8. Heidi
All I’d done was hold a rickety ladder against a tree. Just held the ladder. But when Logan came down with that satisfied look on his face, I might as well have placed that camera myself. It was exciting and felt like rebellion. I knew the other rangers wouldn’t approve of me helping a group who worked outside the law. Then again, I had the feeling that Logan knew the marijuana he’d found belonged to Eli. I didn’t judge Eli for what he was doing, but it hadn’t helped his case when he’d asked me to go out with him.
“Whatcha thinking, good-lookin’?” Logan was watching me. “You had this funny look on your face. Like you ate something sour.”
“That’s about right,” I laughed. “I was thinking about how good it feels to be helping you out here. The last few months have been less than optimal for me, workwise.”
“Because you friend-zoned Eli.”
I punched him in the arm. “There was no friend-zone. I thought we were real friends. Then he told me I needed to go out with him.” I huffed. “No. Not ‘go out with.’ Sleep with. He told me I needed to have sex to be worth dating, and he’d do me the favor of being my first.”
Logan’s mouth made an “O” shape. I picked up the knapsack with the last bit of camera equipment in it and threw it over my shoulder. Wisely, he stopped talking and tucked the ladder under his arm.
I didn’t think I needed to share that when Eli propositioned me, I was so grossed out that my automatic response wasn’t diplomatic or kind. I was still paying for my lapse in manners, and he’d suffered nothing for harassing his employee. When I told the guys, they said they needed him more than me. I’d spent months trying to prove them false. What a stupid waste of my time. I was too scared to leave the job I had to try something new.
But I’d interned at the park while I was going to school. It was the only job I’d ever had, and I was the youngest ranger ever. Those were things I took pride in. I didn’t want to lose out on that because of him.
“This place was my first job,” I said, as he tucked away the map he’d been studying. “I worked here even when I wasn’t getting paid for it. It feels disloyal to think about leaving, but here I am, breaking the one rule that’s sure to get me fired.”
“You can’t help it. I’m just that good looking.”
“It’s not really about you. You know that, right?”
“Ouch. You could’ve lied, you know. Sheesh.” Logan grinned at me. “You’re pretty darn independent to do anything for a guy, handsome as hell or not.”
I laughed and tripped over a root, barely catching myself. “See what you did?”
“You wouldn’t be the first girl to fall at my feet.”
“Why?” I snorted. “Why are you being such a goof?”
He glanced at me and walked ahead a few feet. For a moment, I was afraid I’d offended him. “I haven’t just been… dumb, with a girl for a long, long time. Would it offend you if I overshared?”
“Please, I think it’s your turn.” He chuckled and sat down on a rock. He leaned the ladder against his shoulder and wrapped an arm around it. “You remind me of someone I loved, who died.”
“Wow. That’s… that’s pretty heavy.”
“Yeah, sorry. She was awesome, though, so there is that.”
I sat next to him and stared forward. “I’m sorry for your loss, Logan. I’ve never even had someone to lose. I can’t imagine how that feels.”
He draped an arm over my shoulder and tugged me into his side. “It was a long time ago. But, after she died, I did exactly what you’ve accused me of. I just dated with no thought of a future with anyone I was with. So, you know. You were right.”
“You don’t owe me anything, I mean, we just met. I like you so much, and I’m happy to be your friend and help you out here. You made me feel like I could do something important. That’s not easy for someone like me.” I sighed. “Doing something, I mean.”
“I like you, too, Heidi. But, I don’t want you to misunderstand me. Women like you are very rare, you see. I have no intention of just being your friend. I’m going to be your lover. No kidding around this time.”
I stiffened and tried to pull away gently, but he held me tight. The ladder dropped to the ground, and he lifted me into his lap before I could fight him.
“Why are you doing this? Why are you telling me all this? I can’t...” I stopped speaking, embarrassed by the tremor in my voice.
“Exactly. You can’t imagine it. You aren’t comfortable with it. I’m going to wait for you to be ready, but I’m sure as hell going to make my intentions clear. I want you. I wouldn’t bother with you if you were just another beautiful woman in a long line of them.”
I glanced down at him and bit my lip. “Is there the chance of an actual date in this plan of yours, or are we just going to hike around until it’s time to take our clothes off.”
He groaned and pressed his forehead against my arm. “We should probably not give my imagination too much to work with right now. You smell like heaven, and I’m having a hard time not just kissing you now.”
My heart pounded on the inside of my ribs until I thought they might break. My palms dampened as I considered what I was about to do. I turned to face him, hyper-aware of how close he was as he tilted his head back to look up at my face.
I leaned forward and kissed him softly on the lips. I felt a shudder go through his body, and low in my stomach I felt the tight heat of the fire he started. He waited, his eyes on mine, his face a cautious blank. My lips moved closer to his, and as I brushed against his mouth, it opened to me. My pulse bumped, and he made a small sound as his fingers threaded through my hair and he crushed my mouth against his.
He pried my lips apart, and I felt his tongue searching my mouth as involuntary sounds of need and pleasure escaped me. I whimpered, and he tightened his fist in my hair. Then he turned me and pushed my leg around him until I was straddling him. His free hand slid down my back and then up under the hem of my shirt. I gasped and pulled away as electrical shocks ran through my body at his touch.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped, as he detangled his fingers from my hair. “I did not intend that. Got a little carried away.”
“I had to stop or I wouldn’t have been able to.”
“Wait, what?”
I blushed at his confusion.
“We didn’t have to stop? Because kissing you is my new favorite thing… like, ever.”
I laughed shakily. “Yes, but I wanted… I don’t even know. I wanted everything. This doesn’t seem like the time or the place.”
