Authors: Connie Falconeri
He rolled up the window and turned the air-conditioning on. “Sorry. It’s getting too
windy. It’s giving me a headache.” A negative side effect of being in the water for
so many hours a day, Hank’s ears pretty much always bothered him.
“That’s fine.” Maddie rested her hands on her lap. She figured if he wanted to tell
her about West Point or any other secret facts about himself, he could do so of his
own accord. She wasn’t going to pry around like some desperate . . . person.
After listening to the radio for a couple of songs, Maddie started to feel sleepy.
“Do you mind if I crash for a few minutes?”
He turned to look at her. “Sure. Are you tired? I thought you went to bed early last
night?”
“Very funny. I couldn’t sleep a wink knowing you were naked in your bed a few feet
away.”
He smiled and shook his head. “I don’t care if I hurt your feelings, Madison Post,
you are a hussy.”
She started laughing softly as she nestled her cheek against the front seat. “You’re
probably right. If wanting you makes me a hussy.” Her eyes were closed when she said
it, and Hank had to force himself to breathe evenly.
How could she just say everything like that? At some point in Henry’s childhood, he
had missed that whole chapter on expressing your feelings clearly. Or at all. Maddie
just blurted everything flat out. I like you. I want you. You are hot. You are cool.
Hank felt like he was always standing on trial, in the dock, being interrogated, on
the record, making it count. He was such a liar for trying to convince her that most
people wanted just this or just that for quick satisfaction. That he wanted to use
people like he used the tools of his trade. He couldn’t even use his own brain openly
without feeling like he was a showy bastard.
He turned off the radio and drove the rest of the way in silence, enjoying the slow,
even rhythm of Maddie’s steady breathing. Especially the occasional sleepy hum and
sigh.
“Are we here?” Maddie was groggy. “How long was I asleep?”
She looked up at the bright sun reflecting through the tall trees that shaded the
car. Hank turned off the engine.
“Hey, did you have a good rest?”
Maddie was slower and softer when she was just waking up. She hadn’t had time to marshal
her resources, thought Hank. He reached out and caressed her cheek where she’d just
lifted it away from the upholstery.
“Yeah.” She put her hand over his. “It’s nice to wake up to you.” She closed her eyes
again, still half-asleep.
Hank felt something hot and slow slice through him, like an evisceration. He left
his hand on her cheek—mostly because hers had trapped his beneath it—and it would
have seemed rude to yank it away. But he wanted to yank it away.
He cleared his throat. She released her hand and arched her back to stretch her neck
and shoulders after being asleep in that awkward position. He stared at her chest
and then opened his door and stepped out of the car. It was even worse when she wasn’t
intentionally trying to mess with him.
Walking to the back of the truck, Hank shook his head to clear the image of all that
nakedness right there under that T-shirt and sports bra. He started undoing the ropes
and bungees that held the canoe in place and then paused to watch Maddie let herself
out of her side of the cab, leaving the door open. She bent down and stretched, placing
her hands flat on the bed of pine needles—and her ass in the air—and then reached
up as high as she could, standing on her tiptoes.
She let her arms down slowly, then turned to look at him.
“So how far are we going?”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought we were going for some kind of deep-woods version of
Camping with the Stars.
I want the full military treatment. I can take it.”
“You can, can you?”
“Yeah, no girls on trip.”
“What’s that?” He was back to untying the restraints. Maddie had leaned into the backseat
to start unloading the tent and the backpacks and other gear Hank had brought along.
She leaned her head out so she could see him. “No. Girls. On. Trip.”
He started laughing. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It’s an old family joke. I’m the youngest. I have three older brothers. And I am
a girl.” She smirked and curtseyed. “As you can see.”
He smiled. “Yeah, I see.”
She leaned back in to get the canoe paddles, then shut the car door. “My older brothers
used to go hiking with my dad, and when I was about ten or eleven I said I wanted
to go, and my brothers started chanting, ‘no-girls-on-trip.’ So I’ve got a little
bit of a complex, I guess.”
Hank pulled the canoe out of the bed of the truck and flipped the gate back up into
place.
