Cry Baby Hollow (14 page)

Aubrey and Joe spent more time in the kitchen than anyone else. Joe wasn’t exactly bad at spades. He played a competent hand and didn’t make many mistakes, but you could tell from his expression exactly how good his hand was and whether he was bidding strong or weak, and this was not a crowd that wouldn’t take advantage of that information. They alternated between getting bagged or set, and ended their first game in the negatives.

By the time they sat down at the third table, they were both more than a little tipsy from all of their down time, and Vina and Edna beat them so badly that they were both playing recklessly by the end of it. Aubrey tried to salvage things by bidding blind nil on their last hand and discovered she had both the king and queen of spades. They both dissolved into giggles and as soon as they finished the hand and were officially beaten, Vina sent them home. She was more than a little tipsy herself, but not so far gone that she didn’t take Joe’s keys and tell him to come back for his truck in the morning.

Joe offered Aubrey his arm and the two of them walked off just as the full moon poked out from behind the clouds.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

When Aubrey awoke
the next morning, rain was drumming on the roof and the sm
ell of coffee filled the cabin. She rolled over and saw the bed beside her rumpled and the covers pushed back. There was a Joe shaped dent in the spare pillow. The previous evening came flooding back and she was amazed that she didn’t have a hangover.

She peaked over the railing and saw him sitting at the table, reading the rule book from Carcassonne and drinking a cup of coffee. He must have gone back to his place for it because she knew she’d run out days ago.

Joe felt her eyes on him and looked up. He smiled and set the pamphlet down.

“Why don’t you grab a shower while I make breakfast?” He suggested, getting up and going over to the kitchen without waiting for her to reply.

When she emerged from the bathroom, freshly scrubbed and wearing a clean pair of cutoffs and a T-shirt, he was back at the table and a plate and mug waited for her at the seat across from him.

“Are you mad at me?” He asked as soon as she was seated.

She avoided his eyes and looked at her plate instead. He had made her a fried egg sandwich with melted cheese and sliced tomatoes. He must have picked up more than coffee at his place, since she knew none of the ingredients had come from her refrigerator. When she finally looked over at him, she saw that he was freshly shaven and his hair was still damp.

“Of course I’m not mad, Joe.”

“At least you didn’t say, ‘It’s fine’,” he observed. “Do you want to sleep with me?” He asked her.

She looked up at him, hurt and shock mixing equally in her expression.

“I think I made that pretty clear last night,” she told him.

“I don’t mean last night,” Joe told her gently. “I mean now, sober.”

“I wasn’t that drunk,” she said defensively.

“Well, I was,” Joe admitted. “I was drunk enough that I almost said yes, even though I knew you’d be spittin’ mad at me today if I did.”

Aubrey decided that the only thing worse than throwing yourself at a man and having him say no was him sticking around and being nice about it afterward.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Joe pointed out.

Aubrey shrugged. She was tired of it all. Sick and tired of trying to rationalize and suppress her feelings and sick and tired of telling herself that this man, who was so plainly a better person than she was, wasn’t good enough for her.

“I got two ex-wives and a son I never get to see who keep remindin’ me that I’m not the best man that ever lived,” Joe told her, taking her shrug as indecision. “I don’t begrudge you your hesitation.”

It had never occurred to her that his life was that complicated. It had never occurred to her to ask him about his past. She pushed her plate aside, leaned across the table, and kissed him.

Aubrey wanted to
run and clear her head but the rain was still coming down and the trail was thick with mud. Instead, she settled for a slippery walk. She didn’t plan to go far, but once under the cover of the trees the rain was hardly noticeable except for the gently patter of it dripping down through the leaves. She walked for an hour, passing the mysterious offshoot and cursing herself for forgetting to look for it on the large scale map she’d found on the internet. 

She had turned and was heading back when she felt the eyes on her. The hair on the back of her neck stood up and she became instantly alert to all the small sounds of the forest around her.

She walked on, pretending unconcern but listening intently for any stray noise. She caught movement out of the corner of her eye, but didn’t see anything when she spun around. Then she heard a twig snap behind her and turned again. She saw a shadow move between two of the trees well off the trail ahead of her. She had expected the wolf, but the shadow was man sized. She had two, equally compelling desires. One part of her wanted to race over and see who it was. The other, the part that won out, remembered that she didn’t have her stun gun with her and wanted only to escape.

