“Cassandra.Don’t.”
She just grinned. “All I’ll say is that I’m okay with it. It’s time—past time, if anything.”
“Cassandra Danielle—”
She held up her hands, grinning at me. “That’s it, I’m done. That’s all I’ve got to say.”
“We’ll talk later, young lady. In private.”
Lucas chuckled. “Ooooh, you got the young lady. You gonna get it later, sweetheart.”
Cassie hobbled a little faster, a more familiar fire sparking in her eyes. “Let’s get one thing straight, Lucas—we just met. You don’t get to call me ‘babe’ or ‘sweetheart’ or ‘darling’ or any of that. Even if we hadn’t just met, don’t call me that. I realize you may identify as a good old boy or whatever, but—”
Lucas eyed her, unperturbed by her snappish outburst. “Hey, I’m sorry. Just a habit from way back, all right? I didn’t mean nothin’ by it.” He frowned. “I ain’t a good old boy, though. Don’t go accusin’ me of that.”
Cassie halted as Lucas reached a black F-150 with a lift and aggressively treaded mud tires, and set our suitcases and duffel bags in the bed one by one. She eyed the truck with a skeptical grin. “You sure? You’ve got the look down pretty pat.”
He glared at her. “It ain’t a fashion statement. The truck, I mean. I live and work off road and in the woods. The lift and the tires are necessary. The drawl is from livin’ in Oklahoma for forty years. And the look…well, that’s new.”
I nudged Cassie’s shoulder. “Don’t be antagonistic, please. He’s doing us a favor. We’d never have gotten all our luggage and both of us home in one car, or in one trip, otherwise.”
She rolled her eyes again, but said nothing.
Lucas lowered the tailgate and climbed up into the bed in a single lithe movement that was lighter and easier than his size and bulk should have allowed, securing our baggage into the truck bed with a few bungee cords, and then he hopped down and closed the gate. He unlocked the doors with a key fob, and rounded the hood to open the front passenger door.
Cassie took the rear driver’s side seat without a word, so I climbed up through the door Lucas was holding open for me.
“Nice truck,” I said, examining the clean, fresh-smelling interior.
Lucas started the motor, and glanced at me. “Thanks. It ain’t fancy, but it’s mine and I like it. It gets the job done.”
“What job?” I asked. “You’re not working at the hardware store anymore?”
He grinned, shaking his head. “No ma’am.”
“So, what do you do now?”
“Me and Ram have a business, now. He’s been running hunts and hikes and the like for a while now, usually deep in the bush. He was doing it sort of unofficially, by word of mouth recommendation only, but now we got a real deal business, with a website and everything. He’s still doing the long-term, deep bush trips, and I do the local ones. I guide hikes for the kind of tourists who want a more challenging experience than the usual day trip, but don’t have the time or resources to plan anything more involved. I also do a hike from downtown Ketchikan into the forest, off-trail to a staging area we’ve built, where we can canoe through the forest a ways, and then hike back. It’s a nice little trip that takes most of a full day.”
I blinked at him. “For real?”
He nodded. “Yeah. For real.” He glanced at me. “Why? That seem impossible to you or somethin’?”
I shook my head. “No, I just…when we first met, I had to convince you to go on a short day hike with me. “
He nodded. “I started going on day hikes with Ram after you left, and I sorta got back into who I used to be, to a degree. I told you some of how I grew up—hiking wasn’t a once in a while thing for fun, it was part of how I lived my life. Hunting, fishing, canoeing, all that—I was doing all that as soon as I could walk, lift a pole or a paddle or a rifle. Once I started, it was pretty easy to relearn the old skills, you know?” He paused, shrugging. “Not totally there, yet. Still got some work to do, but I’m making progress.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. “Lucas, you’ve done more than just make progress. You’re…I don’t want to say a totally different person, but close.”
He glanced at Cassie in the rearview mirror—I’d almost forgotten she was back there, I realized guiltily—and then at me. “Maybe once you’re settled, you and me can meet up for coffee, or lunch.”
I realized what he was getting at—he wanted to talk in private.
I resisted the urge to run my hand over his shoulder, over his thick bicep, over his forearm to his hand—resisted the urge to hold his hand. “I think I could fit you into my schedule.”
His grin was playful. “Well that there is mighty kinda’ya, sweet thing,” he said, pulling his natural drawl into a caricature. “I surely do appreciate it.”
He winked at Cassie in the rearview mirror, eliciting a sound from my daughter which resembled the snarl of a trapped wildcat.
