Page 6 of Lost With You
“Make a decision, Dylan.” She planted her hands on her hips. “Are we partners or not?”
He glanced at the cabin, the place his great-grandfather had built with his own hands. His childhood home of wonder when Pops had still lived in it. With a sigh, he shifted his gaze to her van, seeing a pile of boxes and bags through the windows.
He said, “Do you have a bathing suit in there?”
“Of course I do. Do I need it now?”
“If you want to be my partner, yes.” He stepped back into the cabin, chased by reservations. “First, you have to prove you can handle a canoe.”
But if she wears a bikini, I’m a goner.
CHAPTER THREE
Maybe the yellow bikini wasn't a great idea.
Standing in the shadow of the van’s back hatch, Casey considered the two scraps of fabric in her hand. They would cover all the necessary lady parts, but not much else. The idea of showing so much skin in front of that stubborn, square-jawed Viking sent a tremor shooting straight to those same lady parts. Maybe the one-piece suit would be wiser, but there was no way she was going to spend three weeks wrestling out of a one-piece every time she had to pee in the woods.
Dylan would just have to deal. She closed her grip on the bikini and zipped the suitcase shut to hurl it over the boxes and duffel bags that filled the back of the van. Closing the hatch, she headed inside and followed Dylan into a bedroom that smelled of pine and starch. Mountain-man-plaid curtains filtered out the daylight. A pair of black undershorts lay at the end of a huge bed. He snapped them up and tossed them into a sports bag open on the floor.
She said, “This is your bedroom, Dylan.”
“It’s yours tonight.” He crouched and shoved a pile of rumpled clothing into the bag, including that tease of a tie still hanging around his neck. “I’ll sleep on the couch. It’s a pull-out.”
“That isn’t—”
“Nonnegotiable. House rules, guests always get the bedroom. We have only one.”
She glanced at the king-size bed again, wondering how many guests Dylan had entertained in it.
Stop.
“Indoor plumbing over there.” He nodded to the teeniest bathroom she’d ever seen. “There’s also an outhouse out back.”
“How…rustic.”
“Enjoy it while you can.”
“I’m impressed your bed is made.” She tossed the bikini on the bed where his underwear had just been. “Do you always make it when you’re not expecting company?”
“I’m paper-trained, too.” He stood up, hefting his bag. He stilled at the sight of the bathing suit.
So she hadn’t imagined the attraction. Unnerving that it went both ways. “Tell me you’re ex-military, Dylan.”
“What?”
“So there’s a reason for this excessive neatness. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines?”
He frowned. “Army Reserve.”
Umm-hmm. She could pin a military man from a thousand yards. “I just finished a horror novel where the villain lined up his ties according to design and his shoes according to color. Seeing as you’re wearing a starched shirt while chopping wood—”
“Faculty meeting at nine this morning.” He gave her one of those pale-eyed stares. “It’s about ten minutes too late to be wondering if I’m a serial killer, Casey.”
“I’ll be alerting my sister of my whereabouts nonetheless.”
“Do that. We’ll be out of range of cell phone towers for most of the trip.” He headed to the door so fast she felt the breeze of his passing. “Change and meet me outside. We’ve got a lot to cover.”
So did she, but the bikini she put on a few minutes later didn’t quite stretch over it all. She pulled at the fabric over her backside and then adjusted the bra straps to shove her boobs deeper into the cups. The mirror in the tiny bathroom showed a woman in a screaming-yellow bikini with nipples pressing against the fabric, though it wasn’t the least bit cold. Fortunately, she didn’t have a lot of curves, not the kind that made men’s eyes pop. Dylan would give her hipless body one long look, because, well, testosterone. He might even make a play for her at some point. She’d seen the bated interest in his eyes. But now that she was his partner as well as his interviewer, a romp was definitely off-limits.
