A Moment of Bliss (16 page)

This was all going to come grinding to a halt soon. Why go through the trouble of a little day trip away, even if it did hold the possibility of some amazing outdoor sex? In the end, what was the point?

Madison glanced around again, chewing at the corner of her mouth. She was thinking about it.

Roark let another cluck build, low in his throat, before taunting her with chicken noises. There might not be any point to taking her away and spending a little extra alone-time with her, but he was still going to try his damnedest to do it anyway.

Madison clamped her hand over his mouth. “We're going skinny-dipping, just to shut you up.”

He grinned behind her fingers. “I'll meet you at my car in fifteen minutes.”

“Ten. And I'll meet you at
my
car.”

“I've seen your car. There's no way it'll make it. We'll take my truck.”

She opened her mouth to argue.

“But you can drive.”

Madison eased her mouth closed and dropped her hand. “Deal.”

Screw worrying about putting too much into this “not a thing” thing they were doing. So what if Madison would be gone in a week and half? That gave him more reason to soak up every moment now. If this was all going to end soon, he'd enjoy every bit of it while he could.

S
he hoped she looked patient, waiting outside by Roark's truck, because she sure didn't feel it. Inside she simmered with the need to know where he was taking her, but more than that, why she'd agreed to go.

This wasn't her. Madison Kline did not go skinny-dipping, period, much less with a business acquaintance, in the middle of the day,
in September.

It'd been over a decade since she'd gone swimming with a guy. At the time, it'd struck her as romantic. She'd thought it was love, but she was nineteen and still stupid as hell. Look where believing in love had gotten her. Once again, she'd been left, all alone in the world, nowhere to call home and no one to call . . . well, just plain no one to call.

This swimming trip was not romantic. It'd be fun and sexy and that's it. Even though it shouldn't be happening at all. Acting like a teenager again, giddy at the prospect of running off for a couple of hours together. She had work to do, and for her most important clients to date. What the hell was she thinking?

“You ready?” Roark strolled up beside her.

No. She was in no way ready for any of this. “I'm driving.” She held out her hand for the keys.

Roark climbed into the passenger side of his big, black truck while she pulled herself into the driver's seat. A huge, olive-colored duffel sat between them.

“What's all that? Besides the requested towels.” She nodded to the bag and started the truck.

“Some stuff. Don't worry about it. We're going to take a right out of the parking lot and head down the mountain.”

Madison gave the mysterious bag and the bag's owner another look before backing out. “Dear
god
we're up high. Do you drive
over
other cars on a daily basis or is it a weekend hobby?”

“My truck isn't that high. You're used to sitting on the ground in your itty bitty sports car.”

“I do not sit on the ground. I drive a normal car.”

“Ha!”

She kept both hands on the wheel but turned her chin enough to glare at him. “What do you mean,
ha
?”

“You drive a convertible that tops out at over two hundred miles per hour. It's not a normal car.”

“Normal for me then.” Madison turned right and drove them down the mountain. She could do this. A little time away near the end of the day didn't mean there were any new expectations or added pressures between them. They'd be swimming, for crying out loud, and she was making something out of nothing.

The only real issue was taking the time away from work.

“I have about a million things left to do before I can call it a day.” She came right out and said it.

“I know. Me too.”

“Taking an hour off to go swimming isn't a good use of our time.”

Roark shifted in his seat to look at her, his arm slung over the back of her seat. “Then I guess we'll have to make good use of our time.”

She caught the mischievous look on his face. “In an hour? I was with you last night, remember? There won't be time to swim and—”

“Get frisky al fresco?”

She tossed her had back and laughed. “You're a nut.”

He shrugged.

“I don't get it though. You like a good laugh, you obviously enjoy joking around, but you glare at your family if they cut up too much. Why don't you ever lighten up around them?”

Roark shrugged again. “I do sometimes, but when we're working, we're working. Joking is for later.”

“But they're your family and aren't you always working? No one is going to judge you for joking around with them.”

“I know, but . . . it's complicated.”

