“He didn’t deserve your forgiveness,” she said again, and keeping their fingers entwined over her heart, looked up at the stars. “Sometimes, when I’m out on a trek, in the wilderness with just a handful of people, it’s easy to forget all the cruelty in this world. But you…you grew up with it. You have to see it all the time in your job. How do you do it?”

He shrugged. “Most people are basically good. The ones that aren’t, I can help put away. I just keep that in front of me I guess.”

She slowly shook her head. “I’ve been spoiled out there.”

“Speaking of that wilderness, when are you going back to it?”

“I told you. I’m staying to help, until all the work for the fire is done.”

“And given your mood here tonight, it’s going so well.”

“I know.” She let out a low laugh. “It’s just that I feel so tense, all the time. So uptight. So…unlike me.”

“What, no special crystals? No special breathing exercises?”

She played with her bracelet. “I don’t think they work anymore.”

She looked so devastated over that, he searched his brain for a way to help her. “You used to hike to relieve stress. Straight up Palomar Mountain, remember? I hated doing that with you almost as much as I hated jogging.”

With a low laugh, she let go of his hand and bent to pick up a rock. “Actually, I was thinking of another stress reliever entirely.”

He watched as she chucked it hard. “Like what?”

“Like the kind that involves the oblivion of a good orgasm.”

In the dark her self-deprecating smile didn’t shoot to his heart, but straight between his thighs.

“Don’t worry,” she said quickly. “I’m not propositioning you. I met Cindy, I know you’re taken.” Her next rock took a trip halfway to China.

“She dumped me,” he heard himself say.

She looked at him for a long moment. “Before or after the lunch special?”

“I really wish you hadn’t heard that part.” He shook his head, surprised to find himself embarrassed. “We, uh, didn’t. Not that day, anyway.”

She let out a little smile. “A shame for you.”

“Red.” He grimaced. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Okay.” She looked at her toes, then back into his eyes. “I’m sorry if you got hurt.”

“I didn’t.”

“Getting dumped is never painless.”

He shrugged.

For a long moment, she was quiet, reflective. Then she asked the million dollar question. “Did you ever wonder what it would be like between us?”

He looked into her warm, dreamy eyes and felt everything within him react. “This is a bad idea.”

“What? We’re just talking.”

“Yeah, about what it’d be like between us.”

“All I’m getting at is how can one really great night without strings be a bad idea?”