by Gail Sattler
Yet, even when everything was said, her eyes remained dry. Talking about it, rather than brooding, put the situation into a new perspective. If she were as in love with Mike as she thought she was, she should have been more upset and unwilling to talk about it, much less to someone she didn’t know.
She tried to figure out when the relationship started to deteriorate, and now realized it had been a long time ago. She had been so caught up in the flurry of their engagement and pending wedding plans, including meeting everyone Mike thought she should know, she hadn’t thought about the declining state of their relationship.
Roberta couldn’t believe how she had allowed Mike to sweep her off her feet. From that moment on, she refused to let another man do that to her again.
She continued to stare into the fire, warming her hands. Her backside was getting cold, but she ignored the discomfort as she continued to think. Despite the trauma and hardship of losing her job, the end of her relationship with Mike wasn’t such a bad thing after all.
Without warning, Robbie yawned. Her cheeks heated up, and she immediately covered her big mouth with her hands. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. I guess I’ve had a rough day. I should turn in. You can stay up if you want.”
Garrett shook his head. “Us rangers have to be up and on duty by sunrise. I think I’m going to hit the sack too.”
They stood at the same time. As Roberta faced forward, she stared straight into the middle of his chest. She tilted her head up to make eye contact to wish him good night, but before she could, the words caught in her throat.
“Oh, Garrett, your face!”
“My face?”
Before she thought about what she was doing, she rested her fingertips on his cheek.
“You’ve got a huge bruise. This is my fault. I’m so sorry.”
He covered her hand with one of his, pressing her fingers to his cheek. “Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t hurt.”
His cheek was warm in contrast with the cool night air. Roberta made no attempt to pull away. It seemed only natural when Garrett rested his hands on her shoulders and massaged the back of her neck with his thumbs. “You feeling better?”
Strangely, she did. Not lowering her hand, she smiled. “Yes. Thank you.”
Slowly, Garrett’s arms moved from her shoulders to her back, and she felt him pulling her against him. At first she stiffened, but when he did nothing except simply hold her, she relaxed and leaned into his warm chest. Even when she responded, and he could have taken her acquiescence as encouragement, he only rubbed one thumb in little circles on her back.
Roberta’s throat clogged. No one had ever held her like this. Her parents had nicely patted her on the head when she needed comforting, Mike only held her when he had more than a friendly hug in mind. Except for this morning with Molly, she never touched her female friends.
She didn’t know Garrett at all, but his comforting hug was exactly what she needed. She leaned into him even more and sighed.
Without warning, she felt herself suddenly standing alone in the cool night air.
“I think I should set up my tent so you can turn in. Now I know why you had those poles earlier. I’ve got the tent here, and I couldn’t remember what I did with the poles. Now I know.”
Roberta held back a shiver as she sank into the lawn chair. She raised her hands up to the fire, but it didn’t help.
Garrett pulled the poles in question from the compartment in the camper, and soon his pup tent was set up. He disappeared into the camper, and within minutes, he came out wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants instead of his ranger uniform.
Roberta rose and mumbled a “good night” as she stepped into the camper. Instead of putting on her pajamas, she also changed into an old T-shirt and sweatpants to sleep in. Because it was so cool, she left her socks on and slipped into the sleeping bag.
First she made sure the flashlight was within arm’s reach, and then she unzipped the window to watch Garrett quench the fire. He poked it a few times with a stick, then turned off the lantern. Suddenly, everything became completely pitch black except for the twinkle of the stars above.
So he could see where he was going, Roberta shone the flashlight through the screened window, but he pulled a solid heavy-duty flashlight with the Parks and Recreation logo out of his pocket and turned it on. The beam was at least triple the strength of hers. “Thanks for the thought, but I came prepared.” He grinned and disappeared into his tent.
Feeling like an idiot, Roberta quickly zipped the window shut.
She listened in the dark to the sound of the zipper on Garrett’s sleeping bag, and the glow of his flashlight went black.
