how he hated this. Hated the fear that shot through him as he fought to slow his heart rate down. Fought to forget. Fought to remember. He was home. Safe. He was back in the Bay Area. Fortune, to be exact. In a trailer on Wildfire Ridge.
And just like that his thoughts turned to his Angelina. Angelina, who was not Angelina. She was Jill, and still every bit as gorgeous as he remembered. Since he’d thought back to that single night many times over the past three years, he’d recognized her the minute he heard her voice. Heard the sound of her nervous laughter. Saw her long red hair whipping in the wind. Her equally long legs curved around that flagpole. Told himself he had to be imagining things. A look-alike, maybe. He’d waited until she was inches away from him to be sure he wasn’t hallucinating.
The night they’d met, he’d been in San Francisco on leave. He should have dropped in on his parents, who were not that far away. Not a long drive to the other side of the bay and Berkeley. He could have called them, let them know he was stateside, and he’d struggled that night to make the right choice. In the end, he couldn’t do it. In the end, a tall redhead had made her way to his table and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
And good thing, too, because he didn’t think he would have made it through the next three years without the memory of her. Of that night. The knowledge that it was possible to get so lost in someone you forgot everything else. It was possible to forget the fear and the guilt and the pain. Possible to simply allow himself to feel something good again because she made it difficult not to do just that. He hadn’t wanted to hold back from her that night, but he had. Everything but the physical. And so had she. She’d been the one to suggest the fake names.
Just one perfect night.
Without the pressure of knowing he’d eventually drive her away like he had everyone else, he handled that one night. One day at a time was the only way he could manage his life.
Everything was different now. She was here, and she was his boss. A man did not mess with that.
He hadn’t expected the form to be a problem, but something told him she wouldn’t leave this alone. She wanted to know why he wasn’t in touch with his parents. Why he didn’t think enough of their relationship to put their names on a form.
Hell, it took a lot for him to put someone’s name on a damn form.
Right now, he wasn’t interested in talking to them, and he didn’t see that changing anytime soon. So no, their names weren’t going on her damn form.
He dressed quickly and went for a run, the cool spring morning air waking him so he was no longer groggy from lack of sleep. Then he hit the shower, and thought about coffee. Sure enough, his employer had been more than generous and stocked the kitchen with some essentials. He had his coffee and was out the door by 6:00 a.m. One by one, the men came out of their separate trailers on the grounds until all of them were gathered outside the office trailer.
No Jill anywhere in sight.
“What do you think ‘bright and early’ means to her?” Michael said.
“She didn’t give us a time,” Ty said with a shrug.
“Strikes me as being new to this boss thing,” Julian said.
It had struck Sam the same. Granted, he’d never asked about her occupation nor had any interest in knowing. In his fantasies, she’d had many jobs and not one of them had been owner and manager of an outdoor adventure company. Stripper? Yes. Masseuse? Hell, yes. Naughty nurse? Possibly. Porn star? Definitely.
“She’ll be here.”
And an hour later, as the guys stood around debating whether the Warriors would take the championship again this year, she drove up the hill. She parked her sedan a few feet away from the office trailer. When she noticed them all standing there, she did a double take, then seemed to mutter something to herself as she opened the driver’s side door.
“Hot damn, she’s cute,” Julian said.
“Yeah.”
Sam had been thinking the same thing. Thinking how she made him want to smile. Made him want to do a lot of other things, too, first and foremost making her smile. And scream out his name again. This time his real one.
“Usually I don’t even like redheads. Too bad she’s the boss,” Julian said.
“Exactly,” Sam said firmly.
There was some relief in realizing that he wasn’t the only one who couldn’t have her.
Jill walked down the path to the office trailer, carrying several plastic shopping bags in her arms. Her hair was up in a ponytail today; she wore long hiking pants and a tight-fitting black performance tee that read, Wildfire Ridge’s Outdoor Adventures in red stitching across her right breast. Hiking boots, too.
“Good morning.” She set the plastic bags on the benched picnic table near the trailer. “Everyone grab a shirt. Mostly large and extra-large, and they run small.”
Sam grabbed one first. He pulled off his shirt and tugged the other one on and the others followed suit. If Jill seemed shocked that they’d take their shirts off in front of her, she didn’t say anything.
She went into a welcome speech that, while it sounded sincere, also might have been scripted. She looked nervous to Sam, not that he should know. He’d never seen nervous Jill before.
Next was a discussion about equipment sorting.
“We had a delivery two days ago, and I need help inventorying. Next I’d like each of you to try out all the courses and give me your feedback. Is it challenging enough for you guides, and if so, is there a way to level it so that we can work with, um...”
“Different levels of fitness?” Sam offered.
She snapped her fingers. “Yes, exactly. And we’ve got our first group of testers coming out next week so we want to be ready.”
“We got you covered, boss.” Julian winked.
“Thanks! Oh, and another thing. I’ll eventually want to take photos of you guides doing some of the activities so I can put them on our Facebook page.”
The next few hours were like family camp on steroids. Leadership came naturally to him, so he wound up organizing the guys as they pulled equipment out of boxes, counted and categorized. The fun part was trying out some of the equipment. The zip line stretched across a small canyon that was nevertheless about 100 feet up and a long drop. It was obvious some great engineering had gone into it. After each of them had gone across the zip line twice, Sam decided they were having too much fun to be technically working. At least, he was.
“Next,” he found himself ordering.
Julian, Ty and Michael went ahead to the rock face that looked to have been partially man-made, working with some of the rockier and craggier areas of the hilltop. He was about to follow when he saw Jill staring at the zip line from a few feet away.
“Want a go at this?”
She shook her head a little violently. “Oh no. I’ve got paperwork to get back to. I just wanted to check on you guys. I see everything’s going smoothly.”
“Well...”
“Oh God. What’s wrong? Tell me.”
“You can dial back on the panic mode. The comm system has some bugs in it. You might want to look into that.”
“Not again. I’ve called twice and every time they fix it, it goes down again. Is that it?”
“And I was just going to suggest you have a rescue plan in place.”
She chewed on her lower lip. “Working on one. For the Sheriff. He wants me to get it to him soon.”
“How soon?”
“Tomorrow morning?”
He winced. “Okay, I can