Chance Encounter by Jill Shalvis

hour she spent learning something new.
    This week it was kayaking.
    It took a lot of convincing, but she got Tim to take the same lunch hour, which he spent showing her the basics.
    One morning they got up early and hit the river for an hour before work. Afterwards, exhilarated, still wearing the neoprene river jacket Jo had lent her, and a pair of small men’s swimming trunks, she stood on the path between the lodge and her cabin. She was wet, and she needed a hot shower, but it was a glorious morning. There were heavy woods on either side of her, so that if she looked up into the amazing sky she could almost believe she was all alone on earth.
    Birds sang. Trees rustled. Branches crunched beneath her feet. All sounds that only weeks ago had made her so nervous. Now she thought them lovely. Essential. She hadn’t heard them often enough in her city.
    She had to laugh at that, because San Francisco had never been her city, but a place where she’d parked herself and let life pass her by.
    She couldn’t fathom doing that now. Over the past three weeks she’d felt more vibrant, more alive than she’d ever felt, even in her precious library. Yes, she missed take-out food. She missed a good shopping mall. But breathing in the fresh, clean air, Ally suddenly couldn’t imagine the crowded freeways, the pollution.
    A female giggle pierced the air and the woods went completely silent.
    “Anyone there?” Ally called down the empty path, imagining a clandestine meeting between destined-but-tragic lovers. Maybe they had sneaked away into the forest, overcome by passion. Maybe they were fated to steal moments in time, trapped by circumstance, by a family feud, by social differences…
    The only tragedy here was her imagination, though she couldn’t deny the little sigh and the wish that she had a lover to meet. A lover like…oh darn it, she might as well admit it. Like Chance. Just the thought of him, all dark and brooding, heated and aroused, made her weak.
    As if it could ever happen. Laughing at herself, she started walking again, but didn’t get two feet before she heard another giggle, followed by a distinctly male “hush.”
    “Okay, I definitely heard that,” she said to the trees.
    More unnatural silence, though she could have sworn that “hush” had sounded like… Brian? But itwas a weekday, which meant he’d be getting ready for school.
    Or he’d better be.
    Not that she was worrying about him. No, that would mean she wasn’t following her new pattern for life— Ally first. But there was something about him, so tough yet so vulnerable, that if she had been the old Ally—and that was a big if—then she would have ached to help him.
    As if he’d ever let anyone do that for him.
    Hopefully he’d find his own way, and that it would be a safer, more grounded path than the person he so clearly idolized—T. J. Chance. Because while she was enjoying living the wild life during her time here, she knew it couldn’t last, just as she knew it wasn’t the lifestyle for a fourteen-year-old. Not with his fondness for adventure, his dislike for authority, and a definite penchant for danger. Even his girls weren’t picked with care. Jo had told her Brian was “hanging” with one whose father was an owner of a competing resort, a man who’d undoubtedly look at Brian’s baggy clothes and sullen expression and hate him on sight.
    A twig snapped.
    “Darn it!” She stopped again. “Who’s there?”
    More silence greeted her. No reason to feel this frustration. So there were two people having a grand old time in the woods, when she had a deep longing to have a grand old time in the woods herself. So what? It didn’t mean she had to become irritable simply because the only man she wanted didn’t want to wanther back. She began walking again, faster, frustrated. “Damn him anyway.”
    “Talking to yourself again?”
    She nearly fell over. That very man she’d been thinking about stood on the steps of the lodge