No Ordinary Day Read Free Page A

just how it is. Especially in the Dacks.” He glanced around the small cabin. “What’ve we got to eat?”
    Sam rose from the bed and sauntered over to him, trying to look sexy. “Each other.”
    He rolled his eyes and turned away, looking into the single empty cabinet and along the small counter that together served as a kitchen. “Seriously—what’ve we got?”
    She rolled her eyes as well, then went to a drawstring sack she carried as a purse and fished out half a candy bar, which she tossed unceremoniously at him.
    “Here—choke on that.”
    Jeremy caught the half-eaten bar in the air, looking at her in surprise. “What’s the matter with you?”
    “You’re kidding, right?”
    Jeremy tore back the wrapper and bit into the bar, then looked at her for the first time since he’d entered the cabin. He scarfed down the candy bar as he watched her, then lowered his gaze and swallowed.
    “Sorry,” he said. “I know it’s sucked here. We should never’ve come.”
    Sam watched him as he sat in one of the rickety chairs at the even more rickety table. He had turned toward the door as he did, and let his head fall to the table on his arms.
    Sam’s brows drew together.
    For the first time since he had come into the cabin, she noticed he was shaking.
    “You gonna tell me what’s wrong?” she asked as she rose and came to him, pulling his wet motorcycle jacket carefully from his shoulders. She hung it over the back of the other chair.
    “No. Not ever.”
    Sam blinked. “Why?”
    Jeremy lay with his face on his arms for a long time. She waited in silence, sensing that whatever was upsetting him was far worse than she had imagined. Finally he spoke.
    “Because I love you. Can you let it go now?”
    Sam waited in silence for something to change—for him to stop shaking, or raise his head, or change the subject, but he did nothing, just lay with his head on his forearms on the table.
    Trembling.
    Sam did not have a lot of tools at her disposal at the moment for comforting a man with very little imagination. She waited for a long time, then took hold of the bottom of his wet T-shirt and slowly pulled it up and over his head and shoulders.
    He pulled away. “What are you doing?”
    “Taking off your shirt.”
    “Why?” His voice sounded almost threatening.
    Sam contemplated the good sense of going forward, then decided she had nothing to lose.
    “Because I love you ,” she said matter-of-factly. “And you’re wet. Don’t want ya to catch cold. Now turn around.”
    Jeremy, now sitting straight up, rotated ninety degrees until he was facing her.
    It was all Sam could do not to gasp at the look on his face in the dull gleam of the kerosene lantern.
    His jaw was clenched like a vise, and his eyes were shining.
    She wasn’t certain, but she thought that it might be fear gleaming in them.
    Her voice broke. “Aw, Germ,” she whispered.
    She straddled him and sat down on his thighs, looking at him thoughtfully. Then, slowly, she pulled the clips from her hair and let it fall from the messy knot she had tied it up in atop her head into the long brown waves she knew he had a soft spot for.
    Sam took Jeremy’s hands in hers and placed them on the ends of her longest locks, closing his fingers around the strands of her dark hair, then pushed the rest of it up against his chest, rubbing it sensuously against his nipples.
    She could feel the muscles in his thighs tighten beneath her. The muscles of his chest and shoulders did so as well; Jeremy was a skinny young man, hardly more than a boy, really, but what little flesh he had was nicely sculpted along a ribcage on which she could count every bone.
    Beneath her open legs, even through her jeans, she thought she felt some of his other muscles tightening, too.
    One of which was impressively oversized for a man of his slight build.
    Sam ran her hands up his chest to the back of his neck and interlaced her fingers, then applied her lips to the hollow of his throat,