Chapter 4

4

KANE

" D inner is served."

Gillian's voice carried over to me as I stood, admiring my work. The tent was smallish and flimsy, but it had fit into her backpack with a shitload of other stuff. I couldn't believe she'd gotten all of this into such a small pack.

I turned and headed toward the area where I'd set up the chair—yes, chair—she had it in that backpack. It was like nothing I'd ever seen. It folded up small enough to slide into a tiny bag. It came in handy now, though, when she couldn't stand.

"What do you think?" she asked as I drew nearer.

Oh, right. I was supposed to be looking at the food spread on a towel on the ground, not the gorgeous woman who had me battling a hard-on. Having her arms wrapped around me while we took the bike up here didn't help. I kept wondering what would happen if she lowered those arms just a little. Then a little more…

"It's not exactly a gourmet meal, but it's pretty good for camping food," she said.

I had food back at the cabin. In fact, I had a freezer full of meat that kept me from having to trek down the mountain to town more than absolutely necessary. But since she'd worked so hard to lay out this spread, I didn't want to seem ungrateful.

"Looks great," I said, eyeing the cheese, crackers, sausage bites, and chocolate chip cookies in front of her.

"And it's dinner with a view," she said, gesturing behind her.

"You don't have a view."

"That's okay." She shrugged. "I've seen it."

No, that was unacceptable. I surveyed the area and made an executive decision.

"Stay right there," I said.

It took a few minutes, but I managed to move the blanket and snacks to a gigantic rock that had the perfect view. Then I came over and reached out my arms.

"Trust me?" I asked.

She nodded, and that nod went straight to my heart. She trusted me already. It meant more than I would have ever imagined.

I lifted her until she was standing on her one good foot, then scooped her up, carrying her over to the rock and settling her on it. I helped her wiggle around, enjoying every second of touching her, including the hand I had on each hip as I helped her shift until she was facing the other direction. Then I climbed up on the rock on the other side of the snacks and breathed in the fresh mountain air.

"Sunset," she said. "I didn't think I'd make it up here in time."

If she hadn't been thrown off track by the sound of my chopping, she would have made it in more than enough time. My guess was she meant after the injury, she didn't think she'd get to see this sight, and I, for one, could relate to that. It would have been a shame to miss this.

"How about I make you dinner after this?" I asked. "Hamburger steaks, french fries… I might even have a couple of ribeyes in my freezer. Unless you think we should head down the mountain and have that ankle looked at."

"The hospital's too far away and too expensive," she said. "There's nothing they can do for it, anyway. It has to heal on its own. I'll have it looked at when my doctor's office opens Monday."

She was leaving town Monday. It was Friday. Disappointment flooded me.

Why should I care? Relief was what I was supposed to be feeling right now. Normally, I would have been indifferent. Either I wanted to sleep with a woman or I didn't. Since I didn't, I kept my distance. It wasn't hard to do, living way up here. But this time, my heart seemed to have sunk to my stomach.

I didn't want her to go. Two days wouldn't be enough. Hell, I'd be lucky to even have her more than one night. The right thing to do would be to deposit her on her parents' doorstep tomorrow morning.

"All I have to drink is water and tequila," Gillian said.

She gestured toward the bottle of tequila, which she'd taken from the cabinet and shoved into her backpack. It didn't even look like she enjoyed the tequila back at the cabin, where she'd stuck it between her legs—damn, I envied that bottle—and taken only a few sips from it. At one point, she uncapped the bottle, screwed off the cap, then put it right back on, probably thinking I wasn't paying attention.

"I'll just take water," I said, reaching out.

She handed over her large tumbler full of water. She'd probably planned to make this last until morning, but I had plenty of water back at the cabin, so I could refill her, no problem.

"Well, I'm not driving, so I'll have a little more of this," she said.

She was already unscrewing the cap, and she lifted it and tossed back far more than I would have thought. When she pulled the bottle away, though, she covered her mouth and let out a series of closed-mouth coughs before finally turning to the side and letting her full cough out.

When finally she caught her breath, Gillian shook her head and repositioned her legs so that her sore ankle was elevated a little, propped on top of her other leg. "Drinking's not my thing, I guess."

"I'm not sure straight shots of tequila with no chaser is a good drink to try your first time." I thought a second and said, "Was that your first time drinking alcohol?"

