Читать книгу Out of Sight - Michelle Celmer, Michelle Celmer - Страница 10

Abi breathed in the clean afternoon air, feeling the burn in her calves as she hiked with a group of a dozen kids—the ten-years-and-older group—along the nature trail at the foothills of the mountain and into the woods. All around her the forest was alive with sights and sounds and scents. Four years ago she never would have appreciated the simple beauty of it. She would have seen it as dirty and smelly and uncivilized.

Now it was her solace.

It still amazed her at times, the changes she’d made in her life. It hadn’t been easy, and she never wanted to go back to being that lost, confused young woman she had once been. At the time she’d thought she owned the world, but it had all been an illusion.

“Go talk to him,” she heard Leanne whisper.

“I told you, he’s a snob.” Cindy gave her younger sister a shove. “If you like him so much, you go talk to him.”

Abi watched the exchange from the back of the group where she walked with the younger kids. It was easy to see that the older sister was the dominant, outgoing sibling, and like Abi at sixteen, she probably considered herself an authority on the workings of the teenage male mind. As pretty as she was, Abi didn’t doubt Cindy had her fair share of attention from the opposite sex. What need would she have to go looking for it?

Despite her confidence and nonchalant demeanor, she was probably the one hurt the most deeply by their parents’ divorce. She was just better at hiding it. At least, that was usually the case. Leanne, on the other hand, wore her emotions right out in the open for everyone to see.

Though it was Cindy who Abi could identify with, it was Leanne who intrigued her. And she hoped the younger girl would work up the courage to talk to Eric. Since arriving he still hadn’t talked to anyone. Abi was biding her time, waiting for just the right moment to approach him.

She glanced over her shoulder and saw that he was still there, lagging behind, eyes firmly fixed on the ground. She worried about him staying in a cabin all by himself. Not that she thought he couldn’t take care of himself. He wasn’t known to be a troublemaker and at seventeen he was old enough to stay there alone.

That was exactly what worried her. The isolation. She had the feeling he led a very lonely existence to begin with. Would this only make things worse?

She felt a tug on her shirt and turned to find the youngest boy in the group, a ten-year-old named Noah, walking beside her.

“Miss Abi, I’m tired and my feet hurt. I want to go back.”

Though he was a sweet kid, he was quickly gaining a reputation as a whiner.

She rumpled the back of his blond head and gave him an encouraging smile. “We’ll be taking a break real soon. Can you hold out another couple of minutes?”

“Okay,” Noah sighed, then, shoulders slumped, he ambled off. From what Abi had heard, Noah’s father had replaced his wife and son with his much younger, pregnant mistress, and Noah’s mother was so beside herself with grief and resentment she could barely function. Noah had lost not only his father but the attention of his mother, as well. Financially they were set, but as Abi had learned, money didn’t buy happiness. It didn’t heal wounded hearts or erase past mistakes. In fact, it had a way of causing more trouble than it was worth.

Hopefully with therapy and time to heal Noah’s mother would come to realize how much her son needed her, and they would leave the retreat a little less heartbroken. It was the best Abi could hope for.

“Have you got room for one more?”

Startled by the familiar voice, Abi looked back to find Will Bishop walking briskly up the trail behind them. He wore green cargo shorts and a dark tank that showed off the lean muscles in his shoulders and arms. Her heart gave a funny little flutter at the sight of him.

What was he doing here? Granted, the trail was a frequently traveled one, but she couldn’t help wondering if he’d followed them.

The idea both excited and concerned her.

She was still embarrassed by her behavior when he’d walked her to her cabin last night and had decided it would be best to keep her distance for the remainder of his stay. She’d had a speech rehearsed at lunch to let him down gently, but he had barely spoken to her. Just a friendly hello as he’d walked past her to a different table. Later, every time she’d looked at him—which she found herself doing more often than she was comfortable with—he had been engaged in conversation with another guest or staff member and hadn’t seemed to know she existed. Maybe she’d imagined the whole thing and he really hadn’t been thinking about kissing her. She used to be able to spot that kind of thing a mile away, but perhaps her feminine radar was rustier than she’d thought.

