Tucker

by Emily March

  A blue tarp hanging high above them protected the spot from the drizzle weeping from the sky. Gillian set up her chair beside Maisy’s. Caroline placed hers next to Gillian. They each set their backpacks beside their chairs, then stood before the fire, warming their hands and making small talk as other students began to join them.

  Fifteen minutes after they’d arrived, Tucker loped down the hill toward them, carrying a clipboard and chatting amiably with a couple who appeared to be in their early sixties. While the final arrivals set up their chairs, Tucker introduced himself and his assistant, a student at the University of Texas who helped him during weekend events, and he shared a little bit about his background and how he’d come to be the founder of a wilderness training school. Gillian learned a few things about him that she hadn’t known. For instance, in college he’d spent summers working in three different national parks on search-and-rescue teams. And he was deathly afraid of public speaking.

  Gillian wasn’t sure she bought that last bit. He certainly appeared comfortable enough speaking in front of this group of mostly strangers. He grinned, poked fun at himself, and seemed perfectly at ease—and deliciously scruffy. He wore a fleece-lined, plaid flannel shirt over a plain gray T-shirt and dark olive cargo pants. He hadn’t shaved this morning, and his stubble made her fingers itch to feel it. He’d allowed his military haircut to grow out and now his hair brushed the collar of his shirt. The ball cap he wore sported the Enchanted Canyon Wilderness School logo.

  Jeremy had been wearing his blue Italian suit at the Bluebonnet Café. The two men couldn’t be more different. Today, she viewed Tucker as infinitely more attractive.

  Distracted by the direction of her thoughts, she missed hearing Tucker ask them to introduce themselves. “Gillian, want to start?”

  “Start what?”

  “Introduce yourself.”

  “Oh. Sure. I’m Gillian Thacker. I live in Redemption and—” She hesitated, the words I own a bridal salon with my mother hovering on her tongue. The ones that emerged from her mouth surprised her. “I am an event planner and co-owner of a bridal salon.”

  Maisy and Caroline both looked at her and beamed. Tucker winked at her, then said, “Maisy?”

  The group of students was an eclectic crowd of a dozen people and included a doctor and wife from Dallas and an attorney and his son from Fort Worth. There was a fourth-grade teacher, a sales rep, and an engineer who worked for NASA, a man who owned a car dealership in East Texas, and a widowed grandmother of six whose late husband had played middle linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys. The middle-aged couple from the Texas Panhandle proudly declared themselves preppers-in-training, and the wife asked Gillian where she could get a Girls Getting Grubby T-shirt.

  “You’ll be able to order them through the store on the Enchanted Canyon Wilderness School’s website in a few weeks,” Gillian assured her.

  Tucker frowned. “Um, Gillian, we don’t have a store on our website.”

  “You will,” she fired back. “Poor planning on your part not to have one.”

  “Hey, that’s not my job,” he said with a defensive note in his voice. “That’s office related, so that’s all on Boone.” For the benefit of those that didn’t know the McBrides, he added an explanation. “He’s one of our partners. I’m the guy in charge of fieldwork, which is a nice little segue. Let’s get to it, shall we? Everybody find a seat, and I’ll explain how the day is going to work.”

  Tucker broke the weekend into seven sections, beginning with Survival Mentality and Priorities and ending with Land Navigation and Lost Prevention. “Our purpose here this weekend is to teach you life-enhancing skills that will make you feel comfortable in the outdoors and give you a richer experience when you get out of the cities and suburbs and commune with Mother Nature. The goal is that you’ll leave here tomorrow afternoon feeling more competent and confident with new skills to practice when you’re not in the middle of an emergency. Okay? Everybody ready?”

  “Let’s do it,” called the engineer.

  Tucker nodded and went to stand in front of his whiteboard. He picked up a marker saying, “So, let’s jump right in. Your life is at risk. Your survival is under threat. You are in a high-stress situation where resources are not normal. What are you going to do?”

  “Probably pee my pants,” Maisy jokingly offered.

