Discreet by Nicole French

3

“It all needs a lot of work, Mama. I don’t know how else to say it.”

I plopped into one of the chairs on the front lawn and handed Mama a bottle of water, hoping to temper the rum and Coke she was already nursing after work today. I took a long drink from my own bottle and used the bottom of my stained t-shirt to wipe sweat off my brow. Before sweeping and collecting dried pine needles around the cottages, I finished reviewing the list of Mama’s maintenance requests and had made a list of my own. If she was serious about turning this place into a B&B, there was so, so much to be done. But for some reason, the looks on Cathy’s and Lucas’s faces just made me that much more determined to help her do it.

The water bottle toppled over on the grass while Mama took a long sip of her drink. She grimaced and shook her head, her bangs bouncing slightly. “Don’t sugarcoat it, Maggie Mae. Lay it on me now.”

I sighed. Over the last few days, I’d been combing through all of the requirements needed to get this business off the ground, and Lucas had come by earlier to walk around the property with me, doing an informal inspection. Mama’s pet project had morphed into my crusade.

“You and Alan did some nice cosmetic stuff on the property with the paint and the landscaping. But the two outer cottages need new plumbing since last winter’s freeze, and they both look like they have some pretty bad flood damage from the spring flooding that will probably require us to replace the drywall completely. All three houses need new roofs, but maybe we can get away with some patching. I don’t know. On top of that, if you want to get licensed, there are a bunch of things that have to be done to the stairs, to the electric and heating systems, all in order to get the place up to code.”

I looked to Mama, who sipped nervously on her cocktail. I knew what she was thinking. Repairs meant money, and money was what neither of us had at the moment.

“This is beyond me, Mama,” I admitted. “I can paint and clean. Some minor landscaping, help with the livestock. But these are major infrastructural problems. You need someone who can help you with this stuff now, even if we don’t try for the B&B thing.”

“And with what money am I supposed to do that, Margaret?” she bit out. She stared angrily out at the lake, refusing to meet my imploring gaze.

“Mom,” I said gently. “We’ll figure it out.”

I didn’t know what else to say. She didn’t move, likely hearing the uncertainty in my voice. I reached out and touched her arm gently, causing her to look down at my fingers on her freckled forearm. When she finally looked back up, her eyes shone angrily with a fine gloss of tears. Tears and drink. Always drink.

I removed my hand.

“That goddamn bastard,” she muttered fiercely. “Left me in this mess. We sunk everything into this place, Maggie. Everything. I’ve got nothing left. Do you understand that?”

I didn’t have to answer. I’d seen the state of her finances. She had liquidated her entire 401k in order to finance the remodel on the property, all wasted through Alan’s bad investment schemes and debt maneuvering. Just before he left, Mama filed bankruptcy. This property was all she had left, and only because it was her home.

She looked back at the lake, taking deep breaths. She slid the sunglasses resting on her head down over her eyes, masking her emotions while she drained the rest of her glass. I stood up, sensing her need to be alone. You couldn’t talk to her when she was like this, though I’d almost certainly be picking her up off the couch in another few hours.

“I’m going to go for a run,” I said. “I’ll take a quick look in the storage shack to see if there is anything worth selling on my way up to the road.” It was a feeble attempt to make things right, but I already knew I’d be calling Lucas tomorrow. So much for independence.

“There’s not,” Mama snapped. “But you take your time. Take the whole evening if you need. Honestly, Maggie, I just want to be alone without you bothering me for once.”

I tried not to let her words hurt, though the sharpness in her voice reminded me of why I left in the first place. And just how much worse it could get.

“I’ll look anyway,” I said quietly. Then I patted her on the shoulder and left.

* * *

It turnedout that Mama was right—all that was left in storage were boxes of yard sale knickknacks, my childhood paraphernalia, and a few pieces of miscellaneous furniture and other odds and ends. Certainly nothing of monetary value.

But if I was being honest, that wasn’t what I was looking for anyway. I found those things right away: a bag of the gear I once used to swim laps across the lake in the early morning, and my old bike, resting in the back next to a pump. Nothing was too out of shape. The swimmer’s buoys just needed to be pumped up, and the bike, though definitely in need of a tune-up, still seemed rideable. Thinking vaguely of the triathlon flyer, I decided a ride sounded better than a run. I used to cycle the hilly twenty-eight miles around the lake on a regular basis. If I could still do it now, maybe doing a triathlon wasn’t so far-fetched. And I couldn’t ask for a better distraction.

