Page 12 of Promise of a New Beginning
He sat on the boulder beside the camp with his knees pulled up, his hands steepled together in front of his mouth, and his chin resting on the pads of his thumbs. He wondered what he would be like if he had a normal life.Normal.Jack wasn’t sure he even knew what normal looked like anymore. Was normal two adults with dreadlocks and an awesome son? Or was it a single career woman hiding out in the woods to heal whatever ache she had at the moment? Or was normal two kids searching for answers? Maybe there was no normal.Will I ever find my normal again—whatever that is—and have the family I always wanted?
Jack lay back on the rock and looked up at the stars, thinking of his brothers and sister. He was the eldest of six. Before Linda died, he’d seen his four younger brothers and his sister often. Now he was lucky to see them once a year. He closed his eyes and listened to the sound of Elizabeth and Lou singing to Aiden, and their voices silencing when, he was sure, Aiden had finally closed his eyes and fallen asleep. A few minutes later, the metallic scratch of the zipper on Pratt and Josie’s tent broke through the silence. Josie’s hushed giggles brought a smile to Jack’s lips despite his internal conflict. He wondered what it would be like to camp with a woman who truly enjoyed the outdoors. Linda never had, and now, as he lay beneath the stars, he wondered if Savannah ever would. He draped his arm over his eyes to block out the moonlight and wondered if he might fall asleep right there with the cold, hard rock at his back.
He didn’t hear her footsteps as she walked by, and he didn’t feel a brush of wind or hear theswish-swishof her pants legs. It was her scent that brought Jack’s arm away from his eyes and pushed him up onto his elbow. She stood with her back to him at the edge of the woods. He could barely make out her silhouette in the darkness, but he didn’t think he’d ever forget the alluring curves he’d seen earlier that morning. He didn’t want to be accused of spying again, but wasn’t he? No, he hadn’t been looking for her. She’d appeared unexpectedly.Had she? Or was I waiting for her? Hoping she’d appear?Or perhaps she’d been hoping he’d find her.
If he closed his eyes and acted like he was asleep, he couldn’t be accused of spying, but there was no way he was going to allow her to go into the woods alone after what happened the previous night. Should he call her name? Pretend he was just walking around.When did taking students to the woods become so complicated?
He’d never considered himself a hider, but isn’t that just what he’d been doing for two years? Hiding from the world? Hiding from himself? Jack pushed himself off the rock.What the heck have I got to lose. Here goes.
“Savannah?”
Savannah whipped her head around. “Jack?” She leaned forward, squinting into the darkness.
He closed the distance between them. “Are you going bobcat hunting?”That was a lame joke.
“Ha-ha. I wanted to go to the bathroom, but then I remembered…”
“I’ll take you, but let’s not push our luck by going to the same place that bobcat was before. Come on.” He put his hand on her lower back, and just that slight graze of her body against him made his stomach feel funny, like he was going downhill on a roller coaster. He pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. It was safer that way.
Savannah stopped walking.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“You confuse the heck out of me, that’s what,” Savannah said. They were standing about twenty feet from the edge of the camp. The little moonlight that had been visible by the boulder was now blocked by the taller trees.
Jack stepped closer to her, bringing her face into focus. “If it’s any consolation, you do the same to me.” If there was one thing Jack knew about himself, it was that between his height and his brawn, the inflection of his voice determined how people reacted to him. He knew how to come across stern and aggressive. It had become a way of life in recent years. And he used to know how to allow his sensual, flirtatious side to turn on with each breath. But that part of him had been hidden for so long, Jack wasn’t sure it still existed at all. Tonight, for the first time in forever, he wanted that harsh edge to slip away. The recognition of that desire alerted the guilt and self-loathing that he’d harbored for two years and had been trying to ignore for the past twenty-four hours.I shouldn’t want her.
“Great. Now that that’s established, why is it that every time I’m alone, you show up?” Savannah crossed her arms.
“Do you ever not think like an attorney?” She tweaked every nerve in his body, and in the three minutes they’d been standing there, his pulse had already kicked up to the point where he was breathing heavily.
“Do you ever talk nicely to women?”
He looked away and smiled. She was tough…and he liked it. “I’m not a very nice man,” he said.
Savannah arched a brow. “You know what I think?”
She took a step closer to him, and the stirring in Jack’s stomach traveled south, bringing rise to the heat that had erupted between them the night before.
She put her cheek a breath away from his and whispered, “I think you need to walk me into the woods.”
His sexual urges begged to be fed, and as he contemplated doing just that, she leaned in again and said, “I have to pee.”
Chapter Eight
SAVANNAH COULDN’T PINPOINT the exact moment when Jack went from being a surly jerk to someone she wanted to figure out, but she was pretty sure it was when she’d seen him holding Aiden’s hand on the trail earlier that afternoon—and maybe the thought had been driven home when he’d put his arm around Aiden by the fire that evening. In those small actions, she’d seen his angry armor chipping away, exposing a taste of emotion that seemed to scare him as much as it seemed to soften him. And even though she was on the rebound from Connor, she couldn’t stop Elizabeth’s words from playing in her mind over the last few hours.I’m all for sharing yourself with whoever you feel will bring you pleasure, until you find the one whose pleasure you could never live without.The more she observed Jack, the more open she became. She thought of her older brother Rex and how he’d always been gruff around women—until he’d fallen in love with Jade Johnson, the daughter of her father’s nemesis—the man Hal Braden had been feuding with for the past forty years. The relationship between Rex and Jade had been contentious at first, and from what Rex had described, they’d both fought it every step of the way. She’d never seen Rex happier, more content, and less guarded than he’d been since falling in love with Jade.
Savannah smiled at the surprise in Jack’s eyes. She supposed it had been cruel to tease him the way she had, but as she’d seen with her brother, she thought perhaps there was a kinder, gentler man who lay beneath the anger. She wasn’t Jade Johnson, and there was no family feud to contend with. The only thing holding her back from wrapping her hands around his beautiful, hard body and kissing him until she cracked that armor away was the memory of what it felt like to be hurt by Connor. Savannah had to believe that just because Connor hurt her didn’t mean all men would.
Jack cleared his throat. “Right.” They crossed the campsite and entered the forest on the other side. Savannah was aware of every breath as she walked just behind Jack, a little embarrassed that she had to pee at all, much less that she needed a babysitter while she went.
“See that rock over there?” Jack pointed to a large boulder. “I’m going to scope it out. Stay put.”
“I’m not a dog, you know.” Why did he have to speak so rudely?
He took a step forward and stopped, then turned to face her. He opened his mouth to speak, then looked to the side, as if he’d changed his mind. “I’m sorry,” he said a little less grumpily. “Please wait here.”
Feeling vindicated, Savannah grinned. “Okay.” She watched as he disappeared around the boulder with one hand on the leather sheath hanging from his belt. Then he came around the other side and motioned her over.
