On the Mountain (Follow your Bliss #5) (6 page)

She turned back to the cabin,
splashing through the puddles, for the first time in a long time, verging on
feeling free.

Her plan seemed like a good idea,
until later that evening, after showering and freshening up, she ran out of
things to do. Her cell phone had spotty service and her patience evaporated
just as the damp wood on the porch dried, the sun returning just in time to
set, spilling like strawberry milk, splendidly, over the distant hills.

When she crawled into bed that
night, everything felt right. Yes, she’d gotten a bit bored, but the next day
she planned to take a jog along the trails in the woods, do a crossword puzzle,
look through the stack of fashion magazines she’d brought with her, and
reorganize her luggage after having packed it hastily. Tomorrow would be a new
day. She expected insights would burst forth as sure as the sun would rise. She
drifted off to sleep feeling something like hope.

Chapter Six

Baskia dreamed of dancing in a
sea of nameless faces, the music too loud and too fast, but she couldn’t stop
moving. No matter how hard she tried, her feet and legs and arms wouldn’t stay
still. In the dream, she closed her eyes and the music changed, no longer
sticking to a rhythm of drums and bass. A tense rumbling grew louder as if
coming closer. She started to panic, spinning dizzy circles in the dark vacuum
of sleep, then shot upright in the large bed.

The thin tank she wore clung to
her sweating skin, and her pulse throbbed in her ears. For a split second, she
thought she heard something crash outside, but the noises of her dream stuck in
her mind.

She lay back down in the bed,
kicking the sheet off, and smoothing her hair out of her face. After a few
moments, she got up, unable to go back to sleep. She trailed through the dark
to the kitchen, in need of a glass of water. She heard another sound, this time
closer, a scratching and then a brushing noise. Baskia stiffened, realizing
that something might be out there. If she screamed, no matter how loud, no one
would hear her in the remote cabin.

She crept to the door, feeling
along the wall in the shadows for the lock, to make sure she’d bolted it
earlier. As she was about to turn it, the door swung open. She jumped back, a
shriek escaping, but then she slapped her hand to her lips and retreated
backwards in the dark. Terror made her skin chill despite the warm summer
night. As she neared the bedroom door, she fumbled for the light and flipped
on.

There, standing in the shadow of
the doorway, stood a figure with chin length blond hair, blue jeans, and boots.
He wore a wicked grin.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he
said. “You’re Three, uh I mean, Will’s sister, right? I remember you.”

Baskia groped behind her for
something, anything, to use in self-defense if he came any closer. Finally, her
hand landed on an umbrella. She angled it at him. In her daze and still shaken
up from the dream she shouted, “How do you know who I am, and why are you
here?”

“Relax,” he said, lifting his
palms in a sign of peace. “I’m not going to hurt you. Put the
weapon
down.”

Disheveled, with red-rimmed eyes,
his hair was windblown, and the fuzzy scruff on his face suggested haste and
disdain. His broad shoulders hung slightly like an invisible weight pressed
down on him. Tattoos lined his arms all the way up to the snug hem on his
t-shirt.

“Like what you see?” he asked,
pulling Baskia out of her trance. “How about you put the umbrella away? If it
opens, I hear that’s bad luck.”

“Not until you tell me who you
are and then go back the way you came.”

“I’m Will’s friend. His old
roommate actually. At Harvard.”

“You went to Harvard?” she said,
unable to help herself. His haggard, just-rolled-out-of-bed appearance didn’t
suggest a shining example of higher education. And he was her kind of sexy, not
Harvard sexy.

“Don’t sound so surprised. It was
freshman year. I uh, dropped out.” He took another step in her direction,
reaching for the end of the umbrella and lowering it. “Tracey Wolfe. Trace,” he
said.

Slowly the memory of a guy with
blond facial hair and a snarling attitude—on the edge of trouble, which she
hadn’t quite become familiar with before her modeling career started—filtered
back into her memory. It was a sweltering August day in Boston. While they
toured the Harvard campus and got Will settled in, her father complained that
he had to get back to his office. He’d appraised the roommate, Trace,
whispering to Will, before they left, to be careful. 

