Chapter Twelve
Saturday turned out to be a blustery day for late spring, with the warm sunshine offset by a chilly wind.
Kenzie didn’t mind at all because she wasn’t letting a rare day off from the restaurant be ruined by the need for a heavy sweatshirt and a warm hat.
Once they were out in the woods, the trees would help block some of the wind, anyway, and at least it would keep the bugs down.
“Do you have your gloves?” Frank asked as he tossed his own pair on the seat of the utility side-by-side they’d be taking out onto the trails.
The machine had a bench seat and a dump bed on the back. During the winter it had a plow on the front, and it didn’t have the speed or comfort of the fancier machines, but it was a workhorse and it did what they needed it to do.
“I’ve got my gloves. The box of garbage bags are in the back, along with the chainsaw, shovels and rakes. The cooler. I think we’ve got everything we need.”
They played a round of Rock, Paper, Scissors to see who would get to drive first, and Kenzie climbed in on the passenger side. They had about a fifteen-minute ride through a private shortcut to get to the field where everybody was meeting before breaking off into work parties.
It didn’t even surprise Kenzie anymore that the first person she saw when they broke out of the trees was Danny. Even though there were at least thirty or forty people milling around, something drew her gaze straight to the spot where he was standing with Rob and Hannah, talking to another group.
And it also wasn’t a surprise when he turned and found her right away, his gaze locking with hers as he smiled and lifted a hand.
“Looks like a decent turnout,” Frank said, reminding her that, no matter how it felt sometimes, she and Danny weren’t the only people on the planet.
“That’s good. We should be able to cover a lot of ground.” When she saw her uncle, she pointed in that direction. “Jim’s over there.”
Once they’d parked and gotten out of the UTV, Kenzie deliberately positioned herself so her back was to the Kowalski family and she was facing her own.
It was the only way she’d be able to concentrate on what they were saying.
She’d still know Danny was back there, but at least he wouldn’t be in her line of sight.
Her cousins Billy and Chris had joined Uncle Jim for the trail work, but Rhylee wasn’t with them.
Nor were Aunt Karen or Billy’s wife. Not being a fan of off-road recreation, the three women had gone into town to see a movie.
Rhylee had invited Kenzie, but she liked being out on the trails whenever she had the chance—which wasn’t often.
And the trail system brought a lot of business to the restaurant, so she’d give back when she could.
There was a lot of the catching-up kind of talk, because it was rare they were all together outside of the big holidays, but then her dad grinned and waved to somebody behind Kenzie.
“Hey, Hannah’s here.”
“I met those two Kowalski brothers when I got here,” Billy said, also waving. “They seem like good guys.”
Kenzie knew that meant the three of them were on their way over, and she did her best to steel herself before turning around.
This close, she could see Danny looked tired. His eyes didn’t light up as much when he smiled, and there were hints of shadows under his eyes. “Looks like you guys are in our group.”
Frank laughed. “The new guys get to be the leaders?”
Rob shrugged. “The guy with the clipboard said so. And we’ve been riding these trails since I was on a little 50cc machine, so we know our way around.”
“I’m just messing with you. They usually try to group by experience and tools, and you guys know your way around a chainsaw. I don’t need to see the clipboard to know we’re being sent out to deal with the trees blocking the trail on the northern end.”
When Kenzie’s gaze flicked to Danny, he gave her an exaggerated grimace. Chainsaws again.
She didn’t really get a chance to talk to him at all over the next few hours.
It was a long ride to get out to where the fallen trees had been reported, plus Frank would occasionally stop so Kenzie could jump out and grab some litter—mostly beer cans tossed into the snow by snowmobilers.
It was often a mess when the snow finally melted.
Then, when they reached the spot, the chainsaws were fired up, and she and Hannah were given the job of dragging branches away and into the woods, well off the trail.
They’d been at it awhile when she told Hannah she was going to go off and find a private spot to pee. By the time she got back, everybody was taking a break, and she tried not to notice that, for the entire time it took her to walk back up the trail, Danny never took his eyes off of her.
“I need a hand,” she said to the group at large. “Believe it or not, somebody dumped a TV in the woods.”
Jim laughed. “I believe it. Frank, you remember that year we found a washing machine out there?”
