I tried to explain it over dinner, but he’s never used the app. He doesn’t know, and he doesn’t really care. I roll my head on my neck. “I don’t know, to be honest,” I say after spitting out my toothpaste. “Reporters seem to think it is. Marcus, too. And it felt like a big deal when I was doing it.” I rub the heel of my hand against my forehead. “And maybe I should face that music, but I talked to Poppy today, and she says it’ll be like vultures descending.”
“That sounds terrible.”
“Yeah.” I wash my face, then put my toothbrush in the outside pocket of my backpack. “Well, I’m all packed.”
“How do you feel?” he asks after we crawl into my bed.
“Tired. Nervous. Sad.”
“Do you want to…” He rubs his hand over my tummy. “I don’t know, fool around or something? A sexy send-off?”
I roll onto my side so I’m looking at him. “I don’t know.”
“That means no,” he says, his eyes warm.
We’ve never had a rip-each-other’s-clothes-off relationship, and I appreciate that he’s not offended. “Yeah, I think it does.”
He also seems to sense I don’t want this to be maudlin. His lips quirk. “No goodbye fuck?”
I laugh. “I don’t want this to be goodbye.”
“Right.” His gaze searches my face. “But maybe an end to…this?” He gently waves his finger back and forth between our bodies. “We’ve never talked about a long-distance thing.”
“That sounds complicated.” And not necessary. “But we’ll always be friends.” I lean in and kiss his lips. His mouth feels warm and stable and friendly.
Definitely no goodbye fuck.
“I think I’ve been doing a lot of things all the wrong way,” I whisper as I snuggle into his side.
“What do you mean?”
I don’t know. That’s the problem. “Maybe I’ll figure that out in Canada.”
4
Astrid
I’m in a foul mood by the time I park myself outside the arrivals entrance at the airport. I hate traffic, I hate parking, I hate people, and I hate the chaos and noise that comes with a combination of the three.
There’s really no acceptable reason for me to have agreed to spend the next few weeks with another human being. I will fuck this up.
I’ve learned over the years that my expectations don’t line up with what people can deliver. I want too much, too hard, too precisely. Those traits have helped me in my art and in business, but hurt me in love, and cost me in human relations in general.
I’m not an ogre, of course. I work well with Marcus, because our goals align and we have similar personalities. Maybe it helps that we grew up together, spending summers together on our grandfather’s ranch in Idaho. He taught me about computers and supported me when I decided to move to Canada, much to the ire of our family.
He was also the first relative I came out to.
And now he’s sent me a lost soul, so I need to set aside the curmudgeon persona I usually embrace and be a decent hostess to a smart kid.
I take a deep breath and grab my sign with her name scrawled on it. Brianne Fischer. It should come with a warning that I’m the worst chauffeur ever, and she might just want to turn around and get on the next plane back home. Whatever she’s escaping there probably isn’t worse than spending three weeks with me.
The screen inside the terminal informs me that her flight arrived ten minutes ago. Yikes. I hold the sign up, but I don’t see any lost young adults. And it’s a big airport. It might take her some time.
I watch the people arriving, listen to their conversations, to try and pick up on clues as to which flights are now spilling out the doors. One flight is obviously from the United Kingdom. Another from South Asia. Others are harder to figure out, so I stop trying, because that’s less fun than it sounds.
I see her backpack first.
She couldn’t be that cliched, could she? It’s a massive pack that rises above her head, but as soon as I see the edge of it around the side of a large man moving between us, I know.
I’m not prepared when the rest of her comes into view. She’s taller than I expected. I’m a tall woman, just a few inches shy of six feet, and she’s not much shorter than me. She’s also gorgeous.
Dark pixie bangs over a heart-shaped face, slim body, wide hips, long tanned legs in hiking boots with wool socks peeking out the top.
Yes, she’s exactly that cliched. She’s my hiking hippie-girl wet-dream come to life.
Oh, Marcus. What have you done to me?
I drag in a deep breath and hold up my sign. She scans the crowd, her eyes bright, and her mouth splits into a wide, happy smile when her gaze lands on me.
She jumps in the air—while wearing a massive pack—and waves at me like we’re long-lost friends.
Damn it. Why does Fantasy Girl have to be so damn happy? Well, that will get annoying soon, and I’ll stop imagining what the tops of her thighs taste like.
It should be annoying now, though, and it’s not.
Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck.
5
Brianne
“You must be Astrid,” I say as I stride toward the tall, elegant blonde woman holding a sign with my name. “Thank you so much for—”
“Do you have checked bags?” After a pause, she smiles, like she had to remind herself to do it. “Sorry. Hi. Welcome to Canada.”
“I’m good.” I pat my bag. “This is it.”
She nods and turns. “My truck is this way.”
Okay, so curt and surly is a Dane family trait. Maybe I should have seen that coming. “Thanks,” I whisper anyway, because I am grateful. I got a text message—a text!—from a reporter while I was sitting in the Denver airport waiting to catch my flight.
