At Last

Drawing, he realized when he got closer. She was sketching on her pad, oblivious to the room. Or at least she was until he got about halfway across the diner, then suddenly she went still, lifted her head, and met his gaze.

Lots of things flickered across her face, with heat leading the way. But what grabbed him by the throat and held on was the reluctant affection.

She wanted him. He’d proven that. Hell, he wanted her right back. But she also liked him. She didn’t want to, but she did. Inexplicably buoyed by that, he slid into her side of the booth, pressing his thigh to hers. “Hey.”

“Hey.” As always, she closed her sketch book and slid it away from him. “I was just taking a break.”

“You ever going to let me see your drawings?”

“I don’t know. They’re sort of personal.”

He leaned in close. “You’ve shared your body with me. And that felt pretty personal.”

She gave him a little shove and a laugh. “Not the same thing.”

Enjoying the sound of her amusement and the fact that she looked so pretty smiling, he let one of his own escape. “One of these days, you’re going to want to share with me.”

“My drawings?”

“Those too.”

She nudged him again, less of a shove this time. “Move. I’ll get up and get your order going.”

He didn’t move, but he did enjoy her hands on him, one on his arm, the other on his chest, especially since they lingered as if she couldn’t help herself. “I’m a patient man, Amy. I can wait.”

“It’s late, and you’ve got to be hungry,” she said, purposely misinterpreting that sentence. “At least let me put your order in. The usual, right? Or a double-double?”

They’d shared a double-double just last night, and it hadn’t been food. And actually, she’d gotten more than two orgasms. Maybe even a quadruple. He smiled at the memory, and she pointed at him.

“Stop that,” she said.

“Stop what?”

“You know what. You’re thinking things.”

He laughed. “Okay, you caught me. I’m definitely thinking… things.”

She looked around to see if anyone was paying them any attention. No one was. He’d come late enough tonight that the place was nearly emptied out. Only two customers were at the counter and one at a table on the far side of the diner. Leaning in, Matt put his mouth to the sweet spot just beneath Amy’s ear. “Why don’t you tell me what things you think I’m thinking?”

She actually blushed beet red, which was so adorably revealing that he laughed. She shoved him again, which made him laugh more.

“You’re crazy,” she said.

Yes. It was entirely possible that he was crazy. Crazy for her.

Riley walked by. She was wearing ratty jeans, battered sneakers, a sweatshirt he recognized as Amy’s, and a bright pink Eat Me apron. She was carrying a tray of dirty glasses and dishes and a very large chip on her shoulder. Matt looked at Amy.

“I got her a job,” she said, and when he smiled at her, she lifted a shoulder. “It was no big deal.”

But it was. “You’re helping her.”

“Anyone would.”

“That’s the thing,” he said. “They wouldn’t. They don’t.”

She stared at him. “You seem to have this blind faith in me, like I’m a good person and some sort of decent influence.”

“You are.” He reached out and pushed a strand of hair back off her face, stroking it behind her ear. “You don’t give yourself enough credit.”

She was already shaking her head. “You don’t know me.”

“I know enough. It’s all there in your eyes.”

Those eyes met his now, filled with a warmth he didn’t know if he’d ever get used to.

“Your life has been very different from mine,” she said.

“Does it matter?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

She looked around the diner, then back at him. And then she put her hand on her sketchbook and pushed it across the table toward him.

Not one to squander an opportunity, Matt put his hand over hers on the book. “Yeah?”

She paused and then pulled her hand free. “Yeah.”

He held her gaze, smiled at her, then opened the book and found himself completely speechless at the sheer mind-blowing talent leaping off the page. Each drawing was a rendering of the Pacific Northwest in some fashion or another. Squaw Flats, Eagle Rock, Four Lakes, Sierra Meadows, and Widow’s Peak, she’d done them all, rendering them in colored pencil, so perfectly that he could almost smell the pines and feel the breeze. “Amy, Jesus. You’re amazing.”

“Thanks.” Her cheeks were a little pink with the praise, making him wonder if she’d ever shown anyone her drawings before.

He flipped back to Sierra Meadows. “This is close to where I found you that night, when you were… not lost.”

That earned him a small smile. “The night I fell down the ravine. The night you shared your tent.”

“Which has been in heavy rotation in my fantasies ever since.”

“You have some sort of a rescue fetish, Ranger Hot Buns?”

“No, I have a pale blue panty fetish.”

She let out a low laugh. “It was dark.”

“I have panty x-ray vision. God-given talent.”

She laughed again, and the sound warmed him, but he couldn’t take his eyes off her work. “You’re so talented,” he said, truly awed. “You should show these more often. You know Lucille runs an art gallery, right? She’d love these.”

“They’ve always been just for me.”

He met her gaze. “So what changed? Why show me now?”

She paused. “Well, I guess it’s because you let me in. You told me about your childhood, your family. Your past. You’ve counted on me to help Riley.” She shrugged. “You shared yourself with me, so I guess that somehow makes it okay for me to share with you.”

At this, Matt felt his smile slowly fade, and guilt twisted in his gut. She thought he’d opened up, when in fact he’d purposely told her only the good things. What was even worse was that he’d let her think she could trust him, count on him. He liked the idea of her trusting him, a lot, but the last time he’d been down this road, he’d f**ked up. Royally. His ex could attest to that. He’d promised not to get attached, but he was.

Deeply.

And suddenly, he wasn’t in the least bit hungry. Suddenly his stomach was burning and churning. Suddenly, he had to go. Be alone. Now. Gently, he pushed her sketch pad back to her.

She cocked her head to the side, eyes on his, clearly sensing a change in him, but just as clearly not understanding what.

As he couldn’t understand it either, there was no way to explain it to her. “Jan’s trying to get your attention,” he said.

