Mayne Attraction: In The Spotlight (43 page)

She paused while she wrung out her
washcloth.

“Look honey, if either of them loves you as
much as they think they do, then they can wait a little longer, if
it’s best for you, which it is.”

That was the most reasonable, no nonsense
advise I’d probably ever get on this topic and I filed it away for
further consideration, feeling enormously grateful for Elsie’s
presence in my life this morning. I nodded in agreement.

“So what’s the story with Phil?”

I knew that was coming. I decided to
continue with the truth. She deserved it.

“He’s Australian actually, though he lives
in the house behind mine in Louisville right now. And he’d never
camped in his life before this time last month,” I said with a huge
smile.

She had that open-mouthed shocked look
again.

“He’s a quick study. He had some pretty
intense training a few weeks ago to get ready for this. I’m not
saying he’s not capable. He’s just not a veteran. But it would be
very much like him to research everything there is to know about
Kahurangi National Park, so whatever he tells you in your idea
swapping sessions is probably good information.”

She raised her eyebrows, just now
considering that aspect of their relationship.

“Please promise me you’ll play along. They
might actually kill each other if Gray finds out who he is. It’s
only for two more days…please? Please promise me, Elsie?” I pleaded
in the most pitiful tone I could muster.

“All right, if you’ll promise me in return
that you won’t let either one of them push you into making a
decision right now. Do we have a deal?”

She was serious as she looked at me with
those piercing eyes, her expression shrewd while she assessed my
reaction.

“How ‘now’ is right now?” I asked, trying to
get advice on exactly how much time I should take.

“I’ll leave that to you, but you should give
yourself enough time to think about what kind of life you’d like,
what you want in a mate, and how each of them fits in to that frame
of reference.”

Talk about a fearless leader! I actually
felt hopeful with some sort of direction to follow and not stricken
blind for the first time since Gray had appeared. She was right and
I could feel the truth of her words down deep. It would be the
worst kind of self-inflicted pain to part ways with either of these
men, but if it would make me a better person and make for the best
resolution in the big picture of things, working out best for all
of us, then I would take the pain, gladly. It would be like an
unpleasant operation: terrible and excruciating, but ultimately a
lifesaver.

When we returned to camp both men were
working around the fire. I avoided eye contact with either of them
and joined Elsie in hanging our wet things on a line stretched
between two trees. After I couldn’t stall any more, I headed over
to the campfire to work on something to eat. Gray rose to meet me,
putting whatever he had been holding down so that he could hug me
around the waist and kiss me briefly in hello.

“Good morning, Princess Bride.”

Then he whispered, “How’s life at the girls’
tent?”

But I was still stuck on the ‘Princess
Bride’ comment and my eyes automatically locked with Phil’s. There
was pain and anger clearly visible, before he looked quickly
away.

Gray was pulling at my hair, which had
fallen around to the front. Then I realized what he was referring
to, and why the look of my hair had seemed familiar to me. It
looked just like Buttercup’s hair the night she was supposed to
marry Prince Humperdink, in wavy ringlets around her face.

I laughed in relief and said, “Does that
make you the Dread Pirate Roberts or Miracle Max?”

He chuckled and let me go, directing me to a
place next to his spot near the fire. I passed Phil on the way, who
was staring at the flames, and I sat down between my two
lovers.

Gray had my breakfast staged, and poured the
boiling water for my hot chocolate. I opened one of the packets of
oatmeal he’d set out, emptying it into a bowl and he poured hot
water into that for me as well. Then he handed me a spoon and I
stirred the contents until it resembled lumpy paste.

“The breakfast of Champions—or in my case,
Quakers,” I commented to myself as I stood my spoon up in the
middle of the oatmeal, letting it cool.

I knew it was a waste of time, but I blew on
the hot chocolate anyway, trying to cool it down from boiling lava
hot to just scalding.

