“Wait . . . were you speaking English just then? You lost me at something-something cool, then something-something coolness.”
Maddie shook her head and her smile widened. “Whatever, Mr. Big Man. You’ve got everything sewn up tight.” She kept looking out the window and missed the way Henry’s face clouded at her words. He wasn’t sure himself why that sewn-up-tight comment had scraped across him like it had. He didn’t like it.
“Let’s play some games—” he said.
“Okay.” Maddie was like a puppy, practically bouncing up and down in the seat. She widened her eyes and lowered her voice. “What kind of games, Hank?”
He laughed again. “Word games! Are you a nymphomaniac or something? Has it been more than your usual seven days without getting any?”
He was still smiling, but she took it wrong. He thought he was still being funny. Sort of. Shit. He should have known she wasn’t going to like him basically calling her a two-bit whore.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean that like it came out,” he tried.
“Whatever, Hank. You’re safe with the sex-starved co-ed. Not to worry. I’ll get my daily dose in town behind the diner like I’ve been doing this past week.”
“Maddie, c’mon. It was a joke. The condoms falling out of your bag and all that. Lighten up.”
All of his suggestions that she relax or lighten up or take it easy were starting to set Maddie off. “You know what, Hank—”
“Oh, here we go—”
“Yeah, here we go—”
He slowed down the truck. “Am I going to need to turn around, because this is as good a place as any—”
“Darn it, Hank! What is your problem?” Maddie felt frustration welling up. Why couldn’t this guy just be normal?
He continued to slow down the truck. “This was a bad idea.”
“No it wasn’t. Keep driving. Cut it out. You are being such a baby.”
“I am being a baby?” But he started to accelerate again.
“Yes, you are being a baby. We were going to have fun and relax, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember. I suggested it. So why did you have to go and get all sensitive about me accusing you of being a hooker?”
She whipped her head around and was ready to rip his head off, but he was smiling that secret, really good smile and she just shook her head and looked at him instead.
“What?” he said, still smiling.
“I bet you get a lot of mileage out of that smile.”
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
“You’re like one of those girls who just bats her eyelashes and everyone does what she wants . . . no effort.”
He flexed his biceps by squeezing the steering wheel and dipped his chin close to the bulging muscle, showing off like a body builder. “Oh, there’s plenty of effort. You don’t get to bat these eyelashes without being able to bench two-fifty.”
“There’s no way you bench two-fifty,” Maddie scoffed. “That’s just something guys say at bars.”
“You calling me a liar?” He was challenging her, but the smile was there and she felt more like she wanted to kiss him than kill him again.
“Maybe a little white liar. But yes. My brothers always say stuff like that, and it’s always a crock. I read somewhere that sixty-nine percent of men think they are in shape and in reality only thirteen percent are.”
“Do you think I’m in shape, Maddie?”
He was such a tease. When he talked to her like that, with that deep, rolling suggestive voice, she felt all quivery and shaky inside.
“You know I do.” She looked out the window, hating to admit how attracted she was to his body. It seemed wrong, somehow, insulting to him, to just be hot for him because she wanted him for sex.
He laughed. “See. That’s the great divide, right there.”
“What is?”
“You probably feel guilty because you only want me for my body and you shouldn’t. Feel guilty, I mean.”
She smiled her encouragement. “Go on.”
“I don’t feel the least bit guilty for wanting your body . . . and you probably think I should. Feel guilty, I mean.”
He kind of had a point. She twisted her lips the way she always did when something rankled. “But . . .”
“Mm-hmm.” He looked at her for a few more seconds, then focused back on the turn that was coming up after the straightaway that had taken them through the wide valley north of Bangor.
“I think it’s the ‘only’ that’s the sticking point.”
It was his turn to encourage her. “Yes?”
“Yeah. I mean, think about it.”
He smirked. “I’ll give it a shot, Post.”
“You know what they say about hiding your lamp under a bushel, Gilbertson.”
“Point taken. Go on. I’ll try to keep up.”
She rolled her eyes. “I just mean telling someone that you only want them for their body is kind of like telling a chef how to cook. It’s a package deal. It’s a whole recipe. You can’t just walk into a restaurant and stroll into the kitchen and say, more oregano, I hate onions.”
“Sure you can. People order like that all the time.”
Maddie smiled. “But they don’t really like to eat.”
He laughed hard. “You might have a point.”
“Seriously.” She was warming to her theory. “If you want to bang some chick—”
“Maddie—”
She swiped her hand to cut him off. “You know what I mean. One night stand. Whatever. Don’t trip me up. I’m on a roll.”
He smiled. “Go on, then.”
“I mean, if you want to just use someone for sex, there has to be something about them that you want . . . not just their flesh.”
“This is a deadly dangerous conversation. You might be painting me into a corner so I’ll say something you’ll use against me.”
“Oh, cut it out. Consider this the all-clear or whatever you would call it in the Army. All bets are off. Say what you will. I won’t hold it against you.”
“Women always say that.”
Maddie shook her head in dismay. “Darn it, Hank. Who are ‘all these women’ that you keep talking about? It’s so annoying!”
