Page 18 of The Nook for Brooks (Mulligan’s Mill #6)

I tugged the hiking shirt in front of me like a shield. “Control yourself.”

He licked his lips. “Don’t worry. I’d rather wait till tonight, lying beneath the night sky, just you and me and a galaxy of stars.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Oh, the things I could do to you.”

“Wow, that went from romance to porn fast.”

He barked a laugh. “Come on, the woods are calling.”

I tugged on the cargo shorts like a was putting on a space suit then submitted myself to the indignity of Cody’s hiking boots.

“Perfect,” Cody said, far too pleased with himself. “You look rugged.”

“I look ridiculous,” I snapped. “I look like an extra in a budget documentary about the Oregon Trail.”

He only grinned and shouldered his pack. “Ruggedly ridiculous, then. Let’s go.”

The boots were a size and a half too big, which meant I clomped down the spiral staircase like a Clydesdale on parade, before we exited the Book Nook and I locked the door behind me.

As we headed out of town, Cody kept up a running commentary about the “fresh air” and the “crisp afternoon light.” I tried not to notice how every step of his looked relaxed and effortless, while mine clomped, pinched, and squeaked, my feet already starting to blister.

“Cheer up, handsome,” Cody said, slinging an arm casually around my shoulders as if we were out for an evening stroll and not marching toward certain doom.

“I’ve looked at the map. There’s a trail that leads from the mill up to a mountain overlooking the falls.

It’s only about a mile. We’ll set up camp there for the night. ”

“A mile?” I groaned. “Each way?”

“That’s usually how trails work.”

I pictured myself being stretchered out, blistered and dehydrated, while Cody gave a stirring eulogy about how I’d perished bravely, three hundred meters into the journey.

The deeper we went, the louder the forest grew. Crickets thrummed. Leaves rustled. The river burbled nearby with an ominous undertone, as though it knew exactly how many bodies had been swallowed by its currents. Every sound was an orchestra of doom, and I was front row center.

Cody, of course, was humming. Humming. As though he were sauntering down the sunny promenade with one of Clarry’s ice cream cones in hand.

“Keep your eyes peeled. You don’t know what wildlife you’ll see as the sun sets.”

“That’s what worries me.”

By the time we hiked up the mountain and found a clearing with a view of the falls below, twilight was casting a purple glow over the treetops.

Cody dropped his pack and clapped his hands. “Perfect spot. Flat ground, water nearby, gorgeous view. What more could you want?”

“Civilization,” I muttered.

“Sit tight,” he said. “Watch the master at work.”

I sat stiffly on a mossy log which was damp, scratchy, and undoubtedly unsanitary as hell, while Cody whipped poles and waterproof nylon sheeting into position. Within minutes, the tent was standing. My jaw dropped.

“How—how did you do that?”

He winked. “Years of practice. Also, tent technology is pretty amazing these days. They make it as easy as possible for you to enjoy the whole camping experience.”

“Does that come with a guarantee?”

He ignored me, staying chipper the whole time. “Next job… starting a fire.”

Before I could protest about forest fire permits or the absence of a sprinkler system, he was already at work.

He gathered a neat bundle of kindling from beneath a tree, broke up some larger fallen branches with the ease of a man born to show off his biceps with every snap, and stacked them at the center of the clearing.

Smaller sticks went on the bottom, larger logs on top, all arranged with precision.

“Don’t you need… flint?” I asked weakly, picturing him bashing rocks together like a caveman next.

He grinned, reached into his pocket, and flicked a lighter. Fwoosh.

In an instant the kindling caught, flames curling upward like they’d been waiting for him all day.

“There we go,” he said, straightening with smug satisfaction. “Home sweet home.”

Home sweet hell , I thought, busily waving away the smoke that blew directly in my face. I tried moving left, but the smoke followed. I shuffled right, and the breeze shifted again, chasing me like a vengeful spirit.

Quickly I abandoned the fire altogether and followed Cody into the tent, where he unrolled two sleeping bags side by side.

“Oh god,” I breathed, staring at the flimsy nylon cocoon. “That’s it? That’s where we’re supposed to—”

“Yep.” He flopped onto his sleeping bag, clasping his hands behind his head. “Don’t look so horrified. You’ll survive. Promise.”

I sat down gingerly, as though the earth might collapse beneath me. My hip instantly jabbed against a root. I lay all the way down, squirming this way, bending that way, trying to get comfortable.

Cody turned his head toward me, smiling in the dim glow. “See? Cozy.”

