9. Lila
NINE
LILA
I don’t have much of an appetite for dinner. I can barely look at the others as they savor their fish. Grant abstains from fish, too, the sweetheart. He’d looked pretty excited about fishing…right until I lost my mind when I caught one.
The risotto’s good, though.
We ate later than we did last night, since the meal was dependent on successfully catching the ingredients. The daylight’s already starting to fade by the time the last dish has been wiped, cleaned, and dried. Everyone’s saying their goodnights, and it’s only eight-thirty. I’m physically tired, but my brain isn’t ready to shut off this early.
Only one person hasn’t settled in for the night yet. Grant is sitting in his tent’s vestibule, sort of a tiny three-walled garage, if you will. He’s whittling. I don’t know why, but I love that for him. It’s an incredibly old-mannish thing for such a strikingly virile guy to do.
Virile, yuck. I never use that word. Still fits him.
“This is how you don’t go insane from boredom, isn’t it?” I’m standing to the side of his tent in my nighttime clothes, not quite ready to zip myself into my cocoon for the evening .
“Every little bit helps.”
“Do you have a spare knife?”
He looks up at me. “Do you want to give it a try?”
I shrug. “Why not?”
“I don’t have a spare knife, but you can use this one. Come here.” He scoots over until he’s right up next to the tent wall, leaving me just enough room to sit on the floor of the vestibule.
I fold myself down next to him, only moderately mortified by the smells that must waft off my body after hiking for two days straight. He demonstrates how to use the knife on the block of wood he’s holding, and I swear I try to focus. But he’s got really great hands. Strong and long-fingered, they monopolize my attention.
“You got it?” he says, incorrectly assuming I’ve listened to all of his instructions.
“It seems pretty self-explanatory. Wood—cut.”
He chuckles and passes over the knife and wood. I make my first pass—and utterly fail to scrape off any wood.
I exhale a laugh. “The wood-cut process is harder than you make it look.”
“I’ve had a lot of practice.”
The second try, I get the knife lodged in the wood too deep to do anything and have to see-saw it out. “I didn’t mean to do that.”
“It happens.”
The third comes a little bit too close to my fingers. “Whoops.”
“Maybe it’s getting too dark to whittle.” He gently takes the knife away from me.
Seriously, good call.
“So this is the life of an outdoorsman?” I ask. “Exhaust yourself all day and let boredom put you to bed at eight every night?”
“What do you usually do in the evenings? ”
“Take electricity for granted.”
“Addict.”
“I curl up in a blanket and read, mostly. I knew I should have finished the book I’m reading before the trip started. I gave myself a terrible cliffhanger.”
The gargoyle has finally revealed himself to the human he’s in love with, but will she accept a monster mate? Obviously the answer is yes, but I still need to know how it all plays out.
“What’s it about?”
“Oh, uh…it’s a romance.” I’m not sure how cool Grant is with the genre. Josh always treated my reading habits as a dirty little secret. I don’t want to give him too many details if he’s going to be a pain about it.
“You can borrow my e-reader. I don’t know if I have anything downloaded you’d want to read, though.”
I clutch at him. It’s happening a lot, and I should probably stop, but dang, dude. Biceps . “You brought an e-reader?”
“It keeps me from going insane from boredom.”
“I thought that was the whittling.”
“It’s a two-prong approach.” He unzips his tent, reaches in, and pulls out a naked e-reader two seconds later. He places it in my lap. “You can borrow it.”
“You said cards are useless weight. What’s this?”
“Vital to my mental well-being.”
I grin at him and pick up the slim e-reader. “You’d really let me scroll through your book library? That’s very bold of you.”
“Why is that?”
“Oh, you know…” It occurs to me he actually might not know. He probably has perfectly normal titles on his e-reader, unlike some people in this vestibule.
His eyebrows twitch. “Wait, what’s on your library you wouldn’t want people to see? ”
I make a face. “Nothing. It’s all totally average and bland. Super vanilla.”
He dips his face closer to mine. I…kind of need to unzip my fleece. Just got a blast of southern heat.
“What’s on yours?”
He shouldn’t be allowed to throw his sultry voice around like this. It could give people the wrong idea.
Hi. It’s me.
“Just romances of different varieties.”
“What varieties?”
“Totally regular stuff. Human stuff.”
When he laughs, his breath ghosts over my cheek. “Human stuff?”
“Some of it is, yeah.” It’s a low percentage lately, but he doesn’t need to know every detail. Or any detail.
“Now I’m dying to know what you read.”
“That’s too bad, because it’s your secrets we’re revealing tonight.”
I push the button on his e-reader, and the screen lights up between us. We’re crammed way too close together in this tiny space. My heart’s racing a happy little beat, but I tell myself it’s just because I’m about to see what Grant has on his library. Going through someone’s books is a very intimate experience.
Maybe I shouldn’t be thinking the word intimate right now.
I thumb to the library, and—huh. It’s pretty normal. Extensive and full of classics, but all very respectable titles. “Oh.”
“You’re actually disappointed I don’t have something scandalous on there, aren’t you?”
“A bit, yeah.”
His wide smile fills me with fluttering wings.
Then, fluttering wings land right on the e-reader. A giant moth practically covers the screen. A creaky gasp sticks in my throat. It’s only my undying respect for books of all kinds that stops me from flinging the e-reader straight into the trees.
