Long Summer Nights. Kathleen O'Reilly
she admitted that she liked the lack of fog in his eyes.
She pointed to the stars on her phone. “If you had a star app, you could learn them.”
“Spoken like the commercially brainwashed American consumer that you are. Obsessed with convenience, purveyor of a thousand bits of minutia to manage an already hurried world. Devices that fool you into believing that you can rule time and have some control over your life. And in the end, those very things only make you a slave instead of the master.”
Instinctively she knew it wouldn’t be smart to laugh. If he hadn’t sounded so completely sure of himself, she might have felt sorry for him. Instead, because perhaps there was a shred of uncomfortable truth, she crossed her arms over her chest and raised her brows in her best imitation of smug superiority. “This coming from a man who left his solitary cabin and climbed up on a rock, solely in hopes of a little gratuitous nudity? You’re in no position to cast stones.”
Sadly he didn’t look the least bit ashamed. “I’m a mere man. Tethered to the weakness of the flesh and damned to experience life at its worst.”
That was the problem with weakening flesh, she thought, wishing that this time her body could be a little smarter. Instead she was noticing the long, length of his thighs, the rangy breadth of his shoulders and the sexy way he looked at her when he didn’t want to look at her. She’d never realized conflicted men could be so arousing.
“Who said that?” she asked.
“It’s no one you’d ever heard of.”
“He sounds overwrought.”
“That’s the polite term,” he said, his teeth flashing in the dark, and she was shocked at how normal he looked. How appealing. How completely unromantic and yet still hot.
“Why are you here?” she asked, now completely overwrought herself.
“Because I thought you were going to take off your clothes. I thought you would look nice without them.”
Her eyes narrowed only because if he asked nicely, she might have considered. “You think that line will fool me? Leisure Suit Lothario doesn’t come easy for you. In fact, you probably had to scrape the dregs of your social vocabulary to come up with that one. Ergo, the actual answer to my question is even worse than being branded a mere man.”
As insults went, it was convoluted and scattered, mainly because her mind was still stuck back at taking off her clothes.
He looked at her sideways, his eyes amused. “What are you? Psychologist, or just nosy?”
“I’m a reporter.”
At her words, the change in him was visible. The humor in his eyes faded, and his mouth tightened to a forbidding line. “Bottom-feeder.”
Jenn was used to the lack of respect. As a journalist, she had trained herself to be immune. “You are a charmer. I bet your complimentary ways go over well with all the ladies. What do you have against reporters?”
“Do you want specifics, or are the broad, generalized sins of the species enough?”
“Specifics. I like dealing in truths.”
“There is no truth, only whatever is convenient to whomever is speaking.”
She didn’t like his words, didn’t like his bitterness, didn’t like that he was correct. Since she was a kid she’d wanted to be a reporter, but she wasn’t blind to the narrow line that a journalist had to walk. Integrity versus news.
Instinctively she changed the subject to something safer. Like sex. “Is this your idea of seduction? It’s not working,” she muttered, relieved when the tight smile appeared again.
“No. It’s my idea of trying to get you off this rock.”
He looked strangely content for a man who was disturbed, but she understood. He provoked her, but she could feel the answering thrum in her blood, the tightening of her skin, the brooding pulse between her thighs.
Frowning, she crossed her legs and his eyes followed the movement with a knowing awareness that didn’t help the situation. “That didn’t work with the pilgrims at Plymouth. It’s not going to work with me. I have an assignment. I’m going to do my assignment, and I’m sorry if my presence disturbs your man-in-the-bubble existence. Actually, no, I’m not sorry. It’s a lot of fun to irritate you.”
He looked at her, his eyes a little too stunned. “Do you clip the wings off butterflies, as well?”
It was fascinating the way he drifted into insults so easily, using them like a shield, parrying anything that cut too close. “A butterfly, are we?” she said, raising a faux superior brow.
“I like to think in objectifying metaphors, dehumanizing as much as possible. It makes dealing with people much easier. Generally I like to avoid most people.”
Not quite sure how to answer that one, not quite sure why he seemed content to sit with her on the rock, Jenn elected to remain silent, her legs firmly locked.
It was a beautiful night not to be thinking about sex. The sounds of nature weren’t quite so forbidding when he was beside her. Somewhere an owl was hooting, and she realized she’d never heard the hoot of an owl. Crickets played and the stars shimmered in a velvet sky. When he didn’t think she was looking, he would glance at the display on her phone, matching the constellation to the one’s overhead. But she was always secretly looking, always watching him.
She liked him, she admitted. He was the best sort of man. Brutally honest and unafraid to speak his mind, dark and twisted such as it was. But it was that honesty that was refreshing.
He leaned back on the uneven surface of the stone, his chest rising steadily, his face turned up to the sky. He had a nice chest. He chose to hide it, much like he seemed to hide everything, a complete opposite of most of the other men she met who wanted to drone on about every aspect of their existence as if she couldn’t wait to hang on each and every second of their day. Frankly a little mystery could be very sexy.
Maybe she should do this. Maybe she should have an affair. Maybe she should lean over four inches and kiss him. Feel that sharp mouth on hers. Slide her hands under the buttons of his shirt, and see if his heart would beat faster. At the moment, so deep into her own dreams, she thought that it would.
“What’s your assignment?” he asked, which was the very worst question to ask while she was contemplating seduction.
Turning back to the matters at hand, which weren’t nearly as exciting as her current thoughts, she wiped sweaty palms on her jeans. “Harmony Springs. The Summer Nights Festival. The city-goers’ annual mecca to a quiet upstate community that offers very little in comparison to the myriad wonders of the five boroughs, so why the heck do all these people come here?”
Perhaps he noted the snark in her voice. “Which do you work for? Fear-mongering scandal-chaser with a penchant for yellow journalism or overpriced glossies perpetuating an idea of beauty or wealth that no ordinary person could achieve? “
She looked at him sharply, surprised by the anger. These days people were cynical about government, business and international diplomacy. But the media had been defanged long ago.
“I work for a newspaper. Large. Manhattan-based. Many Pulitzers among the staff. You probably haven’t heard of it.”
Beneath the sarcasm, she still felt the thrill, the fierce pride in her job, which warred with her marginalized female propensity to remain humble. Usually the pride won out.
His mouth curved, and not in a happy way. “They give the Pulitzer to every journalistic rabble-rouser who spent their college years watching All the President’s Men.”
After all her bragging—completely deserved in her eyes—the man didn’t look nearly as impressed as she’d hoped. Secretly she wanted to make that disdainful gaze flash with admiration and respect. Some of it was her own defensiveness, her own not quite