He pulled me in front of him and leaned down, his chin almost resting on my shoulder. He pointed with one hand, turned my hips with his other, and murmured in my ear. “See it now?”
And I did. After I got over the riot of butterflies in my tummy at the feel of Leo curving against my back, I could see the remains of an old house on a crumbling stone foundation. Trees grew up through the old walls, and the second floor had fallen into the center years ago. A chimney of fieldstone, leaning precariously, shaped the far wall, while the wall facing us was gone.
“Wow,” I breathed.
“You know what’s all around that house, right?” he asked, right in my ear.
Mercy. I loved the feeling of him behind me. I could so get used to it.
“No?”
“Your walnut trees.” He nudged me forward on the path, his hand moving from my hip to the small of my back. “Whether the trees were here before the house, or the trees took over after the house was abandoned, I have no idea.”
“Oh, now that is seriously cool,” I said, delighted at the idea I was meeting the trees that made my cake so delicious. He nodded back at me, in sync on this. I loved knowing where my food was coming from. I let him lead me toward the house, picking my way carefully across fallen rock and downed limbs. The sunlight filtered through, creating a little pocket of dappled green. “This is still your property, right?”
“Technically it’s my family’s property, but yes. We’re not even halfway across the preserve,” he said, walking over to the biggest tree, knotted and gnarled.
I marveled at the idea that this family had owned so much land for so long. “So this is a walnut tree, huh? I never would have known.”
“I wouldn’t have known either, until I was out here one day in the fall and found all the husks on the ground. We’ve got another grove over by the main orchards, but we still come in and harvest here every year.”
“And the house? Was this one your family built?” I asked, looking back toward the stone foundation.
“I don’t think so. I’ve looked on a bunch of old maps and surveys of the property, and it seems like it’s part of an older farm that was abandoned long before the Maxwells arrived.” He said his family name with a trace of bitterness. But before I could ask anything else, he turned toward me. “Anyway, I just thought you might like to see it.”
“It’s nice back here. It’s quiet, peaceful. There’s pockets of peaceful where I live now, but you have to drive pretty far to find them.”
“I’ve been to LA many times. Peaceful isn’t the first word that springs to mind.”
“Hmm,” I said, leaning my head back against the tree and staring up into the canopy. The green overlapped, leaves and limbs weaving together, swaying high in a breeze that didn’t make it down to where we standing. Leo leaned against his tree, I leaned against mine, and we were content to drink in the stillness of being so deep in a forest. I breathed in the smell of the dusty, crunchy leaves, the grassy scent of growing things, exhaling in a long slow sigh.
“Was that a ‘this place is boring’ sigh?” he asked from across the clearing.
I shook my head. “Hell no. That was a ‘what a good day this turned out to be’ sigh. Perfect weather, perfect temperature, perfect setting. I got to see why chickens cross the road, and see where walnuts come from. Compared to what my days have been like in LA lately, this was exactly what I needed.”
“A good-day sigh,” he repeated, pushing off from his tree and walking slowly toward me.
“A great-day sigh,” I amended.
“An upgrade? Why the change from good to great?”
He was close enough now that I could see the bit of faint red in his beard along his jaw, the spot on his T-shirt where it was worn thin from years of washing, the veins on the inside of his tanned forearm, and how strong his hands must be.
“It’s on its way from great to awesome,” I answered, wrapping my arms around the tree behind me, looking for all the world like a damsel in distress. I gazed up at him through lowered lashes, California Roxie on the case. “Especially if you keep coming this way.”
The grin that crept across his face was less friendly neighborhood farmer and more sexy neighborhood pirate. Then he was suddenly there, inside my dance space.
It was time to kick this summer romance into gear. There I was, leaning against a tree in a forest with my arms behind me, my breasts thrust forward in the international signal for kiss me, you fool. I looked like the prow of a ship. And there he was, all slow amble and eyes blazing and forearms temptation, a little bit stranger and a little sexy danger.
And then there it was—a huge bumblebee, bobbing on the unseen flower highway. It buzzed my ear, dive-bombed my neck, laughed in my face, and flew right down between my outthrust boobs.
I instantly became a flailing, screaming, beating-at-my-chest ball of freak-out. I tore off my shirt to get at the bee and ran in circles around the tree, slapping at my bra while shrieking at the top of my lungs.
“Roxie? Roxie! What the hell are you—”
“Beeeeeeeeeeee!” I shouted as he stopped me cold, closing his hands around my arms and trying—but not hard enough—to not look down at my tits, now struggling to stay inside their cups.
“Okay, calm down. It won’t sting if you calm—”
“Yes it will! Bees are assholes!” I screamed, shimmying like Charo and trying to break away.
“Are you allergic?”
“No!”