Her dogs fell in happily, then ranged ahead. Jaws pulled on the leash.
“Wait,” Fiona ordered, sympathizing. The dogs paused, continuing at a slower pace at her signal when Jaws caught up.
“He thinks he’s one of the big guys. It’s good for him to get out like this, explore new territories, respect the leash, respond to you.”
“Is this another lesson?”
“Just making conversation.”
“Do you ever talk about anything other than dogs?”
“Yes.” Irritated, she hunched her shoulders, lapsed into momentary silence. “I can’t think of anything right now. God, I wish spring would hurry up. There, that’s other than. I can bitch about the weather. But it’s a nice day, so it’s hard to. Still I wish it would get warmer faster, and I want the sun to stay out till ten. I want to plant a garden and chase the deer and rabbits out of it.”
“Why don’t you just put up a fence?”
“Then I don’t have the entertainment value of chasing the deer and rabbits, do I? They’re not afraid of the dogs, which is my own fault because I trained the boys not to chase—oops. Dog talk. I love the way it smells in here.”
She took a deep breath of pine, grateful the headache had backed off a bit. “I love the way it looks—the lights, the shadows. I thought I’d be a photographer, because I like light and shadows, and people’s faces and the way they move. But I don’t take very good, or interesting, pictures. Then I thought I’d be a writer, but I bored myself so I suspect I’d have flopped at that one. Except I like to write—for the blog or the newsletter, or little articles about, you know, the thing I’m not talking about in this conversation. Then I thought I could coach track or be a trainer but... I didn’t really have a center, I guess. I’m not sure you’re required to have a center when you’re twenty. Why don’t you say something?”
“Mostly because you haven’t shut up.”
She blew out a breath. “That’s true. I’m babbling useless conversation because I don’t want to think. And I realize I asked you to come so I wouldn’t think or start brooding. I don’t have a bitch on. I have a brood on, and it’s entirely different.”
“Comes off the same to me.”
“You’re a hardass, Simon. That shouldn’t be appealing to me.”
They moved through a clearing where the trees soared overhead, beefy giants that sighed like the surf where their tops met sky.
“Why Orcas?” she asked him. “Of all the places to live.”
“It’s quiet. I like being near the water. Hold this.” He shoved the leash into her hand and walked over to a large, twisted stump, heaved half out of the needle-strewn ground.
While she watched, he circled it, crouched, knocked on it.
“Is this your property?”
“Yeah. We haven’t walked that far.”
“I want this.” His eyes, the color of old gold in the luminous streams and dapples of light, shifted briefly to hers. “Can I have this?”
“You want... the stump?”
“Yes. I’ll pay for it if you want to be greedy.”
“How much? I’m going on a spa vacation.” She walked closer trying to see what he saw.
“Pee somewhere else.” He gave Jaws a nudge as the pup prepared to squat. “Ten bucks.”
She pff ’d.
“It’s just sitting here. You’re not using it, and I’m going to have to yank it out and haul it off. Twenty, but that’s it.”
“Replace it. Plant a tree in the hole and we’re good.”
“Done.”
“What’ll you do with it?”
“Something.”
She studied it, circled it as he had, but still only saw the twisted remains of a tree broken off in some long-ago storm. “I wish I could see like that. I wish I could look at a tree stump and see something creative.”
He glanced up again. “You looked at that dog and saw something.”
She smiled. “I think that was an actual nice thing to say. Now I guess I have to be sorry for being mean to you.”
“You have a strange scale, Fiona. ‘Sort of’ kissed me when you were locked on like a clamp. Being mean when you told me to mind my own business.”
“I yelled at you in my head.”
“Oh, well, now I’m crushed.”
“I can be mean. Harsh and mean, and I can be okay with it. But it has to be justified. You just asked what was wrong. You can come back and get the stump anytime.”
“Next couple of days.” He straightened, glanced around to orient himself. Then he looked at her. “You might as well spill it.”
“Let’s keep walking.” She held the leash, bringing Jaws to heel, letting him range, bringing him back while they wound through the trees, skirted the curve of a quiet creek.
“This reporter’s hounding me,” she began. “Calling, e-mailing. I haven’t talked to her—just deleted all the messages.”
“What does she want?”
“To talk to me about Perry—in connection with the two women in California. She’s writing a story on it. That’s her job; I get that. But it’s not mine to talk to her, to feed that fire. The only victim who escaped—that’s how she put it. I’m not a victim, and it just pisses me off to be called one. I had enough of that when it all happened.”
“Then keep deleting.”
“Sounds simple—and I will—but it’s not simple.”
The headache was gone, she realized, but the anger and frustration that had caused it remained lodged like splinters.
Small, sharp and nasty.
“When it happened, the prosecution and the cops kept me away from the press as much as possible. They didn’t want me giving interviews—and God knows, I didn’t want to give them. But a story like that? It’s got juice, right? They kept calling, or talking to people who knew me—people who knew people who knew me. Squeezing the juice.” She paused, glanced at him again. “I guess you’d understand that, from your relationship with Nina Abbott.”
“Relationship’s a pretty word for it.”
“And now you like quiet islands.”
“One doesn’t have much of a connection with the other. And this isn’t my brood.”
None of her business, she thought. Well, he had a point. “All right. After Greg, it started up again. Then the trial. I don’t want any part of what’s happening now. So I’m angry all over again, and that makes me feel sick inside. Because twelve before me, and Greg after me, died. And I didn’t. I barely had a scratch, but they say I’m a victim or they say I’m a heroine. Neither’s true.”
“No, neither’s true. You’re a survivor, and that’s harder.”
She stopped, stared at him. “Why do you get it? That’s the mystery.”
“It’s all over you. It’s in your eyes. So calm, so clear. Maybe because they’ve already seen so much. You’ve got wounds. You live with them. That shouldn’t be appealing to me.”
She might have smiled at the way he tossed her own words back at her, but they made her stomach flutter. “What have we got here, Simon?”
“Probably just some heat.”
“Probably. I haven’t had sex in almost ten months.”
“Okay, it’s getting hotter.”
Now she laughed. “God, you’ve actually made me feel better. But what I meant was I haven’t had sex in ten months, so waiting longer isn’t such a big deal. We both live on island—have a connection with Sylvia. I like your dog, and right now I’m part of his team. I think I need to figure out if sleeping with you would just be a nice release, or cause too many complications.”
“It wouldn’t be nice. Nice is cookies and milk.”
“Confident. I do like confidence. Since I’m not going to have sex with you in the woods, especially since we’ve only got about twenty minutes before the sun sets, I think we’re safe. So why don’t you give me a little preview of possible coming attractions?”
He reached behind her, wrapped her hair around his fist. “You like living on the edge?”
“No, I really don’t. I like stability and order, so this is unusual for me.”
He gave her hair a tug, enough to lift her face, to bring his mouth within a breath of hers. “You’re looking for nice.”
“I’m not really looking at all.”