Reckless Fortune, page 17
She let out a laugh, then contained it when he raised an eyebrow her way. “It is something,” she agreed after a moment, clearly still working on that containment. “That charm.”
“Lethal, you might even say.”
Her nose wrinkled. “I wouldn’t say that, actually.”
“Many do,” he told her loftily.
“That’s me,” Autumn said drily. “Always super concerned with blending in with a crowd.”
Bowie would be handling all of this a lot better if he didn’t like her so much. Hot bodies were great and all, but they weren’t confusing. This woman confounded him.
So he ended the debate he didn’t want to have in the first place by picking up the extra tent and carrying it back to stow away on the plane.
He stayed out there, standing on the pontoon and taking in where he was. Crystal blue water, untouched by any humans but them. So clear, he knew, that if he swam out into the middle of the lake and looked down, it would seem as if the bottom were right there, right within reach, when it was actually deep. Even now, at the water’s edge, he could see every last stone that made up the lake bed.
All the times he’d come here before, that had been enough. More than enough. He’d let it all wash over him and make him feel new again. Him again. Like flying on solid earth.
But today, back on the shore like a dream come true, Autumn was moving around the campsite, gathering kindling and bringing it down to the ring she’d made closer to the water. He loved the lake and the towering mountains, but looking at her felt the same. The same rush. The same recognition. The same peace. Maybe it was just that she looked as if she would be perfectly happy here on her own. As if she didn’t need him at all.
Maybe that was why it felt sweeter when she looked up to see him. And waved.
Then she quickly turned back to what she was doing, and he liked the way she focused on things. The tasks she set herself. Or him, last night. There was a ferocity to her and it called to that same ferocity in him, so much so that he felt something in him give way. Like a wall crumbling down.
As if it were never there at all.
He wanted to fight, but he blew out a breath, centering himself. He pushed aside his memories. All those safeguards he’d put in place, none of which had done a damn thing about Autumn. He set them aside, and then he considered the situation.
With his actual brain instead of one knee-jerk reaction after the next.
He was going to share a tent with Autumn. And he was only a man. Not a very good one, by any measure. There was absolutely no way he was going to turn himself into a saint tonight. Or any other night.
If he’d wanted that, he would have set up a tent for her and called it a day. He hadn’t done that.
He wasn’t going to do that.
And there with the mountains as witness, the clear lake below him like clarity, he told himself it was okay.
Bowie had made a promise to himself when he was little more than a kid, that he wouldn’t get close to any other woman, and he’d kept that promise. He’d honored it. But he had also interpreted that promise in the strictest possible sense, because that had suited his grief at the time.
Maybe it still suited him sometimes.
He had decided that meant one night only, no extensions and no repeats. And it had served him well, because, truth was, he’d always lived a nomadic lifestyle. He still did, most years. He loved every moment of it. Just like he loved coming back home when he was done.
There was no place for permanence in his life. He’d made sure of that.
And everything about Autumn was temporary.
Even her name. Because the autumn here was a gleam of gold. The deepest blues. Crisp and lovely and brief. A little breath, then gone.
The season, and soon the woman, too.
All around him there was his favorite kind of quiet. The rustle of the wind. The call of a faraway bird. What some liked to call the pristine Alaskan wilderness, though there was nothing pristine about it. This was rugged land. The more beautiful, the more treacherous.
And like everything else, temporary. Today’s beautiful weather could be tomorrow’s dangerous storm. The pretty snow capping the mountains could be an avalanche at a moment’s notice.
Nothing was permanent.
Neither was this.
“You look very serious,” Autumn said, and he blinked, not realizing she’d drifted down from where she’d gotten the fire going. She wiped the back of her palm across her forehead and smiled at him in that disarming way of hers. Or maybe he wanted to be disarmed, for a change. “I can only hope that’s because you’re deep in the planning of our dinner menu.”
“I have some MREs. They haven’t killed anyone yet, so far as I know.”
She didn’t quite make a face. “Freeze-dried food. Everyone’s favorite.”
He laughed despite himself at her dry tone. “It’s everyone’s favorite when the alternative is not eating.”
Now she really did make a face. “That’s the survivalist mentality we love to see. I guess I should be happy it’s not grosser. Like bugs.”
Bowie let himself smile a real smile and worse, feel the warmth of it move through him, like this really was okay. “That generally comes after the gourmet MREs are used up.”
“Note to self: don’t camp that long.”
But she didn’t look concerned. She looked the way she always looked. Perfectly happy in her skin when he was crawling out of his.
And he told himself it would be fine. It was fine. This wasn’t a relationship, this was a camping trip. A little moment carved out of a summer that would be over before he knew it. What was the harm? What would it really hurt to let himself engage, when he knew there was no hope for anything more?
So he jumped down from the pontoon and met her there on the beach.
Then he wrapped his arms around her, grinned down at her like he was a different man altogether, and indulged himself.
Starting with a kiss.
