At Last

Page 11

Getting comfortable was impossible, so he sat up and put his feet on the small coffee table. Slightly better. Count sheep, he told himself, but when he closed his eyes, sheep wasn’t what came to mind.
Amy came to mind. Amy, straddling him.
Naked.
Damn if that wasn’t a hell of a lot better than sheep. But it wasn’t exactly conducive to falling sleep, so he rose, thinking a kitchen raid might work. A rustle warned him that he wasn’t the only one awake just as he collided into a willowy, warm body that his own instantly recognized. Amy. Catching her, he dropped backward to the couch, taking her with him.
She landed sprawled over the top of him, all soft, tousled woman, her br**sts rising and falling against his chest with every breath. “You okay?”
Apparently she was, because she fisted both hands in his hair and kissed him, a really deep, wet, hot holy shit kiss. Yeah, this. This was what he’d needed all f**king day long. It was perfect.
She was perfect.
Instantly hard, he rolled to tuck her beneath him, spreading her legs with his to make room for himself, pressing into her so that he was cradled between her thighs. It was dark so he couldn’t see much, but he sure could feel. And what he felt just about stopped his heart. She appeared to be wearing an oversized shirt, panties, and nothing else, as he discovered when his hands slid beneath the shirt to cup her bare breasts.
Amy gasped his name, and he went still, realizing he had her pinned beneath him, a perfect breast in each hand. And he wanted to keep kissing her, keep touching her until she was too hot to stop him. Even the thought revved him up. But Jesus, he’d forgotten the reason he was even here—Riley was in the next room. With a Herculean effort, he managed to let go of Amy and rise to his feet.
The distance didn’t help. Nor did the sight of Amy still sprawled on the couch trying to catch her breath. Her shirt had risen up, her cute little panties looking very white in the dark of the room. He wanted in those little panties. Wanted that more than his next breath.
Not happening. Snatching up the pillow and blanket, he strode to the door. “I’m going to sleep in my truck.”
A lie. He wasn’t going to sleep at all.
“I thought the truck was uncomfortable,” she said.
Yes, and so was a hard-on. He’d just have to live with it.
Chapter 8
The best things in life are chocolate.
Amy got up early. She had until four this afternoon to try to get up to Sierra Meadows and back. Try being the key word. She wasn’t at all sure she had any confidence in her ability to do so, but she had to try.
She had some hope to get to.
She was deciding whether or not to leave Riley a note or wake her up when the teen staggered out of the spare bedroom. She was wearing the same ratty jeans as yesterday but a different shirt, this one strategically torn in some sort of misguided teenager sense of fashion.
“Sleep okay?” Amy asked her.
“Yeah.” Riley looked out the kitchen window. “The cop’s gone.”
Yes, Matt was gone. She’d heard him leave before the crack of dawn. She’d been lying in her bed awake, hot, aching, remembering what his hands had felt like on her when she’d heard his truck start up and drive away. “And he’s not a cop. He’s a forest ranger.”
“Same thing.”
Pretty much, Amy agreed. And she recognized some of the authority issues in Riley’s voice well enough since she’d always had her own to contend with. “Listen, I’m going up to Sierra Meadows. Feel free to stay and catch up on some sleep. There’s food, hot water… TV.”
Riley looked around, her wariness showing. “I don’t know.”
“No one will bother you here. Is that what you’re worried about? Because if someone’s bothering you, maybe I can help—”
“No,” Riley said quickly. Too quickly. “I don’t need help. I’m fine.”
Amy’s heart squeezed because she’d been there, right there where Riley was, terrified and alone with no one to turn to. Well, actually that wasn’t quite correct. She’d had people to turn to, but she’d screwed that up, so when she’d needed help, no one had believed her.
“You’re safe here,” Amy said.
Riley nodded, and Amy felt relieved. Maybe she’d stay and be safe for the day, at least. “Is there someone I can call for you, to let them know where you are?”
“No.”
