by Lisa Plumley
Then too, they’d been apart for so long. Was it a crime to want things to be nice, for their first time in a long time?
Riley hadn’t acted as though it was, even though Jayne knew he had to have felt as frustrated and disappointed as she did. Instead, he’d held her hand. He’d talked. He’d made her laugh with squirrel jokes and moose impressions and stories of hikes gone comically awry.
He’d cared for her.
And on a practical level, Jayne recalled, he’d even managed to make good use of their stolen time together. He’d actually taught her a few facts about wilderness survival.
Sure, she hadn’t made whoopee, she told herself. But now she knew how to tie a wicked square knot.
Disgruntled, Jayne tromped further. The sounds of the nearby camp grew louder. It was just past sunset now, and everyone would be gathered around the small rock-encircled fire. As she passed between two trees, Jayne glimpsed Mack and Bruce standing a short distance beyond Lance and the breakup-ees.
The sight of the guides niggled at her. They could help her with…something…she’d been meaning to do. Something she’d planned to do, before getting caught up in the defection of yet another breakup-ee to the Riley Fan Club.
Riley. That was it! She remembered her earlier curiosity about the way Riley frequently left everyone behind, remembered her resolve to discover the reasons behind it. Who better to explain Riley’s tendency toward aloneness, Jayne thought now, than his long-time friends, Mack and Bruce?
Decisively, she stepped forward. With her erstwhile clandestine lover still in the forest to give her a head start, this might be her best chance to dig into his secrets.
“Hey, Mack!” she called. “Bruce!”
They turned at the sound of her voice. Within moments, she’d caught up to them. Selfconsciously, Jayne checked her fleece for more telltale dried leaves, then addressed them both.
“I have some questions for you two,” she said. “I’m really hoping you can help me out.”
Beneath a stand of aspens that glowed ghostly white in the light from the campfire a few yards distant, Jayne leaned her shoulder against a tree. She resisted an urge to check her hair, and fought back the need to swipe on some lip gloss before unsightly chapping set in. She’d been trying to act like one of the guys, in the hope such behavior would relax Mack and Bruce enough to cut loose some secrets. She’d even tried to spit. The resulting dribble of drool hadn’t been pretty.
“About fifteen years now, I guess,” Bruce was saying in response of her last question—how long each of them had known Riley. Casually, he reached down and adjusted something in his pants—something that required a funny hip wiggle and a wince. “My folks moved next door to his grandparents’ when I was going into high school. Riley usually spent the summers there.”
Jayne nodded. She considered scratching her butt, but couldn’t manage such out-and-out fake machismo.
“Almost as long for me,” Mack said, his expression open and Howdy-Doody cheerful. “We wound up working the same cross-country ski trip nine or ten years ago. We hit it off, I guess.” He shrugged. “We’ve guided lots of groups together since then. There’s nobody I’d rather hit the trail with.”
“Except a Playmate.” Bruce gave a huh-huh laugh. “Or one of those Victoria’s Secret lingerie models.”
“I meant that in a professional sense.”
“Hey, so did I. Those girls are professionals. Professional hotties! Yowsa!”
Bruce pantomimed burning his fingers. Jayne shook her head and reminded herself the man meant well. He was just a little…juvenile when it came to women. In all other ways, he was a devoted and capable guide. And he knew Riley. Thoroughly.
“So you’d say you both know Riley pretty well?” she asked.
They nodded. Mack stuck his hands in his pockets and cast a glance toward the group of travelers around the campfire. Was she mistaken, or did his gaze linger just a little bit longingly on Kelly’s bespectacled face?
“‘Bout as well as anybody, I guess,” Bruce said.
“Yeah,” Mack agreed, swerving his attention back to Jayne.
“What does that mean?”
They hesitated. Finally, Mack spoke again. “Well, you’ve seen Riley.” He spread his arms wide. “Riley comes…and he goes. I don’t think he has many close ties.”
“Not even to his family?”
They gave her blank looks.
“His parents? They’re Greenpeace volunteers?”
“No kidding?” Mack asked.
“Huh.” Bruce scratched his head. Then he spit.
