The passing of time was hard to keep track of. It could have been the wildflowers, hypnotizing Sierra with their magic as they swayed in the breeze. It could have been that she and Forrest had actually gotten to talking, conversation that meandered through topics—everything from how each of them had come to their professions, to which cooking shows they liked best, to what Sierra's family was like.
Forrest didn’t ask the usual questions. Most men who found out she grew up with a high-profile cop for a dad forgot about Sierra and asked about him. Forrest asked deeper questions. He wanted to know what her mother did for a living and what Sierra had been into as a kid. She told him what it had been like to grow up with identical triplet brothers—from their high jinks to their protective love to the loneliness she sometimes felt at being the only girl and the only singleton. She told him how her father was a quiet man and how her love affair with the forest had come from the solo hikes her dad took her on to get away from the craziness of her brothers and their loud house.
“What about your family?” Sierra asked. “You said you had a sister. I’m guessing that’d be Naomi Winters, the librarian.”
Sierra thought of the woman who she’d only seen at a distance and had studiously ignored in recent weeks as she’d conducted intermittent research. Did Forrest know anything about her hours spent in the archives room? As with Jake Stapleton, the fact of her solo research was one Sierra kept to herself. She’d never seen him and Naomi together or heard anything about them being close. But friendships and alliances in Green Valley were still a mystery to her, and Forrest seemed to have them everywhere.
“Naomi’s not my sister. She’s my first cousin. So are Beverly Townsend and Scotia Simmons. The three of them are sisters. Naomi’s the youngest—closest to my age, but we never grew up together. They grew up a ways away, in Cedar Gap.”
“Who’s your actual sister, then?”
“Her name’s Marlena. She’s a rocket scientist.” Forrest grinned and said it with pride.
“A rocket scientist?” Sierra laughed.
“Yup. An aerospace engineer for Lockheed-Martin. She lives down in Huntsville with her husband. My parents moved there three years ago to help with my nephew. She and my brother-in-law, Brandon, both work full-time so they watch Colton during the day.”
For the first time all day, Forrest unpocketed his phone and thumbed around on the screen, scooting in closer to her as he did. Sierra tried to be subtle as she angled her nose to get a better whiff of his scent. An hourlong hike had done nothing to neutralize the cedar and spice of his aroma. It was all the better to enjoy, the closer he came.
“This is my mom and dad.”
She wasn’t surprised when he stopped his swiping and turned the screen toward her, revealing two older people equally as beautiful as him. His smoky, gray eyes, he got from his mother, but his father’s were also striking—a bright, cornflower blue. His father had also passed down his strong jaw. His parents were both graying, his father the sort of salt-and-pepper that foreshadowed that Forrest, too, would age well. She imagined the elder Mr. Winters had been just as much of a troublemaker as Forrest in his day. The two shared the same half-playful, half-wicked smirk.
“You look just like them.”
“Wait ’til you see Marlena.”
He swiped forward, not stopping until he reached the image of another dark-haired, gray-eyed beauty, holding her wide-brimmed straw hat in place with her hand, laughing at something off camera from her seat in what looked to be a boat.
“When we were little, people thought we were twins. Even on days when my mom didn’t dress us alike.”
Sierra tried to imagine little Forrest in a little plaid shirt. “That sounds cute.”
“Now my nephew is my little buddy,” Forrest said, his voice tinged with excitement as he began to swipe his screen once again. “My mama gets me on FaceTime with him once or twice a week. I make it down to Huntsville about once a month. This is us gone camping for Memorial Day.”
Speaking of little people in little plaid shirts …
Sierra couldn’t decide whether to laugh out loud or let her heart melt when she got an eyeful of Colton and Uncle Forrest, the former sitting happily on the latter’s lap. They sat on a fallen tree trunk so large it was seat-height to the hulking Forrest. It looked to be late afternoon, with tents and a campfire visible in the back. Forrest looked at the camera, eyes crinkled and beaming, one steadying arm planted on the log, and the other around Colton’s waist, holding him up so that he wouldn’t slide off. Colton was in profile, rosy-cheeked and laughing, gazing at Forrest as if he hung the moon. In his chubby hand and slung over his shoulder was a tiny axe.