He was also at the Denver airport according to his message.
I almost crawled under the seats in the departure lounge. I definitely pulled the hood on my sweatshirt lower over my face.
He didn’t know I was there, of course. He was urging me to prepare to meet with him “so we could get ahead of the story.”
Mm-hmm. I’m getting ahead of it by leaving the damn country, which felt like overkill when Marcus suggested it, but now I’m not so sure. The press’s ability to swarm is intense. Poppy’s article is running today, though, and she says that once it’s no longer breaking news, people will quickly lose interest, and even with the scoop, she couldn’t get it anywhere near the front page.
I’m not headline-worthy, and I never thought I’d be freaking grateful for that fact. Now I can breathe a little easier on my three weeks here in British Columbia.
Other than Astrid explaining that it will take almost an hour to get to her house in North Vancouver, we don’t talk on the drive.
That’s a good thing, because it saves me from my words stuttering to a stop when she turns into a high-end neighborhood, then onto an even higher-end street, finally pulling through a gated fence to park in front of what can only be described as a multi-million-dollar home with a billion-dollar view of water in the distance.
“I have a cousin who lives in Vancouver. She’s a photographer who can use an assistant who knows how to climb mountains.”
Maybe I should have Googled Astrid Dane before I got on the airplane.
She slides her truck into an empty garage that has room for at least two more vehicles and turns it off.
“You must be tired,” she says in a way that feels like an instruction. Go to your room and stay there for a while.
“I could rest, yeah.”
“I don’t really cook.” She presses her hand to a sensor pad next to the door between the garage and the house, and it slides open.
Fancy.
“I’m easy to please,” I say, hoisting my pack onto my shoulder. “I’m happy to get to work, too, if there’s anything I can do. Right away, I mean. Or soon. Whatever you need.”
She gives me a cool look. “I like silence.”
Oh. I nod. Okay.
Well, it is literally a bed room. There’s a bed in it.
And dozens of cardboard boxes, although they are neatly shoved against the far wall. But that’s it. There’s no other furniture, not even a bedside table with a lamp. Okay. I feel like I’m going to be saying that a lot in my head.
“My office is across the hall,” she says, almost apologetically. “And…well, I wasn’t expecting a guest.”
“I’m sorry—”
She waves her hand. “It’s fine. Those are books. I haven’t finished unpacking.”
I desperately want to ask her when she moved in. I’d put ten bucks on it being not recently. Like, a few years at least.
“We aren’t staying here long. We’ll head into the mountains day after tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll tell you more.” She hesitates, then looks at the athletic watch on her wrist. “I’ll order dinner for us. One hour?”
I nod.
“Are you allergic to anything?”
“I don’t like pineapple,” I say faintly. “Makes my lips tingle.”
I get a tight, quick smile in acknowledgment, then she’s gone.
After carefully setting my pack against the empty wall, I pull out my phone to do a search for my new boss. Better late than never.
But the internet is not forthcoming in the least. She has a website for her photography that looks like she could maintain it herself. A gallery of stunning landscape photographs. And an About The Photographer page that refers all inquiries to her agent in Seattle before providing a brief biography.
A renowned landscape artist, Astrid Dane is most comfortable with a camera in her hands and the wind at her back. Born in Idaho, she now lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.
That tells me nothing.
I stretch out on the bed, which smells faintly of lemons and something warmer, maybe something herbal. Earthy. The sheets are soft and well-worn, and they don’t have that stale settled feeling of a guest bed that’s been unused for ages.
She might be cold and untalkative, but Astrid made this bed for me.
Maybe it was a housekeeper?
I laugh at that thought. I’d put even money on her not wanting anyone else in her domain.
Then what are you doing here?
She must really like Marcus. Well, that makes two of us. And if my former boss thinks I should trust his cousin, I will.
Plus I like the way her sheets smell.
That’s something. Maybe something small, but I’ll hold on to it with all my might.
6
Astrid
Brianne does her best to be quiet as a church mouse during dinner. I tell her about the series of photographs I plan to take. I’ve climbed these mountains many times before, but getting the right equipment to the right point at the right time is the real trick of the thing.
“I have a cabin up there. We’ll stay there most of the time, but we may need to do one or two overnights if we can’t climb fast enough in the morning.”
That doesn’t faze her. “I’m pretty comfortable with overnights, even as the temperature drops. Do you have winter sleeping bags, or will we need to hit an outfitter on the way?”
“I have the gear.”
After we eat, I show her all my camping supplies. She carefully inspects every inch of the down bedding, then rolls it tight before sliding it back into the carry bag. Here her curiosity is replaced by a confident knowledge, and I find myself softening toward her as she moves swiftly through the bins. I let myself really look at her, past the adorable haircut and the eager smile, although I like those a lot, too. I see muscles well-defined under pale skin that flushes easily. She purses her lips when she’s thinking, tightening the delicate muscles around her mouth in a repetitive pulse.
And when she glances sideways at me, I feel a warm swell of heat.