After pumping up the tires, I wheeled the bike up to the road. Some cloud cover had finally settled across the skies after almost a week of sweat-inducing sunshine. I turned left down the backside of the hill, basking in the peace of the lake and a sense of freedom I hadn’t felt in years.

Come back soon, Flower.

It was what he always said anytime I left him. For a walk. A run. A gig. A job. In the time we lived together, I had stopped running or doing anything outside completely, locked instead in his lavish apartment. I was lucky if I found an hour a week to myself, let alone an afternoon to do what I wanted. He so intensely resented anything outside of our life together that gradually, I gave up almost everything that mattered to me to make him happy. Everything except music, and for that most of all, he had punished me. A slap here. A shout there. And eventually, so much worse. Still I had taken it, having been convinced for most of my life that I was never enough.

I coasted down the hill, feeling that knot in my stomach release just a bit more, continuing even when I started to pedal uphill and felt a long unfamiliar burn in my thighs. Go! I thought fiercely. This was my time. I didn’t want to waste it.

For most of the ride, I did all right. I had to stop around mile eight to walk the bike up one nasty hill, but from there, I rode another ten, huffing and puffing up the smaller hills in order to fly down again, the comforting smell of dry pine needles and briny lake water filling my nose as I went.

Unfortunately, it was in the middle of one long coast with my eyes partially shut that I missed a massive pothole. It pitched me off my bike and down another steep hillside. I rolled about twenty feet through the soft, needle-covered forest floor until I hit the base of a large pine tree with a thump that made me see stars.

I lay there for a second and focused on breathing in and out with the wind. Could I move my fingers and toes? The answer was yes—okay, I wasn’t dead or paralyzed. I sucked in another large breath and sat up slowly, feeling the side of my head that had smacked the dirt and gravel. There was only a slight scrape, although I’d definitely have a bump there later. I didn’t think I had a concussion. And shockingly, I didn’t appear to have any other major scrapes and bruises—just an unholy amount of pine needles and dirt clinging to my bike shorts and shirt.

I looked up the hill to where my bike lay innocuously on its side.

“You little shit,” I denounced it.

There was nothing to do but get up and ride home. All nine-plus miles there. But when I tried to push myself up, a shooting pain lanced through my right ankle, and immediately, I yowled and fell right back on my ass, sliding a few more feet down the hill.

“Fuck!” I cried, clasping the offended body part. “Shit! You fucker!” I yelled at the bike, now more than a little annoyed with it.

Slowly, I managed to pull myself up onto one leg next to a tree. I looked down the hill, hoping to find a house or a cabin or someplace to find help. I didn’t know many people on this side of the lake, although there had been rumors of a clan of skinheads since I was a kid (not that I’ve ever seen any). Even though neighboring Idaho supposedly had a fairly large white power community, I’d always thought there were more likely meth labs than Neo-Nazis. Still, considering my skin was a few shades darker than most folks around here, and I had the notoriety of being Ellie Sharp’s bastard kid, I wasn’t interested in taking my chances.

“Great,” I muttered. “Now I’m going to be whacked by Walter White.”

“There are worse ways to go.”

At the sudden deep, male voice behind me, I screamed and jumped onto my bad leg, falling again and rolling another three feet down the hill. I scrambled back up, ignoring the pinches around my ankle and calf, then grabbed another tree trunk, looked up, and froze. There he was: a real, live yeti.

Well, not quite. Upon closer inspection, it was a man, but only just. He was tall—at least six feet, more likely six-two or six-three. Dressed in grungy cargo pants and a t-shirt that looked like it had more holes than fabric, his tan, sinewy limbs filled out hole-ridden cotton better than it deserved, revealing muscles that looked more like the product of natural hard work than hours spent in a gym.

His hair was a wild riot of dark blond that, when combined with a severely unkempt beard that extended well past his collar, made him strongly resemble a lion. And yet, even in the midst of this wild man's ferocious appearance, a pair of equally wild green eyes looked just the slightest bit familiar. Did I know him from somewhere? Maybe an old high school classmate, or someone who used to hang around Lucas’s crowd from before. I squinted, trying to place him.

