Ride with Me

She thought for a minute, then agreed. “Deal.” Pulling her helmet back on, she grabbed a drink of water, then said, “We’d better get moving, or else we won’t make it to Kremmling before dark.”

“We’re not going to Kremmling.”

“We’re not?”

“Nope, we’re turning here.” She automatically looked down at her map, and he snatched it away before she could figure out where he was taking her. “You’re not going to need this for a few days.” She looked at him beseechingly, unable to hide how nervous it made her to lose control of the map. He felt sorry for her, but he had a responsibility here. Lexie was never going to relax and enjoy herself on the road until she learned to roll with the punches. When the headwinds sucked, the smart cyclist turned.

“Just trust me. It’ll be fun.”

Trust him. The man had her tangled in knots so bad, half the time she didn’t know if she was coming or going, and he wanted her to trust him.

Not that it was precisely his fault she was a mess. Tom was keeping up his end of the deal. It was just, he was … Tom. Sometimes he was sweet, brushing her hair off her face and kissing her so tenderly it made her heart hurt. Sometimes he was a predator, imprisoning her across the lunch table with this I’m-coming-for-you-babe look in his dark brown eyes that could crank her up from neutral to desperate for it in about three seconds. He could even be playful, like the time he’d caught her on her way out of the campground showers and tickled her mercilessly until she was breathless and giggling, at which point he half-dragged her back to the tent and had his way with her.

But then there were the times when the smile disappeared and he hardly spoke from sunup to sundown. Or when he did talk, but he spent the whole day making grouchy speeches about just about everything: litter, global warming, corporate privilege, offshore tax shelters, lobbyists, polar bears, grade inflation, illegal extradition, food additives. She’d tried playing devil’s advocate a few times, but it was a waste of breath. When Tom was in a mood, he pushed her away so hard it wasn’t worth trying to cheer him up.

It was like touring with half a dozen different people. Cheerful Tom. Angry Tom. Clever Tom. Sexy Tom. Bitter Tom. Silent Tom. Throw in Sneezy and Doc and she’d have the whole damn menagerie. And she never knew which Tom was going to be there when she woke up beside him in the morning. Since she found all of them as impossible to ignore as the weather, it was kind of exhausting. Lexie had always been a pretty sunny, even-keel kind of person, and being so tuned in to Tom’s moods upset her equilibrium.

Regardless of his mood, though, he wanted her in his bed at night. She’d found this out on the first of his silent days after they’d left Montana behind. Figuring his standoffish attitude meant he would want his own space, she’d pitched her little tent and left to do some laundry at the campground office, only to discover when she returned that he’d taken her tent down and packed it away. When she crawled in beside him and turned off her headlamp that night, he’d pulled her close and nuzzled her neck, eased her shirt off, and kissed her over and over again, his hands buried in her hair, t

he cool mountain air creating a delicious contrast to the heat of his bare chest brushing against her skin. His hands and mouth moved over her slowly in the black cocoon of the tent, his patient tongue seducing her, teasing her, pleasuring her until she was desperate for him. When he’d finally taken possession of her, it was with an intensity that left her feeling shell-shocked and vulnerable.

It was too much. She didn’t want desperate or intense with Tom. She wanted to stick with what they’d agreed to—sex and only sex. Steamy sex, blistering-hot sex, rough sex, slow sex. After she’d told him she was on the pill and they’d had an awkward talk to establish they both had a clean bill of health, they’d ditched the condoms, and that had only served to make the sex better. With Tom, it was all amazing. But she could do without the emotional subtext behind their every interaction—a subtext usually so incomprehensible to her, it might as well have been written in Swahili.

On the road, he’d been doing a better job of staying true to their agreement. He made a good riding companion now. There was no more taking off in the morning and meeting up at the campsite at the end of the day. These days, Tom was consistently three feet off her front tire, which meant the view was always agreeable, regardless of their surroundings. But the itinerary had remained her department. She’d decided where they were going and how they were going to get there each day.

Until now. Now, he’d thrown her bike computer into a muddy field, stolen her map, and turned them onto a road to who-the-hell-knows-where. And that was no big thing. All in the name of fun, right? Except it felt like a huge thing to suddenly have no idea where they’d be sleeping tonight, or if this was an out-and-back detour or a whole different route, or when they’d get to Kremmling, if at all. She had the entire trip planned out on paper, and skipping Kremmling messed with that plan. Which left her where, exactly? Somewhere in Colorado with Tom. And she was just supposed to trust him.

Honestly, if he hadn’t been so cheerful this morning, and if it hadn’t been so freaking windy, she probably wouldn’t be going along with it. But he was, and it was, so she was. For now.

“You can’t afford this.”

“How would you know what I can and can’t afford?” Tom asked, his eyes amused. “I’ve got money in the bank. Being a recluse is cheap.”

They were in the lobby of the Bismarck Hotel, which gave every appearance of being Steamboat Springs’s finest, and Tom was insisting he was going to get them a room. She’d never been here before—she’d never been to Steamboat at all, though she had to admit from the little she’d seen so far that the tiny mountain town was totally charming and breathtaking in that way Colorado mountain towns seemed to specialize in. But if the lobby was anything to go by, the boutique hotel had to be expensive. It was tricked out in the old-fashioned luxury western style Colorado also did so well, with comfortable, rough-hewn leather furniture, authentic-looking Navajo rugs on the walls, and a vast expanse of glass offering an incredible mountain view.

Of course he couldn’t afford it. Money in the bank or not, he was a bike mechanic, for crying out loud. He probably made minimum wage. She tugged on his hand, a little uncomfortable in the opulent surroundings. “Come on, we can go back to that motel on the edge of town. It looked fine. You don’t have to do this just to—” She caught herself.

“To impress you?” Now his smile was mocking.

She nodded, embarrassed by the admission. Smooth, Lexie. Way to insult the guy who’s going out of his way to be nice to you.

“That’s not why we’re here.”

“Then why—”

Tom put a finger to her lips, stepping close enough to ramp up her awareness of him until she had trouble remembering what she’d been about to say. When he was this close, she always found herself zooming in on the details—the stubble on his jaw, his dimpled chin, his full mouth—and losing the ability to converse. Some choice words to describe this condition had floated into her mind, words like “besotted” and “infatuated” and “starry-eyed,” but she’d ushered them right back out. It was just hormones or pheromones or something. Anyone who could do the wicked things to her body Tom knew how to do would have the same effect on her.

“Humor me,” he said in the low, rumbly tone that would be his bedroom voice if the two of them had ever had sex in a bedroom. Then he winked at her and strode purposefully to the desk to check in.

Winked at her. Tom.

Seriously, who was this guy, and what had he done with her riding companion?

They ended up in a suite approximately the size of her apartment, an opulent room with a vast bed made of twisted juniper and covered in soft white linens that felt decadent against her skin when she gave in to the temptation to run her fingers over them. The windows lining the back wall looked out on mountains, blue sky, fluffy clouds—a Colorado postcard come to life. The tiled bathroom had a walk-in shower big enough for a football team that was equipped with enough spray heads to accommodate at least the offensive line. It was about as far as it could be from the don’t-look-too-closely-at-the-carpet motels where they’d stayed the few nights they hadn’t been camping.

She couldn’t help feeling like some terrible mistake had been made. They didn’t belong here. She didn’t, anyway. And Tom—how did Tom even know this kind of place existed, much less have the money to pay for it?

“What do you think?” he asked from behind her.