She shot off the path and headed straight down through the trees. The slope was steep and the ground and moss covered rocks were all slick with the rain, but she didn’t care. A fellow hiker would have been on the trail, not off in the woods, and no man that wasn’t up to no good would have ducked behind a tree when she turned. She pushed past a shrub and slid down into a creek bed. It wasn’t Murder Creek, just one of the nameless streams that threaded through the hills, but it probably led to the lake and so she splashed along beside it, up to her ankles in water and completely uncaring.

After a seemingly endless time in the woods she came to the road and clambered up onto it. Vina’s house was directly in front of her and she ran straight to the door and banged her fist against it. Then she remembered that the whole reason she had gone for a walk in the first place was because Vina had called and summoned Joe over to move his truck so she could get out of her driveway. She wouldn’t be home. Aubrey turned her back to the door and scanned the woods carefully. Had someone followed her? She doubted it.

The door caught her square in the back and sent her tumbling head first into the muddy front yard.

She looked back over her shoulder and saw Vina at the top of the steps, laughing.

“You forgot to dodge,” she observed with a smirk.

“I remembered you’d gone out and was just leaving,” Aubrey told her, picking herself up off the ground and scraping mud from her clothing.

Vina waved that away and ushered Aubrey up the steps and into the house.

“I was just usin’ that as an excuse to see if he’d slept at your place last night,” she confessed unrepentantly. “You never tell me nothin’.”

“That’s because there’s never anything to tell.”

She thought about mentioning the man in the woods, but dismissed it as likely to cause more trouble than it was worth. The fresh mud from the yard had covered all evidence of her adventure, and there was nothing to show she hadn’t just come over for a chat.

“You sleep with him last night?” Vina asked as soon as she was through the door.

“No.”

“Then what was he doing at your place so early?” Vina countered.

“Kissing me,” Aubrey snapped.

“Now we’re getting’ somewhere!” Vina crowed. “What happened?”

“You called and he left to come over here,” Aubrey told her sulkily.

“Shit,” Vina muttered. She picked up the hall phone and dialed. When the line picked up she said, “She’s over here looking for you. Come pick her up.”

“He’s on his way,” she told Aubrey and Aubrey didn’t argue. She hadn’t been looking forward to walking all the way home alone, anyway.

She waited for Joe on the porch and jumped into his truck without a backward glance at Vina. As he drove her home she told him what had happened. By the time he pulled into her driveway, he was shaking his head, concern and worry written plainly on his handsome features.

“Do you want me to come in?” He offered. “Just for company,” he clarified.

She shook her head.

“I just want to take a shower.”

He smiled, leaned over and kissed her in spite of the mud.

“Just so we both know where we stand,” he told her, grinning. “We were interrupted before, but I didn’t want you thinkin’ I wasn’t plannin’ on reciprocatin’. You up for dinner tonight?” He asked.

“Sure,” she said, trying to sound casual.

She opened the door and hopped out, flushed and not wanting to show how pleased she was. If he hadn’t done that, she would have spent all her free time agonizing over what his reaction would have been if Vina hadn’t called. He cranked down his window and leaned out into the drizzle.

“You should think about maybe joinin’ a gym,” he told her. “Runnin’ seems to be bad for your health.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Aubrey wanted to
go find him as soon as she was cleaned up, but she was aware that there was a form to such things, and that the impulse had to be resisted. Instead, she pulled up the high-res map on her laptop and tried to get her bearings. Fir
st, she found the Dixie Highway, and then Murder Creek. She traced its course until the trail left it and struck up into the mountains.

There was no sign on the map of the footpath behind Mosley’s, which was no surprise, but there were also no other trails that crossed it within the possible distance she had been walking.

She guessed at where Vina’s house was by a close examination of the shoreline of the lake and traced a line up the facing hill, along the stream she had followed on her flight through the woods.  The only item of any note was a small triangle with the words “Three Caves” printed beneath it.

It wasn’t exactly where she would have expected, but it was well within the realm of possibility that that was where the branch off the main trail went. She thought about grabbing her stun gun and going to check it out, the rain had slacked off and the sun was trying valiantly to poke through the thick clouds, but it was already getting late so she put it off until tomorrow.

Instead she spent the rest of the day primping and trying to figure out what she could wear that would look great without looking like she’d put too much thought into it. She decided to wear a robe when she opened the door, and tell him she was running late. That way she could see what he was wearing before she actually got dressed.