His mouth, wide and full, twitched. He tilted his head, and something in me clicked, like a lock that had just been picked.

Gorgeous.

The word echoed through my head before I could even think consciously.

Wait, what?

The man shuffled down the hill, then reached out a hand. Slowly, I took it, though I gasped at the warmth of his grip, apparent even in the early evening sunshine. His hand was broad, practically a paw, and slightly calloused across his palm and fingertips. This was someone who spent his days using his body, not sitting indoors.

He jerked at the contact too, like he’d been shocked. His squeeze tightened, and I allowed him to guide me toward the road.

“I—uh—thanks,” I stuttered, hopping toward him on one foot and nearly losing my balance again.

He didn’t answer, just cast a look over at my hobbling form, pulled my hand around his neck, and slung an arm around my waist before lifting me completely off the ground, effectively carrying me the rest of the way up the hill. I might have protested more if I hadn’t been one hundred percent entranced by the solid wall of man pressed against me, feeling intoxicatingly…good. Because God, did he smell good.

Like rain. That’s what it was. Soap, of course, and a bit of sweat—he had clearly been in the middle of some kind of workout when he’d seen me fall down the hill. But through all of that was a fresh, vibrant scent, the kind I used to crave when I was stuck in the city for weeks at a time. The kind that would make me run up to the roof of my building when summer thunderstorms hit Manhattan, or make me stop on the side of the road when I’d cross the unlikely bay or river driving between gigs. He smelled like water. Briny. A little sweet. Unbelievably fresh and potent.

It wasn’t until he set me down next to the fairly unkempt dirt road that I realized we weren’t just stuck in the woods. We were obviously on someone’s property—his property, if the narrow driveway, the beat-up Toyota pickup, and the battered wood cabin were any indicators.

“There,” he said, stepping a solid three feet away, almost as if he couldn’t stand to be next to me. He wrinkled his nose. It only then occurred to me that after an eighteen-mile bike ride, I probably reeked. Fantastic. Mountain man was all delectable fresh water, and I probably smelled like a shoe.

“You all right now?” he asked. “Those pine needles are slick.”

I had to physically fight the urge not to step back toward him to answer. What the hell was wrong with me?

“Um, y-yeah,” I managed, unable to cover my stammer. “I’m f-fine.”

His gaze dragged over me. In the sunlight, his green eyes were clearly flecked with gold. We stared at each other, letting the sounds of the wind in the trees and the cry of the osprey fill the space between us. My heart thumped. A vein in the man’s temple twitched.

“So, um, thank you…” I ventured, waiting for him to fill in his name. I extended a hand, telling myself it was the polite thing to do, not because I wanted to touch him again.

But the man only stared at it, then shoved a hand into his wild hair and looked back up at me like I’d just offered him a handful of stinging nettles.

“Do you need a ride home?” he asked abruptly.

“I, uh, it’s okay, I can just—” I took a step backward, and immediately, my ankle buckled. Shit. I could stand on it, but the idea of riding nine miles home sounded like pure torture.

Goldilocks (as he had become the second he refused to tell me his name) glared at my ankle like it had personally offended him. I glared back. He blinked.

“Let me grab my keys,” he grumbled and jogged down the hill into the house, returning a few moments later. “Come on,” he said, and before I could reply, squatted down and scooped me into his arms, dangling my feet over one elbow.

Damn. That smell. It really was even better up close.

“Here.” Goldilocks dumped me unceremoniously into the passenger seat of his burnt-orange pickup, then dusted off his hands, like he was trying to get rid of all traces of me.

He paused, one hand on the door while he watched me situate myself. When I looked up, his penetrating green gaze practically bore through me.

“What?” I asked, suddenly picking at my hair. God, I probably still had pine needles everywhere. We were quite a pair. Yeti-locks and the pine needle bear. Awesome.

The stranger jerked, as if pulled out of a trance, then folded his mouth into a thin, tight line. “Nothing,” he snapped and shut the door in my face.

I sat awkwardly as he walked around the car, got in, and started it up. The windows were down and the old engine was loud, but that did nothing to distract from the immediacy of his scent crowding me in the small cab. Rainwater, yeah. And something else, something sweet. Caramel? Chocolate?

