Chasing Fire
Page 96

She’d rather have that, she realized, in this remote spot on the mountain than a bottle of the finest champagne in the fanciest restaurant in Montana.
In anywhere.
She went back for her PG bag and her little bottles of liquid soap and shampoo.
Alone in the sunlight, she pulled off her boots, socks, stripped off the tired work clothes. The stream barely hit her knees, but the cool rush of the water felt like heaven. She sat down, let it bubble over her skin as she looked up to the rise of trees, the spread of sky.
She took time washing, as another woman might in a hot, fragrant bubble bath, enjoying the cool, the clean, the way the water rushed away with the froth she made.
Drawing her knees up, she wrapped her arms around them, laid her cheek on her knees, closed her eyes.
She opened them again as a shadow fell over her, and smiled lazily up at Gull. Until she saw the camera.
“You did not take my picture like this. Am I going to have to break that thing?”
“It’s for my private collection. You’re a fantasy, Rowan. Goddess of the brook. How’s the water?”
“Cold.”
He, as she did, pulled off his boots. “I could use some cold.”
“You’re late. It’s got to be close to seven.”
“I had a little detour.”
“Did you find fresh spots?”
“No, all clear. But I found these.” He picked up a water bottle filled with wildflowers.
“You know you’re not supposed to pick flowers up here.” But she couldn’t stop the smile.
“Since we save them, I figured the mountain could spare a few. Yeah, it’s pretty damn cold,” he said as he stepped into the water. “Feels great.”
She pulled out the bottle of soap she’d shoehorned between rocks, tossed it to him. “Help yourself. It feels like we’re the only two people in the world. I wouldn’t want to be the only two people in the world for long—who’d do the cooking?—but it’s nice for right now.”
“I heard birds in the black. They’re already coming back, at least to see what the hell happened. And in the green, across the meadow where I got the flowers, I saw a herd of elk. We may be the only people here, but life rolls on.”
“I’m going to get dressed before I freeze.” She stood, water sliding down her body, sun glinting to turn it to tiny diamonds.
“Wow,” Gull said.
“For that, and the bottle of wildflowers, I guess you’ve earned a beer.” She got out, shivering now, rubbing her skin to warm and dry it. “We’ve got spaghetti and meat sauce, fruit cups, crackers and cheese spread and pound cake for dinner.”
“Right now I could eat cardboard and be happy, so that sounds amazing.”
“I’ll get the campfire going,” she told him as she dressed. “And you get the beer when you get out. I guess cocktails and hors d’oeuvres will consist of—Holy shit.”
“That I don’t want to eat, even now.”
“Don’t move. Or do—really fast.”
“Why?”
“Life rolls along, including the big-ass bear on the other bank.”
“Oh, f**k me.” Gull turned slowly, watched the big-ass bear lumber up toward the stream.
“This may be your fantasy come true, but I really think you should get out of the water.”
“Crap. Throw something at him,” Gull suggested as he stayed low, edging through the water.
“Like what, harsh words? Shit, shit, he’s looking at us.”
“Get one of the Pulaskis. I’m damned if I’m going to be eaten by a bear when I’m naked.”
“I’m sure it’s a more pleasant experience dressed. He’s not going to eat us. They eat berries and fish. Get out of the water so he doesn’t think you’re a really big fish.”
Gull pulled himself out, stood dripping, eyeing the bear and being eyed. “Retreat. Slowly. He’s probably just screwing with us, and he’ll go away, but in case.”
Even as Rowan reached down for the gear, the bear turned its back on them. It squatted, shat, then lumbered away the way it came.
“Well, I guess he showed us what he thinks of us.” Overcome, Rowan sat on the ground, roared with laughter. “A real man would go after him, make him pay for that insult—so I could then tend your wounds.”
“Too bad, you’re stuck with me.” Gull scooped both hands through his dripping hair. “Christ, I want that beer.”
As far as Gull was concerned, ready-to-eat pasta and beer by a crackling campfire in the remote mountain wilderness scored as romantic as candlelight and fine wine in crystal. And beat the traditional trappings on the fun scale by a mile.
She’d relaxed for the first time in weeks, he thought, basking in the aftermath of a job well done and the solitude of what they’d preserved.
“Does your family do the camping thing?” she asked him.
“Not so much. My aunt’s more the is-there-room-service? type. I used to go with some buddies. We’d head up the coast—road trip, you know? Pick a spot. I always figured to head east, take on the Appalachian Trail, but between this and the arcade, I haven’t pulled that one off.”
“That’d be a good one. We mostly stuck to Montana, for recreation. There’s so much here anyway. My dad would work it out so he’d have two consecutive days off every summer, and take me. We’d never know when he’d get them, so it was always spur-of-the-moment.”
“That made it cooler,” Gull commented, and she just beamed at him.
“It really did. It didn’t occur to me until after I’d joined the unit that wilderness camping on his days off probably wouldn’t have been his first choice. I imagine he could’ve used that room service.”
“Kids come first, right? The universal parental code.”
“I guess it should be. I was thinking about Dolly and her father earlier, and the way they’d tear into each other. Was it their fractured dynamic that made her the way she was, or did the way she was fracture the dynamic?”
“Things are hardly ever all one way or the other.”
“More a blend,” she agreed. “A little from each column. Don’t you wonder what aimed her at Latterly? There are plenty of unmarried men she could’ve hooked up with. And he was, what, about fifteen years older and not what you’d call studly.”