Jayne pretended he hadn’t. “Don’t tell me neither of you know anything about Riley’s family.”
They shrugged. “He doesn’t talk about himself.”
“And you’ve never asked him? Not in ten, fifteen years?”
Mack and Bruce shared a perplexed glance.
“You call yourself friends?” Jayne prodded.
“Sure.”
“‘Course.”
“The subject hasn’t come up in our weekly knitting circle,” Bruce cracked. Mack grinned.
This wasn’t going at all as she’d hoped. Regrouping, Jayne offered up a hopefully masculine-seeming sniff. She waggled her own hips, but couldn’t go so far as a crotch grab. “What about girlfriends? Surely you guys talk about those.”
Bruce frowned. “Did you just jab me in the ribs?”
She backed off, chagrined. “I meant it in a camaraderie-building sense.” Jayne waggled her eyebrows encouragingly. “You know, man-to-man talk about the ladies.”
Mack shook his head. “Nice men don’t drag the women they care about through the conversational mud.” Again, his gaze drifted to Kelly.
“Come on, you guys! Give me the dirt!”
“Look,” Bruce said. “Riley is different. He’s…the one night stand of friendships. He’s lots of fun when he’s around, but in the morning, he usually has someplace else to be.”
“Good analogy,” Mack said approvingly. “Way to go.”
Bruce beamed. Jayne felt like tearing her hair out.
“Maybe you two aren’t the people I should be talking to about this.”
They disagreed. “Like we said before,” Bruce told her, “we know Riley as well as anyone.”
“Maybe better,” Mack said. “But he’s a hard man to buddy up to. He’s alone most of the time. I think he likes it that way.”
“Yeah. Riley’s fun when he’s around, but…” Bruce shrugged, making his meaning plain. But he’s not around much.
“Then he doesn’t let anyone get close to him?” Jayne asked, frustrated. Riley could return any minute now, and she didn’t have much time.
Bruce concentrated. “Well, there was that one girl…”
“The one in…” Mack snapped his fingers. “San Francisco.”
Everything inside Jayne went still. San Francisco. Where she’d met Riley. Where she’d loved Riley. Where he’d left her, inexplicably, behind.
The two men sighed like lovesick sailors on a two-day pass. “That was somethin’ else,” Bruce said. “He fell for her hard.”
“Really loved her, I think,” Mack agreed.
She hardly dared to breathe, but she had to know. “What was her name?”
Another blank look from Bruce. “Dunno.”
Jayne stared expectantly at Mack. He shook his head.
Still, it had to be her. She hardly dared hope, and yet…it had to be.
“But if you don’t even know her name,” Jayne asked gently, “how do you know Riley was in love with her?”
“Simple,” Bruce said. “He never talked about her.”
Okay, she was losing it. They were making no sense at all. Maybe pretending to be macho was affecting her strangely. But it was her only hope of keeping the conversation going, so she had to keep it up. Jayne lifted her arm and scratched her fleece-clad armpit.
Apparently, Mack took pity on her, because he offered an explanation: “The only thing Riley woul
d ever tell us about the woman from San Francisco was that he’d met her,” he said, “and that he missed her.”
Missed her. Yearning welled inside Jayne. If only that were true. If only Riley had missed her. Missed her enough to come back.
“Yeah,” Bruce agreed. He raised his eyebrows as Jayne tried to carry on her just-us-guys cover by belching. Only a small “peep” emerged. “See, with an ordinary girl, a guy talks about her with his buddies. But with a special girl…well, he clams up. He doesn’t want to risk blowing it.”
“And he doesn’t want to risk having his buddies make fun of her perfectly harmless pet name for him,” Mack added, looking stormy for the first time.
“Quiet, Piggly-Wiggly. I’m trying to talk to the lady.”
Mack glared at Bruce, then transferred his gaze to Jayne. Deliberately ignoring the other man, he continued. “Also, with Riley and the San Francisco woman, it was the way he talked about her. The way he looked when he remembered her.”
