You must do the thing you think you cannot do. Eleanor Roosevelt.
Regardless of the fact that both Mrs. Morretti and Mrs. Roosevelt could have used some major style advice with their respective wardrobes, Rebecca had found the challenge pushing her off and on over the years. It pushed her now.
A hike held all the appeal of a root canal for her. Going would be the self-improvement part of the program. As for the job perspective, she figured the hike might help her better understand the suburban male, and thus better understand his apathy toward fashion. If she could find an angle, she might even be able to get another article out of it.
Trying not to look as tentative as she felt, remembering that Eleanor’s advice applied to the dog, too, she swallowed hard, reached down and when he didn’t bare his teeth, shook his paw.
“Nice…dog.” Not sure what else one said to a canine, she straightened as Bailey pulled back his paw and watched him look to his owner.
Joe gave him a pat on the head and motioned him back into the truck.
“It won’t take long to get to the trailhead,” he said, walking her around the blunt nose of the vehicle to the passenger’s door. “Less than half an hour or so. I brought granola bars, trail mix and water. If you want anything else, we can stop at the market on the way out of town.”
Not wanting to alter the experience with a request for a bagel and a latte, Rebecca told him that whatever he normally took with him was fine. Waving to Mrs. Fulton across the street, she climbed into the cab of the truck and promptly stiffened again.
Bailey, looking expectant, had claimed the console in the middle. The dog also apparently knew he couldn’t stay there. The moment Joe climbed in on the other side, the dog turned in the confined space, brushing her forehead with his long tail and settled on one of the small jump seats behind them.
She hugged the door. “You seem to be good with them. Animals, I mean.”
His deep chuckle sounded easy and oddly relaxing. “I hope so. I’d starve if I wasn’t. You never had any pets growing up?”
She couldn’t tell if he’d asked because he couldn’t imagine such a possibility, or because he didn’t want to talk about himself. Having never met a man who didn’t consider himself his favorite subject, she decided he simply found her lack of animal companionship as a child somewhat incomprehensible. Or, maybe, unfortunate.
Having been under a bit of stress when she’d first met him, she couldn’t quite recall if she’d mentioned the impracticalities of pet ownership in the city, or if having one had simply never occurred to her or her mom. If she had, he didn’t seem to mind if she repeated herself as they left Danbury Way with her neighbors still watching and headed for the Catskills.
Except to go shopping in Albany, Rebecca hadn’t been outside Rosewood since she’d arrived. She had also never in her life set foot in a national or state park. She knew there were people in the city who kept summer homes or lodges in New England where they “escaped” during the summer or skied in the winter. She wasn’t one of them. Neither were her friends, though Carrie Klein, her onetime roommate and unfortunately no relation to Calvin or Anne, had dated a stockbroker with a great little place in the Hamptons. Her vacations were always to the fashion meccas of the world. Rome. Milan. Paris. Stateside, she stuck with Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco. Or the beach. She liked to be where there was room service, cabs and at least some semblance of nightlife.
She didn’t consider herself spoiled. Heaven knew there had been times that the only reason she could afford to go out with her girlfriends from work was because the happy hour hors d’oeuvres were free so she didn’t have to pay for a meal. The designer clothes she wore came from sample sales, or sales at Barneys or Saks, but mostly from the Vogue clothes closet, which housed cast-off items from photo shoots.
Roughing it meant having to walk thirty blocks in the rain because she couldn’t get a cab. Though she wasn’t about to mention it, within five minutes of leaving Joe’s truck to follow a narrow dirt path through the woods, she would have preferred a walk in a downpour from Union Square to East 59th to the trek she was on now.
The trail was too narrow to walk side by side, so she followed Joe into the forest with bushes brushing her on either side. She kept shifting her focus between the bright orange day pack slung across his strong back to the vegetation attacking her legs and snapping beneath her feet. The dog had run ahead. He returned now with a short piece of tree branch in his mouth. Obviously, he didn’t mind the taste of dirt.
“How far is it to the meadow?” she asked.
She watched Joe take the limb from the dog and toss it ahead of them. With the dog making the bushes rustle as he took off after his new toy, she glanced down in time to avoid tripping over a skinny tree root sticking up through the leaves and pine needles. Seeing bits of bush clinging to her jeans, she brushed them off.
Joe glanced at her over his shoulder, waited for her to catch up. “Only a couple of miles.”
“Miles?” They were going miles?
“Only a couple,” he repeated. “It’s an easy walk.”
Easy was a relative term. In the interests of job research and self-improvement, however, she trudged on.
“Why do you do this?” she asked, falling into step beside him as the trail mercifully widened.
“I like being outside.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m cooped up inside most of the week.”
“Why else?”
Joe adjusted the weight of his day pack. “Because it’s a great way to unwind. It puts you back to basics.” Her inquisitiveness reminded him of his four-year-old nephew. Why was his favorite word.
“So it’s a primitive thing? Like you’re feeding your inner pioneer or something. You know,” she coaxed, when a frown creased his face, “like your inner child.”
He knew all about the inner child. His little sister was a psychologist who’d blithely informed him after a family dinner last year that his lack of a serious romantic interest was probably his inner child’s fear to commit. That remark had only fed his mother’s fears that, unlike his married siblings, he was going to wind up old and alone, which was no doubt why she’d resumed her efforts to find him a suitable mate.
He loved his family. He just wished they’d stay out of his love life.
“It’s not that complicated,” he assured her. “I just like being where you can hear the wind in the trees and get some exercise.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to join a gym?”
“Why pay to run on a treadmill when you can do this for free?”
She swiped at something small and pesky buzzing past her ear. “Because there are no bugs?”
“These aren’t bad at all. You should be out here during mosquito season.”
“Thanks, but I think I’ll pass. I’m not crazy about things that suck blood.”
“So you don’t date lawyers?”
“Not anymore,” she muttered.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Joe glance toward her. The smile that deepened the vertical lines carved in his cheeks faded with his curiosity.
“Burned bad?”
The only lawyer she’d ever dated had been Jack. “Barely singed,” she murmured, though the experience had definitely contributed to the void that didn’t feel quite so awful at the moment. Marveling at that, she started