by Lin Stepp
Boyce loosened his tie. “Are you going to let me see what you’ve done?”
“Yes, I decided I would when I let you come up.” She tidied her desk a little nervously while she talked. “I wanted you to see this design of Patrick especially. I took a photo of him one day sitting on his haunches and looking up at the birds on the bird feeder. He was so intent watching them, that I couldn’t resist snapping the picture. I worked from it for my design idea.”
Jenna leaned over to pet Patrick again while Boyce looked at her design.
“I like it,” he said, studying the finished piece. “The guy’s a bird dog, after all, and he’s always trying to tree or point a bird. I’ve seen him do this often, just sit and try to stare down the birds at the feeder.” He laughed. “You’ve really captured it, Jenna. I like the way you got his ears kind of pricked up here – and the way the birds are just going on about their birdy business like he wasn’t even there.”
Jenna released the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. However, when Boyce opened the card to look at the verse she’d written for the card, she found herself holding her breath once again.
He read through it. “Oh, good idea. You put a get well verse with it. About getting well so you can get out in the sunshine to watch the birds and play with the dog. It’s great. So many people will relate to that. It will lift their spirits.”
Jenna studied his face carefully. “Are you just being nice, Boyce, or do you really like it?”
He looked at her in surprise. “I may be nice about a lot of things, but with art I’m usually considered to be too candid.” He laid the card back down on her desk. “Ask Una if you don’t believe me. I tell her flat out the things I like that she does, the things that I think don’t work, or the things that are just not my taste. I’ll do the same with you if you’ll be honest with me about my work, as well.”
Jenna considered that. “How would you tell me if you didn’t like something?” she asked tentatively.
“I’m not sure.” He propped against her desk and gave her a teasing grin. “Let me look at some more of your stuff.”
Not waiting for an answer, he started sorting through all the designs she’d made to send up to New York. He studied each one as he looked through them.
“This one,” he said, holding out a card to her. “This one with the little girls doing ballet exercises at the barre. I like the idea, but you’ve made all the little girls look too perfect. I think this design would be better if one or two girls were a little more irregularly shaped – you know, maybe one too thin, one a bit heavy. And I’d put glasses on one or maybe have the ribbons of one of their shoes dragging on the floor or something. It would be better if it were more human.”
He opened the card and read the verse. “However, I love the verse about dancing all the way through your birthday. That’s great.”
Jenna studied her card and frowned. “You might be right,” she observed. “All of the girls have the same neat buns tied up with ribbon and they’re all the same height and shape. But I’ve seen little lines of girls just like that in the ballet studios in New York.”
“It’s your artistic liberty to interpret it however you want,” Boyce replied graciously, still studying the card. “But you asked what I’d tell you if I didn’t like something or thought it needed improving. This one struck me as a little too perfect.”
He grinned at her again. “Of course that’s my opinion. You gotta remember, I like the wilted tulip amid the beautiful ones, the leaf with the bug hole among the perfect ones. I like the less than perfect among the perfect. That’s life. And everything’s beautiful anyway – perfect or not.”
His words pleased her. “I’m going to remember that thought for a verse,” she told him. “You know, sometimes you are almost a philosopher, Boyce Hart. You say some very profound things.”
“Well, right now, my profound thought for you is that I’m starving and I want to get out of this tie.” He reached a hand up to jerk at it again. “Do you want to go hiking with me or not? I’m going to stop up at the Last Deli to get lunch to take along this time. I don’t want to take time to fix anything. The day is getting away, and everything is green and bright after the rain last night.”
“Won’t it be muddy?” Jenna frowned.
“Nah, the sun’s dried everything out all morning. There won’t be more than a few damp spots here and there along the trail. But the creeks will be up and rushing. I always like that.”
She gave him a big smile. “Okay, you’ve talked me into it. How much time do I have to get ready?”
He tossed a teasing reply to her as he started toward the stairs. “Ten minutes from after you hear the front door close, so get a move on it! The sun is calling!”