“Oh, God. No. I mean, yes, actually, this would’ve been amazing, but not for our first time together.”
“Yes. Exactly.” My nerves jangled at the prospect that I’d have a first time. I’d gone so long thinking no one would want me. But the way he’d kissed me wasn’t a lie. I’d felt him pressed hard against me like a romance novel hero, desperate to be a gentleman in trying circumstances, and I smiled at his back as he stood and straightened himself out.
“Sorry, again. I’m usually a little more chill than that.”
“Ah. Desperate for my body.”
“Pretty much.”
I blushed and shook my head as he threw back his head and laughed, chasing the birds from the trees.
“I was kidding.” I brushed past him and jumped as the ladder hit the ground with a clang. His arms went around me, and he pulled my body against the hard line of his muscular chest and stomach.
“I wasn’t.” He kissed me again, slowly, gently parting my lips and tasting me while he embraced me. “God, I will have all of you.” He blew out a breath and released me carefully, as I regained my footing. “After a real date, or six. You know, whatever the kids are doing these days.”
I blushed and stumbled a little as I put some space between us, glancing around to get my bearings.
“Until then, we have a camera to put up and loggers to threaten. I brought my war paint if you need some.”
He chuckled, then glanced down at me with his brow furrowed. “Did you really?”
“No,” I laughed, “but your face was priceless.”
He had a strange look on his face as he watched me that made me feel nervous and tingly at the same time. “You’re a lot of fun, Heidi.”
I arched an eyebrow. “But?”
“No ‘but.' Just trying to understand how a woman who is so easy to be around is so shy.”
“Oh. Well, people aren’t always the nicest.”
“I know you were treated pretty badly. But, I don’t think that’s it. I’ll figure it out. Just give me a few days with you. Or weeks. It could take a few weeks.”
“But then you’ll be gone,” I reminded him and turned my focus on the trail, which was rockier as the hill sloped up from the river.
He didn’t answer. The silence gave me the chance to appreciate the laughing call of the pine jays and the distant tapping of a woodpecker hunting for insects in the trees.
The ground was dappled with sunlight as the trees thinned and the path widened in front of me. Mosses and ferny undergrowth gave way to tall grass, already beginning to pale and yellow as days lengthened and water became more scarce. It was the water that Logan was concerned about, and we left the trees and climbed the hill high enough to get a better view of the river below us. Sure enough, the water lines were consistent with where they should have been months from now, lower than I’d seen them in my years with the park.
“You think it’s logging that’s causing the low water? How?” I asked as he stood with his back to me. His eyes were drawn upstream, and I followed his example and looked toward the sun as it dipped lower in the sky.
“I think that one or more of the tributaries is being blocked. Maybe by actual dams, maybe just by fallen logs. The road I came in on was almost completely washed away. If they used it as a makeshift log river, diverting water, then letting it flow back into a stream once they were outside the park…”
“Then they could use minimal manpower and tools, and no trucks to red flag them to us,” I interjected. “Well, fuck.”
Logan laughed abruptly. “That about sums it up.”
“We need to find proof. How do we find the one tributary out of twenty that’s being used by river pigs?”
“Wait, what? River pigs?”
“Log drivers. The guys who keep the logs from tangling up and making a dam, instead of flowing down river,” I explained.
“Well, all righty then. Heidi, quit your job and work for me,” Logan burst out. I stammered and he held out his hands. “No, seriously. Or if you prefer, you’d be working for Boyden, but coordinating through me.”
“You want me to just quit my job and look for loggers?”
“Where do you live now?”
“About an hour from here, in Cedar Park.”
“That’s quite the commute. In fact, that makes getting that date a lot easier, too.”
I shook my head. “I can’t just pick-up and leave my life.” He looked sincerely confused. “Okay, you can probably pick up and walk away from everything. But, that’s not me.”
“I’m not asking you to leave everything. I’m asking you to leave a shitty job for freedom and the ability to do what you believe in. With a more varied commute.”
“What do you mean, varied?”
“Not all of my work is at this park. Sometimes, I’m gone for days. Sometimes, I’m right around East Austin. But it’s my time, and my choice where I go. As long as I have something to report at the end of the day,” he added.
“How much time do I have to decide?”
“Oh, honey. It’s not an ultimatum; it’s an offer. You can decide now, or a year from now. But you should know, the longer you wait to decide, the more likely that you never will.” He pushed my hair back from my face. “Don’t you want to be happy?”
“Oh, Logan. I am happy. I’m happy every morning that I wake up and I don’t have chemo or have to wear a wig. I’m happy because I’m not dying, and for the last ten years, I’ve been cancer-free. How many twenty-four-year-olds do you know who’ve lived so close to death and survived?”
He blinked slowly, his face pale. “I’m an idiot.”
I took his hand and chuckled. “No. You’re normal. Most people don’t think like I do. I don’t expect them to. I’ll think about leaving. I mean, I just called in sick for the first time since I’ve been here, the day after I met you. Who knows what I’ll be capable of in a week?”
His arms went around me, and he placed a kiss on my forehead. I was disappointed by how chaste he was being and irritable that I wanted more so quickly. He held me for a minute, and I felt my body relax into him as I started to breathe in time with him.
I couldn’t be in love with a man I hardly knew. But my body didn’t seem to understand that, and tears formed behinds my eyelids at the rightness of his arms around me. I couldn’t be what he needed. He wanted a woman who would drop everything at a whim and travel the world having adventures. I’d had the biggest, scariest adventure already in my life. I wasn’t ready for excitement. But feeling so safe and warm in his embrace, I began to wonder what he could teach me about the fire he’d stoked inside me.