“Must be. Since you think Trevor's irresponsible for taking a sabbatical in Peru, yet you're blowing off work, midday, to participate in an arguably illegal activity?”

“Kind of sounds like you're judging me,” he quipped.

And maybe she was, but she didn't look down on him for being serious. She merely liked seeing the happy, freer side of him as well. She bet his family would too.

“Okay, first of all, Trevor took off to Peru months ago, with no indication of when he'll be back,
if
he'll be back, why he was going, or where else he's going. We haven't heard a word from him. He could be dead on the side of the road, and what can I do to help him way over here? Not a damn thing.”

She glanced over. “Who says you have to help him?”

“You're kidding, right? With Trev, he'll need someone to bail him out of whatever he gets into, and who else is there?”

Roark sounded like a mother hen. His agitation about Trevor was from worry. He cared about his youngest brother and didn't like that he was off somewhere outside of Roark's reach.

She couldn't imagine having anyone worry about her like that. Her mother never worried about her when she was kid; forget fussing over her well-being as an adult. She'd showed Madison the door at eighteen and that was it from mommy dearest.

“Plus, there was no purpose to Trevor's trip.” Roark lifted his hand and let it flop back down on the headrest. “He went for the hell of going. Our little day trip here will take all of a couple of hours and I know the purpose. I have a goal. That makes it a whole different ball game.”

“You have a goal?”

“Yes, I do.”

“And that is?”

He tapped his fingers on the driver seat. “I told you last night. Seducing you. I thought that part was self-explanatory.”

She chewed on her smile. “That's what this is?”

He lifted his hand toward the road. “These are my keen skills of seduction. Take you off somewhere secluded and we both get naked. The chance of sex increases exponentially. Are you not swooning already?”

Her laughter filled the truck's cab. “Oh, I'm mid-swoon right now.”

“Take a left at this stop sign.” Roark pointed ahead. “And yes, I'd be annoyed as all get-out if Devlin took off for the afternoon and didn't tell me where he was going, but the difference is, I get all my shit done. No matter what, I do my job. Dev? Eh. It depends.”

Madison flicked the turn signal and slowed to a stop. She'd told herself she wasn't going to say anything. To say something meant learning even more about Roark and who he was. Learning more about him would lead to liking him even more. But noticing a thing and not stating her opinion on the thing was not her style. “Then you're aware you're pretty tough on your siblings?”

Roark worked his jaw and pointed left. She took the turn but waited silently for the next mile or so. He could try to dodge her observation, but try was all he'd do. She'd sit quietly if that's what it took for him to answer.

“I'm aware,” he finally said into the silence.

She kept her mouth shut, having learned long ago that if you wanted people to tell you something, the best thing you could do was shut up.

He sighed and shifted in his seat. “I guess old habits are hard to break. I don't know. Veer right up here.”

“Old habits?”

“I'm their big brother.” He said it as if that fact, in and of itself, explained him entirely. “I'm the oldest, by a good few years, so I've always been in charge of my brothers and sister.”

“You're not that much older. You make it sound like you were an adult when they were born.”

He propped his other arm along the passenger door and looked out the side window. “I was changing Trevor's diapers when I was five, teaching Dev how to dress, fix his own snacks and not wet the bed. Mom and Dad were busy. Doing other stuff. They couldn't manage it all. Couldn't do much, really, so I helped out with the usual stuff.”

What he did was more than the usual stuff. At five, he was a kid himself. Helping out occasionally at dinner or bedtime was one thing, but it sounded like Roark took on a lot more than that.

“I'd guessed you were always the leader in the family, but at least you have one.”

He shifted in his seat to face her.

She glanced over, and the intensity of his gaze made her face warm. A flash of heat streaked down her neck. She knew what he was going to ask before he even asked it, but she couldn't stop it. All of her silent hoping and cursing couldn't turn back the direction of this conversation.

“What about your family?” Roark asked.

Damn good question. She'd asked herself that about a million times. She tightened her hold on the wheel, staring at the road so hard it blurred. She'd told him before that she didn't have any siblings. As for the rest . . .

“Turn to the left here and follow the road until it ends.”

