by Shayna Ryan
“Just grabbing a snack, Blue. What about you?” Blue was swiftly becoming one of my favorite townies. After Will and Dottie, of course.
“Just resting the old bones and grabbing a cup of Joe. I’m a bit surprised to see that you’re still around!”
“Only ‘til tomorrow, according to Bobby.”
“Then you’re headed south again?”
“Yup. I’m afraid so.”
“And what does Will think of that?”
I was taken aback by his question. It struck me as rather nosey, but then I remembered that this was small town Maine, and Blue was a friend to both me and Will.
“He doesn’t like it,” I sighed.
“And you?”
“I don’t like it either, but it is what it is.”
“Is it, now?” His eyes twinkled merrily as he studied me. I might have been angry about his intrusive questions, but I knew it was just his way and he meant no harm.
“Indeed it is. My life’s back in Hartford, Blue, not up here with Will.”
“You and Will, huh?” Ginger commented as she brought me my Danish. “Everybody thought so, ‘specially after he laid Mikey out like that.”
“Yeah, me and Will, at least while I’m here.”
“Then what?” Ginger leaned across the counter, making it clear she intended to stay a while. How, exactly, did this happen again? I came in to grab a coffee and a Danish, not get the third degree about Will and me.
“Then I go home. It’s nothing serious between us.” I was never a good liar, and I caught the look that Ginger exchanged with Blue.
“Are you kidding me? You’ve got something going on with Will Holbrook and you want me to believe that it’s nothing serious? Come off it, now. Every single girl from here to Lewiston’s tried to get with that man, and some of the married ones, too. He’s always polite, always a gentleman, but try as they might, no one’s ever caught his eye. Then you blow into town and suddenly he’s punching out Mikey Desmond in the middle of my café! Nothing serious,” she snorted in disbelief.
“C’mon now, Ginger, leave the girl be. It’s their business, not ours,” Blue cut in. I liked the guy even more than before, if it was possible.
“All right, all right. I’m just saying–you find a guy like Will Holbrook and you get him to look your way, you don’t let him go again.”
“Does Andy have something to worry about, Ging?” Blue teased.
“Ah, Blue, you know what I mean. If I were fifteen years younger and single, I’d have a go at him myself! I gotta go finish cleaning the fridge out back while it’s quiet, you two holler if you need me.”
She left Blue and I alone at the counter, sipping our coffees.
“I’m sorry for prying, you know,” Blue began, “but I think it’s a crying shame that you two can’t work this out somehow. A lot of us around here really like and respect Will, and after seeing him lose Theresa, well, I guess we’re all just rooting for him to find love again. Seems a shame that when he might have a shot at it, it’s not to be.”
“What about you?”I suddenly realized that I knew nothing about this man. “Is there a Mrs. Blue around?”
“There used to be, before the cancer took her about seven years back. There are little Blues, too, though they’re not so little any more. Three boys I’ve got, all grown now. One’s still around, but one’s in California and one’s in Massachusetts. I get to see the closer ones from time to time.” There was a sadness in his voice while he spoke of his family, and I got the feeling that he didn’t see them nearly as often as he’d like.
“Family’s important, Calista, no matter what your age. You find someone to grow old with, you settle down and grow your family, and you thank God every day for them, you hear?”
“Thanks, Blue.” The door chimed again, and Blue excused himself to go sit with his buddies by the window.
His words touched me. I would welcome all of that in my life, if ever I had the chance to settle down. While I wasn’t like some women, driven to find a mate and start a family, that didn’t mean that I didn’t yearn for a family of my own someday, if the time was right.
When Ginger came out from the back to take the newcomers’ orders, I signaled to her that I was ready to settle up my check.
“Can I get an extra Danish for Dottie?”
“You bet.”
I paid my bill and grabbed the Danish that Ginger had bagged up to go, and I headed back to the Inn. Dottie was touched that I thought of her, and she happily accepted the unexpected treat.
