by Christa Wick
“Okay, but I wasn’t paying as much attention to our route as I should have. I guess that’s another thing I have to learn.”
“Yeah, never count on the other person to be able to lead you out of the woods. They could get hurt and need you to make it back to the road or campsite then back to them again. This time, it’s all good.”
I walked beside Barrett, neither of us talking. I wondered if his brain was spinning in as many circles as mine and at the same speed. Probably not, he was probably just thinking about how he was helping a friend of the family once removed.
He was a smokejumper, after all. He probably had at least a little bit of a hero complex.
Reaching the campsite, Barrett had me get the branches out of the bundle while he grabbed one of the big logs he’d brought from home and the bag of sawdust. He showed me how to arrange the branches around the log and discussed a different arrangement if I didn’t have any large, dry pieces.
“Of course, I’ll make sure you have all the dry logs you need.”
Once the fire was going, he hauled his sleeping bag out and set the small tent up again. We sat in our chairs, roasting marshmallows on the end of twigs, our fingers sweet and sticky by the time the clock passed ten p.m.
“I guess I’ve been officially counted for the night.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The fresh air and the fire’s heat seemed to have a sedative effect on me. Once again I was nodding off and yawning.
Some of it was the anxiety, too. My reaction to stress was often sleep—a drowsiness I couldn’t control. I had once thought about joining the Army or Air Force to escape my family, but realized I would have been dead meat going through basic training.
Drill Sergeant screams at me.
I yawn in his face.
Boot meet backside.
“You stay out here much longer, I’m going to have to carry you into the trailer," Barrett teased.
I wanted to ask if that would be such a bad thing. Him picking me up, cradling me. But I didn’t ask, just shrugged.
“I feel bad you sleeping on the ground again.”
“You’d feel worse if you found out my Mama spanked me, old as I am, for sleeping inside the trailer.”
I turned my face from the fire, seeking camouflage in the shadows.
“I wasn’t suggesting…”
The words sounded hollow leaving me so I let them hang in the air between us. I had only meant sleeping, not anything else. And I was pretty sure Barrett knew that.
“Even if I was,” I picked back up. “You haven’t been…uh…celibate…your whole life.”
Turning to look at him, I caught a slow grin as it spread up his handsome face, that dark green gaze of his glowing like fairy lights as it reflected the fire’s dancing flames.
“Those women weren’t the kin of a man who was close as family.” His face grew deadly serious, the eyes solemn yet kind. “They weren’t a thousand miles away from home.”
“They weren’t pathetic,” I interjected.
Tipping his chair, Barrett kissed my forehead, his thumb stroking reassuringly at my cheek.
“There’s nothing pathetic about you, Quinn. I want you to feel safe out here in the woods. Safe and respected. I want you to know that I’ll help you as long as you need me to, no strings attached.”
Standing, he extended his hand. I slid my palm across his and squeezed then let Barrett lead me to the trailer.
He opened the door, found the pull cord for the battery-powered light and gave it a tug. I stepped inside, turned to face him, my body contorting to fit in the doorframe of the small trailer.
Barrett stroked a line down my nose, his finger stopping when it reached my lips.
“Sweet dreams,” he said, repeating the same words as the night before.
I nodded and closed the door, knowing that any sweet dreams I had would be filled with Barrett Turk.
9
Barrett
Arriving for Sunday dinner, I parked the truck around the side of the sprawling house instead of the circular drive as I had the first time I brought Quinn to Mama's. Signaling her to wait, I jogged over to the passenger door and opened it. I couldn’t imagine a better reward than the smile lighting her face—at least while I was keeping my imagination tightly reined in where the woman was concerned.
“We should probably decide on some kind of signal,” I said, walking her around to the back of the house where the porch faced the lake.
“Signal?”
Quinn stopped walking. I captured her wrist, certain she would bolt once she understood just how much of my family might show up.
“If it gets overwhelming. You let me know and I’ll come up with some reason we have to leave early.”
She took a deep breath in, held it, her tongue darting out to take a nervous lick at her top lip. Seeing the moist, pink tip emerge was a punch to my gut. My balls pulled tight and my cock reacted to the fresh infusion of hot blood, my shaft thickening and straightening.
Turning my head to the side, I faked a cough before continuing to brief Quinn just so I had a chance to compose myself.
“I can only guess at how many people are showing up. I know Sutton fetched Aunt Dotty. Or he’s fetching her now. That was Walker’s truck in the circle drive. That means him and his wife Ashley. Then there’s everyone that lives with Mama—Adler, Sage, Leah, and Jake. That puts it at nine, not counting me.”
Quinn started to pale, her head swiveling to look behind her.
“It’s not that anyone wants to throw all these people at you. But we sometimes forget how many of us there are. And nine is just scratching the surface.”
She nodded. “We don’t need a signal. I just need to do a few breathing exercises before we go in.”
I cocked a brow. Was this some kind of Hollywood thing?
“For the gallery showing,” she explained. “I was certain I was going to freak out having to mingle with all those people, needing and wanting them to like my work. The gallery owner taught me some techniques. With the gallery fire, I didn’t get to try them out then, but they helped a lot later.”
