Jill Shalvis - Just Try Me…

Neither said anything flattering about herself, that was certain.

BY THE TIME they stopped for a picnic lunch, Jack was starving. He’d worked up an appetite while watching his wife bounce around in her wet bikini the past few hours.

Rose’s bikini wasn’t bad either. She sat in the grass clearing eating her sandwich, shrugging off her earlier adventure. “Just a waste of a good hair day, that’s all.”

Michelle, however, hadn’t quite found her happy place yet, not that Jack was surprised. The woman had the corner on grudge-holding. “This is so not a vacation,” she said to no one in particular. “Cooking without a kitchen, putting up tents before you can go to sleep, carting everything around that you need-”

“Really?” Jack interjected. “All that cooking, and putting up your own tent is getting to you, huh?”

She sighed. “You know what I mean. You’re not used to this either. You’re much more at home behind a desk and your computer, where everything you need is online at your fingertips.”

“As I recall, the last thing I did online was to put something on one of your fingers,” he said, and all eyes slid to the huge diamond glittering on Michelle’s ring finger.

It had cost him big, but he’d loved, loved, buying it for her. Loved knowing he could. But Michelle lifted a shoulder. “Easy enough to buy something like this with Daddy’s money.”

Jack stared at her, stung. “Probably. If that’s what I’d done.”

She blinked, her baby blues confused. “What?”

“My computer consulting business,” Jack said evenly. “It’s doing well. It’d doing real well. I tried to tell you.”

“But…Daddy told you to use his account whenever you bought me something.”

“Maybe I wanted to buy you something. I am your husband, you know. It’s allowed.”

She looked at him as if he was an alien.

Jack looked back.

Michelle laughed, as if he’d told a joke, but Jack just kept looking at her. “You…bought the ring?”

Jack nodded, and Michelle stared down at the ring as if seeing it for the first time. “Oh.”

Jack touched it, and then Michelle surprised him by entangling his fingers in hers, holding on. When he looked into her eyes, she shot him a tentative smile, but it was real. After a moment, he returned it with a slow smile of his own.

Maybe, just maybe, he thought, this trip would pay for itself yet.

Lily handed out cookies, which everyone devoured on the spot. Jack ate his, and half of Michelle’s, who tossed back her now dry hair. “Yeah, it’s too bad I didn’t get hurt today,” she said, trying to see herself in Jack’s reflective sunglasses. “I could have gotten airlifted right out of here. A first-class ticket back to civilization.”

“Just you, huh?” Jack asked.

“Well, you’re having such a good time…”

He looked around at everyone, no longer surprised that he was. He was having a ball, thanks to the great company, not to mention the lack of his father-in-law. “Well, yeah, actually. I am.”

“But see, you could have a good time anywhere,” Michelle said. “In a Dumpster for God’s sake.”

His stomach knotted all over again, and he set down his drink. “I could, yes. If you were there, too.”

Michelle’s brow furrowed. “You mean…”

“Yeah.”

She looked confused. “That’s…”

“Marriage?” he asked softly.

Michelle stared at him, eyes suddenly suspiciously bright. “Yeah,” she whispered softly, and warming him as nothing else could have, she ran her fingers over his jaw. “Thanks, Jack. You always have a way of making me feel special. Loved.”

“You are,” he said, turning his face to kiss her palm.

“Ah, that’s so sweet,” Rose whispered. She wore one of Rock’s sweatshirts, and sighed dreamily as she reached for his hand. “Young love. There’s nothing like it.”

“Yeah.” Michelle sipped at her soda, eyes on Jack. “Nothing like it.” And she smiled and leaned in to kiss his cheek.

Jack pulled her onto his lap, hugging her hard, thinking ahead to tonight, when maybe she’d show some more of this whole loving thing.

THEY CANOED until the river spilled into a gorgeous alpine lake surrounded by towering pines and staggeringly tall majestic mountains.

For the second day in a row, Jared looked around at the amazing landscape and felt an increasing tug on his heart. He glanced at Lily, who was making camp in their grassy clearing overlooking the water, helping everyone get settled, and marveled.

She was amazing, too. By turns she took his breath and moved him, and looking at her now, he thought maybe he did the same for her. Or hoped he did.

Earlier, she’d met up with a staff member of Outdoor Adventures for the canoe pickup and new supply drop, after which Lily had served stew, corn bread and salad.

Now Jared brought her wood to stoke the fire. “Keith didn’t make the drop this time.”

She watched him dump the wood into the pile. “Hey, you don’t have to haul wood.”

“I like to haul wood.” He squatted in front of her and waited until she looked at him. “No Keith?”

“No.”

“You okay?”

She looked around her, took a deep breath, and smiled. “Actually…yes.”

She said that as if half-afraid it wouldn’t last. Then as if karma was proving her right, a scream split the air.

Michelle’s.

LILY RAN TOWARD Michelle and Jack’s tent. Michelle had pretty much desensitized Lily to the sound of her scream but she still had to investigate.

What now? she wondered. What could it possibly be now?

Loud crying came from inside the tent. “What happened?” Lily asked Jack, then turned to the sobbing tent. “Michelle?”

“He br-brought me a present,” she hiccupped from inside. “N-not more diamonds.”

Jack sighed. “Michelle, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you wouldn’t like it.”

“Like what?” Lily asked him.

He spread his hands helplessly. “I was just trying to bring her something different, you know? Something that didn’t have money signs attached to it.”

“A frog!” Michelle cried through the tent wall. “He set it right in my hands, and it was slimy! It leapt onto my head. In my hair, Lily!”

Rock chuckled and Rose glared at him. His smile faded. “That’s…awful,” he stammered.

“It was figurative,” Jack said, sounding desperate, like a man who knew he was going down with his ship. “You know, like a gift from the heart, one that didn’t cost a thing.”

Rock leaned in. “Dude,” he said to Jack. “Next time go with a rock or something.”

Jack appealed to all of them. “Look, I just thought that something alive, something breathing, would better symbolize what I was trying to say about our marriage.”

From inside the tent, the crying slowed.

“I wanted her to know it matters,” he said. “It matters a lot. She matters a lot.”

“Michelle?” Lily asked, meeting Jack’s gaze. “Still with us?”

The crying stopped completely. The rasp of a zipper filled the air, and then Michelle stuck her head out and stared up at Jack. “You weren’t trying to freak me out?”

“No!” He looked horrified. “Jeez, I wouldn’t do that to you.”

Michelle chewed on her lower lip, studying her husband for a long moment.

“Well, I think it was a beautiful gesture,” Rock said in his new friend’s defense.

Everyone looked at him.

“It was,” he insisted. “He wanted to keep their marriage alive, get it?”

“Thanks, man,” Jack said, but he had eyes only for Michelle. Longing and love and confusion and worry and need all warred for room in his expression, and Lily’s heart tugged hard.