“Can I get dinner started for you, Dottie?”
“No, but thank you. Will called while you were gone and told me not to worry about dinner for you two tonight.”
Now that was news to me. The man had something up his sleeve for, but what, I didn’t know. But I couldn’t wait to find out.
When I heard his cruiser pull in a little bit before 4:00, I went out to meet him.
“What are you doing home so early?” It took him a moment to reply as I punctuated my question with a kiss, which he happily returned.
“Took a few hours off. I tried to get home earlier, but I got held up. Plan to leave in twenty minutes or so. I just need a quick shower.”
“Why? What are we doing?”
All I got was a cryptic, “You’ll see.” As an afterthought he added, “And no funny business while I’m in the shower–we need to get going.”
He still wouldn’t answer my question when he led me out to the old blue truck a while later.
“You’re not very good at being patient, are you?” he teased. I could tell he was enjoying torturing me.
“Can I at least have a hint?” I pleaded.
“Nope.”
I spied a picnic basket in the back of the cab, but that still didn’t tell me where we were headed. It couldn’t be too far away, if we were taking the truck.
Will took a left out of the driveway and headed down the road in a direction I wasn’t familiar with. He turned off onto an unlabeled dirt road, then proceeded to make numerous turns onto other, smaller dirt roads, taking us farther and farther away from civilization. Eventually he stopped when we came to a section of road that was chained off.
“Now what?”
“Now you sit tight while I unchain it.” He jiggled a set of keys for me to see. I did as instructed and watched as he unlocked the two padlocks securing the chain and then moved it aside. He came back and eased the truck through, then hopped out to secure the chain behind us.
“This is all very mysterious,” I mumbled as we bumped down the barely maintained dirt road. “How, exactly, do you have the keys for that?”
“It’s private property,” he grinned, quite pleased with himself, “but I called in a favor from a friend and we have permission to be out here tonight.”
We rode for about ten minutes as it was slow going since the road was poorly maintained and full of huge potholes that Will did his best to ease around. The road suddenly ended out of the blue, but there was nothing at the end of it. It just stopped.
“Come on, we’ve got some stuff to carry in.”
He unbuckled and rooted around in the back of the truck. When he passed me a bright orange vest and cap, I looked at him skeptically.
“C’mon. We’re going for a little hike here, and as hunting season’s approaching, it’s best to be safe.”
I reluctantly put them on, and when Will caught my expression of disdain, he laughed out loud.
“I look like a giant traffic cone!”
“But a cute one!”
Once we were ready to go, he carried the picnic basket handed me a blanket to carry before he led me towards the woods.
“Um…isn’t it getting dark soon?” The day’s light was just beginning to recede.
“No worries. It’s not far, and I’ve got flashlights to get us back.”
“So we’re having a picnic in the woods?” I tried to hide my disappointment. I wasn’t exactly an eat-in-the-woods kind of gal, but I di
dn’t want to hurt his feelings and I appreciated he gesture, even if it wasn’t my thing.
“Not exactly.” He refused to say more, leaving me still in the dark about our plans for the evening. He started to move just then, and it looked like he was just planning on walking into the woods without a trail.
“Aren’t you coming?” he called to me.
I didn’t want to walk in the woods, without a path, with dusk approaching. But I trusted Will, and he was obviously excited about our plans, so I followed him against my better judgment.
He slowed down so that I could keep up with him, and to my surprise, it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Once we got a few dozen yards into the woods, it opened up into an area that was mostly pines, with little undergrowth.
“Not far now,” he reassured me. And he was right. Not ten minutes later the trees gave way to a huge, beautiful meadow, awash in the brilliant colors of the day’s last light.
“It’s beautiful!”
“You haven’t seen anything yet. Come on, we haven’t much time.” He led me along the edge of the field for a bit, but then ducked back into the woods.
