“Am I dragging you away from anything important?” she asked.
“Nah.” He smiled. “This is top priority right now.” The campaign was Angelina’s priority, of course, but Taryn was his, he realized. He felt a drive to protect her—keep her out of harm’s way, at least while she was here in Mountain Springs. That was more than he’d say, though. “The trails are this way.”
They headed together around the resort, away from the beach and up a gravel walk in the other direction. He pulled the bug spray out of his bag and gave it a shake.
“You’ll want this,” he said.
They paused, and she lifted some stray tendrils of hair away from her neck and he sprayed the back of her neck, then her arms and the lower parts of her legs.
“Are the bugs bad this time of year?” she asked.
“It’s the mountains,” he replied. “There’s always bugs.”
He sprayed himself down, too, then tossed the bottle back into his bag.
“Do you come out here often?” she asked as they started walking again. “On the trails, I mean.”
“About two or three times a month,” he replied. “The funny thing is that you can get used to anything, and here I am living in a town that people pay good money to vacation in, and I probably should have taken more advantage of it than I did.”
She glanced over at him. “That sounds...past tense?”
He sighed. He didn’t want to talk about this, but of all people, maybe Taryn deserved to know a little bit about his plans.
“I’m not talking about this yet,” he said. “It’s delicate. And I’m not ready to discuss it with my boss.”
“Are you quitting?” she asked with a frown.
“Not necessarily, but I’ve applied for a job in Seattle.”
“What’s in Seattle?”
Space. Distance. A fresh start.
“A better-paying job and a new city,” he said, and when she met his gaze in silence, he added, “and an excuse not to see people I’d rather avoid.”
“Right.” She nodded. “I hadn’t realized you had plans to move.”
“I didn’t know about you and the baby when I applied,” he said.
“I don’t see how knowing about the baby should change anything,” she retorted. “You know about us. That’s a good thing, and you should live your life. I’ll live mine.”
He nodded. “Yeah, of course.”
“I’m actually glad you have plans in place,” she added. “It makes it easier for us both to simply live our lives.”
But suddenly Seattle didn’t feel quite the same. A bit of the shine had come off.
“Like I said, I’m not telling anyone about applying for the job,” he said. “I don’t even have the job yet.” He nodded at some hikers coming down the path toward the resort, and he stayed silent until they were well behind them. “I love this job—I really do. But I’ve got a little too much history around here.”
“I know the feeling. I have a fair bit of my own...”
They started slowly up the trail together, and he shortened his steps to match hers.
“You’re talking about your grandmother,” he concluded.
“I went to see her this morning. I’d been putting it off. I really didn’t feel like facing her judgment,” she said. “My grandmother has no filter, and while that was fine when we were kids coming to visit for a week, she’s alienated a lot of people in recent years.”
“I know the type,” he said.
“Anyway, as it turns out, Granny had more heartache than any of us knew.”
“Can I ask what happened?” he asked.
“My grandfather had been cheating on her,” she said. “I had no idea—I don’t think anyone knew. If they did, it stayed a very well-kept secret. Granny only told me because she figured I should have stayed with Glen for financial security. Turns out that’s what she did with my grandfather—she put up with it. They had eight boys to raise, and she didn’t feel like she had a choice.”
The shade from the overhanging trees seemed to be calling as Noah looked down at Taryn, trying to read her emotions in her face. When they got to the shade, they slowed down again, and he noticed how her shoulders relaxed in the dappled cool.
“That’s not right,” he said after a beat.
“No, it isn’t,” she agreed. “But it was a different time, I guess. Women had fewer options. Granny never went through the pain of a divorce.”
“It might have been worse living through that marriage,” he muttered.
He didn’t think he’d said it out loud, but Taryn laughed. “Maybe! There’s a weird sense of freedom when you just let it go, though. When you let him love someone else, and stop trying to make him love you...”
“I’ve never been divorced,” he said. “But I can understand the sentiment. When someone is happier away from you, what can you do?”
Taryn looked over at him, and he was reminded of that night in the pub and the draw of a too-honest conversation.
“Do you miss her?” Taryn asked. She didn’t need to say Nevaeh’s name. They both knew who she was talking about. Her voice was soft, and he felt his own tensions start to melt away.
“I miss...” He sighed, casting about inside of himself, looking for a way to describe it. “This is going to sound strange, but I miss my life before the breakup. I miss the friends we had together, and the feeling that everything had a place. I actually miss hanging out with Brody and how stupidly excited he was about the bachelor party...”
He came to a stop at a wooden sign that read Elm’s Trail. He was talking too much again... There was something about Taryn that brought things to the surface. “This trail is the easiest climb.”
“Is the friendship over?” she asked.
“Yeah. Pretty much.”
Taryn took out her camera and snapped a picture of the trail’s wooden sign, looked down at the display screen, then raised camera again, adjusted the zoom and snapped another one.
“How about you?” he asked. “Do you miss Glen?”
