Addie's Adventurer Read online

“That’s an excellent cause and I’ll write a check to the appropriate people before I leave, but I’m not selling myself like that for any reason. I have some dignity, you know.”

  She smiled at his reaction. He seemed genuinely terrified that such a thing would happen to him. “I just think you’d fetch a good price.”

  “Is that all I am to you? A piece of meat? Does my value only lie in my handsome face and impeccable abs? See what I did there—im-pec-able, because we’re talking about muscles?”

  “Yeah, I saw that. And I thought it was pretty corny.”

  “Well, I thought it was pretty sweet.”

  Sammi brought them drink refills, and Addie decided she had room for another onion ring. “So, you said you met Benny.”

  “I did. He was really helpful, and a nice guy.”

  “He’s eighty-nine years old, and yet he volunteers at the community center every single Wednesday. He’s like clockwork. He’s a widower—his wife died about five years ago—and he decided to turn his grief into something positive. So he volunteers, and when he’s not at the center, he’s at home painting greeting cards.”

  “Painting them?”

  “That’s right. Every single card is copied by hand—there were no full-color laser printers involved with the making of those cards. He sells them at different places around town, then donates the money to the animal shelter. You might have seen some of them at my shop.”

  “Animals from the shelter? No, I didn’t see any.”

  “I mean the cards, you dork. I have a display of them in the corner.”

  Jason shook his head. “I don’t think I made it that far. This is another excuse for me to come visit your shop again.”

  “You don’t need an excuse for that.”

  “I don’t know—I kind of feel like I do. Are you sure I’m welcome here, Addie? This feels so awkward, and you and I were never awkward with each other. When did this become so hard?”

  “When we decided to call it quits,” she replied. “That has the tendency to make things very awkward.”

  “Yeah. I guess it does.”

  They each took another bite and chewed. Awkwardness probably wasn’t good for the digestion.

  “So, you said you just knew that you should choose Quinn Valley. How did you know?” he asked.

  “Is this for the article or for your own personal curiosity?”

  “I guess both. I’m still trying to understand what happened to us, Addie. I won’t pretend that I’m not.”

  She nodded. She’d figured as much. The truth was, she’d been trying to figure it out herself. “It was that sense of community I mentioned. It seemed to sink down into my bones and I could feel it.”

  “See, that’s what I don’t get. I understand liking the look of a place or thinking you might enjoy living there, but feeling it in your bones? Bones don’t feel, Addie. Not unless you’ve got bone cancer or something, and that wouldn’t be a pleasant feeling.”

  “You’re being too literal. When people say they feel something in their bones, they mean, in their soul. You’re a writer—you should understand allegories and symbolism.”

  “I write nonfiction. I deal with what I can see and touch and hear.”

  “It’s boring to limit yourself that way.” Addie finished off her burger and wiped her mouth. “So, what happens next? Do I take you on a tour of my favorite places in Quinn Valley, or . . . how do we proceed?”

  “A tour would be good. Do you have time now?”

  “Yes. I closed the shop for the rest of the day.”

  “Really? You can just do that?”

  “I’m the boss. I have all power.”

  He chuckled. “Now the truth comes out—you wanted to go into business so you could wield the scepter of judgment.”

  “Of course. It’s not quite the same when I don’t have any employees, but I tell myself what to do all the time.”

  “Wait. You don’t have any employees? You do all that by yourself?”

  She shrugged. “It’s not that big of a deal. When I have a lot of people come in at once, they’re usually pretty good about waiting their turn. And do you know how expensive it is to have an employee? Just carrying workers’ comp would put me out of business.”

  “Yeah, I know it’s not cheap. I’m just impressed, that’s all. It’s a great shop, and pretty cool to know that you did that all by yourself.”

  “I’m really not sure if you mean to sound complimentary or condescending right now.”

  “Oh, completely complimentary. I mean it—I’m impressed.”

  They slid out of the booth and Jason paid, then they walked out into air that was even colder than it had been when they went inside. “What are your average temperatures around here, anyway?” Jason asked.

  “We’re usually between twenty and thirty degrees, give or take,” Addie replied. “Feels like around fifteen right now, though.”

  “I can’t even process temperatures that low. My heater in the trailer was running on triple overtime last night.”

  “Is the trailer very well insulated?” Addie asked.

  “It’s pretty good, but I’m not sure it had Idaho in mind when it signed up for this gig.” He paused on the sidewalk. “You’re playing tour guide. Where should we go first?”

  “First, I want to take you up on the mountainside where we can look down over the town. The view is breathtaking. Not only can you see every speck of Quinn Valley, but you can see mountains upon mountains rising up like waves of the ocean that were somehow frozen in time.”

  “That sounds amazing.”

  “Believe me, it is. Can we take your truck? That’s it over there, isn’t it? My car’s buried under a foot of snow right now.”

  “Sure, we can take my truck.” Jason dug in his pocket for his keys. “I’m surprised that you’re letting something easy like a foot of snow stop you, though. Aren’t you a wilderness girl now?”

  “You bet I am. I’m wilderness enough to walk to work when there’s a foot of snow on my car.” She flashed him a smile. “It helps that I live nearby, but still.”

