by Anita Claire
“From your list, I’ve only done the Great Wall of China.”
“On your list, I’ve done some of the Sierra High Route, the headwaters country and the canyon country sections.”
“I took time off after the Army and hiked Patagonia. But since I started this job, I’ve been too busy to schedule vacations.”
“All work and no play you need to schedule in a few vacations.”
He looks at me a little bit longer and slowly nods. This is another tell of his I’ve noticed, it’s a sign of deep thinking. I bet he’s mulling over which place he would choose to go.
“What about you. Are these fantasies or do you actually go?” Brody asks.
“I’ve been knocking them off slowly. I can’t afford big trips like that every year, but my goal is to do one major destination every other year. Last year my dad spoke at a conference in India. I joined him. We went to a number of places, including the Taj Mahal.”
“Is this the first world wonder you went to?”
“After my mom died, dad took us all on a cruise to Greece and Turkey. I got to tick off the Acropolis and the Hagia Sophia.”
“What did your mom die of?
“Cancer, first breast cancer, the chemo gave her leukemia, and then she had complications from the t-cell transplant. She had a couple good years before the breast cancer came back. I don’t think my sister even remembers mom being truly healthy. I think that’s why we’ve spoiled my sister. She was six when mom got diagnosed the first time.”
“How long ago did she die?”
“Over ten years. I miss her but I dealt with my grief a long time ago.”
We both stare at the water. I’ve just met this guy. I’ve never been one who holds back. I wasn’t planning on talking about my mom, is talking about my mom’s death too soon for this relationship? Brody doesn’t say anything. In a way that’s good. I don’t want pity, fake sadness, or a placating statement. We sit for a while as my mind moves back to my lion.
“I don’t get it. This is the last quadrant my cat was in. She was poisoned, but I haven’t seen anything that could have poisoned her, or any other animals that were poisoned.”
“She could have picked something up and ate it, or ate a sick animal that was poisoned when it visited someone’s yard.”
“We’ll know what she ate and what poison she ingested when we get her tox screen back, hopefully, tomorrow. But my gut is telling me she wandered into something bad going on back here. What could she have found? Why haven’t we seen it.”
“The day is still young, we have some more ground to cover.”
“Of course, my luck, the last place I look is where she got into trouble.”
Brody nods. Extending his hand, he silently gestures to me. Placing my hand in his, my fingers tingle. We walk out of the water together holding hands. I’m about ready to drop his hand so I can put my socks and shoes back on, when he gives me a little tug, pulling me close. I look up to meet his eyes but only see a reflection of myself in his sunglasses. My gaze runs down to his lips as he tugs me even closer to him. Closing my eyes, I feel the softness of his lips on mine. With one arm wrapped around his shoulders, I weave my fingers through his hair as our tongues mingle. I run my fingers up his arm. Those muscles of his have been tantalizing me. I love how they feel.
He relinquishes my lips and a little moan slips from my mouth at the sudden abandonment. My eyes flutter open. I can’t read Brody’s face but I can read his body he wants me. He leans his head down and kisses me again. I lean up to kiss him back. Our kiss becomes long and deep as everything inside of me awakens. My mind flashes back to the sexy dream I had. No, this is better. I pull Brody closer because I need all his hard planes and angles next to me. Desire takes over as our kiss continues. His hand feels warm on my back as he pulls me in even closer. Our kiss becomes fevered before we finally release each other.
“We should be moving on,” Brody murmurs.
By the end of the day, we’ve collected a lot of scat, but we haven’t found any smoking guns. As we drive to dinner, it’s obvious Brody picked up on my mood.
“You thought it was going to be easy?” he asks.
“You think hiking like this for the last week has been easy?”
“I was in active combat. When we were looking for the...the bad actors, they weren’t wearing orange jumpsuits. They blended in, they were smart. If your cat ate a poisoned deer, it could have taken a week of wandering afterwards before the sick deer even got caught.
