by Webb, Peggy
“Why else would I be here?”
“There are many who come on retreats looking for a mate.” They were moving through the forest again and he was two paces ahead of her, making it impossible to see his face.
Was he serious? She remembered now why she had called him pompous and pig headed.
“I can assure you I’m not here man-hunting. And even if I were, it wouldn’t be you.” She was mad and overheated and itching, to boot. The woods were full of pests, some of them apparently two-legged. “If I wanted a man - which I definitely do not - I’d find somebody sweet and charming, and probably rich too. I can take care of myself, thank you very much.”
He turned and grinned at her. “I know. I figured that out on the bus yesterday.”
Suddenly she remembered her conversation with Sally about Bill’s wedding ring, and her flare-up died as quickly as it had started.
“Is that why you refused to help me with my gear? You thought I was chasing you?”
“Something like that. Most women would have fluttered and pouted prettily, but not you.”
“I’m not the fluttering, pouting type.” This conversation was getting much too personal. “Why did you become a birder, Bill?”
Before answering, he indicated a mossy bank for them to sit on. “This is a favorite spot of the warblers. We’ll sit here for a while and let them come to us.”
The sun had climbed higher, and Mary Ann pulled off her heavy sweater. She spread it on the ground and sat down. Bill flopped down beside her, disconcertingly close.
“I needed a hobby that would be entirely different from my work as an accountant, something that was unstructured and free. A friend of mine told me about these bird-watching retreats, and Gloria, my ex-wife, and I came to our first one six years ago.”
For some unknown reason, the mention of his wife irked Mary Ann. She was irritated, as if Gloria had appeared in person and placed herself between them, yet at the same time she wanted to learn more about the woman who had run away from this man.
“Is Gloria still a birder?” She hoped she sounded casual and not at all interested in his former wife. Because she absolutely was not.
He threw back his dark head and roared with laughter. “Gloria, a birder!” Fresh gales of mirth overtook him.
“I don’t see what’s so funny about that. It was a perfectly legitimate question.” Was this Gloria such a hothouse beauty that she couldn’t stand to sleep in the woods? Mary Ann viciously kicked at a stone lying on the ground.
“Gloria hated birding with a passion. She liked fancy hotels and room service and a shopping mall with a beauty salon close at hand. But she came like a good little wife and suffered in martyred silence.”
Mary Ann sneaked a peek at Bill from under her long lashes. He appeared calm and unruffled. Apparently, his experience with Gloria hadn’t marred him—unlike her marriage to Harvey.
She pushed the unwelcome thought from her mind. She hadn’t thought of Harvey for almost a full day, and she would not let herself think of him now.
Bill took a leaf and tickled the end of her nose. “And what about you, Mary Ann? Tell me about your husband.”
How did he know? She wasn’t wearing a ring.
“Sally,” he said, answering the unasked question. “She told me that you are a widow.”
“Yes, I live with my mother and my two sons.”
“And your husband. What was he like?”
“He’s dead,” she said tersely. She picked up a twig and broke it in two. The sound was sharp in the quietness of the forest.
Seeing her brooding features, Bill leaned over and took her face in his hands. Gently, he turned it upward.
“Look, the brown thrashers over there are building a nest. They’re one of the four species that are the best songbirds in the eastern part of the United States.”
The thrasher’s song trilled on the morning air, rising and falling in a series of melodic notes.
“Why, he seems to be singing for the joy of it.” Mary Ann was so entranced by the bird’s song that she completely forgot Bill’s probing question. Just like real music, the bird’s song built to a loud crescendo and then eased down to a lovely diminuendo.
“Most ornithologists believe that birds, particularly the continuous singers like the brown thrasher, have some appreciation of the beauty of their songs.”
“I think so too,” she said. “It’s lovely; it almost makes me forget.” She stopped, appalled at herself. What was it about Bill that loosened her tongue so?