“I do,” her dad replied. “Looked like it was a hell of a lot more work getting it out into the middle of the woods to dump it for free than it would have been to pay the ten bucks at the dump.”
“Unless there was a body in it,” Danny said, and everybody turned to stare at him. “Sorry. Occupational hazard.”
“I thought that was your uncle,” Kenzie pointed out.
“Usually, but it happens sometimes.” He picked his gloves up off the front of the side-by-side. “I’ll give you a hand with that. I’d rather haul garbage than run a chainsaw.”
They walked down the trail in silence until she found the spot she’d left the narrow dirt road for a much smaller game trail. Then she led him through the woods until she heard him chuckle.
“What?” she asked, turning back.
“How far did you go?”
She rolled her eyes and then continued on, careful not to let any branches snap back and hit him. “I have a shy bladder, thank you very much. And also, your body in the washing machine theory was deeply flawed.”
“Why is that?”
“Because going out in the woods with a washing machine would attract a lot more attention than just going out there with the dead body. Hell, you could dress it up and put a helmet on it, then strap it into the passenger seat of a side-by-side and nobody would even look twice.”
“Okay, nobody appreciates the way your mind works more than I do, but you’re scaring me a little.”
Kenzie laughed and then came to a stop, pointing at the television off to their left. “There it is.”
He frowned, looking back in the direction they’d come from. “I can’t believe you walked this far out.”
She shrugged. “I actually went a bit farther. I was just lost in thought and glad to be away from the chainsaws for a few minutes.”
“What were you thinking about?”
“Not how to dispose of dead bodies,” she said, making him laugh. She didn’t want to tell him she’d actually been thinking about all the fun things they could get up to if he’d joined her and they were alone in these woods. The irony was too much.
Danny nudged the television with his boot. “How old do you think this thing is? It certainly predates the whole flat-screen craze.”
“I don’t think it’s older than me, but it’s close. It’s not very big, so I was going to carry it as far as the trail, and then I’d just drive the machine back and grab it. It’s just a little too heavy for me to carry that far, though.”
“No pressure to prove my manliness or anything,” he muttered, making her chuckle.
“It’s a good thing you’ve been swinging that splitting maul to warm up these muscles,” she teased, but when she moved forward to squeeze his biceps, she stumbled over an exposed root.
Danny caught her, keeping her from falling by stepping forward and putting his arms around her when she crashed into him. Instinctively, she clutched him and then—her body pressed to his—she tilted her head back, laughing.
When Kenzie looked into his eyes, though, and the heat she saw there flooded through her veins, the amusement faded quickly. As he lowered his mouth to hers, she melted against him and closed her eyes.
The kiss was everything she dreamed it would be—tentative and gentle, deepening until he was devouring her. He cupped the back of her neck with one hand, the other pressed against the small of her back, holding her close to him.
She never wanted it to end, but eventually Danny’s grip on her neck loosened, and, with one final sweep of his tongue, he broke off the kiss and rested his forehead against hers.
Trying to get her breath back and waiting for the world to feel steady under her feet again, Kenzie couldn’t hold back the giggle that bubbled up from her throat.
He stepped back, bending slightly and peering sideways to see her face. “What’s so funny?”
“All the times we’ve gone for lovely walks in the woods and you finally kiss me when we’re on glorified garbage detail?”
He didn’t laugh with her. If anything, he looked even more serious. “Finally? Does that mean you’ve been waiting? Because I’ve wanted to kiss you pretty much since we met, but I wasn’t sure you wanted me to. In fact, I was about to apologize for overstepping when you laughed at me.”
“I didn’t laugh at you,” she protested, nudging his shoulder. “I was amused by the situation. And…okay, yes. I’ve been waiting for that kiss, but we’re friends and we can’t be more than friends, so I was just going to keep on waiting without ever telling you. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“We can’t be more than friends?” he asked, holding her gaze. “You’re sure about that?”
“I’ve thought about it a lot, pretty much since we met, like you said,” she confessed. “And our lives are what they are, so no, we can’t really be more than friends.”
He searched her eyes for a long time before sighing and giving her a ghost of a smile. “I don’t want to lose you as a friend. But, just so you know, I’m going to keep thinking about it.”