Whitewater Rendezvous

they got on the river yesterday. Grace will never believe it when I tellher.

She went back to the tent for a towel and a change of clothes.

Justine was still sawing logs so loudly that Megan didn’t worry about accidentally waking her. She scribbled a note that said she’d gone to the lake to wash up and left it on her pillow. There was one stop she had to make fi rst. She detoured to the area where they’d left their food and some of their personal items in bear-proof cylinders and picked up her toiletries kit.

Yancey and Justine had spent an hour at the lake the night before and reported it was too cold for bathing unless you were a polar bear or masochist. But they both managed to tolerate it enough to wash their hair. At least it was unusually mild, with temperatures that felt like the upper sixties.

It was only a short walk, and she could see the lake through the trees the whole way, so her mind drifted as she trod slowly along on the soft moss. She inhaled long and deeply. The air is so clean here. Thecolors so vivid. Is that the angle of the sun too? Whatever it was, she felt more alive in Alaska, like all her senses had been enhanced.

Before she knew it she had stepped out of the tree line and was at the lake. The water was deep and clear, and so absolutely calm it refl ected the enormous mountain behind it in a perfect mirror, taking her breath away.

“Wow.” The word escaped like a reverent sigh.

“Awesome, isn’t it?”

Chaz’s voice, so near and so unexpected, startled her so much that she dropped the bundle of clothes and toiletries she was carrying. As she picked it all back up, she glanced around but didn’t immediately see the guide.

“Up here,” Chaz drawled lazily.

She was six feet in the air, lying atop a large black rock, face up to the sun, as if she was on a beach in Florida instead of the Arctic Circle.

Her head turned slowly toward Megan, her eyes concealed behind sunglasses. It was the only thing about her that was hidden. She was otherwise completely and utterly nude.

Megan’s jaw dropped and her brain short-circuited for a moment, as she tried to fully grasp what she was seeing. She was unable to speak.

She couldn’t bring herself to look away.

• 83 •

KIM BALDWIN

“Megan?” Chaz’s demeanor changed from languid torpor to concern, her brow furrowing above her dark glasses, her rosy lips pursed in worry. As she roused herself from her semislumber, she seemed to become aware that Megan, who was not, unfortunately, wearing sunglasses, was staring at her breasts, not at her face. She half sat up, reached for her towel, and draped it across herself.

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting anyone to be up this early. Does nudity bother you?” She turned to lie on her side, facing Megan, propped up on one elbow.

Bother me? Hell, yes, it bothers me. But she certainly couldn’t say that. Her mind struggled to come up with a suitable reply while her eyes, of their own accord and totally without her permission, burned the image she glimpsed of the naked Chaz into her memory. Legs that went on forever, athlete’s legs—with fi rmly muscled thighs and calves that complemented the buff upper body she’d been staring at the prior afternoon. A fl at plane of stomach, not a tan line in sight. Her breasts were not too large, but they were round and fi rm and inviting, the dark areolas standing out like the center ring on a target, pulling her eyes to them. The triangle of dark hair below testifi ed that Chaz had indeed been born with that rich, vibrant chestnut brown everywhere.

Photographic memory indeed. She was doomed.

“I’m fi ne. Just fi ne,” she managed after several moments.

She forced herself to look away—at the lake, at anywhere else. It really made no difference. She was still seeing that absolutely delicious body in her mind’s eye, and she knew she would for a very long time.

But at least she might hope to appear outwardly a bit more composed.

No way did she want Chaz to have any idea what effect she was having on her. What the hell is the matter? I’ve certainly seen naked womenbefore. Lots of naked women, as a matter of fact. She took a deep breath.

Then another. Yeah, but not like her, some part of her whispered. EvenRita. In the nude, they look nothing alike, really. Rita never looked thisgood. She realized her hands were trembling. She gripped her bundle of clothes and towel tighter to herself to hide it.

“I can’t believe it’s this warm.” Chaz lay back down, face up to the sun. “Wind’s from the south.” She kept the towel draped across herself.

“I went for a run and then I had to take a swim, I got so hot.”

Stop with the double entendres, Megan wanted to say, but she knew they were unintentional. Frankly, she didn’t think it was that warm,

• 84 •

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14