  They climbed into Jason’s truck, and Addie directed him where to turn. A few of the corners were a bit slick and icy, and the truck tires slid a little from side to side. Jason was a good driver, though, and he got the vehicle back under control quickly.

  “Okay, pull over when we get to the next turn,” Addie said.

  Jason brought the truck to a stop at a place where the sides of the canyon dropped away, revealing Quinn Valley down below. They hopped out of the truck and stood at the edge. “Over there is Quinn Valley Ranch,” Addie said, pointing. “It’s a huge holding that’s been run by the Quinn family for a hundred years.”

  Jason turned slowly, seeming to take in the entire vista. “This is something else,” he said. “It looks like Narnia, with all the trees and the snow.”

  “Doesn’t it, though? I had the same thought my first winter here. I expected to see the White Witch come barreling along in her sleigh at any moment.” Addie didn’t turn to meet Jason’s eyes as she spoke. She knew they were both thinking about the same thing—the cold winter night not long after they’d started dating when they’d curled up on her couch to watch The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe together. She’d cried her eyes out during the scene at the stone table, and he’d held her hand without saying a word. That was the night she’d started falling for him.

  “We’d better head back down,” she said after a long moment. “As the temperature drops, the roads are going to get icier, and we don’t want to get stuck up here.”

  “Agreed.”

  The truck started up again without a problem, but when Jason put it in reverse to back out of his parking spot, the wheels slipped, and they couldn’t get any traction on the frozen ground. He put the truck back into drive, pulled forward a little and adjusted the angle of the tires, but still, the truck wouldn’t allow him to pull onto the road.

  “Did you jinx us?” he asked. “All that
talk about getting stuck up here?”

  “In the first place, it wasn’t all that much talk. I believe it added up to one sentence. Furthermore, I can get us out if you’ll let me drive.”

  He gave her an incredulous look. “You can get us out?”

  “Yes, I can. But I know how you feel about your cars—you’ve always been very proprietary.”

  He sighed. “You can try. I’m not going to keep us stuck up here just for the sake of my pride.”

  Well, that was a first. “Your pride doesn’t even have to be damaged. I promise that I won’t breathe a word of this to a single soul, and therefore, every shred of that pride can remain gloriously intact.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Gloriously?”

  “You heard me. Gloriously. Like a Greek god standing on a pillar of gold proclaiming his masculinity, so shall you be.”

  He shook his head, smirking. “What’s all that about? Do you think that’s how I envision myself?”

  “I’m just saying . . .”

  “Just get the truck off this patch of ice, all right? We can discuss this later when we’re not in danger of having to spend the rest of the winter up here.”

  She climbed into the driver’s seat, turned the wheel hard to the right, and hit the accelerator. The truck jounced forward and over some tree branches that had covered the ground, and it didn’t make a pretty sound, but she brought the truck back onto the road, then turned to Jason with a smile.

  “So, that’s how you do it. You just go all Conan the Barbarian and don’t give a single thought to my paint job or anything.”

  “Your paint is not damaged, and that’s Xena, Warrior Princess, to you.” She hopped down from the cab and walked back around to the passenger side. “If you can’t go backward, you gotta go forward. Makes sense to me.”

  He shook his head. “Fine. All right, where to now?”

  “Now let’s drive around the residential area of town and get you out of the touristy spots.”

  As they headed down the mountain again, Addie noticed that Jason’s jaw was clenched, and she wondered what he was thinking. Okay, she’d probably shown off a little getting the truck off that ice patch. She could have just told him how to do it, but he probably wouldn’t have listened, and taking over and doing it herself was the simplest, but she had the feeling she’d really ticked him off.

  Once they were back into town and the roads were clearer, she said, “Jason, what’s the matter?”

  He didn’t answer for a minute, but then he pulled into an empty church parking lot and cut the engine. “I just keep asking myself one question over and over again.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  He turned and looked at her. “If we hadn’t argued, if I hadn’t gone storming off in a huff, if you hadn’t been gone when I came back . . . would we still be together now? Because I feel it, Addie. I feel all the same chemistry now as I did back then. I feel the same pull toward you, the same curiosity to know what you’re thinking, the same desire to kiss you . . . It’s still there, and I didn’t expect it to be. And I don’t know what to do about it.”

  She felt the air leave her lungs in a whoosh. She hadn’t expected that, not at all, and for a moment, she couldn’t even put words together in her head for a response. How was she supposed to respond?

  “It’s been a long time,” she said at last. “We’re not the same people we used to be.”

  “I should hope not—I wouldn’t want to work at Walmart forever.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I do.” He looked out the windshield, then back at her. “I think what we had was real—that’s why we’re still feeling it. Come on, Addie—I’m not the only one in this boat, am I?”

  Oh, crud. He wanted to know what she was thinking, what she was feeling . . . “I didn’t just leave, you know. It took me two weeks to pack up and move out of my apartment—two weeks and you didn’t call. I left you a message, I stopped by your place—nothing. So I came up here and started over. You had every chance to catch me before I left. Your version sounds like I took off overnight or something—that’s not true.” She paused. “Plus, you told me when you left that you were over it. Why would I stick around after that conversation?”

