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Life. Life did a number on me, but I wasn’t going down that rabbit hole. Especially not with a woman who looked at me the way no one around here had in a long time.
I shrugged and turned the radio up.
She shook her head, and a small smile passed over her lips. Like she was as glad as I was to be done with our discussion. We rode in silence for the twenty-minute drive out to the park. It was the most comfortable I’d been with another person in years.
A mix of towering pines, birches and maples spread out before us as I pulled into the small gravel lot in front of my favorite trail.
Sadie squinted at the trailhead sign. “Mosquito Cove Overlook Trail? Sounds…itchy.”
“Don’t let the name scare you off. The views are amazing.” I popped open the glove box and handed her a can of ninety percent Deet spray. “This time of year, this will keep you covered. If it was July, you’d need to be in a full beekeeper’s suit to keep from hating life.”
“Thanks for not bringing me during mosquito DEFCON one.” She laughed. Fishing through her backpack, she pulled out an expensive-looking camera. “How obnoxious is it if I stop and take pictures?”
“I don’t know about you, but I’ve got nowhere else to be tonight.” Besides with you, back at my house.
“Great.” She beamed.
I slung my own backpack over my shoulders, and we set out on the trail.
We took things slow so she could stop and take pictures of trees, and little woodland creatures, and light, as she put it. I appreciated the pace. I’d switched out from my running blade to my regular prosthesis after my run, and it had been a while since I’d taken a decent hike. The fewer opportunities for me to trip in front of her like a jackass, the better.
“Gonna let me see any of those?” I asked as she finished making the millionth adjustment to her camera while taking a picture of fog rising up from a small creek bed.
Still crouched next to the creek, she paused and looked up at me. “You want to?”
I nodded.
She rose slowly and walked over to me. Her proximity made my blood hum. I breathed a lungful of her scent, a little disappointed she didn’t smell like my shower gel anymore.
Turning the camera screen toward me, she chewed her bottom lip. I didn’t know anything technical about photography, but she’d managed to take a detail I would have passed right by and turn it into something magical.
I looked at the screen, then back at the tiny creek. “I half expect a river nymph to rise out of the water in that picture.”
She preened at the compliment. “The light out here is something else. Gives things an ethereal quality if you catch it right.”
It wasn’t the light that shone brightly in front of me. It was this woman. I couldn’t wait to share my favorite part of the trail with her. “Come on, the views get better.” We moved forward on the trail. “So, you’re a photographer,” I said.
“Only in my spare time.” She snorted. “A few of my pictures make it on the website along with my articles, but nothing like the ones I’m taking today.”
“Website. Right.” I racked my brain for why Brody said she was here but came up empty. “What is it you do?”
Her shoulders tensed before she took a breath and forced them down. “I write for a website called HypeKey.” She gave me an expectant look.
“Never heard of it.” I shrugged.
“It’s kind of like a regional travel magazine meets BuzzFeed meets, I don’t know…Taxicab Confessions?” She laughed.
“That makes you what? Perez Hilton meets Rick Steves?”
“Rick Steves, wow. Deep pull.” She quirked an eyebrow at me. “You don’t strike me as the type,” she said, using my earlier words against me.
“What, just because I’m small-town, I can’t like PBS?” I bumped her shoulder with mine, thinking nothing about the friendly gesture I hadn’t done with another person in years.
“Fair enough.”
I forced down a thick swallow before admitting a fact that would probably get my man card revoked. “I find his voice soothing.” I shifted my gaze to the ground, avoiding her amused expression. “Sometimes I have a hard time sleeping, but listening to that man talk for ten minutes about an ancient wooden footbridge in Switzerland puts me out like a light.”
Her reply was cut off by a gasp.
