Reconsidering Riley (36 page)

Unlike her family's occasional rejections,
Riley's had been deliberate and precise. She couldn't make the same
excuses for him that she made for her father and brothers. Riley
did know better.

At least, she'd thought he did.

I didn't know I'd hurt you
, he'd said
on the day they'd snuck away from fishing duty together.
I'm
sorry
.

But not sorry enough to avoid repeating the
process, Jayne thought as she went about the business of setting up
a small camp for herself. Not sorry enough to stay.

Many minutes later, she'd finished the
necessary preparations. Guided by the coaching Riley had given her,
she'd laid out her standard-issue Hideaway Lodge sleeping bag and
inflatable mattress, prepped her camp stove, erected her tent, and
laid out a one-person, stone-encircled campfire in case it got
cold.

She didn't know how long she'd need to stay
here. Until the impulse to call Francesca to confess her status as
a fraud passed, maybe. Or maybe until her impulse to beg Riley to
stay went away.

Nah
. There was no
way
she had
provisions to last that long.

Sinking to a seated position atop her
sleeping bag, Jayne surveyed her little campsite with a mixture of
surprise and pride. She was struck, all at once, by how easily
she'd accomplished it. A person would think she'd spent her
formative years whittling tent stakes rather than perfecting her
mascara technique and constructing the ultimate girly-girl
philosophy. She guessed some of this nature stuff had sunk in. She
felt almost...competent at it now.

But feelings didn't change what she knew to
be true, Jayne reminded herself sternly. Feelings didn't change a
person
. After she left here, she'd be the same old
Jayne—helpless to fit in, always on the outside,
un
special.

Dispirited, she grabbed her backpack and
dragged it toward her. Unzipping it, she reached inside to retrieve
the copy of
Heartbreak 101: Getting Over The Good-Bye Guys
she always kept with her. Usually, seeing the tangible proof of
what she'd accomplished cheered her. If anyone needed cheering
right now, it was her.

Her fingers fumbled, encountering nothing
that felt like the familiar spine of her hardcover book. Opening
the pack wider, Jayne peered into it and realized what was
wrong.

This wasn't her pack.

Oh, no. What had she done? Driven by the
need to find out exactly what she'd brought with her into the
wild—exactly what she'd be forced to rely on (to wear!) until she
returned—Jayne explored further. She unearthed a series of things
she recognized from her adventure travel orientation sessions. One
by one, she lay them on the sleeping bag beside her.

An ordinary flashlight. Matches. Topos. A
water treatment kit.
Professional digital camera.
First aid kit. Two
Snickers bars—

Camera?

Hurriedly, Jayne dug deeper. She found a
familiar-looking fleece. A shaving kit. A pack of pre-moistened
body towelettes like the ones Riley had given her to—

Riley
. This was Riley's pack. In her
haste to get away before she blubbered and begged him to
reconsider, she'd grabbed the wrong pack from the bedroom
floor.

Jayne smacked her forehead and stared at the
supplies spread before her. She'd been too teary-eyed earlier to
differentiate between their identical-on-the-outside packs, she
figured. But now she saw clearly. And at the sight of the fleece
Riley had lent her that night on the balcony while wishing on a
star...yearning pushed through her.

She missed him already, the
commitment-phobic, wanderlust-crazed jerk.

Well, that was just how pathetic she was,
Jayne told herself. Clearly, she needed to get stronger. She needed
to do
something
to empower herself, something that would
prove she could handle whatever life threw at her—in spite of the
fiasco with Riley. Otherwise, there was no telling how she'd get
through this.

She needed a crash course. The overnight
equivalent of the Buttmaster 2000, designed not to eliminate
cellulite but to eliminate weakness. If she could just tackle
something really scary, that would do it. Something like...never
plucking her eyebrows again. Cutting up her Macy's card. Staying at
her campsite all night, alone.

Alone
. That was it! The very thought
gave Jayne shivers. Until just this moment, she'd been too caught
up in her pain to realize exactly how alone she already was.

How alone she already was
. Yikes!
What had she done?

