Chapter 36
THIRTY-SIX
Jodie Kennery
Jodie blamed herself for the catastrophe she wasn’t sure she’d survive.
Well. Herself and Stephanie, but Stephanie’s track record was annoyingly good, which was the only reason Jodie had said yes to begin with.
Look how well things turned out the last time I played matchmaker, Stephanie had said with a persuasive smile.
And she wasn’t wrong. She’d set up Waylon and Frankie—Waylon, the paramedic who sometimes did work for Watchdog, and Frankie, who was possibly the most adorable human being in Colorado—and they’d had a rough start when they both realized they’d been set up without their knowledge, and then promptly fallen completely in love anyway. Lightning had struck once.
Maybe it would strike again. Because the guy Jodie was interested in for real didn’t seem to know she existed.
So Jodie had said yes to Dale. Dr. Boyfriend’s sister’s husband’s cousin’s nephew, which was a chain of relation so tenuous it barely counted, but Dale was new to town and looking for a hiking partner and it wasn’t technically a date, Stephanie had said.
Except it was technically a date.
Dale was good-looking enough, she’d give him that.
He was also deeply, profoundly in love with himself, which left very little room in the relationship for Jodie.
She discovered this at the coffee shop near the trailhead, when she suggested breakfast. While she drank her latte and munched on a blueberry muffin, Dale explained that he didn’t need breakfast because he’d already had his Saturday protein powder, which was different from his Monday and Wednesday protein powder, which were both different from his Friday powder, which he saved for because it had slightly more sugar and he liked to earn it.
He also suggested, with what he seemed to think was genuine helpfulness, that with her lack of muscle structure she might want to consider giving it a try.
“You have one of those sanitary jobs, don’t you? Where you just sit around all day?”
“Um, do you mean sedentary job?”
“Whichever. Your muscles look like they don’t get much action.”
Wow.
“I’m the receptionist at a security company,” she told him, not bothering to elaborate how she assisted in the kennel’s private clinic or how she kept everything running smoothly.
“Yeah. So you do sit around all day. You could really benefit from some of these powders. I could hook you up. I sell them, too. I’m one of their top reps.”
Oh great. In addition to climbing a mountain, I’m getting hit with a pyramid scheme.
Jodie declined.
“Well, okay, but you’ll regret it when your body falls apart in a couple years.”
“I’m in my twenties.”
“Wow, you look older than that. Tick-tock, tick-tock.” Then he pivoted to explaining how he personally planned to live forever, citing protein powder, red light masks, and his positive attitude as the primary mechanisms.
By the time they reached the trailhead, Jodie had mentally composed and discarded three different texts to Stephanie, none of them nice.
“Is that what you’re wearing?” Dale asked, looking her up and down.
She looked around at the distinct absence of changing rooms. “Um, yes?”
It went even further downhill from there, which was ironic given that they were going uphill. He was nearly a foot taller than her with legs he used to their full potential, and within five minutes she was lagging behind. He came back around a bend looking for her.
“There you are.” He reached for her backpack and slipped it off her shoulders and slung it on his before she realized what he was doing. “I was worried.”
And for one brief, shining moment, she thought maybe she’d misjudged him.
“You were worried about me?”
“Yeah, that I was going to have to babysit you the entire hike. But maybe you’ll move faster if I’m carrying your backpack.”
That did it. Her dander, as her grandmother used to say, was fully up.
She power-walked past Dale. He was surprised enough to let her, and then annoyed enough to catch up, and then they were side by side on the trail and he was explaining why women always thought they could beat men, and she was explaining that she hadn’t realized it was a competition, and then he said the thing about her knowing her place and watching her ass expand and Jodie stopped responding entirely and just walked.
“I’ve never been on a grudge hike before,” Dale said, somewhere around mile six.
“Glad I could introduce you to the experience. How many more miles is this?”
“Well,” Dale said pleasantly, “I was going to suggest the four-mile loop, but we passed that turnoff about half a mile ago. So now we’re committed to sixteen.”
“Oh, is that all? I was hoping for twenty-five.”
She would remember the sour look on his face for a long time with great satisfaction.
