“Thank you for making sure we got back okay,” Tori said, shaking Matt’s hand.
“It was my pleasure.” Hailey wasn’t so sure, but she smiled anyway when he turned to shake her hand. “Make sure you put something on those blisters when you get home.”
“I thought I hid the limping better than that.” His hand felt huge and hard, but the firm squeeze had just the right amount of pressure.
“I was starting to wonder if I’d have to give you a piggyback ride out of the woods.”
Shaking his hand was one thing, but jumping on this man’s back and wrapping her legs around his waist? Strangely heat-inducing but was never going to happen. “Well we’re out now. Thanks.”
It didn’t escape Hailey’s attention that Matt stood at the edge of the parking lot, where the dirt met the trees, and watched them until the car was started and they were on their way. Probably because she was watching him in the mirror.
“You should have asked for his satellite phone number,” Tori said, nudging Hailey with her elbow.
She groaned. “No.”
“If you got laid, this day wouldn’t have been a waste.”
“I’m not going to talk about my sex life.” There wasn’t anything to talk about. “At least the gossips in Whitford will have something to talk about for a while.”
Tori’s mouth turned down at the corners. “We don’t have to tell them.”
“We skipped out on movie night for this, so they’ll ask about it.”
On the first Saturday of every month, some of the women gathered without men or kids to watch a movie and, since it had been Hailey’s turn to host, she hadn’t been able to simply skip it. She’d had to explain about the adventure tour and how the first weekend in May was the only opening they had, thanks to a cancellation.
“We don’t have to tell them every single detail,” Tori said.
“The fact you believe that is proof enough you weren’t born and raised in Whitford. Trust me. We’re going to be famous.”
TWO
BY THE TIME Matt got back to the family’s cabin on the river, the light was starting to change. His dad would probably be tracking the time, wondering if it was time to worry yet.
Bear met him at the edge of the porch and he leaned down to give his black Lab a good neck scratch. “Be glad you stayed behind, buddy. It was a long walk.”
Bear’s tail thumped against the wooden planks for a few seconds before he walked back to his favorite spot under the double swing. Dogs were a man’s best friend until a long nap in the shade was on the flip side of the coin.
“Was thinking about starting up a search party.” His dad held up a can. “Just as soon as I finished this beer.”
Matt grabbed one of his own and plopped down in the other chair. “Had to rescue a couple of damsels in distress.”
“Only you would find women in need of help out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“It’s a gift.” He drained a quarter of the can, fighting the grimace. He was thirsty, but he wasn’t a big fan of beer. It was a tradition tied up with the camp and fishing and his old man, but at the moment he would have swapped it for a tall glass of lemonade in a heartbeat.
“Tourists?”
“I don’t think so.” He realized now he’d never asked the women where they were from, other than where they’d parked their car. “Based on the accents, I’d say they’re both from Maine, though I can’t pinpoint where exactly. Got separated from their adventure tour.”
“Which one?”
“The Dagneau boys.”
That garnered a throaty sound of derision that, in Matt’s experience, only old men from New England could master. “Those two morons would be lucky to find a hooker in a whorehouse.”
“I think I’ll stop in and have a talk with them next week.”
“Somebody needs to.”
Policing local business practices wasn’t necessarily part of his job as a game warden, but he’d always found if a man looked and sounded official enough, nobody would question him. And since it was guys like Matt who’d get called out to find the people jerks like the Dagneaus lost, he figured that gave him the right to speak up.
“I got the house,” he told his dad after a few minutes. “Called the owner while I was out for a walk. Good price and they don’t have a problem with Bear.”
The dog raised his head at the sound of his name, his expression full of joyful expectation. When Matt just smiled at him without getting out of his chair, Bear sighed and dropped his head back onto his paws.
His dad shook his head. “Why rent a house when you can stay here? It’s only forty minutes to Whitford.”
This was ground they’d only covered half a dozen times already. “No, it’s forty minutes from the main road. From here to the main road, if it hasn’t rained and you don’t mind your coffee bouncing right up out of your travel mug, is a good twenty minutes.”
“Lots of people commute an hour to work. No sense in wasting money.”
“You know I get called out at all hours. It can’t take me almost half an hour just to get on the road. And this isn’t a home, Dad. It’s a camp. I’d have to find a house in a few months, anyway. Moving twice would also be a waste of money.”
On the list of traits Charlie Barnett liked in a person, frugality ranked right up there with patriotism and being able to drive a stick shift. Even his old man had to admit Matt couldn’t winter in a cabin that had no indoor plumbing after Columbus Day.
“Your mother’s hoping this is temporary. That there won’t be enough going on to merit a full-time warden in the area, after all, and you’ll go back to your usual area.”
Which was close enough to his parents’ house on the outskirts of Augusta, Maine, so he could pop in for supper a couple nights per week. “We’re close enough to the big lake here so I’ll be kept busy even if everybody on the ATV trails behaves. And it makes sense that it’s me. I don’t know Whitford or the new trails, but I’m familiar with most of the area since we’ve been coming here my whole life.”
“She says it’s too far away.”
“Did Mom write this down for you, or are you winging it?”
“You spend almost forty years with the same woman and tell me if you need a script.”
Matt wasn’t even capable of spending two years with the same woman, though not for a lack of trying. “It’s not like I’m an only child. She has two daughters, a son-in-law and grandchildren to fuss over.”
“You know your mother. Until you find a wife, she’s terrified you’re going to starve to death wearing dirty clothes.”
“Maybe Whitford’s where I’ll find a woman who won’t spend our entire relationship trying to change me into the version of me she wants.”
His dad’s chair creaked as he shifted sideways to get a better look at him. “They’re not all like Ciara, son. And, to be honest, there were warning signs right from the beginning. You just didn’t want to see them.”
That was probably the truth. It had been easy to ignore the jabs at his wardrobe and the way she’d steered him toward doing activities she wanted to do. But over the nearly two years they’d been together, Ciara’s hints about things she wanted changed had gone from subtle to big neon signs flashing her dissatisfaction with him.
They’d been arguing about his job a lot toward the end. At the beginning, Ciara hadn’t minded a boyfriend who wore a uniform, carried a gun, made decent money and—according to her—was hotter than any of her friends’ boyfriends—but it wasn’t enough. The long and erratic hours made her unhappy. The questionable odors that often accompanied him home made her face screw up in a way he found really unattractive. And stripping to his boxer briefs in the yard and spraying himself off with the garden hose before he could go into his own home had made him unhappy.
Still, he’d clung to the relationship. When things were good between him and Ciara, they were really good. Until the company Christmas party for the bank where she was a teller. He’d put on the suit she told him to wear and did his best to make his tie straight, but he could feel the judgment rolling off her like toxic waves.
He was getting her a glass of punch when he overheard her talking to a couple of her coworkers about the engagement ring she was sure he’d bought her for Christmas. “Knowing Matt, he’ll hide it in a pile of moose poop and make me hunt for it. I just hope he’s wearing a decent shirt for once so I won’t be embarrassed to put a picture of us on Facebook.”
Breaking it off with her two weeks before Christmas wasn’t something he was proud of, but he couldn’t look at her without feeling a burn of shame that really pissed him off. And he couldn’t stomach the thought of her spending another holiday with his family.
“I’ve dated a few times since Ciara, Dad. I know they’re not all like her.”
“We liked Wendy.”
“She wasn’t cut out to be a game warden’s wife.”
His dad snorted again. “We heard about that and don’t think we’re too stupid to see you’re testing these poor women.”