“Where’s Will?” Baskia asked,
crossing her arms in front of her chest. Despite her bad dream it was the
middle of the night, she was tired, and not at all interested in having a
houseguest, if she could call him that. 

“I needed to get away from things
for a little while and get my shit together. He invited me to the Cape, but uh,
he said it would be okay if I came up here instead.”

Baskia sniffed, thinking how
unfortunate the coincidence was, getting away being exactly what she needed to
do. With Trace at the cabin, she was no longer away; life back home
unexpectedly barged in. “Well, I’m staying here right now, and he didn’t
mention anything about anyone coming up.”

Trace narrowed his eyes slightly
as if evaluating her. “Does he know
you’re
here?”

Baskia shook her head.

“Why
are
you here?” he
asked pointedly.

“None of your business. It’s my
house.”

“Actually, I think it’s your
parents’ cabin.”

“Which doesn’t give Will the
right to loan it out.”

He looked around at the thick
wood beams, the state of the art electronics, and the spaciousness amidst the
rustic and modern touches. “Though, I would hardly call this a cabin.” He
sighed, as if weariness defeated him. “Listen, Baskia, right? I’m sorry,
honest. I know I startled you, but I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know anyone else
was here. I thought the car in the driveway was one your parents kept here or
something. I just need to chill for a little while. Then I’ll be out of here.
You won’t even know I’m around.”

“How do I know you’re who you
say—?”

“Call your brother. He’ll tell
you everything.”

“The cell service sucks,” Baskia
said. Coming down from the adrenaline rush combined with the thick night air,
sleepiness tugged her back toward the plush bed.

“I just drove five hours. I’m
gonna crash, if that’s okay. I’ll keep to myself. It’ll just be a few days.”

“Fine. I’m calling Will tomorrow.
Stay on the couch,” Baskia ordered, finding herself barking, irritated that one
of her brother’s loser friends was interfering with her solace.

As she closed the door to her
room, Trace tugged his shirt off, revealing a fit chest, tanned from the summer
sun, and a chiseled waist. The tattoos lining his arms, like two colorful
sleeves, words and images twisting around his muscles, hugged his back.

“By the way, you turned out to be
pretty hot, now that you’re all grown up,” he called as he reclined on the
couch. 

Baskia flipped off the light
without another word, leaving him submerged in darkness.

Despite the fact that she vaguely
remembered him, she locked the bedroom door before settling into the oversized
bed. She remembered that the enormous walkout basement had spare bedrooms, bunk
beds, relics from her childhood visits to the cabin. The next day, he could
stay down there.

Unable to sleep, she tossed and
turned, fretting. She wondered about what kind of trouble might have brought
him all the way to Vermont. Worse, she anticipated he might make it more
difficult for her to do her soul searching. She tossed until her eyes grew
heavy and sleep took her back into the land of dreams.

^^^

As the new day dawned, Baskia’s
growling stomach woke her. She vaguely recalled a bad dream involving loud
music and a semi-stranger showing up at the cabin.

She pulled on a pair of shorts,
her skin already sticky in the heat and shuffled out to the main part of the
house, yawning. Baskia jumped when she saw the really, really hot guy sleeping
on the couch in the living room. The night before rushed back to her: the strange
noises, him barging in, and her wishing he’d leave. Scolding herself for
thinking he was cute, she didn’t want any drama—having had her fill back in the
city—she promised she’d get him out of there as soon as possible.

As she clanked around in the kitchen
making coffee, Trace cleared his throat and then rustled. She wasn’t dressed
properly, not that she’d ever cared before; she had, after all, modeled
half-naked for magazine spreads, on the runway, and on billboards. Exposure
wasn’t anything new, yet being braless in the cabin with Trace brought on an
unusual sense of emotional vulnerability. She wanted that time to be her own,
not spent resisting his magnetic field of burdens. Nor did she want
distractions, especially extremely attractive ones.

Baskia scooted back toward the
hallway, but it was too late. He was up, his bare chest kissed by the sun that
streamed through the oversized windows.

She swallowed hard. “I was just,
uh, going to change.”

“I think you look fine the way
you are,” he said, his voice husky from sleep.