She bolted upright, eyes peeled for rogue
raccoons or marauding javelinas. The wind blew her hair in her
eyes, seeming to murmur sinisterly. Clouds covered the sun with
evil portent, and—okay, so maybe it already
had
been a
little cloudy. But that didn't matter. What mattered was, Jayne had
gotten herself in a fix again. The question was, could she handle
it?

Heck, no! Dark, scary, do-it-yourself stuff
coexisted with Jayne Murphy about as well as stripes coordinated
with plaids. Who was she kidding? She had to be reasonable.

But still...this just might be her only way
to salvage her future. Her career. Her pride. Those were all she
had left now, Jayne reminded herself. Without Riley, she was on her
own. So she'd better make it good.

Newly determined, Jayne brushed off the
leaves that had drifted onto her sleeping bag and daintily sat on
it. She grabbed Riley's pack to refill it with his things—and that
was when it happened.

She discovered the most surprising thing of
all.

Inside the canyon lodge's common room,
Alexis glanced toward the wide windows overlooking the forest.
There, seven of the eight adventure travelers still remaining at
the secondary lodge stared out at the sight that had held them
transfixed for the past two hours.

Jayne
. Wilderness Adventure Jayne, to
be exact.

"What's she doing now?" Alexis asked,
pushing a checkers piece across the board toward Lance. He
countered her move.

"She appears to be constructing something,"
Mack answered, squinting. "I think it's a primitive hanger for her
clothes."

"It is." Beside him at the window, Bruce
scoffed. "Next she'll be weaving a purse out of Aspen bark."

Mitzi perked up. "Would that work?
Neat!"

"I don't know, Mitzi," Kelly said. "I
wouldn't recommend it. A bark purse would be a definite Glamour
'Don't.'"

"I once made a purse out of a Quaker Oats
carton covered with wallpaper," Doris offered. "It looked very
Mod."

"Like something Twiggy or The Shrimp would
have carried," Donna agreed. "I remember that." The two women
smiled at each other.

"I'm, like, never going to carry a purse
again," Carla volunteered. "I just decided it last night. A purse
is nothing but excess baggage. It, like, lets you hold on to things
you don't need anymore. Like my...I mean, like Paolo."

All the women, including Alexis, stared at
her.

"'Paolo?' Not 'my Paolo?' Just 'Paolo?' Does
that mean you've given up on that loser?" Doris asked.

Decisively, Carla nodded. "I, like, deserve
better. Being here with all of you has made me realize that."

"
Awww
." The women clustered together
for a group hug. Alexis told Lance to king her, then joined in.

"Now she's dragging over a huge fallen
branch," Bruce said, breaking in with the latest Wilderness
Adventure Jayne Update. "What the...? She's already got a campfire,
so—"

"A weapon," Mitzi said knowledgeably. "She
just wants to protect herself, in case another javelina comes
along."

"Or something
worse
," Kelly added.
All the women nodded.

Lance frowned. "Doesn't she know she's
within a quarter mile of the lodge? Within sight?"

"I'm sure she thinks she walked further than
she did," Donna said. "She looked pretty upset when she started. I
doubt Jayne knows exactly how far she went."

"Right," Doris agreed. "She was going in
circles around the perimeter of the lodge for a while there. And
those trees probably block her view of us. We can only see Jayne so
clearly because she's up on that hill."

"Somebody should go after her," Lance
announced.

They all looked at each other. A moment
ticked past.

"Mitzi and I will," Bruce announced, tugging
a blushing Mitzi nearer by the hand. "We'll reconnoiter Jayne out
of the—"

"You'll reconnoiter
yourselves
into
the nearest secluded spot for a little nature nooky," Donna said,
shaking her head.

"Something wrong with that?" Bruce
asked.

Everyone rolled their eyes.

"Well, I can't go," Lance said. "Jayne left
me in charge. With Riley gone, I'm it."

"I'll go," Alexis announced. Sheesh, older
people took
forever
to decide stuff. She made a quick
hoppity move that ended her checkers game with Lance, then pushed
back from the table. "I'll make sure Jayne's all right."

"You'd better hurry. It's almost lunch
time," Bruce said, looking out the window again. "And I think—" He
glanced down at Mitzi with a worried expression. "I think she just
started crying."

