Chapter 36 Miles
THIRTY-SIX
Miles
Lucy looks adorable paired with such a large dog. Alexander could carry her. In fact, I’m pretty sure Lucy is his pet. But the way she’s leaning her head against his neck is making me jealous of a damn dog.
A damn nice dog.
I was worried I’d regret offering to let Alexander come live with us. I love dogs, but have never spent much time with any bigger than a golden retriever. I wasn’t sure whether I should expect him to be aggressive. But he’s such a big sweetheart that I’m already attached to him.
“We should have picked him up sooner. I like this guy.” I swing open the door and let him jump out. He immediately presses his head against my stomach. “Yes, you’re a good boy, aren’t you?”
Lucy walks around the side of the car. “Oh, he really does like you. He leans into people he loves.”
“Is it a family trait?”
Lucy blushes, and I wonder if she remembers last night and her snuggling into me in her sleep.
“Thank you for letting him come live with us,” she says as she steps close and wraps her arms around me in an awkward hug. My arms are pinned at my sides, so I lean my head down to rest it on top of hers.
“I wish I had known sooner. I love dogs,” I reassure her.
She releases me as quickly as she latched on and looks at me. “Every place I tried to rent here had a no-pet policy, so I just assumed you wouldn’t want one either since you didn’t already have one.”
“I’ve always wanted a dog, but I just haven’t had the time to train one. Especially with being gone a lot of weekends and being at the office so much.”
Lucy turns around and grabs a leash out of the back of the car. “I’m going to take him on a long walk since he’s had to ride in the car so long with Krystal.”
“Where did that giant thing come from?” a feminine voice asks.
I turn around to see my ex-girlfriend, followed by Preston, coming toward us.
“It’s Lucy’s dog.”
“Why didn’t you have the dog with you already?” Preston asks as he studies us with a shrewd look in his eyes.
“With our long work hours, we haven’t had a chance to go get him until now,” I supply as an excuse.
Lucy looks at him in annoyance as she bends down to clip the leash onto his collar. “Let’s go, buddy.”
She stands up and turns toward the trail that I found her and Grandpa on earlier. She grabs my hand as she walks by, tugging me with her.
“We’ll go with you!” Preston exclaims.
“But I need my walking shoes,” Carly says.
“Oh, we’ll wait for you on the trail,” Lucy says without pausing her speed walk.
When we’re out of earshot, I lean down and ask her, “Do you want to hang out with my cousin and ex-girlfriend?”
“Like I want a migraine,” she mutters, still pulling me after her.
Alexander is happy to keep up with us. Poor guy is probably so tired of being cooped up in a car.
When we hit the bend in the trail, Lucy grabs my hand and tugs me after her and Alexander into the brush. “I hid from Preston in here with your grandpa. We’ll wait for them to go by, and then we can have a nice walk without them.”
“I like the way you think.”
The dog plunges past a huckleberry bush, pulling us farther than I would like. I’m too tall to avoid getting whacked in the head with a branch.
“We’re not going to run into a bear in here, are we?” Lucy asks in a hushed tone as she ducks low to dodge a branch.
“No, of course not.”
We might see a bear. Since she’s decided she’s the next Bear Grylls, charging through the brush, we might end up seeing all the wildlife.
“Oh good. Because this is fun. I don’t think I’ve ever walked through the woods.” She yelps as she slips on a muddy patch of ground. “How is it so muddy here?”
“Water runs off toward the lake. How far are we going to go?”
“I think if we keep going, it will pop us out close to the lake,” Lucy says optimistically.
“Bless your heart. You have a terrible sense of direction,” I mutter as she continues plunging toward a small stream.
“I heard that.” She stops abruptly and turns around. “If you don’t want to go on an adventure with Alexander and me, you can go back to camp with Preston and Carly.”
The dog stops tugging on his leash, looking toward something in the brush, on alert.
I stare over Lucy’s shoulder as a dark shape emerges from behind some huckleberry bushes.
A black bear.
If I can keep Lucy from turning around, she won’t even realize it’s there.
“I think we should go back and spend time with them. That way, we can annoy them. Doesn’t that sound fun?”
The bear is not in a hurry to get out of here, stopping next to the stream for a drink of water.
Alexander starts growling low in his throat.
Lucy whips her head around and immediately spots the bear—right before the dog jerks the leash and starts dragging us toward it.
I hold on to Lucy’s hand, but the slope is muddy and slick, and soon, the three of us are sliding down the hill toward the water—and the bear.
“Noooooo!” shrieks Lucy as Alexander keeps blazing a trail like he’s going to eat the bear for lunch.