She would remember less fondly the root she didn’t see a mile later. Her ankle turned, she went down hard on the trail, and she knew immediately from the white-hot stabbing pain shooting up her leg that she was not walking out of here without help.
She looked up and watched Dale continue on without breaking stride.
“Dale. Hey, Dale? Dale!”
He stopped, turned, and looked down at her. She waited for him to crouch down, ask if she was all right, and offer a hand.
Dale looked at her ankle. Then he looked up the trail. Then he looked back at her with an expression that said he was doing complicated math.
“I’m going to go get help,” he said.
“Okay,” she said carefully. “You could also just—”
“I’ll send someone back up for you when I’m done.”
And then Dale, Dr. Boyfriend’s sister’s husband’s cousin’s nephew, turned around and walked away up the trail without her.
“Hey! Hey, wait. You have my pack.”
“So you don’t have to carry it. You’re welcome.” He disappeared around a bend.
“But it has my phone. And my wallet, and my water, and everything else I need…and you’re gone.”
Jodie tried to get up but the second she put any weight on her ankle, she buckled in pain and fell.
“Shit! Shit-shit-shit!”
She had no way to call anyone, no water, no food, and she was eight miles from civilization. They hadn’t seen anyone else on the trail all day.
Jodie sat on the ground with her sprained ankle and the afternoon light shifting through the aspens and the very clear understanding that she was going to need to be stronger than this if she ever wanted to get down off this mountain.
“Okay, self-rescuing princess it is.”
She was trying to decide between attempting to hop downhill for seven-ish miles or just scooting on her butt when she heard footsteps on the trail below her.
“Hello? Is someone there?”
Mac came around the bend.
Thomas MacAllister of Alberta, Canada. A year and a half at Watchdog Mountain Division, recruited by Kyle, who had made some joke about never expecting to employ a real Mountie that Mac had clearly heard seventeen thousand times and still smiled at politely.
He was tall, had an incredible build, and just radiated warmth.
But beyond all that goodness, it was his attitude that got her every time. He was kind and curious and friendly. Some people were wired to be suspicious of everything, but Mac had apparently been wired to find the world genuinely interesting and the people in it worth his time.
On the days he didn’t have a principal to guard, he walked past her desk in the morning coming in and in the evening going out, and he always smiled when he greeted her, and he was like that with everyone, which was the whole problem.
She wasn’t special. She was just Jodie the receptionist. Which was just fine with her.
Except when it came to him. She wanted Mac to see her for once.
Well, he sure could see her now, sitting on the trail and looking pathetic.
“Jodie? Is that you?”
“Hey, Mac. Fancy meeting you here.”
He jogged up to her, crouched down, looked at her ankle, and then looked at her face.
“Oof. That looks unpleasant.”
“It is.”
“What happened?”
“I got mugged by a tree root.” She pointed to the root sticking up that he had almost unconsciously avoided as he’d jogged up to her.
He nodded once. “Yup, they will do that.”
Then without saying another word, he tucked one arm behind Jodie’s knees and one behind her back and stood up with her.
Jodie grabbed his shoulder out of pure reflex and found herself approximately four feet off the ground, cradled against the chest of a man she’d been trying not to think about for the better part of a year.
Well, she thought. This is fine. Everything is fine.
“I can probably hop,” she said.
“For seven, eight miles?”
“Possibly. It’s downhill.”
“Jodie.”
“Okay, no.”
He started down the trail, sure-footed and utterly unbothered by the fact that he was carrying a full-grown woman. She felt his chest move when he breathed.
Stop noticing that.
“How did you end up on the trail?” she asked, because talking was better than the alternative, which was noticing things she shouldn’t.
“Day off. This is my favorite trail. No one ever comes up here.” He glanced at her. “How did you end up on the ground?”
“My date left me here.”
Mac stopped walking.
He looked at her.
“He went to get help,” she added. “And he took my backpack with him so that I didn’t have to carry it.”
“With all your gear?”
“And my phone.”
The look on Mac’s face suggested he had thoughts about that which he was choosing not to share. He started walking again.
“So he alpine-divorced you, eh?”
“He what now?”
“It’s when a guy takes his wife or girlfriend he wants to get rid of up a mountain, pushes her off or leaves her there to die, and calls it an accident. There was a famous case where some guy did it in the Alps so that’s how it got its name. Alpine divorce.”