  “I don’t know.” He looked away from her again, giving her a second to wipe her eyes discreetly. She didn’t want him to know she was crying. She’d already cried far too much over this guy, and he didn’t deserve that kind of emotional energy. “Listen, Addie. I can’t change what happened in the past, and I can’t change who I was back then. Trust me—I didn’t like him much either. What I can do is make you a promise. I promise you that I will never, ever hurt you again. I’m not that guy anymore. I’m worlds beyond that guy.”

  “Wait. What are you talking about? You’ll never hurt me again . . .?”

  “I’m saying . . . I’m saying I want to try again.”

  She sat back, stunned all over again. “Like, you want to get back together? Jason, are you crazy?”

  “Maybe I am. I don’t know. I just . . . Seeing you again, I’m realizing that my feelings have never changed, and I can’t live through losing you a second time.”

  “I . . .” She had no response. She couldn’t even think. She just knew that she had to get away. She opened the door of the truck and hopped down, trying to slam it with emphasis, but it was too heavy to make a good, satisfying noise.

  “Wait! Where are you going?” Jason opened his door. “It’s freezing out there. Please get back in.”

  “I’m a wilderness girl, remember?” She started walking, not even feeling the cold. Her brain was in such a muddle, she probably wouldn’t feel a thing until she had hypothermia, and that was actually okay because numbness was a sign of hypothermia. Therefore, she wouldn’t have to feel anything forever. That sounded pretty awesome.

  “Addie, please.” His footsteps crunched up behind her. “I can’t let you go walking off like this. It’s too cold.”

  “You can’t let me? You’re not in charge of me. You never have been in charge of me, and I think that drives you nuts. You’ve always liked being in control, telling other people what to do and how to be, and when you figured out that would never work on me, that’s when you called it quits.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and sent a quick text. “There. Now I’m not walking off alone—my friend will be here in a few minutes.”

  “I’m not leaving you until she gets here.”

  “Why? Because I’m somehow incapable of taking care of myself?”

  “No, because it’s winter, and if anything happened to you, I’d feel terrible. And I’d likely go to jail for putting you in danger. You wouldn’t want me to go to jail, would you?”

  She turned to face him, exasperated. “I don’t think there is a jail sentence for that, and I’m not buying into the guilt. Go away.”

  “I wasn’t trying to make you feel guilty—I was trying to be funny. But fine! I’ll sit in the truck and I’ll watch from there until your friend comes, all right? I’ll give you all the space you need so your dramatic exit can be all the more dramatic!”

  He stomped off back through the snow, and Addie fumed as she watched him leave. What an arrogant, selfish, condescending . . . she was running out of adjectives . . . piece of work!

  Just then, Monique’s car pulled onto the street, and Addie waved her down.

  “You’re lucky I hadn’t changed into my pajamas yet,” Monique said. “You know I don’t leave the house after the jammies are on.”

  “That is total luck, considering that you’ll put on pajamas at any time of the day or night. It’s always a gamble with you.” Addie watched through the window as Jason blinked his headlights a couple of times and then drove away. “Mo, I need help. Like, serious help.”

  “Is it time to call in my Mafia connections?”

  “You don’t have any Mafia connections.”

  “How do you know? I could have hundreds of them.”

  “Because you ju
st don’t. No, I think I need a shrink.”

  Mo pulled the car back onto the road and pointed it toward her place. “Tell Dr. Mo all about it.”

  Chapter Four

  Stupid, stupid, stupid . . . Jason hit his fist on the steering wheel as he drove out of the church parking lot. Why had he told Addie how he felt? She obviously didn’t feel the same way about him, and he was essentially taking his emotional life into his hands by confessing to her. In the moment, he thought he couldn’t control himself, but now, seeing the aftermath, he realized that yes, he could have kept his mouth shut. He just didn’t want to, and he’d get to deal with whatever happened next.

  Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he wasn’t still in love with her, and these feelings were just residue from everything they’d been through before. He’d dated off and on, but he hadn’t been in a serious relationship since Addie, and it was possible that he was reacting out of loneliness, out of a need for a deeper human connection than just a cup of coffee or a late supper here and there while he was on the road. That made sense, didn’t it?

  But to think that would be to fool himself even more. He knew why he hadn’t had a serious relationship—every time he went out with another woman, he felt like he was cheating on Addie. She was still that much a part of him. And when she sent in that letter, even though she was criticizing his article, he’d thought that maybe it was her way of saying she wanted to reconnect, that she wanted to be with him too. She’d always loved bantering with him—he’d thought the letter was part of it.

  He was wrong.

  He turned the truck toward the KOA. He was ready to curl up in his sleeping bag and try to pound out a few words for this article. He could write about the view from on top of the mountain. He’d been able to take a few shots with his camera phone—he’d bring them up on his laptop and see if they were good enough to include.

  Once inside his trailer, he opened his laptop and checked his email. Right at the top was a note from his editor. Just checking in. Give me a call, please.

  Marilyn didn’t keep regular office hours, so he went ahead and called her, knowing she’d answer. She only asked for calls if she really wanted them.