“Are you sure?” Joey asked. “Doesn’t sound like anything you’d see in Lost Lake in October.”
“I double-checked. It’s there. Still. And it doesn’t seem to be going away for the next couple of hours. I think we should do something with it. In it, I mean.”
“Like worship it? Sacrifice someone or something to it?”
“Or we could walk to the lake and around the lake. I hear this is a thing people do when the sun is out.”
“Sounds good,” she said. “Good excuse to wear my cute new hiking boots. Not a lot of excuses to wear boots on a beach.”
“Visit more often and you can boot around all you want.”
“Maybe I will. For the boots,” she said, and winked at him. “I’ll go get ready.”
Joey left to get dressed while Chris hunted down his shoes and jacket. Last night Joey had been all over him the second he’d walked through the front door. They’d had sex on the sofa first with the fireplace roaring a few feet away. They’d had sex in the bed an hour later. Well, on the bed if not in the bed. He’d put Joey’s hands on the headboard and fucked her from behind. One of his favorite positions as he could have total access to every inch of the front of her body while inside her. The question was...at what point during last night’s fuck fest had he taken his work boots off?
Chris found his boots under the sofa. So apparently he’d taken them off after the first fucking and before the second fucking. When he and Joey both had their clothes on—such a pity—they walked out the back door and headed down the muddy path through the trees.
“You remember how to get to the lake?” she asked as he took her
hand.
“I know exactly where we’re going.”
“Then why did you take the right fork when the left fork leads to the lake?”
“Because we’re not going to the lake just yet. I want to show you something.”
Joey raised her eyebrow.
“Not that,” he said. “You’ve already seen it.”
“I know, but I never get tired of the view.”
Chris laughed as he dragged her by the hand down the path. Sunlight trickled through the high canopy of towering Douglas firs and red cedar trees. Ferns and bear grass lined the edge of the trail like a soft green fence. The last week of rain had left the trails muddy and the air scented with pine and cedar and everything clean and alive. Impossible to walk this path with this woman and not give in to the voice of hope inside him that said even if Joey wouldn’t stay in Oregon for him, maybe she would stay for this day, this land, this mountain, this lake.
“This cabin,” Chris said when they reached the end of the path. “Like it?”
“Wow.” Joey let go of his hand and stepped into the clearing. “Oh, my God...”
“Good reaction.”
“It’s Thoreau’s cabin.”
“Not quite, but close. I found pictures of it when I restored it and went off those.”
Joey turned to face him, her dark eyes wide, her mouth slightly open. Took all his strength not to kiss the life out of her.
“You did this?”
“It was on its last legs,” Chris said. “It was either tear it down completely or rebuild it from the studs up. Seemed like a good contender for a stone facade.”
“You did this?” she asked again. “All you?”
“Not all me. I hired a few subcontractors. But the redesign was all me.”
“It’s incredible. I used to dream about living in a cottage like this.”
“I know. You had pictures of those Carmel-by-the-Sea fairy-tale cottages on your Wonder Wall.”