Wild at Heart: A Kincaids of Pine Harbour Novel

by Zoe York

  Then the line started to move.

  Will navigated his truck into the dark underbelly of the ferry, parking where instructed, and once the attendants put blocks under his wheels, they got out and made their way up to the passenger deck for the two hour crossing.

  They found enough seats to sit together as one large group, and from the smell of the coffee from the cafeteria, Catie was glad she had an extra big Thermos filled with Frank’s good stuff.

  Tom reminded them all of their timings. They would have a team meeting at the hotel that night, then early to bed, because the competition started at eight in the morning, and they needed time to get to the mine site where it was being held. “And don’t forget to plan your pee breaks.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” Lore said.

  He gave her a pained look. “It’s not safe to pull off on the side of the road.”

  “The Venn diagram for Concerned Dad and Safety-Aware Park Ranger is a perfect circle,” Will joked.

  Tom held out his hands in a why are you joining in? move. “Pot says what about kettle?”

  “Anyway, we don’t need to worry about sticking in a convoy, but please have your passengers text each other updates from time to time so everyone knows we’re all making good progress.”

  Will nodded and stood up. “I’m going outside to catch some fresh air.”

  He stayed out on the deck for the entire crossing, only returning when the overhead announcement indicated the ferry had docked safely, and passengers could return to their vehicle.

  They went below deck as a large group, but Tobin apparently planned to take the “no need to convoy” instruction seriously. “The race is on,” he crowed. “See you there, suckers.”

  Catie rolled her eyes. She thought she was alone in thinking that was silly, but as soon as they were in the cab of Will’s truck, the principal muttered under his breath that Tobin was a fool. “If he wants to get a speeding ticket, that's on him.”

  Catie tried to suppress an amused smile.

  Will glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t say anything until he’d navigated them off the ferry, and onto the road towards Sudbury. Somehow that little stretch of silence made it even harder to hide her amusement.

  “What are you grinning about?”

  “Nothing.”

  “That is the least innocent-sounding nothing I have ever heard.”

  “I was just thinking about how much of a rule follower you are.”

  “Oh?”

  “Speed limits should be obeyed. Road safety warnings should be taken seriously. Noise ordinances should be respected.” As soon as the last example was out of her mouth, she realized she’d said too much.

  Will’s brow tightened up. “Noise ordinance?”

  She could fudge the truth. But almost two months had passed, and she didn’t think Will would mind that Sam had told her about the party. “Before Canada Day. There was that party near your house…”

  “The gossip mill knows everything?”

  “Not exactly.”

  He looked across at her with curiosity. “Right. You’re not one to gossip.”

  “I heard about it from Sam,” she confessed.

  Will grunted.

  “We had to have a conversation about responsibility and respect after that.”

  “Really?”

  “Did you think I would take the kids’ side in that?”

  “It’s not outside the realm of possibility.”

  “It is outside— Will Kincaid, I am a responsible business owner,” she said hotly.

  “Nobody said you weren’t, Catie Berton.”

  “For the record, I told him that in a couple of days, he would probably feel bad. And sure enough, it came up again after a while. He didn’t go to another party hosted by the same people, because he didn’t think they were worthy of his time. Sam’s a good kid, Will.”

  Will gave her another one of his classic side-eyes. “I’m aware. That’s why I recommended him to you for the job.”

  “Good, then we're on the same page about him.”

  “Good.”

  A long silence stretched between them, then Will turned on the stereo system. On the touch screen display he selected a playlist titled, Six Hours From The Chi-Cheemaun to Timmins.

  The Authoritarian Freak had programmed, apparently, six hours of what Catie quickly realized was non-stop country music. And it was all good stuff, Southern rock and folk music. But it wasn't her usual, and she didn't know any of the words.

  Which made it hard to sing along, and Catie loved nothing more than belting out road trip tunes. Dancing in her seat was a given, too. Even if she didn't know the words, she was all-in. At first it was quiet, very under her breath, but as a Brothers Osborne song came on that she did know a bit, that she liked from hearing it on the radio, her version of the lyrics slipped out a little louder.

  Dancing at the dentist in my old Levis

  I got the fuel, yeah all right

  I’ve got the awl, if y’all got the knife

  Will choked a little. “What did you just say?”

  “Now you’re the one smiling,” she muttered, not answering him.

  “Did you say, I’ve got the awl?”

  “Maybe.”

  He chuckled. “What do you think that line means?”

  She decided to brass it out. “They’re incredibly violent men. Armed to the teeth with…awls and knives.”

  “After dancing at the dentist’s?”

  “Yep.” She lifted her chin proudly and tapped the display. “Let’s listen to it again, I think you’ll find I’m right.”

  His eyes danced. “Do you want to play something else?”

  “Not at all, I’m loving this.”

  “Good.”

  “Great.” And she danced again in her seat just to prove her point.

  Half an hour on the other side of Sudbury, they made their first stop. They both took Sean’s advice and ate lunches they had packed themselves, but they grabbed drinks from a Tim Horton’s just off the highway. Then, instead of getting back in the road, Will typed a different address into his GPS. “Want to stretch your legs a little?”

