by Erin Wright
Yeah, nothing useful for a camping trip.
“Isn’t the John Deere dealership busy this time of year?” she asked as Levi knelt down next to the coolers and began pulling food out, handing it up to her. Her brilliant plan had worked. She gave herself a mental pat on the back for that one. “How are you able to take Monday off?”
He shrugged, his shirt pulling tight across his delicious muscles as he continued to dig. The food just kept coming so Tenny had to turn sideways so she could continue to drool over him as he worked, but that view? Totally worth it.
“I’ve been there long enough that Rocky pretty much lets me set my own hours,” he murmured distractedly, rifling through the cooler with a muttered curse. Before Tenny could question him on that – Moose had never had that sort of latitude and it was his father’s dealership – Levi pulled out a bag of carrots triumphantly. “There you are, you little buggers.” He started to hand it up to her when he actually took a good look at her. “Oh, whoa!” he said, scrambling to his feet and beginning to unload her arms. A sack of potatoes, a bag of celery, onions and garlic and a few more items later that she didn’t even recognize, he could finally look her in the eye again.
He stared down at her for a moment, and then let out a small laugh. “If I’d handed you those carrots, where, exactly, would you have put them? On top of your head?”
She shrugged, which was considerably easier now that he’d taken half her load away. “I still had a pinky free. I was going to hold it with that.”
He shook his head, kicking the cooler top closed with his booted foot and then heading back towards the fire. “It’s okay to complain, you know,” he said as they walked. “You can say, ‘Levi, I’m drowning in food over here.’”
A second card table had appeared from somewhere, pushed up together with the first one, and they began laying out the food. As they did so, Tennessee contemplated his words. They were a foreign concept, to say the least. Complaining about something just meant that she’d have whatever it was piled on top of her twice over. Hate practicing the piano? Butt-on-bench time would be doubled from two hours a day to four. Hate caviar? That’s all they’d eat for a week until she could learn to swallow it without grimacing.
Before she could think of how to respond to his comment – if she could even think of a good response to give – Levi held out a short knife to her. “Are you good with chopping up celery?” he asked, clearly worried that her complete lack of camping knowledge also extended to cutlery.
“Absolutely!” she said, snatching the knife out of his hand and getting to work on the green stalks. Knives? Now there was something she knew something about.
He stopped, mesmerized by her quick and efficient strokes of the knife blade, and then murmured, “Hidden talents,” before starting in on cubing the potatoes.
She hid her smile of triumphant. Maybe she didn’t know jackshit about tents or camping in general, but she wasn’t completely worthless. Too bad there wouldn’t be a chance for her to show off her ability to put together a smashing menu, paired with just the right wines. Maybe she could be in charge of the menu next time.
Next time…
It had a nice ring to it.
Chapter 7
Levi
The campfire was crackling, sending sparks up into the gathering twilight and adding a homey cheer to their camp-out. Levi’d never admit it out loud, of course, but his favorite part of camping was the campfire. It chased the darkness away, casting a circle of light where staying inside of it meant safety and security.
Hmmm…
What was it that made him love camping so much, other than the campfires, of course?
Sitting next to Tennessee, who was busy trying to get pine sap off her fake fingernails and muttering about the lack of civility out in the wilderness, he thought back over his childhood. Maybe he hadn’t been camping since he was old enough to walk – yeah, okay, that was an exaggeration – but he had been camping since he was pretty young. Moose’s family would take him along with them, even Linda joining in on the fun, and they’d spend a week up in the mountains, away from the stress of the world. Rocky Garrett wasn’t one to take much time off from the dealership, but he was always willing to go camping.
And then it hit Levi – the realization so obvious, he felt like an idiot for missing it before.
My dad never took me camping.
That was it.
Never, on a single camping trip, had Levi been beaten black and blue, screamed at, backhanded, or called names, because his dad was never there with him. Why leave his recliner and his blaring TV and his alcohol, all to go sit in a tent up in the wilderness?
No, camping was a Steve-Scranton-free zone, which made it…wonderful.
On the other hand, Rocky Garrett had always been kind to him, treating him like a second son, and yeah, maybe he’d been hard on Moose and what had happened with the dealership wasn’t cool, but…well, Rocky still had Steve beat to pieces. He was practically ready for sainthood in comparison, even if Moose didn’t see it that way.
Moose didn’t understand what it was like to truly have a shitty father, and Levi was simultaneously glad for it, and jealous as hell.
What would it have been like growing up to know that he was going to be eating dinner every single night? What if he could’ve known that he could always count on heat coming out of the ducts during the wintertime? What if he’d been able to have someone wash and dry his clothes for him, rather than having to scrub things out in the bathtub and hanging them up over the shower curtain rod to dry?
Heaven. Heaven on earth.
Moose had been spoiled absolutely rotten, and he didn’t even know it.
“What are you thinking about?” Tenny asked him, startling him out of his thoughts. He quickly recovered, though – hiding his thoughts was what he did best. He turned and flashed her a smile in the darkness, scrambling for an appropriate topic to give to her as an answer. One that didn’t involve Steve Scranton or belts or trying to sleep at night while his stomach was eating through his backbone.