I wasn’t ready to think about just why I was so interested.

“Um, that’s my bike on the road,” I pointed out as he backed past the old Schwinn lying in a heap by the potholes.

Goldilocks rolled his lips together, cast his eyes upward like he was searching for patience, and stopped the car to throw the bike in the back.

“Your tires look like shit,” he remarked once he got back in and started driving. “No wonder you crashed. They are completely bald.”

“They were fine until I hit that pothole up there. The bigger problem is probably that I had my eyes shut.”

At that, his full mouth twitched again. This time it was definitely noticeable.

“You were riding with your eyes shut?”

I blushed. “Only for a second. Don’t you ever get that feeling when you’re just kind of caught up in how good something feels? I was coasting, and the wind was blowing, and it just felt awesome.” I sighed, and giggled to myself. “Well, until I toppled down the hill and busted my ankle. But before that I felt…free.”

“Free,” he repeated quietly. The thrum of his voice filled the car, and almost matched the engine.

We passed more than half the drive around the lake without saying anything beyond me giving directions and him grunting in response. Either the radio didn’t work, or the guy wasn’t feeling music. But I wasn’t the kind of person who could sit easily in silence.

“So, um, I haven’t seen you around. Have you lived on the lake long?”

He darted a side-eyed green look at me. “A few years.”

I ventured a smile. Okay, he was talking. “Where were you from originally?”

Another suspicious glance. Jesus, the guy could seriously break glass with his intensity. “Connecticut.”

“Connecticut, really? You’re a long way from home. What brought you all the way to Newman Lake?”

He worried his jaw for a minute, and a gust of wind through the window caused his beard to wave slightly. I didn’t even like facial hair on men—it obscured the face, not to mention made it scratchy when you kissed—but this guy, those eyes. I swear, I could barely see anything past them.

“I just wanted a change of pace,” he said finally, gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white.

I nodded. “I get that. That’s why I’m back myself, I suppose. I was actually living in New York for the last eight years, believe it or not. But I grew up here, so this is home, I guess. I’m Maggie, by the way. You, um, you actually look kind of familiar. Are you sure we haven’t met before, maybe back in the cit—”

“We don’t need to do that,” he cut in abruptly.

I recoiled against the force of his voice. “Don’t need to do what? Turn left here, by the way.”

His eyes remained steadfast on the road as he turned onto West Newman Lake Road. “The whole getting to know you thing. ‘What’s your name, where’re you from, blah, blah, blah.’ I don’t give a shit who you are, and that’s all you need to know about me. I’m taking you home because it was the quickest way to get you the hell off my property.”

Then he finally did look at me again, and his expression sliced like a knife. Everything about him seemed etched by a razor: the long line of his nose, the chiseled edges of his muscles, the angles of his bent knees and elbows. There was nothing soft about this man. He was sharp. Feral.

I flinched. I couldn’t help it. His eyes flickered over me with something I might have confused with concern if I didn’t already know what a dick he was.

“Hey,” he started. “Ah—Maggie. I—”

“It’s fine,” I said, hating how small my voice had become. I crossed my arms and wrapped my hands over my shoulders, hugging myself. I had already lived with someone who treated me like shit. I wasn’t interested in putting up with it from complete strangers, ride home or not. “You can pull over at the sign right there.”

“It’s all right, I’ll just drive you down to the—”

“It’s fine,” I said again. “Just pull over.”

He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something more, then sighed and did as I asked. I hopped out while he pulled my bike down from the bed. I took it and wheeled it to the curb, limping on one foot. The pain was already better, but I’d be exclusively swimming for at least a week if I still wanted to compete next month.

“You all right?”

When I turned around, Goldilocks was back in the driver’s seat, his door still open as he watched my progress. One long, muscled leg balanced on the ground. I parked the bike, then hopped back over to him as defiantly as I could.

“I’m the hell off your property now,” I told him evenly. “So we don’t have to do this. Thanks for the ride.”

Before he could reply, draw me back in with those hypnotic green eyes and that scent that made me forget where I was, I shut the car door in the stranger’s face. Eager to return to the house that, for all its faults, never left me feeling as disoriented and confused as I’d been for the past twenty minutes.