Feast of Saints (17 page)

Irritated at the dinner comment, but exhilarated that she’d won the war, she beamed at him, then let out a yip and jumped back as he suddenly growled and grabbed at her with his free hand, barely missing her. Heart in her throat and realizing she was playing with fire, she chastened and grabbed the pots and filter and headed back down the trail to the lake.

She was filling the second pot when she heard Jake, whose steps behind her she’d come to know, walking down the steep path. He stopped to kneel beside her and watch as she finished pumping the water and took apart and stowed the filtering system. When she was done, Jake stood, taking the full pots with him, and headed back up the hill.

As she started the WhisperLite stove, Jake pulled out two apples, handed one to her and then pulled out two packages of freeze dried, cook-in-the-bag, backpacker’s lasagna, handing them to her, too.

While she watched for the water to boil and ate her apple, she piped up to Jake between bites, telling him about the couple across the lake. Jake had also seen them and had actually spoken with them. They were just married and honeymooning and thrilled to have another story to put in their scrapbook about meeting Jake Durant on the trail.

“Nice kids,” he said.

“Did they get your picture?”

“Yes.”

Lilly smiled, “That was nice of you.”

When the water boiled, she opened the packages of lasagna. Jake offered to hold them, but she declined – it was too dangerous, much safer to stand them up on a rock and risk losing dinner rather than risk scalding each other. Closing them up to let them steep, she looked up to find Jake staring at her.

“Tell me about your family,” he said.

So she did. Lilly talked through the bag lasagna, which wasn’t so bad, and made some hot chocolate, pulling on a down jacket as the air chilled. She talked about her brother and his wife and their little girl, who was a beautiful monster and threatened to wreck their lives as much as she enriched them. She talked of her mom, who had died too young. Lilly’s aunt, her mother’s sister, fell asleep at the wheel when they were coming back from a girls’ trip and flipped the car. Her aunt survived but was so guilt ridden by what happened that Lilly hadn’t seen her since childhood.

She spoke of her dad, who was older when he had her and her brother and was now getting up there, but still in good health. He still kept a few cows in Kansas on his parent’s old dairy farm and rarely left. He lived with his second wife, who Lilly liked well enough, even though she always seemed to overdo it, offering to do things and give things to her as if she needed to buy her affection. It could be exhausting. She worked her way back around to talking about her brother.

“We look nothing alike, except for our coloring. He’s only eleven months older than me. He snuck in first and stole the egg with the tall genes.”

She’d always been small, but she was truly tiny until she was about nine. When she was six, she was the size of most three year olds. People tended to baby her. She grew to hate it. She liked sports and the outdoors, but her classmates put her aside when it came time for the real fun. As a result, Lilly was always getting herself into scrapes trying to prove how tough she could be. Her brother had had to rescue her on more than one occasion, like when she climbed much too high in the town center old oak tree.

Because she was so lightweight, she had gotten much higher than anyone else, and even her brother had trouble getting her down because he couldn’t climb on the slender branches. With her brother standing three branches below her, she’d had to drop to his arms, trusting he would catch her.

As she got older, the scrapes got riskier to her record, if not her health. She was small and slippery and was often used by her classmates as a natural lock pick. She could climb under or over just about anything, which provided access to a lot of backyard pools, locked marinas and water towers. Somehow she made it through her early teens, but not without her brother’s help.

And then she’d met Kyle. A true friend to both her and her brother, as they were to him in return. After that, she channeled her frustrations in a different, more practical, direction. To study, school and art.

Smiling ruefully at how long she’d talked, she began sorting the pack items to secure for the night. Anything with a smell that might attract bears had to be bagged separately and hung from a tree a fair distance away from camp. When everything was put away, she interrogated Jake for contraband, until he turned over a toothbrush and toothpaste.

That’s it. No more stalling. Time to get in the tent. Her fingers were becoming stiff with the cold. She tried to find her bravado from earlier, but it had deserted her. Sitting on the threshold of the tent trying not to look at Jake, she undid her boots to leave them in the vestibule. Then she ducked into the tent, scooted into her sleeping bag, choosing the side away from the door, and rolled over to face the back of the tent so she wouldn’t have to pretend not to watch Jake as he got in.

Jake’s broad back blocked the moonlight as he sat on the threshold taking off his boots. For such a large man, he moved gracefully and with little noise. As the tent zipper closed on the nylon cocoon, she tried not to think about the fact that she was in bed with him in in the middle of nowhere.

