Dream of Me (Harmony Falls, Book 1)

by Gaelen Foley

  Bea gave her back a good stretch, dipped forward to loosen up her hamstrings, finally starting to feel normal again.

  Jack in all his battle-scarred, tattooed glory lay back on the cool, smooth boulder for a catnap. He closed his eyes and waited for Carlos to return while Finn prowled back to the river’s edge, upending the raft to let the water drain off it.

  Harry went over to sit on the enormous rocks overlooking the Onatah, and after a moment’s hesitation, Bea joined him. They sat for a while in companionable silence, just listening to the river’s steady babble.

  “Well,” Harry drawled at length, “can’t wait to do that again sometime soon. How about you?” He leaned back, resting his hands behind him, his legs outstretched.

  “Oh, I loved it. Right up to the part where I nearly died.” She chuckled, giving him a sideways glance. “And so did you. Right?”

  “Meh,” he said in a low tone.

  Her eyebrows shot up. “Are you kidding me? You didn’t totally love Finn’s famous thrilling tour? Fooled me.”

  “Did I?” A curious half-smile curved his lips. “I guess it was okay. But in general, I prefer to keep my near-death experiences confined to dry land.”

  “Got it,” she said, then paused. “You were amazing out there. I honestly don’t know how I can begin to thank you.”

  “Ohhh, I could think of something.”

  “I’m not selling you my farm,” she scolded with a smile.

  “Man, you’re tough,” he answered, his eyes twinkling. But the mischievous tilt of his mouth hinted that was not quite the reward he’d been thinking of.

  Bea looked away, but she liked it when his arm brushed against her shoulder, the edge of his thigh touching hers. Somehow they had begun sitting closer together, and after a moment, she took a chance and rested her head against his shoulder. She could feel the pleasure he took in their simple contact radiating from him like the sunbeam that had fought its way through the clouds to warm them.

  They sat for a while longer, and finally she stood up, gave him a little caress on the head, and nodded toward the trail. “Come with me, New Guy.”

  Harry raised his eyebrows and practically leaped to his feet. “Where are we going?”

  “I hear you haven’t seen the falls yet. If you weren’t dazzled by Finn’s thrilling tour, maybe this will impress you. Come on.”

  Without questioning, Harry followed her into the forest. It was thick with green, waist-high ferns and swaths of wildflowers here and there.

  Bea felt rejuvenated on the trail, breathing in the musky air. It had been a long time since she’d taken the time to go for a hike, and she remembered now why she loved it so much.

  The richly textured canopy of spruce, birch, and hemlock trees created a cool, dense cove—a safe, secret space where she could be alone with her thoughts.

  Or with a gorgeous guy.

  Maybe Chloe was right. Maybe he really was into her.

  “So, where’d you learn to handle yourself like you did out there?” she asked to break the tension of their growing mutual awareness.

  “Handle myself? What do you mean?”

  “I assumed you’d never been on whitewater before. But it seems like you knew what you were doing. You were good.”

  “Oh. Well, thanks. Guess I really did fool you.” He laughed softly, but Bea stopped and shot him a wary look, considering how much less-than-forthcoming he had been when they’d first met.

  “It’s not like that. Relax,” he chided, back-pedaling again. “Full disclosure, I happened to be a little unnerved out there, if you must know.”

  “Is that so?”

  They walked on.

  “More than a little, actually. I’ve got this thing,” Harry started, then stopped.

  Bea turned, arching a brow. “What kind of thing?”

  They veered back toward the river now. The trail followed along the Onatah down a steep, craggy zigzag.

  “Um…like a phobia type of thing.”

  “No kidding.” She glanced back, fully engaged now. “Watch your step.” She pointed to a muddy slide.

  He took a long, surefooted step around it. “Come to think of it, it all started around here. You might be surprised to learn that I happened to win the Campfire Builder of the Year award at summer camp when I was eleven years old.”

  “Get out,” she said, amused.

