5. FIVE
FIVE
Bastien
The scent of Vera’s cheap perfume hits me as soon as she opens the front door, and I have to turn away for a moment to avoid letting her see the way my nose wrinkles.
God, I miss the real scent of her. I haven’t really ever thought about it before, but ever since Christmas a couple weeks ago, it’s been running through the back of my mind.
It’s driving me crazy that I can’t remember the exact bright notes of it.
“Hey, sorry. Just give me a second.” She leaves the door open, hurrying back inside the house to grab a rucksack and a bottle of water and an enormous puffer jacket that looks like she’s smuggling a sleeping bag for an elephant into my truck.
“Did you want to pack a tent and a hot water bottle too?” I tease her. “We’re only going to be out of the office for a few hours today.”
She pokes me in the chest defiantly. Well she tries, but she’s so much shorter it ends up being my belly she jabs her finger into, and I have to hold back a laugh.
“Who is always complaining about how people are always underestimating the national parks to their peril? Hmm?”
She has a point. “Well, good to see you’re going to take me seriously as a mentor.”
I expect a joke, but she stops in the act of climbing into the passenger side of my truck. “Of course, Bas. Seriously. You don’t know how much this means to me. Helping me finish my course, that is. You’re a real life saver.”
“Nah, it’s nothing. Don’t mention it.” I hurry around to the driver’s side so she can’t see how fucking awkward her gratitude makes me. Of course I’d do this for her. I’d do just about anything for her. I just don’t want her to get the wrong idea about what that means.
I start the engine, and she turns to me with a big, excited grin as I pull out of the driveway. “So what are we doing today, boss?”
“You, ah, you don’t have to do that.”
“Do what?” She gives me an innocent look as if I don’t know she’s winding me up.
“I’m not your boss.”
“Oh, OK, teach.”
“Yeah, no. Not that either.” God, that makes some of the inappropriate thoughts I’ve had about her recently basically criminal.
“Jedi master?”
A laugh bursts from me, and I shake my head. “OK, if you want to be a total nerd.”
“Fine, fine, but if you’re not the boss, then I get to choose the music.” She reaches for the radio dial on my stereo before I can stop her and switches the channel.
Not that I mind. I do not mind one bit listening to her singing and watching her dancing in her seat all the way to the ranger station at the entry to the park.
The sky is gray and getting darker as I drive. Looks like snow. It’s sure cold enough.
My truck eventually heats up, and Vera warms her hands in front of the heater vents, still singing. I’m surprised she didn’t complain more, to be honest. It’s pretty frosty in the early morning air. I don’t normally feel it, but I’m sure a little human her size is freezing!
I park the truck in front of the shed where we keep most of the large equipment.
There’s a small visitor center to the right-hand side, with an office behind and a basic kitchen.
And that’s it, really. Just us and the wilderness.
I’ve never really thought about how isolated my work is until now when it’s just me and her.
I wonder for a second if I should have asked Riley to come along and chaperone.
Which is ridiculous. He has been back in the city since the day after Boxing Day, back to work.
And anyway, there’s no risk here because Vera and I are just friends.
She’s basically like my kid sister. I’ve certainly never worried about being alone with her before.
Shaking my head at my own stupidity, I lead Vera to the visitor center and open up. Inside, the building is cold. The boiler has been turned off to conserve power over the holiday shutdown, and the center is still closed to visitors.
By the time I’ve switched it on and set up the little fan heater which I keep in the cupboard beside my desk, Vera’s already walking around the visitor center, looking over everything like it’s the most fascinating thing she’s ever seen.
I know she’s been up to the park before.
Years ago, before Tilly’s MS got so bad, the Ballards always used to hike the trails up here on weekends and go on picnics.
Riley could never understand why I wanted to come too instead of us staying behind and hanging out at my place, but I love it up here.
Probably why I wanted to be a park ranger, now that I think about it.
Some of my best memories of childhood are from here.
Which says a lot seeing as my parents almost never came.
“God, I remember this map from when I was a kid,” she says, making me poke my head out of my office to look. I’m waiting for my computer to grumble back to life anyway, so I walk out to stand beside her, looking up at the old brown-and-white topographical map of the park.
“I mean, what’s not to love? The way they got the spelling of the First Nations people wrong or the place where some teenage dirtbag drew a dick on there when the old superintendent wasn’t looking?”
Vera snorts. “What dick? I don’t see any dick.”
Feeling juvenile, I point it out to her, and she squints, turning her head to one side.
“I mean, I’ve got news for whoever drew that.” She laughs. “I hope the artist was female and a virgin, because otherwise I’m worried.”
I shake my head. “Well, whoever they are, they’re probably in their forties or fifties by now. It’s been there a long time. So hopefully they’ve found out what a real dick looks like.”
Vera opens her mouth as if she’s about to say something and then apparently thinks better of it.
I think better of asking her if she has any firsthand experience and instead return to my office to find my computer has finally booted up.
“Hmm. There’s a message here to say that there’s been a bit of a landslide on the trail down to the hot springs after the rain.
I want to check that out before the park re-opens.
Other than that, it’s mostly paperwork today, I’m afraid.
And then tomorrow we get the pleasure of checking all the toilet and shower blocks. ”
“Let me guess, intern’s job to clean them all?”
“I’m afraid in a park this size, you never graduate from that kind of dirty work completely, but no.
Not unless there’s a leak or a burst pipe.