“Good night, Robbie,” he called. “Sleep tight.”
Bugs chirped, and in the distance, something howled ominously. Easy for him to say. “Good night, Garrett.”
Roberta closed her eyes and laid back, and soon the sleeping bag which surrounded her like a cocoon became warm inside. She wanted to fall asleep, but the sounds of the night kept her from relaxing. She opened her eyes, but what she saw wasn’t much different from when she had her eyes closed, it was so totally dark.
She forced her eyes to close, but suddenly she heard the sound of crunching in the gravel outside. Her heart pounded. She swallowed hard to make her voice work.
“Garrett!” she said in the loudest whisper she could force out. “Are you sleeping? Do you hear something?”
Garrett was already awake. In fact, he hadn’t been sleeping. He’d been lying there, thinking about Robbie’s sad story. She needed a friend, and since Molly wasn’t there, it was up to him to be that friend. He’d promised to listen, so he had. Even when she wasn’t talking, he listened anyway.
He could only imagine how bad Robbie had been hurt. In any relationship, Garrett valued trust and faithfulness above all else. He’d had a few relationships over the years, but never anything serious enough to be badly hurt when the relationship ended, regardless of the reason.
When Robbie finished talking about her ex-fiancé’s betrayal, he didn’t know what to say. He did the only thing he could think of, and that was to hold her. Except, his plan to just comfort her backfired. When she nestled into him, instead of the calming gesture he had intended, touching her made his pulse heat up and his brain freeze. It scared him.
At twenty-six years old, he’d recently begun to wonder if he’d ever find a special woman who could ignite that spark, especially since his job entailed either spending most of his time alone or being with other park rangers who were also all men. He’d spent many hours in prayer, turning it over to God. If the woman who was to be his soul mate was out there, God would allow her to cross his path, or he would remain single.
Because Robbie was a city girl and not the least bit interested in wildlife biology, he knew she wasn’t that woman. But in a strange sort of way, he looked forward to spending the next day with her, in between his ranger duties.
But for now, he had something else to deal with.
He’d heard something too.
Something, or rather someone, was prowling in the campsite. From the sound of the footsteps, he could tell this was definitely not an animal, at least not the four-legged kind. If one of the other rangers needed something, they would have called him on his radio first, not entered the campsite when all was dark. To his knowledge, the camp had never experienced any trouble with intruders, but there was always a first time.
He tried to make his voice sound sleepy and unconcerned, when deep down he was furious. He had wondered earlier if someone had bothered her when she asked him to watch the fire. Now he suspected he knew the answer.
“Go back to sleep, Darling,” he said loudly enough for anyone to hear a male voice plainly. Hopefully, the intruder would fail to notice the tent in the darkness and would think his voice came from inside the camper. “It’s probably just a raccoon.”
The gravel crunched, getting softer, then fading to nothing.
He lowered his v
oice. “It’s gone. Go back to sleep, Robbie.”
If Roberta had been the least little bit sleepy before, she wasn’t sleepy now. She couldn’t imagine why Garrett would have called her “darling,” unless he was half asleep and in his dreams he was thinking of his girlfriend. Just because she didn’t like him didn’t mean no one else could. All she knew was that whoever “darling” was, the poor woman would have a hard time competing for airtime.
Girlfriend aside, Roberta had thought that whatever was outside sounded bigger than a raccoon. However, Garrett was the park ranger, so if he thought the noise sounded like a raccoon, it must have been a raccoon. But thoughts of wild animals were the least of her concerns. Now that she was fully awake, she had to go to the outhouse. Tomorrow night, and every night while she was out camping, she would remember to limit her liquid intake.
Garrett lay on his back, staring blankly at the peak of the tent above him. He had to alert the other rangers to the possibility of a prowler. He had his walkie-talkie, but in the small space of the campsite in the silence of the night, Roberta would hear every word he said and know something was wrong.