“But aren’t we…” I thought we might eat our picnic in the meadow, but Will had other plans for us. I followed him, and his plan became clear a moment later.
He led me to a huge boulder, almost taller than I stood. After examining it for a moment, he handed me the picnic basket and then grabbed the edge of a big crack running down the rock’s face before hoisting himself up.
“Pass me the basket and blanket, then I’ll help you up.” Oh. So this was the plan. We were going to dine on a huge boulder just inside the woods. It was different, that was for sure.
Once I was on top of the rock with him, I saw that the top of it was surprisingly flat, and wide. Will spread out the blanket and took a seat, and I joined him. We sat facing the meadow as he unpacked our dinner.
“Sometime soon the show should start,” he told me with a twinkle in his eyes.
“Show?”
“You’ll see.”
I tried to talk to him as we ate, but each time he shushed me, and I was beginning to get a little bit annoyed. While I originally had high hopes for our mystery night out, it was so far at least a minor disappointment on every level.
At least the food was good. Will had hit the grocery store at some point and loaded up on barbequed chicken and an assortment of ready-to-eat side dishes.
“There!” he exclaimed quietly as he pointed towards the meadow. “Just be very quiet, okay, or you’ll scare them off.”
Perplexed, I followed his pointing finger to a point past the line of sparse trees between us and the meadow.
“Oh!” Now I understood the whole point of our strange picnic spot.
In the fading light, a herd of deer picked its way out of the woods on the opposite side of the meadow. One by one they stepped into the long grass, alert and tense. Once they assessed that all was safe and quiet, they lowered their graceful heads to eat their fill of the grasses growing in the meadow.
“They’re beautiful, Will!” I whispered. Even though I took care to be very quiet, I could swear that one of the deer heard me. She raised her head quickly and stood perfectly still, with only her ears twitching slightly.
Will gestured for me to stay quiet, and I was happy to oblige. I had never seen a deer in the wild before. There was something magical about them, something wild and otherworldly, but peaceful at the same time. I felt privileged to have the chance to watch the herd graze there in the quiet meadow.
As we sat silently watching the herd, Will slung his arm around me and pulled me close. It was one of those perfect moments that I was sure would stay with me for the rest of my life and I just wanted it to last forever.
A loud, fluttering sound to our left broke the moment and I let out a yelp of surprise as I spun to see what had caused the commotion. The deer all heard me and took off back into the woods with their white tails held high.
“It’s just a group of turkeys roosting for the night,” Will laughed.
He was right. A hundred yards or so away from us I spied them. The big, fat things were all clumsily fluttering up to the lower branches of a nearby pine. I estimated that there were at least a dozen of them.
“I didn’t know they could fly!”
“Well, they’re not great at it, that’s for sure, but they can fly short distances when they need to, and they like to get up in a tree for the night to keep safe.”
I felt badly that I had accidentally scared off the deer, but Will didn’t seem to mind.
“It’s no big deal,” he shrugged. “I wasn’t even sure they’d show up at all, and we got to see the turkeys as a bonus!”
By the time we packed up our picnic and started heading back to the truck, night had fallen. I grabbed Will’s hand to calm myself down. We were out in the woods after dark, and who knew what kind of animal might be lying in wait to ambush us.
“Lions, and tigers, and bears–oh my!” he teased. “We’re fine, Calista, relax!”
His words calmed me a bit. I trusted him completely, and I had confidence that he would keep me safe. We made it back to the truck without incident.
“Thank you for that. It was amazing.” Even though it had been a puzzling start to the evening, in the end it was a wonderful surprise.
It was a quiet ride back to the Inn, as if a melancholy of sorts had fallen over the both of us. Though neither of us was mentioning it, the fact that this was our last night together weighed heavily on both of us.
Back at the Inn, Will placed the picnic basket in the kitchen and then took me by the hand.
“Let’s go upstairs.”
I obliged without hesitation, even though I dreaded it. We had always known the time would come, but its arrival felt surreal. This was our last night together before we parted ways.