“I was just remembering the ghost stories that Moose and I used to tell each other while we were up here camping,” he said, shooting Moose a huge grin across the sparks of the campfire. “Around junior high or so, we started coming up here and camping together, just him and me, and some of the stories we came up with…” He shook his head, laughing. “I can’t believe we didn’t piss our pants.”
Moose laughed. “I was always too cool to admit that I was scared spitless, of course. We’d sit around the campfire for hours, adding in the goriest details, and then we’d crawl into our sleeping bags and I was just sure that there were monsters outside, about to come in and eat us alive. I’d spend the whole night shaking in my sleeping bag, and then, we’d do it all again the next night.”
Georgia let out a belly laugh at that. Moose leaned down to whisper something in her ear, and sure enough, the spit swapping commenced.
Levi rolled his eyes and turned pointedly towards Tennessee. “Wanna hear a ghost story?” he asked loudly over the slurping sounds.
The edges of her lips twitched for just a moment, and then she nodded regally. “Of course,” she said as the moans of desire commenced. “I’d love nothing more.”
As Levi started into one of his favorite ones, finally pulling Moose away from Georgia’s lips long enough to add his own gory deets into the mix, Tennessee’s eyes got wider and wider and she began scooting closer and closer to him on the log they were sitting on.
Levi figured if he kept this up, she’d end up on his lap soon enough. The idea was…an interesting one. At least, according to his dick.
He casually rearranged the front of his jacket.
When the story finally came to a bloody end, both Tennessee and Georgia were letting out little whimpers of panic. He grinned down at Tenny, her soft body plastered against his side, her arms wrapped around him. Turned out, telling ghost stories to Tenny was even more fun than telling them to Mo
ose.
Huh. He’d finally found something – other than the view, of course – to recommend taking a girl on a camping trip.
He looked up and caught the horny gaze of Moose, who was currently eating Georgia up with his eyes. Moose stretched oh-so-casually and then said, “Well, we should probably go to bed. Uhhh…you guys can stay up if you want to,” and then he was carrying Georgia to the tent, her squeals of laughter ringing out into the night forest.
Levi looked down at Tennessee, who, sadly enough, had moved away just a bit to start poking at the fire again with her stick. He said softly, “So, we should probably stay out here for a while longer. Seems like they’re needing their privacy.”
Tenny let out a light laugh even as a blush so brilliant he could see it in the darkness began to climb her cheeks. “I’m pretty sure Georgia would never speak to me again if we headed into the tent just now.”
“Probably not,” Levi agreed dryly. “I think Moose might even invent some new swear words for the occasion.”
They lapsed into silence, just the crackling of the fire and the hooting of a distant owl and the rustling of the insects over the fallen leaves and pine needles to be heard.
Levi tried to remember the last time he felt this comfortable around a girl. High school with Georgia? Probably. It was hard to remember that far back. They’d started drifting apart as soon as they left to their separate colleges, so it certainly hadn’t been during that phase of their relationship, and sure as hell not after Georgia turned him down flat when he’d finally gathered up the courage to propose to her.
But being this comfortable around Tennessee Rowland? Bizarre.
“So, what’s it like to work for the almighty Rocky Garrett?” Tenny asked, laying the fire stick down and turning towards him on the log.
He shrugged. “Rocky…he’s not the easiest guy in the world to get along with, but I’m also lucky enough that I’m not his son. He’s always been hard on Moose, but me? I think I had the good luck of not living in the Garrett home.” As much as I would’ve loved to. “He didn’t have to argue with me about whether or not I’d done my homework or if I was staying out too late at night, because I wasn’t his child. At times, it felt like I was ‘cause I spent half my childhood at the Garrett home—” something you do when your father is the town drunk and more interested in beating you than feeding you, “—but I never lost that special shine that came with the fact that Rocky hadn’t had to potty train me.”
“You really think that Rocky potty trained Moose?” Tennessee asked with a laugh, her brilliant white teeth glinting in the firelight. “I’m pretty sure Linda took care of that.”
“Good point,” Levi said dryly. “Anyway, Rocky paid for TIG welder training for me so I’d come back to the dealership once my certification was done, and so…well, I’ve been there ever since. Even though I wasn’t his kid, he was kind enough to pay for my schooling, so I can’t pay that back by being disloyal, you know? I’ll probably be at the John Deere dealership for life. So,” he hurried on before she could ask him any more personal questions, definitely one of his least favorite topics on the planet, “what about you? I know you’ve played in a lot of piano competitions around the US. Are you thinking you’re going to become a professional piano player?”
“‘Pianist’ is the official term and dear God in heaven, I hope not,” she said seriously. She began twirling a lock of her hair, refusing to look at him, her other hand dancing around, refusing to settle down into one spot.
He’d originally thought her hands fluttered around when she was lying, but now he was starting to think she did it when she was nervous.
At least, that was his working theory. Further study would be needed to know for sure.