“Well, I like girls-on-trip, so we’re good.”
She put her hands on her hips and tilted her head. “You make no sense to me, Henry
Gilbertson.”
He shrugged. “Oh well. Luckily I never promised to make sense to you.”
She smiled, deciding not to get drawn into another nit-picky argument about semantics
and who promised what to whom, and tried not to feel sad about promises that Hank
didn’t want to make.
“Okay, how should we portage?” Maddie lifted up her backpack. “Also, this is really
light, so if you want me to carry the tent, I can attach it to the bottom of the pack.”
“First of all,
we
are not going to portage the canoe.
I
am going to portage the canoe. And yes, tie the tent onto your pack and I’ll take
the rest.”
Pulling her eyebrows together, Maddie bent to attach the tent to the bottom of the
pack. “You don’t have to carry it all by yourself. We could split the weight.”
“Have you ever portaged a canoe before?”
She wasn’t looking at him. Maddie was trying not to pick a fight, but if he wasn’t
going to let her do her share, it was going to be all wrong.
“Well, not technically.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Hank had moved around to where she was standing and
bent to pick up his pack and the two sleeping bags. He used the hood of the truck
like a worktable and attached a sleeping bag to either side of his rucksack.
“It means,” Maddie flipped her face up to look at him from her crouched position near
his feet, “that the place where we usually go camping leaves the canoes for us, so
we don’t have to actually portage.”
Hank smiled and rested one arm on the hood of the truck. “How convenient. And no one
ever steals all those canoes just resting on the side of the lake.”
Maddie mumbled something indistinguishable.
“What was that?” Hank knew she was embarrassed.
“I said, it’s a private lake.”
“Like the whole lake belongs to a club or something?”
“Something.”
Hank whistled. “You mean, your family owns the whole lake, don’t you?”
She shouldered the knapsack into place, trying to adjust it to make up for the drag
and awkwardness of the heavy tent weighing it down at the bottom. Maddie tried to
busy herself with the straps and the minor modifications to avoid answering the question.
He shook his head and didn’t push it. He returned his attention to lashing the sleeping
bags. “What’s your cell phone number, in case we get separated?”
“I don’t have one.”
Hank looked up to the treetops, trying not to lose his composure entirely. He exhaled
slowly. “Of course you have a cell phone. Did you forget it?”
She shook her head no.
“Did you lose it?”
“No. I just can’t afford one right now.”
Hank finished attaching the sleeping bags, tugged on the straps to make sure they
were secure, and pulled the whole bundle onto his shoulders with an easy toss.
“So let me get this straight. You have an entire lake, but you can’t afford a cell
phone?”
“That pretty much sums it up. And it’s not
my
lake. It’s my grandmother’s.”
They stared at each other, each of them holding their thumbs beneath the straps at
their shoulders.
Maddie’s gaze slid to the forest floor near her feet and she decided to just spill
the beans. “Look. My brother made this stupid bet with me. . . .”
Hank kept looking at her, but his expression changed from humor to wariness. “What
kind of bet?”
She took a deep breath. “My brother acts like I am this spoiled brat—and I’ll admit
it, my mom totally spoils me—but I am not spoiled . . . just because my mother loves
me—” She looked up into Hank’s eyes and hoped she didn’t sound like she was overly
defensive.
“Go on.”
She shook out her shoulders. “So . . . I think he was just joking when he said he
didn’t think I could go three months without talking to my mom, or asking for money,
or buying a new pair of shoes just because I felt like it. . . .”
Hank’s eyes narrowed. “And?”
“And when I said I actually wanted to do it he started backpedaling and I held him
to it and—I was angry and I wanted him to pay up—so we made a bit of an insane wager.
. . .”
“How insane?” Hank asked quietly.
“Fifty thousand dollars of insane.”
Hank coughed to cover his disbelief. “Your brother is going to pay you fifty thousand
dollars to be a normal person for three months?”
Maddie burst out laughing. “Well . . . yeah . . . when you put it like that it’s even
more ridiculous. But, yes, that’s pretty much the crux of it.” She kicked the dirt
at her feet again then lifted her eyes to his. “And he’s not giving the fifty thousand
to me. He’s going to have to give it to some worthwhile charity . . . I’ll think of
something good.”
