“We should get you to the hospital,” she said, helping him to his feet. “You okay to walk?”
“Oh yeah,” Tripp said, his voice hoarse and raspy, but he was absolutely going to continue talking like there was nothing wrong. “Go get patched,” he paused to cough, “patched up, get a breathing treatment and then get the okay from the doc to—”
“Uh, yeah,” Jill said, smiling. “I think that might have to wait for the second date.”
For once, he let his humanity shine through his bullshit. When Tripp threw his arm around Jill’s shoulder, she knew it was because he needed the help walking, not because he was trying to cop a feel.
Even though he did.
And that was how dates went for Jill Appleton, PhD.
One thing, at least, was that even if they very rarely resulted in anything resembling the earth shattering, screaming-and-pounding-the-wall kind of nights she longed for, they were never boring.
At least there’s always something interesting happening, she thought, as the unlikely pair shuffled up the steps into Santa Barbara General, and her date pretended to need her help signing the insurance papers.
She went along with it, if nothing else, because making this guy feel good, even if he was a jackass of legendary proportions, made Jill feel good.
He wasn’t so bad, he just tried too hard.
Way, way, too hard.
They sat in the alcohol-smelling waiting room, on rubber-seated chairs that squeaked and protested every time anyone shifted their weight back and forth. For what seemed like hours they sat and waited and watched Anderson Cooper, and then a re-run of The Andy Griffith Show where Barney screwed up an arrest. Andy set it all up so that his overly intense, slightly doofy deputy ended up hauling the pair of would-be burglars in, and you could just see the scrawny, cartoon-faced Barney Fife puff up with pride.
Andy smiled, and so did Jill.
She grabbed Tripp’s hand, and gave him a squeeze. He looked over, and they exchanged a moment’s glance that said they both knew why she was holding his hand, but reality didn’t matter just then.
Really, when does it?
Tripp let out a long sigh and curled up in the chair, laying his head on Jill’s shoulder.
She sighed, and rolled her eyes a little, but in the end, it was fine. She didn’t mind being the alpha here. In fact, she rarely minded, because she generally ended up in eerily similar situations. But what she really wanted? She really wanted someone who she could lay her head on, someone who made her feel as safe and taken care of as she apparently made her allergic date.
Jill wanted herself an alpha, one with big shoulders, strong eyes, and a way of kissing her that took her to another planet.
And... I’m about to spend a year in the woods. Only alphas I’m going to find there are bears. And somehow, I doubt any of them are interested in a date.
She smiled, blowing a fallen curl of brown hair back out of her eyes.
Tripp, for his part, started snoring.
-4-
“Am I ready? Does a bear shit in the... you know what? Nevermind.”
-Jill
Whipping above her head, the chopper blades thump-thump-thumped deep in Jill’s stomach, giving her a distinct I’m-not-so-sure-about-this feeling.
“All ready, Doc?” Jacques Poirot, the displaced Cajun pilot who was taking her from the small regional airport in West Virginia where she flew in, all the way to her outpost camp, asked. “The bears, them is waitin’.”
She smiled, or tried to, but the vague green tinge on her face gave her actual feelings away. “Yeah,” she gulped. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”
Hopping down from the small, low-altitude helicopter, Jacques helped her load up an overstuffed backpack. Both of them were glad the camp had already been outfitted over the course of the year it’d been built. She’d been in two times before to oversee construction and setup, so she knew what to expect.
Grabbing Jacques’s hand, she pushed off the ground with a half-hop and climbed in beside him. This was the sort of helicopter big enough for two seats, and a pick-a-nick basket. Jill laughed, Jacques looked at her like she was crazy, but he knew she wasn’t.
Well, mostly not anyway. Luckily, they weren’t going on a picnic, so there was enough room for a week’s worth of stuff to be hauled in on Jill’s back.
She buckled in, the click of the seatbelt a very dramatic punctuation to the rest of what led to this point. She closed her eyes and slid the helmet on, adjusting the visor without looking. She took a deep breath, and Jacques noticed.
“You all right, Miss Jilly?” he’s the only one who ever called her that, and she wasn’t ever sure why. “You lookin’ like you not so sure ‘bout this all.”
