Free Instant Gratification by Jill Shalvis Page B

tell.
    “Maybe you could try a new tactic.”
    “Like?”
    “Like a date. Without the blood and guts and someone screaming in pain.”
    As the middle child, Stone was the talker, the peacemaker, the one who kept them all together, but as the oldest, TJ usually had the answers, at least when it came to women. “You don’t think that would be a waste of my breath?”
    “I think you’ve got a shot.” TJ smiled. “I’ll put your first-aid kit back so you have it handy. Knowing you, you’ll need it.” With a pat on the back, Stone’s supposedly smarter, wiser, older brother got up and headed toward their clients.
     
    The next morning, Emma woke up to her cell phone vibrating right off her nightstand. When she finally caught the thing, she saw Spence’s number and felt herself smile.
    Spencer did that for her, made her smile.
    They’d become friends in an undergraduate freshman biology class at Columbia. They’d become friends-with-benefits their junior year when he’d been dumped by his long term girlfriend, and that tradition had continued on an as-needed basis throughout the years. When they were dating others—mostly Spencer, because Emma didn’t often make time for dating, they saw each other less, but in between significant others—again, mostly Spencer’s—they spent more time together. Whenever there were bad breakups, and for Spencer there was never any other kind, they’d occasionally knocked their feet together in bed.
    It’d been a year since they’d last gotten naked, and that wasn’t what Emma wanted from him now. She wanted the company of someone who knew her and accepted her, as is. “Tell me you’re still getting on a plane tomorrow,” she said.
    “I’m already here. I got in late last night to surprise you.”
    “What?”
    “Yeah, I’ve already been on a mountain bike ride this morning, in the rain, no less, which was amazing . I suppose your lazy ass is still in bed?”
    “What do you mean, you’re here? Here here?” Emma sat up and pushed her hair out of her face as she looked around her childhood bedroom, still so yellow and cheery and full of sweetness that she felt like she got a new cavity every night she slept here. God, she needed coffee. “I don’t see you.”
    “I’m at a place called Wilder Adventures. You know it?”
    She’d in fact been dreaming about Wilder Adventures for nearly two weeks now, or more correctly, of the men who ran it. One in particular.
    Stone.
    Naked.
    Not muddy. Not bleeding. Not teasing her about her battery purchases. “Yes,” she said weakly. “I know it. How do you know it?”
    “My assistant looked up things to do in Wishful and found it. I’m only about four or five miles from you, and it’s sweet . Did you know you can guide out any kind of trip you can imagine? It’s amazing, and—”
    “I know. I’m familiar with it,” she said, closing her eyes tight. Her best friend and sometime casual lover had just slept at the place owned by the man she’d been fantasizing about. She didn’t need a cup of caffeine, she needed an entire pot.
    And possibly a shrink.
    “Anyway, it’s dumping rain, like buckets of rain, and supposedly the road out of here gets tricky without four wheel drive. Did your father leave you a vehicle that you can use to come get me?”
    She got out of bed and padded to the window to open the shades.
    Indeed, it was pouring rain, big fat drops that hit the ground and bounced back up like super balls. She eyed her father’s ancient, massive Ford truck that he’d indeed left for her, and braced herself.
    But just like anything else, she could handle it. “Yes, I have a truck. I’ll be right there.”

Chapter 7
    T he rain had let up as Stone came into the home stretch of a mountain bike race with Nick. He was winning too, when out of the corner of his eyes he saw Doc Sinclair’s truck ambling up their driveway.
    Only it wasn’t Doc Sinclair behind the wheel, but his daughter, the one with the snooty