Fortunately, Jenna was already dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, so she flew through getting her hiking gear together and her boots on. She stood on the porch waiting for Boyce when he walked out his front door.
“You’re two minutes late,” she called as she started across the street.
“Smart ass.” He unlocked his jeep and threw his gear in the back. “I had a phone call that held me up.”
They were on their way a few minutes later. Boyce stopped at the deli to buy sandwiches for lunch and caramel apples to eat on the way, then headed up the highway into the mountains.
“You’ve never lived until you’ve tasted Nell’s caramel apples.” He bit into an apple dipped in caramel and rolled in nuts. Ummmm. She soon agreed.
At the Townsend Wye, they turned right on Laurel Creek Road, which snaked its way in and out along the creeksides and under the ridgetops toward Cades Cove.
Boyce gestured out the window. “The Cades Cove area was once a green settler’s valley of rich farmland, log cabins, barns, mills, and schools,” he told her. “When the park gained possession of the cove lands, some of the old cabins were kept, and they are now maintained by the park service as historic sites. I’d take you back to see others, but I try to avoid driving in the cove on a pretty weekend day like this. The traffic is bumper to bumper, and the tourists literally stop in the road and hold everyone up to gawk at every glimpse of wildlife. It can sometimes take hours just to drive around the eleven mile loop of the cove. It really frazzles my patience, so I avoid it except in the off seasons and weekdays.”
This raised a question for Jenna. “I thought you said the John Oliver cabin was inside the cove? And it is Sunday, you know.”
“The cabin is in the cove.” He gave her a smug smile. “But the trail to it starts before the loop road into the cove begins. We can park and walk in. It’s only about two miles to the cabin on the Rich Mountain Trail and it’s a nice easy walk through a pretty, open woods. You’ll like it.”
Soon they had on their packs and were walking down a narrow, single-file woods trail, with Boyce in the lead.
“How come you always get to lead and be first?” Jenna asked teasingly - just to nettle him.
He stopped to gesture that she could walk around him to take the lead, smiling impishly while he made the gesture. “I usually take the lead so I’ll be the first to step on a snake or on horse poop in the trail. But I’ll be glad for you to be the one to go first, if you want.”
She looked down at her feet in alarm. “No, I guess I’ll let you lead,” she replied primly.
After a few minutes, shuddering at the thought, she asked Boyce, “Have you ever really stepped on a snake?”
“Once.” He grinned over his shoulder at her. “A big rattler sunning on a southeast ridge trail. His coloring blended in so cleverly with the dirt path and the dried leaves on the path, that I simply didn’t see the old boy until I almost had a foot on him. I hollered so loud in shock, that I think I scared the snake almost half to death. He took off slithering down the hillside as fast as his slithers could carry him. I was sure glad, too. I wasn’t keen to get better acquainted.”
They both laughed. Boyce knew almost as many mountain stories as Sam, and Jenna loved listening to them.
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“I like being with you, Boyce.”
He turned his head and winked at her. “Don’t sweet talk me out on the trail with no one around, Jenna. I’m likely to get ideas.”
“Well, if that happened, all I’d need to do is just wave food around to distract you,” she answered flippantly.
He laughed. “And don’t mention food, either. I’m likely to get ideas about that, as well. But we need to get on to the Oliver cabin before we dig out our lunch. You know, that deli makes the best club sandwiches – puts them on butter-toasted rolls. And I bought some of their homemade fudge, too. They make it right there in the shop.”
“You’re making me hungry now.” Jenna giggled. “So don’t talk about food anymore.”
“Want me to sweet talk you instead?” He turned to give her a teasing look. “I’ve been told I’m good at it. And it would pass the time.”
“Better not,” she quipped back. “My knees might go weak so I couldn’t hike anymore. And you’d have to carry me.”
He laughed with pleasure as they hiked on up the trail.
Learning to tease back and forth with Boyce had been new for Jenna. When she first came to Orchard Hollow, his teasing confused her. Sometimes she had let it hurt her feelings. Now she understood it as just a part of Boyce’s fun-loving, comfortable nature. Jenna had always grown up around serious people. None of her family, and few of her friends, told jokes and stories – except for Sam. She wondered sometimes if Boyce was too easy and carefree.
