“Good?”
“Yeah,” he said, the smile slipping from his face. “I want to take care of you tonight. I want to feed you.” His words had gone low and gravelly again, and a delicious shiver zipped up her spine.
“I’d like that.” Did she need a man to take care of her? No, but with Jenner things were different. She didn’t mind being vulnerable with him.
She had one towel in her bag and dried off as best as she could before she got into her comfortable night clothes. Her hair was going to dry wild, but from the way Jenner kept slipping her hungry glances, she didn’t think he would mind au naturale. Which made sense. Only a wild woman would do for a feral man like him.
He slid into a pair of jeans but left his shirt off, thank heavens for tiny blessings. His pants were low enough that she still had a fantastic view of those sexy strips of muscle that wrapped around his hips. And as she spread out a sleeping bag to the sound of the pattering rain against the tent, Jenner loaded up two metal plates with steak, vegetables, and steaming baked potatoes. It all smelled so good, her stomach growled, so she wrapped her arms around her middle with a giggle.
He set up their dinner on the sleeping bag picnic style and sat directly across from her. It wasn’t until midway through the meal that he stopped with a knowing grin and asked, “Was it everything you imagined it would be?”
“No.” Heat flooded her cheeks, so she ducked her gaze to her plate of food. “It was much more.”
Jenner hooked a hand under her chin and pulled her face up to meet his. With a light kiss, he settled back in front of his plate and murmured, “I hate when you hide your blushes from me. I’ve never met a woman who colors up so pretty.” He swallowed hard, his eyes growing serious. “I’ve never met a woman so pretty.”
“You’re teasing. I bet you say that to every girl you take to bed.”
His dark eyebrows arched high, and he let out a surprised laugh. “Is that what you think of me?”
“Well…yeah. Look at you.”
And he did. He ran a quick glance over his bare torso and gave her an uncertain half smile as if he thought she was the one teasing now. “Yeah, I’m a great catch. Scarred up hunting guide, off in the woods most of the time, prefers to be alone, emotionally constipated, and sleeps half the damned—” Jenner dropped his gaze and cleared his throat, attention back on his food.
“Day away? I like naps, too. That won’t scare me off.”
But the smile she’d been trying to conjure didn’t return.
“I have six sisters,” she said low, desperate not to let their connection go just yet.
“Six?”
“Yep. It was an all girls’ club growing up, especially after Dad passed. He wanted a son so badly that he and my mom just kept trying.”
“Let me guess. You’re the oldest.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Super responsible, looking out for others, independent.”
“Wrong, wrong, dead wrong. I’m the baby of the family. And”—she scrunched up her nose in disbelief she was about to admit this out loud—“the black sheep of the Rhodes family.”
“No.”
She laughed and tossed a pepper at him. “It’s true. My sisters are all married or engaged. Three of them have given my mom grandbabies, and all of them were settled by my age. Every time I go back for the holidays, I get so excited about seeing everyone and connecting again, and then after about a day with them, I’m clawing my eyeballs out to leave again.”
“Why?”
Lena sighed and lifted her shoulders to her ears in a shrug. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. Why do you run?”
She bit her bottom lip and pushed a piece of steak around her plate. “Because that was supposed to be me.”
“You and Adam?”
She nodded and huffed a laugh. “Sounds so stupid because it was a marriage out of friendship, but I was eighteen and hoping and praying on my knees every night that Adam would pull through, and then I was widowed three weeks after I turned nineteen. I was so young, you know? And for a minute, my life had made sense, and then all the sudden it didn’t anymore, and I didn’t know how to stop the tailspin. Every time I go back home, I have to hear the speeches about how it’s time I moved on, and I get so angry at them. It’s so easy for people to say that. Easy to say and almost impossible to do. It’s so flippant. Just, ‘Lena, you need a man.’ But I had one, and I didn’t recover. Every time I go home, I come out of it eager to travel again for this job. I take more assignments than anyone else because I have no one tying me to anything.”
Jenner’s eyes were on her, sad but understanding.
“I guess I’m still in the tailspin, huh?”
“My brother was the one that made these,” he murmured, gesturing to the long silver slashes across his chest. “I understand tailspins.”