Well, that had been a long shot.
“I left out some spare clothes if you’re interested,” Amy said. “There’s some food in the fridge, but not much. If you walk down to the diner later, I’ll make you something to eat, whatever you want.”
“Why?”
Riley wasn’t asking about the food, and Amy knew it. What she didn’t know was how to answer, so she went with to-the-bone honesty. “Because I know how it sucks to not know where your next meal’s going to come from. You don’t need to feel that, not today anyway.”
It took Amy two hours to get up to Sierra Meadows, made easier by the fact that now she knew where to go. Lungs screaming, huffing like a lunatic, she climbed to the same spot where only a few nights ago she’d teetered and then fallen, sliding down on her ass in the inky dark.
There was no fog now so she could see, and the view was breathtakingly gorgeous. The sun poked through the lush growth, dappling the trail. Far below, down in the meadow, the steam rose from the rocks as the sun hit the dew. Making her careful way down the steep incline to the meadow floor, she walked through shoulder-high grass and wildflowers to the wall of thirty-foot prehistoric rocks on the far side. The meadow was a lot longer than it appeared from above, and there was no path, so this took another half hour. Finally she stood before the towering rocks, feeling quite small and insignificant.
Heart pounding, she slowly walked the entire length of them. Names and dates had been carved into the lower stones by countless climbers before her. Not needing to read her grandma’s journal, Amy followed the right curve as far as she could and found the last huge “diamond” rock. There were rows of initials, and she painstakingly read each and every one, looking for the RB and SB that was Rose Barrett and Scott Barrett. It took her another thirty minutes to decide they weren’t there.
Frustrated, she sat in the wild grass and stared at the rock. To give herself some time to think, she pulled out her sketch pad and drew the rocks. She needed to start back soon but she was hesitant to leave without answers. She looked at the rocks again and let out a breath.
Then she reached for her phone and called the one person who could help her.
“Hello?”
Amy went still at the sound of her mom’s voice.
“Amy?”
Amy cleared her throat, but the emotions couldn’t be swallowed away. Guilt. Hurt. Regret. “How did you know?”
“You’re the only one who ever calls and says nothing. Though it’s been a few years.” Her mom paused. “I suppose you need something.”
Amy closed her eyes. “Yeah.”
Now her mother was quiet.
“I’m in Lucky Harbor,” Amy said. “In Washington State.”
More silence.
“Following grandma’s journal.”
This got a reaction, a soft gasp. “Whatever for?” her mom asked.
For hope and peace, Amy nearly said. To find myself… But that was all far too revealing, and her mother wouldn’t believe it anyway. “Her journal says they left their initials on the mountain, but there’s no RB and SB for Rose and Scott Barrett anywhere that I can see.”
Nothing.
“Mom?”
There was a sigh. “It was all a very long time ago, Amy.”
“You know something.”
“Yes.”
Amy wasn’t breathing. “Mom, please tell me.”
“You’re looking for the wrong initials. You should be looking for RS and JS. JS is for Jonathon Stone.” Her mom paused. “Your grandma’s first husband.”
Amy felt her heart stutter. “What?”
“Rose ran away when she was seventeen, you knew that. She eloped.”
She hadn’t known that. “With Jonathon Stone.”
“Yes. Their families didn’t approve. Not that Mom ever cared about what people thought. You’re a lot like her in that regard…” Amy’s mother sighed again, and when she spoke this time, there was heavy irony in her voice. “The women in our family don’t tend to listen to reason.”
Amy ran back to the rock and searched again. It didn’t take but a minute to find it, the small RS and JS together. She pressed a hand to the ache in her chest. “No,” she agreed softly. “We don’t tend to listen to reason.”
There was another awkward pause, and Amy had this ridiculous wish that her mom might ask how she was. She didn’t. Too much water under the bridge. But she hoped there was enough of a tie left to at least get the answers she wanted. Needed. “What happened to Jonathon?”