  Tucker, however, took her serious. “Fear is actually an important survival skill. The trick is to use fear as a tool to keep you safe and not as a barrier that holds you back.”

  Caroline leaned toward Gillian and whispered, “That sounds like something Celeste Blessing would say.”

  “Remember that in a survival situation, your brain is the most important tool in your toolbox,” Tucker continued. “We are not the fastest or strongest creatures on the planet, but human intelligence gives us an advantage—as long as we use it and don’t let our primal mind take over and make decisions based on emotion rather than logic. Survival often depends on the ability to keep a cool head. So, here we are, the zombie apocalypse is approaching. Your primal mind might be telling you to turn around and run like hell. You need to listen to your lizard brain, but you shouldn’t act on it.”

  He used a black marker to draw a number one on the whiteboard and then wrote the words: Calm down. Determine your need and develop a solution. Aloud, he said, “I have a problem. I need to fix it. How? A little later we will get into the survival triangle and learn about need priority, but for now, I want you to think about this. Life is full of all sorts of survival situations, some more life threatening than others. Fear of public speaking is the same fear as being eaten by a lion. This survival rule helps in all sorts of situations. Collect yourself, identify the problem, and think about how you’re going to fix it. Don’t simply react or make an impulsive decision because impulsive decisions often make matters worse.”

  Listening to Tucker, Gillian’s thoughts returned to that morning at breakfast. The moment her gaze had landed on Jeremy, her blood had run cold. She’d reacted impulsively and turned around and hid in the bathroom until he left, which only made matters worse because his mother was in the restaurant too, and she saw her do it. By now, Mary Ann Jones undoubtedly had spread the news all over town and made Gillian look pathetic.

  “Any questions?” Tucker asked. When no one responded, he continued. “Okay, then, next.”

  He wrote the number two on his board along with the words: Continually work to improve your circumstances. “I call this the extra blanket phenomenon. Have you ever been camping or lying in bed in the dead of winter or even napping on the couch beneath an air-conditioner vent in July and you’re cold? There’s a blanket nearby that would improve your circumstance if you’d only get up and get it.”

  “But it’s too much work to get up and get it, so you stay cold?” asked the car dealer.

  “Exactly. It’s too much work, or you’re too lazy or too comfortable to roust yourself out of bed to get the extra blanket. As a result, you don’t sleep well. You’re not comfortable. Survival rule number two is to empower yourself as a problem solver, not a sit-around-and-whiner. Get up and get yourself another blanket. If something’s not working, fix it. Work to improve your circumstance.”

  Okay, Gillian thought, that one could apply to relationships too.

  “Third, don’t make your situation any worse.”

  “That’s pretty obvious,” Maisy said.

  “It is,” Tucker agreed with a nod. “But it’s also easy to do. Act on emotion instead of logic, and you might end up—”

  Hiding in a bathroom, Gillian thought.

  “Jumping from the proverbial frying pan into the fire. Attitude is vital. Start feeling overwhelmed or sorry for yourself or lose your cool, and things can go south fast. If you convince yourself you’re going to die, you’ll die. Decide you are going to live, and your chances of staying alive are a whole lot better.”

  “Wilderness karma,” observed the teacher.

  “Life karma,” Gill
ian offered. “Honestly, Tucker, everything you’ve said applies to everyday life, everyday relationships.” Where were you two months ago?

  He flashed her a grin and nodded. “Most everything we’ll discuss this weekend comes back to common sense and preparation. Utilizing those two things will carry you a long way toward your goal, whether it’s surviving the zombie apocalypse or navigating your way through, I don’t know, say, planning a wedding. Caroline, you’re planning a wedding now. How do you deal with it when you’re feeling overwhelmed?”

  “That’s easy,” Caroline said with a laugh. “I call Gillian. She is the planning pro. She takes care of everything.”

  Tucker grinned at Gillian. “All right, then, pro. What do you do when the zombies are bearing down upon you from every direction?”

  “I focus on the task in front of me and work on solving one problem at a time.”

