by Lisa Plumley
“You do,” Doris said, still nodding. “Everyone in our canasta group agrees. Right, Donna?”
Her sister folded her arms. “No. Our golf club loves Jayne’s book more. And you know it.”
“Everyone in my dorm was like, completely green with envy when they found out I was going on this trip,” Carla volunteered. “You’re our hero, Jayne.”
Kelly nodded. “The women in my office feel the same way. I’m lucky to be here.”
Overwhelmed, Jayne looked from one woman to the next. She could have hugged every last one.
It was one thing to know Heartbreak 101 had shot to the top of bestseller lists on the strength of readers’ demand. It was something else again to talk with those readers, and to know she’d really, truly helped them.
You have a gift, she remembered Carla saying, and wanted to grin like an idiot, all over again. Jayne had never had an honest-to-gosh gift before. Now that she did, it meant so much to her.
“But I’m dying to know,” Kelly went on, giving her a speculative look, “exactly what happened with the guy? The guy who broke your heart? Who was he? What was he like? How did you meet him?”
To Jayne’s dismay, everyone else chimed in, clamoring for details. How had it ended? Where was he now? How did she feel? Tell, tell, tell.
Finally, Jayne held up both palms, leaving her handbag and books balanced on her lap. She laughed. “Okay, okay. At the risk of giving away terrific book-three material…here goes.”
They all settled in. Around them, the afternoon breeze swooshed past the rocks and mesquite, and an occasional bird chirped. The setting was serene, peaceful…and way too “raw wilderness” for Jayne’s tastes. Seriously. How was she supposed to get a decent decaf soy latte out here?
Anyway….
“Well, let’s see. It was almost—” She paused, as though the time that had passed weren’t emblazoned in her memory. “—almost two years ago now, I guess. We met at the pier in San Francisco, while I was on location for an advertising shoot. He was a photographer on assignment taking pictures of migrating whales off the coast—”
“What was his name?” Mitzi interrupted.
Jayne hesitated. Then she decided there really wasn’t any reason not to tell them. “Riley. His name was Riley.”
She barely stifled a sigh. Hearing Riley’s name again—especially from her own lips—was strange. Thinking of him was even stranger. Yet at the same time, it was tempting, too. A half-forgotten yearning nudged itself awake inside her, and Jayne knew she’d be wiser not to travel down this road again.
“To make a long story short, we hit it off,” she said casually. “You know those romantic montages in the movies where the couple walks along the beach, laughs over dinner, and chases each other in the park? That was us. Instantly smitten. Love at first sight. Blah, blah, blah.”
They smiled. Doris leaned forward. “So what happened?”
Jayne fingered the gold pendant she’d worn to fill the neckline of her shirt dress. She shrugged. “Six months later he left. That’s what happened. One minute, everything was wonderful. And the next, he was gone. Just…gone.”
“Awww.” The group huddled closer, patting Jayne on the shoulders. Their comfort surrounded her, freely offered even though they were still mostly strangers—strangers who’d bonded over shared loss.
Jayne felt herself weaken, felt a sting of tears at the long-lost memory of Riley’s desertion, and told herself she had to get a grip. Falling back under the spell of coulda, woulda, shoulda wouldn’t help anyone now. Least of all herself.
Besides, she was over Riley now.
She sniffed and swiped a hand over her eyes. Straightened. “It’s all right,” she croaked, knowing she had to set an example for them. “I’m fine now. But thanks everyone.”
Amid the comforting murmurs her breakup-ees offered, Jayne sucked in a deep breath. She stood. “I’d better…go try knocking on the lodge door again. Maybe they’ve just been asleep in there.”
At twelve forty-five in the morning? a part of her jibed. But none of the women called her bluff, so Jayne managed to get away. At the big plank door, she pulled out her compact and checked her makeup.
Bawling over lost loves was, after all, hell on a girl’s Benefit “babe cakes” classic eyeliner.
A shout from Carla carried from the parking lot. Jayne turned to see her pointing through the towering pines and scrubby oaks toward the dirt road beyond. “I see, like, a dust plume! Somebody’s coming!”
The lodge owners. If they were back, then she could get started—and move on to something positive, too.