“It’s a sad story,” her mom said. “Jonathon was sick,” her mom explained. “Lung cancer, and back then it was even more of a death sentence than it is now. Jonathon had a list of things he wanted to do while he could. Rock climb the Grand Canyon. Ski a glacier. See the Pacific Coast from a mountaintop…”
The Olympic Mountains. Where Amy currently sat. “Did he get to do those things in time?”
Her mom was quiet, not answering.
“Mom?”
“You haven’t called me in two years. Two years, Amy.”
She sighed. “Yeah.”
“It’d have been nice to know you’re alive.”
The last time Amy had called, her mother had been having marital problems with husband number five—shock—and she’d wanted to play the place-the-blame game. Amy hadn’t wanted to go there. So it’d been easier not to call. “What happened to Jonathon, Mom? And do you know where it was exactly that Grandma Rose ended her journey? Her journal is clear on the first two legs of their trek in the Olympic Mountains, but it’s vague on the last stop.” Where Rose had found heart… “Do you—”
“I’m fine, you know. Thanks for asking.”
Amy grimaced. “Mom—”
“Is this your cell phone? This number you called me from?”
“Yes,” Amy said.
“You have enough minutes in your phone plan to make a few extra calls?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Call me again sometime, and you can ask me another question. I’ll answer a question with each call. How’s that sound?”
Amy blinked. “You want me to call you?”
“You always were a quick study.”
“But—”
Click.
Amy stared at the phone. This was almost too much information for her brain to process. Her Grandma Rose had made this journey when she’d been seventeen years old. Seventeen. And she’d been a newlywed, in love with someone who’d died young and tragically.
How had that brought her hope? Or peace? Or her own heart…?
Amy pulled out the journal. She’d read it a hundred times. She knew that there was no mention of Jonathon.
Just the elusive and misleading “we.”
It’s been a rough week. The roughest of the summer so far.
Well, that made sense now. Jonathon had been sick. Dying. Amy flipped to the next entry.
Lucky Harbor’s small and quirky, and the people are friendly. We’ve been here all week resting, but today was a good day so we went back up the mountain. To a place called Four Lakes this time. All around us the forest vibrated with life and energy, especially the water.
I never realized how much weight the water can remove from one’s shoulders. Swimming in the water was joy. Sheer joy.
I could hear the call of gulls, and caught the occasional bald eagle in our peripheral. The sheer, vast beauty was staggering.
Afterward, we lay beneath a two-hundred-foot-tall old spruce and stared up through the tangle of branches to the sky beyond. I’d always been a city girl through and through, but this… out here… it was magic. Healing.
I carved our initials on the tree trunk. It felt like a promise. I had my hope, but now I had something else, too, peace. Four Lakes had given me peace.
A little shocked to find her eyes stinging, her knees weak with emotion, Amy sank to the grass, emotion churning through her. As odd as it seemed, she’d found the teeniest, tiniest bit of hope for herself after all. Maybe her own peace was next…
“Phone’s for you!” Jan yelled to Amy across the diner. “You need to let people know that I’m not you’re damn answering service!”
Amy had gotten to work on time, and though she was still reeling from the afternoon and all she’d learned, she managed to set it aside for now. That was a particularly defined talent of hers. Setting things aside. Living in Denial City.
For now, she had to work; that’s what kept a roof over her head and food in her belly. She had no idea who’d possibly be calling her here at the diner, but she finished serving a customer his dinner and then picked up the phone in the kitchen. “Hello?”
Nothing but a dial tone. She turned to Jan. “Who was it?”
“Some guy.” Jan shrugged. “He wanted to talk to the waitress who’d been seen with the runaway teen.”
Amy went still. “And you didn’t think that was odd?”
Jan shrugged again. Not her problem.
Amy had a bad feeling about this, very bad. To save money, she’d never gotten a landline at her apartment. This meant she couldn’t check on Riley, which she felt a sudden real need to do. “Going on break,” she said.