Jake slid into his sleeping bag and lie on his back. Lilly couldn’t tell if he was looking at the roof of the tent or had closed his eyes for sleep. While she wondered, she felt her mind drift into that half-sleep/half-awake state where her thoughts didn’t make sense, until she realized she was falling asleep despite everything and let it go.

She dreamt of her mother standing in the surf at a beach she did not know, smiling and kneeling down to pick a shell or something out of the shallow water …. She dreamt of her brother, fourteen or so, riding his ten-speed at breakneck speed on the loose gravel of the farmhouse road…. She saw her mother sitting on the porch, strumming a guitar, then realized it wasn’t her mother but her niece Anna, all grown up. She watched as her father shuffled slowly across the barnyard. He must have been tired, because he wasn’t picking up his feet and his muck boots were making a loud shuffling sound that distracted from the music on the porch. The sound was unsettlingly loud, so loud that she woke up.

It took a moment to realize where she was. In a tent, with Jake. Although the dream was gone, the shuffling sound was still there. She started to sit up, but a strong arm moved across her chest, pinning her in place. Instinctively realizing this wasn’t a come-on but something else, she stopped and just listened. It wasn’t a shuffling but a
snuffling
sound that was so loud, and it was just on the other side of the nylon wall of the tent.

Jake turned his head silently toward her and raised a finger to his lips. Lilly’s eyes were as wide as saucers as she tried to make sense of the situation. For just a second, the horizontal view of Jake’s face was so disorientating, she thought she might be still dreaming. The moon was bright and filtered through the thin material of the tent so that it wasn’t completely dark but played wild shadows over his multi-facetted face, making him look fierce, resembling the Jake of her nightmares.

She must have looked as frightened as she felt, because Jake shook his head and slid the arm that had been across her chest over and behind her neck and shoulders to pull her close to his face.

She knew all the rules for bear encounters in the wild, all of which were running through her head simultaneously. Frustratingly, they seemed to conflict: some said make lots of sound; others said don’t provoke an already interested and too close bear. Some said run and leave your stuff; others said stand your ground.

She could feel her stomach clench and her legs go all noodley.

Quietly, next to her ear, he whispered, “Herbivores.”

It took her thirty seconds to make sense of what he’d said, that he meant elk, moose or mountain goats, not bears. Goats would be no problem, although they might eat their boots and chew on anything with salty sweat left outside. Elk and moose might be problematic if they left the tent, but if they stayed quiet inside the tent they were probably safe. As this last thought crossed her mind, she sagged with relief.

Wanting to believe him, but needing to be certain, she turned her face to Jake’s ear and asked softly, “You’re sure?”

Jake just nodded, wrapped his other arm around her, pulled her close, tucking her head into his shoulder and shut his eyes, leaving her no choice but to rest her head on his shoulder and lay her arm across his chest. She listened in silence to the sounds around their tent and eventually could make out two, maybe three, hooved beasts inspecting the ground and the tent itself.

When their curiosity was satisfied, they clomped toward the lake. She became more conscious of Jake’s embrace and shifted to move away. His arms didn’t give an inch and she felt a low growl of protest rise up from his chest.

Their bodies had warmed the tent, but it was still cold in comparison to the heat where her chest met his. Lilly laid her cheek back down and melted into him. Jake’s arm tightened around her and she felt her face flush.
Oh jeez
, and not just her face. She squelched an urge to wrap her leg around his body. She couldn’t remember the last time she felt such a sweet ache of desire. Maybe she could just lie there, enjoy it for a while until Jake went to sleep and then roll away.
I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I’ve got to work with this man and he can sometimes be quite nasty
.

After five minutes, the sweet ache had become an inferno, and she was sure that Jake could feel her racing heart. She’d never sleep like this; she had to get away.

Thinking fast, but not brilliantly, she said, “Do you think it’s safe to pee? I’ve really got to go,” and pushed off his chest. He had no choice but to let her go. She scrambled over him, quick not to straddle him too long, unzipped the tent and practically hopped into her boots. She turned to re-zip the tent, but Jake waved her off, saying, “Leave it open, and don’t go far.”

Her cheeks flaming, she grabbed the little baggie of biodegradable TP and hand sanitizer out of her pack and headed for the backside of the tent. Trying to go when she knew he could hear her every movement made things difficult. Finally, she shut her eyes tight and repeated nursery rhymes until she shut him out. Finished and wishing she could just sleep outside, she tightened her jaw and headed back in the tent, slipping her boots off in the vestibule.

