WILD RIDE by Juliette Jones Page B

out to
him like a flower seeking sun.
    “I’m
okay,” I said, pausing at his attentiveness, his genuine curiosity and concern. 
I wasn’t used to it.  Cal wouldn’t have noticed if I’d been struck down with
the plague, never mind suffering from an emotional vulnerability of one kind or
another; he just didn’t have that kind of gauge built into him and I’d become
accustomed to the bland, neglectful indifference.  I’d come to think such a
thing was normal.  Now, under the watchful gaze of Nate Walker, I felt myself
fall just a little deeper.  But I brushed it off.  Useless, giddy daydreams
would not help me dig in and get myself where I needed to go.  “You just go on
and do whatever it is you need to do.  I’ll – ”  I almost said something like, I’ll
just get my stuff and be on my way , but I couldn’t quite do it.  Not yet. 
And I was distracted by the little furrow between his eyebrows that had
appeared as soon as I’d brought up the subject of Riley.  I remembered the tone
of their voices last night, as I’d fallen asleep.  They’d been arguing about something. 
“Is everything okay –” I almost felt it was too personal a question to ask, but
then a crazily intimate visual flashed through my mind – “with you and Riley?”
    He
was more honest with me than I expected.  “He’s a little irritated with me. 
He’ll get over it.”
    I
waited, taking another sip of my coffee, watching his face.  He’d tell me if he
wanted to tell me.
    “Last
night was a one-off,” he finally said.
    I
agreed with him, without voicing it.  Very soon, we would go our separate ways.
    “Generally,
I don’t share,” Nate said.  He ran a hand through his hair as though the topic
was putting him on edge.  The motion mussed his hair up and the sight of its
unruliness reminded me of how it had felt in my hands.  Grabbing fistfuls of
the coarse silk of it as I cried out in the cataclysmic throes of an ecstatic,
whole-bodied release.
    I
started to offer my understanding but he interrupted me before I could begin.
    “I
told him I don’t want him touching you again.”
    I
just stared at him, a little dumbfounded, if you really want to know.
    No,
Riley wouldn’t be touching me anymore.  Nor would Nate, Cal or anyone
else.  I’d be too busy working three jobs as I tried to get myself through a
few college classes – if I even got in – and scraping together enough
cash to pay the rent on the couch I’d be sleeping on – if I was able to
locate it.
    My
shock at his pronouncement and his suddenly-tense vibe brought the conversation
to a screeching halt.  We sat there in an awkward silence for a few seconds.  I
thought of Riley, how he would have spliced right through all that and cracked
a joke or made some off-hand sexual innuendo.  Even so, I didn’t wish for him. 
I focused instead on the shape of Nate’s mouth as he lightly bit into the soft
flesh of his lower lip.  He seemed almost … nervous, but the fleeting impression
barely touched his macho demeanor, and it passed quickly.
    “Would
you like to have lunch with me?” he said.
    My
stomach did another one of those funny little flips as our eyes met.
    “You
must be hungry,” he commented, like I needed to be talked into it.  Like I
might refuse him.
    “I
am hungry.  Famished, in fact.”  It was the quiet eagerness as he awaited my
answer that burrowed into some fissure in me.  I loved how aware he
was.  Emotionally layered.  Intellectually complex.  It was refreshing.  In
comparison, Cal was thick as a goddamn brick.  Nate simmered with a
perceptiveness I found myself wanting to dive into and swim around in.  Here he
was, this drop-dead gorgeous hunk of a man, with a red convertible and an
investment portfolio – not to mention his other phenomenal endowment,
beyond anything I’d ever seen or imagined – sitting there all expectant in that
staunch way of his.  Awaiting my acceptance of his offer.  Of lunch.