Chapter Two
Rachel
Itapped my pen against the side of my notebook at my kitchen table later that night.
The blank page stared back at me. I had come up with a detailed plan for the display before my meeting with Brody, but annoyingly, he had brought up some good points.
The information mattered, but so did how the public interpreted it.
And the entire discussion was a lot more nuanced than people knew.
Cutting a tree and preserving a tree aren’t opposites.
That’s what he’d said. It was a very insightful line, so much so that I wrote it on the top of my blank page.
Brody Brosseau.
Just thinking his name made my stomach do a stupid little flip-flop.
I’d seen him around before. He was always in plaid, always covered in sawdust. He wore his hair in one long dark braid down his back, a hazard for a tree faller, I imagined, but common enough for people with indigenous heritage around here.
His eyes were dark enough to get lost in, even more so when he was arguing his point, which seemed to be always.
We had argued; I’d expected that. What I hadn’t expected was that we’d agreed on things too. He was passionate about his work. Intelligent and well-versed in the big picture. He wasn’t too stubborn to see another side, and I’d always loved looking at problems from every angle.
If we had more time, I bet we could learn a lot from each other.
I flipped back through my notebook, reviewing what I’d planned for the presentation before we’d met. My information wasn’t wrong, but it was missing the prospective Brody provided. Sighing, I tore the pages from my notebook and set them aside.
I tried to focus on what needed to be done, but my mind kept skipping back to the café. The veins and scars that marked the back of Brody’s strong hands. The tension in his square jaw when he thought he was being wronged.
This was going to be a disaster if I couldn’t focus.
I didn’t have time for a crush, or whatever this was.
I was an academic. I’d earned a bachelor’s, then a master’s, before doing fieldwork all over the country.
Despite how soft my hands were compared to his, I had spent plenty of time outside my lab.
Granted, it had been a few years, but that was all the more reason this project should be easy.
Research. Presentations. This was my bread and butter now.
Poising my pen over the page, I wrote: Logging: A Necessary Evil?
I immediately crossed it out. Brody would hate the word evil. Besides, this would be a busy event. I needed to catch the eye. Trying again, I wrote: Past Practices, Future Forests: The History of Logging and Conservation in Springwood.
It was a little wordy, but it was something Brody and I could both agree on. I thought so, anyway. I would find out when we met next.
******
Brody and I had planned to meet up again the next day, this time at the library.
Honestly, I could’ve used another day of distance between the two of us before we were shoulder to shoulder again, but this all had to come together fast. I would just have to shove down whatever confusing feelings I had for the man.
The air conditioning hit me as I walked through the doors, and I waved to my friend Joy, who was working behind the desk.
“Here for the key to the meeting room?” she asked, digging around under the counter before placing the key in front of me.
I nodded. “Meeting with Brody for that lumber industry heritage project I told you about.”
A grin split her face. She was a happy person to begin with, but over Christmas she’d finally gotten together with her lifelong crush, Alden. Now she was convinced everyone’s life could be a romance novel if they just tried hard enough. “And how’s that going?”
I blew a strand of hair out of my face. If there was a ponytail holder that could keep my hair out of my eyes all day, I hadn’t found it. “We had some good discussion yesterday,” I said vaguely.
“Good discussion. Riveting stuff, Rachel.”
I scoffed. “What do you want me to say? We don’t know each other, are coming at the topic from opposite sides, and we’re under a tight deadline. The fact that we haven’t killed each other is a minor miracle.”
“Murderous rage is just a hair off from uncontrolled lust, you know,” she said, straightening a stack of flyers on the counter.
I cocked an eyebrow.
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, maybe not murderous. But passionate disagreements, push and pull. It can turn in a very sexy direction in a flash.”
“I’m sure it can in all those romance novels you read. In the real world, forced proximity doesn’t always lead to a happily ever after.”
Joy leaned on the counter, her big earrings swinging as she moved. “Well, not directly. There are steps in between. One of which involves very hot sex.” She pumped her eyebrows, suggestively.
I grabbed the key off the counter. “Thank you for your insight, delusional woman. If you need me, I’ll be in the meeting room not having hot sex with Brody.”
“Does Brody get a say in this?” His rich voice hit me, and my back straightened.
Dammit.
I mouthed I hate you at Joy just as I turned and met Brody’s eye. I’d seen his eyes fiery in argument and bored in meetings, but this was the first time I’d seen them dance with amusement.
I fought a blush.
“Different Brody,” I blurted. “Anyway, shall we?” I led him toward the meeting room, throwing a glare over my shoulder at Joy.
She let out a cackle that the wicked witch would be envious of as I hustled away.
My shoulder bumped Brody’s as we climbed the stairs to the second floor. The heat of his body seeped into mine. I could smell his skin from how close we were walking. Pine, with a hint of something else. Something with some spice to it.
Was he wearing cologne?
No. Why would he? He spent his days climbing trees. Besides, he hated me. No need to try to impress the enemy. Although if that had been his plan, he had succeeded, no fancy scents required. His brain was a fascinating place to get to know.
Mercifully, he didn’t bring up what he’d overheard between Joy and me, and we set up in the meeting room to get started.
A half-hour later, we were at an impasse. I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Of course the data isn’t perfect. No one does a study on Springwood specifically. They’re all at least regional, if not provincial. We have to draw conclusions from the larger data sets.”
“This is a Springwood event,” he said. “What some egghead has to say about Vancouver doesn’t apply. They’re basically a rainforest; we get minus forty-degree winters.”
“Well, I don’t have time to conduct a full health assessment of the local forest before Saturday, so—”
He stood. “No one said anything about a full health study. We can just go outside. You know, touch grass, like the kids say.”
“You want to just wander around the woods and what? Ask the trees how things are going?”
He dug into the pocket of his jeans for his keys, and I let my eyes roam over him for just a moment—definitely not trying to determine the size of his bulge through the well-worn denim.
“We can get pictures,” he said. “A cut block that was clear-cut versus a site that was selectively logged. Real-life, close-to-home examples of how things are actually done around here.”
I huffed. “That…isn’t the worst idea.”
He flashed me a close-lipped smile. “Then get in the truck. I’m driving.”