Rum and Raindrops: A Blueberry Springs Chick Lit Contemporary Romance (9 page)

“Spring was a little rough on it.” Apparently. She’d assumed they could get through, but now she was starting to worry that she’d led him down a road they’d have to back out of—for miles.

She tried to come off as relaxed, but her eyes were trying to peel ahead, foresee any dangers before he drove into them.

Twenty minutes later, he shot her a quick look before shifting into a lower gear for the bump up onto the pavement. “Which way?”

“Left,” she said with relief.

“Did my manhood pass the test? I think that stunt not only enhanced my virility but also bumped my testosterone levels up to Cro-Magnon levels.” He gave her a teasing smile as he shifted the truck into a higher gear. The muscles in his tanned forearms tensed and relaxed as he wrangled the gear shift.

“Are you teasing me, Rob Raine?” she asked in a sultry, slightly challenging voice.

“I am. Is there any danger in that?”

Jen could have sworn that if he’d leaned any closer with that burning look in his eyes he’d be in danger of finding her in his lap. In a sexy, demanding, do-me kind of way. Which would have been mortifying or satisfying, depending on his reaction. She was half tempted to find out.

Let people in.
She trusted Wally and his advice and, right now, it might be the excuse she needed to let herself get a little closer to HHMH.

“There is.” She gave him a smoldering look. “I’ve killed people for less.”

He threw his head back and laughed, his laughter as fresh as the air after a spring rain. “I’ve never been able to resist a woman with a good sense of humor.”

Jen’s attention snapped into minute focus. Okay. Somebody stop the bus. This was a professional hiking date. Not romp time. She couldn’t get involved, flirt, act as though they were falling in love. There wasn’t a conflict of interest. She had baggage. And sure, it wasn’t more than the average single woman her age, but still. It was baggage that didn’t fit snugly into a carry-on, and Rob was rocketing them toward scary baggage area.

He gave her a look, swallowed hard, and switched on the radio. “Sorry, I was trying to be funny.”

She released a breath and smoothed her hands down her thighs, watching the woods flit by the window, trying to get into the oldies Rob had flicked to on his satellite radio. So he knew he’d flown them into scary territory. Thank goodness. He’d put on the brakes, too, which meant she could play and he wouldn’t make it serious.

She smiled. This could be fun. Wally didn’t say to let people into her heart, just in. And she could let Rob in.

“‘Rescue Me’ by Bella Bass. I love this song,” she said, trying to break the awkward silence. She started singing along, envisioning Rob sweeping in to save the day. Particularly in that snug little loincloth that kept flipping into her fantasies.

Rob stopped the truck outside Raspberry’s locked park gate.

“Oh, hell, we have to hike from
here
? This’ll add at least another hour each way.” Two more hours to spend with this guy meant two more hours where she could put her foot in her mouth, overreact, and basically give him the wrong impression and make him want to run away.

Jen stared at the still-standing registration/interpretive center perched on the nearby hill. In fact, the whole area by the road up to the parking lot looked untouched. It was difficult to believe that only a few days ago it was threatened by a forest fire. From here she couldn’t even see a burn area. Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.

Her mood perked. How costly could the fire be if she couldn’t even see its damage?

Rob dug around in his pocket before triumphantly dangling a key from his index finger. He grinned, eyebrows raised.

“You have a
key
?” She didn’t even get a key and she was a guide with open access to these places.

“Best interests of the forestry guys.” He slid out of the truck to unlock the gate. As they drove up the gravel road to the parking area, she half expected to see the old pickup still sitting there. But the parking lot was empty. She sighed and leaned back in the seat.

“The man in the store the other day?” Rob asked carefully, sneaking a peek at Jen. “Are you two…living together?”

Jen let out a laugh that sounded more similar to a snort. “Wally?” She gave Rob an amused smile. “No. He’s like a father.” She gave a shudder at the idea of having ‘something more’ with Wally. “He’s great, but I don’t think of him in that way. And I tend to prefer men closer to my age.”

Rob flushed. “I meant the other man. With the keys.”

She stopped mid-laugh. “Moe?” She shook her head a bit too vigorously. “Um. No. We’re friends.”

