“Let’s swim!” Jade exclaimed, ready to peel off her clothes and dive in. Swimming in a tropical waterfall was a long-held dream of hers.
“You can, but come check out the one above it first,” Jesse recommended. “It’s usually not as crowded.”
“Okay,” she agreed.
He gestured toward the trail. She climbed up the narrow, muddy trail, using roots and tree branches to assist her. Jade liked the feeling of adventure, the beautiful green scenery around them, and sharing it with Jesse. He was definitely an enigma, but she could see herself liking him, a lot. He hadn’t touched her since she tugged on his hand back on the beach, and she wanted to know if it would feel that powerful again.
As her mind wandered, she slipped on a muddy patch and slid backward. The drop wasn’t vicious, but she still didn’t want to go rolling down fifteen feet through mud, and bouncing off of boulders and tree roots. Letting out a little yelp, she scrambled for a root or branch or embedded rock or something to hold on to.
Jesse grabbed her around the waist from behind, and she abruptly stopped slipping. His feet were planted on a rock and a tree root as he strained to hold her. “You okay?” he asked.
“Yes.” Her voice was all breathy and she felt weightless, like she was floating. His hands warmed her waist and lower back, flooding her with fire and desire that she hadn’t felt in a long time, if ever. She stared at his lips, finding herself beyond intrigued by the fuller lower lip and bow-shaped top lip. His lips were manly but unique and oh so appealing.
“You okay to keep going?” Jesse asked.
“Oh!” Embarrassment rushed through her. It probably wasn’t easy to hold both of them from plunging to cuts, bruises, or worse. “Of course. Sorry.” She leaned forward, grabbed a root, and dragged herself up the path.
The path leveled off about twenty feet later, and they burst through the trees to a view of another small, picturesque waterfall and a clear pool below. There was only one other couple swimming in it, as opposed to the crowd below.
Jade grinned as she climbed down a short, steep decline and then over the rocks to get to the pool. “I’m finally going to swim in a waterfall. I’m finally going to swim in a waterfall,” she chanted, stopping on the boulders next to the pool and pulling her T-shirt, shorts, and shoes off.
“Glad to see you’re so calm about it,” Jesse teased with laughter in his voice.
Jade turned to push at him and tease back, but he’d removed his shirt while she wasn’t looking, and the effect shocked her into silence and stillness. On the beach when they met this morning, he’d been wearing a T-shirt, and she’d been able to tell he was fit. Now that his extreme fitness level was on display, she had to exclaim, “Holy heaven, what do you do to be Bodybuilder Bob?”
He chuckled, the lean muscles in his chest and shoulders flexing slightly. “Lifting weights is kind of an escape from work for me.”
Jade forced herself to drag her eyes from his lovely chest and up to meet his gaze, but all she met were his sunglasses. She wanted to rip them off in the worst way. Maybe they’d come off in the waterfall pool. “What do you do for work again?”
He shrugged, and her mouth went dry. She wanted to touch those muscles. Now. “Real estate,” he said. “Ready?”
Jade suppressed the urge to run her fingers over his shoulder muscles, pull his sunglasses off, and demand that he stop being vague with her. She wasn’t sure which one to do first, so she turned and gingerly stepped into the pool, the rocks uneven on her feet. The water was a lot cooler than she’d expected. She kept pushing forward and then dove in. The cold water enveloped her. Her head shot out of the water and she screamed, “It’s cold!”
Jesse laughed. He was treading water next to her. She wondered how he’d gotten in so quickly. “What did you expect?”
“Well, we’re in the tropics.”
He smiled. “You’re also in a rainforest, and this water comes from some decent elevation. So this is really your first waterfall?”
“I’ve seen waterfalls,” she protested. Not many, though, and none she could swim underneath. She was a Lame Lucy when it came to traveling. Unlike her artist sister, Teal, who traveled the globe for settings for her oil paintings, Jade had focused her extra money on traveling to meet with celebrities for her site, mostly in California or New York.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
“For sure. Can I go underneath?” She pointed to where the water cascaded down the mossy rocks. It wasn’t a quick flow, but it would probably pound her shoulders pretty well.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Can you show me?” It was sneaky of her, but she really wanted his hat and sunglasses knocked off. Would his eyes be blue, brown, gray, hazel, or green like hers? The hair curling underneath his hat was a deep chestnut brown. She wanted to see if he had a full head of hair and if it was as soft as she imagined based on the short curls she’d seen.
He smirked at her, as if he knew exactly what she wanted. Swimming with quick strokes toward the waterfall, he plunged under it, grabbing his hat and sunglasses as he did. When he surfaced, his sunglasses were firmly in place, his dark hair covering his forehead. He shoved his hair back and replaced his hat.
Dang. That hadn’t worked. All she’d gotten was a quick glimpse of his dark, wavy hair.
“Your turn,” he called.
Jade swam the short distance to the falls and let it pound on her head and shoulders. It wasn’t vicious, but it definitely gave a stronger massage than her last masseuse had done.
She pushed the hair out of her face and glanced over to where Jesse was treading water. Why was he so mysterious? The investigative part of her that loved getting to the bottom of celebrities’ lives and secrets wondered if he was famous; that would explain why he wouldn’t show her his face. The womanly part of her just wanted to see his eyes and get to know him better.