“No, I mean a real live bobcat. But he’s cool. He’s never hurt anyone.”
“That sounds cool. Sign me up.” Harper grinned. “Right, Zach? You’re up for it.”
“You just put your name here.” Jeremy pointed to a list on the counter. Harper put down her name and Zach’s.
“ZACH, LOOK!” Her voice was hallowed. “It’s a great horned owl!”
“Wow.” He lowered his voice. “It’s looking right at us.”
“Look how it bobs its head forward. What is it doing? Is it sensing us?” Fascinated, she stepped closer. “God, it’s gorgeous. Look at those powerful legs. And those claws.”
“Those look pretty wicked,” he agreed.
“I’ve never seen anything like it.” Her voice was quiet. “I’m glad we did this.”
“The owls have one ear higher and offset than the other,” Carlos jumped in. “The uneven placement changes the way sound waves reverberate so they can triangulate their prey—determine distance and height.” He glanced over. “The owl might be moving his head, yes, to learn more about your position and location.”
“But it won’t attack us. Right?”
Carlos laughed. “No. The largest thing the owls can attack is maybe a rabbit, a Chihuahua, a…”
“Did you say Chihuahua?”
“I did. Hawks and eagles can take them, too, so people who live near the mountains need to be careful of their pets. I had a friend in Tucson who lost a Shih Tzu to a hawk. It was like that scene from that movie with what’s her name, Sandra Bullock, but real. And very tragic.”
“God.”
“Here, look, I’m going to give you the black light flashlights. Scorpions will glow under the black light like they’re neon millennials at a rave.” He laughed. “Don’t touch them.”
“Not planning to. Where should I shine the light?” She was actually excited to do this. Having other people around, like Carlos, made it less terrifying. These were things you could live in and among, if you knew how. She could learn.
Carlos gestured. “Off the path, you can try the gravel and rocks over there. Just keep scanning the sides of the path as we walk. You’ll see one sooner or later.”
Grateful she’d exchanged her flip-flops for sneakers, Harper slid her hand into Zach’s and he squeezed reassuringly. “They don’t jump.”
“No.” Carlos laughed longer than seemed strictly necessary. “Tarantulas, if you see one, are shy, too. The only thing that might jump is a wolf spider, but we won’t see those right here, I don’t think.”
“Snakes?”
“Nah, too much foot traffic recently.” Carlos sounded disappointed. “But if you get up early or come out later than this tour, you might see one. But don’t approach. That, though,” his voice firmed, “is dangerous and don’t do it for kicks. A rattler bite is nothing to laugh at, okay? Got me?”
They nodded.
After the tour, Zach pulled her hand toward the bench facing the mountains. “Sit with me.”
“We might be attacked by crazy desert creatures.” But she was joking. Although they’d seen more than one scorpion, a tarantula, and a bat, she was exhilarated.
“I’ll keep you safe.” He tugged her to his body. “Let’s look at the mountains we can’t see, and talk.”
“Okay.” Unbelievably pleased, she snuggled into his shoulder. “It’s just cooler enough to be bearable right now.”
“Yeah. How do you like it here?”
“You mean Arizona? Or this resort?”
He shrugged against her.” Both. Either.”
“More than I would ever have expected. Things, when you get to know them, are deeper and more nuanced than you could ever imagine from the surface.” She paused. “Like a fractal.”
“How’s that?”
“You know the fractals, right? They look like fancy gorgeous snowflakes with all kinds of points and curves and divots on their arms. All colorful, like an oil slick.”
“Do I know the fractals? It’s like you’re asking if I know the Joneses or the Smiths.”
“Stop! I know you know what I’m talking about.”
He laughed. “I thought they were more of a mathematical construct than an oil slick.”
“But how they draw them. They look like multicolored mandalas, or fancy swirls, like Escher on molly made them.”
“Yes, I know those, although I can’t tell you anything about the science behind them.”
“Well, I’m no expert. But the thing I do know about fractals is this.” She drew one in the air in front of her, a curve. “The point is, that the details are supposed to reflect the thing as a whole. And they never end. If you enlarge pieces of the edges of it, it’s supposed to look just like the original, and so on for ever and ever.”
“Infinity in a finite space.”
“They use them to describe coastlines and galaxies. I don’t know how, really.”
“A never-ending pattern, right? It repeats and repeats, on a smaller and smaller scale.”
“Yes. So anyway, to make a really long and complicated analogy, Arizona is a fractal. From the surface, it looked boring and I was disappointed not to be in Hawaii. All I saw from the drive was boring buildings and dry fields. Then I looked closer and I found…”
“Smaller boring building and tiny dry fields? And inside those fields, even tinier buildings and more minuscule fields?”
“No! Stop it!” She laughed. “Okay, it’s not a perfect analogy. The point is that there was way more there than I could imagine. And every time I looked more closely at something, it turned into something else wonderful and interesting. Every detail led to another detail, and another. And what I thought would be a dry and dusty place ended up being full of life and wonder and color.”
“Look at you making that lemonade,” he said, pulling her closer. “Out of those closed flaps came an open mind.”