Lilly made a determined show of sliding her sleeping bag and pad back to its original spot before the nighttime invasion. Jake, on his back with his eyes shut, didn’t move or say anything as she bent down and carefully stepped over him, trying not to either straddle him again or lose her balance in the awkward position. She made it without incident and, kneeling on her sleeping bag, leaned over Jake to zip the tent back up.

When she looked down at him, he was staring at her so intensely that a shock of desire whipped through her, leaving her in worse condition than before. She quickly zipped up the last ten inches and shot back to her side of the tent. She shoved her feet, legs and torso into her bag and turned quickly away before he could make any move to bring their bodies back together. Using her nursery rhyme technique, she tried again to block him out. Jake hadn’t moved, and all she heard was soft breathing that didn’t sound like sleep. On the third round of “The Lady in the Shoe,” she finally started to feel the familiar confusion that preceded sleep and nearly cried with relief.

Chapter 14

It was light when Lilly next opened her eyes. Jake was not in the tent. She unzipped to a bracing chill that was refreshing and clean and saw Jake sitting by the WhisperLite, the pot full of water and ready to boil. He’d also hiked over and brought back the food bag they’d tied up the night before. He pulled out two plastic thermo cups and two tea bags. Without looking at her, he poured the boiling water into the cups, dropped in the tea bags and handed one to her. When he did look at her, he suddenly guffawed, almost dousing her with the hot liquid.

“What’s so funny?” Lilly glared at him, knowing exactly what she looked like in the morning.

For unexplained reasons, every night the hair on the top of her head tried to make a break for it. With a mind of its own, it stood on end, tethered only at the scalp. She was well aware that she looked like a comic Disney character when she awoke, and frankly Jake’s reaction was neither unique nor welcome.

Taking her tea without thanks, she stomped over to the other pot of fresh water, splashed her face and wet down her hair, even though she felt like icicles were forming on the tops of her ears.

Not usually a grumpy morning person, she turned swiftly and shook her head like a dog, splattering cold water everywhere, including all over Jake.

“I didn’t say anything!” he protested.

“Yeah, but you laughed. I know what my hair does in the night, and I can’t control it! It’s crazy.”

“Crazy Hair Pixie. Too bad you made me turn off my phone when you were being Big Bad Pixie. My sister Jennis appreciates the photo texts.”

“You sent your sister my picture last night?”

“Yep.”

“So, you weren’t working when I threatened your phone with a watery death?”

Jake looked at her, considering. “Yes, I was working,” he finally admitted. “We’re opening a new club in Soho this week. Between her connections to the music industry and my pro-football equity interest, we think the club will draw the kind of clientele that is likely to make it a huge success.”

“Not to mention your Hollywood connection,” she said, as if he had forgotten.

“Well, there’s that, too.” He smiled wryly back at her.

After a breakfast of dried fruit and instant oatmeal, Lilly and Jake worked quietly together to put away the packs and load up for the next trek. Whatever the weird moods of the previous day and night, they seemed to have finally fallen into a groove. Jake had actually said more than three non-business related words to her, and she was feeling like maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.

As she wadded up the ground sheet and squished it into a tight ball, Jake knelt beside her and pointed to the ground next to where the tent had been. A clear imprint of a large cloven hoof could be seen in the soft, sandy soil.

“A large deer, I think,” said Jake. “A moose or elk print would be much larger, a mountain goat considerably smaller.”

As they headed out past the north end of the lake, they passed the honeymooning couple. Jake and Lilly stopped for a minute to chat, and Jake told them about their “bear” scare the night before.

“I told you,” said Matt, “same thing happened on our first night out here. Would have put the kibosh on the honeymoon if we hadn’t turned in so early – ow!” His new bride pinched him hard in the side.

“Don’t embarrass me,” she said.

“They don’t care – we’re legal!”

The sex banter made Lilly uncomfortable, bringing to mind her own fiery feelings last night, but she smiled at their obvious happiness together and their excitement at swapping bear-scare stories with a big Hollywood star.

“It’s been a great trip, but now we’re looking forward to getting back to civilization. Thanks so much for the invitation to Vibe’s opening, Jake,” said Matt.

Jake nodded, “Just give your names to the front doorman. They know you’re coming. Have fun.” Jake must have texted Jennis the couple’s names last night. That was thoughtful.

“Happy trails,” Matt said as they headed back up the trail.