She held his gaze a moment longer, eyes sharp. He hadn’t fooled her. But in classic Amy fashion, she took the easy way out and let him distract her. She glanced up at Jan, who was indeed pointing to her watch.

Matt stood up and let her out of the booth. She brushed against him as she did and sucked in a breath at the contact.

He did, too, but he managed to keep his hands to himself, shoving them into his pockets to ensure it. She’s not for you…

Amy hesitated for a moment, and Matt held his breath, though he shouldn’t have bothered. She didn’t press for answers. She wouldn’t, because as he’d counted on, that’s not how she operated. And then there was the bottom line—she didn’t want this any more than he did.

That night Amy went home, running through the light rain to her apartment, hoping the damp had brought Riley back.

It hadn’t.

She grabbed her mail and dropped it all on the kitchen table. Mostly junk, but there was a manila envelope from New York, and she recognized her mother’s handwriting. She spent a moment staring at the package as if it were a striking cobra before she opened it.

Inside was a short note and a small notebook. The note said:

I’ve had this all these years, but it occurred to me after you called that maybe it’s your turn to hold onto it. Mom

The notebook was identical to her grandma’s journal. She opened it and then realized it wasn’t identical at all. The paper in this notebook wasn’t lined. And someone had filled the pages with sketches. Not in colored pencil, like Amy did, just black charcoal, but the sketches were so eerily similar to her own that Amy sank to a chair, weak-kneed. Lucky Harbor, Sierra Meadows, Four Lakes, Squaw Flats… the images wavered as Amy found herself choked up.

She hadn’t known her grandma could draw.

She flipped through, marveling, swiping her eyes on her sleeve. There was only one picture she didn’t recognize, the very last one—a vista of rough-edged, craggy mountain peaks that was so wonderfully depicted she could almost smell the trees.

This drawing was different than the others. This drawing had a figure sketched in, a woman. Drawn in shadow, she stood in profile on the plateau, the wind blowing her hair and scarf out behind her as she held something above her head. A container. From it came a cloud of dust—

Oh, no. Amy’s heart sank. Not dust. She thought back to the journal entry before, where her grandma had switched from the “we” to “I.”

She’d not been with Jonathon on this journey, at least not a living, breathing Jonathon.

Amy turned to the journal and reread the last entry again.

… standing at the very tippy top, looking out at a blanket of green, a sea of blue…

Amy eyed the drawing. It certainly looked like the tippy top. She opened her map. The highest peak was Widow’s Peak. Her grandma hadn’t left her initials on that mountain.

She’d left Jonathon’s ashes.

I would never settle. I would never stop growing. I would never give up…

Coming here had given her grandma the hope and peace she needed to go on with her life after losing Jonathon. She’d gotten the hope to go on. And the peace to live without him. Amy understood that. She’d followed her grandma’s journey to make a change in her life, too, to learn about herself. To grow.

Baby steps, and like Riley, she was taking them.

She ran her fingers over her drawing of Widow’s Peak. Her grandma had never settled, and she wouldn’t either. She’d never give up. She went through the pictures one last time, and when she finally closed the book, her resolve to finish this journey was renewed. She definitely had hope and peace now, and she wanted the rest. She wanted to find her heart.

Two days later, Amy had a day off and was mountain-bound, equipped with her grandma’s drawings. She’d studied the map and had found a trail called Heart-Stopper. Was it possible that grandma’s “heart” moment had been a play on words? The problem was that the Heart-Stopper Trail ran perpendicular along the Rim Trail, except higher up, along the top of the peaks, from the north rim all along to the south rim in a huge semicircle, connecting the two. The loop that Matt had insinuated was too hard for her. She’d have to break it up into a few separate trips.

Or she could show Matt the drawing and see if he could help.

And she would have—except she kept playing that night in the diner over and over in her head. He’d backed off, and she didn’t know why.

But it was okay. She could figure this out, just like she’d figured all her other shit out.

She cheated by taking the fire roads up past Squaw Flats and Sierra Meadows, straight to the trailhead of Heart-Stopper. It was beautiful, but she felt… off.

That’s because you miss Matt…

How ironic was that? She’d told him not to get attached, and then she’d done it. She’d gotten damn attached.

Not that it mattered, not that it would slow her down. Matt wasn’t her journey. This was her journey.

But though she managed to hike half the Heart-Stopper Trail before she had to turn back, she never found anything specific. Unlike at Sierra Meadows or Four Lakes, there was nothing obvious, nothing in her notes to point out a direct item. And of course, there were a million trees. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack, and she’d had to admit defeat for the day. She got back to the North District Ranger Station just before dark. Matt’s truck was in the lot, and seeing it put butterflies in her belly. She never got butterflies. Damn man. So they hadn’t spoken in a few days, so what? It wasn’t a big deal, and certainly not the reason why she entered the building. Nope, she just needed a new map is all.

And maybe, if she saw him, she’d tell him about her grandma’s drawings. Not that she wanted to see him…

But she did. He was on the phone behind the reception area, his broad back to her. Amy picked out the new map and paid the young ranger-in-training behind the desk while simultaneously trying not to notice that Matt really earned the moniker of Ranger Hot Buns.

He turned and caught her staring. Still on the phone, he arched a single brow.

She waved her map at him and ran out. “You,” she said to her reflection in the rearview mirror when she was in her car and on the road, “are an idiot.”

At home, she showered then joined Mallory and Grace for a night out. They went to the Love Shack, Lucky Harbor’s one and only bar and grill. The place was done up like an old Wild West saloon, complete with walls of deep bordello red, lined with old mining tools. Lanterns hung over the scarred bench-style tables. The bar itself was a series of old wood doors attached end to end. Run by former world sailing champion Ford Walker and Lucky Harbor’s mayor Jax Cullen, the place was never wanting for customers.