  He nodded approvingly. “Exactly. Do that, and you’ll hold the zombies at bay. When you get in a tight spot, battle against the desire to feel sorry for yourself. Relish your victories, no matter how small, and do your best to keep your sense of humor. It’s amazing how much maintaining a bit of irony can help in desperate situations.”

  Maisy quoted the famous line from the movie Jaws, “‘We’re gonna need a bigger boat.’”

  “There you go.” Tucker turned back to his whiteboard, wiped it clean with his shirtsleeve, then drew a triangle. “Now, let’s talk about the survival triangle.”

  In the three corners of the triangle, he wrote the words Body Temp, Hydration, and Energy. At the center, he wrote Fire.

  Fire. Yes, she could use a little more heat. The dampness of the morning seemed to have seeped into her bones, and she wished she’d packed a warmer pair of socks than what she wore. Guess she got an F in preparedness. Gillian nudged her chair closer to the fire pit and listened distractedly as Tucker began to lecture about understanding and prioritizing problems.

  The cold didn’t appear to bother him at all. In fact, even as the thought occurred to her, he slipped off his flannel shirt. The man was comfortable and confident and in his element. Her gaze lingered on his broad shoulders, drifted to his muscular arms. He wore his T-shirt tucked into his cargo pants. When he casually unsheathed his wicked-looking knife as he approached the fire, hunkered down on his heels, then used the knife tip to … do something … she really wasn’t paying attention … her gaze drifted to his crotch.

  Stop that!

  The wanton woman inside her fired back. Why? Why did she need to stop it? She was free, wasn’t she? Single, with a capital S. Why couldn’t she have a casual affair with Tucker McBride and enjoy some no-strings sex?

  Because she lived in Redemption, that’s why. The sex always came with strings because small town affairs were never casual. After they ended, they weren’t over because they might just follow you into the bank or sit in the same row at church or take the table next to you at the Bluebonnet. A woman couldn’t live her entire life in the ladies’ room.

  Her gaze drifted to the glowing orange embers of the campfire. She was cold, and she wanted to move closer to the heat. The people around her laughed, and judging by Tucker’s mischievous grin, he’d said something amusing that she’d missed.

  Whoa, the man was hot when he smiled like that. Of course, he was hot when he scowled too.

  She was cold, and she wanted to move closer to the heat.

  Jeremy was back in town and pretending all was well. What was she going to do about it?

  Survive. That’s what.

  She would survive Jeremy Jones.

  And she just might let Tucker McBride teach her how.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “We are going to start a friction fire using a bow drill,” Tucker said. “Learning this skill teaches you one invaluable lesson—always carry matches.”

  The comment got the expected chuckle from the group, and so began the first hands-on lesson of his Survival 101 class. He lectured about materials selection, leading the group through the woods in search of the optimum materials for the task before them. “Due to the rain, we won’t be harvesting today—I have dry raw materials set aside. Your first time is challenging enough without adding damp materials into the mix.”

  Tucker’s hearing was keen, so he heard it when Maisy murmured to her girlfriends, “And here I always thought that being good and damp made the first time easier.”

  Caroline and Gillian both giggled. Tucker pretended not to have heard even as the comment sent his thoughts in a distracting direction. Dammit, he did not need to think about sex. Sex might be required for survival of the species, but despite what the average male liked to believe, it wasn’t necessary for survival, and it didn’t belong at Enchanted Canyon Wilderness School’s Survival 101 class. Tucker was a professional. He needed to keep his mind on professional topics. Nevertheless, he was glad when the dreary sky opened up and drenched his … heat.

  Once they made their way back to the pecan bottoms site, as his students gathered around the fire and a few of them—including Gillian—complained about the cold, he used the weather to make a point. “Remember that body temperature should be your number one concern. At unhealthy body temperature levels, your level of consciousness starts to decrease. Your ability to think clearly disappears, and you’re unable to help yourself. That will kill you long before thirst or hunger does. As I said at the beginning, your mind is the most important tool in your toolbox.”