I make a pitiful sound while Grant shoos the moth on its way. He pulls the e-reader from my hands and turns it off again.
“Probably best to wait until you’re in your tent, or you’ll attract more unwanted visitors to read over your shoulder.”
I close my eyes, calculating how close that thing must have been for it to reach us within seconds of the light switching on. Very, very close. I open them again to find Grant watching me.
“Why does everything out here have to be so…”
“Full of natural beauty?” he offers.
“Ha. I haven’t seen much natural beauty.”
“I have.”
This close, his utter sincerity throws me. The moment slows, snags, halts entirely. I won’t pretend I don’t get compliments. I’m well aware of my face. But he’s not talking to glammed-up Lila ready for a night out. He’s talking to two days out from a shower Lila who isn’t even wearing tinted moisturizer.
His compliment sinks straight into my bones.
I kind of seriously wish he weren’t heading home to Texas in a few more days.
He passes the e-reader back to me. “Take it. If nothing else, you can scan my whole book library and discover all of my shameful secrets.”
“You mean all the middle grade stuff on here?”
“They’re comfort reads.”
“Someone’s very attached to Percy Jackson.”
“Who wouldn’t love to find out they’re secretly a demi-god?”
Insert You look like you’re secretly a demi-god joke here.
“I already took your snacks. I don’t want to take away your entertainment, too. ”
His eyes drop to the device and back to me. “We could read something together. Or I could read aloud.”
My heart stops. I think I just walked into every book-loving girl’s dream come true.
“Really? You wouldn’t mind?”
“It’d be fun. But we should move into my tent.” He hitches a shoulder. “To avoid the moths and mosquitos.”
“Right. I don’t want any more moth buddies to find us.” Going into a guy’s tent after knowing him for two days? I should feel weirder about doing that than I actually do. Maybe because I have no context for it. I’d never been in a tent alone before this trip.
“Think of it as my reading nook. Forget my bed is in there.”
There’s the context. Now that’s all I’m going to think about.
He unzips half the entrance and snaps on an LED light, then waves me inside. He slips off his boots to leave them outside, a habit I’ve seen the others in the group follow too. I do the same before I crawl into his tent. It’s a two-person tent like mine, with enough space for both of us to sit comfortably without ever touching.
Or at least I think so, until he crawls in after me. He zips the door closed and sits at the head of his sleeping bag, folding his legs criss-cross. The mini lantern swings from a hook in the center of the ceiling, knocking against his head. He straightens it and shifts as well as he can.
You never realize just how big a big guy is until you’re smooshed into a two-person tent with him. Grant is broad and muscular, and my heart might be racing for entirely different reasons if he weren’t so totally unbothered. He’s not acting like I’ve accepted an invitation into his lair. We’re just chilling in his reading nook.
“This proves how susceptible I would be to kidnapping if given the proper lure. ”
He lifts an eyebrow. “That’s concerning.”
“I have a weakness.” I look around the ultra small space. “It’s neat in here. Very tidy.”
When I get ready for bed, I’ll have to shove the rest of my gear off my sleeping bag to get inside it.
“What are you in the mood for?”
“Well…” My gaze drops to his mouth. “I’m not sure…”
“Adventure, fantasy, sci-fi? One of the middle grade books you disparaged?”
My eyes snap down to his e-reader in my lap. Right. I am in the mood for reading. Obviously.
I switch it back on and scroll through the options. Something feels off, though, and it takes me a minute to realize what it is.
“How do you have all this extra stuff? The granola bars, the e-reader, the lantern. None of that was on the packing list.”
His tent is fancy compared to my bare-bones version. I had no idea glamping was an option.
“I’ve been on a few hikes like this. I know what I want to have with me.”
“Yeah, but you’re breaking the rules.” Generally, I don’t care about the rules, but I had him pegged as someone who would.
But you know how first impressions can be totally deceiving? The mischief in his slow smile makes me realize that what I took to be an innocent, vanilla Clark Kent personality is just a mask. His All-American good looks make him seem mild and unassuming—the man underneath has a strong undercurrent of rogue about him.
“You learn the rules so you know how to break them,” he explains. “If this were a more rigorous hike, I might be more cautious with the extra weight. But for a light walk?—”
I scoff. “Excuse me, this is not a light walk for some of us.”
“There’s no reason I can’t bring a few extra things,” he finishes. “Plus, I know I can carry my extras.”
“That feels a bit like a dig at me.”
“It’s not meant to be. I’m just well aware of my own abilities.”
After Josh, excessive confidence became a turn-off for me. Being with a man whose ego required attention at all times got exhausting. But there’s a line between confident and arrogant, and Grant never sticks a toe over. It’s weird.
Weird and intriguing.
“Now.” He points at the e-reader. “What do you feel like?”
I drag my eyes away from this mysterious mountain man and go back to scanning books. “You have a lot of Terry Pratchett on here. What are those like?”
“Fantasy and humor. Not much romance, but you might like it.”
“Let’s try one of those.” I pass the device back to him.
He scrolls around for a minute. “How about we start at the beginning?”
“Where all the best stories start.”
I’m a romance girl through and through, but with Grant reading the book and doing all the voices? By the time I slip my boots back on and scurry into my own tent a couple of hours later, he’s won me over on fantasy.
Even if, way down deep, I still hope everyone gets their love story in the end.