“Garrett? Are you sleeping?”
“No, I’m not sleeping.” The opposite of sleeping, he was plotting how he could sneak off. “What’s on your mind?” Hopefully she wasn’t scared, even though this time she had a reason to be.
“Garrett, I have to make a trip to the outhouse.”
Garrett broke out into a smile, then forced himself to become serious as he unzipped the tent door. He flicked on his flashlight and slipped his feet into his untied hiking boots. When the camper door opened and Robbie stuck her head out, Garrett stretched his arms over his head and lowered his voice, trying to look bored. “Let’s go.” Not taking the time to tie the laces, he shone the flashlight on the camper’s single stair for Robbie. As she closed the door behind her, he patted his walkie-talkie in his back pocket.
They walked in silence to the outhouses, where he waited for her on the path. When she was inside, he told Tyler about the possibility of a prowler trespassing in site 27 and to be on the lookout for someone checking out the campsites while people were asleep, and especially in the campsites where people had left their tents or trailers for the night to reserve the spot and gone back into the city. He almost wished it was his turn for night duty.
“Who are you talking to?”
Garrett tried not to flinch at the sound of Robbie’s voice. Someone must have finally oiled the hinge, because he hadn’t heard her come out of the outhouse. “I was just checking up on the other rangers, that’s all.” He held out the walkie-talkie for her to see and turned it off. “Let’s get back to sleep, shall we?”
They walked back to the camper in silence. Garrett shone the light for her as she stepped back into the camper. He listened as she zipped up her sleeping bag, then crawled into his tent.
“Good night, Garrett, and thank you,” she called softly.
“Good night, Robbie, and you’re welcome.”
Garrett almost had to bite his tongue. He’d almost called her “darling.”
Chapter 5
Daylight came early in the wilderness. Roberta awoke to the smell of coffee and the sound of faint stirrings outside. She opened her eyes, orienting herself to the small sleeping compartment of Garrett’s camper. The early light gave the unit a strange glow, giving everything inside a yellowish hue. As soon as she opened the camper door, she smelled food. Good food. Bacon and eggs. Garrett stood beside the picnic table, using a small green camper’s cookstove.
Trying to be discreet, she quietly slipped out of the camper and up the entrance to the campsite for a trip to the outhouse. She almost thought she made it undetected, but his head turned, and he smiled and nodded as she left.
Upon her return, two plates of bacon and eggs and toast and two cups of steaming coffee sat on the picnic table.
“Good morning, Robbie. Did you sleep well? I did.”
“How did you cook this out here? Are we going to eat all this for breakfast? What time is it?”
He turned off the flame and raised his head to the sunrise, the brilliant colors already starting to fade. “5:17 A.M.”
Roberta looked up. Wisps of pink and purple clouds were losing their colors to bright white against the blue of the early morning sky as she watched. Birds twittered and squirrels chattered. “How could you tell that?”
“I checked my watch.”
She would have said something nasty if her stomach hadn’t growled. “Where did you get that thing?” She swooshed her hand in the air over the stove. “And all this food?”
“Ranger camp. I’ve got connections. I make breakfast like this every day.”
“If I ate breakfast like this every day I’d weigh six hundred pounds. I brought cereal for breakfast. There’s milk in the cooler that’s got to be used up.”
“I suppose we could eat that too. Unless it’s some kind of healthy granola stuff. I won’t eat that.”
She had always assumed that anyone who made a career out of being in touch with nature would lead a healthy lifestyle, including plenty of exercise as well as a nutritionally balanced diet. Somehow, she couldn’t see a breakfast of high-fat, high-cholesterol bacon and eggs with thickly buttered toast fitting into that plan.
“It’s sugar-sweetened processed kid’s cereal, loaded with food coloring and preservatives. Multicolored sugar bombs. The kind my mother would never allow me to have when I was a kid. You’re welcome to help yourself if you want.”