And then, because Bowie wasn’t the kind of man who did anything by half, he did a whole lot more, out there beneath the endless blue sky and the watching mountains.
Until he forgot he’d ever questioned that he should do exactly that.
As often as possible.
Because soon enough, she’d be gone.
Thirteen
Did you like being a marine?” Autumn asked. They were lying in the tent, some ten days into their camping trip. She had her head cozied up on Bowie’s arm like it was a pillow, a small joy in the swirl of much larger ones. They both lay on their backs, gazing out of the tent’s panel toward the sky, still light this late at night. Though she liked to think she could see the stars peek through in the middle of the night these days. Just the slightest bit, as the midnight sun slowly released its grip. “I don’t actually know what it’s like to be a soldier.”
“Clearly not.” But she could hear the laughter in his voice. “You should know better than to ask a question like that.”
“Is that an offensive question?”
Bowie gave out one of his long-suffering sighs that she knew by now were mostly for show. Maybe entirely for show. The man did like a show. But then, it turned out, so did she. A realization she was glad she couldn’t share with her sisters, because she could already hear their responses in her head.
She knew that she’d spent the better part of her life witnessing grand dramas indeed, usually in the living room of her father’s house, while never starring in any herself. No matter what her sisters might claim. She’d spent the last ten days starring in a different sort of show altogether here. And no one was as shocked as Autumn that she quite liked it.
More than she should—but she wasn’t thinking about that. Not yet. Like the world that was turning ever closer to the winter darkness, it was coming. There was no escaping it. So really, why worry about it in advance?
“Darlin’, you’re killing me,” Bowie was saying, sounding very much alive. “A marine is obviously the superior form of all soldiers so, yes, obviously I liked it. I would have thought that went without saying.”
“Maybe to other marines.”
“Oorah,” he said, and laughed, like that was all the response needed.
And before, he would have stopped there. He would have turned the conversation into something else, made a joke, changed the mood.
But everything was different here, on their private lake a million miles away from anyone. He turned toward her, and she shifted her head off his arm so she could lie next to him and gaze at him in the summer light though it had to be getting near midnight.
They went to bed early here. Though not to sleep.
“I was proud to be a marine,” he told her, reaching over to tuck a bit of her hair behind her ear. Because he did things like that now. She slept in their tent in a T-shirt and little else, though she kept more clothes within reach, should she have to exit suddenly. Which was always a possibility in bear country. He did not seem concerned about the potential intrusion of bears, so he was always as gloriously naked as he was now. But at the moment, what made her melt was the hand he hooked over her hip, proprietarily.
Though she knew better than to infuse these things with meaning.
Or maybe she didn’t know better. Maybe she only thought she should, while swooning a little bit inside, every time.
“I wanted to make a difference,” Bowie said. And this was the Bowie she adored. No wisecracks, no practiced smiles. The man she got on these long nights, the man she knew in the midnight sun—this was the Bowie who made her heart feel too big inside her. Like it might tip her over when she stood. “I might not want the responsibility that my brother has to all our friends and neighbors, but I wanted to do something with my life. Serving my country was something I believed in, totally.”
“Then why did you quit?”
His smile started in his eyes then, and those were the ones she loved best. She could feel them inside her, like heat. “Don’t really love getting shot at, it turns out. And the kinds of things I did for the marines, there were too many bullets.”
Autumn knew every inch of his body now. She didn’t have to look as her hand moved, of its own accord, to trace the scar on his arm. And another one on his side, jagged and wide. “I don’t like to think of you getting shot.”
“Turns out,” he drawled, “neither do I.” He liked to trace patterns over her skin. Maybe it was words he was writing there, but if they were, she could never make them out. “I think the better question is, Why didn’t you join the marines? It’s a time-honored way for folks to leave home and do a little good.”
She laughed at the idea. But when she was done laughing, she considered it. “It never occurred to me to leave home. I never thought that was strange, but maybe it is. My sisters couldn’t get out of Montana fast enough. I guess I always felt like I couldn’t abandon my father.”
“You’re supposed to abandon him. You’re the kid.” He was intent on those patterns of his, as if he alone could see the masterpieces he made, using his fingers as brushes. “Besides, your father didn’t exactly strike me as the kind of guy who needs taking care of.”
“Thank you,” Autumn said, and she wasn’t kidding. “That’s my work. He was a mess.”
“After you lost your mother. You told me.”
She’d told him so many things by now that it shouldn’t have surprised her when he already knew something about her, but it did. Every time. “I don’t think he meant to fall apart as completely as he did, but that was what happened. And I was the one who picked up the pieces. If I hadn’t, I don’t know who would have. And all my sisters are younger than me, so if I’d left, who would have taken care of them?”
“How much older are you?”
“Jade is two years younger than me. Willa is about two years younger than her. And Sunny is the baby. She’s a year younger than Willa.”