What made me think that? Had she said it? I couldn't remember. It was tough to remember anything she said since every time I looked at her, my thoughts got all scrambled.

"First time," she said. "I'm a virgin drinker…and a virgin in general."

She punctuated that with a laugh as she popped a block of cheese in her mouth like she hadn't just dropped a huge verbal bomb on the conversation. I had to ask.

"Did you just say you're a virgin?" I asked.

Was that too personal? Maybe so, but she'd said it and I was just clarifying. My cock had just stirred again, and not in a way that was specific to her having never had sex before. It was mostly because sex had been brought into the conversation in the first place.

"Yep," she said. "See this ring?"

She held up her right hand to display a silver band on her ring finger. It had a cross inside a heart.

"It's a purity ring," she said. "My high school friends all have one. If one of us loses our virginity, we have to enter it into the app."

"There's an app for virginity?" I asked.

Wow. Things had changed since I was young. I'd lost my virginity at fifteen, which was twenty years ago.

"It was through our church." Gillian lowered her hand to her lap and stared out at the view. "We were in a youth group. Most of the kids dropped out of church altogether by the time they were old enough to become sexually active. There are only six of us from that initial group who are still on that app."

"So instead of updating the app, you could just delete the app from your phone, couldn't you?" I asked. "If you were going to lose your virginity, that is."

"I guess that's what most girls do," she said. "But my friends and I have stuck with it. If we get married, we can update the app with that. Then we kept the promise."

"The promise is to stay celibate until you're married?" I asked. "Do blowjobs count?"

I couldn't believe I just said those words to a virgin. Or to a lady in general. I normally wouldn't talk like that this early into a relationship.

But this wasn't a relationship. We were just hanging out on a rock that was precariously perched above a large drop-off. The rock was stable, of course. I knew it, and Gillian, no doubt, knew it, too, but we were still living on the edge. Literally.

"Nope," she said. "But my friends and I don't do that. It's cheating."

"So is kissing against the rules?"

"The rules just say no physical intimacy before marriage," she said. "And not in those words. It's more about the value of the gift one gives to a spouse by waiting until the wedding night."

"Is this just girls or do boys do this too?"

"Both." She sighed. "We made the promise in sixth grade."

"Sixth grade?"

The words popped out before I could stop them, and they were full of disbelief. I didn't want to put down what was obviously important to her, but sixth grade was a little early to be thinking about when someone would have sex.

"Most of the boys dropped away over time," she said. "But my friends and I stuck to our pact even when we weren't necessarily going to church all the time." She laughed. "Okay, we weren't going to church at all."

She laughed and reached over for the water jug. I still held it in my left hand while I was eating with my right. I handed it over and watched as she unscrewed the cap and took a drink.

It was a good sign she'd drink after me. Did that mean she'd be open to kissing me?

"So I guess if you violated the rules, you'd be letting your friends down," I said.

"Accountability." She nodded. "It does keep me honest, but…"

She hesitated, and I held my breath, not sure what I was hoping she'd say next. Maybe that she was thinking about breaking those rules. Otherwise, I'd have to marry her to sleep with her.

The idea of getting married didn't have me wanting to throw myself off this rock. That's the first time I could have said that in years. In fact, when she'd mentioned wedding nights, I had this strange pang of longing. I wanted to be the one she gave that gift to. I wanted to be the first man she slept with.

"The friends who dared me to go on this adventure," she said. "They're the same ones I have a pact with. They keep saying I'm stuck in my routine. After college, two of them moved overseas to work. The rest of them never went to college at all. One's been on a bunch of mission trips, another works as a flight attendant, traveling all over the world. Then there's Meg, who conducts river raft tours in the Smokies, and Jessica, who travels the country with her sales job. Meanwhile, I sit in my apartment with my college roommate and work at a job where I sit in front of a computer all day. They just think I've gotten stale."

I was listening to all of this with interest. It told me a lot about who she was and why she was here, but all I could think about was how this played into the "but" at the end of that sentence about waiting until marriage.

"I've been thinking that it's time to show those high school buddies just how adventurous I can be." She looked over at me. "Are you game?"

I had no idea what she was hinting at, but suddenly, I knew I'd follow this woman to the moon and back without question. And that was when it became absolutely clear that my plan to spend the rest of my life alone was wrecked.

I'd do whatever I could to make sure this woman didn't walk out of my life when the weekend was over. Even if that meant only kissing her until I could someday marry her.