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“Over coffee. It was our one and only date. She’s not really my type, as it turns out. I need someone a little edgier than a small town elementary school teacher.”
Galen gritted his teeth against the urge to smack him. This was good news, after all. Duncan wasn’t any kind of competition.
“Did she say anything else?”
Duncan shot him a sardonic look. “Crushing on Teacher?”
“Want me to leave some fresh meat out to draw the bears?”
With a laugh, Duncan threw up his hands in surrender. “Mountain man wins. He’s got a bite, too. Brenda also said that you were a great guy.”
What?
Thank God, once again, for the beard that hid his reactions. It didn’t work a hundred percent, though. Duncan eyed him sideways.
“Hey man, you should ask her out. Nothing to lose, right? I know she’s single. The friend who set us up says she doesn’t date much. Personally, I think she might be asexual. Ace, they call it. Some people just don’t have a sex drive. I didn’t pick up any kind of vibes from her, not even lesbian vibes. But you might as well take a shot.”
In a blast of fury, Galen grabbed him by the Gore-Tex collar. “Don’t fucking talk about her like that.”
“Whoa, man. Be cool. I was just speculating.”
Galen dropped him like a burning coal. Where had all his professionalism gone? He’d never done anything like that before. “Sorry,” he muttered.
Duncan backed away, keeping a wary eye on him. “It’s all right. I’ll consider it part of my inner quest. In the spirit of radical honesty, she turned me down for a second date and I’m not used to that.”
Galen felt as if the sun had suddenly appeared from behind a cloud. Brenda had turned him down. There was still a chance for him, if he could screw up the nerve to shift from fantasy to reality.
He left Duncan perched on his meditation pillow on the porch of the cabin. As he headed down the trail, he smirked at the sound of Duncan slapping yet another mosquito. Before long, there would be a swarm of them, and no doubt Duncan would seek shelter inside. Inner quests and mosquitoes didn’t go together very well.
Two days later, he got a text from Duncan. Off the mountain.
How did it go? He texted back. What he really wanted to ask was how many mosquito bites he’d ended up with.
Cabin didn’t work out. I’ll try another mountain.
He was still laughing at that—sure, blame the mountain—when Brenda appeared next to him. It literally seemed that way, as if she’d stepped down from a cloud in a beam of sunlight. He was down at the lakeside launch site, loading up a canoe with supplies for a late-season river trip. How had she even known to find him here?
“Brenda?” He blinked at her.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt your work. Redbull sent me this way.”
She looked tired, he thought, and maybe a little sad. She was wearing a soft pale blue sweater with little pearl buttons down the front. It clung to her beautifully formed chest in the most distracting way. She also wore a black wool skirt and boots that zipped up the side. And pink pearl earrings.
“Is everything okay?”
Her pretty green eyes blinked at him. “How did you know?”
“Know?” A horrible thought struck him. “Is your grandmother…”
“No! Galen, you have to stop thinking something’s about to happen to Granny. She’s very healthy. She has a better sex life than I do now that she has a boyfriend.”
Why was she talking about her sex life? Was she just trying to torture him? “Sorry,” he muttered. “I worry about people that I like.”
She softened. “It’s okay. I understand, I worry about her too. It’s actually her friend Rosalind from the senior home. She passed away.”
“I’m sorry.” Should he offer her a hug? A touch on the hand? Some sympathy? He wrestled with the question for a moment, then went with a light touch on her upper arm.
She gave him a grateful smile. “Thank you. The really sad thing was that she didn’t have any family around here. In her will, she asked if I would take care of her last wishes. That’s why I’m here.”