  “Sure. What are you thinking?”

  “There’s a pretty spectacular waterfall near here. I know a secret spot I thought you might want to see.” On the short drive, Will gave her a brief history lesson—which doubled as an art lesson, because it was a popular location for the Group of Seven artists a century earlier.

  “You know a lot about this place.”

  “I’ve come up a few times. Chaperoned two grade eight trips, and then this particular spot I discovered when I came here a few years ago with my brother Seth.”

  After they parked, Catie asked him more about that trip with his brother.

  “Seth had to pick up a plane up in Gogama and fly it home. I volunteered to drive him up there because it was the summer break and I was bored. It was my first summer not doing school of my own, and I was a bit at odds with the extended break.”

  The path opened up, and ahead of them was a waterfall, wider and more vigorous than the ones around Pine Harbour. Catie slowed to a stop. “Wow, it’s pretty.”

  “Yeah.” His voice was lower now, closer, and she glanced sideways. He gave her a slow smile. “Come on, there’s something else.”

  The rush of water got louder as they climbed up the path along the side of the waterfall, but then it quieted again at the top, and the river flattened out.

  Will caught her hand and turned her, his hand sliding up her arm to her shoulder. “There. I know how much you like caves…”

  This one was glorious. Big and deep, a dark chasm surrounded by overgrown green. She bounded towards it, then turned around. Will had his phone out. “Go on up there, and I’ll take your picture. We have to document the road trip properly.”

  She twirled in a circle, then posed on a boulder in the middle of the cave mouth. He joined her after taking the picture, and they sat next to each o
ther on the rock, looking back at the river.

  “This is a pretty sweet rest stop,” she whispered, not wanting to disrupt the quiet.

  He nodded. “Glad you think so.”

  “Any more caves on the map?”

  “I think we’ll find a couple at the mine site once we get to Timmins.”

  “Awesome.”

  “Yeah.” He was looking at her again. She could feel his attention on the side of her face, a warm kind of focus. And then it was gone, and he stood up. “Shall we hit the road again?”

  “Yep.”

  “Do you want to put your music on for the next leg?” he asked as they headed back to the truck.

  “But you have a six-hour playlist,” she teased.

  “Maybe I want to shift things up. Try something new.”

  “Get a little wild?”

  He laughed. “I might even make up my own lyrics, who knows?”

  He didn't need to, though. In fact, after she synched her phone up to his truck’s Bluetooth system, it turned out that Will knew all the lyrics to all the songs that Catie listened to on a regular basis. He might have programmed exclusively country for his own playlist, but he was well versed across a broad selection of music, no matter what she put on next. He was right there with her, especially when she put on a retro pop playlist.

  The fact that he knew every word of Debbie Gibson’s Shake Your Love did something very funny to Catie’s chest.

  But before she could explore that unexpected sensation, she got a text message. And not just on her phone—but, to her horror, it also delivered right to Will’s dashboard, thanks to her having synched up to play her music.

  Lore: You managing okay with Mr. Grumpy?

  Will made a choking sound as Catie jammed her hand over the way-too-big digital display screen. “Shut up, Lore,” she said out loud. Her face was burning. Why didn’t she see that coming? Because she hadn’t texted about Will with anyone, ever. “I’m sorry.”

  “Why? You didn’t say it.” His voice was deliberately calm. Extra calm.

  Except she had and he knew it. The only reason Lore would say that in a text was if it was a nickname Catie had given the man taking up way too much room in the cab of his pickup truck right now.

  She decided to go for the brutally-honest-on-the-offence approach. “I did once, in the past.” She lifted her chin. “Because you were, at times, grumpy to me.”

  He made the choking sound again and looked out his driver’s side window. “Uh huh.”

  “But I’m going to text her back…” She picked up her phone and furiously typed out a response, then showed it to him.

  Catie: We’re getting along super well. Nothing grumpy about Mr. Team Player.

  Will’s face turned red, then he turned his attention to the road ahead. And he kept it there for the rest of the song. When the music faded out, he hunched his shoulders up, then smoothed his hand down his denim-clad thigh. “Mr. Team Player makes me sound like a square.”

  He was a square, though.

  But then she remembered that he’d confessed his hurt feelings about her not wanting him to be in the bachelor auction.

  As intensely attractive as Will Kincaid was, he was still just as insecure about his appeal as the next human being.

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” she said softly. “I quite like that you’re a team player. And responsible. That you have big feelings about safety and fairness. I’m sorry if I ever made you feel like that wasn’t part of your appeal.”

  She reached out and caught him by the arm, her fingers wrapping around the thickest part of his forearm and squeezing. His gaze found hers and locked on, his eyes serious. She waited for him to jerk away, but he didn’t move.

  There was a depth in his expression, like she’d hit a nerve—but one he didn’t mind her hitting. He didn’t pull away, even after he glanced back to the road.

  She squeezed her hand reassuringly, then sat back.