I clutched the edge of my sleeping bag like a shroud. “If the Beast of Bray Road comes for us in the dead of night, I want it on record that this was your idea.”

“What the hell is the Beast of Bray Road?”

“It’s a local legend down in Elkhorn. A werewolf with glowing red eyes that stands on two legs and scratches on doors. We don’t even have a door to scratch on!”

He chuckled. “If he turns up, we’ll just have to cuddle closer to stay safe. Actually, werewolves are kinda hot. Maybe we’ll invite him to join us.”

I groaned. “Dear god. Camping really is porn.”

To my utter amazement, dinner was edible. More than edible. It was positively delicious.

Instead of the charred hotdogs or ash-flavored beans I’d been bracing for, Cody unwrapped a foil package to reveal a golden, buttery chicken and leek pie—procured, of course, from Pascal’s.

He’d even thought to tuck a little tub of spiced relish into his pack, and we warmed the pie over the fire until the pastry flaked beneath our forks.

“This,” Cody declared, lifting a bite as steam curled upward. “Is camping done right.”

“This,” I corrected. “Is not camping. This is smuggling haute cuisine into the wilderness like a culinary outlaw.”

“Outlaw, huh?” He winked. “I can live with that.”

When the last buttery crumbs had been brushed from our laps, Cody folded the foil wrapping into a neat square, slipped it into a zip-lock bag, and tied it tight before hanging it from a tree branch well away from camp.

“I heard you had black bears,” he said by way of explanation.

“We do?” I panicked.

“You really don’t get out much, do you? Relax, we’ll be fine.”

Cody clearly wasn’t concerned. He leaned back against a log with a satisfied sigh. He patted the ground beside him, gesturing for me to join him.

I did, partly because he looked so damn handsome in the glow of the fire. Also because if a bear was going to jump out of the bushes, I needed someone to hide behind.

He wrapped one of his big arms tightly around me, pulling me close.

The forest hummed with unseen things—crickets thrumming, the distant falls crashing and splashing, leaves shifting high above.

The flames crackled, throwing sparks into the dark.

The shadows beyond the circle of light shifted and stirred, and I had the uneasy sense that at any moment something big and scary would come lurching out of the trees.

I needed a distraction. Any distraction.

“So,” I said, clearing my throat. “A travel writer… What makes a person want to be a travel writer?”

Cody smiled. “That’s a short question with a big answer. Do you want the long version or the abridged edition?”

“I’d prefer the longest possible version, actually. Something that lasts until sunrise.”

He chuckled, poking at the fire with a stick.

“Fair enough. Honestly, I guess it started when I was a kid. I grew up on Magnetic Island with my parents. My dad was constantly coming and going, working in the mines, while Mum worked two jobs, one at a café in the morning, the other at the local pub at night. We didn’t have much.

But sometimes, if she got home early from a shift, she’d read me the travel sections from old magazines she picked up at the café.

I’d sit there staring at those pictures of mountains in Peru or markets in Morocco and think, I’ve got to see this for myself one day. ”

He paused, eyes reflecting the fire, and shrugged.

“So, when I got older, I saved up for a one-way ticket to Istanbul. I promised myself I could find my way across Europe with nothing but a few bucks and a whole lot of determination. I hitchhiked, I swindled my way onto a few trains, I even walked parts of it. In Budapest I washed dishes for three weeks for a little cash. I picked olives in Tuscany for a local farmer and polished shoes in a train station in Berlin for a whole month. A year later I made it to London and submitted a bunch of stories to a local magazine. They published all of them, one week after another. They even gave me my own column after that. But staying in one place was no longer an option for me. So I kept moving. I’d land somewhere, pitch a story, write it, sell it, and use the money to get the next plane out.

I was officially a wanderer, a citizen of the planet, and I never wanted to stop seeing things, writing about things, experiencing everything the world had to offer. ”

I tilted my head. “But doesn’t it ever get… lonely?”

His grin flickered in the firelight. “I’ve still got my own place on Maggie.

I use it as a base every now and then. I know all the islanders, and they know me.

But I never really stay long.” He paused for a moment; he’d avoided my question.

With a sigh he nodded. “Yeah, it gets lonely sometimes. You meet people, you say goodbye. Sometimes you fall for someone, and you’ve got to keep walking anyway.

But the road becomes its own sort of companion, you know?

There’s always something new around the corner. ”

I studied him for a moment, the way his voice had dipped softer, the way the lines around his eyes deepened.