She shook her head as they lifted off the ground, and opened her eyes to the tops of the pines, the firs and the oaks. “Can you open a window?” she asked, before remembering the opening mechanism was beside her, and cracking the window.
Even this late in the summer, the morning was slightly crisp up here in the foothills, and the green, piney scent of the forest was cut slightly by the chill bite of a coming storm. As she massaged her temples, she thought back to her absurd fantasy with the two giant men on either side of her.
Prickles rose up on one of her arms as she imagined the sensation of fingertips brushing along, curling around her elbow. She had no idea why, but in that moment, she wasn’t able to think of anything else except their breath, and their hard, leathery, earthen scent. And, of course, the fact that there were two of them.
Oh no, she thought. Not here, not in the front of a helicopter with a Cajun a foot and a half from my elbow.
Gazing out the window, Jill tried to concentrate on anything except the desire burning in her chest. She watched the trees whiz by underneath, and let them lull her into a momentary trance.
Jacques stayed quiet until she finally spoke. “Sorry,” she said. “My mind’s a million miles away.” Ain’t that the damn truth.
“We all do it, Miss Jilly,” he said. “But you seemin’ like you ain’t in your own head. Bad way to be out there in the woods. You sure you wantin’ to do this?”
She smiled. “A year in the making, this camp. Two years getting the grants. A lot of sleepless nights and a whole lot of crazy angst. I’m just feeling a little overwhelmed,” she lied, sort of. “Leaving society for a year to watch bears? That’s kinda weighing on my mind. Being alone out there...”
“Don’t you worry none about that. I’ll be keepin’ an eye on the weather and what’n not. Any kinda bad mojo come your way, I’ll pick you up. And you ain’t gonna be completely alone,” his sunglasses sparkled as he dipped the helicopter to begin the descent. “I’m bringing you food once a week, you know. There’s the radio an’ all. And from what I understand, Fred’s gonna come along as soon as his doc gives him the okay.”
Jill smiled, and then returned to staring out the window. Something about watching the trees whip past, seeing the shadows from the clouds vanish underneath her, it brought some small measure of peace.
She took a deep breath, inhaling the scent again, letting it fill her lungs. She smiled, the sun warming her face against the morning chill.
“I think it’ll be fine,” she said, exhaling slowly, a slight tremble marking the end. “Something tells me that... yeah, it’ll be fine. Don’t ask me what, but there you go.”
“Intuition?” Jacques asked. “Luck?”
Jill shook her head. “Nothing like that, I don’t think. It’ll work out because, basically, it has to. This is the way everything is supposed to go.”
“Ah,” he smiled, watching the horizon and making a slight adjustment. “You talkin’ fate then, huh? I always thought that was a bunch of shit, fate and all. But lately though?”
Jill looked over at the pilot with the big, square beard, and the tanned skin and waited for him to finish.
“Lately though, I ain’t so sure. I’m thinkin’ maybe so. Maybe there is something to that fate business after all.”
The rest of the hour-long flight they spent without speaking, Jill thinking about what he’d said, and what had stuck in her mind.
The next time the two men from her fantasies returned, as the chopper thumped along, Jill didn’t fight her heart, instead just letting her thoughts drift away on top of the clouds.
*
“Field camp is four miles to the north!” Jacques shouted as Jill stepped out of the helicopter and into fate. “You sure you can make it?”
I’d probably rather jump out of this damn thing than make that trek right about now, Jill thought. “Of course! I’m gonna live out here for a year, I better be able to hike a couple miles.”
“That’s the spirit,” he shouted back. Gingerly, he handed her pack out and down to her waiting arms. He waved, spun the chopper, and headed back the way he’d come.
For a moment she just looked around her surroundings, slightly amazed that even though she’d scouted this location out herself, that had been two years ago. Her life hadn’t changed much, to be fair, but still, turning over that hump between the don’t-give-a-shit twenties, and the ugh-where-is-my-life-going thirties was quite a feat.
To the north, the direction of her camp, there was nothing but a dense, green wall of forest that looked imposing as all hell, even in the early morning. She’d been down this road a hundred times, going out deep into the woods, frequently by herself, and always ended up fine.