“That I don’t want to eat, even now.”
“Don’t move. Or do—
“Why?”
“Life rolls along, including the big-ass bear on the other bank.”
“Oh, fuck me.” Gull turned slowly, watched the big-ass bear lumber up toward the stream.
“This may be your fantasy come true, but I really think you should get out of the water.”
“Crap. Throw something at him,” Gull suggested as he stayed low, edging through the water.
“Like what, harsh words? Shit, shit, he’s looking at us.”
“Get one of the Pulaskis. I’m damned if I’m going to be eaten by a bear when I’m naked.”
“I’m sure it’s a more pleasant experience dressed. He’s not going to eat us. They eat berries and fish. Get out of the water so he doesn’t think you’re a really big fish.”
Gull pulled himself out, stood dripping, eyeing the bear and being eyed. “Retreat. Slowly. He’s probably just screwing with us, and he’ll go away, but in case.”
Even as Rowan reached down for the gear, the bear turned its back on them. It squatted, shat, then lumbered away the way it came.
“Well, I guess he showed us what he thinks of us.” Overcome, Rowan sat on the ground, roared with laughter. “A real man would go after him, make him pay for that insult—so I could then tend your wounds.”
“Too bad, you’re stuck with me.” Gull scooped both hands through his dripping hair. “Christ, I want that beer.”
As far as Gull was concerned, ready-to-eat pasta and beer by a crackling campfire in the remote mountain wilderness scored as romantic as candlelight and fine wine in crystal. And beat the traditional trappings on the fun scale by a mile.
She’d relaxed for the first time in weeks, he thought, basking in the aftermath of a job well done and the solitude of what they’d preserved.
“Does your family do the camping thing?” she asked him.
“Not so much. My aunt’s more the is-there-room-service? type. I used to go with some buddies. We’d head up the coast—road trip, you know? Pick a spot. I always figured to head east, take on the Appalachian Trail, but between this and the arcade, I haven’t pulled that one off.”
“That’d be a good one. We mostly stuck to Montana, for recreation. There’s so much here anyway. My dad would work it out so he’d have two consecutive days off every summer, and take me. We’d never know when he’d get them, so it was always spur-of-the-moment.”
“That made it cooler,” Gull commented, and she just beamed at him.
“It really did. It didn’t occur to me until after I’d joined the unit that wilderness camping on his days off probably wouldn’t have been his first choice. I imagine he could’ve used that room service.”
“Kids come first, right? The universal parental code.”
“I guess it should be. I was thinking about Dolly and her father earlier, and the way they’d tear into each other. Was it their fractured dynamic that made her the way she was, or did the way she was fracture the dynamic?”
“Things are hardly ever all one way or the other.”
“More a blend,” she agreed. “A little from each column. Don’t you wonder what aimed her at Latterly? There are plenty of unmarried men she could’ve hooked up with. And he was, what, about fifteen years older and not what you’d call studly.”
“Maybe he was a maniac in bed.”
“Yeah, still waters and so on, but you’ve got to get into bed to find that out. A married guy with three kids. A God guy. If she’d really planned on reeling him in toward the ‘I do’s,’ didn’t she consider what her life would be like? A preacher’s wife, and stepmother of three? She’d have hated it.”
“It might just have been a matter of proving something. Married God guy, father of three. And she thinks, I could get him if I wanted.”
“I don’t get that kind of thinking,” she stated. “For a one-night stand, I can see it. You’ve got an itch, you scope out the talent in the bar, rope one out of the herd to scratch it. I don’t see wrecking a family for another notch on the bedpost.”
“Because you’re thinking like you.” Gull opened the last two beers. “The older-man thing. He’d probably be inclined to indulge her, and be really grateful that a woman her age, with her looks, wanted to sleep with him. It’s a pretty good recipe for infatuation on both sides.”
She angled her head. “You know, you’re right. A guy a little bored in his marriage, a needy young single mother. There’s a recipe. Of course, for all we know Latterly might’ve been a hound dog boning half the women in his congregation, and Dolly was just the latest.”
“If so, the cops’ll find out, if they haven’t already. Sex is never off the radar.”
“Maybe they’ll have this thing wrapped up when we get back.” She broke off a piece of pound cake. “Nobody talks about it much, but it’s on everybody’s mind. L.B.’s especially because he’s got to think about everybody, evaluate everybody, worry about everybody.”
“Yeah, he’s handling a lot. He has a smooth way of juggling.”
“My rookie season, we had Bootstrap. He was okay, ran things pretty smooth, but you could tell, even a rook could tell, his head was already halfway into retirement. He had this cabin up in Washington State, and that’s where he wanted to be. Everybody knew it was his last season. He kept a distance, if you know what I mean, with the rookies especially.”
Gull nodded, sampled pound cake. Ambrosia. “He didn’t want to get close. Didn’t want to make any more personal bonds.”
“I think that was a good part of it. Then L.B. took over. You know how he is. He’s the boss, but he’s one of us. Everybody knows if you need to bitch or whine or let off steam, you can go to him.”
“Here’s to L.B.”
“Bet your ass.” She tipped her head as they clinked beer cans. “I like having sex with you.”
Those cat eyes gleamed in the firelight. “That’s a nonsequitur I can get behind.”
“Seriously. It occurs to me that the season’s half over, and I’ve never had another one like it. Murder, arson, mayhem, and I’m having sex regularly.”
“Let’s hope the last element is the only one that spills over into the second half.”
“Absolutely. The thing is, Gulliver, while I really like sex with you, I also realize that if we stopped having sex—”
“Bite your tongue.”
“If we did,” she said with a laugh, “I’d still like sitting around the fire with you, and talking about whatever.”
“Same here. Only I want the sex.”
“Handy for both of us. What makes it better, over and above the regular, is you don’t secretly wish I’d be something else. Less tied up with the job, more inclined to fancy underwear.”
He pulled out a cigar, lit it. Blew out a long stream. “I like fancy underwear. Just for the record.”
“It doesn’t bother you that I had a hand in training you, and I might be the one giving you orders on a fire.”
She took the cigar when he offered it, enjoyed the tang. “Because you know who you are, and that matters. I can’t push you around, and that matters, too. And there’s this thing I didn’t think mattered because it never did. But it does when it’s mixed in with the rest. When it’s blended, like we said before. You bring me flowers in a bottle.”
“I think of you,” he said simply.
She pulled on the cigar again, giving her emotions time to settle, then passed it back to him. “I know, and that’s another new element for the season. And here’s one more. I guess the thing is, Gull, I’m in care with you, too.”
He reached out for her hand. “I know. But it’s nice to hear you say it.”
“Know-it-all.” Still holding his hand, she tipped her head back, looked at the star-swept sky. “It’d be nice to just stay here a couple of days. No worries, no wondering.”