“That’s the most likely story. Weak deer, easy pickings, my cat ate it. She, too, got sick.”
“So, who’s poisoning deer?”
“Most people in the mountains consider deer to be tall rats. They eat everyone’s gardens. Even if someone wasn’t trying to kill a deer, if they sprayed their plants with something nasty, it could make the deer sick.”
“It will be hard to find the source, if it’s a home owner poisoning deer.”
“Not every problem has a solution,” I say. “It’s just…I have this nagging feeling that something’s amiss in these mountains.”
“Meth labs? Or pot, that hasn’t always been legal. Lots of people are looking for easy money and there’s lots of people to sell drugs to. The mountains are a good place to hide an illegal business.”
“Yes, and the bad guys don’t clean up their messes. My cat could have wandered into a drug den.”
Chapter 10 – Brody – The Next Week
My alarm jars me awake. I lie in bed and force myself to focus on work, instead my mind flashes to Ana. I wish she was here, in my bed.Stop thinking that way. You know you don’t have time for a woman.
While I head to CrossFit I think past Ana and focus on her cat. I bet we can check out the area better by air. I’ve hired a lot of former military. One of my guys was an Army pilot, he’s also certified on light commercial planes. I’ll rent a plane and perform some recon. With that solved I get Siri to run through my texts.
I arrive at CrossFit on time. Flint and Logan enter. I nod “hello” and start stretching.
“What’s with you this morning?” Logan asks, interrupting my zen.
I give him a perplexed scowl.
“Flint, did you see that?” Logan asks. “When he nodded, I think his lips almost moved into a smile.”
“You're right, I think I did notice something like that,” Flint jokes back.
“Hey, Brody, you're falling off the wagon. First, you almost smile, next thing who knows? You might speak a full sentence.” Logan laughs.
As usual, I ignore them and focus on stretching. My quads are tight from so much hiking, which is a much better feeling than being tight from sitting. I move to do a set of pull-ups.
“Dude, what did you do to your arm?” Logan asks.
“Scratched it.”
“Dude, half the skin is gone from your arm. What kind of kinky stuff are you into?”
I have zero interest in talking to Logan about my weekend with Ana. Of course, now I’ve got Ana on my mind, and I almost smile.Stop that thinking. You can’t lose focus on work.
At work, I feel happy more energetic and more creative than I’ve felt in ages. The pundits were right, taking the weekend off is good for business. As I sit back in a meeting with Legal and listen to them discuss terms and conditions ad nauseam, my mind flashes to Ana. Again. I wish I had more skin in my memory. The memory of her taste and smell, and the sound of her laughter, they reverberate strongly through my mind.
“Brody, what option do you want?” my Chief Legal Counsel asks.
“What?” Shit, I just got caught mentally masturbating.
“How do you want us to proceed?”
“What would your top choice be?”
***
The next morning, after CrossFit, I head to the chiropractor. Ana is all I’ve thought of since Sunday night, but there’s no old, red Ford truck in the parking lot. Where could she be? All day yesterday I was wondering what the tox screens would say. After my meet
ing in LA, I wanted to call Ana, but I didn’t get home until close to midnight.
After reading the same line in my e-mail three times, I walk over to the window to look out. Where could she be? The receptionist calls my name to come get the clipboard, and just as I’m about to tell her to hold on, Ana pulls in. I wait at the door until she enters. Our eyes catch and she gives me one of her beautiful smiles.
“Good morning, Brody.”
“Did you get the tox screens back?”
“No, hopefully, today.”
“Text me when you do.”
“Sure.”
Chapter 11 – Ana – Texting
“That was very friendly,” Judy whispers as soon as Brody shuts the door.
“Yeah,” I half-heartedly answer. I feel deflated; I thought something special had transpired this weekend. Thank God I didn’t sleep with him! Seeing him here, having him treat me like…like an employee feels devastating. In an attempt to shake it off, I remind myself that he is a man of action and few words.Is this what I want?