“He is absolutely adorable.” Sierra said what had to be said. “And you are absolutely obsessed. Let me guess—that axe was a gift from you.”
Forrest beamed down at the photo, smiling as widely as she’d ever seen him do. It was obvious he loved the little boy.
“Daggone right it was,” he said with pride, taking one last look before thumbing off his phone and replacing it in his pocket. “I made that axe myself. Pear wood handle. Ten and a half inches on a five-inch aspen blade. It’s just carved wood painted silver. I’ll get my blacksmith to make him his first real one when he’s about ten. To be used only under strict supervision, of course.”
“You have your own blacksmith?”
Forrest didn’t move back to where he had been seated a minute before, even though they were done with the pictures. He smirked. “You don’t?”
Sierra's heart skipped again. It was the same kind of witty comeback Forrest always made—the same words that would’ve come out of his mouth six months or a year ago when they met. Only, now, when he said the kinds of things he always had, it felt like flirtation. And it hadn’t escaped her notice he’d started sitting closer, too, or that there was something new—something invitational—in his tone.
“I’ll bet you sleep with that thing …” Sierra quipped. If she let the silence take hold, quiet truths would show on her face.
“Leaned right up next to my bed.”
“Do you shower with it, too? Polish its handle and sharpen its blade while you’re watching TV?”
“Make fun all you want.” He was unperturbed. “The axe is the single most useful tool ever invented.”
“Tell that to my Papa Bear.” Sierra leaned away long enough to reach her day pack and unclip her own knife. “I could survive in the wilderness with this bad boy for weeks.”
The sheathed blade measured a good ten inches from end to end. Sierra bounced it lightly in her hand. Forrest let out a long whistle, then stopped her motion with a warm, callused hand upon her arm.
“That is one serious blade.” He sounded impressed. “May I? That is, unless you get nervous when a man wants to handle your knife …”
Sierra hummed in mock indignance but handed it over. She half-expected him to come through with more snark, but Forrest quieted. He sat a little straighter and carefully unsheathed the blade.
“Scar Blades makes this one, right?”
It was Sierra’s turn to be impressed. “And here I thought you only knew axes.”
He didn’t spare a glance when he replied, “I know a lot of things.”
He took in all the markings and features at the same time he spouted off stats.
“Quarter-inch thick high-carbon steel ... six-inch blade … aggressive pommel ... front finger grip … what is that, a Tidex sheath? It looks customized.”
“The fire-starter element comes in handy in my line of work.”
He flipped the knife between his fingers to return it to her, handle first, then gave her back her sheath. “That is one badass knife, Sierra Betts.”
She blushed, not so much from his praise as from the rumble of his voice when he took it reverent and low. But she tried to keep things light. “The pink sheath was a dead giveaway, huh?”
“Doesn’t matter what it looks like. Just matters what it can do. I’ll admit, if you had to survive, that knife would do you a lot of good.”
“Then why do I hear a ‘but’?” She slid her knife back where it belonged and fastened it to her bag.
“A good knife will keep your heart beating—food in your belly and a little protection. But an axe will keep you warm.”
Sierra might have laughed if Forrest’s face hadn’t been so earnest.
“You said it stayed on the side of your bed.”
Thoughts about Forrest and beds and being kept warm infiltrated her mind.
“Your knife can cut small things. And a blade like that is long enough and thick enough for you to get a good baton. But it can’t cut you a big log, or build a real shelter, or butcher whatever you catch. It can’t do the same thing as Old Faithful here …”
Forrest reached toward the side of his blanket to pick up his tool.
“Please tell me you didn’t name your axe.”
“I name all my axes. It makes them feel special.”
Sierra laughed again. “You have given this entirely too much thought.”
“Go ahead. Make fun. But you’d change your mind if you were ever out in the wilderness with me. I’d have us living in the lap of luxury.”
