Take a Chance on Me(34)
What did he think—that she’d step into his life with her bright, cheery smile and suddenly they’d be a family? Tiger would have a mother and everything would feel right and whole?
The log split, flipped off of the block, landing in the pile.
Darek should stop this before somebody—like Tiger—got hurt.
He picked up another log and balanced it on the block.
“Sheesh, Dare, last time I checked, we were just having a little campfire, not burning Rome.” Casper came up behind him wearing an Evergreen Outfitters shirt, the sleeves torn off, and carrying two cans of Coke. He handed one to Darek. “Mom sent this out.”
Darek put down the ax and worked off his gloves. Woodchips layered his sweaty skin—he needed a shower before Ivy arrived. He’d called her yesterday at the courthouse, leaving a message with her secretary giving her directions to the resort.
Could he possibly hope that she hadn’t received it?
Darek took the Coke, pushed back his baseball hat, and wiped the cold can across his forehead. Closed his eyes.
When he opened them, he found Casper tossing the wood into the wheelbarrow. Oops, he had chopped more than he’d realized.
But once he’d gotten going . . .
Casper leaned against the wheelbarrow. “What’s eating you?”
Darek shook his head. Setting down his soda, he slid on his gloves and picked up another log.
“Dude, seriously. We have enough wood for the winter. Last time you chopped with such a frenzy . . . well, you and Felicity got married about six weeks later.” Casper lifted an eyebrow.
Darek made a face. “I made so many mistakes with her. Starting with getting her pregnant.”
Casper took a sip of his Coke.
“It was so unfair to her. I didn’t want to marry her—and she knew it. But what could we do?”
“I don’t recall Mom and Dad saying you had to get married.”
“It felt like the right thing to do.”
“Did you love her?”
Darek sank his ax in the wood block. “I don’t know. Maybe. We had fun together. But that summer—well, I’d heard she’d been hanging around Jensen, and . . .”
“You went after her because you didn’t want him to get her.”
Darek picked up his Coke and finished it, then tossed it in a nearby garbage can. “Move so I can wheel this to the fire pit.”
Casper stepped aside, and Darek grasped the handles of the wheelbarrow. He felt his brother’s eyes on him as he started to push it.
“Okay, yes. Probably I wanted to win. He had this huge house, the boat, his fancy Mustang.”
“So you thought you should have the girl.”
“Something like that.”
“Except you weren’t prepared for what that meant.” Casper finished his own Coke, tossed the can in a recycle bin beside the path. “Move over. I got this.”
Darek relinquished the wheelbarrow to his brother.
Crickets chirped in the forest as they walked along the path, through the heat trapped between the trees. His feet crunched on thick, dry needles, tinder to a fire if a blaze ever started.
It was days like this that raised the hair on the back of his neck. All of Deep Haven County could go up in flames with one careless camper or a well-placed lightning strike.
“You miss firefighting.”
He glanced at Casper.
“It’s the way you pick up the needles and break them, testing their moisture levels. And the way you watch the sky. You miss it. The adventure, the hunt for fire, the battle.”
He and Casper had that in common, at least. The love of adventure. Being four years older than his middle brother had always seemed to distance them. Casper and Owen were a better fit—especially with their love for hockey. Darek hadn’t loved the game, just played it because he didn’t like basketball. He did love the ice, the cold frost on his face on a crisp winter day.
Shoot, he just loved being outside, the world in his grasp.
“Yeah, I guess. I’ll never forget that day I walked into our apartment, about two weeks after we got married. There was a message from my pal Jed from the Jude County Hotshots, and they needed me for a fire. Felicity looked at me like I had said I was going to war. Then she cried; I packed and left. Didn’t see her again for three months.”
“The Colorado fire, right?”
“Montana. The Colorado fire was the next June. Tiger was about three months old. That time I was gone until September.”
They’d reached the beach area, where their father, long ago, had created a fire pit with benches that circled it. It looked out over the lake, where the afternoon sun turned the water to a rich sapphire, a few boaters spraying diamonds into the sky. He could smell barbecues and hear laughter trickling across the lake.