For that reason only, he should keep his eyes glued to her face, watching her every move and blush and sigh.
No other reason, of course.
“Why, dear God in heaven, not?” he asked, mimicking her words. “I’ve heard you play – you’re good.” She’d played at every talent show in elementary school and had been one of the few students participating who could actually claim any talent.
When they’d hit high school, she’d entered into every beauty queen competition in the valley, and Moose had dragged Levi to them all, claiming that sitting through something like that without someone there to keep him sane would mean the death of him. Levi hadn’t minded them like Moose had – who complained about girls dressing up in evening gowns, and (even better) swimsuits while walking around in high heels on a stage?!
Tennessee’s talent for these competitions had always been the piano, too. She’d won every one of them that she’d competed in, making her the Homecoming Queen, the Prom Queen, the winner of Junior Miss their junior year, and Miss Sawyer three years in a row. She’d even come in second at the state level, making her Miss Idaho 1st Runner Up.
And yet, here she was, sitting next to him, Levi Scranton, on a log up in the wilds of Idaho.
Sometimes, life was a little on the bizarre side.
She didn’t answer his question. He nudged her in the side softly. “Do you not like playing the piano?” he asked, trying to prod her into answering. That obviously wasn’t it, but maybe it’d make her tell him something.
“I hate it.”
She whispered her confession into the darkness. The flames had died down a little, making it hard for even Levi – who had excellent night vision – to see what she was thinking.
He turned the shocking words over and over in his mind, trying to make sense of them. Hate? But she’d been playing the piano since…
“When did you start playing the piano?” he asked, realizing that he couldn’t remember a time that she hadn’t played.
“Three. My parents decided that I was going to be a musical prodigy. They didn’t base this on anything, like my natural aptitude for it or an innate desire to play; they just decided that’s what would happen.” She was rigid; a piece of steel carved into a beautiful impersonation of a woman.
“You know what’s really funny?” she asked sarcastically. “Virginia loves music.” Virginia was Tenny’s younger sister, and if Levi remembered right, she played some sort of violin instrument. He’d honestly not paid a lot of attention in high school to his girlfriend’s cousin’s younger sister, but that seemed vaguely correct. “Ginny loves it all. Her music teacher told her that if she keeps it up, she could end up at Juilliard.”
She turned and squinted up at him. He was quickly sorting through his mind, trying desperately to come up with a meaning for the word Juilliard. He wasn’t quick enough, though, because she saw his confusion and clarified, “It’s one of the most prestigious music schools in the country. You know what my parents said when Ginny told them that? To hush up; they were talking about me just then.” She let out a hollow laugh. “They’re so focused on me and my music career that they don’t care at all about the daughter who actually loves her cello and actually wants to play it. The irony…”
She shook her head and turned back towards the fire, staring at the orange coals burning brightly in the summer night. Levi wanted to reach out a hand and rub her back or pat her on the thigh or something consolingly, but touching Tenny…what if she didn’t want him to?
She was – quite literally – a beauty queen. He was nothing. She wouldn’t want him to touch her, and he couldn’t blame her at all for that.
Conflicted, trying to figure out what to do, he realized that the hushed groans and moans and cries from the tent had finally died away, so he stood, holding his hand out to Tennessee to help her up. “I think they’re finally…uhhhh…done. You want to help me put the fire out?”
She looked down at the glowing coals and back up at him, confused. “Why? It’s so pretty!”
“Yeah, but if a wind comes along and whips the fire back up, we could start a forest fire without even knowing it. You should only leave a fire burning if you’re there to watch it.”
“Oh. Right. Of course.”
&n
bsp; They poured water on the fire, the steam and smoke curling up in the sky, popping and crackling its discontent at being doused into oblivion. Once it was full out, Levi verifying that by pushing the dirty gray ashes around with Tenny’s fire stick, they headed for the now-quiet tent.
As he removed his boots and shucked off his jeans under the cover of darkness, quickly pulling on a pair of sweatpants before crawling into his sleeping bag, he thought over the day’s events. Maybe it wasn’t nice of him to make that comment about Tenny needing servants to dress her, but the longer he was around her, the more he was starting to realize that it had been a little more true than even he’d wanted to admit.
Left to her own devices, she’d have no tent or sleeping bag to sleep in, but that’s okay because she’d have a forest fire to keep her warm.
He sighed to himself.
She could only survive in an environment where she was being coddled and taken care of every moment of the day. Not that her life was especially easy – it was true that having overbearing parents wasn’t exactly a walk in the park – but it also didn’t prepare her for the real world.
Like a porcelain doll, she could sit there and be beautiful, but never more than that.
Chapter 8
Tennessee
Tennessee awoke to something doing its best to rearrange her spine. With a groan, she rolled over, finally free of the giant lump she’d spent the night sleeping on. She opened her eyes and looked around the tent blearily, realization that she was in it by herself belatedly registering in her mind. She could hear the chatter and quiet laughter of the other three outside so, with a sigh, she pushed her way out of her sleeping bag.