Her Inconvenient Groom by Niomie Roland

Chapter 38

 

“You sure you can make this?” Dustin asked Chantelle for perhaps the third time in the past two hours. They were on a forest trail that had started off flat, but which now had a noticeable incline. He was certainly fit enough to make it, but he wasn’t the one who had spent almost two months in the hospital. Months where she’d grown stronger and all the poison in her system had been eradicated by a counteractive drug. Her body and organs were back to normal.

“I’m not an invalid,” she told him snippily. “Stop treating me like one.”

“Nobody, saying you’re an invalid,” he answered, trying to hide his amusement. “But you haven’t spent much time on your legs since you were discharged. Maybe a major half-day hike isn’t a good idea.”

She brushed away a damp lock of hair and puffed, stubbornly shouldering her light backpack and taking another sip of plain spring water. Since discovering what had been happening to her flavored water over the past few months, she had sworn off any such beverage unless she dropped the slices of lemon into the bottle herself. “I told you—”

“You need this to soothe your soul,” he said, humoring her, slipping his arm through hers. They’d arrived at her mansion just two days before, and despite Rosemarie’s dire warnings and Dustin’s gentle dissuasion, she’d insisted on giving in to the urge to take a hike along the trail to an old family cabin, where she’d hiked with her parents as a child.

Dustin wasn’t too sure if the cabin was even being kept in a habitable condition, but he thought about the trauma Chantelle had suffered, and understood her overwhelming need to go to ground, return to a place where she’d been happy and safe.

But still, they’d been hiking awhile and there was no sign of the babbling stream she’d spoken so enthusiastically about, nor the large stone cabin with the front porch and chimney.

“See anything familiar?” he asked casually.

“Just a bit farther,” she insisted. “And the view is well worth it.”

Without saying anything, he lifted the backpack from her shoulders and added it to his. He could tell she was relieved, but this stubborn woman who he loved would never admit it. He smiled to himself.

“Dustin?”

“Huh?”

“You were engaged, right?”

He was immediately on his guard. “Yes, why?”

“Nothing,” she said, too casually. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

Not really, he thought. He was certain that her questions had been triggered by the numerous calls that he’d silenced without answering. She’d have been an idiot not to have noticed that.

He was reluctant to get into details, especially since Kim had dropped that bomb about Jen turning up at her house with a baby. But he felt that Chantelle had a right to know about his last relationship. He began to speak.

“Her name was Jennifer. We dated for a few years, and then we moved in together.”

“Did you love her?”

“Yes,” he said simply. But not the way I love you. “We got engaged and planned to marry in a year. Jen was attending community college, so I was the only one working. Still, we were doing okay cause I was able to save well over six figures. But then my sister’s condition worsened, and she needed more and more medical care. I wanted to use most of the money I’d saved up for our wedding and down payment on our first house to pay Arabella’s expenses. Jen was livid. All she could think about was a fancy wedding, with a designer gown, a big cake, and all the trimmings. We just couldn’t agree on it.”

“So you broke up with her.”

He shook his head, feeling a sharp stab of remembered pain. “She broke up with me. Technically, since she never said a word. I came home from work late one day and found her gone. My bank accounts empty.”

“Oh.” She touched him on the arm. “Sorry.”

He shrugged it away. “It’s fine.” It wasn’t really fine, he reminded himself. There was still the question of Jen’s incessant calls, and the baby Kim had told him about….

Then he felt a droplet of rain, fat and heavy, and simultaneously, they looked up. The clouds had gathered, and the slivers of sunlight that had been penetrating the forest canopy were being snuffed out.

“Ah, merde,” she cussed under her breath.

“We better find that cabin fast, sweetheart,” he said. He took her hand and together they began to run.

They rounded a clearing, and to Dustin’s relief, there was a building standing before them. Not one of stone, and there was no porch or chimney, but a building it was, and as the rain began to sting, it seemed like this would be their port in a storm. They ran to it, gasping and laughing.

The door was locked. Dustin guessed that, like many country people, the owners wouldn’t have made it a fortress. He was just able to stick his hand in through a narrow rectangular jalousie next to the door and pry the lock into the ‘open’ position.

By now the slanting rain had made them truly wet, so they tumbled gratefully in, hugging and giggling.

“Admit it,” he challenged her.

“Admit what?” she countered stubbornly.

“You got us lost.”

“But we aren’t lost.”

“Where are we, then?”

She gave him an impish grin and kissed him teasingly on the nose. “Here.”

Dustin looked down at her, amazed at the change he was seeing, from the straightlaced, painfully uptight businesswoman he’d met such a short time before, to this sweaty, flushed, panting girl in wet jeans and t-shirt. He wondered if she could see the changes in him, too.

“Well, it looks like ‘here’ is where we’re going to have to stay awhile, especially if that storm has anything to say about it.” He began darting around, looking to see if there were any signs of occupancy, of someone being there or having recently enough vacated that they were likely to return. But there was a single bed in one corner, and a bathroom off to the other side. Other than that, the kitchen, dining room and living room were all in the area where they were standing.

He noticed she was shivering and hurried back to her side. He rubbed her arms, stripping off his denim jacket to get at the long-sleeved flannel shirt, which was still dry enough to use as a towel. “Take your top off, sweetheart. I don’t want to see you back in the hospital with pneumonia.”

“The storm won’t last long,” she protested. “We’ll be back on the trail in no time.”

From the crack of thunder overhead, Dustin doubted that, but he didn’t want to worry her. “Maybe, but take it off anyway. You can’t stay wet like this.” He led her to the small, low bed and, after pressing down on it vigorously to make sure it wouldn’t collapse under them, urged her to sit. She let him peel the wet shirt up over her head like a child, and began the careful process of rubbing her down, inch by inch, limb by limb.