Jayne ran (okay, walked quickly—sacrifices had to be made for beauty, and for stylish shoes) back toward her things. Sudden excitement shimmied through her as she gathered up her handbag and the autographed books she’d brought for their hosts.
Now that the time was here, she could hardly wait to get started. Anything was better, Jayne figured, than thinking about Riley Davis…and the bewildering vanishing act he’d pulled, just when things had started to get good between them.
Chapter Two
Over the thirty-two years of his life, Riley Davis had, on occasion, hacked his way through jungles. He’d climbed his way to mountain peaks in sub-zero temperatures. He’d even risked his neck on white-water rapids, and held his breath while skydiving. But he’d never, during all those adventures, encountered anyone more frustratingly, aggravatingly, crazy-makingly stubborn than Bud Davis.
His grandfather.
Who, at this moment, happened to be sitting in the passenger seat of Riley’s battered Suburban as they meandered down the service road toward the lodge…driving him ape shit with every word he said.
“You are not leading this group, Gramps.” Riley forcibly relaxed his grip on the steering wheel and shot Bud an earnest, don’t-mess-with-me look. It was tough to pull off on a man who’d once watched eight-year-old Riley cry over losing his favorite grass snake, but he gave it a try, all the same. “The doctor said you need to take it easy. I’m here to make sure you do that.”
“You’re here ‘cause you’re in cahoots with your grandma,” Bud grumbled. “She wants to turn me useless, too.”
Riley’s heart softened. Putting himself in Gramps’s shoes, he could imagine how helpless, how embarrassed, how—yes, thoroughly pissed off—he would feel. But that didn’t mean he was going to let his seventy-year-old grandfather work himself to death. Especially if he meant to do so by leading a bunch of namby-pamby city types on a five-day adventure hike.
He glanced sideways. “You’re not useless. You never will be. Those water lines near the lodge need work, and—”
“‘Water lines need work,’” Bud mimicked, making a face. “A damned plumber could do that, and you know it.”
“That’s not the point.”
“I’m trained to take that group out. I’m doing it.”
“No, you’re not.” Calmly, Riley steered around a pothole left by a recent rain. He squinted into the distance, where two people could be seen walking along the roadside. “I am.”
“Hell. You don’t wanna do that.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Bullshit. You don’t care about this place.” Bud’s outflung arm indicated the scenic red buttes, the creosote and cypress along the roadside—and the lodge in the distance. “Or any place, for that matter. You haven’t spent more than three months straight in any one spot since you were old enough to put on your own boots.”
It was coming, Riley knew. The usual reminder. The usual dig. Wait for it…
“Just like your father.”
Stifling a sigh, Riley glanced sideways again. He deliberated making a rebuttal. Sunlight shone through the Suburban’s window, casting Gramps’s lined skin and stubborn features into bold relief…and changing Riley’s mind about stirring up trouble, too.
“No point trampling over the past. It’s over with,” was all he said.
“Hmmmph.”
Stubborn to the co
re, Riley thought, giving his grandfather an affectionate—if aggravated—look. Those weathered lines of his—and his shock of thick white hair—were the only visible reminders of Bud Davis’s advancing years. Past retirement age now, he was nonetheless broad-shouldered, lean, and as strong as the day he’d first ascended the more than twelve-hundred-foot summit of nearby Humphrey’s Peak.
On that day, though, he hadn’t had two bum knees, torn cartilage in his shoulder, ever-worsening arthritis, and a trick ankle that threatened to send him careening down a canyonside some day.
“I know you want to get back to your own life,” Bud said, resting his open palms on the knees that had helped betray him. “Take some of them pictures, hike into some godforsaken no man’s land—” At this, he smiled. “—for that magazine of yours. Didn’t you say something about heading off to Antigua for another National Explorer assignment?”
“I don’t remember.”
Riley’s gut clenched, protesting the lie. Ignoring it, he kept his gaze fixed on the two people he’d seen strolling the roadside up ahead. He recognized them.
“It’s not important,” he added. What was important was keeping safe the ridiculously bullheaded man who’d spent summer after summer watching over Riley.
