Page 14 of Protecting Vidalia
“That’s not a conversation I want to revisit.” Vidalia stepped away from him and went back to the table. She could feel Jake studying her while she worked.
“You need to talk about it,” he insisted.
Vidalia flung her hands in the air and scowled at him. “Not with every Tom, Dick, and Harry who wants to gossip.” The evening had been pleasant so far, the food preparations keeping them busy with little reason to talk much, but now that dinner was over, Vidalia was becoming increasingly nervous. Especially with the current conversation.
Jake sighed with frustration. “Will you just go back to the diner while you’re here? Poke is a friend of mine and I don’t like to see her hurting.”
A flash of something resembling jealousy coursed through Vidalia and she whipped around to stare at him. “Is she your girlfriend or something? Is that why you’re so insistent about this? You want to keep your little tart happy?”
In a flash Jake was at her side, taking Vidalia by complete surprise. When he bent her over his hip and began smacking the seat of her skinny jeans, she yelped loudly. “What are you doing? Stop it! Ow!”
“Poke isn’t my little tart. She’s the daughter of a good friend of mine and you are disrespecting her and me. That remark was rude and uncalled for with regards to an innocent young girl, and I won’t stand for it.”
Guilt swept through Vidalia and she started apologizing, even though he hadn’t stopped spanking. “You’re right, I’m sorry. Please, Jake, I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” If he kept this up, she was sure her jeans would ignite.
“That’s better.” He stopped and stood her up.
She couldn’t help it—she danced on her toes and rubbed her stinging butt. “What’s with this caveman imitation?” she asked ruefully. “Are you always this forceful with women?”
“Only with the ones I like,” he said, grinning at her.
“Lucky me,” she replied dryly.
“If you keep shutting me out, I may get worse,” Jake drawled. “Now tell me about Poke, and whether or not you’re going to accept her apology. Because if you’re not, we have some more talking to do.”
“By talking I assume you mean talking with your hand?” Vidalia’s eyes narrowed. For whatever reason, she found she didn’t resent his spanking her. Attacking the young girl had been a dig at Jake, and a way to make him leave her alone. She’d gotten very good at deflecting people’s interest. Jake just didn’t respond the same way other people did.
“It’s always a possibility.” His eyes gleamed down at her.
Vidalia ogled his lean body, the attraction she’d felt for him stirring to life again as she studied his muscled physique. He’d handled her so easily, yet he hadn’t hurt her except for a stinging butt, which was already fading into a warm glow that seemed to feed the attraction.
There was no doubt that Jake was a kind man. His concern for Poke—his concern for her—showed her that. Her feelings softened and she sighed. “If it makes you feel better, then I’ll go talk to Poke before I leave here. Those cheeseburgers did smell heavenly today. She just caught me by surprise. I don’t react well right now when it suddenly hits me between the eyes. Especially after the newspapers waged war on dispatchers and public sentiment seemed angry.”
Jake reached out and rubbed his big hands gently up and down her upper arms, then leaned in and kissed her on the forehead. “That’s my girl,” he murmured. “I do remember the newspapers, so I can see why you reacted the way you did. But thank you, she really feels bad.”
Vidalia cleared her throat and stepped away, but the warmth of his embrace seeped into her bones. His girl? Being his girl might not be so bad. Not if it made her feel this good when he praised her. She was rather proud of herself that she’d agreed to go talk to Poke, though. Admittedly, she never would have if he hadn’t pushed her. “Let’s get this finished up, then I have something super exciting to show you.”
It wasn’t long before the kitchen was sparkling clean, and then Vidalia set her laptop down on the table and hooked up her camera. “Come and see this,” she urged.
Jake chuckled and pulled up a chair beside her. Vidalia excited was a beautiful sight. He could barely take his eyes off her as she flipped through the screens to open her pictures up on her laptop.
“This is Victory Falls trail, the one I hiked up today. The falls are simply beautiful,” she gushed, pointing at the screen.
Jake had been to Victory Falls many times and knew they were beautiful, but watching the pleasure in her face was even more so.
“You’re not looking at the screen,” she said, sounding breathless as she turned to face him.
Their heads weren’t that far apart and it would have been easy to reach over and capture her lips, but she palmed the side of his face and turned it towards the screen. The next shot that popped up opened his eyes wide. “Bears,” he breathed in delight. “You got to see some bears.”
She laughed. “Oh yes, a mama and her baby. Isn’t the cub cute playing in the water? Watch this.” She clicked on one of the photos that was a video clip. Together they watched the bears in the stream, the baby splashing and gamboling about while the mama drank her fill of the fresh water.
Vidalia explained the bears movements that coincided when the kids came into the scene, but she’d kept her camera steadily filming the magnificence of the mama bear when she stood on her hind legs and sniffed the air, and the point at which she hurried her cub into the brush and disappeared.
“And that’s when we left too,” Vidalia finished. “Just in case she decided to come around and inspect us closer.”
“Good call,” Jake replied. “I would have left too. You never know how they are going to react. Those two bears look thin, like they are fresh out of hibernation. With them being this close to the Falls, you want to be extra careful about your trash, and also when you’re out hiking.”
“Maybe we should warn the other cabins around here,” Vidalia suggested. “If I had a copier, we could print off a picture of the bears and send it around to our neighbors.” She tapped her finger on her lip, thinking.
