1. Rickie #2
Slowly I sit up again and flick a spider off my foot. The view between the blueberry bushes offers me an oblique look at Daphne. She’s hosing down some of the wooden barrels the Shipleys use to age their cider. After berry-picking, she hustled over there to keep her distance from me again.
She’s a tough nut to crack. But I’m a patient man.
I’ve had to be. These last couple of years have tested me in every possible way.
Daphne thinks I’m cocky, and she used to be right.
But these days my cocky routine is more about muscle memory than confidence.
It’s hard to be a shell of your former self at twenty-two.
When I flirt with Daphne, though, it’s not an act.
She is very interesting to me, and not just because she’s ridiculously pretty.
It’s her attitude that really gets me going.
She has a brisk efficiency that I find sexy—a no-nonsense way of moving her body.
She doesn't have time for your bullshit and she doesn’t suffer fools.
She's not particularly warm or friendly. That doesn’t bother me, because neither am I. She’s the angry Shipley. And it works for me.
I’m dying to know why she avoids me. We met a couple times before I came to stay here, and it's completely possible that I offended her and don't remember.
I sure as hell hope not. I wish she’d soften up toward me, otherwise it's going to be a long summer. We’re sharing a bathroom, for starters. I’m staying on the second floor of the main farmhouse, where she and her mother also live.
Meanwhile, Dylan is living it up with his girlfriend in the bunkhouse, which is a separate building.
They need their privacy, I guess, because those two have more sex than soldiers returning from war.
Last week I caught them going at it in the middle of the meadow on a blanket.
Had to walk an extra quarter mile just to get out of range of all the moaning.
Across the way, Daphne straightens up again. Her tank top is just a little damp from the spray of the hose, and I find myself wondering what she’d look like soaking wet.
I’ve had a strange time of it lately. Hookups haven’t really been very high up on my list of things to do.
But I’ll be damned if Daphne Shipley hasn’t shaken the dust off my rusty libido.
There’s something about those long limbs that gets me going.
Her thick brown hair is always trying to escape a soft-looking knot on top of her head.
I’d like to pull the clip off that hair until it tumbles down around her bare shoulders.
In the middle of this evil but entertaining thought, I hear just the slightest rustle from the other direction. The sound is far enough away that I can’t tell if it’s a person or a creepy-eyed chicken.
But I sit up either way. It would be embarrassing to be caught lying down on the job. So I'm back to work, tugging another weed out of the ground, when someone comes around the corner of the chicken coop. I look up, ready to call out a greeting. But the visitor is not, in fact, one of the Shipleys.
It's a black bear. A real one—a full-grown motherfucking bear, and it's holding a white bucket in its jaws.
And now I understand that expression frozen with fear . It takes me several long glugs of my heart to react, since I'm paralyzed with indecision. Should I stand up and run? Shout? Play dead? The beast is just a few paces away. I can see the whiskers on its snout.
It takes another step, and that’s what gets me moving. I stand up, but my shout gets caught in my throat. I grab the dandelion fork off the grass—it’s my only weapon. But when I take a step backward, I trip on the goddamn Garden Pad and go down on my ass.
The bear watches me scramble around on the ground like a wounded cockroach. I pop up again with a strangled sound. And I turn my body as far as I dare, trying to warn Daphne. “BEAR!” I yelp in a voice much too high for a grown man’s.
But it’s enough. Her head swings in this direction. The bear drops his bucket, and it lands with a loud smack. Even if he’s about to eat me for lunch, at least Daphne can get away. I see her running toward the tractor shed. At least one of us can flee to safety.
Clutching the garden tool, I take a slow step backward. “Fuck off, bear. Go on back to the Hundred Acre Wood or where-the-fuck-ever.”
He grabs the bucket’s handle in his mouth again and drags it a few feet away from me. And then I edge backward, wondering if it’s safe to make a run for it.
But then I hear a sound behind me. And I risk everything to take a look over my shoulder.
Daphne storms out of the tractor shed. And she’s carrying…is that a shotgun? Before I can blink, she lifts that gun and blasts a shot into the sky, handling the recoil like a champ.
My head whips around again as the bear drops the bucket with a loud thump and then trots his fat ass away from me. He keeps right on going, ambling across the meadow and finally disappearing into the tree line.
“Holy shit!” I shout, turning around to see Daphne, who’s watching him go. She’s holding the shotgun carefully but casually, muzzle pointed toward the ground, her posture a hundred percent badass in her tiny little shorts. “Did you see that? It was a motherfucking bear .” I’m still in shock.
She shrugs. Shrugs! “They like the sunflower seeds. Those assholes. I hope he didn’t break the bucket.” She passes me to pick up the bucket and give it a shake. The lid is still screwed onto it, and I can hear the sunflower seeds rattle inside.
Then she walks past me again, on her way to lock the gun away. I watch her long, tanned legs march past, and I’m both turned on and a little frightened of her.
I like my women feisty. This one particularly. And I’m starting to think that this summer could be a whole lot of fun.