-18-
Will kissed me slowly as if we had all the time in the world. That was just fine with me; I was in no hurry to see the night end, either. His lips caressed mine, softly at first, then with more force as our kiss deepened and his hands tangled in my long tresses.
While our kiss lacked the fire and heat we had shared in the past, it was incredible all the same. The animalistic need had been taken over by a sense of passion that ran deeper than just physical attraction, as if it had been replaced by the yearning of our souls. It wasn’t just a kiss; it was an expression of all the things left unsaid between us.
He undressed me slowly, stopping to cover me with kisses where ever he exposed me, and I struggled to hold back from moving things along as my body came to life beneath his adoring kisses and caresses. I wanted to enjoy this, every minute of it, and though my body demanded to have him as soon as possible, my heart begged it to take it slow.
When he had me down to just my bra and panties, I gently removed his sweater and ran my hands up and down his proud chest, mesmerized by his solid flesh. He was simply exquisite, and I could never tire of admiring him.
When he unhooked my bra, I reached down to free him from the jeans restraining him, and I felt the mood shift. The animal inside of him was ready to come out to play, and with a grunt he pushed me back onto the bed and stepped out of his jeans and boxers.
He pulled my panties down with his teeth, one bit at a time as I squirmed beneath him, eager for more. Once I was completely naked as well, he remained down by my feet and slowly, ever so slowly, began kissing his way up my calf. I closed my eyes and lost myself in the sensation of his journey.
As he moved ever upward, I became anxious to feel his mouth upon me, but he skipped over my most sensitive parts and instead came up to my neck where he continued showering me with gentle kisses. He rubbed his hardness against the top of my thigh, and I parted my legs for him, eager to have him.
“Not yet,” he whispered. “Let’s try to make this last, shall we?”
I caressed his clavicle with my tongue in response, relishing the feel of his bare skin. He tossed back his head and
moaned as I worked my mouth down to his right nipple, where I flicked it lightly with my tongue. My free hand slid down to stroke the length of him, and he shuddered slightly under my touch. One of his hands moved to feel the slickness of me, and we pleasured each other as our lips met once again.
Oh, how I would miss this. This moment when we forgot the world and found happiness in each other’s embrace as we indulged our carnal desires.
I gently pushed him away and he stood, confused as to why I halted our foreplay. With a sly grin and a gentle push with of my foot I moved him back, further away from me on the bed.
“What are you–”
“Patience!” I got off the bed and knelt in front of him, but I took a moment to savor the naughty gleam in his eyes when he realized what I was playing at.
I took him in my hands again and stroked him hard and fast before suddenly setting him free, but just for a second before I wrapped my lips around him. I plunged down around him quickly, only to slide back up and release him. His hands found my head and urged me back, but I shook my head playfully and licked him up and down with my tongue instead.
“Oh, woman, you don’t know what you do to me,” he sighed, lost in his own pleasure.
I teased him for a few minutes, giving every part of him there gentle attention with my lips and tongue alone until I felt his fingers tightening in my hair in anticipation. Without warning, I fully encompassed him again, and he pulled my hair to the brink of pain as I worked my oral magic.
“Enough,” he gasped as he pushed me roughly away. His eyes were wild and we both climbed back onto the bed. I laid on my back, but he maneuvered me onto my side so I was facing away from him. I didn’t protest. I heard the condom wrapper open, and it felt like forever before I felt him seek his mark.
He wrapped his arms around me and fondled my breast as he entered me. My hands had nowhere to go, so I clung to the sheets for dear life as he filled me to my limits and our bodies fell into our own familiar rhythm. He kissed my neck gently my breath quickened. Closer and closer to the edge I came, and he increased his pace when he sensed that my time was approaching. With a shuddering cry, my release came, but still he kept at me, harder and faster until I felt like I couldn’t take it anymore. He was close as well, I could tell.