Rob smiled as he parked the truck. She watched him out of the corner of her eye. Was he asking if she was open game for flirting? Or more?

Oh, man. Wally’s advice was going to get her in a lot of trouble if Rob planned to slip past her gates.

“It is always good to have someone looking out for you,” Rob said, opening his door.

“God knows I don’t have many of those.” And it wasn’t as if Moe was about to look out for her and play rescue hero. Not unless her fridge’s contents were in danger.

Rob looked at her questioningly.

“Brought my GPS,” she said, turning it on. She stepped out of the truck and clipped the gadget to her backpack’s shoulder strap. “I have a route from last year that goes pretty close to the clearing in case we need it.”

Rob nodded. “Shall we?”

“The path starts over there.” Jen pointed to a thin trail heading east, about forty-five degrees in the other direction from the marked campsite path. She still couldn’t see any signs of the forest fire. In fact, because of the gentle breeze’s direction, she couldn’t smell anything other than pine.

Closing her eyes, she tilted her head back and inhaled deeply. It smelled so good. Fresh. Inviting. Relaxing. Way better than any candle or air freshener. She opened her eyes to see Rob pretending not to watch her. There was something in the intentness of his gaze that made any of her typical self-consciousness vanish. It was as though he felt the same way about nature and didn’t think she was a nut for the way it comforted her.

They hiked the first half an hour, the barely-there path between the towering pines, quiet because of the pine needles and dirt layered over the exposed mountainside. The first section became steep, and Jen was beginning to feel the workout in her calves by the time they reached the pitch’s peek. At the top she halted so suddenly Rob that ran into her from behind.

She was speechless. The scene before her was horrifying. Everything on the downhill side was black. Ravaged. Dead. Done. Destroyed and consumed by the fire.

She felt as though she was caving in on herself and she sat on the ground with a hard thump. Unable to tear her eyes away from the damage, she stared blindly, unable to process it all. Rob sat beside her, loosely hugging his legs to his chest.

Rob pulled a water bottle from his pack, chugging a third before holding it out to Jen. “Water?”

Snapping out of her daze, Jen dug out her own. She couldn’t stop staring at the scarred earth. The grass they were sitting on had turned brown from the heat, and not fifty yards in front of them the fire had raved and ravaged. She could see every dip, hole, and knoll. Blackness was everywhere. It wasn’t like in the fall with shades of browns, yellows, oranges, and reds. It was all black. No shades of anything. In a few areas a smattering of tall trees still stood, black poles sticking out of the ground as a reminder of what used to thrive there. Here and there piles of charred logs snuggled in heaps, tendrils of smoke seeping out in a constant stream. She’d heard of forests that had been ravaged by fire being called charcoal forests, and now she understood why. That’s all that was left. Even their barely-there footpath had been obliterated.

“I guess we should continue on.” Rob stood and donned his pack.

She nodded reluctantly and checked her GPS, feeling uncertain despite the way her GPS pointed which way to go.

Rob indicated the lack of foliage and branches that would normally interfere with receiving a good satellite signal. “On the bright side, we should get a good signal.”

She humored him with a weak smile and led them further up the mountain, through areas of shin-high char and soot, and other areas where the soot didn’t even reach the top of her hiking shoes. Hoping she’d recognize the clearing when they came to it, she continued on.

“At least we’ll be able to see bears coming,” Rob joked. “Well, as long as they aren’t black.”

Jen turned to catch a jovial wink from Rob then jerked at a noise. Her steps faltered, heart pounding. There was nothing for bears to hide behind, but there was also nothing for bears to eat. So, if a black bear came up it would not only blend in, but it would be in a very hungry mood.

She
knew
she should have brought her bear bell.

She was tempted to ask Rob what he knew about starving bears and how speedy he was at drawing his bear spray, but decided that wouldn’t exactly boost her image of a competent nature guide.

After several hours of hiking, they reached an area her GPS identified as the clearing. The problem was it looked the same as almost everything else. Black. Bare. Indistinguishable.

Trying to sound confident, she said, “This is it. The clearing.”

