more appropriate today.”
“Oh, come on, gimme a clue.” I crawled onto the back of the bike and wrapped my arms around his middle.
“No hints.”
And true to his word, there were no hints. Instead, we went to my apartment, where Landon dove into my closet, emerging with a flannel shirt and a giant fisherman’s sweater, citing that I would “thank him later.”
I smiled when he slipped into the bathroom before we left. Even though we’d only been dating a few weeks, he was already talking about our relationship in the long term. Instead of being allergic to such talk the way most guys were, he seemed to enjoy planning a future together.
“Hey, hurry it up in there,” I teased from my kitchen. “This sweater is really warm.”
He laughed from behind the bathroom door, and went to check my phone for messages. I sent Gabe a text message as I left the Silver Cascade, and then got too caught up in my Valentine’s Day celebration to answer his three calls.
“Hey, Violet…it’s Gabe. Dude. What’s up with your cryptic text message? Sorry I didn’t get back to you quicker. I was at the grocery store buying groceries for Valentine’s dinner. Why anybody would want to eat a mushroom with the word ‘shit’ in the name is beyond me. But Alicia loves that kind of fancy crap. Whatever. So anyway, give me a call, and let me know what’s up. I’ll be around. Later.”
I covered my mouth to keep Landon from hearing me giggle as Gabe rattled on. The sound of Gabe’s voice made a shudder go through my body, so I pressed repeat and listened to it again two more times.
I heard the water running in the bathroom and pressed delete. It was time to chill out. Here I was, in my apartment with my new, good-looking and thoughtful boyfriend, and I was obsessing over a voice mail left by a taken man.
“Get over it,” I muttered, making a mental note to call him as soon as I got home. Gabe would be up late. He always was. Unless Alicia was spending the night…in which case, he wouldn’t be able to talk. I had a sudden urge to throw up.
“Ready to go?” Landon’s deep voice came from behind me and made me jump.
“Oh, you scared me,” I burst out.
“Sending me a text to tell me to hurry it up?”
I slid the device into my jeans pocket. “Exactly. Let’s do this.”
“No, wait.” Landon held up two hair bands. “I found these in your bathroom. May I?”
I nodded, blushing. He swept one side of my hair into a ponytail, then moved to the other side, where he gathered the remaining hair into another one. Every time his fingertips brushed the skin on my neck, an excited shiver ran up my spine. When he was finished, he leaned down and kissed the tip of my nose. “We’ll be on the bike for a while. Don’t want you to get tangles.”
A brief memory of Gabe kissing the tip of my nose as he’d left me at my locker one day in high school flitted through my mind.
I curbed it by throwing my arms around Landon’s neck and mashing my mouth against his. The heat between us flared instantly. Landon’s breath caught in his throat, then released in a long, warm sigh as I pressed against him. His arms went around my waist underneath the sweater, his callused palms pressing against my skin. My insides stood up and took attention.
“Whoa.” He pushed me back by the hips. “You really know how to get me going.”
I tried to close the space between us. “That’s a bad thing?”
Taking me by the wrists, Landon held me a foot away. “Not bad. Just dangerous.”
I lowered my eyelids. “Don’t be such a wuss.”
His expression changed from heated to determined. “Oh, I’m no wuss. We just have plans.”
With that, he laced his fingers through mine and led me out my apartment door. The ride into the Cascade Mountains was cold but beautiful. Though the roads were clear and dry, both sides were blanketed in crisp white snow, and the scent of pine permeated my nose as my head rested on Landon’s leather-clad back. The air was crisp, but he was warm, and it comforted me to know that he was real, instead of some high school memory I was clinging to.
It was almost an hour before we pulled off the main road and wound our way up into the thick pine trees. We passed