Harbor Nights (19 page)

“Not this trip.” Ned strapped on his pack and helped her with hers. “I know a really good spot to make camp for the night. It's right near a stream where you can get cleaned up if you want.”

“It's not too far, right?” She didn't know how much further she could leisurely stroll without breaking down and crying. She wanted a Jacuzzi and room service. Jill and Kay were absolutely right—backpacking wasn't conducive to romance. If she had been Kay or Jill, she would have made sure she made it to the top of this fricken' mountain just to shove her husband off.

“Just a little bit longer. You can make it.” Ned gave a sharp whistle for Flipper, who had once again disappeared, and then headed up the mountain on some unseeable path.

She reached up, grabbed both straps of her new pack, and gave it a tug. The pack settled nicely against her back as she headed after Ned; she began singing about an ant and a rubber tree plant. In front of her, Ned's shoulders were shaking with laughter, but she didn't hear a sound.

 

 

Ned sat in front of the blazing fire and wondered what was taking Norah so long. He could hear Flipper barking nearby, but it wasn't his Lassie imitation of “come quick; Timmy fell into the well” bark. It was more like “look at me run back and forth through the stream getting Norah soaked, while I try to catch the spraying water with my tongue” bark. He didn't hear Norah yelling, so either she didn't care or she was already soaking wet.

The look of appreciation on Norah's face when he'd shown her the stream was well worth detouring around the mountain and not going to the top. He'd left her and Flipper by the shallow water with her backpack and told her to freshen up while he set up camp and got their fire going. If he hadn't added a couple of good-sized logs to the fire, it would have burned itself out by now. There wasn't that much of her to wash. Maybe he should go check on her. With the way Flipper was barking, there wasn't an animal around for a quarter of a mile.

Then again, his ear was still ringing from Norah's scream when a harmless little spider had made the fatal mistake of crawling up her arm. Norah had smashed the spider to smithereens, the whole time screaming at the top of her lungs. She had not only spooked every animal on the mountain, but she had also ruptured his eardrum. He'd nearly had a heart attack until he realized what the fool woman had been screaming about. He had all the confidence in the world that if Norah somehow managed to stumble across a snake, he, and the entire state of Maine, would know about it.

The sound of Flipper's barking growing closer alerted him to Norah's arrival before she came into sight. “Ned?”

“Follow Flipper; he'll show you the way.” A moment later, Norah stepped into the small clearing, and his heart melted and his body heated. Norah hadn't just freshened up; she had totally bathed in the stream. Even her hair was freshly washed.

Norah was wearing pink-striped long pajama pants, a little bitty matching pink top, and a pink sweatshirt that she had left unzipped. A pair of pink flip-flops completed her slumber party in the woods outfit. She not only looked fresh and squeaky clean but like Barbie as well.

“Feel better?” He knew she wasn't used to hiking up mountains. But she had done him proud. She hadn't stopped, whined, or given up once.

“If the water had been a little warmer, I would have stayed in it longer.” Norah dropped her pack by the tent. “Where can I put these so they will be dry by morning?”

Ned looked at her pair of wet socks. “Any blisters?” He got up and went in search of a branch.

“Not a one.” Norah sat down on his sleeping bag, which was close to the fire and in front of the tent. She counted one tent. She leaned in close, and in the fading light, she saw that her sleeping bag had been unrolled inside the screened tent. There was barely enough room for it in the small nylon tent. If she sat up in the middle of the night, she would bump her head.

Ned followed her gaze as he jammed the end of a branch into the ground near the fire. “You'll sleep in there; Flipper and I prefer to sleep out in the open.”

“Under the stars and all of that?” Well, she now understood the sleeping arrangements. She had been thinking about them for the past few days. Ever since he'd invited her on an overnight hike.

“Nothing like it in the world.” Ned took the wrung-out socks from her, gave them another good twist, and then hung them on the branch. “How about I go and clean up before it gets too dark. I'll put dinner on as soon as I get back.”