Bud shook his head. “You’re a piss-poor liar. You still tap your foot whenever you’re telling a stretcher.”
Frowning, Riley stilled his jittery brake foot.
“It’s a bunch of them New Age types, I think,” Bud warned further, “going on that trip you’re so hot to lead. Probably, they’ll have crystals and crap. Want you to burn incense on the trail and free the spirits in the red rocks.”
His disgusted tone made his opinion of “New Age types” plain. “The leader, she wrote one of those self-help books. S’posed to help women get over the men who broke their hearts.”
A self-help guru. Picturing the kind of uptight, brainiac man-hater who’d be likely to write such a book, Riley made a face, too. He didn’t know why people couldn’t just help themselves. That’s what he did. And he was perfectly fine.
He slowed up just behind the walkers, who were headed in the same direction he and Gramps were, but on the opposite side of the road. Dust billowed from beneath the Suburban’s thick-treaded tires. Beside him, Bud squinted through the windshield.
“Hey! Is that your Grandma? And Alexis, right along with her?”
“Yep. Looks like Alexis is running away to Phoenix again.”
Bud shook his head, watching the two females stride side-by-side. “Spittin’ image of your brother, that girl is. Leastwise, on the inside. She’s got a stubborn streak a mile wide.”
“Wonder where the family gets that from?”
“Damned if I know.”
“Uh-huh.” Riley grinned and gave the Suburban a little gas. Once abreast of the pair, he let the vehicle idle and rolled down his window all the way. He leaned out and offered a wolf whistle. “Goin’ my way, ladies?”
They turned. Recognized him. Blushing, his grandmother shook her head. His thirteen-year-old niece giggled—then remembered she was in the midst of her latest adolescent angst, and put on a dramatic face instead.
“Only if you’re going to Phoenix, Uncle Riley. Then I’m all yours.” Alexis cast an accusatory look at her great-grandmother. “Some people around here don’t understand what life is like for a person who still has a passion for living.”
Gwen Davis, sixty-six and still plenty lively despite the challenges of caring for a newly-hatched teenager for the duration of spring break, rolled her eyes. “What you have is a passion for trouble, young lady. If I hadn’t caught up with you when I did, you’d have been on the back of that man’s Harley and halfway to God-knows-where by now.”
“Phoenix.” Alexis pouted. “That’s where I’d be. Phoenix, where my life is.”
By “life,” Riley assumed she meant “the mall.” It couldn’t be easy to survive shopping withdrawal without so much as a cherry-berry smoothie and a gigantic pretzel for comfort.
“There’s nothing wrong with a little hitchhiking,” Alexis went on. “He was nice. He had a Tweety Bird tattoo.” She issued the ultimate recommendation: “My mom would’ve let me.”
“Your mother’s a nincompoop,” Bud offered, leaning across the Suburban’s gearshift. “Best thing she ever did was divorce your dad.”
Alexis’ lower lip pushed forward. She crossed her skinny arms.
“Bud.” Gwen shook her head. “Not now.”
He subsided and settled for hunting down his favorite Hank Williams song on the radio. Static crackled and popped as he spun the SUV’s pre-digital-age controls.
Riley gestured Alexis nearer.
“I don’t have a Tweety Bird tattoo—” The tattoo he did have was in a place he did not intend to share with his impressionable niece. “—but what say you and Nana jump in here and take a ride back to the lodge with me? You can help me break in that new group that’s coming today. I’m taking them out—”
“Like hell you are,” Bud grumbled.
“He is!” Gwen insisted.
“—tomorrow for training. Since we’re already late—” Riley shot a glance at his scratched-up sports watch. “—we’d better hit it.”
Morosely, Alexis schlumped to the Suburban and got in. She sat in the back seat beside her great-grandmother, who got in next, and chewed a lock of her long brown hair.
Riley glanced in the rear view mirror. “Doesn’t that ever get caught in your braces?”
His niece yanked her hair from her face. She snapped her lips closed to hide her recently-installed purple orthodontia and gave him a look that definitely plugged him into the “lame old people who don’t understand me” category. Riley made a mental note to never mention her braces’ existence again. Even if he did think they made Alexis look cute, in a gawky, tender, between-stages sort of way.