  The woman from Amarillo said, “My mind is telling me I should have paid closer attention to the weather report. I didn’t bring adequate rain gear.”

  Tucker nodded. “Prevention is the most important survival skill, so if you left our shelter here inadequately prepared, you’ve learned a lesson. However, now that you’re chilled, let’s see about teaching you how to tend to the center of the survival triangle—fire. Tomorrow, we’ll cover shelter construction.”

  He gave them an overview of the bow drill process as he set out his demonstration kit, intending to use the teaching technique of telling his audience what he was going to do, then doing it, and finally, telling them again what he’d just done.

  He went down on his knees and then picked up the bow and the spindle and explained, “It’s all about duration, pressure, and speed.”

  “That’s what I tell my husband,” quipped the doctor’s wife.

  That one everybody heard. Instinctively, Tucker’s gaze shifted to Gillian at the same time hers moved toward him. Their gazes held, and in that instant, the switch flipped in Tucker’s primal mind, and from that moment on, everything he said during his fire-making lecture took on a sexual undertone.

  “Softer wood doesn’t polish,” took on a new meaning that had nothing to do with wood selection for the spindle.

  He saw something other than a hunk of mesquite branch in his hand as he said, “You want the hardest wood for a handhold.”

  When he said, “Lubricate your handhold,” he wasn’t thinking of soap or grease.

  “Use the whole bow.” Sex. “Take long strokes.” Sex. “Slow and steady until your notch is full, then speed up to light the coal.” Sex. Sex. Sex. “For tinder, look for something fluffy and flammable.” Just kill me now.

  By the time he transferred his coal to his tinder and blew a flame gently to life, Tucker wondered if he’d survive the attempt to teach Gillian Thacker how to build a friction fire. He was about to spontaneously combust.

  He hoped the situation would improve once the students began attempting to make their own fires, but Gillian’s natural grace and competent manner apparently didn’t transfer to wilderness skills. The woman was an absolute klutz. She handled her knife okay to make her handhold, but she couldn’t tie knots worth a damn, and so she’d needed help stringing her bow.

  She’d worn perfume. Who the hell wears perfume to survivalist school?

  By the time she had her bow strung, holes drilled in her handhold and fireboard, tinder prepared, and fireboard notched to catch the coal wh
en it formed, half the class already had their fires. She went down on one knee, placed her tools, and began working the bow.

  Dammit, he wished she’d worn a thicker coat that better camouflaged the swing of her deliciously full breasts.

  She made very little progress before her spindle launched out of the bowstring and she had to start again.

  Her second effort was no more successful than the first. She tossed her bow down in frustration. “I can’t do this. I give up. I’m a fire failure.”

  “C’mon, Gillian,” Tucker chided. “You never really fail at something until you’re dead.”

  “There’s something else Celeste would say,” Caroline observed.

  Maisy shook her head. “Actually, that sounds more like Angelica to me.”

  Gillian scowled at Tucker.

  He encouraged her with a steady, confident look. “You can do it.”

  Around her, three other students got their fires. She exhaled a heavy sigh and picked up her bow, twisted the spindle into position, and went back to work, moving her arm in a sawing motion.

  “Atta girl,” Tucker said before turning to help first the lawyer, and then the car dealer. Afterward, he returned his attention to Gillian. He hunkered down beside her. “Keep a straight back and bowing arm. Keep that bow flat and level. Like this.” He reached out and adjusted her tools. “Remember to use the whole bowstring. Speed isn’t as important. Slow and steady.”

  “My arm is going to fall off,” Gillian complained. “My knee is killing me.

  She pouted like a schoolgirl. He wanted to nip at that bottom lip of hers. “Apply more and more weight on the handhold, Gillian. Keep your back straight. Arm up.”

  “I am.”

  He moved behind her, reached around her, and repositioned her bow. He placed his left hand atop hers on the handhold, his right hand over hers on the bow and demonstrated the proper pressure, the slow and steady pace. He smelled the spicy scent of her perfume, and the silky texture of her hair brushed his cheek. Fire flared inside him.