“You’re awful.” She groaned.
“Come on, it would make a great blog title.”
“Never!” She giggled, then they fell silent.
“Do you think people are like fractals?” She looked up at him, finding his eyes in the moonlight.
“How’s that?” He brushed a strand of hair from her face, and she felt tingles at the gesture.
“More complex than you could imagine. More interesting than you can see at first glance.”
“Isn’t that the going philosophy? Everyone’s deeper than you first give them credit for?”
“But it’s really true. You know?” She wanted his hand back on her face. “The interesting part is how they don’t mimic what you see on the outside. You see one thing, you look, you find something else entirely. It’s a reverse fractal maybe. Instead of endlessly repeating that one design on the outside, they create a whole new world on the inside.”
“I think the fractal analogy is done,” he announced with a smirk, but answered her with a more serious look. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. It’s like a mystery, every time you get to know someone. But also a little stressful, right? Because they’re also finding out about you. And then you might not like what you see, or they might not.”
“And that’s why people avoid intimacy,” she mused. “The social intimacy, I mean. Getting to know people not on a sexual basis, but the deeper than an acquaintance basis. It’s scary. Right?”
He nodded. Then he asked, “When we were in the airplane.”
“Yes?” She stiffened, just a little, not sure what he was going to say.
“We talked about a lot of things.”
“We did.” She nodded.
“Do you feel that we became closer because of it?”
She thought before responding. “It felt like it, right? I think so, at least in some ways. Don’t you?” She glanced up at him for confirmation, although the fact that he was even asking—coupled with his arm around her, the two of them sitting against the night—surely should have been answer enough.
“I do,” he said slowly. “I think we exchanged
information that we would not have shared at this point in our relationship. Maybe never.”
“Definitely.”
“I guess the question is, what did that do for… us?” He pulled away to face her a little on the bench, putting his hands out like a question.
“I don’t know.” Her face was hot, her pulse racing. She wanted him, she knew he wanted her. She didn’t want to want him. He wasn’t a safe bet. He was the kind of man who would become a drug overnight, tipping her over the edge from crush to full-fledged addiction even as he was pushing her away when he was done. And then it would take months more, long, dreary difficult months, to get the taste of his mouth out of her mind, to lose the feel of his hands on her skin—
“Well, it made me want to do it again.”
“Do what again?”
“Look into your eyes for four minutes and then kiss you senseless.” He smiled. “I liked that feeling. Didn’t you?”
“Yes, but we were… it was an adrenaline situation. Right? You were helping me, and I was practically manic with fear. And then you turned me down when I…” She swallowed.
“I didn’t want to turn you down,” he reminded her. “I was trying to do the right thing. Make sure you really wanted—something. With me. But yeah, I felt like we had a connection on the plane.”
“I don’t know if it…” She stopped talking, mesmerized by the look in his eyes.
“Only one way to find out.” He lowered his voice and brushed his hand over her cheek, cupping it as he leaned in.
CHAPTER 12
She thought he was going to kiss her, but he stopped, closer than the time in the plane, and smiled. “Want to set a timer?”
She shook her head.
“We’ll just estimate, then.” He put his other hand on her cheek, too, so he was holding her face with both hands.
“Okay.” Her voice was so soft. His eyes glittered in the dim light and the shape of his face was in shadow, making him sexy and mysterious. “Should we talk?”
“If you want.” He removed his hands from her face, still looking right at her, and ran his palms over her shoulders, down her arms, until he caught her hands in his.
“Okay.” She wanted him to talk because she liked the way his lips looked, moving. Was it cheating to glance at his lips now and then? She smiled, and his eyes darted to her mouth, and that made her smile more.
“What?” His voice was teasing.
“I saw you look at my lips.”
“That’s because I want to kiss them. You looked at mine, too.”
“They have a nice shape.”
“And?”
“Does there have to be more?”
“I think there does.” He reached up and brushed his thumb across her lower lip. “And I’m pretty sure there is more, Harper.”
She swiped at his thumb with her tongue, a quick flick, and was gratified to see his jaw clench and feel his body tighten, something she sensed from their proximity.
“You could be right. But you’ll have to wait four minutes to find out, though, won’t you?”
“Only if you trust me to honor the original agreement,” he said.
“I would hardly stare into the eyes of someone who I found untrustworthy, now, would I?” she chastised him, with a grin.
“Maybe, if he was as good at certain… things… as I am.”
She raised her eyebrows. “You’re confident, I see.”
He grinned at her. “Yeah, I am.”
“Well, I,” she said, deliberately licking her lip, “am also quite good at certain… things. Just for the record.”
His eyes narrowed and a tendon jerked in his neck. “Then we’ll make a very good match, won’t we?”
“Only time will tell,” she said, although she was absolutely sure that he could give her the most amazing night of her life.
“To pass the time, want to ask another of the thirty-six questions?”
“Why are his questions so good? I think we should come up with our own.”
“Okay, ask away.” He smiled. “Anything you want.”