She looked at him over her shoulder. “Most days no. But there are times when I wish I had a husband—like when I got to find out the sex of the baby and I was alone for it, or when I’m traveling by myself and I have to get the kind general manager to carry my bags.”
He smiled. “Happy to do it.”
“That might have sounded—” She shook her head. “I don’t know how that sounded. But I’m mostly just glad to be doing this on my own, because I think it would be infinitely harder to be looking at having a baby and trying to make my husband love me at the same time. That’s too much work.”
“Yeah, that’s one of things I found to be a lot of work with Nevaeh,” he said. “I felt like I was always trying to make up for the kids I wouldn’t give her.”
“Are you relieved at all?” she asked.
“Yeah, a bit,” he admitted. “I had a feeling that this was coming—before the wedding, or after. I’d rather do it now, when there’s less at stake.”
She nodded.
“Add to that, Nevaeh is ten years younger.”
“Men like that, I thought,” she said. “All that youthfulness and tight skin.” She cast him a teasing smile. “It makes them feel younger.”
Noah and Nevaeh had listened to different music, had different memories of childhood TV, even saw politics differently. He’d mellowed a bit—not a huge amount, but enough to be noticeable.
“Or it makes them feel old,” he chuckled. “A decade makes a bigger difference than you’d think—in the way you see things, measure things. I don’t know.”
Maybe it was his age difference with Nevaeh, or maybe it was just that they weren’t meant for each other, but in that pub with Taryn he’d felt more understood than he had in the entire two years of his relationship with his fiancée.
“Let’s go,” she said, and Taryn shouldered the camera strap and cast a smile over her shoulder. “Maybe we should just enjoy all this emotional freedom. No one to impress.”
Noah caught up and they continued along the rocky path.
She might not want to impress anyone this morning, but he felt a testosterone-driven desire to make sure that she respected him, at least, by the time she was done here in Mountain Springs. He’d settle for that. Taryn was going to be in his life now for...the rest of his life. A child bound people together more tightly than an engagement. That was a sobering realization. And if they were going to be connected through this baby, at the very least he could be a man she could speak well of.
He didn’t want a woman to look at him the way his mother had looked at Tom. He had to do better... Ironically, it might take him keeping his distance to make that happen. He wasn’t going to try to be something he wasn’t again.
There was only so long a man could hold his breath. And right now, in the cool shade with this woman who tugged at him in ways he couldn’t quite name, this woman who wanted nothing from him, and yet made him wish he could give her more, it felt so good to finally exhale.
CHAPTER SIX
AS THEY WALKED farther up the trail, the trees closed in and the sound of wind rustling through the leaves and birds calling to each other made Taryn’s muscles relax. She’d been carrying more tension than she’d realized, and she let out a slow breath. Noah walked beside her, keeping his pace slow to match hers, and she couldn’t help but notice that he was in good shape. His arms were bronzed from the sun, and his muscles were defined. He obviously spent time at the gym.
Their footsteps crunched along the path in unison, and Taryn spotted a squirrel on the side of a tree staring down at them with glassy little eyes. She knew her camera well enough to not even bother trying to take the picture.
They’d only been walking for about fifteen minutes, and she was already starting to tire. Nothing was easy at this point of the pregnancy, but her doctor had told her that staying active would help in everything from prenatal health to delivery to recovery. So she was doing her best.
“Is there any family medical history I should be aware of?” Taryn asked.
“Um—” Noah paused for a moment. “My mother died of breast cancer a couple of years ago. My maternal grandfather died of a heart attack at ninety. I have a cousin with type 2 diabetes.”
“I’m sorry about your mother,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“What about your dad’s side?” she asked.
“We never really knew them,” he said. “My dad left when my sister was a baby. He had a really fractured family, and his mom died a long time ago in a boating accident in Italy. There wasn’t anyone to even look up. Believe me, I tried.”
Raised by a single mom—it wasn’t a bad life. A devoted mother could give a child everything he needed, or almost everything. Did Noah miss having a father? She wanted to know but was afraid to ask—she didn’t want to come across as asking for more from him than she was. Back when finding this baby’s biological father wasn’t even a possibility, she’d had a good excuse to not worry about it. But now?
They came to a break in the foliage, and she looked down a tumbling ravine to a stream. The scene came upon them so suddenly that she stopped short, breathing quickly from the exertion. Brambles and vines covered the jagged descent, and the stream rushed over rocks, frothing and splashing. A cool breeze wafted from the icy water toward them. But even with the grandeur of the Colorado Rockies, her mind wouldn’t be diverted from the question that worried her.
“Did you ever resent your mom?” Taryn asked after a moment. “I hate to even ask this—it’s in no way my business. It’s just—”
“You want to know if this little boy is going to resent you for raising him alone,” Noah said, and he met her gaze evenly. She waited—looking for judgment in his clear gaze, but there was none.
“Yeah.” That was exactly what she wanted to know.
