Cindy Gerard - The Way Home

She’d lived with that man. She’d loved and tried to understand that man. But neither love nor understanding had been enough to keep him home, keep him happy, or keep him alive.

AWARE THAT TY WATCHED HER in a curious silence, Jess poured the minnows and enough water to sustain them into a clear plastic bag, filled it with air from the pressure hose, and fastened it with a rubber band.

“Need anything else?” She held out the bag, still doing her best to avoid eye contact.

The long silence that followed had her tensing muscles she wasn’t sure had ever been tensed before. When he finally shifted his weight and reached for the bag, she thought, Here it comes, and waited on an indrawn breath.

“Maybe a pole?”

That finally brought her head up. “Excuse me?”

His blue eyes flashed with amusement as he glanced from her hair to her mouth, then back to her eyes. “A fishing pole? I’ve heard it’s mandatory.”

Right. OK. A fishing pole was absolutely mandatory. If he’d actually come here to fish. Which, clearly, he hadn’t.

Or maybe he had, and she’d read everything wrong. People traveled to Lake Kabetogama from all over the country. The scenery was stunning. The national park bordering the lake was pure and pristine. You wanted to get away from it all? You came to the North Country, where you could fish and camp and, yes, maybe even see a bear.

So… what if he had come here with fishing in mind, and all this absurd schoolgirl hormonal activity was a result of a sad case of wishful thinking? Which was another surprise, because she’d had no idea she’d been wishing for anything. Her life was good. Maybe a little lonely. Especially today.

And maybe she needed to get a grip, because she really didn’t want to travel that road.

“Let’s get you set up with a pole, then,” she said, working hard to dismiss the notion that she suddenly felt more disappointment over the possibility that he’d actually come here to fish than apprehension over the notion that he hadn’t.

All purpose and pretense and business, she headed for the back wall, paneled in age-yellowed knotty pine and lined with dozens of fishing rods and reels.

“So, how’ve you been, Jess?” he asked softly from behind her.

She stopped mid-reach, then slowly pulled a rod off the rack, turned around, and handed it to him. “Good. I’ve been good. You?”

He studied the rod, tested its flex, then met her eyes on a long, slow blink. “Good. Yeah. I’ve been OK.”

It was only a blink. But it did things to her. Things that created a silence that became a little too lengthy and compelled her to take a stab at filling it. “You and your brother and your friends… you’re quite the legend around the lake, you know.”

He looked a little disappointed that she’d decided to keep up the dodge-and-weave game, but one corner of his mouth finally lifted in an ironic smile. “I thought you had to be dead to become a legend.”

“Since the biggest news this far north generally involves fishing and the weather, stories don’t need as much time to marinate.”

He got very quiet then. Thoughtful quiet. Troubled quiet. The kind of quiet that seemed personal and made her want to fill it. Again.

“So what are you fishing for?”

His grin came back slowly. “Um… isn’t that a redundant question?”

How could she not smile at that? He made it very easy. “What kind of fish? Walleye? Northern pike? Bass?”

“Ah. How ’bout we shoot for the walleye? Do they all come with saddles?”

An involuntary laugh burst out before she could stop it.

Across the road from her gas pumps stood a gigantic fiberglass walleye, complete with a dozen steps for the kiddies to climb up and sit in the saddle strapped to its back so Mom and Dad could snap their pictures. As a tourist gimmick, it was pretty corny, but since the lion’s share of the businesses around the lake depended on fishing for revenue, it was also highly effective in drawing travelers off the main highway.

“Last I knew,” she said, “only the big guy has one.”

“Good to know.”

Darn, that smile did things to her. Things she felt woefully unprepared to deal with. Just like it was hard to deal with his presence. He’d been dressed in winter gear when she’d seen him before, but even the bulky quilted outerwear hadn’t been able to hide the fact that he was fit and fine. Today he wore a pristine white T-shirt and worn jeans that proved she’d been right about his build. He was tan and tall and strong in the shoulders, and she didn’t have to guess if his snug T-shirt concealed a set of six-pack abs to go with the biceps that bulged beneath his sleeves.

He had such an easy way about him. A man comfortable in his own skin. A man unimpressed by himself and by the reaction he most likely got from women. But as this drew out, he also looked uncertain—and that got to her more than how physically striking he was. A man who looked like him shouldn’t feel insecure around a woman like her.

She was no fashion plate. She didn’t have the time or, since J.R. died, the inclination to be. Makeup generally equaled tinted lip balm. The last time her plain brown hair had seen a pair of scissors, they’d been in her own hands. She kept it short out of necessity and softly curled because of heredity. She was tan from working outside in the sun, because shorts, tank tops, and flip-flops were her uniform this time of year.

By no stretch of anyone’s imagination would she be considered voluptuous, but she was proud of her toned limbs, which he’d been eyeing. And whoa, the silence had stretched out too long again as she’d wished that she’d put on a little mascara and done more than finger-comb her hair after her shower.

“Are you staying on the lake?” she asked, half afraid of his answer.

“Hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. Seeing you was as far as I got with the plan.”

Hokay. There it was. The part that made her heart pound. No more pretending that he’d come here to fish.

And he had a plan.

She should tell him, very sensibly, that this was not a good idea. That he should go back to Florida and leave her peace of mind and her equilibrium and her fragile sense of stability intact.

Except the truth was, none of those things had been stable or whole since she’d lost J.R. All of those things were raw and frayed and so far from healed that she had no convincing argument that his departure would make it better.

She really looked at him then. At this man who had blown in on that snowstorm and whom she’d never thought she would see again but had foolishly thought of so often since then.

Too aware of his gaze on her and feeling a sudden need for distance, she moved around him to return to the front of the store. “You should be all set, then. All you need is a fishing license.”

His footsteps made the floorboards creak as he followed. Not crowding her. Trailing her slow and easy, giving her space and time to think as she slipped behind the counter, so distracted that she nearly tripped over the sprawled pup again.

“Jess. Let’s get this out in the open. You don’t seriously think I came all this way to fish, right?”

She faced him from behind the safety of the high counter-top. Scratched Plexiglas covered a sales-tax chart, a map of the lake, a copy of the fishing regulations, and a dozen old cartoons her dad had cut out of newspapers dating as far back as the ’60s—all of which she couldn’t tear her gaze away from.

Well. If she hadn’t figured out that he’d come here to see her before, the sudden rasp in his voice and the nuclear explosion taking place in her chest were major tip-offs.