There’s a cleaning crew who will come out and do that, but since they don’t work over shut down, we have to check this week.
Sometimes you get animals nesting in there and whatnot. ”
She nods. “Well then, shall I put a pot of coffee on? Want me to help clear emails or something?”
I grin. “Coffee sounds great.” I wish I’d taken an intern before now.
Seems like it’s the perfect way to chase away the winter blues.
Mind you, no other intern would have made my chest tighten in that particular way it does when Vera smiles or laughs.
Other interns couldn’t make me laugh at myself rather than getting in my head and moping about my life.
Maybe she’s ruined me for other interns.
Once my inbox is cleared, we head out to the collapsed trail to the hot springs. We have to park the truck about a mile away from the area I think is most likely to be affected, since there’s no vehicle access on the slope here. The ground is too unstable.
The wind has picked up, and when we get out it licks at all the exposed places on our bodies. I don’t often feel the cold, being a shifter and all, but in weather like this my bear has a hard time staying on the go. It’s always my instinct to snuggle up somewhere warm and take a nap.
Vera pulls her beanie down lower over her brows, and we walk close together with our heads down.
The ground has dried since the rain last week, but it’s still unstable in places along the trail.
Vera is surefooted, though. I’m not truly worried about her.
I know she’s an experienced hiker, but I keep an eye on her just in case, letting her take the lead so I can.
“There!” Vera stops, pointing at a section of the path up ahead. Sure enough, the embankment above the path has collapsed and sent a torrent of dirt and mud that covers the trail completely.
It’s a big job. Bigger than we can take care of today. I’ll probably need to get an engineer out to make sure we get it structurally sound before we can open the trail again. “Let’s get some photos,” I tell Vera, who takes out her phone and gets to work.
We document the extent of the damage, and I drop a pin in our location.
Vera props her hands on her hips, looking up at the slope. “You know, what this trail needs is some vegetation.”
I look up in surprise. “You think?”
She nods. “The whole slope is going to stay unstable unless something is planted there. The roots will help stabilize the topsoil and prevent this stuff from happening in the future.”
I nod. Makes sense. A lot of sense. “You’ll make a good ranger,” I tell her.
She beams at me. “You think so?”
“I know it.”
Her cheeks are pink from the cold, but they flush a deeper shade at my compliment, and I have to bite back my instinct to shower her in them.
On the way back we get to a section of track that’s wide enough for both of us to walk abreast, and we fall into easy conversation, the tension from Christmas forgotten.
It’s almost like the old us, the us we used to be when we were kids, before I fucked everything up by not having the right words to say after humiliating her when she tried to kiss me.
Well, almost like the old us, only I keep turning my head to catch a whiff of her scent because the perfume has worn off a little and every now and then I get a hint of warmth and sweet tartness like lemonade, cranberries, or orange rind, with a bit of clove and burned sugar.
It’s like I remember, only richer, deeper.
It’s so distracting it takes me by surprise when she speaks. I almost bump into her.
“Do you ever get lonely up here over winter?” she asks.
“Oh! Yeah. Over the summer I always think I’m looking forward to the low season, but I do miss the bustle of all the seasonal workers and volunteers. Working alone all day and then going home to an empty house can get a little depressing.”
“Do you always go home alone, then?”
I almost fall over my own feet at the shy look she casts me. “You ah… you’re asking if I have a girlfriend?”
She snorts. “Sure. Or girlfriends. Or boyfriends.”
There’s a beat where I scramble for the right words. Do I tell her the truth? Will she ask why?
“So do you?” She’s playing it cool, but I catch the way she watches me from the corner of her eye. She cares about my answer, which makes me nervous. I have to toe a line here.
I clear my throat, but just as the words are about to leave my mouth, her foot slips.
She’s close to the edge. There’s no railing on this part of the track, and the slope down the hill is steep and rocky.
My bear reacts instantly, before I even process the choice.
I grab her around the waist, hauling her against me and slamming my back into the embankment on the safe side.
Her heart is beating fast. I feel it pulsing against my hand where it rests over her ribcage.
Her scent—her real scent—fills my nostrils, and to my great shame my cock stirs against her back.
It’s then I realize how the height difference between us means my grip has slipped a long way north of where it started. Instead of her waist, my hands are cupping her breasts, and even the thick jacket she’s wearing isn’t enough to disguise the distinctive feminine shape.
Shit.
Neither of us moves for a long, silent moment. Very slowly, I release my grip a fraction. “You good, Vera?”
Her voice is shaky when she speaks, and the scent I thought I imagined before has grown ten times as strong. “Y-yeah.”
“Gonna let you go now, OK?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
All the way back to the car, neither of us talks. Neither mentions the place I grabbed her or the way my palms still throb with the phantom feel of her small, firm breasts which fit so perfectly there.
Fuck, when did she get breasts? It feels like I blinked and the flat-chested tomboy who used to follow me and Riley around grew up into a beautiful woman. A woman who smells ripe and sweet and breedable.
It’s cold, but I leave the window down all the way back to the ranger station in case I do or say something too fucking stupid for words.
I need Riley and the Ballards in my life. This last month has made that fact hit home harder than it has for a while. I won’t do anything to compromise that, especially making a move on Vera when I’d only end up hurting her.
I’m too big. Too clumsy. Too much of a beast. If today doesn’t make that abundantly clear, nothing could.
I’ve got to work harder on keeping my big paws off her.