Page 69 of Love By a Landslide

“Well, I’m not sure how much you know about weather predictions, but . . . a storm’s coming.” He grimaced when he didn’t hear a response. Then froze when he didn’t hear footsteps. He turned around.

Lucy had stopped dead and jammed her hands, no, her fists, on her hips and gave him a venomous glare. “You’re fucking with me, right?”

“I wish I were.” He walked a few paces back to where she stood and laid his hands on her shoulders. He gave her a sympathetic squeeze and said, “We can do this. We’ve still got a couple of hours until it starts. We can speed up a little and try to get further along before then.”

Judging by the look on her face, he’d say she blamed him for the upcoming precipitation, and he couldn’t help but chuckle.

“You’re absolutely sure about the rain?” she asked.

“If I were a betting man, which I’m not, I would wager my house on it.”

Lucy closed her eyes and inhaled. She counted to ten and looked back up at Jonathan. “Ok, nothing we can do about it, right?”

Impressed with the display of levelheadedness, he pulled her in for a soothing hug. “That’s my little trouper.”

“Don’t push your luck.” She hugged him back.

He planted a slow, sensual kiss on her lips before turning back around and continuing on. Lucy followed closely behind.

Chapter thirty-five

Lucy

For the next few hours, Jonathan and Lucy labored their way around trees, dense brush, and boulders. Stopping only to drink water and take bites of their dwindling food supply, the two continued the hurried march in relative silence. Naturally, the lack of conversation allowed Lucy’s thoughts to ricochet inside her head at the same breakneck pace they maintained during their descent. Thoughts of returning to Seattle and going back to work left a lingering dread with each logistical consideration. Besides Todd, whom she loved, and her job, which she didn’t love but needed in order to feed herself, there was nothing drawing her home.

Home.

Could she even call it that?

The last few days had been full of excitement and color and intensity. Leaving was a difficult pill to swallow. Even with the landslide and the stranding, meeting and connecting with Jonathan made every moment worth the struggle. He brought out a vivid, life-altering awakening in her when she hadn’t even realized she’d been asleep. The idea of receding back into her bleak, gray life was difficult to reconcile.

No.

She didn’t belong in Seattle. Deep down, she’d known that for a long time. Lucy wasn’t sure where she was meant to land, but it wasn’t back in the loud, bustling city where she kept her headdown and stayed out of everyone’s way.

She wanted to belong withJonathan.

A substantial part of her—the romantic in her—whispered that maybe he wanted the same thing. Unfortunately, the logical corner of her brain was deafening, stomping on those quiet murmurs of hope for new love. But if he felt the same way, all she would need from him was reassurance, and she’d happily skip away from the Emerald City and into her own little slice of Bavarian heaven. It would be worth giving their connection a chance to become something. Worth the risk.

But would it be for him? Did he even want something serious again after being married and becoming a widower? Was he over his wife? Something nagged at the back of her mind regarding Cynthia and the rafting trip. Jonathan had said it was his fault, but that couldn’t be true.

Lucy had to find out if he was hung up on Cynthia before she humiliated herself into thinking otherwise. She had to know more.

I might regret this . . .

“Can I ask you something?”

Jonathan almost jumped as Lucy broke the silence but quickly released a disarmed chuckle. He dropped back a few strides so they walked side by side. “Anything. What do you want to know?” he asked gamely as they continued through the woods.

“You said your wife, Cynthia, died in a river rafting accident.” She glanced over in apprehension. A scowl replaced the charming smile on his lips. Lucy bravely pressed onward, even if it was to her doom. “But when you said it, you sounded like . . . like you didn’t . . . um . . . what I mean is—”

“Spit it out,” he said, stopping abruptly and facing her.

“It sounded like . . . maybe . . . that wasn’t the whole story. I don’t know what I’m saying, but all I know is I feel like you leftout something.”

Like the fact that you’re still in love with and/or stuck on your deceased wife, for example.

Jonathan looked up at the sky, preoccupied with the shifting clouds looming gray and fat with water.

---