  Will almost shuddered as she drew her soft fingers away from his skin. Something had shifted between them, and he felt that old impulse to exasperate her try to rise to the surface. A misguided self-defence mechanism, but he wasn’t going to let himself do that.

  Self-defence in this case would be self-sabotage.

  Oh, the irony, that the well-trained school principal had discovered much to his own horror that he deliberately acted out to get the attention of someone who judged him. Any attention was good attention. It was true for fifteen-year-olds and thirty-eight-year-olds alike.

  But he didn’t want to put that wall up between them, just to try to make her climb over it. They were done with that. So he stayed soft for her, even though she probably had no idea what it took. More irony. That the one person who saw through him was probably the only person who didn’t want to see that much of him.

  As another ‘80s pop song came on, he cleared his throat and reached for anything to change the subject without sounding like he minded where the conversation had gone. “Speaking of being a team player…”

  She laughed softly. “Yes?”

  “I have a media lab at the school. It’s part hands-on history, part technical library. We have CDs, cassette tapes, VHS movies, even a few 8-tracks—and all the equipment to play them on. It’s something that I wanted to offer to the business club last year, but didn’t get around to organizing. Right now a few teachers use the material in their literacy classes, and our music teacher has, too.”

  “That’s very cool.” Her lips purse together, and even as he kept part of his attention on the narrow highway slicing through rock and heavy pine forests, he didn’t miss the way her eyes twinkled. “And still slightly square, I have to say.”

  His cheeks heated up. “Fair is fair.”

  “But very, very cool.”

  “Next week I’m back in the school every day. So if you wanted to come in and see it…”

  “Yeah. Definitely. So the media lab… I noticed you’re really into all kinds of music. Where did that come from?”

  “My dad.” His neck heated up. “Not that he knew how much I appreciated it when he was alive. I have a lot of regret around that. I used to tell him I hated his music, and that wasn’t true. I found it confusing sometimes, maybe? I think back to that and shake my head. So now, I go out of my way to never say that about music, even if it’s not my taste at first. It’s one of the things I think I get right with students. I listen to everything they do.”

  She made a humming sound in agreement. “That’s really great. You know, I had a phase where I said I hated things when I actually found them confounding or fascinating.” Her nose scrunched up. “I still feel residual shame for some of those moments.”

  “You too?” He didn’t like that she felt shame. That was a heavy thing to carry. “How old were you?”

  “Early teens. Twelve, thirteen. I know when it ended, though. I was fourteen when I started working at Mac’s, and I told Frank I hated it when people tipped too much. And of course I didn’t actually hate it. I just was overwhelmed. He laid into me about appreciating people’s generosity from their hard-earned money. I felt like shit. Went home and sobbed about it. My mom told me to go back the next morning and apologize properly, and show Frank I understood how hurtful those words had been.”

  “Did you ever say it again?”

  “Never. Not even once.”

  He could see that fiercely earned lesson in her to this day. It was a raw confession. So when she asked him what his most mortifying memory from that age was, he couldn’t deny her the truth.

  “Popping a boner in Madame Acton’s grade nine French class. And not subtly, either. Everyone laughed and pointed.”

  She giggled. “Oh, boy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I never would have imagined that you were awkward as a teenager. I mean, now, sure, I can see it—” He poked her knee, and her laugh doubled in size, joyous and big. “But back then, you were so confident. At least, that’s what it looked like to a muc
h younger girl.”

  There was a wistful note there that got under his skin. He tried to think back and remember what he could about little Catie Berton, seven years younger than him. Maybe by the time she was aware of him, he was heading off to university. A young lifetime of experience separating them.

  “We never truly know what someone else is going through. But I can’t complain about my teen years that much. I had it pretty good.” He glanced over at her. “How about you? What was high school like for you?”

  She made a face.

  Now it was his turn to laugh. “That good?”

  “I couldn’t wait to just be done. Move back to the city. I was gone the second I graduated.”

  “And then you came back.”

  “And then I came back,” she echoed.

  “Is there a story there?”

  “There’s always a story.” But she said it in a way that warned he wouldn’t hear this one, not today.

  “We’ve got nothing but time.”

  “Yeah.” She wasn’t ready to open up yet, though. That was clear.

  He gave her an out. “Maybe on the drive home.”

  She made a noncommittal noise and twisted around in her seat and tugged at her soft-sided cooler. “Want a snack?”

  “Sure.”

  It was the end of deep conversation for the rest of the drive.

  When they arrived in Timmins, though, and pulled into the hotel parking lot, she put her hand back on his forearm. The touch sizzled his skin and warmed him to his core.

  “Thanks for thinking of me with the rest stop choices.” She rubbed his arm, and he felt like he was in grade nine French all over again. “You’re a good teammate, Will. Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re grumpy.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The knock on Catie’s hotel room door came far too early, but as soon as she heard it she was wide awake, heart racing with excitement. It was competition day.

  “One minute,” she called out, slapping her hand around to find the light switch. The red numbers on the clock glowing in the dark promised her she should have had at least another thirty minutes of sleep.