Thank goodness Bill didn’t probe. She wasn’t up to fending off any more personal questions, especially with his hands on her face. They felt so strong and safe and good. For a moment she almost lost herself in the pleasure of his touch, and then she remembered.
Hastily, she twisted her head away and covered the movement by rattling open their brown bag lunches. “I wonder what the cooks packed. I’m starving.”
He laughed. “I can tell you without even looking. Ham and cheese sandwiches and oatmeal cookies.”
Mary Ann peeled back the wrapping and grinned.
“You’re right.” She handed him a sandwich. “How did you know?”
“Experience. As long as I’ve been coming here, the cooks always pack ham and cheese on the first day. Do you want to know what they’ll pack tomorrow?”
“Don’t tell me. I like surprises.” She flashed him a dimpled smile.
They ate their lunches in companionable silence.
“There’s one place I’d like to go before we return, if you think you can keep up with me,” Bill said.
“I can go anywhere you can. Just because you’re unfortunate enough to be saddled with a novice doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice your bird-watching.”
He gave her a quick and thorough assessment. Mary Ann wondered if he noticed she was built more for comfort than for size six clothing.
“I wouldn’t call it unfortunate.”
His voice was soft and intimate, and she felt herself flushing from head to toe. She stood up quickly and reached back to grab her sweater.
“Just lead the way.”
Bill gave her this look, and then set off on a path that was more suited to a mountain goat than a woman who considered the woods enemy territory.
“There was a red-cockaded woodpecker spotted in this area in 1935.” He sounded more like a tour guide than a man who could look at you and set the roots of your hair on fire. “There’s been only one sighting since then. If we’re lucky, maybe we’ll see one.”
Mary Ann was too busy huffing over boulders to care about an old bird that didn’t bother to show up for bird watching retreats. What kind of team spirit was that? Twice her feet slipped on the rocks, and she remembered what he had said about her shoes that morning. She made a face at his back and struggled on. She had no idea what a red-cockaded woodpecker was and didn’t care. She just wanted to get back to her children in one piece.
Bill plunged ahead, intent on looking for signs of the rare bird. He seemed lost in his hunt, oblivious to her struggles to follow him over the rough terrain, which was fine with her. Hadn’t she told him a million times she could take care of herself?
Suddenly she slipped and lost her footing. Grabbing at branches, she skidded over the rocks and tumbled into a small ditch, landing squarely on her backside.
For a minute she was too stunned to do anything but sit there feeling aggrieved. And then she did what any woman in her right mind would do: she screamed.
Bill whirled around, calling as he raced toward her.
“Mary Ann! Are you all right?”
“What does it look like!” She flexed her arms and legs to see if anything was broken.
“Don’t move. I’m coming to get you out.”
Not if she could help it. She tried to scramble out of the hole, but her shoe soles were too slick to gain a foothold. She might as well have been six feet deep instead of what should have been easy climbing distance from the top. Defeated,
she plopped back down.
“Just get me out of this hole.”
He knelt by the side of the ditch and reached toward her. “Here. Give me your hand.”
Obediently, she reached up to grab a hand hold. He half-pulled, half-lifted her out of the hole. She didn’t mind the dirt and twigs that clung to her; it was yet another rescue that rankled.
“Don’t you say a word.” She started brushing off the debris.
“You missed a spot.”
“That’s three words.”
“Actually, it’s four.”
“Math is not my friend.”
“I can tell.”
“Well, you don’t have to be so cheerful about it.”
He was so affable and patient, standing quietly by while she rode a roller coaster of emotions that might or might not be due to recent widowhood. And he was so very unlike Harvey, who had a knack for turning the least little problem into a pitched battle that always made Mary Ann feel like Custer at his last stand.
“Here.” Bill’s hands on her shoulders were as gentle as the touch Mary Ann used when she soothed her boys’ hurts, large and small; and his face was a study in kindness, as if he had read every one of her thoughts. “Let me help with that, Mary Ann.”
