LITMIR.BIZ

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off to the side of her, in the middle of an unfortunate sip of water, choked.

      Rose smiled at him. “You okay, sugar?”

      Rock choked some more, and Rose stroked a hand up and down his back, which didn’t seem to help.

      Eyes watering, gasping, he nodded that he was going to live and Rose stopped touching him.

      Lily sighed. “Rose, you’re going to want to change those shorts.”

      Rock, still hardly able to talk, shook his head. “Ah, don’t do that.”

      Lily thought of the cliff they’d be walking along in less than an hour, and pictured the guys watching Rose’s ass instead of the trail, then falling to their certain deaths. “Well…” How to be diplomatic here? “Those shorts aren’t going to be comfortable.”

      “Honey, these are as comfortable as anything I’ve got.”

      Wasn’t that just perfect?

      Michelle came close. She slipped into a sunshine-bright yellow rain jacket that required sunglasses just to look at. “Which direction are we traveling in?” she asked anxiously.

      “It’s not going to rain, at least not today,” Lily assured her. “You don’t have to wear—”

      “She’s never camped before,” Jack said. “She’s nervous.”

      So that made two of them, Lily thought.

      “Which direction?” Michelle asked again.

      “It’s going to change quite a bit out on the trail,” Lily told her.

      Michelle shook her head, her pretty blonde hair artfully layered about her face. “Can’t you estimate? I want to leave a note here at the trailhead, so that if we get lost—”

      “I can promise you that won’t happen if you stick with me,” Lily said. “I know this trail—”

      “Which direction?” Michelle’s voice came out high-pitched and just a little panicked.

      Jared slid a palm-held unit out of his pocket and thumbed a few buttons. “North by northwest,” he said, and showed Michelle the digital compass he’d pulled up. “See?”

      Everyone leaned in to see the new toy, oohing and aahing, and Lily sighed again. “I thought the digital stuff was going to stay at home.”

      He looked right at her, for once his eyes not quite as warm—reminding her that he’d witnessed Keith’s kiss— and without a word slid the unit back into his pocket.

      Something went through Lily at that. Her own regret? Yeah, probably. But she had plenty of other stuff to worry about. “If everyone could bring their packs,” she said. “I have the supplies divvied up for you to put away.”

      JACK LIFTED Michelle’s pack for her, and shouldn’t have been surprised to find it weighed more than his wife. “Damn, Shell. What did you put in here, rocks?”

      She sent him a pout over her shoulder that he recognized well as he buckled her in. “It’s way too heavy for me.”

      “Uh-huh,” he agreed. “I told you that you packed too much.”

      “Don’t start in on me. You want to please my daddy and his money as much as I do.”

      Ah, back to their biggest bone of contention, he thought with a sigh—which was that it wasn’t just him and her in this marriage, but him, her and her daddy.

      He loved Michelle, loved her more than he loved any other thing on this planet, but sometimes she drove him absolutely insane.

      How could someone so smart be so incredibly dense? “I could care less about his money,” he said patiently, for what had to be the bazillionth time in their one-year marriage.

      “Right.”

      Jack shook his head. What made him think he could ever win this argument? He was coming to understand that what he’d heard was true—sometimes love just wasn’t enough. “At least take out the ten pounds of makeup and hair products.”

      “I need it.”

      “You don’t.”

      “My hair fuzzes at this altitude.”

      He shook his head. She was gorgeous, at any altitude. “So braid it.”

      “Jack.”

      He groaned and tossed up his hands in defeat. “Might as well call back our driver, you’ll be done by noon.”

      She looked horrified. “You know we can’t back out. Daddy’ll cut us off.”

      Right. And in her mind, that would be a fate worse than death. Heaven forbid they make this work like the rest of the world—on their own. God, she infuriated him.

      But she also loved him as no one else ever had, and for that alone, he intended to give this all he had. “Look, just because your father is richer than sin, doesn’t mean he can make us—”

      “He’s not making us. He just said that if we wanted to keep spending his money, we had to do this. He thinks we need the togetherness.”

      “He’s making us,” Jack said flatly, and turned his back on her to tend to his own pack, frustrated and…sad. Damn sad, because as much as he didn’t want to believe it, he was afraid they—he—couldn’t fix this enough to make it work.

      LILY WAS HANDING OUT the supplies for everyone’s packs when Michelle came up to her, still wearing her sunshine -yellow rain jacket. “Um…I don’t have extra room.”

      Everyone had read the brochures. They’d been to the meeting, where they’d gone over the particulars of the trip in minute detail, including the fact they’d be helping carry the supplies. “Your portion isn’t more than a few extra pounds—”

      “But my pack’s already too heavy.”

      “Damn right, it is,” Jack said dryly, then lifted his hands when Michelle glared at him. “Hey, you needed your makeup and hair stuff, right?”

      Michelle let out a huff and opened her pack. “Fine. Bye-bye hair products. But if I look like a Bohemian in a day, you all have no one but yourselves to blame.”

      “We’ll keep that in mind,” Jack told her and winked at Lily.

      Michelle took the supplies from Lily. “This doesn’t look like enough food for four days.”

      “We’ll be getting two drops with additional supplies, so we don’t have to carry it all right now. Just your own things.”

      “Right.” Michelle looked at her pack. “That’s going to be incredibly taxing.”

      Jack let out a huffing laugh. “For once, baby, we’re in total agreement.”

      Yeah, Lily thought, she was going to have her hands full with this group. So far, she had a couple clearly on the outs, a woman on the prowl, and a man who was going to be said woman’s lunch.

      Jared, wearing his pack, moved into her line of vision, an enigmatic man of few words with a set of eyes that made her both yearn and want to run for the hills.

      And a man she wanted for lunch.

      “Lily, honey?” This from Rose. “I think you’re right about the shorts. I’m going to change.” She leaned in and whispered, “Wedgie City.” Straightening, she held up two choices; a denim mini-skirt, or a pair of black Spandex short shorts. “Which would you suggest?”

      Lily stared at them. “Uh…I really couldn’t say—”

      “No problem, I’ll wear one today, and one tomorrow.” Twirling away, she spared a moment to wink at Rock.

      Rock, looking a little dazzled,

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