Chapter Five
Jillian’s inner clock usually woke her at midmorning, but it changed when she moved into the cabin.
Now, when the first rays of sunlight came through the window above her bed, she was wide awake, and her first thought was not a cup of coffee, like normal.
But after that kiss that rattled every hormone in her body, the first thing that went through her mind was Wyatt’s name.
She jerked on a pair of paint-stained sweatpants and a T-shirt that looked like it came fresh out of a rag bag and went out to the porch.
Wyatt was already waiting for her and handed her a steaming-hot cup of coffee for the third morning in a row.
After that mind-blowing kiss that she relived in her dreams last night, she expected an awkward moment or two.
But it didn’t happen. He leaned down and kissed her on the top of her head, and all she felt was excitement.
“Good morning. I hope you don’t mind Rascal coming with me this morning.”
“Good morning to you. Of course not, but that leash looks like it could go a long way. Did you give him the talk?”
“What do you mean?” Wyatt asked.
“The first time I allowed Molly to go out on the balcony, I told her all the bad things that would happen if she tried to climb on top of the railing.” She set her coffee down on the makeshift table and bent down to talk to the little dog.
“There are bears and bobcats and all kinds of evil varmints out there in the woods that will eat you like they would a bunny rabbit. That will make Wyatt sad, and he is my friend. That means if he’s sad, so am I.
So, don’t try to stray any farther than the first tree. Do you understand me?”
Rascal wiggled his tail and licked her across the cheek.
“Okay, then. We are good.” She straightened up, picked up her mug, and sat down.
“Good talk,” Wyatt said with a grin. “Other than putting the fear of bears into Rascal, what’s on your agenda for today?”
“I plan to finish the eagle picture. It’s amazing what all I’ve gotten done already this week with no distractions. How about you? What does your day look like?”
“I’m going to read through my work in progress and send it to my agent and publisher earlier than I ever thought possible,” he answered.
“My cabin is rented until the end of the month, which means I’ve got a couple of more weeks before I have to move out.
I’m going to use the time to work on the outline for the next one in the series. ”
“Finish one. Start another?”
Wyatt raised his mug in her direction. “Just like you do with your art, right?”
She clinked her mug against his. “Absolutely.”
A flock of mourning doves flew down out of the trees and began pecking at the ground. Jillian couldn’t see anything, but evidently, they were having a breakfast of some kind of tiny bugs or seeds that only their beady little eyes could see.
Rascal flopped down on his belly on the top porch step and kept an eye on the birds, but he didn’t growl or try to chase them away.
“He listened to me,” she whispered.
“He would probably go to war with a bear or a bobcat before he would a bird,” Wyatt explained in a low voice.
“When I first took him home from the rescue center, we were out on the balcony and a hawk tried to carry him away. I managed to slap the bird hard enough so that he turned Rascal loose. Since then, he only goes out the front door. If I open the balcony door, he hides in his igloo and refuses to come out until he hears the door closing.”
A squirrel fussed at them from a low tree limb, but they didn’t pay any attention to the critter with the flipping fuzzy tail.
And Rascal waited until something else spooked them, and they all took flight before he made a mad dive off the porch.
He ran over to the tree, put his front paws up on the trunk, and growled until the animal scurried up to a higher limb.
The birds flew down out of the trees, and Rascal made a run to the safety of the porch.
“Wonder why they are called mourning doves?”
“Because of that grieving sound they make,” Wyatt answered.
“Are you teasing me?” Jillian asked.
“Nope. I looked it up on the internet.”
Jillian thought of all the turmoil in her life. Had she ever grieved for what might have been had that little girl who clutched a coloring book to her chest been born into a different family? Was that what this cabin was doing to her? Did fate, or God, or the universe, send Wyatt to help her?
“Have you wished that you could stay here forever?” she asked.
“Yes, I have, especially this last week,” he answered. “But like Chaucer said: All good things must come to an end.”
“Even friendships?”
“Oh, no!” He shook his head. “Good ones last forever.”
“And bad ones?” she asked.
“We have a good one,” Wyatt assured her. “Have you had a bunch of bad ones? Want to talk about it?”
“I’m not sure. If I do, then we might not be kissing friends anymore. You will pity me, and I do not ever want that. I am not a victim. I am a survivor.”
“If that picture of the little girl staring in at the bunkbeds is you, then you are a survivor for sure. I would never pity someone with your strength and talent, not to mention your temper if the music is too loud.” He chuckled.
