Closer and Closer Page 6

  “Did she put something besides lemons in here?”

  “I think it’s ginger.” Erin swirled the contents of her own red plastic cup. “I’m sorry, that was odd. And too personal. And…just—I think Claire’s rubbing off on me. Last Saturday she took me along to one of her galleries in Asheville so she could drop off some new bowls or coffee mugs or something. I bought a huge piece of amethyst quartz she swore called out to me across the store.”

  His shoulders dropping a bit, Walt nodded, the awkward moment clearing. This line of conversation was more comfortable than exploring his innermost feelings about trees and the older, more obscure meaning of the term ranger, and the balance of hurt and pleasure. Especially when Lucy or Tate, or even both of them, could be around the corner, hearing every mortifying word.

  Besides, if he let Erin run on and on with that the forest is who you are business, next she’d be imagining him plucking a lute, naked, and skipping down the Sawtooth Overlook trail.

  But wouldn’t she fit in there? And it was exactly where Walt wanted to see her. Out there, in the deep woods. Naked would be a nice touch, too. But outside, in the daylight, with sun-scattered green leaves all around her, the sound of her voice mingling with the rush of Sawtooth Creek, and the songbirds arriving, back from wintering in South America as summer came on. This woman didn’t belong in a place like Area 51.

  Where she belonged…that really shouldn’t be his business.

  “Do you know why she said I couldn’t put it—the crystal—near my desktop?”

  “What?” He tossed his cup in a large trashcan by the club door and stepped aside so she could walk out. “No. I mean, I’m sorry but I don’t know, ask Cla—Hey, do you hike?”

  Shit. Made it my business, just like that.

  She froze at his side, eyebrows shot high over the rims of her glasses. “Hike? In the mountains? Outdoors?”

  “You should. You should come out tomorrow. My last hike leaves the visitor center at three fifteen.” As they stepped from the protective span of the red awning-surrounded entrance, Erin looked across the parking lot, dubious.

  “It’s raining. You’ll be soaked…and I can make it on my own.”

  “Couple of raindrops won’t bother me. In fact, it’s sort of nice.” It fell against his cheeks, splashing across his eyelashes. Walt looked up, grinning for the fourth or fifth time since he’d sat beside her. He tucked his hands in his pockets and leaned toward her, closer than he should. “Y’know, I’m not gonna melt in a rainstorm, Erin.”

  “No. I…” She considered it, staring hard into the distance. “I guess it’s okay.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  They started across the darkened parking lot.

  “I know how to take care of myself.” For the first time since Claire and Lucy hustled him toward her, Erin seemed chilly. They walked in silence for a minute, Walt pausing once as she adjusted the ankle strap on one of her shoes. When she spoke again, her voice was nearly too soft to hear. “Hiking isn’t really…I don’t go outside very often.”

  They stopped by a dark mid-sized sedan. Erin opened her door, preparing to step inside the car. Grasping the doorframe, Walt stepped toward her, then back a half step, suddenly aware again of his size relative to hers.

  “Why?”

  She looked up at the steadily increasing raindrops, blinking at the few that found their way past her glasses’ lenses. “It’s too chaotic.”

  “Come anyway.” He stepped to her again, hoping his shoulders would block some of the rain coming down toward her face. He was toeing at the line between welcoming and creep who tracks new girls at their first play party. The balance in the need to act right but not let her go was never clear. Walt backtracked away from her car door. “I do know a few things about managing nature.”

  Not convinced, Erin sat behind the wheel and turned over the engine. “Can I drive you back to the front door?”

  “No, my truck’s over there. I’m gonna head home too.” He reached out, catching her door before it closed. “Poplar Branch State Park. North of Callahan. Can’t be more than twenty minutes from your big mainframe or whatever ThinkMine’s got in that building down on Highway 54.”

  “It’s a server farm—or data center. Lots and lots of servers.”

  “It’s still twenty minutes away.”

  “Okay.” She sighed a little and smiled up at him. “I’ll think about it.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow. Three fifteen.”

