The Inventive Bride

by Maria Hoagland

  “It’s effective,” Logan protested. “Besides, that was so three years ago …” Logan imitating a teenage girl had them all laughing that much harder.

  “And that’s why I had Grandma teach me to do my own ponytail.” Harper had finished her part of the painting and stood up, waving the brush around in her animation. Frankie gathered the two brushes and started washing them out.

  “I’ve come a long way since then.” Logan still wouldn’t concede defeat.

  “No, Dad, I’ve come a long way.” Harper gave Frankie a knowing look, like they were in on it together. “I want to learn how to do the beach waves you do. Can you teach me?”

  “Of course, honey, but what about Tess? Do you want to ask her?” Almost as soon as she’d said it, Frankie wished she hadn’t, especially when Harper scowled.

  “I’d rather have you.”

  Frankie’s heart swelled unexpectedly with the implied compliment. “Figured I’d better ask.” Over her shoulder, she asked, “How is it going with Tess?”

  The scowl deepened on Harper’s face, and Logan gave a lukewarm, “Good enough.”

  Okay, then. Again, Frankie knew the warmth in her chest had nothing to do with the late summer afternoon sunlight streaming through her workshop windows, but either way, she was going to enjoy it while she could.

  Harper washed her hands at the sink where Frankie washed out the brushes. Logan stood off to the side, tapping the lid onto the paint can with a rubber mallet. Using a paper towel, Harper dried her hands as she walked around, looking at the objects in the display case. She reached in and pulled something out. “What’s this?”

  From this distance, Frankie couldn’t tell if the flat, round ball cupped in Harper’s hand was a compass, pocket watch, or stopwatch. She had all three in the case.

  Harper depressed the knob and the brass cover snapped open. “Is this a real compass?” She reverently ran a fingertip across the glass top, and then started slowly turning in a circle, experimenting with the needle. “Do people still use them?”

  “I used to use them all the time,” Logan said, “before there was GPS on my phone.”

  “So, like, people could use these for geocaching instead of their phones?” Harper asked.

  Geocaching? Frankie knew what it was, of course, but having never tried it herself, had no idea how it worked.

  “You’re the expert cacher, what do you think?” Logan countered. The typical throw-it-back-to-the-student approach. “Do you think we should try it on Saturday? We haven’t gone geocaching since we arrived in Cobble Creek.”

  “Can we?” Harper carefully closed the lid to the compass and cupped it in both hands like a firefly that might try to escape. “Frankie could come too. Come with us, Frankie.”

  “I don’t want to interrupt your time together.” But she did want to go. Frankie had had such a great time a few weeks back making the garage sale rounds with them, she couldn’t think of a better way to spend her free Saturday.

  “Come on …” Harper drew out. How was it that all kids knew this tactic of wheedling into the emotions of an adult—especially one who wasn’t their parent?

  “My dad is covering the shop this weekend,” Frankie admitted.

  “I bet you know all the best hikes around.” Now that Logan had joined in trying to convince her, she wouldn’t be able to resist.

  “I don’t know any hikes with caches, though.”

  “You’ll be surprised.” The finality in his voice sealed it. They both wanted her there, she wanted to be there; it was a done deal. He caught the price tag affixed to the leather strap on the compass dangling below Harper’s hands. He pulled out his wallet and laid some cash on the glass display case. “Seven o’clock tomorrow for hair and Saturday, eight o’clock for hiking? We’ll pack the lunch, right, Harper?”

  “It’s a date,” Harper said, and Frankie fought the heat of a blush creeping up her neck. If only.

  Chapter 12

  When Logan pulled up in front of Frankie’s house for geocaching Saturday morning, the air was crisp. How quickly the weather turned in Wyoming. He and Harper had moved into Cobble Creek in the heat of the summer more than a month ago, but he never would have guessed he’d be scrambling to find Harper a sweatshirt already. He’d hefted their winter clothes, still packed tightly in boxes, onto closet shelves and forgotten them. This premonition of autumn felt like football and apples, holidays and fireplaces. Today, the sky was clear and the sun shining down—a perfect day to spend immersed in nature.