“Don’t you even know how to be serious?” she asked him once, provoked with him over a prank he just played on her.
He stopped to study her intently. Then he leaned closer to her to frame her face with his hands, his fingers playing seductively over her lips. “I work hard not to get too serious with you, Jenna Martin,” he said huskily. “Very hard. Don’t complain or I might just teach you why I try so hard to keep it light with you.”
She found herself frozen in place, her whole body alive and tingling from his words and his touch. He ran those magic hands of his over her face and down her arms, and then lifted both her hands to kiss her palms and her fingers. She thought she was simply going to die from all the feelings he caused to run through her body.
Jenna read in books that women could be teases, but she thought Boyce Hart a more subtle and dangerous tease than any woman she ever read about. In fact, she hadn’t known men could do some of the things Boyce did that tantalized her so. Most of the little things he did were so subtle she could hardly draw his attention to them to complain. He gave her soft looks across the room that almost melted her. He would catch her eye and hold her glance – and not look away as most people would. Then he’d study her face, her eyes, her mouth with his eyes, until she would get little windmills in her stomach and would wet her lips with nervousness. Then he’d slowly smile at her, knowing she was reacting to him.
“Shhh! Look!” Boyce held up a hand and stopped in the trail in front of her. “Over there in the woods.” He pointed as he spoke.
Jenna followed his glance and saw two deer grazing in the forest not far off the trail.
He stood quietly. “Stay still or they’ll bolt and run,” Boyce said. “That’s a buck with the antlers. And look at their white tails. They’re pretty, aren’t they?”
“I can’t believe they’re so close to us,” Jenna whispered.
“Well, the deer are trusting here in the park.” He smiled back at her. “But they’re watching us, too. I’m going to try to get a few pictures.”
He got in several photos before the glint from the sun on the camera lens startled the deer, making them quickly disappear into the forest.
They continued on up the trail and soon had to rock hop over a couple of streams along their way. The afternoon grew warm, even under the trees, and Jenna took off her light jacket and tied it around her waist.
Eventually, the trail curled up a hill and around a corner to arrive at the Oliver cabin. It was a rustic, hand-hewn cabin sitting at the edge of the forest with a broad, green field spreading out before it. From the cabin’s porch, you could see a stunning vista across the Cades Cove valley and up to the high mountain ranges beyond. Jenna and Boyce sat on the front porch steps to enjoy the view while they ate their lunch.
“Mmmmm,” Jenna said. “Any food eaten in the mountains always tastes so wonderful. I wonder why that is.”
Boyce chuckled. “Because of the walk you took getting here, in part,” he answered. “But the rest is a mystery. I can eat a peanut butter sandwich up here and it tastes like a feast.”
They laughed and visited companionably over lunch. Then Boyce got out his sketch pad and pencils to make drawings of the cabin. Jenna located her own small sketchbook and walked around the cabin to find mushrooms and plants to draw that took her fancy. She also drew sketches of a swallowtail butterfly that kept dipping around the porch of the cabin.
“I always have the best time with you,” Jenna told Boyce on the hike back to the jeep later. “You’re an easy person to be with.”
“Good. Maybe you’ll miss me and come back to me after you figure out who you are up there in New York.” His voice sounded light but the look he sent her was serious.
She took a deep breath. “What if I figure out who I am and it’s a city girl?”
Boyce was quiet for a moment. “It’s a point that’s held me back from doing more than making jokes,” he said finally, surprising her.
Before she could make a response back, Boyce shushed her to listen to the sound of a woodpecker far off in the distance. He tried to locate the bird with the small binoculars he carried in his pack, but he never could see it.
After that, there was another creek to rock hop across, and somehow, Jenna never got the nerve to turn the conversation back to that last comment Boyce made.
Back at Jenna’s place later, she and Boyce sat on the couch resting. “I enjoyed our hike today, Boyce.”