  “True story. I told you I grew up in the city, right? Smokestacks and railroad tracks, old abandoned warehouses, the whole nine yards.”

  “Steel buckle of the Rust Belt,” she replied, borrowing a common tagline for the ’Burgh.

  “Right. And I was an only child. My mom raised me by herself in this tiny row house near the river. She worked as hard as you. Regular nine-to-five as a secretary, plus a weekend job waiting tables to make ends meet. Which left me, shall we say, unsupervised, quite a bit of the time.”

  “Aha. And what exactly did you do with yourself while she was at work, dare I ask?”

  “All kinds of nonsense I’d better not tell you about right now.” He grinned when she glanced back at him.

  “You want to lead for a while?” Bea asked, pausing to stretch her quads. “There’s only one way to go, and you’ll know when you get there.”

  “Sure.”

  “And please, continue your story.”

  “I’m not boring you?”

  “Not at all.” As they switched spots on the trail, Bea clapped him affectionately on the shoulder when he passed, moving ahead of her.

  “When I was nine or ten, Mom sent me off for the first time to this summer camp for city kids. Camp Negligence, it should’ve been called.”

  “Oh, no!” she exclaimed, but he laughed.

  “No way. I loved it. I went for three summers in a row and probably picked up more bad habits there than I did back home. Smoked my first cigarette. Tried my first sip of beer from a can of warm Iron City that one of the other boys had stolen from the counselors. Late night meetups at the lake with my buddies and a few of the rowdier girls.”

  “You little miscreant.”

  “I know! There was basically zero adult monitoring. Like Lord of the Flies, with s’mores.”

  Bea laughed quietly.

  “Anyway, one night, a few of the boys a couple years older than me and my friends planned on having a race across the lake. So of course we all had to go and watch the daredevils try to swim across. I’ll never forget it. It was late, maybe midnight, I forget. Pitch dark.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how we thought we would be able to see who was winning. But when you’re twelve, you don’t really reason these things through.”

  She gave him a humorous poke in the back. “Guess not.”

  “I was standing on the shore with this herd of other campers as we watched three pimple-faced fourteen-year-olds line up on the beach, then run into the lake, and start doggy-paddling across it. But I guess one of the boys got tired or freaked out or lost his sense of direction in the dark or something, because he never made it to the other side. Two of them swam across just fine, but the third kid drowned.”

  “Oh my God,” Bea said with a gasp. She had not seen that coming.

  “Yeah. It was bad. Nobody knew what to do. We heard him splashing around and just a yelp or two. One of the kids was totally convinced there was a lake monster out there. We’re all standing around watching like it was entertainment, and he’s out there dying. But it was pitch black. Once we realized he wasn’t faking, we started freaking out. Some of us tried to swim out to save the kid, but you couldn’t see anything, and once he slipped underwater and quit making noise, none of us could find him. He was just…gone.”

  “My God, that’s horrible.”

  Harry nodded. “Yeah. Of course, that was back when only adults were starting to get cell phones, so we couldn’t just call for help right away. Me and some of the other boys ran the mile back to camp to tell the counselors what had happened, but by then, it was far too late.”

  �
�God, you must’ve been so traumatized.”

  “I got through it all right.” He sighed but didn’t look back, and his tone darkened a bit. “The kid who washed up on shore a week later, not so much. They closed down the camp.”

  She winced. “I’m sorry I brought this up.”

  “Nah, it’s all right. It’s just, when I saw you getting swept off by the current today, I—”

  “Oh, Harry,” she cried as understanding dawned. Finally, she realized how much more this had impacted him than she had even suspected.

  He stopped at last and turned around to smile wistfully at her. “It’s all right. I’m just a little wary around water after that experience, I guess.”

  “Oh my God, and we pranked you on those class-threes! I’m so sorry. I feel terrible—”

  “No, no, it’s cool, really,” he said with a smile. “You didn’t know. Don’t worry about it. All’s well that ends well. I wouldn’t have come today if I didn’t think I could handle it.”

