I couldn’t help smiling as I nodded. “We can. There’s a ranch just outside of town, and they do guided rides through some of the forests out there. I’ve never done it, but if you’re game…”
“That sounds like fun.” He was almost vibrating with enthusiasm now. “Let’s do it.”
Hell yeah. I couldn’t wait.
CHAPTER 10
JESSE
Once we got into Maine on the second day, the scenery progressively became less city and suburbia and more trees and farmland. After we got off the interstate in Maine and started following progressively smaller and less maintained highways, the towns got tinier and more quaint. Buildings were similar to those in Pittsburgh that had been around since the steel era—craftsman houses huddled in rows along rivers and narrow streets. Farms stretched out between forests and towns. There were gas stations that looked like something caught between eras—pumps with shiny new digital readouts stood in front of dusty old buildings with ancient signs for companies that no longer existed.
It all reminded me of some of the smaller towns in the rural parts of Pennsylvania, with antique shops, diners, and the crumbling remnants of bygone manufacturing booms.
I’d always heard that fall in New England was something else, but I’d figured it couldn’t be that much different from Western Pennsylvania. Turned out I was wrong; the red, orange, and yellow leaves were so vibrant up here, some of the rolling hills looked like they were on fire.
At a little past five, we reached the largest of the towns by Moosehead Lake, which was Greenville. Even it wasn’t exactly a glittering metropolis; a lot of mom-and-pop places, plus an all-in-one gas station, grocery store, tourist shop, and outdoor outfitter. We grabbed dinner at a local café, then picked up some groceries at the all-in-one place before continuing to the cabin.
That turned out to be another twenty-five minutes from Greenville. By this point, I was tired of being in the car, but honestly, I couldn’t complain about the scenery. The two-lane road wound through hills blanketed in dense evergreens and fiery deciduous trees, broken up by the occasional driveway or a road leading to a boat launch. The lake’s sparkling surface poked through the thick forest here and there, and we probably passed all of three cars the whole way.
“Not a lot of people out here,” I mused.
“Not too many,” Eric said. “A lot of people come out here to hike, boat, or snowmobile, and you have people coming through on the Appalachian Trail, plus the leaf peepers. Even during the peak times, though, I’ve never seen the area stacked with crowds or anything. That’s one of the things I love about it.”
“I believe that. I saw some signs for snowmobile crossing. That sounds kind of fun… aside from the part where it’s cold, wet, and… cold.”
He laughed. “Not much of a snow person?”
“Ugh. No. I went snowboarding once, and that was enough.”
“Same. Not because of the cold, though.”
“Oh yeah?”
He nodded. “Sprained my knee really bad.” Grimacing, he absently rubbed his left knee. “Zero out of ten. Do not recommend.”
I shuddered, fighting the urge to rub my own knee just to assure myself it was uninjured. “I think I’ll stick with doingwinter sports the way God intended—watching them on TV from my nice, warm living room.”
“Agreed.”
“Says the guy who went snowboarding.”
“Hey, I wentonce.”
“Uh-huh.” I shot him a look. “Doesn’t sound like a true ‘fuck winter sports’ kind of person to me.”
He rolled his eyes and gave me the finger. “I’ll have you know I only went because the guy I was trying to date at the time wanted to go.”
“Ooh, so you were there trying to score.”
Eric snorted. “It sounds so crass when you put it like that.”
“Mmhmm. And where am I wrong?”
Another eyeroll, though he was smiling. “I wanted to date him, not just get naked with him.”
A mental image of Eric naked, hot, and horny flashed through my mind, but I tamped it down because ooh, no, I was absolutely not going there. Not on this trip when I’d be alone with him for three weeks.Nooway.
I cleared my throat. “So, did it work?”