“Would this make a difference?” said Phil,
holding a sample size bottle of Godiva chocolate liqueur up for me
to inspect. I smiled and nodded with enthusiasm. He’d stolen my
inside joke, turning it into a new one for us to share.

“It might,” I acknowledged as he handed it
over, slightly recovered, a knowing smile gracing his now somewhat
rougher, though still gorgeous face. I stared at him briefly when I
realized I was seeing the shadow of a beard on his face. I smiled
and shook my head again, this time in embarrassment with myself,
when it occurred to me that until this moment I’d actually thought
he was too young to shave.

“What?” He asked, having caught the turn of
my countenance.

“It’s nothing.”

I tried to dismiss it and divert him by
making a show of trying my enhanced and temperature controlled
version of hot chocolate. It was now only blisteringly hot, but
even served over ice it would now have a certain warmth to it.

“That looked like something to me. What were
you thinking just now?” he asked quietly.

It was still so strange to hear him speaking
like a Kiwi. It was kind of like flirting with a stranger. His
smile made me smile even more, which didn’t help my cause.

“Well?” he prompted.

“How old are you, Phil, if you don’t mind my
asking?”

The happy mischievousness in his eyes
evaporated. A stone wall seemed to instantly pile up in its place.
Why was that a hard question? But I knew the answer already. Little
comments he’d made along the path of our relationship had made me
think that the difference in our ages was a sore point for him,
though I had never inquired about the specifics before this moment.
I’d always attributed it to my just being too young. Did he really
think he was too old?

I waited patiently for his answer, while he
did some internal deliberating, probably deciding on how he could
most tactfully request for me to mind my own business.

“Yeah, I was wondering that too,” Gray
added.

I’d turned my back on him to face Phil, and
I’d forgotten he was there for a moment. I think he must have
sensed that and this was his way of reminding me.

“I turned twenty-eight in May.”

He said this like he was making a murder
confession, staring warily at my eyes, searching there for the
reaction he feared.

“Huh, that’s interesting. You could pass for
much younger.”

I tried to communicate as much as I could
with my smile and my eyes, which were still glued to his. What I
tried to say was, ‘I love you. I want you, no matter what your age.
Please believe me.’

He had to be careful with his response
because, unlike my own, Gray could see his face.

“You too,” he replied softly, some of the
stones in his countenance knocked away by my attempts at non-verbal
communication.

“How old are you Gray?”

Elsie had emerged from her tent and jumped
right into the census taking.

I turned to view his response. He seemed
about as comfortable answering the question as Phil had been, but
he didn’t take as long to reply.

“I turned twenty-four in May.”

His answer was flat and he didn’t look up
from his oatmeal.

I was secretly pleased with myself. At least
my guess of his age had been in the right neighborhood. I’d been in
the wrong state with the other one.

“Well, I guess that makes me Mother Hen,”
Elsie said, with feigned irritation.

“Speaking of care giving, would you like me
to do your hair this morning, Ellie?” she asked as she sat down on
a log, directly across from me.

I thought I had done my hair…and in that I
had my answer.

“Thank you. I’d love that.”

After she finished her granola bar and
instant coffee I sat down in front of her with my pad and handed
her my brush and a couple of hair bands. It was obvious from her
own appearance that she could do more than ponytails.

Once again, I had the satisfaction of seeing
the glazed look on both men’s faces as they paid unwavering
attention to Elsie’s hair brushing techniques.

I could really get used to this for a couple
of reasons. I knew my hair would look great and stay put, and it
was such an amazing way to start the day, though it made me feel
like slipping back into my sleeping bag and zipping it completely
over. Once she was finished brushing through and then tying down my
hair, she released me and I began staging my daypack for the
morning’s activities.

Gray had shown me how to use the water
purifier and I worked on that to pump out clean water into my
hiking bottle. Then I rooted around in our food bag for a protein
bar and some Swedish Fish, placing both inside a triple
smell-proofing barrier of Ziplocs. Next, I folded a handful of
tissues, tucking them in an outside pouch, in the event of an
emunctory (nose blowing) emergency, hoping I wouldn’t need them,
but knowing I’d be glad to have them if I did. Then I zipped up the
daypack and retied the laces of my hiking boots.