There is a still, small voice in all of us that tells us when we are in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. Mary Ann let herself fall into her perfect moment. She gave herself permission to enjoy the simple pleasure of Bill’s hands not only removing dirt and twigs but giving her the tenderness she’d missed in her marriage to Harvey, the kind of quiet caring she’d longed for without even knowing it.
For a dazzling few moments everything fell away except the two of them, cocooned by deep woods and surrounded by the scent of orange blossoms. For a little while, Mary Ann believed all things were possible, even a legend that could follow her from the white sand beaches of Sunday Cove to the forest-covered mountains of east Tennessee.
Slowly, Mary Ann dragged herself back to reality.
“It’s all your fault,” she said, but not as stoutly as she meant to. “I could have stayed in that hole forever for all you cared. Some partner!”
“That’s highly unlikely.” His smile seemed more relieved than mirthful. He was probably as glad to step away from dangerous emotional terrain as she. “Your screech for help could be heard clear to Gatlinburg. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the red-cockaded woodpeckers in this area didn’t take flight to Mexico when they heard you scream.”
“I hope they did. It was the red-blockheaded woodpecker that got me in that hole in the first place.” She sat solidly on a rock to empty the dirt out of her shoes.
“Cockaded,” he corrected her, grinning down at her mutinous face.
“I don’t care if that woodpecker is blockheaded or slew-footed. I’m no mountain goat, and I refuse to act like one. That woodpecker can have this part of the mountains. It’s fine with me.”
Bill sat down beside her on the rock and stretched out in the sun. “At least you don’t suffer in silence.” With that cryptic remark he removed his glasses and closed his eyes.
Mary Ann was reminded of the way he had looked in the moonlight. Without his glasses he was like Superman emerging from his Clark Kent disguise.
His dark hair was tousled and boyish. She reached a tentative hand out to smooth it back.
With her hand in midair, she stopped. Good grief. This will never do. She pulled her hand back. Why did she want to touch Bill Benson, to feel the texture of his hair and put her face against his neck to see if the heady scent of citrus came from his skin or from the air?
“I don’t know about you,” she announced, “but I’m going back to camp. I’ve had all the bird-watching I can stand for one day.”
“Don’t go... Please.”
“And I should stay, why?”
“I don’t know.” His smile was lopsided and perfectly charming. “Because your eyes remind me of a robin’s egg, and I could never resist the sight of a robin’s egg?”
Suddenly she forgot how to breathe. She forgot how feelings can catch you unaware, how they can ensnare you before you even notice the net.
“I really shouldn’t stay... but I will.”
When he put his hand around her waist, she still had enough willpower to regain her senses. Even when he pulled her toward him, some rational part of her mind told her there was still time to run.
But when he kissed her, there was no turning back. Long suppressed need lit her up like a shower of stars. And if she wasn’t fooled, he was feeling a bit his own need. He caressed the long length of her blue-jean-clad legs with hands that felt hot and urgent. It was a dangerous kiss, one that wiped her mind clear of Harvey and death and guilt, a kiss that engulfed her and controlled her. It was a searching kiss, a kiss that stole her willpower.
Her hands tugged at his shirt, pulled it loose from his belt, and stole upward over his bare back. She heard his sharply indrawn breath as her fingertips raked him, whisper-soft and white hot.
Bill’s hands moved lower, and in the stillness of the forest, her snap popped open with something that sounded like an explosion.
“Oh no!” Mary Ann she struggled out of Bill’s embrace and tidied herself, hating the way her hands shook. “I won’t let this happen again, Bill. I’m going back to camp.”
He stood quickly, tucking his shirt into his pants.
“I’m sorry, Mary Ann. I didn’t mean to upset you. Please believe me.”
“I do. I’m as much at fault here as you.”
“It doesn’t seem as if anybody should take blame. It just seemed right somehow.”