“I think he was waiting for you. He kept looking out the window,” Judy confides.
“Really?”
“And he smiled. It’s the first time I’ve seen him smile. He has very nice white teeth.”
Over the last thirty-six hours, I’ve been thinking about Brody constantly. I forgot how crazy falling for a guy can make you. I wanted to call him so badly, but felt like I needed to have a reason. The last thing I want is for Brody to think I’m some psycho-stalker. No matter how successful a woman is, there’s the stupid unwritten rules for dating. A woman has to wait for the man to call, or text first.
“Ana.” Judy’s voice pulls me out of my funk and she hands me a clipboard.
***
My phone rings. Without checking who’s calling, I answer it.
“Ana,” my sister whines.
“What’s wrong, Jazz?”
“Ana, Dad has a girlfriend.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. Lauren called me. She spotted him on a date.”
“A date is not a girlfriend.”
“That’s not what Lauren said. She saw her leaving the house on Sunday.”
Lauren is a neighbor and a friend of Jazz’s from high school. This news makes me smile. Dad acted on my advice.
“I bet she’s a gold digger,” Jazz says.
“Wow! You went from hearing he has a girlfriend to completely hating her in one sentence. Maybe Dad’s the gold digger.”
“Oh come on, Ana! Dad drives a nice car and lives in that big house. You know a third of Dad’s estate is yours.”
“Please tell me you didn’t just say that.”
“Listen, some gold digger sails in, and the next thing you know, we’ve been relegated to second-tier players.”
“Jazz, first of all, Dad is in his sixties. Second, I have a job. I don’t need someone else’s money.”
“You live in a one-bedroom apartment over someone’s garage and you drive an old truck.”
“Jazz,” I start, but what’s the point?
I listen to my sister ramble about her life for the next half-hour. She works in the fashion industry, goes to chic parties, and dates high-tech entrepreneurs. Not once does she ask me about what I’ve been up to. Then again, my social life is nonexistent. My work life consists of hiking through the Santa Cruz mountains, analyzing scat, and mapping the movements of carnivores.
I put Jazz on speaker so I can use the computer to research my lion. I downloaded all the places she was before I found her. Now, I need to retrace her steps. I want to see if I can find what poisoned her. Do we have an errant homeowner? A local vigilante trying to kill mountain lions? Is there an ecological disaster? I’ll need to inform the collaborating agencies; I’m not the only one who wants to find the source of her illness. I need to make sure I have all my facts together before those meetings.
Thankfully the weather looks like it will be cooler this week. As Jazz drones on, I map out what I know about my lion’s territory, based on her recent tracks.
“Ana? Ana? Are you paying attention?”
“Of course I am, Jazz. You should call one of your fashion friends. They’ll have a better idea of what you should wear.”
“Yeah, that’s true.”
Relived that I answered her question appropriately, I turn my energy back to my map.
Chapter 12 – Brody –Abuela
After lunch, I fly to a meeting in Los Angeles, then to meetings in Dallas, Atlanta, and finally New York. During the week, Ana sends me a couple of texts.
Ana:Nothing yet on this end, I hope your week is going well.
Ana:Still no tox screens and no smoking guns out on the trail, how’s your week going?
I flip past her messages, searching for texts I need to react to.
Friday, I fly to Michigan. It’s my grandmother’s ninetieth birthday and my mom is planning a big party. I pull my rental car up to the large, summer home on the beach of Lake Huron. It’s been in my dad’s family for three generations. It’s dark and all the lights are on in the house.
“I’m home,” I call out as I enter the house.
I’m met at the door by a band of roving rug rats.
“Brody’s here!” some adults yell from the kitchen.
With a couple of squealy little ones under each arm, I head to the big, country kitchen. A few more kids follow.
“You keep your kids up late!” I exclaim.
My older sister, Victoria, gives me a kiss on the cheek. “Hello to you, too.”