After about twenty minutes, Lilly could feel her mind finally falling into the Thoreau mood she’d been hoping for when she planned this trip. Taking deep breaths and as long of strides as her short legs would allow, she let her mind go blank and just enjoyed the beauty of the Rockies. Jake was always quiet, so she wasn’t sure if his mood echoed hers or not, but she decided not to think about it and just focus on not focusing.

Her trail plan had them hitting the farthest point in the circle at midmorning. There was supposed to be a spectacular view of the Alaska basin on the west slopes of the Teton Range that can’t be seen from any road – you had to hike to get there.

It was more beautiful than she’d imagined. Large raw granite boulders in an array of colors – slate, rust, blue-veined – were scattered about the valley like some giant’s discarded game of marbles. She pulled out her camera and made Jake take her picture sitting on the overlook with the valley in the background a half dozen times. She photographed terribly, but she hoped she’d get one that would make a good screen saver.

Stepping off the rock, she looked askance at Jake. He was photographed so often, she wasn’t sure if he’d like one of himself, but she asked anyway, and to her surprise he agreed. She took six shots of him too, all of which were striking, of course. When he stepped away from the ledge, she motioned him over to show him. As he towered next to her, she could smell the sweat and mountains on him, and it was wonderful.

“Do we have time to sit here a few minutes?” asked Jake.

“Yes, of course, if you’d like.”

They peeled off their layers and strapped their outerwear to their packs, both wearing only an over shirt and undershirt. The two sat down on the rock, and Jake asked to look at her camera. Sliding closer to her, he held the camera out with his long arms and angled it to get a picture of both their faces and the basin in the background. Lilly’s eyes were closed in the first one and in the second one she was looking away.

Jake snorted and said, “I have no idea why you think you can’t take a picture.” She grinned at him and he snapped another picture.

“Can you send me that one? It’s nice to see you smiling at me.”

Flustered, she stowed her camera while Jake sat and simply seemed to soak in the beauty. She thought about asking how often he got to take a real break, but that would just bring up work, and she didn’t want to break the mood. Lilly looked at him and finally said, “It’s nice to see you so…”
unguarded? friendly?
… “relaxed,” she finally got out.

When he looked at her, his bland expression was back. Not the relaxed one of a moment ago. This was the expression that made her feel like an ant about to be stepped on by an uncaring pedestrian. If he had been someone else, she would have asked what the hell was going on behind the facade. She assumed it made other people feel like she did, which wasn’t pleasant. She pushed off the rock and shouldered her pack again.

“Two miles to lunch,” she said and, without waiting for him, started down the trail.

With the ranger’s help, she’d found a beautiful spot on Teton Creek with a fifteen-foot waterfall where they could stop for lunch. After lunch, they’d hike four miles to that night’s campsite, then have a short downhill hike the next day to meet Wil by midmorning.

The sound of the falling water and smell of the mossy banks and pines filled her head as they approached Teton Creek. Both dropped their packs on the trail and walked down a short slope to stand on the bank of the pool at the bottom of the waterfall.

If it were warmer, the pool would feel like heaven. Although they were warmed from the hike, the ambient temperature was only fifty-five degrees, and the glacier-fed creek water was probably more like forty. It was incredibly beautiful.

After gazing her fill at the waterfall, she sat on a rock and pulled out a couple more apples, handing one to Jake, and two mini-tubs of peanut butter with crackers.

They drained the rest of the water, which they would have to refill after they ate with filtered water from the creek.

It turned out that Jake’s silent character was conducive to peace and relaxation, maybe better than her intended hike mate, Mike, who talked incessantly about anything and everyone. Even when he wasn’t talking, he hummed and whistled.

Lilly ate her crackers dry, then bit a large chunk out of her apple and used it to scoop the peanut butter out of its container. When she couldn’t get the peanut butter out of the corners with the apple, she used her finger. Happily sucking the last of the yummy nuttiness off of her index finger, she looked up to see Jake frowning at her.

He already thinks I’m a pig, she thought. He’s as much as said so. Well, if so, then let him think it. She slowly pulled her finger out of her mouth, daring him to say anything.

Jake looked away swiftly, and without a word, he pushed off the rock on which he was sitting and walked off. He stomped along the creek for a bit and then cut into the woods, she assumed to relieve himself.

Snickering, she hopped off her own rock, collected their trash and walked up the short hill to the packs to grab the water filtration system.

