Wanderlust

Swept away in a torrent of need…

River Rapture

When Michon volunteers to chaperon a group of teenagers on a canoe trip, she knows her appearance could be held against her. Her exclusive department store job requires her to look model-perfect, and she aches to break free of the constant pressure.

She never expected to find someone who understands her inner restlessness, much less in the form of rugged river tour guide Chas Carson. Yet the walls around his heart are almost as high as her own, and there's only one way to breach them. Prove herself.

Chas is equal to all of life’s challenges, at peace in the wilderness, and at peace with himself. Michon touches a lonely place in him, stirring a fierce need to protect her from harm. Much as he admires the city woman's willingness to stand up to anything nature throws at them, one thing is certain. Once the trip is over she'll go back to her safe, secure life. And he'll become a memory.

But when the river takes control, Michon and Chas find themselves facing the greatest challenge of all. For their hearts—and their lives.

Enjoy the following excerpt for River Rapture:

The phone was ringing as Michon unlocked the door to her apartment. She dropped her purse on the floor and hurried over to grab it.

“Where have you been? I just about gave up on you,” Paul Shields was saying in the tone he used whenever he was dissatisfied.

“I ate dinner before coming home,” Michon tried to explain, around the excited barking of the little mutt she’d rescued from a city street six months ago. Michon sank onto a stool next to the kitchen phone and lifted Worthless onto her lap, shrugging as his claws caught her leather belt. “I thought you had a client to entertain tonight.”

“I do.” Paul lowered his voice. “Look, he wants to check out some of the night spots. And he doesn’t want just me to talk to. Do you think…well, a young woman in tow would sweeten the pot, if you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean, Paul.” It wasn’t the first time Michon had been asked to act as informal hostess for one of his clients. She didn’t particularly enjoy fending off advances from slightly tipsy men and told Paul so, but that didn’t stop him from continuing to ask her to “help me out just this one last time.” “I’m tired,” she gave as excuse. “It’s been a long day and Worthless needs a little attention.”

“So do I, honey. Who means more to you—that mutt or me?”

Tired and confused as she was, Michon was in no mood to debate that with Paul. “I have to change my clothes.”

“We’ll be there in fifteen minutes. What about that new long dress of yours? The one with the slit. Knock his eyes out.”

Paul hung up before she had time to respond. Michon returned the receiver to its cradle and held Worthless against her. “‘Knock his eyes out,’” she parroted sarcastically. “Show him a little flesh. Worthless, I don’t think I’m going to like this.” For a moment she rubbed noses with the delighted pup. “You’ve got it made, old boy. If I were smelly and ugly like you, no one would ever want to take me out. Come on. Keep me company while I try to find something to cover up my bones.”

Worthless trotted after Michon and jumped up on the bed as she peered listlessly into her closet. She hadn’t been lying. Her feet ached from wearing high heels all day, and there was nothing she’d like better than to sprawl in a chair. If she spent the evening in her apartment with no one except Worthless to talk to, she might have too much time to think…about a kiss and a man who didn’t smell like expensive cologne. But she didn’t want to think about something he’d said. He once thought he had everything he wanted. How deeply had that affected him and the relationships he formed?

Michon shimmied out of her new jumpsuit and carefully hung it up. In undergarments she went into the bathroom and washed her face and applied fresh moisturizer. Paul had said they’d be there in fifteen minutes. It didn’t give her much time to apply fresh makeup. Automatically she dumped out the contents of her cosmetic bag and reached for foundation.

Then she stopped. Ten girls would be going on that river trip with Chas. Not one of them would bother to adorn herself with war paint. It had been so long since Michon had gone out without her public working face that she wasn’t sure she’d recognize herself. But tonight she was in a mood to try. It took her less than a minute to apply a little eyebrow pencil, a touch of mascara and a few quick strokes of green eye shadow. She stepped back, surveying herself in the mirror.

“Not bad, Worthless. I forgot I had those freckles on my nose. I wonder if Paul knows.”

Worthless wagged his approval of her freshly scrubbed cheeks and the slight shine on her nose. Michon used her fingers and palms to fluff her hair but didn’t bother to capture it with spray. She felt reckless and devil-may-care. So Paul wanted a female to escort around, did he? She just hoped he wasn’t counting too much on a talking mannequin. Tonight the real Michon was in a mood to present herself.

“Haven’t you picked out anything for me to wear?” she asked Worthless as she padded barefoot back into the bedroom. “If I wear that thing with the slit I’ll have to put on panty hose, won’t I? Ridiculous invention, panty hose. They make me feel like I have something painted on my legs.”

Michon laughed softly at her choice of words and grabbed at a long white skirt and a pale blue blouse with a high lace collar. Once dressed she had to admit she looked like a rather feminine takeoff of a frontier woman. She slipped into flat sandals and wiggled her toes in delight because they weren’t hampered by hose. “I think I like you better like this,” she told her image in the bedroom mirror. “I wonder if Chas Carson would approve?”

Hearing Chas’s name spoken aloud instantly changed Michon’s mood. She sank onto the bed, unmindful of any wrinkles that might form in her skirt. She lay back, flattening her hair on the pillow, rubbing Worthless’s head absently. She was too young for a midlife crisis…so what was the matter with her? First she was getting sick to her stomach just thinking about spending another year making polite conversation with Chantilla’s wealthy customers. Then she’d started talking to squirrels. And now she was remembering how the world stood still when Chas Carson kissed her.

He was right. They were different. Totally different. She honestly didn’t know there were men like him left in the twentieth century. A river guide? Did men really still do that kind of thing?

They must. Obviously that was how Chas made his living. He was a man’s man in the old-fashioned tradition. He was experienced in search-and-rescue, lived the majority of his life out-of-doors, and by his own admission felt like a bull in a china shop in the city. Michon, for her part, had grown up on the city’s limits in a standard tract home paid for by working parents. She’d gone to college because that’s what all her friends were doing, had gone after the job considered “in” at the time, had found herself a modern apartment, drove a nearly new car, dressed in the latest fashions.

She also had pulled her car over to the side of the road one evening, darted through commuter traffic, and hugged a frightened, half-starved mutt to her breast and brought him home to live with her.

“What is it?” she asked Worthless softly. “Am I going through an identity crisis? I wish you could meet Chas. You’d like him.”

And Chas would like Worthless. She didn’t have to see the two of them together to know that. Paul barely tolerated the enthusiastic, ugly, floppy-eared mutt who had won Michon’s heart. He frowned when Worthless curled up on her bed and booted him aside when the little dog scampered too close to his legs. So far Michon had been able to ignore Paul’s attitude toward Worthless, but in her present mood she found herself siding with her dog against the man who was going to show up in a few minutes to take her out on the town.

“What do you think?” Michon asked as Worthless licked her neck. “Think I’d come back alive if I tackled the John Day River?”

Worthless’s answer was lost in the sound of the doorbell. Michon sighed, scratched his head one last time, and got to her feet. As she reached for the doorknob she frowned. Copper sheen nail polish didn’t go with a frontier-style skirt and lacy blouse.

Paul’s quick frown as he stepped in matched her own. “You aren’t ready,” he said.

“Yes, I am,” Michon responded quickly. “This is as good as it’s going to get.”