He redeemed himself by selecting a magazine from the grocery store bag next to Bud’s seat. He handed it over his shoulder. “I got you something in town.”
“Cosmo! Cool! Thanks.” Glossy pages ruffled as Alexis rapidly flipped through them. “‘Fifty ways to look smokin’ hot!’ Number one…”
“Wouldn’t Tiger Beat have been more appropriate?” Gwen asked. “I don’t want to be a prude, but—”
“Tiger Beat is so fifth grade,” Alexis said, waving her half-bitten, glitter-polished fingernails. “I’m a woman now.”
Bud scoffed. “And I’m one of the Backstreet Boys.”
“Ha. Good one, Gramps.”
Gwen frowned, her hand hovering over Alexis’ bent head as the girl went back to reading hottie tips. At the last instant, she halted the caress she’d undoubtedly been about to give and looked out the window instead. Riley put the Suburban into motion again, having decided keeping his trap shut was the better part of valor. After all, he’d been the one who’d handed over the bone of contention.
They drove farther down the road. Navigating the steep switch-backed climb during the final two-tenths of a mile to the lodge required vigilance and a certain tolerance for dust. It also required patience, Riley learned, since his grandfather was hell-bent on resuming their argument.
“It’s only a five-day trip,” Bud said as though they’d never quit talking. “With a gaggle of that how-to woman’s groupies. To the lodge in Catsclaw Canyon. I can—”
“I’m doing it. End of story.”
“Damn it, Riley! I said I’ll—”
“The publicist who booked the trip said they’ll need to stop frequently,” Gwen chimed in, “to conduct some sort of heartbreak workshops along the trail. You know you’ll never have the patience to settle for less than a twenty-miles-per-day pace, Bud.”
His grandfather scowled. Jouncing along in the back seat, Alexis perked up. “Heartbreak workshops?”
Gwen nodded. “Yes. Apparently, that’s why the author came here. To test out her new theories in private.”
Riley shook his head. This just got better and better.
His unwanted group was slow, new to the back country, fond of New Age mumbo jumbo, and dead-set on using the quiet canyon trails to conduct open-air therapy sessions. Whoever the heartbreak book’s author was, she must be a real piece of work.
“What a bunch of hooey,” he said beneath his breath.
Bud heard. “See? I knew you didn’t want to do it! I’ll just get out my gear as soon as we get to the lodge, and—”
“I’ll do it,” Riley said quietly. Firmly.
Angling his head to loosen the tight muscles in his neck and shoulders, he pondered his future. The sooner he finished this trail guiding job and completed the rest of the repairs he’d begun on the lodge, the sooner he could get back to the life he loved.
The vagabond’s life.
Riley had sometimes joked he was one part interpreter, two parts Gypsy, and one part daredevil…but given his upbringing, it really wasn’t much of a joke. He’d had to become all those things to survive. Now, though, he accepted and appreciated the life he’d built. However willing he was to temporarily help out his grandparents, his intentions remained clear to him.
He intended to see, to do, to conquer and to enjoy. Not necessarily in that order.
He’d only once been tempted to alter his plans. To settle down, to toe off his boots and hang up his rappelling ropes and sample life the way a rare few did…with someone they cared about. But although the temptation had felt nearly irresistible, the urge to stay had felt so alien that Riley had—
No point trampling over the past, he reminded himself savagely, feeling a familiar—and unwanted—sense of loss wash over him. It’s over with.
“You said the group’s six women?” he asked, taking refuge in the job to be done.
Gwen nodded. Bud glared. “Hmmph.”
Riley knew his grandfather would understand. Eventually. “Then I’ll probably ask Mack and Bruce to come along.”
On a typical guided adventure travel trip, a traveler-to-guide ratio of three-to-one, or even four-to-one, would have been perfectly acceptable. Higher ratios were safe so long as the guides knew their jobs, and meant better profits, too. But the Hideaway Lodge was firmly in the black, and Riley wasn’t leading this trip for the money, anyway. In the midst of the “how-to junkies ‘do’ the wilderness” craziness, a couple of extra guides would help keep him sane. If a shortfall arose because of his decision, he’d make up the difference himself.