His dark eyes burned into hers, probing, searching. He seemed to be reading her thoughts. She stood still a moment, entranced by the magnetic power of those eyes. Finally, she pulled free of his spell and started down the steep path.
“Wait.” He caught up with her and turned her around to face him. “I hate it that you seem afraid. Are you afraid of me?”
“No.”
“Then, what?”
The man was a sorcerer, the way he looked at her, the way she couldn’t be near him without feeling as if she were falling headlong into the future without a net.
“Please. Just leave me alone.”
Spinning away from him, she pushed her way over the rocks, heading back toward camp, she hoped. She was horrible at directions, always had been. What was even worse, she felt as if she were under a spell. Whether it was Bill’s kiss or the pervasive scent of orange blossoms or even the song of birds, she couldn’t have said.
All she knew is that she had to break free. And the only way she knew how was to fall back on the pattern she’d formed with Harvey. When he was at his best, she’d soaked up the good times like a puny house plan too long deprived of water. But when he was at his worst, firing verbal volleys designed to do the most emotional damage, she’d protect herself by going on the offensive.
Chapter 4
Mary Ann stalked ahead of Bill, her lips clamped in determination. She hoped he fell in a hole. She hoped a black bear grabbed him by the britches and carried him off to a dark cave. One as far away from her as possible.
Unconsciously, she reached a hand up to touch her lips. Why did he have to kiss her like that? And why did she have to like it? Why didn’t a big vulture just fly over and capture Bill in its talons and cart him off to Mexico?
She kicked at a twig in her path and marched on resolutely. Did vultures have talons? Somewhere back there she could hear Bill, walking in screaming silence. She wished she could see his face, but she’d rather die than turn around. Let him suffer. Was he suffering or gloating? Trickles of perspiration ran under her collar and down her back. Impatiently, she yanked off her sweater.
Behind her, Bill was still walking—still with as much racket as possible. She hoped it was Bill and not a bear. She hoped—plop!
Oh, no! Mary Ann stopped dead in her tracks. Was that what she thought it was? Tentatively, she put a ha
nd up to feel the top of her head.
“Rats!” she yelled. “Double rats!” It was mushy and slimy and just what she had expected. Even the birds were out to do her in.
She whirled around at the sound behind her. Bill’s hand was over his mouth, his eyes were twinkling, and his sides were shaking in mirth.
“You pig-headed nature lover,” she exploded. She managed to make “nature lover” sound like “Jack the Ripper.”
“Don’t look at me,” he said, still laughing. “I didn’t do it.”
She glared at him. “It was probably your old block-headed woodpecker. I hope he develops wing failure over the Mississippi River and falls in and a great white shark eats him up.”
“There are no sharks in the Mississippi River.” He was still laughing.
“I don’t care.” She glared at him. “I hope that’s what happens anyway.”
Bill whipped a handkerchief out of his pocket and moved toward her. “Here. Let me wipe some of that off.”
She held up her hands as if she were warding off a king cobra. “Don’t come near me. Don’t touch me! You’ve done enough already.” She sniffed with all the disdain she could manage, considering what she had in her hair.
Bill tried to look pained but didn’t succeed. The whole situation was too funny. His grin turned to a chuckle, and his chuckle turned to a roar of laughter that bounced off the treetops and reverberated through the mountains.
“Mary Ann, you would be insufferable if you weren’t so gorgeous and so sexy and so much fun to be with. I don’t believe I’ve ever met a woman who says exactly what’s on her mind—all the time.” Laugh lines fanned out from his eyes, and his face was still shining with mirth.
“That’s what my mother says: I’m insufferable.” Mary Ann had spotted a stream through the trees, and she headed that way. Bill followed her.
She continued talking, mimicking her mother. “You’re just like your daddy, God keep his soul. Always speaking when it would do just as well to keep quiet.” The stream glistened ahead of her, beckoning.
“Why ‘God keep his soul’?”