So odds were he hadn’t followed her but was instead out for a stroll and just happened to run into them. Which was good. She’d never had a guest interested in her, though it was known to happen, and the idea made her uncomfortable. The fact that she found him so fascinating was even worse.

“We’re taking a nature hike,” she said as he walked up and fell in step beside her. He was tall and fit and the way he moved was almost hypnotizing. She would have gone as far as to say he was graceful had he not been so glaringly masculine. She’d never known a man who displayed so much confidence with such a complete lack of arrogance.

“Shouldn’t you be in group therapy?”

Will shrugged and made a face. “Therapy isn’t really my thing.”

Interesting attitude considering he was at a retreat that specialized in therapeutic counseling. “Maybe it’s none of my business, but if you don’t want therapy, what are you doing here?”

He thought about that for a minute. “I’m not sure, really. I just knew I needed some time to work things through, to make some changes in my life. This seemed like the right place to do it—where I’m with people who understand what I’m going through.”

Well, she gave him points for honesty. “You should really consider it,” she said. “The therapy, I mean. It’s probably not what you would expect.”

“I’ll think about it,” he said.

They reached the clearing where her group would take their first rest. Overturned logs and tree stumps served as seats. “Okay, everyone, fifteen-minute break. I’d like you to take out your journals and write at least one page.”

“What do we have to write about?” one of the younger girls asked.

“Anything you’d like. It could be a page about something you saw in the woods that interested you or something you’re feeling. Anything at all.” It didn’t really matter what they wrote. Their journals were a warm-up exercise to get the kids loosened up and ready for their group therapy sessions later that afternoon.

The kids dropped their backpacks to fish out their journals, and Abi turned to Will. “You don’t have to wait.”

“I don’t mind.” He set his pack on the ground and sat on an overturned log.

Okay.

Whether she wanted his company or not, it didn’t look as if she had much choice now, not without causing a scene and possibly insulting or embarrassing him in front of the kids. Besides, what could be the harm in a little friendly conversation?

“Keeps to himself, doesn’t he?” Will asked.

She followed the direction of his gaze and saw Eric standing alone, leaning against a tree away from the group. He hadn’t taken out his journal and was instead whacking at the underbrush with a stick, his usual bored expression on his face.

Rather than insist, she let him be. Forcing him would only make matters worse.

She sat beside Will on the log. “I haven’t figured out how to approach him yet. I know there’s a way in, I just have to find it.”

Will leaned back and stretched his legs out in front of him. They were long and muscular and covered with crisp dark hair. She’d never been particularly attracted to men’s legs before, but she found her eyes drawn to his and even had a difficult time looking away. What was it about him that fascinated her so?

“He’s a problem kid?” Will asked.

Though she tried not to discuss one guest with another, she was grateful for the neutral topic. And being male, Will might have an idea how she could get through to a teenage boy. “The opposite, in fact. His parents are concerned because he’s become unusually introverted. They sent him here to pull him out of his shell.”

“Sent him here? I thought it was supposed to be family therapy.”

“It is usually.”

“Let me guess—the parents don’t have time.”

“Something like that.”

He shook his head. “That’s too bad.”

“Miss Abi!” Noah appeared in front of them, hopping from one foot to the other, clutching the front of his shorts. “I gotta pee bad.”

Add drama queen to his personality quirks. All he had to do was ask.

“That’s the cool thing about being a boy. Outdoor plumbing.” She nodded toward the dense forest on either side of the clearing. “You’ve got a couple hundred trees to choose from.”

He glanced around, a worried look on his face. “I don’t want to go out there alone.”

“Would you like me to come with you?”

His expression went from worried to horrified. “Yuck! You’re a girl.”

“Would you like Mr. Bishop to take you?”

He looked Will over in the blatant, honest way that kids did, then shook his head. “He’s a stranger.”

“Hmm,” she looked around, wondering how to solve this problem, then got an idea. “What if one of the older boys took you? Would that be okay?”

