After church the next day, Jed drove to a trailhead in the Boise foothills, following directions he’d found on the internet, and parked his rental car in a leveled area. Half a dozen other vehicles were parked there already. The temperature had climbed to seventy-five degrees, and wispy clouds, undisturbed by any breeze, were scattered around the blue sky.
“Perfect weather,” Holly said as she got out of the car. She was dressed all in yellow, from the visor on her head to her shirt and shorts to the athletic shoes on her feet.
“You’re right. Perfect.” But he wasn’t thinking about the weather when he said it.
Holly slid her arms through the straps of a backpack. “This was a great idea. I’ve spent way too much time cooped up indoors lately.” She drew a deep breath, head back and face toward the sun.
Jed dropped the car keys into a small zippered pocket in his own backpack, and then the two of them set off along the trail.
The foothills in early May were covered in long grasses, wildflowers, bitter brush, and sagebrush. According to Ben, the Boise front served as grazing land in the spring for about twenty-eight thousand sheep. With any luck, they might catch a glimpse of one of the large bands of ewes and lambs.
“If you get near them,” his cousin had told him, “pay attention. Those Great Pyrenees they use for herding mean business if they feel the sheep are threatened.”
Jed looked up the hillsides. If any sheep were within hiking distance, they were hidden by the rolling hillsides.
“No sheep?” Holly asked, guessing his thoughts.
“I don’t see any.” He glanced her way. “Grant says he remembers the sheep drives going right through downtown Boise on their way to the mountains when he was younger. That was back in the fifties and sixties. But they were doing the drives for decades before that. Can’t imagine what that must have looked like, seeing twenty thousand sheep trotting down Main Street. But then, the population of Boise was a whole lot less fifty years ago.”
Holly grinned at him. “Sometimes you sound like a historian.”
“Do I?” He chuckled. “Yeah, I guess I do. I never used to care much about history. Did okay in it in school, but it wasn’t what I focused on. But these past few weeks, going through the boxes of old family photos and letters I got from a cousin, I have to admit, it’s piqued my interest more.”
Conversation ended as they followed the trail up a steady incline. The ground was hard and dry beneath their feet, but evidence of earlier spring rains was carved into the earth. When they reached the top of the hill, they paused to take in the view—both in front of them and behind them.
“So pretty,” Holly said.
From this vantage point, Jed could see a stretch of the Boise River as it flowed westward, wending its way through the center of the city and across the valley floor. In Andrew Henning’s day, the population of Boise had been about twenty-five thousand, and the valley had been farmland or desert from here to the Oregon border. Now homes and subdivisions were spreading to the south and west, joining one city to another, gobbling up both farmland and desert. In some ways, he envied his great-grandfather that simpler life. Well, maybe not simpler. Andrew had lived through the Great Depression, a second world war, and other tumultuous decades besides. But at least the area had been less crowded.
With a soft laugh, Holly said, “Your roots are showing again.”
For a second, he didn’t understand what she meant. Then he did, and he laughed with her. “Guilty.”
“Do you feel the same way about where you live now?”
He thought about the question before answering. “There’s lots to love about where I live. It’s beautiful. Greener because of all the rain. The forests are different. The ocean is close by.” He looked over the valley again. “But there’s something about all this that makes me feel like I’ve come home. It’s hard to put my finger on why.”
In unspoken agreement, they turned and began walking again, following the trail higher and higher. A couple of times they were passed by mountain bikers. Another time they met three hikers with their dogs. Greetings were exchanged. “Beautiful day.” “Great weather.” “Nice dog.” It was almost another hour before bleating sounds punctuated the silence, telling Jed and Holly that they were about to get their earlier wish. They crested the hillside and saw them: a band of sheep grazing in a long, narrow draw.
“Look.” Jed pointed. An enormous white dog had stopped to stare at them, assessing whether or not they were a threat. “He’s got my attention.”
“Mine too.”
Jed removed the phone from his pocket and snapped photos of the dog, the sheep, and finally, a herder on horseback who rode into view before he was done. Then, when she wasn’t looking his way, he snapped a few of Holly and knew he would spend a lot more time looking at those photos than the ones of the herd.
* * *
While Jed took his photos, Holly removed the water bottle from her backpack and took several big swallows. It had been too long since she’d done something like this, since she’d gotten away from work and her phone and her worries. Time to simply breathe deeply and enjoy the beauty of God’s creation.