At the reverent tone in his voice, Jayne held her breath. Both men grew silent for a moment. It felt almost as though they were paying respect to the mysterious ideal of true love. Jayne was touched. Deep down, they were sweet, really.
Bruce hawked a loogie. “It was a beautiful thing.”
“Yeah.”
Oh, brother. Jayne recoiled, all pretense of being rough-and-ready gone. She was nothing like a man, and it was useless to pretend. She loved baby blue and kittens, shoe shopping and chocolate. She was a girl.
A girl with a mission—a mission to end Riley’s loneliness. Hearing about his self-imposed friendship exile just about broke her heart. If there was anything Jayne was better at than girly-girl stuff, it was making friends. Before this trip was through, she vowed, she’d show Riley how wonderful being close with other people could really be.
Chapter Sixteen
Riley entered the campsite from the opposite side he figured Jayne had entered it. As he did, his gaze was instantly drawn to the campfire circle and the people sitting on logs around it. They looked cozy. As cozy as they’d looked together every night so far. The firelight flickered on their smiling faces as they talked in voices too low to carry clearly to his position. Sparks snapped into the night sky above them.
Go over there, a part of him urged. But a lifetime of being on the outside kept Riley where he stood. He’d always been the new kid, the American curiosity in a foreign land. He’d never hung out at the mall, cruised through suburbia with a newly minted driver’s license, bruised his thumbs playing video games with pals. Thanks to his parents’ dedication, from the moment he could hug a tree Riley had been involved in more “meaningful” environmental and cultural pursuits.
He’d been good at them. He didn’t regret his expertise in outdoors skills and wilderness sports. He didn’t feel sorry for himself. But he had…once.
Photography had saved him. It had changed him. Seen through his camera’s lens, the world took on a personal light. Captured through that lens, the world became his. Riley had loved photography instantly. He’d begun taking pictures in Norway, Chile, Turkey—and shortly afterward, a chance encounter with a National Explorer magazine editor had changed his life. Since then, he’d divided his time between photography assignments and guided travel work, comfortable with the movement and change both required.
But now…now he felt inexplicably lured by the gathering in front of him. It didn’t make sense. Riley had never experienced such a powerful longing before—except as a boy. And that had been before he’d learned to accept things the way they were. Hell, aside from his weird settling-down yearnings in San Francisco with Jayne….
Jayne. Of course. He felt this way only because of Jayne. Probably because of their rendezvous in the woods. They hadn’t come together the way he’d hoped, and that explained this feeling.
Satisfied, Riley squared his shoulders. He wasn’t changing. He wasn’t craving something so unreliable as stability. He was merely sorry to have missed another opportunity with Jayne. Whew. He headed toward the opposite end of camp, intent on double-checking the tents and water supplies. He’d almost made it past the crackling fire when Jayne called out to him.
“Riley! I’m so glad you’re here.” She hurried toward him, a welcoming smile on her heat-flushed face. She took his arm and began dragging him toward the fire. “Look, everyone! It’s Riley, come to join us!”
They turned interested faces toward him. Riley blanched.
“Nah, I have things to do.” He gestured vaguely toward the dark, safe edge of camp. His stupid foot began a telltale tap. “Equipment to check. Routes to plan.”
“Marshmallows to toast.” Jayne pressed one of her silly “designer” sticks in his hand. The ribbons tied to it fluttered in the breeze and tickled his fingers. “Yum, yum.”
“Uhhh—”
“Look, here’s your first marshmallow.” She poked one onto the end of his stick with exaggerated care. Her upward glance implored him to toast it.
Well, if it meant that much to her… “Okay. One marshmallow won’t kill me.”
“Yay!” the women cried, as they often did. Riley couldn’t believe he’d actually agreed to do this. Campfire gatherings were for other people…people who needed people, or some psychobabble crap like that.
He reluctantly edged nearer. Everyone called out greetings. They shifted to make room on the nearest log. Jayne pushed his shoulders downward, shoving him into place. Within seconds, Riley found himself somewhere he’d never been—inside the circle. Travelers pressed close on all sides, getting resituated. The conversation resumed, this time to include him.