After a few minutes of digging around with her feet, she managed to find her old fire pit. “Here.” She tried not to act too delighted for finding it so quickly.

Rob, who had been quietly taking in the surroundings, snapping pictures and taking notes, came over. She didn’t know how he survived waltzing through burned-out forests all the time. After only a few hours, she felt like a dirty old sponge that had sucked up every bit of pore-clogging soot the forest had to offer.

“Must have been a nice place to camp,” he said.

It
was
. Before she’d been there.

Looking down he confirmed, “This was your fire pit?”

Not thinking, she brushed some soot away with her hands and instantly regretted it. The soot would be stuck in her skin for days.

“Don’t touch!” he snapped, crouching over the pit. “Are you nuts? This is evidence. Don’t touch anything. Just stay away from everything and don’t touch.”

Jen backed away. What had she been thinking? Of course it was evidence. This was what she’d brought him all this way to inspect. She peered over his shoulder from a distance, happy to see her circle of rocks looked sound. If only she could tell if the fire had somehow escaped from the pit.

She glanced around. How could Rob even tell anything in all this blackness? It would be similar to trying to trace the first explorer’s exact routes through North America a hundred years later.

Jen turned to let Rob finish his investigating and looked for somewhere to relieve herself. Not a bush in sight.

Feeling shy, she said, “Don’t turn around.”

He pivoted on his heels. “Why?” He watched her as though she was trying to hide something.

“I have to, um, go to the bathroom.” She could feel her cheeks burning under his scrutiny.

His body relaxed. “Right.” His high-alert body language drifted back to being relaxed as he returned to his investigating.

She walked down a slight incline—the best she could do for privacy. She looked at her black hands. She headed back to Rob, who was poking around with some sort of device, his hands still clean.

“Can you open my pack for me?” She held up her dirty hands, feeling like an in-the-way child.

He straightened and reached into his pants pocket. He produced a couple of square packets and she took a step back. He handed her two wet wipes, the kind they gave you when you ordered ribs or wings in a pub. For a brief moment, she thought they were the
other
kind of square packets men carried around in their pants pockets when they were out with a single woman.

She took the wipes quickly, praying she wasn’t blushing, and swiped at the soot stuck in the lines of her knuckles.

After completing her business, Jen walked to the creek with her camera to watch the fish.

But the creek was empty. Dried right up.

Did the fish manage to swim to safety, or did they slowly cook in the boiling, evaporating water? Jen flipped her sunglasses up off her face and wiped her wet cheeks.

What if she had really done this? This wasn’t just the costs of firefighting, or rebuilding damaged areas, or replanting trees, or having a few more deer, elk, or bears walking through Blueberry Springs than usual. It was everything. Their habitats. Their lives.

How many animals hadn’t escaped?

She should have stayed home. No camping trip was ever this important. And honestly, the odds were that it was her who started this fire. If there had been another camper, they would have used the metal fire pits, and when push came to shove, they were going to contain a fire more reliably than a few stacked rocks.

Flinching at a sound behind her, Jen quickly flipped her sunglasses over her damp eyes. Rob slowed as he moved closer.

“It’s something, isn’t it?” He indicated the burned-out wreckage surrounding them.

She nodded. “I guess I brought my bathing suit for nothing.”

“Your first fire gets you right here.” He touched his chest lightly, his eyes locked on hers. “Doesn’t it? All those little things you don’t think of until you’re faced with it.”

“All the rabbits and fish. Even the spiders. Birds and their nests. All those innocent creatures…” Every emotion she’d felt in the past month burst out of her like a broken dam, and a massive sob broke loose.

“I pulled the pin on that one, didn’t I?” Rob said with a chuckle, drawing her into a tentative one-armed hug. Not intending to, she collapsed into his arms and let out a few hearty sobs before forcing her emotions back under control.

“I’m sorry, Jen. This wreckage is my existence. I forgot how hard it is for people like us the first time.” He gave her a light squeeze and took a look at her. “It gets to you.”

She sniffed, tipped up her chin, hating the way tears were still coursing over it. “It’s just seeing it. Knowing that it’ll take years for the area to reestablish itself. And all the animals.” A fresh bout of tears broke free.