She fled to her room. Flustered,
she quickly clasped her bra and slid on a sundress. It would be another hot
day. She splashed water on her face and freshened up.

When she entered the kitchen, she
caught Trace dumping the fresh pot of coffee down the drain.

“Hey, why are you doing that?”
she said crossly.

“It was awful. Who taught you how
to make coffee? Wait, let me guess, you’ve never made coffee before.” He wore a
smirk on his lips.

“That’s not true.” It was. Her
pout turned into a snarl. “And that’s not nice.” She was no pioneer woman or
Martha Stewart, but her resolve to figure things out included the simplicity of
making a pot of coffee. It was in the rhythm of every-day tasks that she hoped
to move farther away from the tug of confusion and helplessness about not
knowing how to move forward with her life.

“I never said I was nice,” Trace
said. He no longer smiled. The roughness she’d noticed the night before
appeared in the tight set of his jaw.

“I never asked. And I certainly
didn’t request that you rate my coffee making skills or—” she spat, but he
interrupted.

“Here’s how you do it,” he said,
scooping just the right amount of grounds into the filter. “Also, freshly
ground beans are much better.”

“Okay, do it your way, coffee
snob,” she said, pulling a banana from the bunch and peeling it.

The machine gurgled as it brewed,
filling the silence. In no time, the aroma of fresh coffee enticed Baskia to
have a cup, despite the fact that he’d made it. 

“How do you like it?” he asked.

“What? The banana?”

He shook his head with a chuckle.
“You really know how to make one of those look good,” he said suggestively.
“But I meant your coffee, how do you take it?”

“Oh, just cream,” she answered,
feeling foolish.

Trace started to prepare two
mugs, but Baskia grabbed hers. “I can handle it from here, thank you.”

She huffed out of the kitchen,
mug in hand, and took a seat on one of the uncomfortable Adirondack chairs. She
couldn’t begin to understand why her mother insisted on having them; they were
stiff and built at the wrong angle for reclining in comfort, yet she couldn’t
sit up straight in it either. But what she really couldn’t wrap her head around
was why she couldn’t be alone. She was trying to distance herself from the
wealth, the parties, and the trouble. She wanted to improve her life, on her
own terms, and then Trace—all handsome and surly—had to interfere.

Watching a pair of birds land in
a tree, she took a sip of coffee, reluctant to admit that it was much better
than when she had made it.

^^^

Later, while the shower water ran
like a babbling brook, Baskia snuck over to the couch, where Trace had left his
things. A leather jacket, a t-shirt, and a pair of burly black boots were in a
pile on the floor. His dirty jeans draped carelessly over the end of the couch.
She had to call Will, but figured she’d drive into town so she could have a
private conversation and not risk dropping the call. She vaguely remembered
Trace, so it wasn’t a problem of identity, but she wanted to know more. Asking
him would be the right thing to do, but she wanted to interact with him as
little as possible. Despite his good looks, he was rough, rude, and something
about him suggested anarchy. She picked up the jeans and dug her hand in the
pocket. There, she found a set of keys, a pocketknife, and loose change.

She turned to the bathroom,
listening. The shower continued so she pulled the leather wallet out of the
back pocket. Nervous bubbles in her stomach told her not to open it, but she
ignored them. The photo on his license looked a few years old, probably taken
back when they’d originally met—when he’d started at Harvard. He looked younger
and fresher, his eyes bright, but his smirk demanded trouble. There were some
bills, a condom, a credit card, and a creased photo of what looked like a baby
picture of him. Baskia quickly put everything back.

Just then, Trace emerged from the
bathroom, tucking the end of a towel around his waist. Drops of water dripped
from his perfect chest. Again, he wore a mischievous grin that vaguely reminded
Baskia of London, sending a rash of anger through her.

“Looking for something?” he
asked.

He couldn’t have known that she’d
riffled through his things, but it would have been riskier if she hadn’t; she’d
worry and wonder if she’d allowed a crazy person into the cabin. Yes, maybe he
was a bit wild, but she didn’t discover anything overly suspicious. Still,
guilt over the intrusion crept across her mind pushing out her irritation.