Chapter Six
The path had been so poorly maintained that there was just enough room for them to walk side by side.
Sometime in the past, a small vehicle, like a four-wheeler, had left tracks, but weeds grew up in the middle.
Jillian was reminded of a foster home she had landed in when she was about fourteen years old.
“Do you want to go back and forget all about this?” Wyatt asked.
“What makes you ask that?”
“You had this strange look on your face, somewhat like I imagine mine looks like when I smell a skunk,” he answered.
“I was thinking about the last time I was on a path like this,” she told him.
“I was fourteen when I was moved from a home in town to a dairy farm. The owners only took kids my age or older because they needed help with the place, especially with milking the cows every morning and evening. That meant getting up before dawn and walking down a poorly lit pathway to the milking barn and cleaning up everything in the place before breakfast was served back at the farmhouse. After that we caught the bus to ride five miles to school. In the evening, we did the same thing, ate, did homework, and went to bed so that we could be up at four thirty and start all over again.”
“Were you scared?” Wyatt asked.
Jillian had to think about that before she answered.
“I was accustomed to fear. It was part of my life. The powers had control over where I would stay and when I would leave. The people in the homes where I was tossed like a bag of trash could be horrible or decent. The powers decided that, not me.”
Opening up to Wyatt surprisingly brought her an uncanny measure of comfort and peace.
“But this is supposed to be an adventure, not a trip down misery lane. Look, there’s a bunny!
” Jillian whipped out her phone and took several pictures.
“I haven’t seen one since they moved me from the farm into a group home.
I hated all the work, but I loved the never-ending supply of milk.
Esther, that was the woman in the house, let us four kids have all we wanted, anytime we wanted.
I didn’t like raw milk at first, but one of the other girls showed me how to load it up with chocolate or strawberry syrup. ”
“All girls?” Wyatt asked.
“They either kept all girls or all boys, never a mixed bunch. They were very, very religious. We still milked twice on Sunday, but instead of school, we were all piled into a van and hauled to church. One of those places where services lasted two hours and the hard wooden pews had no cushions. When we got home, we were quizzed about the sermon while we ate lunch. But hey, we had a fantastic meal. She either made a pot roast or a slow cooker full of some kind of soup.”
“Why did they move you?”
“I’m not sure about that time,” Jillian answered. “By then, it really didn’t matter where I lived, as long as I had paper and pencils to use for my drawings.”
“When did you start to use paints?” he asked.
“My art teacher at school gave me tubes of paint that some students pitched in the trash. I could cut the end open and squeeze out quite a bit into a small jar. Then I got a job as a waitress when I was sixteen, and I bought supplies with my earnings. Enough about me. When did you know you wanted to be a writer?”
“I believe I was born with the desire,” Wyatt answered.
“I’ve never made friends very easily. Most people bore me, and then there was the fact that we moved around so much.
A year at the most was the longest we were ever in one place.
I liked books and creating stories, even if they were in my mind, more than I did a crowd of folks.
So, I turned to writing. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a few relationships.
One even lasted six months before it died in its sleep. ”
The trail ended at the gravel road and into the yards of two more cabins. Both seemed to be sitting empty. A possum with babies hanging off her back had taken up residence on one porch, and a family of skunks on the other.
“Let’s turn around real slow like and go back the way we came,” Wyatt suggested.
“Why?” Jillian asked. “We’ve been walking in a straight line. That means the road will lead back to the one where we turn right to get to our cabins. Then we’d be on gravel and hopefully not tempting fate.”
“Why would you say that?”
“I saw poison ivy crawling up a tree about twenty feet back there. I’m not allergic to it, but I do not want to take a chance.”
Dark clouds moved above them, lightning streaked through the sky, and what sounded like a bomb went off behind them when the lightning struck something nearby.
“I believe that was a tree falling, maybe even over the path,” Jillian said. “I vote that we go by the way of the road, and do not stop to get something to eat out of our go bags.”
“Vote is unanimous.” Wyatt laced his fingers with hers and picked up the speed. “Tell me if I’m too bossy.”