Wow. Mac is pissed.
“Dale didn’t push me. And he’s not my boyfriend. This was our first date. Stephanie set us up.”
The corner of Mac’s mouth turned up. Of course it would—Stephanie made everybody laugh.
“It’s not the worst thing that’s happened to me this week,” Jodie offered.
“No? Then you’ve had a really crappy week.”
“Shitty.”
“That’s what I said. Crappy.”
So the rumors were true—Mac absolutely refused to swear in front of a woman.
“Yeah, I really could have used you last Saturday,” she told him. “Where were you?”
“Probably doing something completely pointless that I would abandon immediately to know what happened to you that was worse than this.”
This isn’t so bad right now.
“Okay. Last weekend I was cleaning out my shed and I gave away my dad’s rototiller.”
“Doesn’t sound so bad yet.”
“Yet. I put an ad online and I got a response. The guy said he’d swing by to pick it up Saturday morning. My definition of morning is sometime before noon, but apparently his is three o’clock.”
“So you waited for him all day.”
“I did. And just when I’m about to text him and say forget it, I see a cloud of blue smoke coming up the street.
The guy’s driving this old truck, which, I love old trucks, don’t get me wrong—I think they’re kinda sexy.
But not this one. This one needed to be shown the sunset and then put out of its misery. ”
Mac’s chest rumbled with laughter. Boy, did she feel it.
“Stop laughing,” she said. “I’m injured.”
“I’m not laughing.”
“Your chest is laughing.”
“My chest thinks this is a great story.”
Damn. Oh, damn.
“So he parks in my driveway and I’m hoping the truck doesn’t leave too big of an oil slick.
He parks but he doesn’t turn off the engine.
I see he’s got this kid with him, like early twenties, who doesn’t bother looking up from his phone.
The guy gets out, he’s wearing a backwards cap, and a T-shirt that doesn’t quite cover everything it’s supposed to cover.
” Jodie grimaced at the memory of his hairy beer gut and belly button.
“He walks up to the rototiller, and apparently his inspection absolutely requires that he bend at the waist because squatting is not an option, and his grubby jeans decide it’s time for a southward migration.”
By now, Mac was having to stop every few feet to laugh. “I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry for? It wasn’t your jeans and hairy ass crack.” She covered her mouth. “Not that I think your ass crack is hairy.”
Mac roared.
“Are you sure I’m not too heavy?”
“You are not too heavy, Jodie. Please continue.” Mac started walking again.
Jodie had no choice but to go on. “So, he decides he’s going to take it, right? He asks me if I can load it into his truck for him.”
“Wait. He what?”
“Yeah. Load it into his truck. Me. All by myself. By now I’m coughing because my entire yard is full of smoke from his oil-burning truck. I must have been delirious from the fumes because I didn’t tell him to leave, I told him he’s going to have to at least help me.”
“Oh no. Jodie.”
“I know. He at least agrees to that, so I wheel it around to the back of the truck and all this smoke is just pouring out of the tailpipe. It took years off my life, Mac.”
“I don’t doubt it.” He readjusted her, lifting her higher, and she got a Grade-A view of his biceps in motion.
Mercy.
“Am I hurting you?”
“Nope, not at all.”
“So what happened?”
“Well, we try and lift this thing like a couple of idiots and that doesn’t work.
And then I ask him if he could maybe tell his son to get out of the damn truck and help us.
And he tells me, ‘That’s my nephew. He can’t help us.
’ I ask him why not, and…” Jodie snorted.
“He says because he’s not wearing any pants today. ”
Mac stopped dead. “He’s not…pants?”
“Nope! No pants day, I guess.”
Mac leaned against the high, steep bank lining one side of the trail and roared again.
“Did he end up taking the rototiller?”
“He did. We finally got it into the truck bed. He’s going to use it for his organic pot farm. If that doesn’t work out, he’ll grow tomatoes.”
The laugh that came out of Mac was warm and real and completely unguarded, and Jodie felt it all the way through her body like a struck bell.
Oh boy, she thought.
I am in so much trouble.
Mac and Jodie’s story continues in Wild Horses on the Mountain, Book 8 of the Watchdog Mountain Division series.