  “I’ll think about it,” she said, an almost-concealed note in her voice heavy. “Thank you, Walt. It was nice to have met you. Good night.”

  It was a promising end to a night he’d had no business participating in, but had found himself in the thick of anyway. Nothing more than Erin agreeing to crunch over the pros and cons of a simple afternoon walk on a moderate trail. Still, he liked her. He wanted to know more about what made her quirky mind tick. As Walt made his way through the rows of cars, humming contentedly at the warm rain falling around him, the taillights of Erin’s sensible little car disappeared around the corner of Area 51.

  Suddenly, he was absolutely sure he’d screwed up. A woman like Erin would try to think her way right out of coming over to the park, and maybe right out of the lifestyle before she’d had a chance to see what she’d come looking for.

  When she’d said good night, it sounded like good-bye.

  Chapter Three

  EVERY MOMENT, and during each distraction of the day, I’d resolutely assured myself I was not thinking about him.

  I spent my morning applying new drawer liners in the kitchen, sure I was home for the day. Determined to be focused, I finished the rest of the projects I’d scribbled out before I went to bed. By early afternoon, I sat beside an open window in my living room, fingers drumming across the spine of an open repair manual laid on my knee. It was barely May and already so hot here, the cooling unit in the rental house had labored until it gave over and clicked off.

  But last night, and the third time I heard his “hi” in that lazy-afternoon accent, did make me think. Or think more, maybe differently. Diminishing waistbands and tropical humidity should have made me turn my Passat back on the winding access road and go home.

  Thinking—what I did best—had failed me.

  Action brought me to Poplar Branch State Park. To see Walt, and for no logical reason other than a few minutes of good tension-filled conversation and a pair of impressively sized biceps. I came to meet him. Outdoors. On a hiking trail.

  I didn’t pursue men. Especially men like Walt, the tattooed, leather implement swinging forest ranger. And why would I? Men like him never really saw women like me anyway.

  I flung the car door open, suddenly indignant. Why wouldn’t he? And why wouldn’t I? This was why I’d uprooted myself, moved cross-country, and taken on the work of actually managing people instead of lines of code. I needed to be different. Or maybe more. But not anonymous, and not an observer.

  It was 3:19. I was late, already sweaty, and in addition to wearing dusty six-year-old running shoes that still looked brand-new, my only pair of khaki shorts must have shrunk significantly during my cross-country move.

  I bent over and retied the unruly right lace for the fourth time, sucking in at a sudden, sharp clench around my waist. At least I’d walked through damp grass on my way from the parking lot. The longish, wet blades dislodged most of the dust that had collected on my running shoes since they found their home, seven months ago, in the back of a closet in my spare bedroom.

  Before I saw him, the baritone of his voice floated to me, landed in my solar plexus and radiated through my body.

  “…does rise about three hundred and forty feet and is a three-and-a-half-mile round trip. There’s a self-guided trail that starts past the visitor center. It’s a nice, gentle pace and pretty flat. Y’can’t miss it. Follow the signs to Hemlock Walk.”

  I pulled at one fraying lace, stopping to blow away escapee strands of hair from my ponytail
. And definitely not listening to that voice.

  “But I wanted to see the waterfalls. This trail goes to the waterfalls,” came the petulant retort of one of the heavier and older-looking women. A veritable gaggle of them were clustered at an information kiosk around a tall, shadowed figure who could only be Walt.

  When Dani and I were twelve, our mother moved us to Glens Falls, New York, for some boyfriend or another. I placed this woman as a Long Island native. Poor Walt, he had a battle on his hands.

  “I understand, ma’am.” Walt’s nod and a sheepish shrug of his broad shoulders were clear, even across the field. “I just like for folks to know what to expect. A moderate walk on flat land is different than a hike on an uneven trail with a couple of big elevation changes.”

  “This is ridiculous. Why don’t you people just pave over the walkway so everyone can see it?”

  “Well, ma’am…this is first and foremost a wilderness. The state is trying to maintain Sawtooth Falls as a place where nature is left alone and hopefully allowed to recover to its natural state. Not paved over and sanitized.”