The poor bear jerks its head up, as if realizing for the first time that it’s not alone. It lets out a snort and scampers away. It’s gone in only a matter of seconds, but our fate is sealed when Lucy and I bump into each other, and we fall down to our knees.
It’s a tangle of limbs and yells as we roll and slide all the way down the incline until we finally stop next to the small stream. We land like we’re attempting to make mud angels.
I turn to look at Lucy. Her whole front is covered in chunks of mud. Her face looks like she’s wearing one of those beauty masks.
And there are leaves and dirt everywhere in her hair.
Alexander is sitting a few feet away, grinning down at us like he wasn’t the one who instigated the fall.
“What was that you said about not seeing a bear?” She’s scowling at me, but it’s hard to take her seriously when there’s mud splattered all over her face.
She’s lying on top of me as she pokes my cheek. “You lied. And I should do something to get even. You’re such a stinker! No bears! We could have been eaten! We could be bear soup right now and we—”
I cut off the torrent of her words by leaning up and pressing a kiss against her lips.
She gasps and pulls back for half a second before she leans forward to kiss me back. I groan as she grasps my shoulders. She’s an enthusiastic kisser. And what started as a way to distract her from me being in trouble…has now crossed us into dangerous territory.
Because the last time I kissed her? We wrote it off as a natural thing. Two people who are mildly attracted to each other.
But now? Now I know better.
I’m kissing the woman I love.
Alexander barks loudly, breaking the kissing trance we’ve found ourselves in.
Lucy rolls off of me quickly, leaping to her feet. “I—we—I didn’t mean—”
I stand up much more slowly than she did. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
I should have told you I loved you first. But, of course, I keep that to myself.
She nods stiffly and turns back toward the main trail. “I guess we should get cleaned up,” she says softly.
And I don’t like that she sounds a little sad.
“What in the world happened to you?” Aunt Emily, Preston’s mom, asks as we walk back into camp.
Karis is playing chess with Grandpa, who looks rather amused at our whole situation.
“Oh my,” Grandma says with a laugh from where she’s sitting in a lawn chair, sipping a lemonade. “Lucy was cleaner when she worked on the dairy farm that day I came to visit.”
“We might have slipped into a mud hole after seeing a bear,” Lucy explains as she casually reaches over to slap my chest. “A bear you promised me we wouldn’t see.”
I’d apologize, except I did lie. I’ve seen plenty of bears around this lake. I just didn’t think we’d see one this late in the day.
“Ainsley!” Goldie calls.
Ainsley pops out of her tent.
“These two are going to need a shower. Can you go find them some quarters from my stash?”
Ainsley looks at us, then bursts out laughing.
“Yes, thank you. We needed that. You’re so helpful,” I tell her as she makes a wide berth.
Alexander looks like he would happily give her a muddy hug.
“I’d offer you a seat,” Mom starts to say, “but I don’t think I will.”
Everyone sitting around the camp bursts out laughing. Mom volunteers to grab towels and soap for us so that we don’t have to climb into our tent and get everything muddy.
Dad comes over and grabs Alexander’s leash from Lucy. “Why don’t you let me watch him while you two get cleaned up?”
“Thank you. That’s sweet,” Lucy exclaims.
“No problem,” Dad says. “I’ll even give him a bath.”
Ainsley returns a couple of minutes later and puts some quarters in Lucy’s hands. “There’s only enough for one shower.”
“I’ll just go to the camp hosts and get some change,” Lucy says.
“They’re all out,” Ainsley blurts. “We got the last of the quarters this morning. This is all there is.”
I narrow my eyes at her. But before I can say anything, Mom is standing in front of us, handing me two towels and a bottle of soap.
“Ainsley, go grab them some clean clothes out of their tent so they don’t track mud in there,” Mom tells her.
“And check my backpack for more quarters while you’re in there. Sometimes I throw some in the front pocket,” I call after her.
Lucy looks at the handful of coins and then both of us covered in mud. I can see her swallow before she speaks. “We can share.”
I’m pretty sure my eyes try to fall out at her suggestion. “Share?”
“Yeah, why don’t we just share the shower?” Her cheeks are turning a nice shade of pink, but her voice doesn’t waver.
“There’s not a problem with that, is there?” Mom asks.
“No, no problem,” I answer roughly.
Mom walks away to check on something cooking on the grill, giving us a moment to whisper back and forth.
“We’re both muddy,” she says, then drops her volume another notch. “We have to share a tent again tonight, and it wouldn’t make sense for one of us to get clean but not the other.”
“Are you sure?” I say.
Lucy nods quickly. “We’re both adults. It’s no big deal. At least we’ll be warm and clean.”
I nod, because my brain is not thinking about warm and clean. My brain is on the track of naked and in the shower with a beautiful woman.