  They’d stopped to pick up Frankie, and as soon as she settled into her seat in his SUV, she pulled a Ziploc bag from her backpack. “Orange-cranberry scones? I made them this morning.” Unzipping the baggie released a delicious aroma that felt like summer on a cold day, warm and refreshing and comforting. “I’ve got homemade granola for the trail as well.”

  “I knew there was a reason I asked you to geocache with us,” Logan said, though it had little to do with food or hiking trails.

  One bite of the scone, and he was pretty sure his day couldn’t get any better. “Any ideas where you’d like to hike today?”

  Frankie looked good dressed in comfortable jeans that fit just right, a dark red V-neck T-shirt that brought out the color in her cheeks, and a soft flannel shirt loosely buttoned over top. Tess probably didn’t have any of these in her wardrobe, and he was pretty sure Christina had never worn anything like this, either. His tastes were certainly changing, but he was okay with that. He couldn’t think of anything more attractive than a person so comfortable with who she was—especially one so eager to spend a day sharing what he and his daughter loved.

  “Diamond Back Falls is a magnificent hike about fifteen minutes west of town. It’s a moderate climb, but we’re all in good shape, right?” Frankie eyed Harper critically up and down.

  “You think you can keep up with us, huh?” Harper could hold her own in the trash talk department, Logan knew from almost a decade of experience with the girl who could be the sass-meister. He’d taught her well.

  Frankie turned her soft hazel eyes on him, and he melted just a bit before finding something else to focus on. “What are the chances there will be a cache on that particular trail?” she asked.

  “Our navigator will find out for us.” Logan motioned to Harper, who leaned forward with the app open on his phone. “If there’s not one on that particular trail, there will probably be something close by.”

  Little green circles with the outline of a box popped onto a map of the area around Frankie’s house where they were sitting. “All of these are geocaches?” Frankie’s hazel eyes were wide. “You’re saying I walk past one every single day when I get my mail, and all this time, I’ve had no idea it was there?”

  Logan remembered how overwhelmed he’d been the first time he’d opened the app. Like a flashlight revealing all the spiders in the grass on a summer night, the number of caches always around but previously unknown could be disconcerting.

  He hoped they hadn’t freaked her out. Living alone at the edge of the forest, that might be unnerving for a beautiful young woman. “They aren’t supposed to be on private property. If they are, we can report them.”

  Frankie took the phone from Harper for a closer look, spreading out the map to zoom in. “Oh.” She sounded more relieved. “They aren’t as close as I thought. I mean, I could still walk there if I wanted to, but it’s not like they’re in my backyard or anything.” She zoomed back out and sat back with a relieved sigh. “You were saying?”

  “If you could locate Diamond Back Falls on the map, Harper can lead us from there.” Logan turned the ignition and waited to be told which direction to drive. He didn’t care if he got lost as long as he was able to spend the day with these two.

  Once Frankie had returned the phone to Harper, he looked into the rearview mirror and caught her eye. “Where to, kemosabe?” He’d always left navigation up to Harper as a way to encourage map-reading proficiency.

  And they were on the
ir way. While Cobble Creek was nowhere near the size of Denver and its suburbs, watching civilization recede in his rearview mirror made him a happy man. Driving past ranches, the grazing horses that dotted the wide-open spaces, filled him with a calm satisfaction, and he breathed in the sweet scent of cut hay.

  The landscape began to climb the foothills and then more rugged mountains. As Logan maneuvered the road cut through the mountain, his eyes followed the rock layers ascending into the sky, tangents away from the horizon like the brim of a hat sitting askew.

  “Turn left up here, Dad,” Harper piped up from the back seat.

  Harper had been so quiet during the drive that Logan figured she’d fallen asleep. Perhaps she’d been listening to the small talk between Logan and Frankie all along, the little snake in the grass. At least it hadn’t been anything more interesting than updates on Frankie’s involvement on the art festival planning committee and his upcoming presentation at the school for eye health week. That should have put any child to sleep.