“Simmer down, tiger. I just meant, that’s always the way when the women I have dated—and banged—in the past drew me into the quicksand of let’s-have-a-real-discussion type discussions. Maybe you are different.”
“Talk about quicksand. If I say, ‘Yes, I am so different from other women,’ then I am some arrogant twit. If I say, ‘No, I’m just like that. Tricky. Wily. Trying to trap men into saying all sorts of stuff they don’t really mean . . .’ Doesn’t leave me much wiggle room.”
“Okay, okay. Go back to your theorizing. At the very least, I like to hear your voice and watch your lips twist around when you’re trying to get your mind around an idea.”
“You’re impossible.”
“Totally,” he said with another smile. “But you like me this way, so keep going. Please.”
“Oh, all right. It sounds stupid now that we’ve lost track of what was really just a little aside. But here’s the thing: by saying I just want someone for x, y, or z it’s like you are totally denying that they are a whole person. They are just some object. A tool.”
Hank tapped the steering wheel for a few minutes. Thinking. Finally he started talking. “But. Now hear me out. Sometimes you need a tool. I use very specific tools on my job. There are very specific wrenches and gauges and valves and—”
“But those are objects!” Maddie said over a laugh.
His smirky, wide-eyed look silenced her. “May I finish?”
“Yes,” she said, chastised.
“And sometimes people want to be used like that. To be taken in hand.”
Oh, Jesus. He did it again. The slow, deep, suggestive, this-means-nothing, this-means-everything voice. Maddie felt like she might melt right into the seat of the car.
“Yeah? And?” She tried to sound blasé.
“Yeah and nothing. It’s just a fact. I think people sometimes just want the cigar. It doesn’t need to be all Freudian and meaningful. It can be great and not be attached to everything that ever happened in the universe. It can just be a thing.”
“Eloquent.” Maddie sneered.
“Preach not to others what they should eat, but eat as becomes you and be silent.”
She stared at him. “Picked up a little Epictetus in the Middle East, did you?”
“Something like that.” He put his elbow on the edge of his window and looked peevish.
“Something like what? Where did you get the philosophy degree, and why do you act all anti-intellectual and then go and quote Epictetus to me?”
“West Point.” He barely said it loud enough.
“Yeah right.” Maddie inhaled to laugh and then realized he was serious. “You went to West Point? How? When? I thought you enlisted on your eighteenth birthday.”
He looked at her and narrowed his eyes. “My mother been singing my praises to you?”
“Something like that.” Maddie smirked back and tried to ignore him. Why would he act all gruff and dumb when he had a degree from West Point?
He rolled up the window and turned the air-conditioning on. “Sorry. It’s getting too windy. It’s giving me a headache.” A negative side effect of being in the water for so many hours a day, Hank’s ears pretty much always bothered him.
“That’s fine.” Maddie rested her hands on her lap. She figured if he wanted to tell her about West Point or any other secret facts about himself, he could do so of his own accord. She wasn’t going to pry around like some desperate . . . person.
After listening to the radio for a couple of songs, Maddie started to feel sleepy. “Do you mind if I crash for a few minutes?”
He turned to look at her. “Sure. Are you tired? I thought you went to bed early last night?”
“Very funny. I couldn’t sleep a wink knowing you were naked in your bed a few feet away.”
He smiled and shook his head. “I don’t care if I hurt your feelings, Madison Post, you are a hussy.”
She started laughing softly as she nestled her cheek against the front seat. “You’re probably right. If wanting you makes me a hussy.” Her eyes were closed when she said it, and Hank had to force himself to breathe evenly.
How could she just say everything like that? At some point in Henry’s childhood, he had missed that whole chapter on expressing your feelings clearly. Or at all. Maddie just blurted everything flat out. I like you. I want you. You are hot. You are cool.
Hank felt like he was always standing on trial, in the dock, being interrogated, on the record, making it count. He was such a liar for trying to convince her that most people wanted just this or just that for quick satisfaction. That he wanted to use people like he used the tools of his trade. He couldn’t even use his own brain openly without feeling like he was a showy bastard.
He turned off the radio and drove the rest of the way in silence, enjoying the slow, even rhythm of Maddie’s steady breathing. Especially the occasional sleepy hum and sigh.
CHAPTER 5
“Are we here?” Maddie was groggy. “How long was I asleep?”
She looked up at the bright sun reflecting through the tall trees that shaded the car. Hank turned off the engine.
“Hey, did you have a good rest?”
Maddie was slower and softer when she was just waking up. She hadn’t had time to marshal her resources, thought Hank. He reached out and caressed her cheek where she’d just lifted it away from the upholstery.
“Yeah.” She put her hand over his. “It’s nice to wake up to you.” She closed her eyes again, still half-asleep.
Hank felt something hot and slow slice through him, like an evisceration. He left his hand on her cheek—mostly because hers had trapped his beneath it—and it would have seemed rude to yank it away. But he wanted to yank it away.
He cleared his throat. She released her hand and arched her back to stretch her neck and shoulders after being asleep in that awkward position. He stared at her chest and then opened his door and stepped out of the car. It was even worse when she wasn’t intentionally trying to mess with him.
