“Now what?” she asked, motioning toward the huge trunk still completely blocking the narrow gravel road.
“Now that the trunk is light enough not to yank the bumper off my truck—I hope—I’m going to try to hook a chain to it and pull it out of the way, at least enough for us to get around it. Once I can drive past it, I’ll go down and check the flooding at the foot of the hill. As long as the rain holds off a while longer, maybe we...”
The sky opened. It was the only way to describe the way rain dumped suddenly onto them, as if someone had turned on a showerhead full blast above them. Gavin snatched up the chain saw and followed Jenny’s mad dash to the covered porch, but both of them were soaked by the time they ducked under the overhang.
“Are you kidding me?” She shoved her sodden bangs out of her eyes, shaking her head in dismay. “Could this weather get any crazier?”
Gavin ran a hand through his wet, shaggy hair, spraying raindrops around his feet. “It’s spring in Arkansas. Crazy weather is pretty much expected this time of year. They’ve been predicting these storms for a couple weeks now.”
“I know,” she admitted with a sigh. “I just hoped the worst forecasts would be wrong. They often are, you know.”
He leaned back against the wall of the cabin, gazing out at the downpour without answering. An occasional windblown gust of rain blew in at them, but they were already so wet it didn’t seem to matter. Actually, the wet breeze felt rather good after the sweaty work. She settled into a damp rocker and watched a rivulet of water slide down a porch post.
His gaze focused intently on the falling rain, Gavin spoke quietly. “You’re not getting much of your paperwork done today. Didn’t you say that’s why you came?”
She shrugged. Once again, she had a perfect opening to tell Gavin exactly why she’d needed some time to herself, but once again, she decided to let the opportunity pass. She told herself it would just be too awkward to discuss Thad with Gavin, especially considering she hadn’t even given Thad an answer to his proposal yet. “I’ll find some time later, once I get off this hill.”
“You make a habit of taking off on your own like this to work?”
That made her laugh, though without much humor. “This is the first weekend I’ve not spent at my office in longer than I can remember. And I very rarely have time just to myself. This trip was an aberration in almost every way—and wouldn’t you know, it would turn out to be a disaster.”
“Sorry you were disappointed.”
Realizing she might have sounded a bit ungracious, she shrugged. “You had no control over the weather. And the booking mix-up wasn’t your fault, either. Just all-around bad luck.”
Because that didn’t sound much better, she added, “I mean, it’s very nice seeing you again, it’s just...”
“Jenny.” His tone was dry, and she figured he must find her sudden discomfiture amusing. “It’s okay. You didn’t hurt my tender feelings. And it’s nice to see you again, too. Sort of.”
Because she understood exactly what he meant by that, she gave him a quick, wry smile. “Yeah. Sort of.”
He didn’t return the smile. “Always figured we’d run into each other again someday, both still living in the area and all. I’m kind of surprised it took so long. Guess we hang in different circles these days.”
She was determined to act as nonchalant as he appeared to be. “It’s funny that we reconnected here, three hours from where we live.”
“Not so strange, I guess, since I own the cabin and you were looking for a secluded place. Maybe the fact that you remembered it so well is a little odd.”
“I hadn’t thought about it in years,” she assured him quickly. “My assistant unintentionally reminded me of it when I jokingly said that I needed to crawl into a cave or something for a few days to think and get organized and she said maybe I should find a nice, secluded mountain cabin. This place popped into my head and I did an impulsive internet search and...well, here we are.”
“Here we are.”
She twisted her fingers in her lap. “It’s nice that we can be...” Friends didn’t seem to be quite the right word. She quickly substitute
d, “Civil.”
“Why wouldn’t we be civil? We dated as kids. We went our own ways. It’s been—what, a decade or so? Life’s gone on, for both of us.”
It had been ten years and two months since they broke up. Not that there was any reason to get that specific, but she couldn’t help wondering if he, too, remembered the exact date. Still, as he said, they’d been very young. A lot had happened since for her, and certainly for him, too. She was in a relationship, and for all she knew, he could be, too. Neither had been pining for the other all these years. There was no reason at all they couldn’t be...well, friendly. She couldn’t see them hanging out as buddies. Not because of any difference in social status, but because she suspected there would always be undercurrents between them that made their interactions too potentially volatile.
As if to reinforce that thought, Gavin pushed away from the wall with a bit more force than necessary. “I’ll be right back.”
Jenny was torn between enjoying the sound of the rainfall on the porch roof and being impatient for the rain to end so they could get back to clearing the road. She glanced behind her. Gavin had left the door ajar, probably to allow fresh air into the stuffy rooms. It was quiet inside the dim cabin. She didn’t hear him moving around at all.
Curious, she stood and walked inside, leaving her muddy shoes on the doorstep beside his boots. She had just moved farther into the room when she heard a heavy thud and a heated curse from Gavin’s bedroom.
Tentatively, she headed that way. “Gavin? Are you all right?”
His bedroom door was open. Shirtless, he stood in front of the dresser mirror, an open first aid kit in front of him, the bandage on his shoulder hanging crookedly. A plastic bottle of isopropyl alcohol lay on the wood floor beside his feet; fortunately, the lid was still on so it hadn’t spilled.