Briony lurched out of his grasp.
Erik opened his eyes to find hers staring back at him, wide and glistening with something that looked like panic.
Before he could move, she scrambled to her knees and moved away from him.
“Wait—” Erik said, struggling to stand and failing. “Wait—what’s wrong?”
She brushed off her thighs, then looked away.
“Sarah? Are you all right?”
She nodded quickly. “I’m fine. I’m—fine.” She sat back against her heels, her hand running awkwardly over her hair and throat.
“Can you tell me what just happened?”
Briony wrapped her arms around her waist, looking as if she was going to be sick. She was shaking visibly.
Erik sat back on his heels as well, waiting in silence.
Finally she spoke, and her voice sounded tight, constricted.
“I’m willing to be your guide and your memory of the Adirondacks, Erik. But I’m not willing to let my heart—or my body—be your souvenir.”
“I—I would never expect or want that, Sarah. How could you think that I would?” Tentatively he reached out and touched her elbow, trying her to keep from falling over.
“How do I know what you expect or want? I’ve spent a few moments yesterday and the better part of today with you, that’s all. We’ve just met. God, I can’t believe I’m alone with you here—I must be out of my mind.”
She pulled away from him and stood suddenly, brushing the grass and twigs off her jeans. Erik stood quickly as well.
“I don’t know what I said or did to upset you, Sarah, but I’m sorry,” he said nervously. “I didn’t mean to move too fast or make you uncomfortable. I apologize.”
She stopped brushing off her jeans and looked at him, profound pain in her amazing eyes.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Erik, and I’m sorry for making you feel that you did. But you’re leaving in less than six weeks. You’ll go back to following whatever story of misery will pay you in the sunny places of the world, and I’ll probably never see you again. Please don’t take my heart with you. Because you could, you know—much too easily. You’re right—you are really charming. And that’s dangerous. I have to keep reminding myself that I don’t really even know you.”
Erik exhaled slowly, and made his voice as calm and reasonable as he could.
“Maybe that’s because you really do. Maybe we’re kindred spirits.” “What does that mean?”
“Please—can we sit down again? I promise I won’t kiss you until—I mean, unless—you ask me to. I’ll keep my distance.”
Briony watched him for a moment. Then she nodded warily and sat back down beneath the branches of the dead tree. Erik followed suit, returning to the cold grassy ground a few feet away from her. He was silent for a long time.
“It’s a concept my Gram taught me,” he finally said, looking up into the sky. “My family is really close. My mom and dad are great parents. I have three older sisters, and they helped raise me, or at least that’s what they thought they were doing.”
Briony smiled slightly. “What did you think they were doing?”
“Torturing me.”
“I see. Well, that’s part of an older sister’s job.”
“I take it you’re an older sister?”
She nodded. “Two younger sisters, identical twins. Four years younger.”
Erik nodded also. “Well, that makes sense.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to derail your train of thought. Please continue.”
“I cannot overstate how much my family means to me,” he went on. “The rule of thumb I have always used when assessing my feelings for someone in my life is whether or not I would ever want to share our family name with her—and, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, I have never wanted to. But as close as my family is, the person in it that I’m closest to, by far, is Gram—my grandmother. She’s a wise old lady, probably one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. And long ago, when I was still a little kid, she told me she suspected we were kindred spirits, she and I, people who just understood each other without much talking, who saw the world in much the same way. ‘There are just people in the world who make sense to each other in ways they don’t to anyone else,’ she said.
“Ever since then, I’ve run into a number of people who are like that, in all different places, in all kinds of circumstances. It just seems like we’re meant to be sharing space in the world at the same time. And we do whatever it is we’re doing, and then move on—a bartender in Chile, a soldier in Afghanistan, a newspaper columnist in Hungary, a flower-seller in Beijing, an old man on the subway in Harlem. We just seem to get each other. And now, a woman who works in a garden center in the Adirondacks, who has shown me more of the magic of this place in the better part of one day than I could have seen if I had lived here all my life.
“Maybe we’ve known each other all our lives, or in other lives, I don’t know. I have a reputation for being somewhat anti-social, and very unromantic, though I do the best I can when the mood strikes. It’s hard to maintain a reputation in my field and please the opposite sex, but, as I’ve already confessed, I haven’t been stirred by anyone of that gender to change my unromantic ways—until now, maybe. I don’t know. I only know that in one day’s time I feel close enough to you to have wanted to kiss you. I thought you wanted me to as well. My mistake—I really am sorry.”
Briony was watching him intently.
“Please don’t be sorry,” she said quietly. “You weren’t wrong; I did want to kiss you, too. I’m just not good at this. I’m an old maid, someone who has very little experience with men. I feel like an awkward teenager a lot of the time.”
Erik chuckled. “Well, you make me feel like an awkward teenager, too, Sarah. And that’s pretty awesome at my age, given what I do for a living. My line of work can make people old fast. I’m kinda enjoying feeling sixteen again. I hope I haven’t offended you enough to make you want me to find my way around the rest of the Adirondack Park for the next six weeks alone. And undoubtedly lost.”
She broke into her crooked grin. “No, not at all.”
“Good. Because I would hate to get eaten by a bear while I’m on vacation.”
“That could happen here. Well, generally not eaten. But mauled, certainly.”