A deafening clap of thunder drowned out his last words, but Jillian filled in the blank. “No, you are not,” she said, and jogged along beside him.
The force of the south wind swished her ponytail across her face on one side or the other. Dried leaves mixed with green ones from the trees and blew across the gravel road.
“This really blew up fast,” Wyatt shouted above the roar of the wind when they made the turn to jog the last quarter mile up to their cabins.
They could see the cabins when the clouds opened up and dumped huge raindrops on them.
Jillian let go of Wyatt’s hand, but there was no way to run between the cold raindrops.
She reached the porch of her cabin at the same time hail the size of marbles sounded like bullets peppering the tin roof of the place.
With the hard wind and the size of the stones, they could kill someone if they hit them just right.
Jillian shivered. Her teeth chattered. Her hands shook so badly that she couldn’t get the old-fashioned key in the lock. Finally, Wyatt gently took it from her, unlocked the door, and swung it open.
“There you go,” he said, and turned to leave.
She kicked the door shut with her foot. “You can’t go until this lets up. Those hailstones could be downright deadly.”
Wyatt’s shoulders shook with a shiver. “I’ll build a fire, but we both need to get out of these cold, wet clothes. I doubt you’ve got anything here …”
“I’ve got a couple of blankets you can wrap up in,” she said. “I’m going to the bathroom to take a warm shower.”
He picked up a box of matches from the mantel. “We might not have all the modern amenities, but by golly we’ve got fire-making equipment.”
“Blankets are in that tote. Help yourself to however many you need.”
She peeled her icy-cold jeans, sweatshirt, and underwear from her body.
If the hail didn’t stone her to death like the hellfire and damnation the preacher yelled about from her dairy days, then she was pretty sure the cold rain would have frozen her to death right then and there.
Her agent might send someone to look for her when she didn’t show up at the gallery on the right day, but by then the coyotes, bobcats, and mountain lions would have picked her bones clean.
“Wyatt’s book has me thinking crazy thoughts,” she muttered as she pulled back the curtain and stepped into the shower.
For several minutes she let the warm water beat down on her body and thaw it out.
Slowly, the shivering stopped. Her breathing had been coming in short rasps, but it returned to normal, and the tension in her muscles eased up.
Either rain or hail still beat down on the roof when she turned off the water, but at least she didn’t have to be out in it.
She wrapped a towel around her body and had her hand on the doorknob when she realized she hadn’t brought any clothing with her.
Thank God, she had hung her terry cloth bathrobe on the back of the door.
She dropped the towel, put on the robe, and belted it around her waist. Nothing under it put her in a vulnerable position, but hey, storms didn’t last forever, and it would blow over in a little while.
Convincing herself was tough when she left the bathroom. Especially when hail was trying to beat the roof off. Wyatt stood in front of the fire with one blanket wrapped around his waist and hanging to the floor, and another one around his shoulders like a shawl.
“Welcome to dry and warm,” he said with a gleam in his eyes. “I took the liberty of making a pot of coffee. I still have a couple of candy bars in my backpack if you’re hungry.”
“Coffee is fine to start with, but a fire calls for hot chocolate and popcorn.” She tightened the belt around her waist and crossed over to the microwave.
Hot chocolate first, so it could cool slightly, and then the popcorn.
Anything to keep her mind off ripping those blankets off Wyatt’s body to see what was hiding beneath.
Desire shot through her body when she caught sight of the soft, light brown chest hair peeking out from the corner of the shawl.
She poured herself a cup of coffee and sipped on it while she set two mugs of water in the microwave.
She deliberately kept her back to Wyatt so that she could control the impulses that seemed to be yelling louder than the storm outside.
“This is one time I wish there was a television in the cabins,” Wyatt said. “The storm has knocked out the internet on my phone, so there’s nothing to tell us how long it will last.”
“We’re at the mercy of the elements. We’ll just be grateful for electricity.”
“And blankets.” He grinned.
She removed the water when the ding sounded and stirred packets of hot chocolate mix into the mugs before she slipped the bag of popcorn inside the microwave and set the timer. Wyatt had finished his coffee and was sitting on the sofa when she turned around. He reached up and took one mug from her.