Iled the way out of the library, grateful to be out of the confined space. I hated sitting still as it was, but sharing air with Rachel for that long had been doing things to my head. It wasn’t just attraction; it was a constant awareness. She couldn’t even blink without me registering the change in the air.
And I didn’t want to even think about what I’d overheard when I walked in. Talking about a different Brody, my ass. She and her friend were talking about me, and not in the usual way people talk behind my back. I hadn’t heard the wordasshole; instead, they’d been talking about sex.
Hot sex.
The idea had my jeans feeling tight, and my skin prickling with awareness. If only my injured back wasn’t also making its presence known.
The sun was shining and I tried not to wince as I walked downthe few steps to the sidewalk. My damn back was taking forever to heal. The chiropractor said it was because I was doing too much, but if I did any more sitting around than I already was, I’d go crazy. I’d built my whole life on motion. Being forced into stillness felt like being caged.
I stepped up to the passenger side of my truck and slid the key into the lock.
“Wow,” she said, “a vehicle that needs a key to open. Those are a dying breed.”
I patted the slightly rusty door of my vintage truck and pulled it open with a creak. “Nothing wrong with being a little older, just takes the right person to handle it.”
She stepped past me with a grin, and climbed into the passenger seat. “Talking about the truck or you?”
The teasing note in her voice caught me off guard. I couldn’t tell if she was flirting or just observant, and the not knowing threw me more than either option would have.
I moved around the front of the truck, ignoring the jolt of pain that shot down the backs of my legs before climbing into the driver’s seat and turning over the engine.
“You might want to roll the window down,” I said. “This thing doesn’t have AC.”
I shot her a look, daring her to complain, but she just did as I suggested, and rested her elbow out the window.
Pulling into slow downtown traffic, I focused on getting to the other side of it without my back locking up.
At a red light, I glanced over at Rachel. Her hair—which never seemed to want to stay put—blew in the breeze, the sun catching the blonde, and making it almost glow. But what held my attention was her focus. She didn’t seem to be watching the world go by, but rather studying each piece. As someone whopreferred to spend my time in nature, being downtown, with its too-close buildings and its artificially spaced and pruned trees, set me on edge. I wondered if that was what she was seeing too.
A horn blared behind me, and I realized the light had turned green.
“Do you have a place in mind?” she asked.
I nodded. “I know my way around out here.” She nodded, accepting that without question, and turned back toward the window. That easy trust settled low in my chest, unexpected.
I arrived at the first spot I had in mind twenty minutes later. The truck, its suspension admittedly not what it used to be, bounced over ruts for the last five kilometers, and my back throbbed relentlessly against the seat. Rachel braced herself with one hand on the dash, laughing softly when we hit a particularly deep rut, and the sound loosened something tight in me.
She said she’d done the fieldwork side of this industry before. I admit I hadn’t entirely believed her. Seeing her take the whole drive, dust and all, in stride made me think I had underestimated her.
“Stop number one,” I said. “This tract was logged a few years back with preservation and fire reduction in mind.”
I climbed down from my side of the truck slower than I wanted to, and Rachel met me around the front.
“Were you involved in this project?” she asked.
She started walking toward the forest, not rushing ahead, but taking in each piece one after the other.
I nodded. “More expensive to cut some trees than to wipe the whole area out, but that was what the company who hired us wanted.”
We spent the next half hour walking the site. Rachel askedquestions and scribbled notes in her notebook while I explained decisions I’d made as the project progressed. She didn’t keep her distance. When I pointed something out, she drifted closer, close enough that I could feel her presence at my side without looking.
I slowed my pace as my back protested, and she slowed too without comment.
“This spacing here,” she began, gesturing toward a cluster of younger trees, “was that intentional for a windbreak, or did it just work out that way?”
“Intentional,” I replied. “You leave them too exposed and they snap in the first bad storm.”
She nodded and crouched to examine the soil near the base of one of the trees. She was close enough now that I could smell her shampoo, clean, faintly herbal, and I had to consciously steady myself.