Lilly was squatting by the pool putting away the tubing for the water filter having replenished their water supply, when she heard Jake rustling nearby.

Standing, she turned to carry the full water bottles up to the trail and stopped cold. Not Jake. A mass of brown fur blocked her way back to the trail. It took a moment for her to register the characteristic hump of an adult grizzly bear.

The bear was fifteen feet away, sniffing the air in her direction. Her blood seemed to rush to her head and her heart at once, causing her hands to go numb, and she lost her grip on the wide, round Nalgene bottles, which dropped to her feet, one of them rolling away into the creek pool with a splash. The bear responded to the movement and noise by hop-stomping on its front paws and swinging its jowly maw, flinging long strings of saliva into the air. It was a sign of agitation, a possible prelude to aggression.

Her entire body wanted to run, but her brain yelled at her to stand her ground. Running was not an option. This close, running would trigger the bear’s chase reflex. An adult grizzly could easily run thirty miles per hour.

When you’re face to face with a grizzly that shows no sign of moving off, “look big,” all the guides said. Hold your pack up, raise your arms, stand tall. Stand your ground, talk softly, but don’t look the bear directly in the eye.

For the ten thousandth time in her short life, Lilly wished she was bigger.

Clearing her throat, she raised her shaking arms, and practically whispered, “Hey bear, hey bear.” Trying to look anywhere but at the bear’s face, she looked at its paws, immediately wishing she hadn’t. His claws were bigger than her fingers. She watched the claws scrape the ground as the bear advanced, huffing and swinging his head from side to side.

Then the bear bluff charged her. Lilly screamed, all the fright in her little body echoing back to her off the mountains as the bear bounded forward before stopping five paces from her. Huffing and chuffing, the bear backed up, preparing to charge again.

She screamed again when a hand came down hard on her shoulder, shoving her backward away from the bear. She stumbled and stepped on the remaining Nalgene bottle, twisting her ankle painfully and falling to her knees.

Jake stepped in front of her, between her and the bear, waving his arms high in the air and speaking firmly, “Whoa bear! Whoa bear!” She scrambled to get back up, desperately trying to get a purchase on the slippery wet rocks beside the creek. Her hand landed in a pile of splintered rock and she threw a fistful of the rocks around Jake, at the bear.

The bear bluff charged Jake, too, and then did it again. Both times the bear stopped three feet in front of Jake, then backed away swinging his head and popping his jaw. Jake never flinched. On the third charge, the bear feinted to the right intending to get around the big man at Lilly.

Jake registered the shift in muscle mass, and before the bear could get in position to lunge at her, Jake side-stepped in unison. Facing off with the bear, his arms outstretched, Jake bellowed so loudly that Lilly instinctively cowered, then covered her ears as the bear bellowed back, their combined roars reverberating around them.

The change in circumstance finally registered with the bear. The big man was not so easy pickings. The grizzly huffed once more, and then turned and left.

When he was sure the bear had moved off, Jake knelt next to Lilly, whose face had gone alarmingly white. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

“Yes—no—I mean—I think I’ve twisted my ankle,” she admitted miserably.

“Can you walk?” he asked.

“Yes, I think so,” she said, although her adrenaline was pumping so fast, she couldn’t tell how bad it was.

She stood and gingerly placed weight on her injured ankle, and grimaced. It throbbed, but at least it wasn’t a shooting pain. Jake frowned down at her, but she shook him off.

“I’m okay. We should get out of here. Let me just tighten my boots.”

Short of carrying her out, there wasn’t much to be done but let her walk. He couldn’t leave her with the grizzly and go get help—she might be in shredded pieces when he got back.

“Let’s take a look first.” Jake knelt down and started unlacing her boot.

“Hey, I can do that.”

“Then do it. While you’re at it, take your sock off and submerge your ankle in the water and leave it there for as long as you can stand the cold.”

Lilly, seeing the wisdom of stopping the swelling, did as she was told. Jake looked around for the bear before leaving her long enough to walk the twenty feet to their packs. Immediately returning to her side, he unpacked everything. She watched as he redistributed the weight, leaving her with only the sleeping bags and a few dry goods.

Jake put everything heavy in his pack. Lilly protested, but Jake simply stonewalled her.

After five minutes in the icy water, she couldn’t feel her foot at all. She pulled it out of the creek and examined it. Other than the redness caused by the cold, she couldn’t see a problem, unless she counted the silly neon pink pedicure she and Anna had done together before leaving LA.