adventure.”
He pulled his hand back with a frown. “Yeah, that would be great.”
Sarcasm edged his voice. Most guys would be thrilled she was covering their challenges. Was he pissed she’d shown up past the appointed hour?
“Listen, I apologize. I took a wrong turn somewhere around Schenectady. I tried calling you, but…” You didn’t pick up. Or answer any of my emails. He was probably too busy chopping wood, though he looked like he’d just stepped out of a board meeting. Her fingers itched to tug the hanging end of the tie until it slid off his shoulders.
Wow. What was wrong with her? All the other subjects of her interviews were gorgeous physical specimens, and she managed to keep her professional cool.
“Frankly,” he said, “I forgot about the interview.”
“Oh?” She straightened her knees, melting under the sun of his perusal. “That’s not surprising, considering all the details you must be dealing with for tomorrow’s launch. I did text you—”
“I threw my phone across the room hours ago.” He shifted his stance, planting his hands low on those lean hips. “It’s been a hell of a day.”
Her instincts twitched. “A problem with the expedition?”
“That’s putting it lightly.”
“Last-minute glitches are inevitable.” She would not be distracted by the muscular roll of that shrug. “As a journalist, that’s the stuff I need to hear anyway. Trouble makes good copy, provides twists and turns in the narrative.”
Icelandic blue, those eyes.
“Perhaps this might cheer you.” She gripped the strap of her laptop bag for balance. “My editor is promising a full feature article for the October edition.”
He dropped his head, shook it with a short, startled laugh.
Odd. Most guys would roar in triumph. “We’re talking front page of the magazine, Dylan. The home page of the website.”
“Neon’s not my color.”
“They won’t make you wear…swim briefs. I promise. You can wear that shirt, if you’d like.” Though her editor would expect the shirt fully unbuttoned to show off the massive, carved chest under the chaff-sprinkled cotton. She forced her mind away from that thought. Nailing this interview was more important than fantasizing about nailing him.
She glanced pointedly back at the cabin. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Should we go inside and talk?”
After a pause, he strode past her, all heat and muscle, toward the cabin’s back door. “How far did you drive for this?”
“Six hours,” she confessed, falling into his wake.
He cursed sharply. “This day couldn’t get any harder.”
Harder than your butt? Seriously, though. High-rounded and rock-solid. “What’s the trouble?”
“My partner is the trouble.” Dylan swung open the screen door and stepped back to beckon her in ahead of him, acting the casual gentleman. “Garrick—Garrick Kane, my plus-one for this expedition—just bailed on me this morning.”
She brushed by his pulsing, vibrant warmth into the cabin. “He bailed?”
“Climbing the Shawangunk Mountains yesterday, he broke his arm.” He stepped into the cool kitchen behind her, the screen door banging. “He’s lucky he didn’t crack his hard skull, though I may crack it for him when I see him again.”
“But you’ve got a substitute.” Of course.
“Garrick was my substitute.” Dylan walked to the farmhouse sink where he shoved on the faucet. “My original partner recently started a new job and bought a new house, so he bailed on me months ago. Garrick agreed to take his place. But after months of planning, good old Garrick decided to take up a new athletic endeavor and blow this all to hell.” He thrust his hands under the stream of water. “And now here you are. Coming at me like a dream.”
She startled, grazed by his sidelong gaze. He was talking about the publicity, of course. Every adrenaline junkie wanted to be famous. “But there must be someone you could call.”
“Yeah, plenty of guys can take three weeks off work, starting tomorrow.”
She frowned at the sarcasm. “So push the expedition off for a week or two.” But no more than that, she hoped. She needed the payday and had no other assignments lined up.
“I can’t. I’m a professor of history at Bridgewater State.”
She absorbed that revelation with a tingle of surprise. Her editor liked to reveal as little about a subject as possible when giving Casey an assignment. The editor’s philosophy was to allow the unveiling of new information to guide the angle of the piece. Casey tucked Dylan’s revelation away and added a new facet to her inner portrait of this man.
“The semester starts in a month.” He shook his hands, spraying water, then shoved them, still damp, through his thick, cropped