The First Time at Firelight Falls

by Julie Anne Long

  But Annelise wasn’t six anymore. Eden couldn’t keep diverting her with hairpin topic changes or holding out shiny objects.

  Eden sighed—surreptitiously, a slow release of breath—because Annelise was keyed into sighs, too.

  But for now, Eden suddenly knew exactly how to end the topic.

  “Auntie Avalon said their donkey might arrive today,” she said. “We can go and see it.”

  “A donkey? No. Way.”

  “Way.”

  When Eden and Annelise pulled up to the gigantic rose-colored Victorian house at Devil’s Leap where Avalon now lived with Mac, she’d had a text from Avalon.

  We’re out near the goat paddock! I told Mac we should name the donkey after him. You should have seen his expression.

  This was followed by an emoji of a little yellow face laughing tears.

  Eden snickered.

  Avalon and Mac definitely gave each other a run for the money.

  P.S. You guys might as well stay for dinner. It’s just spaghetti. But you have to eat.

  This was true.

  And now that they were here, Eden realized how pleasant it would be to just linger a tiny bit outside the confines of her usual schedule.

  When Avalon bought the house at Devil’s Leap, she’d discovered Mac was the caretaker, and he lived nearby in a cottage with a small herd of goats, some chickens, and a homely but dignified long-legged cat. Avalon had adopted a tiny, ancient fluffy dog, and they were adopting more animals and making plans to set up programs for at-risk kids and veterans—and presentations to local investors and vendors were the reason Avalon had trifold poster board. After the biggest upheaval in her entire life, Avalon was living her dream.

  And Devil’s Leap was heaven for a kid. Vast, rugged, wooded, beautiful, a little remote. Annelise had lucked out in the aunt department. Mac wasn’t an official uncle yet, but really, it was pretty much only a matter of time.

  Eden had never stopped to wonder whether she was living her dream. She’d been just too busy living, period. She’d never dreamed, for instance, that Annelise would be a part of her life. But she was practically Eden’s very definition of happiness.

  “They’re out by Uncle Mac’s goats, Leesy. Let’s go find her.”

  They skipped up the flagstone path to the side road leading up to the Devil’s Leap swimming hole. The metal-barred gate separating the walkway from the road was swung open wide. From a distance they could hear the steady, primal rhythm of someone chopping wood. She was glad for the sound of an ax. The scream of chain saws might have felt like a desecration up here.

  Avalon appeared to be waiting for them by the gate. But she wasn’t looking toward them.

  A few seconds later it became clear she was watching whoever was wielding the ax.

  So Eden looked in the direction, too.

  And then all at once her head sort of floated over her body.

  Her senses flooded as though she’d inhaled a particularly beautiful drug. She couldn’t quite feel her limbs. Other parts of her, however, were on red alert.

  “Mom, that’s Mr. Caldera! Without his shirt!” Annelise added.

  When Eden didn’t say anything.

  No shit, kid.

  Improbably, like something out of a dream, Gabe Caldera was shirtless and swinging an ax against a stump of wood. Levering it up in the air, hurtling it down, in a steady, primal rhythm that was so fundamentally, unexpectedly hot Eden’s lungs finally seized.

  Muscles shifted and slid beneath glossy, bronzed skin as the ax came up.

  Then down again.

  It was hands down the most mesmerizing thing she’d ever witnessed.

  She went as motionless as a hunter in a blind.

  She only hoped she literally wasn’t slack jawed.

  “I honestly didn’t know this would be happening,” Avalon said on an apologetic hush, as if this was a trauma only the strong of constitution could endure. “Do you need smelling salts?”

  “Smelling salts?” Eden repeated. Or thought she did. Unbeknownst to her, what she’d really said was something like “Mahumuh?”

  Avalon stared at her.

  WHAM! Down came the ax again.

  He swung it up overhead again. Muscles slid and shimmered in slow-motion elegance. Hands down the most beautiful machine she’d ever seen.

  WHAM! Down it came again. The three of them, Eden and Avalon and Annelise, gave a little jump. Chips flew; the trunk cleaved halfway.

  And up it rose again.