Gray finished with the food bag as well and
walked over away from camp to the spot where Elsie had set up the
high wire hungry bear-foiling apparatus. I watched him work on this
because I hadn’t seen how it operated the night before, when they
had done it in the dark. It was a winching technique, pulling the
rope until the bag was suspended twenty feet in the air between two
trees.

The clothesline was attached to a set of
adjacent trees, though it was not quite so high. Just then a really
big gust of wind hit the clearing and I thought that everything on
the line might blow away into the next province. But only one
casualty hit the ground…and of course it would have to be my
panties.

Gray bent down to retrieve them, but to my
chagrin, he did not place them back on the line. Instead he looked
at them for a moment and then folded them before turning and
heading back over to me.

I don’t know why this embarrassed me so
much, but I could feel the heat in my face as he approached to
return them to me. He caught my mood as he closed the distance,
gathered me into an enveloping hug and pressed a kiss on my
forehead while pressing the underwear into the pocket of my
jacket.

“These are dry. You should put them away or
they’ll probably be gone by the time we get back.”

His logic soothed me slightly, but only for
a moment before he continued.

“I wish you wouldn’t be so embarrassed. It’s
just underwear. I plan on touching more than that someday, you
know.”

The bottom dropped out of my stomach, like a
ride at King’s Island. He hugged me tighter, enjoying my reaction
to his suggestive words.

“I’m sorry. Teasing you is so much fun,
though,” he whispered in my ear, managing to work in another tease
along with his apology.

Our plans for the morning took Gray and me
along an unmarked path to a spot where the creek passed near a pond
and then descended in elevation through a narrow ravine. There were
places where huge slabs of rock jutted out of the earth at sharp
angles and Gray was very interested in inspecting the stones and
debris around them.

He found a few pieces that interested him,
once again carefully documenting their location with his GPS device
and labeling them in detail before stowing them in Ziplocs in his
pack.

One enormous slab of rock near the edge of
the trees at the ravine was smooth and somewhat wide on top. Gray
had found a nice view there and summoned me to join him. After a
bit of scurrying between roots and rocky footholds, I finally made
it to the top. It was farther up than I’d realized.

He was waiting for me at the edge and pulled
me up by my armpits the last three feet to join him on the surface.
He didn’t let go of me right away and I guess I looked like I was
bracing for an attack, because he looked a little hurt, releasing
all but my left hand. Without a word he turned to guide me to the
side with the view and settled me down next to him.

From this elevated perspective we could see
the creek all the way back to the pond. It was a lovely site in the
morning sun, with wildflowers dotting the grass, bending low in
response to the intermittent gusts of wind. After a few moments I
noticed that he wasn’t looking at the view. Instead, he was
inspecting the new arrangement of my jewelry. I pretended like I
didn’t notice and went back to enjoying the view, the warmth of the
sun, and the coolness of the wind, listening to it blow through the
trees and up the mountain.

“What does this mean?”

He wasn’t about to let me off the hook, no
matter how much I ignored him.

“It means that I don’t want to lose my
rings. The aquamarine is smaller and it fits better on my left
hand. The bixbite fits fine on either hand. This way is more
comfortable…for now.”

I tried to sound unapologetic.

“You only need to wear one ring, Ellie.”

There was an emotional edge to his tone, but
I refused to look at him, worried he might convince me of something
I didn’t believe.

“I know, Gray.”

I’d be lucky if anyone wanted me to wear his
ring after this trip.

Chapter 34
–
Fireworks

A few moments passed as the wind blew and
the birds sang. It was beautiful and tranquil and totally at odds
with my state of mind. I’d spent the night thinking about what I
needed to do today. I decided to get it over with. This was as
private a venue as we were ever likely to encounter and I was
certain that being alone for this was critical.