I place her son in her arms before setting my other niece down. As soon as I get rid of one, another nephew attaches himself to my leg. Then a niece grabs onto the other leg. With them attached to me, I slowly walk and make a roaring sound. My antics makes them giggle. I go to my grandmother.
“Abuela, congratulations.”
“You congratulate me for being old?”
“Abuela, I congratulate you for being able to handle all this noise.”
She waves me off. “I’m a lucky old woman. I’m surrounded by my family.”
By now my nephew is climbing up my leg.
“I’ve developed this terrible disease. Look at my legs, I’ve got these misshapen growths,” I call over to my mom. I start shaking my leg.
My nephew squeals and giggles. With both kids hanging on my legs, I walk across the kitchen toward my mom and lean down to give her a kiss on the cheek.
“What am I going to do?” I ask.
My brother-in-law hands me a cold beer. “I have the same affliction every time I come home. I see it’s catching.”
“I normally don’t have this problem.”
“It’s about time you got married and had kids,” Abuela declares. Shit, I walked right into that one. “You’re thirty-four. You’ll wake up and be sixty with no wife and no family.”
“Are you dating anyone?” My younger sister, Camila, inquires.
I ignore both remarks. I was raised with four sisters, each of whom could talk anyone's ear off, and all of whom spend way too much time concerned with everyone else’s business. With sixty pounds of giggling kids hanging off me, I lift a leg toward my twin. “I think this one’s yours.”
“Did you notice how he ignored the last question?” Camila asks.
My twin, Bella, and I are complete opposites. As kids, she was always complaining that I got preferential treatment. Even so, we’ve always had each other’s back. I peel her son off my leg and throw him in the air barely missing the ceiling. He makes a loud screeching sound. Then I hand him to her.
“Dad,” I say as I head over to my old man. Only one kid is left hanging on my leg. Dad and I shake hands. I had followed in his footsteps: West Point, Rangers, serving in a war, and then retiring from the Army to work in business.
“Son.”
With my best military voice, I report, “Sir, it looks like there’s an enemy on board. Should we blow her off?”
“Uncle Brody, don’t bl
ow me up!”
“Major, your enemy is about to surrender. I think we should throw her in the brig?” Dad winks at his granddaughter.
My niece releases my leg and runs screaming to my younger sister. “Mommy, Uncle Brody and Grandpa are going to throw a brig at me.”
As a kid, living in a house full of women, I looked forward to when Dad came home.
I remember following my dad around. Whenever he got in the car to leave the house, I’d jump in with him. “Us guys need to stick together,” I’d declare.
***
When I wake up the next morning, it takes me a couple of seconds to realize what year it is. Growing up, we spent every summer here. For a split second, I wonder if I’m late for lifeguard duty. I’m sleeping in what mom refers to as, “the single-guy room.” Since my nephews are still sleeping, I quietly throw on some clothes, grab my sneakers, and head downstairs remembering to skip the seventh and twelfth steps that creak. The house is dark and quiet when I take off for a run. The air is crisp and it smells like summer. I take the long route and I check out what has changed. It feels comforting to realize that very little has. By the time I get back, the house is awake with chatter and amazing aromas coming from the kitchen. My sisters are cooking breakfast as my grandmother instructs from her seat.
“My daughter might have married a gringo, but my granddaughters know how to makechilaquiles the right way,” Abuela brags to my brothers-in-law.
My youngest sister, Sofia, looks me over. “You went for a run?”
I nod, as I head to the range to check out what’s cooking.
Mom slaps my arm. “Get your fingers out of the food. Take a shower. Breakfast won’t be ready for another fifteen minutes.”
“I wish you’d have told me you were going running. I’d have joined you.” Sofia pouts. She’s eight years younger than me, also a West Point alum. She injured her leg this past winter.
“Your leg is up for a long run?” I ask.
“How far did you go?”
“The long loop through town.”