“So basically you’re all around the same age,” Bowie said. Autumn wanted to argue with him, because she had always felt significantly older than her sisters. But mathematically, he wasn’t wrong. She found herself frowning. “For some reason, you were capable of acting like an adult at age fourteen, but they’re still infants who need your help.”
She turned her frown at him, even though she knew by now that it would only make him grin. This time he did that and also dropped a kiss right there where her brow furrowed. Autumn liked that a little too much.
But she reminded herself that she was making a point here. “Hey. Marine. Maybe you should be careful when talking about other people’s families.”
“You can talk about mine if you like.” He ran his palm along that dip at her waist, another thing she thought was silly but that fascinated him endlessly, and who was she to argue with the man’s fascinations? “I’ll probably chime in.”
“Anyway,” she said, sighing a little because his hand was distracting, up beneath her T-shirt. “You successfully changed the subject from your Marine Corps career.”
“It’s all the same subject.” He lifted his gaze to hers. And it turned out a person really could get lost in all that endless, fathomless blue. Even when she didn’t want to get lost, she did, like he was the only night around. Perfect for wandering off into and never quite returning. “Seems to me that you and I basically did the same thing. Took on burdens not our own and made the best of them. The only difference is, after I did a few tours, I decided I was done playing by other people’s rules. You probably would have stayed with your father forever if he hadn’t met Donna.”
Her sisters said things like that all the time and it always irritated her. But this was Bowie. He had no stake in this. Nothing to prove. Maybe that was why she couldn’t seem to help but take that comment on board in a way she never did when it was Jade’s.
Bowie rolled away while she was digesting it, sitting up and digging around until he found his jeans. He tugged them around his hips as he rolled up. He stamped his feet into his boots, then ducked outside.
She knew he was going to find something to eat, because they’d burned off their dinner twice already by now. And she was hungry, too, come to think of it. But she lay there another moment anyway, staring up at the sky and wishing she really could see the stars. Surely they would provide a little guidance.
Because . . . why hadn’t she had a whole plan for her life? She understood why she’d done the things she’d done, but maybe it really was strange that she’d never balked. Even when her sisters were being awful, she’d never thought to herself, I wonder what would have happened if Mom had lived and I’d had a normal life? She wished all the time that her mother were still here. But she never thought too much about the fact that if Roberta were still around, there would have been no reason for Autumn to stay home. Or the life she would have had to go find after high school like everyone else.
Shouldn’t everyone have a road not taken?
Why didn’t she?
Because this summer, this contest, didn’t count. This was something she’d seized upon as an opportunity after it was clear she had to figure something out. A way to kill two birds with one stone, and that wasn’t the same thing. Though it dawned on her then that maybe that was the piece she’d been missing. That maybe a whole lot of lives were arranged around what happened when a person had to leave the nest and not so much what that person had dreamed about doing all along.
That felt a little heavy for a summer night on a lonely lakeside beach within sight of a gorgeous man.
“You need to keep your head in this game,” she advised herself, her voice a little scratchy in the confines of the tent.
She pulled on her own pants and shoes, then zipped herself into one of her midlayers, too. Because Bowie was impervious to mountain temperatures, but she wasn’t. And it still thrilled her to know such small, matter-of-fact things about him, like how little the weather bothered him on a cool July night. It felt like an intimacy. Autumn could see him off down the beach by the fire they kept far away from their tent so as not to tempt the bears, stoking the flames with the stick they’d been using as a fire poker since they’d arrived. She zipped up the tent behind her and then stood there a moment, just breathing it all in.
Because she wanted to remember this, always. The stillness. The expansiveness.
Him.
She didn’t think she’d ever felt more alive. Part of that was Bowie. But a whole lot of it was this place, too.
This perfect, sacred place.
Autumn shoved her hands deep into her pockets to warm them, because the night was cool at this elevation, despite Bowie’s flagrant half nakedness. She crunched her way down across the beach, the scent of the hot dogs that he was roasting for this middle-of-the-night snack dancing in the air. The smell of the dogs made her belly rumble, but it made her heart hurt, too. Because they were running out of the supplies they kept packed away in bear-resistant storage. They’d already gone beyond the original week they’d planned up here. She knew it was unlikely they could make it much past two weeks. Even though, Bowie had told her with his usual intense amusement, he always packed more food than necessary. Because you never know, he liked to intone.
It all made her ache because she knew that this was special, out here. Just the two of them. Because despite all the other things they’d packed, neither one of them had come with any defenses.
She didn’t need another painful conversation about boundaries to know that wasn’t going to hold when they left here.
And Autumn had always considered herself the very height of practicality in all things, but she knew there was nothing the least bit practical about the way she chose not to think about that.
Because there was no point worrying over something she knew she would never change.
Though it was maybe worse now, because if she didn’t know better, she would have sworn that Bowie found her beautiful. Her. That he wasn’t comparing her to her objectively stunning sisters every time he looked at her. She would have sworn that sometimes, he gazed at her as if she alone blew him away—
