t act silly or play games. The real deal.
He liked her. A lot.
But not in that way. More like a sister.
Then why are you noticing her ass, breathy voice, and heaving chest?
The admonishing inner voice sounded a lot like Carlos.
Oh, shut the f*ck up.
Sometimes being honorable and doing the right thing got in the way of his baser needs. All he had to do was remember who had sent him on this mission, though, and he’d stay on the straight and narrow.
The sunlight waned as they walked out of the second tunnel. The timber operation died in the first half of the last century. Now the road was popular with locals and adventurous tourists. Ryder avoided the area during July and August when the road became congested with too many people, but right now, it was just the two of them.
The wind picked up, and he heard the squawk of two or more Steller’s jays. He often hiked here during the winter months to just sit and listen to the birds and watch for other wildlife. Helped him some, especially when he’d had a rough night. Carlos’s Pueblo elders had taught both boys how to become one with the Universe.
“It’s so serene here.”
Megan felt it, too.
He smiled. “I still feel close to the Great Spirit here.”
“I can see why.”
Sherry had never wanted to spend time outside of Albuquerque. Megan was the first woman he’d brought out here. For some reason, that made him happy.
“Oh, look at these!”
Her eagle eye homed in on the rusty nails and bolts that had been pounded into posts at the side of the road to form representations of wildlife. The posts had been intended to keep cars from going over the embankment to the river below, but someone decided to decorate them with fanciful doodads.
Megan spent the next fifteen minutes photographing each one from every angle. Her excitement over the simplest things ignited a spark of life inside Ryder in places he thought long since dead. He hoped she’d show him the photos after she downloaded them off her camera. He wondered if she was any good at what she did, but if she had earned her master’s studying photography, then she must be.
“Do you ever put any of your pieces in galleries?”
She stood and smiled at him. “Not yet. I was thinking earlier this evening that I might have captured some that would make great gallery pieces.”
She scrutinized him a moment and lifted the camera to her face before snapping a couple photos of him.
“Careful. You don’t want to break your camera.”
She giggled. “You make a wonderful subject.”
“Not for a gallery, though.”
“Oh, no. Those are just for me.”
Without warning, she leaned toward him and pecked him on the cheek. His heart pounded hard before he convinced himself he wasn’t under attack. Not the kind that would warrant his fleeing anyway.
“Thanks for bringing me here, Ryder, and for sharing one of your special places with me.”
He cleared his throat after it tightened with emotion. “It’s nothing. You needed to get away as much as I did.”
The thought of returning to her place unsettled him and ruined the moment. “I guess we’d better head back. This isn’t a good road to be on after dark.”
She took his hand, and they started for the bike. He didn’t slow her down this time, because the sooner they re-entered her world, the better. He’d be able to keep up his defenses more easily there than out here. Maybe he’d adjust better tonight than he had over the last day.