Stop it, body. That’s annoying. You’re not supposed to like her.
I decide that’s enough time spent together for one day. “I wake up early,” I tell her.
She nods, and her pixie cut sways with far too much enthusiasm for hair. “Sounds good.”
Does it? It sounds disciplined, maybe. Practical, for sure, especially if you want to get the early light regularly. But good?
Good is waking up whenever my body wants, not when “All About the Bass” starts playing on my phone.
Which reminds me, I’m going to need to change my ringtone before I share a small cabin with Brianne the Kid.
She’s hardly a kid. True. But my brain wanted to give her a nickname and Hiker Fantasy Girl is untenable. That would lead to absolutely bad, bad, bad things. The worst kind of bad.
Deliciously bad.
“Right. See you in the morning.” I turn on my heel and head back inside. She races along behind me, coming alongside as we reach the living room.
“Night,” she murmurs like she just can’t help but be polite, and before I can respond, she veers off to the guest room.
I sigh and head in the opposite direction.
My bedroom is deep inside a suite. My retreat from the world. But tonight it feels confining, like I’m hiding from my guest.
Which you are. She’s not my guest, though. She’s an assistant, forced on me by my cousin.
I run a bath, then sink into the water, thinking about the days ahead. I have an ambitious photo schedule planned. The most important shot is one I’ve taken three times before. This will be the fourth and final image in a set. The four seasons, all captured from the same point.
But I’d like it to also anchor a new series I could display in a show of its own. Climb a Mountain, I think I’ll call it. If we could find a gallery that was vertical, with a winding staircase, that would be even better. Hang all the pictures around the staircase as guests climb up to the top, where “The Seasons” would be on display.
You need to take the pictures first. It’s almost an impossible task, requiring four or five days of perfect weather, in the same season. An assistant nimble enough to keep up with me, and smart enough to stay out of my way while I’m working.
Brianne seems both nimble and smart.
And yet… Marcus has sent her to me to hide out.
What kind of political activism did his wild child stray get caught up in?
I ask her the next morning in my office. I’m not prepared for her answer. Probably my own fault for asking after two hours of grilling her on how she reads maps, GPS coordinates, having her pack and unpack my camera gear.
She’s doing her best, but I’ve snapped a few times. And now I’m doing it again. “I’m sorry, what?”
Brianne gives me a wary look from across the maps spread out between us on my desk. “What…what?”
“You’re here because you said the wrong thing on Twitter?”
“It wasn’t just one tweet. I created a whole account and heckled the government for months on end.” She squares her shoulder, her eyes bright and defiant.
Oh, heaven help me from the ideological youth. I press my lips together to keep from responding further.
Political activism my ass.
“I couldn't keep quiet,” she protested. Is that what she thinks I’d rather? “I was shocked at how many people out there just didn't get it. I needed to say something.”
“Sure.” I turn back to my computer, and the weather report for the next two weeks.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see her cheeks turn pink, but she doesn’t say anything else.
It’s my fault for asking. I’d been hoping for a protest. Maybe dreamed of her in Docs and a plaid shirt, stomping through a Take Back the Night rally.
“I did say things out loud, in front of people, too,” she says abruptly. Then she clamps her mouth shut again.
“Forget I asked.”
Now her cheeks are bright red, and I’ve offended her, but I don’t have time to school her on
the real injustices in the world. She lifts her chin and rolls her lips together, then nods. “What does the forecast say?”
“There are four or five nice days. If we climb each day, I think I can do this. We can do this,” I add, forcing myself to soften my tone. “It’s going to be hard work. Long days, sore muscles.”
“I’m fine with that.”
“Good.” I glance back at the screen. “Today is a cold dip, then the temperature rises again. We should head up there tonight, and tomorrow might be our first climb.”
She nods, then looks at the door.
Have I barked at her enough that she’s worried about asking if she can go? I flick my wrist and give her what I hope is an understanding smile, but it probably comes off as a grimace.
I carefully gather up my notes and the maps, and file them in their waterproof folders, then slide them into their designated pocket on my custom camera backpack.
I carry it to the foyer, then get my personal pack from my bedroom. I meet Brianne again in the hallway, and gesture for her to put her backpack at the door next to mine. “We should eat before we hit the road,” I say, pulling leftovers out of the fridge.
She slides onto the bar stool on the other side of the granite island, then stops herself and hops off. “Can I get cutlery?”
I point to the drawer, and she silently grabs forks. Her cheeks are pink again.
I should say something to make this less awkward.
I don’t, because what would I say? One day you’ll realize the world is full of assholes, human beings are basically dysfunctional and awful, and then we grow old and die?
It’s better if I don’t talk.
As we eat, I notice Brianne’s eyes dart around my big, empty house. It’s the not first time she’s wondered why I have all this space when I clearly don’t like people. Does she know her face is that expressive? But she presses her lips together, again, because I told her I prefer silence to the sound of her voice.
I lied.
Rogue Affair Page 6