  Another woman from the group, apparently all vacationing together, took the spokeswoman by the elbow, gesturing dismissively. “Oh, let’s go, Estelle. We saw a waterfall last year in Jamaica.”

  They moved as one like a gaggle of honking geese toward the parking lot, Estelle’s complaints still reverberating across the grassy expanse.

  According to the North Carolina state parks’ web site, the entire trail was three-point-nine miles long, forking to either Sawtooth Falls, or one-point-seven miles when followed to an unnamed overlook. Both places seemed remote. A tall, muscular man with an impressive trail of ink spanning shoulder to groin might choose a place like that to hide a pale, lumpy, too-tight-khaki-shorts-clad body—and its dusty New Balances. But that man wouldn’t also be pictured on the Poplar Branch State Park web page, showing a group of fascinated schoolchildren a newly molted butterfly and its spent chrysalis.

  A pair of long, dark-green clad legs passed me, lifting the hair escaping my ponytail with their stride. Still bent over, I watched as the disarmingly large feet attached to the legs paused, then turned toward me. Of course it was him. Of course it was.

  I pushed myself upright on tight thigh muscles, certain I’d hear a seam or two in my shorts give up the good fight as I rose.

  He took off his hat, revealing damp, dark brown curls. “Well, it’s Erin. Afternoon. You came.”

  I did, the night before. I never would have been able to sleep otherwise. I did not share this information with him.

  “Surprised?” I said instead.

  “Yeah, kind of.” He held a peaked brown straw hat with an official-looking red crest, and there was a slim brass badge attached to his light-green dress shirt, stamped Easton in blocky letters. He really, really was Ranger Walt.

  “Me too,” I said.

  He offered his wide-palmed hand, his long fingers just worn enough from work to speak masculine rather than sandpaper. The same sensation of them bumping over mine registered from the night before. We shook, slower and for a beat longer than could be considered purely social.

  I released his hand and nodded toward the group he’d just dismissed. “Good thing they were in Jamaica last year.”

  Walt turned, hands planted on his hips, and watched them go. “Yeah. They would’ve been disappointed anyway,” he said, and pivoted back to me, his eyes twinkling. “No gift shop.”

  Our laughter only lasted a few seconds before an inevitable silence fell down hard between us. I glanced back to the parking lot, looking for other hikers. Of course there wasn’t a single figure crossing the grass toward us.

  “Looks like we’re it,” he said.

  “If you have to have a certain number of people you have to—”

  “Nope. I’ll lead this hike for one or twenty.” His cool, crystalline-blue eyes suddenly tucked inside the same crinkling laugh lines I’d noticed last night, and two deep dimples appeared on his cheeks.

  “I’m sorry if…there’s no obligation.”

  “No need to say sorry, Erin. It’s my job.” The brim of his hat passed through his fingers. “And a pleasure too, to show you around.”

  “So—” we both began after a long moment, faltering and laughing, self-conscious.

  He was recalling last night. I knew it, in another atypical flash of human-focused intuition. Felt it, really, as a plume of heat rolled down my neck.

  I cleared my throat. “Thank you for inviting me. I’m sure it’s unusual, asking someone to your workplace who’s from…well, you know—there?”

  He glanced away, turning the brim of his hat through his hand, then gestured toward me.

  “I’m glad you came.”

  The timbre of his voice never changed, but the volume softened appreciably. Before I could stifle the thought, I wondered what his voice would sound like in the morning, across from me in my bed, or in my ear as his thick thighs rode between mine, behind me as he grasped my hair and drove into me again and again.

  Warmth quite unlike anything I’d known spread, from that first shimmer across my neck, to my shoulders, and sparked a fuse traveling straight down my spine.

  His mouth twitched slightly, then spread into a disarmingly sweet smile as his eyebrows lifted. A small rumbling chuckle escaped his chest, and then Walt the Park Ranger with matching floggers shocked the hell out of me. His eyes darted toward the parking lot, he looked down, and the tips of his ears flushed.

  “I think it’s just us,” he said, still looking away, and put his ranger’s hat on. “Want to get goin’?”