Uncomfortable, he rotated his tense shoulders.
“Isn’t this nice?” Jayne asked chirpily beside him. She covered his hand with hers, guiding his stick into position above the fire. She kept it there with a gentle pressure.
He grunted. What was he supposed to say now? There was no purpose to this gathering. There were no instructions to be given, no training to be offered, no plans to be made. Riley felt at loose ends, and hated it.
Maybe he could take a cue from Jayne. She was never at a loss for friendly behavior. He cleared his throat and began with her.
“Your, uh, hair looks nice. New style?”
She patted the strands, which stuck out from the clip at her nape in a way that seemed purposefully haphazard. “Just a little something I worked up until I can wash it properly,” she said, looking pleased. “I saw it on a woman at the gym a few weeks ago, and just remembered how to do it.”
“It’s cute.”
“Thanks, I—” Jayne’s eyes narrowed suddenly, as though she’d just remembered she was talking to a man with no previous interest in hairstyles, cute or otherwise. She opened her mouth, obviously intending to ask him about it. Riley took a deep breath and moved on.
“That, uh, color suits you, Kelly.”
Kelly blushed and patted the collar of her bulky pink sweater. “Gee, thanks, Riley. It’s nice of you to notice.”
He pushed his luck and went for broke. “That neckline is great. Very, um, Bogey.”
Beside him, Jayne frowned. “You mean Vogue-y?”
“Sure. Okay.”
Her look of suspicion deepened. Riley concentrated on turning his marshmallow, watching it puff as it toasted. When it was done, he raised it to his mouth and blew. A brilliant Jayne-style maneuver struck him, and he spoke to Doris, Donna, and Carla next.
“Ladies, is this marshmallow Atkins-approved? Is it Zone perfect?”
Carla raised her brows.
The sisters gawped. “Well, I think so,” Donna said, recovering first. “I don’t have my book with me, but—”
“Nonsense,” Doris argued. “With all that sugar? That marshmallow’s got high-carb written all over it.”
“Hmmph. That hasn’t stopped you from pigging out.”
“I resent that! Who lost two pounds last month, and who didn’t?”
Clearly not the two-pound loser, Donna crossed her arm
s over her chest and sulked. Riley regretted having mentioned anything at all. This group togetherness stuff was tricky.
He regrouped. “Mitzi, what’s life like at the restaurant?”
She launched into a story about one of her regular customers, a man who’d ordered a double bacon cheeseburger and fries delivered to his hospital room after having bypass surgery. Told with Mitzi’s usual wisecracks, the tale had everyone laughing. Feeling a little more at ease, Riley jabbed another marshmallow onto his stick. He offered one to Jayne, too. She took it, still watching him with a speculative expression.
The night deepened. Conversation flowed freely around the campfire. When Riley got stuck or panicky, he considered what Jayne would have done, and tried that. In the process, he learned more about press-on nails, sushi bars, and self-help hoo-ha than he’d ever imagined. He also learned that Alexis didn’t think Lance was too much of “a jerk” to be sat next to. And that his good buddy Mack had a major thing going for Kelly. The two of them shyly traded glances all night.
Gradually, the tightness in Riley’s chest began to loosen. Even Jayne relaxed beside him, seeming to accept his new chattiness at face value. She guffawed at his tentative jokes, smoothed over his occasional oddball question, and generally beamed at him as though he were a prize pupil and she the tenacious teacher. He found her proprietary attitude a little strange, but he didn’t mind. Riley had the sense he was pleasing her, and that was all he really wanted.
Encouraged, he asked Carla about piercings and Lance about Limp Bizkit. He started a discussion about Bruce’s secret cross-stitch hobby, and stifled a grin at his buddy’s insistence that it was “totally Zen, dude.” By the time the small fire was reduced to embers and he was packed with toasted marshmallows, Riley began to believe he’d misled himself all along. He could be part of a group. He could fit in. Hell, he could even enjoy it.
Then the unthinkable happened.
“How about you, Riley?” Doris said. “You’ve asked us all about ourselves, but we’ve heard nothing about you. What made you want to become an adventure guide?”