He grinned ear to ear and rubbed his stomach, which she couldn’t help but notice was extremely flat. “Yummy.”
A plastic tablecloth covered the picnic table. Despite the questionable nutritional value, not to mention the megacaloric content of the food, she could hardly wait to dig in. This time, she knew what to expect as he sat down. Just as he started to close his eyes, she stopped him. “It’s okay, Garrett, you can pray out loud.”
His eyes widened as his head rose. He stared blankly at her, then smiled again. Something inside her stomach flipped, but she was sure it was only the growlies.
He bowed his head and folded his hands on the table. “Thank You, dear Lord, for all You’ve given us, including this food, this wonderful day, and that we can share it with our friends. Amen.”
At Roberta’s mumbled “Amen,” he dug in. Not only did he consume a huge plate of his own breakfast, but he also helped himself to a large bowl of cereal. He even drank every last drop of the milk.
He turned his wrist to read his watch as he chewed his last mouthful. “Sorry to be rude. I’m on duty, and I’m late.”
While she stared at his empty plate and her still half-full one, Garrett disappeared into the camper. In what seemed like seconds, he reappeared in his uniform, including the pants with the stripe down the side, the hat, and the dark sunglasses to complete the picture. He’d also done up the laces on his hiking boots. From the dark shadow on his jaw, she suspected he would be shaving at the ranger camp, where they probably had electricity.
“I’ve got beach duty after lunch. Want to go for a swim?”
“Swim?”
“There’s a beach down that path over there. It takes about fifteen minutes to walk. You can swim, can’t you?”
“Of course I can swim!”
“Good. See you after lunch.” Tipping his hat, he smiled beneath the sunglasses and walked away with his duffel bag slung over his shoulder and his rolled-up pup tent under his arm. Roberta couldn’t help but notice that he’d again forgotten the poles to go with it.
She smiled until she realized she had been railroaded again. Yesterday Molly had wangled her into going on this camping vacation, and now Mr. Ranger Garrett had conned her into a swimming expedition. Plus, he left her to do all the dirty dishes.
Since it was so early, despite all the time it took to heat the water on the propane elements, wash, then dry and repack all the dishes in their plastic boxes, she had plenty of time before lunch and Gar
rett’s expected return. Unless he made the rounds as often as he did yesterday.
Short of hiding, she considered what she could do and where she could go that he wouldn’t find her. Very few people were in the campground, and those who were, she suspected were mostly still asleep. The only place she’d seen so far besides her own campsite was the wood stockpile at the entrance. She had seen a sign directing campers to a nature trail, so she decided to check it out.
Preparing for the heat of the day, she changed into her shorts and sandals. After brushing her teeth, she picked up her camera and the rest of the bag of bread that Garrett brought, and she was on her way. If she had three hours to kill, she might as well feed the squirrels or any other wildlife that came along.
After constantly stabbing her toes on twigs and mulch as she walked, Roberta settled down on a log and spent most of her time trying to take pictures of a very elusive squirrel who must have felt the same way as Garrett about having its picture taken. For awhile, every time she clicked the camera or moved slightly, the squirrel ran away, but after a few tries, he seemed to get used to her and finally ate in front of her. She wondered how one tiny squirrel could eat so much at once, and why he sometimes hid while he was eating it. However, she still managed to get a few good shots of the squirrel with a tiny piece of bread tucked neatly between its cute little front paws.
The little critter must have sent out some kind of secret squirrel radar code, because just as she was about to leave, a whole flock of squirrels descended from the trees. Before she knew it, the whole loaf was gone, except for two pieces she remembered at the last minute to save for her own lunch. She wondered if other campers gave the squirrels the good pieces and left the crusts for themselves. Once they saw no more food forthcoming, the squirrels deserted her. Roberta braved the path again, constantly stopping to empty pieces of the great outdoors from her sandals. Next time she would wear sneakers.