“So I’ve heard. So if you’re willing to spend some of your free time with me over the next six weeks, you tell me what works for you. I can adjust my schedule, such as it is, to your shift at the garden center. I can put a few hours in organizing my photos and making notes in my journal in the morning, maybe getting a workout or a run in while you’re at work, and then, whenever you are willing to play tour guide, we can go exploring. So, whaddaya say? Are you willing to be My Girl for another few weeks? Let me be your Temporary Boyfriend?”
Briony laughed. “Sure—why not?”
“Excellent! You set the rules, and I will comply. While I admit I’d prefer to be more of a full-service boyfriend, if that makes you uncomfortable, I can always work within limits. I have every time I’ve ever gone out with someone.”
“What kind of rules? I don’t have any experience with this sort of thing—are there notes or a handbook or something? ‘The Care and Feeding of Your Temporary Boyfriend?’ ”
Erik laughed. “Well, it’s a little more like a real estate transaction for a temporary dwelling. We don’t have to buy the house. We can just rent the apartment, or even a long-term hotel room for now.”
“What in the world are you talking about?”
“It’s an analogy. Given that the nature of this relationship is temporary, at least until you decide otherwise, we can go about it as if we are on business out of town, which I sort of am. We can enter into a loose agreement, one where we can limit the options and the expectations, until you decide to renegotiate our contract.” He sighed. “So much for the whirlwind wedding.”
Briony thought for a moment.
“Well, I suppose I can really only think of two limits or options off the bat,” she said, looking slightly uncomfortable. “First, a limit—I can’t really imagine getting too physically involved with someone who will be in East Timor or some such place six weeks from now.”
Erik sighed in mock sadness.
“I suppose not,” he said grudgingly.
“And second, an option,” she went on, “I would like to try being a little physically involved with you.” As he started to laugh, she gave him a teasing push. “Well, come on, who wouldn’t? Who could resist those ice-blue eyes, that gorgeous hair, those incredible muscles—?”
“No one I’ve ever met, certainly,” Erik said smugly. Then he coughed and adopted a look of solemnity. “Joking. Just joking. Been shot down more times than the Red Baron.”
“I believe he was only shot down once in a way that mattered, though they brought him down twice before that,” Briony said. “All right.” She rose from the ground and offered him a hand. “It’s getting chilly—time to go. Can you drop me off at Charlie’s? It’s a restaurant just off of Center Avenue. I need to go see MaryBeth.”
“Of course,” he said as he allowed her to start to pull him up, then she stopped. He stood the rest of the way on his own. “Shall I wait for you?”
“No, I’m gonna call my dad. It will make him feel protective and important. I used to call him from school whenever I’d stayed late and he would always drop everything and come get me. Besides, I need his help in there.”
Erik watched as she rummaged through her purse and pulled out a huge, ancient cell phone. She flipped it open, tapped out a number, then raised it to her ear.
“Good grief, how old is your phone?” Erik asked, dumbfounded. “That looks like it was manufactured before you were.”
“Shhh,” she admonished, then spoke into it. “Daddy?”
Erik moved politely away as she spoke to her father, taking a final look at the lake glistening in the light of the enormous moon, shining down through the black branches of the massive tree. His skin was tingling, his heart beating excitedly.
A tree of life, she had called it.
She’s right, he thought, watching her talk with her hands expressively as she spoke to her father on the cell phone.
He could not recall when he last felt so alive.
And glad that, even though it was long dead, Obergrande was still the place of important treaties—they had negotiated the terms of their own temporary relationship under it.
After she had finished, she snapped the phone shut.
“Where would you like to go tomorrow?” Erik asked her.
The light from the moon made her eyes sparkle. “Well, for our first official ‘date,’ I have a great way for you to give your arms a workout,” she said impishly.
“Fantastic! There’s a gym in Obergrande?”
“Well, yes. But I was thinking we might go rowing on the lake instead. You man the oars, and I’ll navigate. How does that suit you, Temporary Boyfriend?”
Erik grinned. “Perfectly,” he said. “Just like you do, My Girl.”
His smile dimmed, and he looked at her seriously.
“If your dad wasn’t the one coming for you, I would insist on waiting for you outside Charlie’s, then driving you home on my way back to the hotel. Being a full-service boyfriend with limits always includes making sure you get home safe. That’s kind of non-negotiable for me. I hope that’s all right.”
He noticed that her face was slightly pale, and his smile faded.
“Are you cold?”
She nodded.
He quickly pulled off his coat and wrapped it around her over her own. As he adjusted it, Briony took his face in her hands.
“You have my permission to kiss me again, if you want to,” she said softly. “It’s sort of a tradition here, standing beneath Obergrande.”
Erik smiled broadly. “Well, who am I to buck tradition? I want to be certain I get the most out of my Adirondack experience.”
He wrapped his arms gently, carefully around her, and heard her sigh. His last sight before he closed his eyes and pressed his lips to her warm, soft mouth was the way her skin glistened in the glow of the moonlight, striped with black shadows from the tree limbs hovering over their heads.
Screw you, Katherine Bruce, he thought as excitement rushed through him. I would never betray this woman for you.
Now all he had to figure out was what he actually would tell the fashion maven, if anything.