“I could start it.” She frowned at Ned's pack and wondered what he'd brought for dinner. She was starving, and there didn't appear to be a bucket of chicken or a T-bone steak in sight. She'd kill for a nice tall glass of iced tea with a slice of lemon floating in it.

“It only takes a couple of minutes to cook. I'll be right back.” Ned reached for his pack, and Flipper came running to his side. “Stay.” Ned pointed at her.

Flipper rolled his eyes and then plopped himself down under a nearby tree.

“He doesn't like me.” She'd seen the look the dog gave her.

“Yes, he does,” Ned chuckled, “but he likes splashing in the water more.” Ned headed in the same direction she had just come from.

She looked around the surrounding area. The shadows were lengthening, and Flipper appeared to be snoring. Great; some protection he was. She eyed the top of Ned's sleeping bag for wayward spiders and found only a small twig. She was clean, comfortably dressed, and scared. Ned would have a field day with that one.

What was there to be afraid of? They hadn't seen an animal bigger than a chipmunk or another person the entire time they had been hiking. If a plane hadn't gone overhead, she might have thought they were the only two people left on the face of the earth.

She reached over and pulled her backpack next to her. It wasn't her fault she didn't shop at L.L. Bean or Lumberjacks-R-Us. She wasn't Kay or Jill. She dug into her pack and pulled out a flashlight and her small cosmetic bag. The flashlight had been her mother's idea, just in case she needed to use the little girl's bush in the middle of the night. The body lotion was hers.

She unscrewed the cap of her night moisturizer and began rubbing a few drops onto her face. She had taken the time to run a brush through her hair and clean her teeth down by the creek, but she had nixed the lotion. With Ned gone, she needed something to occupy her mind besides the thought of wolves, coyotes, and moose. Or was it mooses? Mices?

Two minutes later, she had the sweatshirt off, and she was slathering lotion on her shoulders and down her arms. She had taken Ned's words to heart, so she hadn't brought any sweet, flower-scented stuff with her. She had picked up travel size bottles of body wash and lotion that smelled like green tea at the mall after she'd bought the hiking boots and socks. She recapped the bottle, trimmed two broken fingernails with the clippers she'd packed, and then looked around again. No Ned, and it was getting darker.

A pile of wood and a hatchet were set neatly by the fire. She had heard Ned cutting it while she was bathing earlier. The man was a miniature version of Paul Bunyan and nature boy all rolled into one. He probably swung from vine to vine when nobody was looking. She reached out and put another log on the fire. She glanced behind her to make sure Chip and Dale hadn't coordinated an attack plan to take her out and steal the Tic Tacs she had in her pack.

Ned wouldn't have left her alone if there was any chance something would happen to her. She knew that, but she still wanted him to hurry back. There was a reason she'd never become a Girl Scout.

She rolled her pajamas up to her knees, kicked off the flip flops, and started to apply lotion to her legs and feet. The fire was nice and warm, but she couldn't really say it was cold out. She had a feeling that the temperature was going to fall during the night. Thankfully, the sleeping bag she had carried up the mountain looked soft and warm.

Ned entered the small clearing without her even hearing him. One minute, she was alone; the next, Ned was there. She gave a small squeal of surprise and dumped a little too much lotion onto her leg. “Geez, warn a gal the next time.”

“Sorry.” Ned grabbed a long stick and fixed the burning logs in the fire pit. “What are you doing?”

“My legs are dry.” She noticed the way Ned was trying not to look at her legs. He was acting as if this was the nineteenth century, not the twenty-first. He had seen more of them the other day when she had been cutting the grass.

“You're supposed to be camping, Norah, not spending a night at the spa.” Ned started to rummage through his pack, pulling out what he would need to make dinner.

“What do you mean, supposed to be camping?” She waved her arms at the surrounding trees and tent. “I am camping.” She finished rubbing the delicious-smelling lotion into her feet. “I want to see where it is written in your camping handbook that I can't put on lotion.”

Ned's lips twitched as he opened a huge can of stew and dumped it into a pot. “I don't have a camping handbook.”