Should she trust him enough to tell him anything at all about her past, or should she simply change the subject? She had only known him for a week. She had spent time with foster brothers and sisters longer than that and had never shared anything about herself with them.
“You are right. That picture is me in the first foster home I was sent to,” she said.
“What happened when you aged out at eighteen?”
“My high school art teacher had a contact at a university and helped get me a scholarship. I lived in the dorm and ate in the cafeteria and thought I had died and gone to heaven. I spent four years studying. I sold a couple of paintings and met my agent through a buyer. The rest is history,” she said.
“You had a normal life. Are you sure you want to be my friend?”
“There is no such thing as normal,” Wyatt said with a chuckle. “I was one of those starving authors for several years. Thank goodness, my folks let me live with them, or I would have been on the street with a soup can begging for change.”
“Does that make us a couple of misfits that fate smiled on and let live out our dreams?”
“Probably, and then the universe brought us together in this remote place.” He pointed at something out in the woods.
Jillian followed his finger like it was a laser and saw a mama doe with triplet fawns coming out of the trees. They walked across the road and disappeared down a narrow trail. She didn’t even realize she was holding her breath until she let it out in a whoosh.
“Would that be the hiking trail that was advertised in the wonderful getaway to nature website about this place?”
“Maybe so. We could pack a backpack with water and energy bars and go see this evening,” Jillian suggested.
“I’m all for it. Meet you here at five o’clock?” Wyatt asked as he stood up and unfastened Rascal’s leash.
“I’ll be ready. Too bad I don’t have Molly leash trained or we could take the animals with us.”
“Tell her that Rascal can’t go either,” Wyatt said. “Last time I took him anywhere but on the gravel road, it took hours to get all the stickers out of his fur. Besides if a big bird swooped down, I’d have to carry him the rest of the way. Happy painting today.”
“Happy writing to you,” she told him.
Wyatt turned Rascal loose in the cabin and grabbed the notebook he had been using for his next mystery book.
He sat down on the sofa and began to write every word, nuance, and feeling he had when Jillian confided that little bit of her past to him.
He turned several pages to the one where Jolene’s name appeared at the top.
She could not have lived in foster homes; that would be way too close to Jillian’s life story.
“But her mother could die when she was a toddler, and a very strict aunt raised her.” He began to write down that possibility, then created another one where she was left at a fire station right after birth and had abandonment issues.
At noon, Rascal put up a fuss to go outside, so Wyatt took his notebook to the porch. For the next hour he wrote cryptic notes about the way friendship turned into something more between Adam and Jolene. When the dog finally got tired, he reared up on Wyatt’s leg and yipped a couple of times.
Wyatt came out of his fictional world and let the dog inside but went back to write some more.
Some of the bestselling authors he had talked to said they kept all their notes on the computer, but he had had the horrible experience of losing too much when the computer crashed.
So now, he kept journals and notebooks filled with ideas and scenes that he could easily refer to when he needed the information.
Another hour passed, and his stomach began to growl. He went into the cabin, heated up the three biscuits stuffed with scrambled eggs leftover from breakfast in the microwave. He kept writing and ate them with his left hand.
Thirty minutes before he promised to meet Jillian, he put the notebook away and started getting his backpack ready for the hike.
The niggling voice inside his head scolded him for using Jillian as a muse.
He silently argued that her influence was more than merely giving him ideas for the next book. She was truly his friend.
But you are a loner. You don’t do relationships of any kind, and especially not with someone who has the kind of baggage that Jillian seems to have. Besides, what happens when you both move out of these cabins? The voice sounded an awful lot like his mother.
He thought about that as he packed water, a couple of candy bars, and a bag of trail mix.
He and Jillian were alike in a lot of ways, and that made for a good friendship.
He smiled at the memory of the goodnight kisses that were so passionate that he could almost feel their souls uniting.
He had never met anyone like her, and most likely never would again.
What they had found with each other was so special that he couldn’t describe how being close to her made him feel.
Even as an author, he could not put it into words.
He did know that he didn’t want it to end.
He slipped the backpack straps over his shoulders and stepped outside to find Jillian already walking toward his cabin. “Right on time,” he said as he locked the door and put the key into his pocket.
“I met my goal in time to take a thirty-minute nap and still be ready by five.” She smiled. “I have a confession to make, though. I’m not an outdoorsy person.”
“Me, either,” he admitted.