Page 20

CHAPTER 20

A fter dinner,Maxwanted to see the status of the cottage, so he checked to make sure that Marley would be in Ozzie’s apartment all night so that Poppy wouldn’t be alone in the building. I told Poppy we didn’t have to leave, and she said, “Go. Max should see how far we’ve gotten on the cottage.” I told her Marley would be in Ozzie’s apartment, and she nodded and said, “That’s fine,” and I thought about asking her what was going on with them, and decided if she needed me to know, she’d tell me. Until I couldn’t stand it anymore and asked her.

So Max and I went out to our cottage in the woods, the one he’d bought for me before he’d left.

It had only been two weeks since he’d hit the Trail, but I’d managed to get a lot done to the place. Turns out having friends like Luke and Pike and Marley and Reggie paid dividends. And for the other work, cold hard cash worked wonders on a plumber or electrician’s priority list for showing up, especially if it was Luke doing the asking. I didn’t have as much of that cold hard cash now, but I did have a cottage that showed real progress.

The new windows were in, double-paned so the place was a lot warmer. The roof had been repaired with extra insulation blown in. There was power, courtesy of a brand-new circuit box and Pike making a call to the electric co-op in Bearton. The plumbing was started but not done—the kitchen was completely gutted, pipes in place but no shower upstairs in the bathroom, although there was a working toilet and sink up there. That was a priority I’d insisted on so I could go out to the cottage and read and think. Max might miss peeing in the bushes, but I was all for walls and flushing.

The easy part on the interior had been done: gutting it. Luke, Darius, Marley, Reggie, Owen, Mei, and Poppy had had a blast the previous weekend wielding sledgehammers for two days in our four rooms. The interior walls downstairs, none of which had been supporting, were gone. HGTV would have had the place done in a week; I was hoping for some time in January, settling for February.

Until then, I’d ordered a queen-sized memory foam mattress and bedframe for the bedroom, thinking I might spend the night out there. I could get it pretty warm inside even before the electricity had gone in since Luke had made sure the fireplace people had come in and cleaned and lined the chimney, and had paid Marley and his brother Reggie to stock me up on firewood. Then I’d reconsidered and decided I'd wait untilMaxand I could spend the night out there together if he ever got back. Sleeping alone in the woods at night outside Rocky Start? I wasn’t that brave yet, and anyway I couldn’t leave Poppy alone.

But now Marley was in Ozzie’s bedroom, and Max was back in town, and I needed a break from problem-solving for everybody who wandered by.

Basically, I needed a break from Rocky Start.

We left Maggs with Poppy and took the Pathfinder because Max said he was done with walking in the snow. Ozzie’s big tires and four-wheel drive really helped as we drove down the forest road that Pike kept plowed and then past Betty’s cottage where Fernanda eyed us balefully across the fence. Then we turned off the plowed forest road onto virgin snow, as Max called it. Max somehow managed to get us up what could hardly be called a road, more an opening among trees, to park right behind the old cottage. The farther we got from Rocky Start, the easier I breathed. I loved that town, but it was weighing on me at the moment.

Max grabbed some stuff out of the back of the Pathfinder as I went to the cottage and unlocked the door and turned on the lights. Max hustled in, shut the door behind him, and took in the place, now one open room bisected by a stone staircase.

“You got a lot done,” he said.

“Not me. Luke and the kids. Plus an electrician and a plumber. Claud. He’s coming back to finish up the bathroom and start the kitchen. But there are new pipes and a new pump in the well, so we have running water that’s lead-free.”

He nodded, looking about. I looked at the walls and imagined drywall and paint and paper, at the naked windows and saw curtains, thick thermal ones. Max probably saw lines of fire.

“You kept the interior shutters,” he said. “Good.”

“The toilet works,” I said.

“Always a plus. Tell whoever the plumber is to put in a big shower fast.” He wiggled his eyebrows at me—the man had a real lust for shower sex, so we were definitely going to have a bench in there so we didn’t kill ourselves—and I laughed and he kissed me, which is always good. I said, “I told Claud we need a soaking tub big enough for two,” and he said, “We’re going to be the two cleanest people in Rocky Start,” and we were all right again, all the crisis and turmoil fallen away.

Max let go of me and did what he called a manly thing: making a fire. He cheated though, using one of those fire logs I’d bought because I am not manly but still wanted warmth.

“Don’t you do it the Daniel Boone way?” I asked as he arranged wood on top of the fire log. “Rubbing sticks together or something?”

He looked insulted. “Some things are best done the easy way, especially when there are much more important things to do.”

“Such as?”

“Such as checking out the upstairs.” He frowned. “There’s a fireplace up there, too, right? We need one of those bearskin rugs. We could make love in front of the fire.”

“Some things are best done the comfortable way,” I said. “Not on the floor. Especially not on the fur of some dead animal who was probably just minding her own business trying to get home to her cub when some asshole shot her.”

“Right,” Max said, now staring at the flames flickering over the logs and beginning to catch.

Men and fire. There’s something primal there. Although I love a fire, too. Maybe Max was right about making love in front of a fire, although not on a dead animal. Upstairs would be a big improvement over a kitchen in Rocky Start with Poppy upstairs and Marley watching from his truck, appalled, while Hermione pounded on the door to report Russians.

Max stood up, and I moved close so he put his arm around my shoulders, holding me even closer.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“Trying not to,” Max said.

“Good idea,” I said.

So we stood there for a minute in this weird, comfortable bubble, watching the fire blossom in our place, safe and private, just us.

I mean, the future was going to happen, we definitely had major problems and more coming our way. But worries about the future were just living in the future, and all I wanted tonight was the Good Right Now.

I pulled him toward the stairs. “Did I tell you I bought a mattress for the bedroom? Memory foam.”

Max nodded, as he followed me up the stairs, his hand on my ass where it belonged. “Now we’re living large.”

I did have one bad thought as we went up to bed, that the Good Right Now might be all we ever had if whoever was sending the attacks got lucky, but that wasn’t helpful. If Max the expert could put it aside, so could I.

So I watched Max build another fire upstairs and I just enjoyed the hell out of the Good Right Now.