She looked into the pot and prayed she wasn't drooling. “Is that real stew?” Her stomach gave a low rumble. “Don't answer that; I'll eat it even if it's fake.”

The amount of stuff Ned had fit into his pack was mind-boggling. Then again, the thing had to weigh forty pounds. She had offered to take some of the supplies, but Ned wouldn't hear of it and had only allowed her the sleeping bag. He'd even carried her tent.

“It's real stew, Norah.” Ned pulled out a small metal frying pan, dumped a package of yellow flour into it, and started to add water. “It's a luxury out here, so enjoy it.”

“Why so special?” She was watching whatever he was stirring turn into a thick, yellow paste. “What's that?”

“Corn bread, and I'm trying to impress you with my culinary skills.” Ned placed the pan on a flat rock at the edge of the fire. “Am I succeeding?”

“I was blown away by the peanut butter and jelly.” She stuck a finger into the batter and licked it. “For stew and corn bread, I might have to declare my undying love and devotion.”

Ned chuckled. “God, you're easy.”

“Nope, just hungry.” She ran her fingers through her drying hair to give it some body. She'd had that feeling you get when you've forgotten something this morning, but she hadn't figured out what it was until she'd started to wash her hair in the stream. She'd forgotten her styling gel. Tonight and tomorrow, Ned would see her hair in its natural state—à la flat.

“So now what do we do?”

“What do you mean?” Ned stirred the stew and moved it closer to the flames. He gave the pan with the corn meal a quarter turn and then pulled two metal plates from his pack.

The man had an entire kitchen in there. “This is it? You hike eight hours up the side of a mountain just to open a can of stew and sleep under the stars? You could do that in your backyard.” No wonder Kay and Jill had been so frustrated with their husbands.

“It's more than that.” Ned glanced around him. “It's the peace and quiet. Being surrounded by nature without another soul for miles. The tranquility.”

She leaned back onto the sleeping bag and stared up at the evening sky. Daylight had faded, and the stars were just beginning to come out. “Okay, I grant you it's nice here.” She hadn't really noticed the quiet until Ned had pointed it out. She closed her eyes and listened to the fire crackling and the night sounds of the forests. With Ned sitting three feet away, she felt safe. “I just wish we didn't have to hike so far to get here.”

“Yeah, they could put a parking lot about three hundred yards away.” Ned turned the frying pan another quarter turn. “Families could do bonfires and bring the popups and the trailers and their big ass generators for their refrigerators and heaters. Teenagers could have beer parties and take potshots at the deer.”

“Okay, it wouldn't be the same.” He didn't have to make it sound so depressing. “I concede the point. If it was easy to get to, more people would be here, and they would probably end up ruining it.”

“It's because it is so hard to get to that people appreciate it more and take care of it.” Ned dug Flipper's bowl out of his pack and filled it from the baggie of dog food he had brought. He set the bowl over by Flipper, who immediately jumped to his feet and started to eat.

“Maybe my boss would let me write a column on hiking in the wilderness.”

“I'll be more than willing to supply you with any facts and statistics you need.” Ned started to dish out the stew. He handed her a plate. “Careful; it's hot.”

“Thanks, it smells delicious.” Of course, liver and onions, her least favorite meal in the whole world, would have smelled like heaven. She took a small piece, blew on it, and then popped it into her mouth.

Ned sliced into the cornbread and dug her out a piece. “If you clean your plate, you get dessert.”

“What's for dessert?” The cornbread tasted like butter-flavored cardboard, but it was filling.

“A pack of Ring Dings.” Ned grinned. “They might be a little squished, but I figured you wouldn't mind.”

She stopped eating and stared at him. What were the odds that he would know her favorite snack food? “What did you do—call my mother?”

“Nope.” Ned continued eating his stew innocently.

“My mother called you?” Now that would be mortifying, but she couldn't picture her mother doing it. Her mother liked Ned. She told her so about five times a day. There was nothing subtle in her mother's attempt at matchmaking. Joanna was happy with Karl, and that meant her mother wanted everyone paired up and happy.