  “Why did you?” she asked, shaking her head.

  “’Cause I wanted to see you again.”

  Bea arched a brow, not sure how to take that, whether to believe.

  “The important thing is, you survived,” Harry said. “And me, well, I got some free desensitization therapy, so let’s just leave it at that.” His tone was sardonic, but he was clearly eager to keep the conversation light.

  She figured it was the least she could do to indulge him. “Okay,” she said, giving him a glum, penitent pout.

  He chuckled and turned around, then continued leading the way up the trail. “Anyway, the whole point of me telling you all this was that being at that summer camp did teach this city boy to appreciate the great outdoors,” he finished cheerfully.

  Bea fell silent, still marveling that he’d willingly put himself through this today. That had taken real courage—and in light of this new information, it made his rescue of her all the more heroic.

  Not only had he been battling the elements along with the rest of them, but fighting his own worst fears, too. God, if he hadn’t been there…

  “This is cool,” he remarked, pointing to a pair of moss-covered boulders with a narrow passageway between them.

  Instead of looking at the rock formation, she studied his handsome profile, his relaxed posture. Then she tore her stare away from him and nodded, gazing at the rocks. “Pretty.”

  They had to angle their bodies sideways to navigate through. Her awareness of him grew, deepening as they pressed on.

  “So, Miz Palmer,” he said, holding aside a thin, leafy stray branch for her, “now that I’ve bared my soul, I think it’s only fair you do the same. Do you have any irrational fears you’d care to share with the class?”

  She grinned at him. “I don’t know if I’d say irrational.”

  “Oh, come on. There’s got to be something,” he challenged her in a playful tone. “You know, fear of tree frogs, fear of jellybeans or—I dunno—fear of roller coasters? Or is everybody in this town just a badass like your pals?”

  She chuckled. “Okay. I’ll tell you what I’m afraid of, since we’re being candid here, and because I feel awful that we pranked a guy with a phobia.”

  “You are not allowed to think of me as the guy with the phobia,” he said sternly. “I’d rather be Harry New Guy than that.”

  She laughed again. “Wouldn’t you rather be known as the guy with the hot car?”

  “Much better,” he said, smiling over his shoulder at her. “You were saying?”

  “Yeah. Well. If you really want to know…” Bea leaped carefully over a wide mud puddle.

  “I do.”

  “You promise not to use it against me?” she asked, poking him in the sleek, sexy curve of his low back.

  “Beatrice. I would never do that.”

  “Hey, just checking. Clearly we both started out on this trip today with, shall we say, other motives.”

  He didn’t answer at first, strolling on. “Guilty,” he admitted, but they had already discovered each other’s hidden agendas and laughed them off before they had even hit the rapids.

  Bea gnawed her lip for a moment. “I’m afraid I’m being hideously selfish,” she finally confessed.

  “How’s that?”

  “My grandparents are amazing people. They’re generous and kind and just…good. You know?”

  “I noticed.”

  “They let me come and live at the farm four years ago so I could figure some stuff out. I ended up staying and helping out, and now I’m doing my best to follow in their footsteps.” She paused, struggling for words.

  Harry listened patiently as they wound through a tunnel of rhododendrons.

  “But it feels like it’s taking forever to amass the down payment, and I know that I’m holding them back from finally being able to do their own thing. They’ve been tied down for so long.”

  “So why doesn’t he just give you the property then and be done with it?”

  “No way. I would never accept that. All my relatives would hate me, for one thing—it would cause a big inheritance mess when my grandparents pass on. But more to the point, the two of them need the money that I’m supposed to give them to pay off their debts, and most importantly to buy an RV and go on this big trip they’re longing for. It all depends on me.”

  “No pressure there.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thought about asking your dad for help? Sounds like he’s got the means.”