She picked out three outfits of varying casualness and set them, ready to be thrown on, in the closet. She did her hair and makeup and settled down on the stool in the bathroom to wait, since anywhere else she went in the cabin, he would be able to see her, or at least her shadow, through the shoji screens. She reminded herself again that she needed to go shopping for curtains.

Aubrey waited until he was twenty minutes late to come out, only to find that he had already arrived. He was sitting Indian-style on the back deck, assembling a small grill. She walked over and slid the door open.

He looked up at her and smiled. “You been home this whole time?” He asked. His only concession to their dinner date was to throw a loud Hawaiian shirt on over his wife beater.

“I was soaking in the tub and lost track of time,” she improvised. “I tweaked my knee a little when I fell today. What are you doing, Joe?”

“Do you have any idea how many times a day you ask me that?” He asked her.

“No. How many?”

Joe shrugged.

“I dunno. That’s why I asked. It seems like a lot, though.” He pointed to the grill. “Right now, what I’m doin’ is missin’ some parts.”

“Let me throw something on and I’ll help,” she offered.

“Can I put some stuff in your fridge?” he called in.

“Sure.”

She went into the closet and pulled on a light blue t-shirt and pair of shorts that hadn’t even been in the running until she saw Joe. Why had she thought he would show up in anything but cargo shorts? Why had she thought they were going out when all he had said was “have dinner”? Because they had kissed twice in the last twelve hours and come rather close to doing a good deal more the night before, and because under those circumstances “have dinner” meant “go out on a date”, dammit, not come over and throw some hot dogs on the grill.

She was somewhat mollified when she came out and found Joe unpacking several bags packed with Tupperware containers into her fridge. At least he hadn’t come straight from the store. He had obviously already put in a great deal of effort on the meal. Cooking dinner for her, she realized, was a lot more work and would probably taste better than anything they could get without driving all the way to Knoxville or Asheville.

“I tried to get us a table at Waffle House, but they were booked up,” he told her as if reading her mind, and I’m savin’ Sonic for our second date.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

“If you wanna to take a crack at the grill, that’d be great. But I can cook dinner in the oven if it doesn’t cooperate, so don’t fret over it.”

She went out on the back deck and had the grill together and the coals started in five minutes. One thing the military and board games had in common was a need to be good at following directions. She pushed back all the shoji screens so she could keep an eye on the grill and still keep Joe company. He was massaging oil and herbs into a chicken when she got back. As she watched, he pulled a can of beer out of the fridge, pulled the tab, and took a long swallow. He motioned her over with his chin and held out the beer to her.

“Can you hold this?” He asked.

She took the can from him. Pap’s Blue Ribbon? She wouldn’t have believed they still made the stuff if she wasn’t looking right at it.

“Put it in the pan,” he told her, nodding to a disposable aluminum pie plate he had waiting on the stove. She began to pour the beer in.

“Whoa!” Joe told her. “Just put the can down in the center and hold it steady,” he warned and came over with the chicken in hand. He pulled open its cavity and sat the chicken down on the pan with the beer can sticking up its butt.

“It ain’t pretty,” he admitted, “but it tastes awful good.”

She looked at him skeptically and washed her hands where the chicken had dripped on them, very aware of his presence right beside her in the tiny kitchen.

“Beer can chicken has a long, proud, culinary tradition,” he informed her. “I didn’t just make it up.”

He carried the chicken on its pie plate contraption out to the grill, set it down, adjusted the vents, and covered it. She watched him from the sofa, aware that in many ways she was seeing him for the first time.

“It takes a while to cook,” he warned her, coming back in and closing the door. “But I brought snacks.” He went back into the kitchen and returned a moment later with a plate piled high with cantaloupe wrapped in prosciutto and tiny kabobs of grape tomatoes and little blocks of fresh mozzarella. He set it down on the edge of the fire pit and sat down on the couch beside her.

“I also got a bunch of movies,” he told her. “But I wasn’t sure what kind of libations would be situational under the circumstances. I’ve got beer and wine with me, or I can run out if you want something else.”

“I have every conceivable liquor you could want and a pretty good stock of mixers,” she told him. “I spent years living on ships or in barracks so I never learned how to cook, but I can mix any drink you can name. You can be the chef, but I draw the line at letting you be the bartender, too.”

“Sounds fair,” he grinned.

“What are you in the mood for?”

“Now there’s a loaded question,” he said with a wink and leaned over to kiss her. Just then lightning crashed outside and the sky opened back up. They both started. Rain came pouring down in sheets.

“Will the chicken be okay?” She asked.