“Me, too.” He pulled her hand over to hold it in his and began to trace patterns over her arm with his fingers.
“Guess what I’m drawing?” He grinned at her.
It was all Jenna could do to concentrate or make a guess with his fingers skimming over her arm.
“That’s a circle,” she said, trying to focus. “And that’s a square.”
The next shape was a heart and the movements of Boyce’s fingers grew more intimate, skimming across the tender skin of her inner arm as he traced the shape again.
To avoid moving in that direction, Jenna shifted the subject. “You know, Carla and I used to play a game like this when we were girls. We wrote words on each other’s backs and then tried to guess the words.”
“Show me,” he said, rolling over on the couch to present his back to her.
Remembering the fun she and Carla had doing this, Jenna climbed up on Boyce’s hips like she used to sit on Carla’s and started to trace out letters, letting him guess them from the feel of the letters on his back. At first it was fun, just as she remembered, and then odd, strange feelings began to seep up her thighs and legs where she was sitting on him. She became more and more conscious of the feel of him under her body, but she didn’t know how to change the situation without saying something personal and inappropriate. Without giving away her own discomfort.
Boyce took care of it for her by suddenly rolling over and pulling her down on top of him. “No more of that game, Jenna.” He looked into her eyes with heavy desire. “You’re driving me crazy with it.” And it was all too obvious that she was. They kissed and cuddled a little then - if you could call cuddling a right word for it, when they were both breathing like two racehorses just out of the gate.
Blowing out a long breath, Boyce stood up. “I need to go now, Jenna. It’s getting late. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He paced across the room and let himself out the door.
Jenna sat on the couch feeling confused. She wondered if she had done something she shouldn’t have.
Walki
ng to the door, she looked out to see him starting across the yard.
“Boyce, did I do something wrong?” she whispered out into the night.
“No, Jenna, you did everything right.” His voice sounded husky and soft. “That’s why I have to go now.”
“But we could just talk,” she suggested.
“No, we couldn’t just talk.” She heard him sigh deeply. “Or at least I couldn’t. I can’t be with you anymore right now without asking things of you that I shouldn’t ask.”
Jenna heaved a sigh watching him stride across the yard. Did he mean asking about deeper emotions than either of them were ready to admit yet?
When Boyce was with her and when her emotions were stirred, Jenna often wanted to talk of love and future. But by the morning, she always felt glad things had not gone further or gotten even more complicated.
Later in the evening, she went over to ask Boyce something about art. In all honesty, she just wanted to see him again. She’d felt restless and antsy ever since he left.
He let her in with few words and seemed almost annoyed to see her.
She smiled at him, wanting to soften his mood. “I wanted you to give me your opinion on these designs I’ve been working on.” She laid them out on the table. “I’ve been trying some new techniques with my paints – trying to infuse more color - but I think it takes away from the initial design.”
Boyce walked over to look at them. “I don’t know why you came over to show these to me.” He frowned. “They’re a mess and even you know it. This pouring technique with watercolors doesn’t work well with your kind of card designs. It makes them confusing and distorted.”
“Yes.” She sighed. “Maybe I was just painting out how my life feels now.”
He shot her an annoyed look. “Well, maybe you need to do something to fix your life instead of just painting out your feelings.”
Hurt now, she turned on Boyce in irritation. “Well, who made you the great authority about me and my life, Boyce Hart?”
He glared at her. “The only way anyone gets to be the authority in your life – because you give your authority up, Jenna. You’ve been abdicating your rightful authority over your own life for years. You let others dictate who you are, what you like, what you should do, whether your art’s good enough, how you should think. Even now, you’re down here hiding out in the mountains, letting other people handle getting the details you need for a divorce together for you. Letting other people work out your future. Afraid to go back and face it. Afraid to stand up to your husband or your parents. Afraid to really have your own life. I’d like to see you grow up, Jenna, live on your own, make it on your own, know who and what you really are. Be your own self. And be proud of who you are in the bargain.”