  She scoffed. “Hell no. I mean, yeah, he does, but I don’t want any handouts—and I know how he operates. He’d probably help, but then he’d try to control everything. I’d be relegated to child status again. Besides,” she added, probably telling him too much, but he was so easy to talk to, “Pap insists on me standing on my own two feet in this venture. He says if I’m not strong enough to get the down payment together, then I’m probably not strong enough to last in the farming life, and it’s better to know that up front than afterwards, once it’s too late.”

  “Sheesh. Tough love,” Harry said.

  “I know.” Bea smiled at him. “But he’s right. The deal we worked out together is generous enough. I just wish I could get there faster—for their sakes. They deserve to be happy.”

  Harry mulled it over. “So that’s why you wanted to know about different sources of funding?”

  “Guilty,” she replied.

  “Well, unfortunately, Bea, I’d probably get fired if I went against my boss on this and tried to put a package together to help you out. And most of the angel investors I know are in the energy and tech sectors. IT, cybersecurity, robotics. There’s a couple in real estate, but that’s usually related to urban renewal projects. Plus, I’m supposed to be representing my boss’s interests here. But…” He hesitated. “Off the record, I personally believe that there’s always a way if you want something bad enough, and you seem really dedicated to your chosen field. Pun intended.”

  “A hundred percent committed.” Bea nodded slowly. “Congratulations, Mr. Riley. You have me all figured out.”

  The thunderous roar of the falls crept up on them. The legendary cascades were just around the bend.

  “I wouldn’t presume to say that,” he replied. “But the fact is, I can relate.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “I’ve got my eyes on the prize, too. I mean, I consider my line of work to be pretty cutthroat. But I tell you what. I had enough of being broke when I was a kid, watching my mom work her fingers to the bone.”

  Wonder where his dad was, Bea thought, but it seemed much too personal a question to ask.

  “I’m doing everything I can to get where I want to be,” Harry said. “Culpeper’s got a lot of swagger, but deep down, he knows he’d be screwed without me. I do what needs to be done, I do it well, and I expect to be rewarded handsomely for it.”

  Bea sensed a surge of lightning in him. She also suddenly realized what a threatening opponent he truly could be.

  “But al
though it’s my job to recommend certain things to my boss, I don’t always get to choose my assignments. If you know what I mean.”

  She stared at him uncertainly. Was this comment simply a nice way of telling her that he wouldn’t be backing off anytime soon with regard to her farm? Some sort of gentlemanly apology in advance that he still had every intention of carrying the deed to her farm back to his boss like a trophy?

  Well, if that was the case, he would soon learn just how stubborn she could be. He’d saved her life, yes, but that didn’t mean she would just roll over for him.

  Anxiety roiled her stomach as she realized that Harrison Riley was still determined. Obviously, he couldn’t force her to sell. Which meant they were still at a stalemate. Unstoppable force had met with immovable object. And that ought to have been the end of their dealings with each other.

  But at that moment, they rounded the bend and finally set eyes on the massive, gushing waterfall for which the town of Harmony Falls had been named.

  “Wow,” Harry murmured, striding toward a flat, rocky outcrop where the trail ended.

  Half of the seventy-five-foot cascade was above them, half below their elevation. They stood side by side at the water’s edge, feeling the spray, watching the never-ending spill from the dark rocks above go crashing down into the plunge pool below.

  Eons of friction had worn away this chasm, relentlessly demanding the water follow this path and this path only. Gazing at it in silence together, they let the current carry away the stone wall between them.

  The thundering falls were ferociously loud, and Bea could feel the rumbling vibrations in her chest and through her sandals on the forest floor. It was majestic, even peaceful in its own reliably cyclic kind of way. It gave her a sense of wonder, of hope.

  Harry seemed to get lost in it, attempting to follow one drop of water from the top, trying to keep track of it as it disappeared, sloshing its way along, following all the others down the continuing stream.

  As he tilted his head up, she gazed in wistful admiration at the chiseled line of his jaw, darkened by an appealing hint of stubble; apparently, he hadn’t bothered shaving for their outdoor adventure, and she liked the way it looked.