Hank stayed quiet and Maddie started to question why she had told him at all. She
tried to stuff the realization that she wanted him to know everything about her. She
wanted to open herself to this guy in a way she had never wanted to open up to anyone.
“You think I’m ridiculous.” She said it with a quiet resignation, as if all the grit
and heart she was trying to prove she had was never going to be enough to earn the
respect of Hank Gilbertson.
“I don’t think you’re ridiculous, Maddie.” She had started to turn away and he pulled
her back with a gentle hold on her upper arm. “Come on.” He pulled her into a quick
hug, then released her. “I still wish you had a cell phone, though . . . it’s not
safe.”
Maddie held his gaze. She might have been five inches shorter, but she was not going
to be the one to lose this battle of the wills. Hank finally relaxed his shoulders.
“This is such a bad idea, but okay.”
“Good!” Maddie’s smile beamed, and he had a hard time staying irritated with her.
She was too damned cheerful.
“Moderately good,” Hank added.
“Okay, fine. Moderately good!” But she said it with all the enthusiasm she felt.
She loved camping.
A few hours later, she conceded that he was right about the portaging. He had rigged
up his canoe with some sort of head strap thing and he carried it like an African
woman might carry water from a well. When the paths were wide enough, she walked beside
him, but for the most part she stayed behind him and enjoyed the incredible smells
and textures and sights all around them.
Despite her initial excitement and enthusiasm, Maddie had calmed. She’d always loved
the woods and found it settling and reassuring on some deep level to just walk through
tall trees or paddle through quiet lakes.
By two o’clock she was starving.
“Hey, can I have one of the sandwiches? We don’t need to stop.”
Hank had been leading them through some old path that was apparently one of his childhood
favorites. No one was anywhere in view or within earshot. She had a momentary flutter
of fear—who the hell was this guy anyway, and what was she doing with him alone in
the middle of nowhere? It wasn’t even the middle of nowhere. Blake was the middle
of nowhere. This was like a three-hour drive and a two-hour hike from the middle of
nowhere.
He tipped the canoe over and set it down easily on the ground in the small clearing.
“We can stop. I’m hungry, too, and my neck could use a rest.”
“Okay.” Maddie peeled off her backpack, the hot, sweaty T-shirt and skin beneath cooling
as soon as the air made contact. “Man, that feels good.”
“We’re almost there. It’s worth the hike.”
“Hey. You’re funny.”
Hank pulled out two of the peanut butter sandwiches he’d made that morning and handed
one to Maddie. “Bon appétit.”
“Are you fluent in French as well as Epictetus?”
“Very funny.”
She sat cross-legged on the ground, then looked up at him and used the back of her
hand to push a strand of chestnut hair out of her eyes. “Are you going to sit down?”
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
“Okay.” She opened the ziplock bag and took a grateful bite of the sandwich. “Yum!”
she moaned around the food. “What is this?”
He liked the sound of her satisfaction. “Secret ingredients.”
“It’s awesome. Don’t you love how food tastes outside? Why is that? Food just tastes
better outside.” She took a swig off her water bottle and then another bite of the
sandwich. “Honey?” she said through a mouth full of food.
Hank nodded and watched her eat. Her mouth was the worst. The best worst. Totally
distracting. He couldn’t really look at her because he kept staring at her lips and
not listening to what she was saying. And despite his devil’s advocacy in the truck,
at base he agreed with her that thinking it was ever cut-and-dried to have sex with
someone and never think about it (or them) again wasn’t really his style.
She popped the last bite into her mouth and wrapped her lips around her index finger
to get the last crumbs. “Yum! That was just the best. Thank you.” She slapped her
hands on her thighs and then stood up. “Are you going to eat yours?”
Hank looked down and realized he was still holding his sandwich in his right hand,
the bag unopened.
“Now that you’re done watching me eat mine?” The witch gave him a saucy wink and wandered
deeper into the forest. “Nature calls! I’ll be back in five!”