As far as Riley was concerned, airports were
part of an alternate reality.

Inside an airport, time crawled or raced,
depending on if you were early for your flight or fifteen minutes
late. Logic vanished, replaced by a kill-or-be-killed mentality
that insisted it was okay to trample your fellow travelers if they
dawdled at the wrong speed. All roads led to uncomfortable chairs,
and second grade knowledge of sequential numbers went by the
wayside when staring at a too-high boarding pass number. Human
kindnesses and courtesy mostly disappeared, brought low by layover
tussles in the Wiener King hot dog line.

Not that any of those factors affected
Riley, in particular. No, his usual M.O. was to arrive early, sleep
as much as possible to pass the time, and carry on everything. In
keeping with that philosophy, he arrived at the small Sedona
airport still numb from his confrontation with Jayne, completed the
check-in procedure, and promptly napped.

He placed his backpack on the seat beside
him, then turned sideways so his knees rested on its bulk. He
wadded up the fleece he'd grabbed and tucked it beneath his cheek.
With his body spanning two chairs in the nearly-empty waiting area,
he leaned his head to the right and took a shuddering breath.

The next thing Riley knew, someone was
shaking him.

He awakened to find a gray-haired, sixty-ish
man peering into his face. Blinking at the man's lined face and
turquoise-studded string tie, Riley shook his head to clear it.

"I said, are you all right?" the man
asked.

He had the impression the man had been
trying to wake him for some time. Was his flight leaving? Riley had
set his watch alarm to awaken him in time, but there was always a
chance it was broken. He jerked his wrist upward. The time
indicated more than forty-five minutes remained until boarding.

"You were crying in your sleep," the man
explained in a low voice. "Not blubbering, mind you," he added at
the doubtlessly alarmed look Riley shot him, "just sad, silent
tears. Nightmare?"

Slowly, Riley raised his hand to his cheek.
His fingertips came back wet.

Jesus
. His freaking emotions had
ambushed him while he'd slept. Exactly when he'd been at his most
defenseless, they'd snuck in and
bam
! Helpless bawling. What
was happening to him? He couldn't remember the details of what he'd
been dreaming, but he felt sure it had been about Jayne.

He missed her. Already.

"It's okay, you know," the man said, sitting
down in the chair across from Riley. He gave him a wise look.
"Catches up to us, sooner or later. Nightmares are just our brain's
way of giving us a big smack upside the head, telling us to pay
attention. You don't have to be embarrassed."

"I'm not embarrassed," Riley lied. He
swiveled, ducking his head to swipe away the tears as he did. He
dried his hands on his pants. "But thanks for waking me."

The man nodded. "You don't look like a fella
who takes easy to being caught off guard. I figured you'd want to
know."

He didn't want to know. He wanted to
never
know. When it came to being helpless against his
feelings, Riley wanted nothing to do with it. But it looked as
though the rest of him had other ideas. Scary, touchy-feely,
emotional
ideas.

As a result, he was afraid to try napping
again.

Instead, after sniffing away the last of his
tears, he cleared his throat as manfully as he could. He deepened
his voice. Extended his hand. "He Riley Davis. Buy you a cup of
coffee?"

Ten minutes later, he and K.C. Logan were on
the road to becoming friends, unlikely as it was. They slurped
scalding coffee in the waiting area, chatting about the weather and
the Diamondbacks and photography. Somehow, talking with K.C. felt
natural to Riley—and so did bringing some other travelers into
their conversation, when they sat down nearby. Hell, if he'd known
passing the time with gabbing worked this well, he'd have quit
napping years before this.

Maybe
, Riley thought uncomfortably,
there was something to Jayne's theories about being with
people
. Maybe Alexis had been right, and he
was
a loner.
The thought depressed him. Was it too late for him?

If it was, Riley told himself, then he
didn't want to know. Determined to forget his past—and Jayne—as
easily as she'd tossed him into a damned closet and
hidden
him, he went on talking. Faster than he'd have thought possible,
more than an hour swept past, punctuated by two flight delay
announcements.