  He took the turn and drove up the road a few more miles before locating the gravel pullout at the trailhead. With the first few steps, Logan felt the week’s stresses lift from his shoulders, a toxin leaving his body. The trail wound gracefully through a valley, at first following a stream and then up the hillside and into the alpine layer, the pines fragrant with the scent of Christmas and their footsteps hushed by the fallen needles. Aspen groves clumped together, excited partygoers in a tight space, the contrast of their white bark and the crisp green leaves tinged with autumn’s gold dressing them up for the occasion. In the distance, other aspens blushed red in the morning sunlight. While Harper may have been looking for the trinkets in the geocache, he’d already found his treasure.

  “How are rehearsals going for the play?” Logan heard Frankie ask Harper a mile or so up the trail. The two of them had forged on a few paces ahead of him, comfortably maneuvering the terrain and easy companionship. He was content to hang back, allowing his daughter to prattle on about the kid who fell off the stage when he was dancing and the way she’d impressed the teacher with her mastering a difficult technical passage. She’d told him all this before, but watching Frankie’s reactions held him entranced. Why couldn’t Tess listen to the girl like that, at least for a few minutes?

  Logan and Harper had never sought a geocache this far from the main road before and had almost forgotten that was their aim, especially once they rounded a bend and the trees gave deference to a breathtaking view. The unexpected meadow was sprinkled with wildflowers ranging from pink to lavender-blue and set in tall, swaying grass, the area peppered with clumps of boulders for texture.

  “A baby cairn!” Harper ran ahead and fell on the ground in front of a rock stack so fragile and ethereal one exhale would be as devastating to the structure as an earthquake.

  While intriguing in its seemingly impossible balance of rocks, Logan marveled that Harper would notice such a small detail among the grandeur of the entire scene.

  With Harper a few yards down the path, Frankie had stopped, fingers curled around the small of her back at her hips, taking in the view as if it were the first time she’d been hiking in these mountains, and Logan had never seen anything more beautiful. Finally, it was his turn to chat with their new friend, and he was closing the gap between them when an alert chimed from his phone.

  “App says we’re getting close,” Logan called out.

  With that news, Harper abandoned the minute rock stack in favor of locating the cache. She reached out to Logan for the phone, but he pulled a flat, brass circle from his pocket instead. “I thought you wanted to use the compass.”

  Almost as if it were a dare, Harper took the compass, playing with the magnetic needle as she twirled around, but rejected it after a few seconds. “You know this won’t work, Dad. There’s nothing to tell me which way I’m supposed to go or how far.” She held it out to Logan and traded him for the phone.

  Harper scrutinized it for a moment, turning in a circle to find the direction she should look. “It says it’s a small cache, and it’s six feet away.”

  Without a telltale traffic pattern worn into the dirt or crushed in the vegetation—the lack of which pleased him immensely—they’d have to find it the old-fashioned way. His eyes scraped the ground at his feet, checking for fake rocks or an accommodating low-growing bush that could disguise a sandwich-sized container.

  “Do you think the cairn is marking the spot?” Frankie asked.

  He’d felt her eyes on him, but he’d hoped it was for reasons other than looking for the cache. “Could be. They usually aren’t marked, but since there’s no tree, or bridge, or obvious place to look … Maybe under that bush?”

  “Would it be underneath the cairn—like ‘X marks the spot’?” Frankie moved a few of the longer grasses with her boot, careful not to knock over the rocks.

  “Digging is against the rules,” Harper said.

  Logan decided to clarify. “It should blend in but not disturb the environment.”

  “Last time, Dad and I found one in the crook of a tree.” Harper put the phone to sleep and then walked around slowly, avoiding crushing the flowers.

  Frankie swept up the bottom branches of the brush so she could see underneath, careful, if not ginger, about sticking her hand straight under where she couldn’t see. Smart woman, even if it was late in the season. He heard her hand thump on something hollow, plastic.