“Sounds ominous.” She tried to smile and change the subject.

“Not as ominous as you not answering the question.”

“No family. It's just me.” She could feel his grimace without looking over.

“I'm sorry. Did they pass?”

It'd be so much easier to accept if they had. Madison laughed, the sound icy even to her ears, but thoughts of her parents turned her cold. “Hardly. I'm sure they're both alive wherever they are.”

He made a noise, contemplating what she'd said. “So were you orphaned or . . . put up for adoption?”

“I wish.” She pinched her lips together to keep her mouth from crumpling. “Look. I don't want to talk about it.”

“Okay.” Roark was silent as they bumped down the road. “But it sounds like maybe you should.”

“There's nothing to talk about.” She spat out the words. “My dad took off and never looked back. My mom let me live with her until I was eighteen, and that was that. End of story.”

But ten years later, she still didn't understand why no one wanted her, and it still hurt like hell.

“
Let
you live with her?”

“I said I don't want to talk about them.” She bit off the words, right as she hit a nasty dip in the road at full speed, bouncing both of them around like basketballs.

“Okay, okay. We don't have to talk about them.”

Madison clenched her teeth.

“But I'm here if you ever want to,” he said. His voice was so soothing, so understanding and accepting—and something in her snapped.

No. She was not going to spill her guts for him to soothe and accept her, because no matter how good it might feel to let him in, at the end of it all, he wouldn't be around. People never stuck around.

Roark would always be
here
. Not with her if she wanted to talk about it two weeks from now. Not months from now, when she woke up from the same old nightmare of being lost and alone. She would always be alone and that had become just fine with her.

Rather than say anything, she put her foot down on the gas pedal. The road was half washed out, but Roark's truck was a four-by-four and could take it.

They bounced down another half a mile, Roark muttering next to her until one particularly hard knock worked him up.

“Seriously. I'm not interested in wrecking today. The road ends up here, by the way. I know how you like fair warning before you get to a dead end. Son of a—”

Madison jerked the wheel, skidding the truck to a stop. She hopped out of the truck before Roark could fuss, and started tromping toward the lake, about a hundred yards off the road.

“What the hell was that about?” Roark shouted, his words following her through the grass and copse of trees.

“Hey. Hey!” He jogged to catch up to her. “Where are you going?”

She flung her arm out toward the lake. “This is our destination, isn't it?”

“Yes. This is the secluded side of the lake.”

“Then that is where I'm going.”

His sigh was full of gruff frustration, and she didn't blame him. She was a frustrating person to know. Ask any of the people who'd known and left her.

“What was all that stunt-car driving? Do you seriously think that's going make me
less
curious about what's going on with you?”

“I don't want to talk about it.”

“Okay,” he said, the sarcasm so thick, Wright could've used it for frosting.

A shrill noise rose from her throat and she couldn't stop it. The Indian-summer sun beat down on them, making it feel like an August day in September. She hadn't even reached the water when she started stripping off clothing.

“I . . .” Roark turned back to watch the trail of shirt and shoes and bra she left behind. “Okay.” He slung his duffel down once they got to a clearing at the water's edge. An old campfire site sat surrounded by rocks, the ashes from a fire not too long ago.

Roark had stopped talking and tugged his T-shirt up over his head.

Madison shucked off her pants along with her panties. She tossed her earrings on top of the pile. She knew, if nothing else, nudity always worked if you wanted a man to shut up.

Hopping on one foot, Roark pulled off one shoe and then the other. She was way ahead of him—completely naked, arms crossed, tapping her foot as she waited. When he looked up for the third time as he pulled his pants off, she snapped, “Let's go. This was your idea. Quit dawdling.”

“I'm not dawdling,” he snapped back. “I'm enjoying the view. You're stunning, even when you're mad as hell. Maybe more so, which is probably a messed-up thing to say, but I don't care.”

“Thank you,” she huffed.

“You're welcome.” Roark flung his pants and boxers down on the ground like he was trying to break a plate.

She turned her back on him and went toward the tiny sandy area that might constitute a five-foot beach.