  “It’s like porn, isn’t it?” Avalon whispered into her ear. “Or like one of those Zen sand gardens. But an erotic kind.”

  “Mom, can I have an ax?” Annelise asked.

  “Sure, after dinner, maybe,” Eden said absently.

  “Cool,” Annelise beamed.

  The ax came up again; muscles rippled and shimmered beneath that hard, glistening satin surface.

  BAM, down it came again.

  Avalon murmured right next to her ear, “Bet you’d like him to split you in two.”

  Eden’s head whipped around. “AVALON. HARWOOD.”

  Avalon’s face had gone a sort of fuchsia shade with the effort to keep from laughing. But she was playing a risky game. Annelise’s ears were a little too sharp, and she was fond enough of drama to ask, “What does it mean when someone wants to split you in two?” in the middle of company.

  “Just checking to see if you were listening, Edie. Maybe I ought to check your pulse, too. I bet it’s doing at least sixty miles per hour.”

  She grabbed for Eden’s hand. Eden snatched it out of reach.

  That was another sisterly inside joke. They liked to give their brother Jude fits by feigning rank ignorance about biology. Heartbeats were measured in miles per hour; lungs were called “those pumpy things”; they insisted actual drums shaped like tiny bongos were situated inside their ears, and so forth.

  “It really seems unnecessary for an elementary school principal to look like that,” Eden said irritably.

  “It certainly does,” Avalon soothed. “It’s very alarming. He has some nerve.”

  Eden scowled at her.

  Truth be told, she was genuinely alarmed. She couldn’t ever recall feeling literally dumbstruck by a man’s beauty. Or awash in a riptide of what, let’s face it, was probably lust.

  “It’s so cool! His stomach has squares. You could play checkers or tic-tac-toe on it!” Annelise observed cheerfully.

  “He was a navy SEAL,” Avalon explained. She made it sound as if the six-pack abs were military issued, along with the uniform. “Mac was in the National Guard. They have meetings once a week with local vets. That’s how they became friends, apparently. I didn’t know they knew each other, I swear it.”

  Eden didn’t hear her. She was thinking, why play checkers, when you could just trace each square with your tongue, the way she used to savor the sections of a chocolate bar to make it last longer. Why do that, when you could even, say, gently nibble that firm, warm, smooth skin, then drag your fingers along those lovely trenches drawn by muscles. Why do that when you could—

  “How do you get squares on your stomach, Mom?”

  “By eating all of your vegetables.”

  Not even stomach squares interfered with the mom programming when it came to vegetables.

  “Aw, man, it’s always vegetables,” Annelise said sadly.

  “Yep, they are the key to pretty much everything,” Eden confirmed cheerily.

  And then Gabe finally noticed them—how could he not? They were lined up there at the rail like spectators cheering on a winning horse, and surely the beam of their collective admiration was as powerful as a set of klieg lights.

  He slowly lowered the ax to his side. Shaded his eyes. Revealing fluffy armpits and another vista of expanse of muscle. He was literally shaped like a wedge.

  And he had shaded his eyes to gaze in Eden’s direction.

  His spine abruptly straightened.

  Instantly, something like invisibl
e lightning snaked through the air between them.

  It made Eden’s breath stop and the back of her neck and arms prickle when all the little hairs went erect, the way they did when she heard or saw something particularly beautiful or profoundly true.

  She couldn’t move.

  Then he unshaded his eyes and waved. Tentatively. She couldn’t see his expression, but his smile flashed bright as an ax blade.

  After a stupefied delay, she lifted her own arm in greeting. Avalon and Annelise were already cheerfully waving.

  She could have sworn his smile got just a little bigger and just a little more amused. He rested a hand on his hip and let the ax casually swing from one hand, and he regarded her like a buccaneer on a ship’s deck who’d fixed his sights on bounty.

  Eden pivoted abruptly. “Leesy, let’s go help Auntie Avalon get dinner on the table.”

  She had to make a conscious effort not to flick her hair as she walked away.