Noah considered that for a minute, then nodded.

“How about Eric?

“Yeah, okay.”

Perfect. Just the way in she needed. “Eric,” she called, “can I see you for a minute?”

His expression one of sheer disinterest, Eric tossed down his stick, shoved both hands in the pockets of his shorts and ambled over to them. Though he was only seventeen, he stood close to six feet tall. His sun-streaked brown hair was on the long side, and he brushed it aside with a jerk of his head when it fell into his eyes. “Yeah?”

He was trying so hard to not look lost and lonely, it broke her heart.

“Noah here needs to relieve himself, but he’s uncomfortable with the idea of a girl or a stranger taking him,” she explained. “Could you please take him far enough into the woods so he has some privacy?”

He shrugged as if it didn’t matter either way to him. “Sure. Come on, kid.”

He headed into the woods and Noah trailed behind him. Abi could hear him jabbering away. Maybe he would get Eric talking.

“That was good,” Will said.

Abi turned back to him and smiled. “Like I said, the moment would present itself. I just had to be patient.”

“You’re really good with the kids.”

“I love my job. Although, if you had told me four years ago that I would be doing this, I’d have said you were nuts.”

“Why is that?”

“Let’s just say I wasn’t into kids back then.”

“A lot of things can change in four years,” he agreed, a sad, almost wistful look in his eyes.

“Is that when it happened?”

He turned to her. “What happened?”

“The car accident.”

“Yeah, four years ago.” Four years next month, in fact. The anniversary of Ryan’s death. In an odd way it felt as if Will’s life had been on hold since then, as though he were just biding his time, waiting until Vince was brought to justice. He was so close now he could feel the heavy hand of justice by his side, waiting for him to succeed. And he would get that justice, no matter the consequences.

“How did you end up working here?” he asked her.

“Fate.” She looked over at him, and though she smiled, he could see the guarded look in her eyes. She was hiding something, and he had a pretty good idea it had to do with her boss.

After talking with many of the other staff members, he’d concluded that not many seemed to know much about their elusive employer, and the few who did weren’t inclined to discuss her.

He was all the more convinced that Abi was the key, his ticket to meeting Maureen. But it wasn’t going to be a simple operation. There was something about her, something in her eyes he identified with—a connection he felt—and he was pretty certain the feeling was mutual. But he was also aware that his presence made her uneasy, as if she wasn’t quite sure what to make of him. That was okay, because he wasn’t sure what to make of her either—what he found so attractive about a woman so plain and unassuming. His wives might have been clingy and dependant, but they were both physically beautiful.

Today Abi wore her hair in a ponytail, her face once again scrubbed clean—he’d never once seen her wear makeup. Her clothes were on the baggy side, as if she were self-conscious about her body and deliberately tried to hide her figure. As far as he could see, she wasn’t overweight. In fact, she was so slight in stature, he was surprised by the muscle tone in her legs. He was guessing that she’d done a fair amount of hiking to develop calves like that.

Working undercover he’d learned to subtly—and sometimes not so subtly—insinuate himself into any given situation. He knew just how far to push and when to back off. He didn’t doubt he would get what he wanted. He’d waited too long, worked too hard to let this chance slip away. And there was no rush. He had the better part of four weeks to get what he needed. Plenty of time to win Abi’s trust.

“I guess I should be on my way.” He stood and hiked his backpack up over his shoulders. “I’d like to get a few miles in before I play golf.”

He looked down at Abi and for a second he could swear he saw disappointment in her eyes.

“There’s a sign-up sheet in the office for both individual and group therapy,” she told him. “I’d like you to consider it.”

“I will,” he said, knowing he really wouldn’t. He didn’t need a shrink to tell him he wasn’t cut out for marriage. He’d figured that out all by himself. “Maybe I’ll see you at dinner tonight.”

She gave him a noncommittal smile that said whether he did or didn’t was of no consequence to her. “See you around.”

That he would definitely do. She could count on it.