Her brain went blank, because she didn’t really want to talk at all; she wanted to melt into his arms and his mouth, to be bare skin on skin. And if she couldn’t do it, she wanted to think about that, and only that.
She blinked and grasped at a random thought that slipped by. “What’s the best thing you’ve ever done?”
“The best thing?” He blinked rapidly. “Wow, that’s hard to answer. I don’t know.” Although he was still looking at her, his gaze seemed vacant, like he was seeing something in the past, now, instead of her eyes. “Forming my business. Well, for me. That’s the best thing I’ve ever done for me. And, I don’t want to brag, but for my employees, it’s a good thing, too.” He paused. “But—the best thing. That’s hard, to sum up the accomplishments of an entire life into one thing.”
“Right?” She was eager to share. “I guess my best thing would be my career. But when I look at it from above, like a hundred miles above, that seems so… I don’t want to say useless, but I want more. I guess that’s why I got so scared on the airplane. I wanted all the options back. I wanted to do more and see more and be more. Maybe it’s why I get scared every time, on every plane. I feel my own insignificance and how badly I want to accomplish things, while I still can.”
He nodded. “If you’re asking what’s the nicest thing I’ve ever done? I don’t know about that either. I mean, I’ve donated a lot of money to charity over the years, individually and from my business. I guess those are good things. Are they better than forming the business in the first place? Better for the world as a whole? How do you judge that?”
“I don’t know how. I’m just asking.” She shrugged. “I guess the nice things I’ve done are so small compared to the world, although at the time they seemed very powerful.”
“Such as?”
“I’ve—one time my friend on the block growing up got sick, really sick. Something with her kidneys, but I was a kid so I never knew the real details. But we visited her in the hospital and she was so sad and pale, like someone had sucked the her right out of her body and filled it back up with, like, putty. She was scary because she was so apathetic. Seeing me didn’t help. We just sat there. Then I, well, I had this gorgeous fake diamond ring that I loved. It was heavy and looked like the Hope Diamond or something, and it was so sparkly, and it made my finger green from the band. I took it off and I put it on her hand. And then she smiled, and it was like the film came off of her eyes, I swear.”
She touched her face. “I’m going to cry!” she laughed. “Not really. But it made her so, so happy. And then her mom—I could see her mom in the hallway, hovering, watching like a mother bird staring at a fox lurking near her nest of eggs—”
“Not at you, right?”
“No! Not at me. At her daughter in that fucking bed with the fucking IV in her arm. She was so helpless. That was scarier than seeing Manda there. But I gave her that ring and she got so happy and she hugged me, and then we started talking. And she smiled a lot.”
“That’s really sweet.”
“At the time, it seemed monumental. I loved that ring and would never have considered giving it to anyone. And it made her happy, and that made her mom happy, so it was a good thing to put into the world, right? But is it the best thing of my life?” She paused. “I don’t know. And if it is, is that pathetic? That in all of my years on the planet, the best thing I’ve ever done is to give a toy ring to a sick child?”
She shook her head. “It’s not a good question. Sorry.”
“No, it is good.” His voice was urgent. “Maybe all of the little things are the important things. That one thing, okay, that was small, but important to that girl. And important to the core of who you are as a person. And if you do a lot of nice little things, over time, that adds up into something far larger.”
She nodded. “I hope so. I mean, I’m sure the right answer most people would give is my kids, of course. Everyone
would consider their kids the best thing they’ve done, because procreation, keeping the human race alive, blah. But I don’t have kids yet. So—I’m still important, right?” She heard the question in her voice.
“I’d say you are.” His voice was firm. “Everyone’s important. All of us together. One big human team.”
“Yes.”
He touched her face. “I think the time is up, Harper.” He smiled. “What’s next?”
She smiled back. “Well, you could ask me another question. Or…”
“Or this?” He leaned in so his breath brushed her cheek. “The kiss we’ve been waiting for?” He ran his lips over her neck, and she shuddered with arousal. “Neck first, or lips, Harper?”
“Lips,” she whispered, and then his mouth was on hers, as sexy and warm as she remembered, and he wrapped one hand behind her neck to pull her to him, gentle but firm.
She reached out to touch him, too, twisting on the bench for a better position, and he surprised her by breaking away and standing, pulling her to her feet. “Like this,” he said, then tugged her in so their bodies touched, chest to hips. “See?”
He bit her neck, a quick nip, then kissed the spot before taking her lips again. One hand on her back, the other on her ass; she touched the side of his jaw, his shoulders, then reached for his ass as well, smiling into his mouth when he growled.
When his leg nudged at her thigh, she shifted without words, letting him pull her closer yet, and when she felt how hard he was already, more passion surged.
His phone rang and he ignored it, just pulling her hips into him, urgently, as the ringtone chimed and chimed. But when it rang a second time, and a third, Harper pulled back. “It looks like someone’s trying to contact you,” she said, her concentration broken.
“They can fuck off,” he said, but pulled it from his pocket anyway. “Just let me deal with whatever it is, and then we’re going to continue this conversation.”
She laughed.
“It’s the resort manager at the Hawaiian Tropics. Let me just call back. One minute. Sorry.”
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