  It felt a teensy regressive, the womenfolk bustling about the kitchen with tureens of steaming food, the menfolk, freshly showered and deodorized after a hard day’s labor out in the fields, showing up at the table and rubbing their hands together exclaiming, “Smells good!”

  If it was regressive, then so were Gabe’s daydreams.

  Not that they’d specifically involved the elusive-as-a-gazelle Eden Harwood fluffing plucked wildflowers she’d inserted into a vase then placing it in the middle of the table.

  Then fetching a big ladle for the spaghetti.

  Then prettily arranging bread in a basket.

  It was just that literally everything she did was sexy.

  And to think his subconscious had once gifted him with a dream involving Elizabeth Hurley and a vat of chocolate pudding. He’d revisited that one more than once when he was on active duty in the navy.

  Times changed. Warmth and beauty and laughter and a kitchen full of people he liked and a woman upon whom he had what could only be described as a painful crush, even at his advanced age of nearly forty, was apparently what got his motor running.

  When they all sat down at the table, the clink of forks against plates was deafening, thanks to the fact that no one said a thing. The silence was as tense as a trampoline.

  Mac was quiet because he’d just copped on to the source of tension at the table, and he was moving his eyes between Gabe and Eden with speculative surprise.

  Avalon was quiet because she was captivated by the novelty of her cool, collected older sister’s discomfiture, and she was witnessing it with a sort of rapt glee.

  Eden was quiet, possibly because she’d been caught baldly ogling Gabe from across a field, and then they’d had what amounted to eye sex, a moment of zinging, unguarded eroticism that he hadn’t been able to help and that had been better than actual sex with some women in his past, and it felt almost as though everyone here had watched them actually rut out there.

  And Gabe was quiet because, absurdly, he felt almost . . . was the word shy? It couldn’t be. He was never shy. It’s not like he didn’t encounter attractive women all the time, and it sure as hell wasn’t as though he didn’t know how to talk to them.

  It was just that there had never really been . . . stakes . . . before. And somehow this kept him from opening his mouth.

  Gabe and Eden were carefully not meeting each other’s eyes now, because it was precisely what Avalon and Mac wanted them to do.

  And the kid was probably quiet because she was at dinner with her elementary school principal, a generally surreal and not necessarily welcome experience for a ten-year-old. Also, her plate of spaghetti also featured a few florets of broccoli she’d promptly herded with her fork to what probably equated to Annelise Harwood’s version of a leper colony. Far, far away from all the other food.

  He’d watched Eden’s jaw go tense when she’d seen Annelise do that.

  And right after that Annelise coolly met her mom’s eyes. And her own jaw gave a stubborn little jut.

  Aha. Vegetable wars, if he had to guess.

  It was so quiet, in fact, that when Mac leaped to his feet and said briskly, “Let’s have some music!” everyone visibly gave a start. No one went so far as to clap a hand over their hearts, but Eden dropped her fork with a clatter on her plate.

  Fleet Foxes filled the room with pretty, anodyne harmonies and Mac sat down again.

  Enough was enough. Gabe took charge, because that’s what he normally did. When in doubt, always start with the kid.

  “Is it weird seeing your principal outside of school?” Gabe asked Annelise.

  “Kinda,” Annelise said shyly.

  “A lot of kids seem to think principals live at school, the way Santa lives at the North Pole.”

  “Ha ha ha!” Annelise laughed, somewhat uncertainly.

  Given her expression, odds were pretty good she’d at one time thought that was true.

  “Do you live in a house?” Annelise asked a moment later.

  “I live in the cafeteria. Carl the janitor is my roommate. We skate around in our socks when everyone goes home.”

  Annelise laughed so hard at that she spluttered, and Eden had to rub her back.

  All the grown-ups laughed, too.

  Ice broken, somewhat.

  “That is hiLAR. You do not! I want to live in the cafeteria, too!”

  “The cafeteria smells like feet and ammonia and hot dogs, Annelise. I don’t think you want to live there.”

  She roared with laughter.

  It was impossible not to laugh when she laughed. That was a big part of the reason he loved kids. Things were still so new to them, which made everything old new again. They were easy to surprise, and surprise was a big part of humor.

  “Whoops, Leesy, honey, your hair is in your spaghetti,” Eden said.

