Mind out of the gutter, please!
But no matter what she told herself, she couldn't keep her thoughts from straying in that direction.
With a groan of frustration, she plopped on the sofa and thumbed through the old journal, looking for a specific date. If she remembered correctly, her grandmother wrote about an area that refused to respond to any restoration efforts. She wondered if it was the same one.
Sure enough, she found the entry written three days after her grandmother had stumbled upon Ben Robbins.
13 July 1950
Ben showed me a section of his land today, not far from his cabin, that stubbornly refused to respond to any treatments. It was depressingly stark and close to a mile long, surrounding a small, winding creek. Mostly devoid of vegetation except for random patches of wild prairie grasses. Ben believed it had once been polluted by a nearby manufacturing plant. It is a classic reminder of the damage that can be done with little to no environmental oversight.
Ben promises to take me swimming tomorrow. I can't wait.
XOXO, Meredith
That sounded like the same area Frankie and John visited, but now there was more than just patchy areas of vegetation. There were still no trees, but the grasses, while mostly covered in snow, had been lush, demonstrating that there had been a modest degree of recovery in the seventy years since her grandmother had visited.
"Did you find something interesting?" John's deep voice just behind her left ear made her jump and shriek.
"Oh my god!" She pressed a hand to her chest. "You scared me."
His hands were planted on the back of the sofa and his rich brown hair spiky on top from the shower as he leaned toward her, giving him a naughty air. A mischievous grin stretched across his face, completely unrepentant. He had deliberately snuck up on her, the rogue. "It looked like you found something,” he said, pointing at the journal.
"Oh, yes!" She tapped the open page. "I found the entry my grandmother made when your grandfather took her to the spot we hiked today. I thought I had remembered her note while we were there, and here it is." She held it up for him to read. "She doesn't say too much but did mention that the vegetation was patchy with mostly bare areas. Yet now the grass is relatively thick with few bare areas that I could see, although they might be hidden by the snow. The bright side is that the area has recovered some in the last seventy years."
John hummed, his voice so deep, she could feel the rumble in her chest. "My grandfather wrote about that spot extensively. It drove him nuts because nothing worked. My guess is that it was too soon after the dumping for anything to take hold. It takes a while for the metals to break down."
"Yes, exactly.” Frankie chewed her bottom lip. “If the pollution was going directly from the plant into the water, there would be damage up and down the stream. Have you seen anything like that?”
John shook his head. “No, not on that scale.”
“Then it must be something else, or maybe whatever they dumped here years ago is activated by a particle in the water.” She sighed heavily. “Sorry. Sometimes I get a little carried away.”
“Don’t be. I appreciate the perspective.” He still hung over her, looking breathtakingly yummy.
“I know this might sound ridiculously sentimental…” She paused. “But I love knowing we both walked where our grandparents visited so long ago." Frankie smiled. "I love being in the areas where they were together. I can really feel her presence here, as if it was a place she truly treasured."
A brow arched over one glacially blue eye. "You do realize they were also in this cabin together, right?"
Frankie's eyes popped wide as she remembered her earlier discovery, her hands fluttering in the air. "Oh my god! I completely forgot. I wanted to show you something." She jumped from the couch and grabbed his hand, dragging him along as she ran to the bedroom. "I found it when I woke up this morning."
She led him to the bed's heavy log headboard, scooted onto the mattress, her eyes scanning the underside until she found the spot. “Here!” She ran her fingers lovingly over the carved heart. "Look what I found."
She glanced up when she was met with silence, finding John standing between her legs at the edge of the mattress, an intense look of longing and hot desire plain on his face. She held her breath as he melted toward her, his gaze zeroed in on her mouth as her lips parted on a breath. Then his head turned to follow her fingers.
His mouth slanted into a lopsided grin and he placed his hand on top of hers as they traced the heart and initials together. "I found this years ago when I moved in here. It always reminded me that my grandfather was human and once a romantic."
"They were here together," Frankie added, watching their fingers mingle together. She couldn't tone down the awe in her voice.
John's eyes turned back to her, a storm swirling in his gaze as if he were fighting for control.
"Are you all right?" she asked, worried she'd crossed some invisible line, and hoping at the same time that she had.
His head moved side to side slowly and edged even closer until their lips were barely an inch apart. "No, I'm not. I can't stop thinking about you, about what it would be like to kiss you, spread you out on this bed and make love to you." His eyes were so intense it made it tough to breathe.
Frankie knew she was approaching a crossroads—the point that could change her life forever. But there wasn’t a chance she would stop this.
"Kiss me," she whispered, her heart pounding and breath coming out in small pants. She was in overdrive already and he hadn't done a thing to her yet.