Walking to the back of the truck, Hank shook his head to clear the image of all that nakedness right there under that T-shirt and sports bra. He started undoing the ropes and bungees that held the canoe in place and then paused to watch Maddie let herself out of her side of the cab, leaving the door open. She bent down and stretched, placing her hands flat on the bed of pine needles—and her ass in the air—and then reached up as high as she could, standing on her tiptoes.
She let her arms down slowly, then turned to look at him.
“So how far are we going?”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought we were going for some kind of deep-woods version of Camping with the Stars. I want the full military treatment. I can take it.”
“You can, can you?”
“Yeah, no girls on trip.”
“What’s that?” He was back to untying the restraints. Maddie had leaned into the backseat to start unloading the tent and the backpacks and other gear Hank had brought along.
She leaned her head out so she could see him. “No. Girls. On. Trip.”
He started laughing. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It’s an old family joke. I’m the youngest. I have three older brothers. And I am a girl.” She smirked and curtseyed. “As you can see.”
He smiled. “Yeah, I see.”
She leaned back in to get the canoe paddles, then shut the car door. “My older brothers used to go hiking with my dad, and when I was about ten or eleven I said I wanted to go, and my brothers started chanting, ‘no-girls-on-trip.’ So I’ve got a little bit of a complex, I guess.”
Hank pulled the canoe out of the bed of the truck and flipped the gate back up into place.
“Well, I like girls-on-trip, so we’re good.”
She put her hands on her hips and tilted her head. “You make no sense to me, Henry Gilbertson.”
He shrugged. “Oh well. Luckily I never promised to make sense to you.”
She smiled, deciding not to get drawn into another nit-picky argument about semantics and who promised what to whom, and tried not to feel sad about promises that Hank didn’t want to make.
“Okay, how should we portage?” Maddie lifted up her backpack. “Also, this is really light, so if you want me to carry the tent, I can attach it to the bottom of the pack.”
“First of all, we are not going to portage the canoe. I am going to portage the canoe. And yes, tie the tent onto your pack and I’ll take the rest.”
Pulling her eyebrows together, Maddie bent to attach the tent to the bottom of the pack. “You don’t have to carry it all by yourself. We could split the weight.”
“Have you ever portaged a canoe before?”
She wasn’t looking at him. Maddie was trying not to pick a fight, but if he wasn’t going to let her do her share, it was going to be all wrong.
“Well, not technically.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Hank had moved around to where she was standing and bent to pick up his pack and the two sleeping bags. He used the hood of the truck like a worktable and attached a sleeping bag to either side of his rucksack.
“It means,” Maddie flipped her face up to look at him from her crouched position near his feet, “that the place where we usually go camping leaves the canoes for us, so we don’t have to actually portage.”
Hank smiled and rested one arm on the hood of the truck. “How convenient. And no one ever steals all those canoes just resting on the side of the lake.”
Maddie mumbled something indistinguishable.
“What was that?” Hank knew she was embarrassed.
“I said, it’s a private lake.”
“Like the whole lake belongs to a club or something?”
“Something.”
Hank whis
tled. “You mean, your family owns the whole lake, don’t you?”
She shouldered the knapsack into place, trying to adjust it to make up for the drag and awkwardness of the heavy tent weighing it down at the bottom. Maddie tried to busy herself with the straps and the minor modifications to avoid answering the question.
He shook his head and didn’t push it. He returned his attention to lashing the sleeping bags. “What’s your cell phone number, in case we get separated?”
“I don’t have one.”
Hank looked up to the treetops, trying not to lose his composure entirely. He exhaled slowly. “Of course you have a cell phone. Did you forget it?”
She shook her head no.
“Did you lose it?”
“No. I just can’t afford one right now.”
Hank finished attaching the sleeping bags, tugged on the straps to make sure they were secure, and pulled the whole bundle onto his shoulders with an easy toss.
“So let me get this straight. You have an entire lake, but you can’t afford a cell phone?”
“That pretty much sums it up. And it’s not my lake. It’s my grandmother’s.”
They stared at each other, each of them holding their thumbs beneath the straps at their shoulders.
Maddie’s gaze slid to the forest floor near her feet and she decided to just spill the beans. “Look. My brother made this stupid bet with me. . . .”
Hank kept looking at her, but his expression changed from humor to wariness. “What kind of bet?”
She took a deep breath. “My brother acts like I am this spoiled brat—and I’ll admit it, my mom totally spoils me—but I am not spoiled . . . just because my mother loves me—” She looked up into Hank’s eyes and hoped she didn’t sound like she was overly defensive.
“Go on.”
She shook out her shoulders. “So . . . I think he was just joking when he said he didn’t think I could go three months without talking to my mom, or asking for money, or buying a new pair of shoes just because I felt like it. . . .”
Hank’s eyes narrowed. “And?”
“And when I said I actually wanted to do it he started backpedaling and I held him to it and—I was angry and I wanted him to pay up—so we made a bit of an insane wager. . . .”
Love in Maine Page 5