  “I think I found it!” Frankie jumped up without taking the container out, and Logan couldn’t help but laugh at her childlike excitement.

  “How do you know if you don’t look?” he teased.

  “Right.” Frankie dropped to her knees next to Harper, who’d also scrambled over and peeked under the brush. “Do you want to get it?” she whispered to Harper as though the container might hear her and run away.

  “Not this time.” Harper shook her head, adamant. “This one’s yours.” She pushed her hands in front of her, urging Frankie forward.

  The rectangular camouflaged container was watertight with a clear lid. Inside the olive plastic tray were some trinkets, a rolled-up sheet of paper, and a golf pencil that had been sharpened with a pocketknife.

  “You need to sign the paper log and claim it in the app on your phone,” Harper instructed. “Then let’s see the loot.”

  After signing the log, Frankie picked through the container’s contents. “These look like foreign coins of some sort …” Examining them took a moment. “The cutest Lego guy—” She leaned over and showed it to Harper for confirmation. “A hiker? How fun!” She looked at Harper and then at Logan. “Now what?”

  “If we want, we can take one of these with us, if we switch it with something we brought. It needs to be at least as nice or nicer,” Harper said.

  “Oh.” Frankie pressed her lips together so hard they almost disappeared. “I didn’t bring anything.”

  Logan fished around in his shirt pocket for the objects he’d slipped in that morning. “I have a few things. Take your pick.” A home-tied fly with a capped hook, a chess knight carved from dark wood, and a bottle cap geocaching coin lay in his palm for her perusal, objects he always trucked around when he and Harper went caching. His signature items, he’d started to think of them, although the coin had been taken from a different cache, so in reality, he was moving it from place to place like barnacles on the hull of a ship.

  “What do you want to take?” Frankie slid the container in front of Harper for her to choose.

  “You found it; you get the spoils.”

  Logan was proud of his little girl. She was acting so mature, stepping back to let Frankie have this moment, and he could tell how much she liked their work neighbor.

  “Well, then, that’s easy,” Frankie said, palming the Lego hiker. “He can sit on the shelf with us every day while we work, reminding us of our hike together.”

  Harper beamed her agreement.

  Logan dumped all three objects into Frankie’s hand, her palm soft and w
arm … and distracting. “Why don’t you leave all three? That way I don’t have to transport them back.” Like they were burdensome.

  “I can’t believe we actually found it!” Frankie exuded, replacing the box under the bushes. The three of them fluffed the landscape to leave no trace. “That was so much fun!”

  Frankie worked the minifig’s legs and arms as if he were hiking. She was like a seven-year-old in a body twenty years older. There was nothing more attractive than this woman’s joy: contentment with herself, appreciation of her surroundings, excitement for life.

  He’d only consented to go out with Tess at first because it seemed a way to have a good relationship with Frankie—a reason to talk and text every day. Besides, if Frankie wasn’t interested in him, he owed it to himself to keep looking, but it was days like this that drove home the truth that Frankie was the one who made him smile and laugh every day.

  “Do we want to move on, or is anyone ready for lunch?” He shifted the weight on the backpack’s straps. It wasn’t heavy, but there was a hole in his insides that he hoped to fill with food.

  Agreeing this was the perfect place for a picnic, they found boulders near the tree line with an expansive view of the wildflowers and valley below. They enjoyed sandwiches and small talk about their mutual appreciation for the Tetons and the wildlife, both flora and fauna.

  “Not that I’m too concerned at the moment,” Frankie said, shaking a spray bottle that looked like mace, “but bears and I have things in common too.”

  Ah, bear spray. Logan jumped in quickly, knowing she had more to say but not being able to help himself. “You’re both cute and cuddly?”

  “You think bears are cuddly?” Frankie gave him a strange look, earning a laugh from Harper.

  No, but I think you’re cute.

  “Bears and I like the same things—huckleberries.” She jumped up, jogging over to the tangle of bushes and trees behind Logan.

  “Huckleberries?” It was evident from Harper’s tone she wasn’t familiar with that name, but she followed Frankie, plucking her own berry.