“Thanks, Jed.”
He looked over at her.
“I needed this.”
“Me too.” He smiled.
In that moment she realized she wasn’t afraid. She knew she could still get hurt. She knew she might even be wrong about Jed. He might not be all that he appeared to be, all that she wanted him to be. She knew he might be gone in another month or two. But still she wasn’t afraid. She almost wished—
A bike came sailing over the rise, its tires leaving the ground. Jed grabbed Holly with both arms to pull her out of the way an instant before the bike would have hit her. They went down together, Jed taking the brunt of the fall. Holly heard dogs barking and lifted her head from Jed’s chest to see two Great Pyrenees charging across the draw in their direction. Thankfully, a sharp command from the sheepherder stopped the dogs.
“Dude. You two okay?”
She turned her head, squinting into the sun, to see the cyclist standing beside them, a gloved hand outstretched.
“Sorry ’bout that. Didn’t mean to run you down.”
Reluctantly, she took his hand and let him pull her up. Jed got to his feet right behind her.
“You okay?” the cyclist repeated.
“Yeah,” Jed answered. “We’re fine.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.” He looked at Holly, and she nodded.
“Okay, then. Again, real sorry.” In no time the guy was back on his bike and riding away, as if the encounter never happened.
Holly watched him go. “I don’t think he even noticed the sheep.”
Jed made a sound halfway between a laugh and a grunt.
She looked at him again. “Turn around.”
When he complied, she brushed the dirt, twigs, and pebbles from the back of his shirt. That’s when she noticed his right elbow was bloody. “Hey, you are hurt. You’re bleeding.” She touched him, just above the scrape.
He lifted his arm, bending it and stretching to see what she meant, but he couldn’t contort quite far enough. “You sure?”
“I’m sure.” Holly looked for her water bottle. She’d dropped it when Jed grabbed her. She found it beneath a sagebrush. Next she withdrew a clean cloth from the backpack. It only took her a few moments more to cleanse the wound, dry it, spread some ointment over it, and then top it off with a bandage.
“Good grief, woman. What all do you have in that backpack?”
She laughed. “It’s good to be prepared.”
“Were you a Girl Scout?”
“No. But my family loved to go biking, hiking, and camping, and my dad taught his daughters well.”
“I can see that.”
This time his smile made a shiver run down her spine. A pleasurable kind of shiver. One of anticipation. Something flickered in his eyes. Understanding, perhaps. With it his smile faded. His eyes seemed to darken as he gazed intently into hers. His right hand rose to cup her cheek, the flat of his hand gentle against her skin. She couldn’t help but press into it. She was tempted to close her eyes, but she didn’t want to break the look passing between them. His face drew closer. Was this happening?
“Holly.” He whispered her name, as soft as a caress.
She feared her knees would buckle. Breathe, she reminded herself. Just breathe.
When their lips met, she closed her eyes and gave herself over to the wonderful sensations that swirled through her. She hadn’t known how much she’d wanted to be kissed by him until it happened.
His hand moved from the side of her face to the small of her back, freeing her to lift her arms to encircle his neck. At the same time, she rose on tiptoes, wanting more, wanting all. Her former fears, her excessive caution—it was all forgotten.
Of course, the kiss had to end eventually. It was Jed who drew back first, forcing Holly to look at him again. His dark eyes seemed to smolder, and her stomach tumbled in response. Then a slow smile tipped the corners of his mouth.
“This isn’t the setting where I expected that to happen.”
“You expected me to kiss you?” Amusement filled her question, and she realized how happy she felt. Happier than she’d felt in such a long time.
“Imagined it, then.”
“Oh, you’ve been imagining it.”
His voice deepened. “More than you know, Ms. Stanford. More than you know.”
She laughed aloud.
Jed glanced toward the band of sheep, and she followed his gaze to discover the sheepherder watching them and grinning. Jed gave the man a wave. “We have an audience.”
“So I see.” She waved to the sheepherder too. “It’s only fair, I suppose. You were taking pictures of him and his sheep.”
Jed chuckled. “At least he doesn’t have a camera.” He looked at her again. “Come on. We’d better start back to the car.”
She wished she could refuse. She wished they could stay right there and she could relive the kiss all over again. But then he placed his arm around her shoulders, and she realized she would have gone with him wherever he wanted to go.