  It was indeed.

  Gabe kind of wished Eden would call him “honey” and rub his back.

  Annelise pretended to insert the now sauced end of her hair into her mouth.

  She froze—everyone did, such was its power—when Eden fired a glare-missile at her.

  Annelise made a big show of using her paper napkin to carefully rub sauce from her hair.

  “I actually live in a biiiig yellow house,” Gabe said. “Has a yard with a huuuuge oak tree and a tire swing hanging from it. And a porch like this one outside—wraps all around. And a pretty great view of my neighbor’s front yard in the front and the mountains in the back.”

  He didn’t spend a lot of time there. It mostly seemed for sleeping.

  Annelise’s eyes—same color as her mom’s—went huge with yearning. “Oh, man. I wish we had a tired swing. We live over the flower shop, and we only have a little backyard, but it’s really nice. It has roses and a hummingbird feeder and a birdbath. We have a really great cat, too. His name is Peace and Love.”

  “That’s what I’m missing. A cat. And maybe a dog. I can get my donkey fix here with Mac and Avalon.”

  Annelise hesitated. “Do you have room for a pony?”

  The look on Annelise’s face told him that this would be the clincher. That this might just push her over the edge of unbearable yearning.

  “I have room for a pony, sure.”

  She froze dramatically, mouth dropped open into an O.

  “Lucky,” she breathed finally. “Mom, he can have a pony and a tired swing.”

  He shot a glance at Eden. He intercepted an expression on her face—fixed, rapt—that made his breath literally stop.

  She dropped her eyes to her plate and determinedly wound some spaghetti on her fork.

  “Auntie Avalon?” Annelise said idly after a moment.

  “Yeah, sweetie?” The first words Avalon had said.

  “Do you think it was your destiny to meet Uncle Mac?”

  Everyone froze midchew.

  “What the . . .” Mac was deeply suspicious of anything that smacked of gloppy romance. Which was pretty funny. “Why are you wondering about destiny?”

  “Because I want to be a r
ock star like Glory Greenleaf. I think it’s my destiny.”

  Annelise was now using the tine of her fork to scroll the word destiny in her spaghetti sauce.

  And then she disdainfully shoved her broccoli all the way out to the borders of her plate. So far away the florets nearly tumbled onto the table.

  “Maaaybe,” Mac allowed, so cautiously that all the other adults at the table bit back smiles.

  Eden’s shoulders went back and she took a breath, as if she was bracing for impact. And then she cleared her throat. “Hey, Leesy? Do you think it’s very important to fulfill your destiny?”

  “Yes! Destiny is everything!” she declared with hammy melodrama.

  Gabe wasn’t certain he agreed with that. But he had a hunch Eden was leading up to something. Her mistake was in broadcasting it even a little, because kids could pick up on that stuff the way animals could sense an impending trip to the vet.

  “So what do you think the new donkey’s destiny is?” Eden asked. Casually but not casually enough.

  “Um . . . to be cute and to help kids learn things,” Annelise declared. As though it were a flash card quiz.

  “What do you think Peace and Love’s destiny is?”

  “To be very soft and purr a lot and love me and you.”

  “What do you think broccoli’s destiny is?”

  The trap was laid.

  Annelise and Eden eyed each other like a pair of gangsters, each aiming a pistol at each other’s hearts.

  “To smell like bad breath and farts,” Annelise declared mutinously.

  “ANNELISE HARWOOD.” Eden issued this through gritted teeth.

  Annelise sighed and looked down at her plate wretchedly.

  Eden shot a glare at Mac when he snickered.

  He blinked and clammed up instantly.

  Judging from Eden’s expression, this vegetable thing was a huge and ongoing source of anguish.

  “You know what I think, Annelise?” Gabe said thoughtfully. “I kind of think it’s your destiny to be brave.”

  She swung her head toward him. “You do?”

  “Yeah. You know, I just get that feeling. And I’ve known a lot of brave people in my time, so I can tell. Lots when I was in the navy. Your Uncle Mac here knows a lot of brave people, too. But I’m not positive about you, yet.”