  “Yes, of course.” I bristled inwardly at the sound of my own voice: too efficient, mechanical, harsh.

  As we walked across the wooden bridge at the trail’s head, I settled into a pace a little slower than his. Practically, his legs were much longer and he would constantly trip over me if I lead. Letting him lead made sense.

  An added benefit was a better view of the movement of his legs against his dark olive green pants, and the round, muscular backside that rippled in differing defined landscapes with each step. His pale green ranger’s shirt stretched across his broad back as his arms swung, revealing even more refined muscles. They strained slightly against the short sleeves before continuing on to tanned forearms, scattered with brown hair.

  I pushed a damp strand of hair from my neck. Only May and it’s this humid?

  “So what have you been up to today?” Walt asked, slowing his pace to match mine.

  “The usual Sunday afternoon chores. I checked on a couple of projects I’m managing. My sister called to remind me it’s our bir—” I snapped my mouth shut over the stupid, stupid admission of a day I didn’t remotely care about. “She called to say hello.”

  “Erin.” He leaned down to me a little, raising his eyebrows. “Are you a birthday girl today?”

  “Yes.” I felt my chin rise again. What was it with him this afternoon?

  “Well then, happy birthday.” He chuckled to himself in a way that was endearing—and infuriating—and ambled down the trail, his thigh muscles constricting under his uniform trousers.

  Unmoved, I paused in the middle of a footbridge and looked back over my shoulder for another glimpse of the parking lot. Men didn’t usually flirt with me. None like Walt. Since work had become my all-day-every-day, most men didn’t really see me at all. Now that I’d admitted it was, indeed, my birthday, he likely assumed I was telling him to catch his attention, maybe cause him to obligate himself to me socially. Dani played with men in similar ways. I’d watched as she’d perfected the skill at my mother’s elbow.

  But even if my only remaining pair of khaki shorts were tighter than most of the corsets I saw last night, and I was winded from simply following him to the trailhead, I still had my pride. Or was it dignity? I couldn’t remember the difference. His smoked-cedar and cinnamon scent, clinging to my hair and navy blue T-shirt, was too distracting to reason it through.

 
Walt pivoted back to me, still moving—and of course still snickering over his own little private joke.

  “Coming?”

  “Before I take another step I want to know what’s so funny,” I called back over the rush of the creek beneath me.

  “Nothing funny ha ha but funny—hmmm—ironic.” He kept walking. Backward. Up a leaf-strewn, bare root-stabbed, dirt-trailed hill.

  “Yes? And?”

  “It’s your birthday, but looks like I got the present.” His eyebrows lifted barely under his straw hat and he turned to face the trail again without a further glance my way. “Pick up your feet, now. This is a three-hour hike.”

  He loped up the trail, adjusting the weight of his daypack as he walked. With a small, exasperated burst of breath, I narrowed my eyes at him.

  “Did you just tell me what to do?”

  “Friendly suggestion.” His broad back disappeared into the new spring foliage. “Park closes at dusk. Best get after it if you’re coming.”

  The first thirty minutes were brisk, taking me up bumpy, root-cragged hills and through two narrow, wooded streams. Those thirty minutes seemed like a gentle amble through a spring meadow compared to the next hour and twelve minutes I spent gasping for air and clutching tree limbs to steady me as I scaled not one, but two rocky inclines. And Walt—he never paused once. He kept a reasonable but most likely restrained pace, stopping only to sip from a water bottle that hung from a mesh bag attached to his olive green park service backpack.

  Occasionally he would just disappear into the bright green and muted gray of young springtime foliage, then reappear as he rounded another bend in the trail. As my heart pounded, my frustration began to beat the same tempo in my head. I forced myself to breathe—in through the nose, out through the mouth—and keep my own pace.

  When I crested what I fervently hoped to be the final hill, he appeared again, down the trail a hundred feet or so, perched on a giant, lichen- and moss-covered boulder, his long legs dangling in front of him like a child’s might. Smiling amiably when I reached his side, he pushed himself from his perch with an agility that, given his sheer size, was incongruous—and perfect. He was power and grace, waiting for me.