“Okay.”
Quinn closed her eyes. The lines of her face relaxed. The breaths she took were controlled, deep. I found myself subconsciously changing my rhythm to match her, my body swaying dangerously close to brushing against Quinn.
We had stopped by my house before coming out, both of us showering. She had used my soap and shampoo. This close, it was like smelling my scent on her, like our bodies had been intimately intertwined earlier in the day.
My fingers twitched with the need to touch her, to start by taking her delicate hand in mine, placing my lips against her warm flesh and moving upward. I took a long, silent step back right before she opened her eyes and indicated that she was ready.
“I should have mentioned something else before you went through all that breathing.”
Quinn waited, somehow holding onto the calm she had just found while I sensed mine completely unraveling.
“Some of my family is going to look at this as me bringing Jester’s kin over, helping you learn more about him and meet people in a new town…”
Seeing the first fresh line begin to scratch its way across Quinn’s forehead, I tried to bottle up the point I was getting to.
She stepped closer, her body leaning toward me.
“Please, go on.”
“Others are going to think of it more as me bringing a woman to Sunday dinner for the first time.”
“Oh…” Her lips parted in surprise.
I wanted to kiss them shut, then tease them open again. That was just the start of what I wanted to do with her lush body.
That Quinn was Jester’s kin was no longer part of the equation. I wanted her. I wanted her to meet my family, to like them, to see how she could so easily slide into my world.
“Well,” she smiled after a few awkward seconds. “The facts will settle eventually.”
“That’s cryptic.”
; Quinn shrugged, her smile growing bigger as she slid her hand in mine and continued in the direction I had been leading us.
“I thought I heard a vehicle pull up by the garage,” Mama called from the back porch. She had her apron on and a hand towel draped over her right shoulder. “You must have just missed Boone and Claire behind you. They pulled into the front drive about thirty seconds ago.”
“My father’s brother and his wife,” I whispered in Quinn’s ear before turning my gaze on Mama. “How full a house are we expecting?”
She held the door open, ushering us inside.
“Well, Emerson sends his regrets. Work, he says, but it’s an easy excuse for him since he can always claim national security when I try to poke a hole in his story. You saw Walker’s truck out front, so him and Ashley. Still waiting on Sutton to get here with Dotty.”
Shutting the door, Lindy gave a little eye roll. “As Boone’s kids didn’t spend much time up at Jester’s, I told them they’d have to wait to satisfy their curiosity. You can imagine the trouble I had driving that idea into Siobhan’s head and getting it to actually stick.”
“She’s going to be a cop one day,” I reminded Quinn. “If she liked math more, she’d probably be a scientist instead. She can be a bit too curious about things and relentless in looking for answers.”
Sage came into the kitchen with Ashley and Claire.
“Sage you know,” I said, making the introductions. “This is my aunt Claire, Boone’s wife, and Ashley. We’re still not sure how Walker convinced her to marry him.”
“Well, it’s not every day a man throws an entire tree at a Jeep to get your attention,” Ashley laughed.
“True,” Quinn smiled. “Barrett settled for jumping in front of mine with an axe in each hand.”
Ashley winked at me. “Busted.”
I rolled my lips, my body flushing as hot as when I was rigged up in my jumpsuit.
“Aunt Dotty is in the great room,” Sage said, saving him further embarrassment. “She’s got all her photo albums with her and can’t wait to meet you.”
“If it’s alright with Quinn,” Lindy started, “you ladies can take her in to meet Dotty. I need these muscles for a few seconds.”
She squeezed my arm, but I knew when Mama was stretching the truth.
“I’ll be right along,” I assured Quinn.
Once she was out of the room, I let my mask slip as I looked questioningly at my mother.
“You know what I told your daddy when you came home from the Army?”
I shook my head. I had gone through a wandering phase when I left the military. I knew where I wanted to be, but not what I wanted to do with myself.
“You were sampling a lot of girls then, some of them at the same time.”
Cheeks burning hot all over again, I shoved my hands in my pockets like I had when I was little and getting scolded.
“Your daddy wondered when you were going to make up your mind about the girls.”
She drew one of my hands out of its pocket and brought it to her cheek.
“I told him you’d make up your mind the first time you laid eyes on the right one. And it would be true and lasting. You’ve always had a special sense when it comes to people. Animals, too.”
“Mama, I brought Quinn here to learn about her uncle and to meet some more folks from around the area.”
“Of course.”
If I didn’t know better, I would have said Mama was smirking at me, her smile too loaded with meaning to be genuine.
“You were always happy to let a certain kind of woman chase you. But you always stayed away from the nice ones, child. Quinn is one of the nice ones.”
I closed my eyes, Quinn’s face swimming up in front of me. Beautiful, vulnerable, trusting and wary, every turn a contradiction and a challenge.
“I know, Mama.” Pulling away, I gestured toward the double doors that led into the dining room and the great room beyond that. “Trust me, I know.”
10
Barrett
Sitting in front of the coffee table, her photo albums spread open on its surface, Aunt Dotty held court. Quinn sat directly next to her on the right. Boone was on the left, sorting through one of the albums to find pictures of a young Jester.