Noah sucked in a slow breath. “I think we all universally resented my biological father,” he said. “He left us, and the couple of times I did try to make contact over the years, he wasn’t really happy to hear from me and seemed relieved when I went away again. The one I missed was Tom—my stepdad.”
“He was different?” she said.
“Maybe I just remember him differently.” Noah rubbed a hand over his jaw. “And I was mad at Mom for a few years because she was the one who kicked Tom out.”
So there was some resentment...
“Why did she break up with him?” Taryn asked.
“Mom always said he was like having an extra kid. She needed a partner, not a dependent.”
“He didn’t work?” she asked.
“No, he did. He just...didn’t know how to parent, because he was too much of a kid himself. He wanted to be the fun one, and he always took things too far. I guess she didn’t trust him with us, and that eroded their relationship. I can see how that would be a problem now. At ten, I was less understanding. On this side of forty, I can see why my mom was as frustrated as she was.”
And yet, Taryn could see something just under the surface—deeper emotion he was holding back. Had he loved that stepfather?
“Did you stay in touch with him?” she asked.
“No. They got divorced, and he went his own way. We weren’t his kids.”
“Biologically,” she said.
“He hadn’t adopted us. He had no rights.”
She nodded. It wasn’t like she blamed a woman for keeping her kids close. They were her children, after all.
“How about you?” he asked.
“My parents are still married,” she replied. “I have a massive extended family. My grandmother here in Mountain Springs is on my father’s side.”
“So our son—um, the baby—will grow up with a lot of family,” he said.
“He will,” she said with a nod.
“That’s good,” he said. “I missed out on that.”
She looked up at him and, standing there with the sun dappling his features, the leaves and sky behind him, she took her camera off her shoulder and looked through the lens.
“Hold on,” she said, and she backed up a step, then snapped the picture. “Perfect.”
“For what?” he asked.
Taryn looked down at the image on her camera’s screen. His good looks had been captured exactly—the first picture she had of her son’s father. Should she keep it for later on, for when he asked about his dad? She felt a lump rise in her throat, and she forced back the melancholy.
“You’re very rugged and outdoorsy,” she said, holding the screen so he could see it.
“Am I?” He sounded amused. “Just say it. You think I’m handsome.”
She chuckled. “Does it matter?”
“Maybe not. I mean, I know you saw something in me back in Denver, but...do I lose all allure with no beard?”
“I did like that beard,” she said, and she shot him a grin. “But this picture is strictly business. I need pictures of faces like yours.”
“What’s special about mine?” he chuckled. “My smoldering good looks?”
She chuckled. “I’m not saying you aren’t good-looking, but that’s not what I’m looking for in this campaign. I need people who look accessible. Customers should want to hike with you.”
Noah caught her gaze for the first time, and a slow smile spread over his face. She looked down at her camera. What was it about this man that made her stomach flip when he looked at her like that? He was supposed to be an isolated mistake from one stupid night, not...so real.
This picture had something in it, though—something deeper than an attractive man in the woods. There was an openness in his gaze, a vulnerability, even. People might look twice at a handsome guy, and she wouldn�
�t blame them, but it would take something more to make them stop and mentally put themselves with him on this trail.
“Um...” She glanced around. “Go over there—up by that big tree—just up there.”
She pointed in the direction she meant. Noah climbed up a small incline, slapping at a bug on his arm, and then turned. She took another couple of shots, then nodded, satisfied.
“Yeah, this is good...”
Noah came back down to the trail and looked over her shoulder as she perused the photos.
“Your turn,” he said, and his voice was close to her ear.
“Oh, no, I’m the one behind the camera,” she said with a short laugh.
He was close to her, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him, even though they weren’t touching.
“Not for the campaign,” he said. “For your son. Some pictures of you when you were pregnant with him, looking happy, and—”
She turned and he stopped talking. She almost regretted having broken the moment.
“Um,” he said. “Here, give me the camera. Just stay right where you are.”
Noah slipped the camera out of her hands and looked through the viewfinder. She looked down self-consciously and heard a couple of clicks. He backed up a couple of paces.
“Taryn—” His voice was low, insistent, and the same tone she recognized from that one reckless, stupid night together. She looked up, there was a click and he grinned.
“There—” He came back toward her and handed over the camera.
She looked down at the view screen, and she saw a photo of her looking significantly more pregnant than she realized she did...but it was more than that. She did look happy. She looked relaxed, too, and maybe it was the pregnancy hormones, or just a hike in the woods with this brawny, good-looking man, but she looked feminine, too. Glowingly.
“Beautiful,” he murmured, and she felt goose bumps at the word.
Her gaze still on the photo, Taryn took a step forward, and her shoe caught on something. Her heart jumped and she felt the camera drop from her fingers when Noah’s arm slid behind her, and he pulled her hard against him. She caught her breath as her body pressed against his, the side of her belly against his stomach. Even the baby inside of her seemed to be frozen in surprise.
Harlequin Heartwarming June 2021 Box Set Page 8