Forrest’s big talk got her imagining again. Her mind flashed to the two of them, stranded alone in the woods, surviving together, making their own fire, catching their own food, and staying even warmer from body heat.
“You said you majored in psych,” she baited with a sly smile. “Have you ever considered the deeper significance to why you carry that big axe everywhere?”
His eyes twinkled and the chuckle he let out was rich and deep. “Maybe,” he admitted. “Have you ever considered the deeper significance to why you keep up that tough-girl routine? About how you want me and everyone else to think you’re some sort of ball-breaker?”
She didn’t answer. She wished she had. Her silence prompted him to keep talking—to say all manner of thing she wasn’t ready to hear.
“I’ve got your number, Sierra Betts. I see what you don’t want anyone to see—the part of you that’s soft, that cares so much. It’s beautiful.”
I see what you don’t want anyone to see …
She wanted to scoff and look away and dream up some flip response. Only, his gray gaze kept her in his thrall. His irises were light in that moment, the hue of clouds after a storm chasing the darkness away with the light of the sun. They were earnest and wise and they made her want to tell him things. Some part of her wanted to tell him about Shasta and about Jake Stapleton. But a bigger part of her was just plain scared.
With her next blink, she looked away, head turned and gaze set back out on the gorgeous vista. The heat of his attention warmed her face. When he, too, turned his head and fixed his gaze back on their surroundings, she thought the moment had passed. It hadn’t. His voice was softer when he spoke again.
“The first time I ever saw you was on Little Pigeon Creek, on the part that splits off after the falls. It was last summer, a few weeks after the Fourth of July.”
Sierra remembered the day she’d seen him there, at the narrowest stretch of the creek. It was an off-trail shortcut park workers used to cross between different sides.
“That wasn’t until September. Just before Labor Day,” she corrected gently. “I never ran into you at the creek until fall.”
“I said the first time I saw you—not the first time we met.”
Heat prickled her nose. This was a confession.
“I’ve taken a shortcut across that creek twenty times. But when I came up on you helping that cub, I just … stopped.”
Goose bumps rose on Sierra's flesh. What she had done that day had been extreme. She’d never mentioned it to a single soul. It had also been the right thing to do. A bear cub had gotten caught in fishing netting that had floated its way down the creek from some point upstream. And the cub couldn’t disentangle himself.
But that hadn’t been the dangerous part—the dangerous part had been the fully-grown mother bear, who saw that her cub needed help but whose every instinct should have been to keep other animals away from her baby.
Understanding the mama bear’s predicament, Sierra had been cautious. She had approached slowly—carefully—hidden the knife in her pocket until she’d absolutely needed to use it to cut away the net. She’d approached the cub carefully and slowly. But when it had been time to set him free, she’d made quick work of cutting him loose.
“At first, I stayed back out of caution,” Forrest continued. “I didn’t want to spook the mama bear. But I got my tranq gun on her right away. I was aimed and ready to fire. And I’ll admit, I was spitting mad—rehearsing in my head the earful I was gonna give you about pulling a stunt like that, alone. But then I saw how gentle you were, and how you somehow got that mama bear to believe you weren’t gonna hurt her baby … it was magic. I knew then, crazy or not, I wanted to know you.”
Sierra's nose prickled even more and some emotion she couldn’t identify welled within her—whatever it was called when you felt completely laid bare.
“Why didn’t you announce yourself, after I freed the cub and he went back to his mother?”
“Honestly? I didn’t want to intrude on any of it. There was something sacred about it. But I did follow you back. You looked shaky, afterward. I wanted to make sure you got back to the station okay.
“Look,” he said in a way that made her lift her gaze. “I like you, Sierra. And now that you don’t hate me so much anymore, I’m hoping I’ve got a shot at you liking me back.”
“I never hated you,” she corrected. It was easier than responding to what he’d said.
His expression changed, his eyes crinkling at the corners and his lips subtly turning up.
“Then maybe you’ll say yes if I ask you out on a date.”