“Wow,” Quinn marveled. “He was quite dashing in uniform.”
“That’s right before he shipped out to Asia,” Dotty said. “We still called him Jasper then. He was different when he came back.”
“Still a great guy,” Boone clarified, pulling out a picture of Jester on a boat in combat fatigues, a foreign jungle eating away at the banks of the river he traveled upon.
Dotty turned a wet gaze on Quinn. “Yes, that he was. He just decided he would not have any sons who could be sent off to war or daughters who had to sit and wait for that knock on the door telling them their soldier or sailor was never coming home except in a coffin.”
“Is that why he never married?” Quinn asked.
Dotty nodded and, for the first time, I understood why my grandaunt had also remained unmarried.
Resting some of my weight on the back of the couch, I put my hand on Quinn’s shoulder. She looked up at me, her dark gaze and trembling smile signs that she had just glimpsed the same truth about her uncle and my aunt.
“Sutton, you brought that box in?”
Sutton snapped to attention at Dotty’s question. “Yes, ma’am.”
Walking over to a side table, he picked up a wooden box about six inches wide and deep and some nine inches tall. He carried it toward the coffee table, leaning forward to hand it to Dotty.
She waved it away. “My hands are in bad shape today. Let Quinn open it.”
Seeing her take a rough swallow, I gave Quinn’s shoulder another reassuring squeeze. I was aware that not every gaze in the room was fixed on Quinn and the box. All three of my brothers present were keenly watching me, particularly the small touches I exchanged with Quinn.
She pulled a finely carved crow from the box, the wood a deep reddish gold with black striations.
“Did my uncle make this?”
Dotty nodded. “It’s Makassar ebony. He carved it while he was over…there. He used to call me Crow Girl because I had one that would eat out of my hand when we were teens.”
“This is the only piece of his I’ve seen,” Quinn told Dotty. “There’s nothing left of the cabin or the totem poles.”
Boone passed a photo to Quinn, she held the crow in one hand and the picture in the other. The image showed Jester somewhere around age forty, the work on his first totem pole half complete.
“Look for other spots on the land,” Dotty suggested. “There’s close to a hundred acres. He had hunting blinds and I suspect another small building or two. He’d be out in his woods for days without going back to the cabin.”
Dotty fixed her bright blue gaze on Quinn.
“Tell me, do you plan on staying up on the mountain or at least here in town, or will you sell once the title transfers?”
I bit down on my back teeth to keep from giving Quinn another squeeze, this time for my own comfort. I didn’t think she had anything to go back to in California and all signs seemed to be pointing to her staying. Walker had been out to Jester’s with Sutton and accounted for which burls had survived the fire. He had called before heading to the homestead with some rough numbers for what Quinn could expect. Weather permitting, Walker would extract the highest value burls first—once the land was officially Quinn’s.
“I want to stay,” she answered. “It looks like I’ll be able to afford it, especially if I can find work. The challenge is being at the property at six in the morning and ten at night. I think prisoner work release would be more flexible than what Mr. Cross has ‘relented’ to.”
I smiled at the twist she put on Cross “relenting.”
Mama glanced at her watch, no doubt timing what she had cooking in the oven to perfection.
“Don’t you worry on the job front,” she told Quinn. “Sage is trying
to bring an emergency clinic to Willow Gap as a sort of hub for the surrounding smaller towns and ranches. She’s chasing after several grants. She could use an assistant on that and the ranch.”
“Absolutely,” Sage agreed from the opposing couch. “You just figure out a day this week and we’ll sit down and find what fits for you. I know I want to do a PR push, but graphics aren't in my wheelhouse. And the ranch's website really needs a refresh.”
“Thank you, both,” Quinn said, her voice growing more raw. Eyes shining, she looked over her shoulder at me.
Dotty picked up another of her albums to thumb through.
“That’s decided, then,” she said. “But you’re going to need something a little bigger than that teardrop Barrett went and bought to get you through three months up there.”
Quinn was still looking at me when Aunt Dotty dropped her little bombshell.
My bombshell, really. And I didn’t know how my grandaunt knew that I had gone out and bought the little trailer. I wanted to get a read on Sutton’s face, but I couldn’t just unhook from Quinn’s gaze.
My cheeks got hot. I couldn’t keep my mouth from twisting. Couldn’t keep my brain from spinning with the question of whether the new information would make Quinn back away from my helping her.
All I could do was offer a guilty shrug.
A forgiving smile spread across her face. My worries melted away.
Shifting her attention to Aunt Dotty, Quinn broadened her smile.
“I’m just thankful for each day I can get closer.”
The old woman nodded, her bright blue gaze soft with approval.
I didn’t get a chance to explain myself until the drive back to Jester’s.
“I’m sorry for giving you enough reason to think someone was lending the trailer.”
Quinn turned in her seat and stared at me, her face lit by the setting sun.
“It wasn’t expensive at all,” I continued, hoping to put her mind at ease. “And I’ll be able to sell it back close to the same price when there’s no more use for it. Maybe better than what I paid.”