“We’ll go outside,” he whispered. “You’ll get better shots.”
She nodded, curling her fingers around his hand. He was careful not to meet her eyes, pulling her along to the front door. He hadn’t expected her to take hold of his hand, but he’d be lying if he said it wasn’t affecting him, because it was. A lot.
He felt pathetically grateful that she was finally letting her guard down again after such a cool, composed morning. Suddenly he had a slight glimmer of hope that the rest of the day might showcase the funny, surprising Jane from yesterday instead of the cool, reserved one from this morning.
Lars opened the front door quietly, stepping down the two steps. He had no reason to keep holding Jane’s hand, but he didn’t want to let go. She stepped down beside him and they stood side by side.
“They’re marvelous,” she breathed.
He glanced down at her and felt his heart speed up as he stared at her face. Her mouth was slightly open, soft and surprised, and her eyes were wide and fascinated. He could still smell that mango or passion fruit, or whatever it was, from her lips, and wished he could lean down and kiss them. Instead, he adjusted his hand again, lacing his fingers through hers, hoping she wouldn’t notice and pull away.
She turned to him and smiled. “Aren’t they wonderful?”
He nodded at her, smiling back. But, he wasn’t smiling at the herd—honestly, a herd of bison wasn’t very compelling for him anymore—he was smiling at her.
From experience he knew that tourists were generally blown away by their first glimpse of a herd. He’d seen the look many, many times. But not on Jane’s face, and it just about took his breath away to see her so unreserved, no trace of the smart-ass from yesterday or the businesswoman from this morning. Just a guileless young woman, enthralled by the sight of something pure and new in Lars’s world. Watching her made Lars’s heart swell and thump, drawing him to her in some otherworldly way he never saw coming. He squeezed her hand instinctively and she glanced up at him, pink lips still tilted up in delight, before she turned her gaze back to the grazing herd.
Finally she loosened her hand from his, and took the lens cap off, clicking the camera on. Moving stealthily, she approached them, then turned back to him, whispering, “How close can I get?”
He stepped up beside her. “We can move in a little. Just be really calm. No sudden movements. They’re used to people, and they’re pretty gentle, but you don’t want to startle them. The bulls can gore you if they get riled, though they’re more likely to run than charge. These are females, but with a baby out there, don’t get too close. Stay low, okay?”
They moved calmly, quietly, until they were about sixty yards away, and Lars put his hand on her arm, motioning her to stop.
She raised her camera and started to shoot as he squatted down next to her, whispering in harmony to the low whirring of her camera. “There used to be millions and millions of buffalo out here. But they were hunted, almost to the point of extinction. By the late 1880s, there was only a handful left. A couple hundred.”
“Go humans.” She stopped clicking and turned to him. “Way to almost wipe out a species. Then what?”
“Well, they took a small herd of forty-one captive and wild buffalo and moved them here to Yellowstone. Today there are over four thousand wild buffalo here.”
“Well, at least they tried to fix things.”
“I love to see the little ones,” Lars whispered, smiling as he watched the calf trail along, bleating after its mother.
When he glanced at Jane, she was smiling at him, but it was a small, tenuous, uncertain smile. Her face was soft, as it had been in the truck yesterday while they were talking about her father, and her green eyes were serious, searching. Without thinking, Lars leaned forward, moving his lips closer and closer to hers.
She looked down suddenly, breaking their eye contact, breaking the moment. “Thanks for showing me this. I got some good shots. Time to finish unpacking.”
He considered reaching for her as they stood up, to connect with her, to assuage the growing tension between them by kissing her senseless. But she stood up, still not looking at him, so instead he watched her walk purposefully back to the cottage without turning around even once.
***
Two hours later, Jane glanced over at Lars, who was driving them to the first of three shoot locations so she could photograph them and send pictures to Sara. She checked her phone, even though Lars had warned her there wouldn’t be reliable cellular service for as long as they were in the park.
No signal. No bars. More’s the better.
She rolled down her window, which added white noise to the otherwise quiet of the car. Lars had seemingly given up all attempts to charm her out of her grumpy funk and drove in silence, which Jane hated as much as she suspected he hated grumpy Jane.
Not liking Lars was proving to be just about impossible, and the effort it was taking to be aloof and professional was draining, especially when he seemed so thoughtful; bringing that CD for the ride to dinner last night and showing her the bison this morning. But, whenever she felt her resolve slipping, she would think about Paul’s words from last night—the girls from the park—and the coolness would return quickly. She felt sure that if she had let him kiss her earlier, that’s all she’d be: a temporary distraction left in the dust once the “main attraction” arrived. Just another girl from the park. Jane didn’t want that.
Well, she didn’t think she wanted that.
Or did she?
Their chemistry was not just in her head anymore, not that she had ever really believed it was totally in her head. She felt Lars watching her yesterday, taking her hand, touching her curls. She could see how pleased he was to see her this morning.
She thought of him asking her if anything was wrong, and how he had laced his fingers through hers as he led her out to the meadow earlier; she knew there was something between them, something crackling and interested, simmering just beneath the surface.
Jane peeked over at him.
Smokin‘ hot. Like, doing a double-take on the street, tongue rolling out of your mouth, rugged, western-model-perched-on-a-horse-with-a-cowboy-hat-and-a-lazy-smile hot. And Jane was pretty sure that if she wanted a fling with Lars, it was hers for the taking…at least until Sara arrived.
That was the rub. No way Sara wasn’t going to hit that. Jane would be surprised if Lars wasn’t her first order of business. And Jane knew her place. Every day, every moment of her life so far had impressed upon her that she couldn’t possibly compete with Sara.
From a young age, Jane had believed what she had been told in a myriad of unspoken ways; Sara was vapid, but pretty and Jane was smart, but plain. Unfortunately for Jane, her smarts had never been a match for her cousin’s beauty in the eyes of her guardians.
By high school, Jane’s whole existence had been overshadowed by the breathtaking, luminous Sara. Graduating from high school, Sara was almost six feet tall, willowy and confident with a perfectly formed body, long, silky onyx hair and lavender eyes fringed with long, black lashes.
It was as though she had skipped puberty entirely, neatly developing within the time span of a mild New England summer before her freshman year with nary a blemish on her porcelain skin, and no need for the awkward machinery of braces. Her breasts followed a perfect trajectory from an A cup freshman year to a full B cup by the end of high school, ever accentuated by her increasingly tiny waist and adorable backside.