“Low country’s in the rearview mirror now,” Hazel said when the birch-covered foothills were abruptly replaced with steeper slopes and gradually thinning timber.
“Jo, I hope you at least were a Girl Scout,” Bonnie declared, “because I sure wasn’t. Only place I ever camped out was in the backyard.”
Jo looked back at Bonnie, sending her friend a hesitant smile. “I think I know some heavy-duty survival skills—like how to roast marshmallows.”
It was a harmless joke, but Jo’s timidity seemed to irk the outspoken and hard-charging Stella.
“My goodness, Jo,” she scolded mildly, “do you know you’re so timid you even have a one-sided smile? Put your whole mouth into it! Pretty girl like you, it’s a shame. Where did you inherit that shyness of yours? If I didn’t know it for a fact, I’d never believe your momma was Miss Montana. Hon, when you’ve got a dazzling smile, don’t hide it under a basket.”
Jo realized Stella meant well. But the heat of resentment came into her face at yet another reminder that she lived in her mother’s beauty-queen shadow, inadequate, a flawed colorless chip off the dazzling marble block.
Other girls were allowed to develop their own personalities, while Jo was expected to effortlessly replicate her mother’s charming, gregarious, photogenic, always “on” vivacity. The ironic result was to make a naturally shy girl even shier.
“Never mind who was Miss Montana,” Hazel interceded, sensing Jo’s discomfort. “It’s all history now. The point is, any gal needs a backbone, not a wishbone. The rendezvous is just what these town girls need to put some stiff in their spines.”
Hazel’s right, Jo tried to rally herself, the past is just history now. She was on a new road to a new outlook on life. The hurt couldn’t count so much if there were no men around, even if that hurt caused by a cheating English professor in a midlife crisis left a hard, piercing sadness down deep where language couldn’t soothe it.
At the sudden, unwelcome memory, Jo felt the warm and stinging threat of tears.
“Five more minutes and we’re officially campers,” Hazel announced as she swung the car off the blacktop road onto a narrow gravel access lane. Although bigger trees had thinned out, stunted jack pines closed in on the lane and cut off any distant view.
“Here, Jo,” she added in an undertone, handing Jo a faded but clean bandanna. “I think you got some dust in your eyes.”
Hazel knew the main details about Ned. Neither woman believed there was dust in her eyes.
Jo managed a wistful smile. She still regretted her decision to come on this trip, but she knew she could at least fake enthusiasm for ten days out of respect for Hazel’s good intentions.
The narrow access lane took them around the shoulder of Lookout Mountain to a remote campsite near Bridger’s Summit, a few simple cabins without electricity, plumbing, or other amenities.
Jo could see a small clearing just ahead with only one car in it. But Hazel slowed the Fleetwood to a stop even before she reached the campsite, and no one had to ask her why.
Sun-drenched Crying Horse Canyon, visible as a deep gash beyond the cabins, lay below them, beautiful and serene. The Stony Rapids River cut a churning green ribbon through its middle.
But a few ridges’ distance to the north of Bridger’s Summit, dark smoke smudged the horizon.
Even as the new arrivals watched, a U.S. Forest Service helicopter hovered into view, dangling a giant bucket over a forested gulch below. The hinged bucket opened its steel jaws and bright-orange retardant misted into the gulch.
“Fire’s still pretty far away,” Stella remarked as Hazel pulled into the clearing and parked.
“Several ridges,” Hazel agreed in a dismissive tone. “I’ve seen the fires come closer. Besides, before we left I checked the long-range fire conditions with the rangers. State weather service is predicting low winds and high humidity next few days, and those conditions don’t favor the fire even if they say we might have to be evacuated.”
Stella laughed, unloading the trunk after Hazel unlocked it. “They always have to say that, Hazel, my dear. It’s a standard warning so you can’t sue their butts for attractive nuisance.”
“Attractive nuisance?” Jo repeated with a bemused smile, taking her knapsack.
“It’s a legal term. You know, for something that attracts people to it, yet is dangerous. Like kids playing in abandoned refrigerators.”
“Well,” Hazel scoffed. “In my day, an attractive nuisance had big boobs and her eye on your husband.”
She pointed with her chin toward the other car, a new beige Chrysler with Texas plates. “That Texas turncoat Dottie and her grandniece Kayla must be here.”
Jo shook off her misgivings as she stretched her stiff muscles. The place was attractive, and as far as she could see, there were no nuisances at all.
Hazel gazed around the camp clearing for a glimpse of Dottie and Kayla, but still spotted no one.
“I rented those two biggest cabins right near the rim of the canyon,” she explained. “One for age and one for beauty. Looks like we have the place to ourselves right now. Maybe the smoke scared off the tourists.”
“Speaking of beauty,” Stella muttered, gazing beyond the cabins to where a hiking path emerged into the clearing. “Methinks I see Dottie’s niece from Dallas. Talk about ‘attractive nuisance.’ Just look what she’s found in the woods.”
Jo, struggling under her heavy aluminum-framed backpack, looked just in time to see a man and a woman emerge from the surrounding pines and head in their general direction.
The curvy blonde had to be Kayla. She wore too much eyeliner for camping, and her denim cutoff jumpsuit, hardly designed for practicality, revealed long tanned legs and a glittering gold chain around the left ankle.
Jo glanced at the man with her. His appearance was a mystery. It was supposed to be a girls’ weekend—no men allowed. But the “talented” blonde had managed to find one in the woods, anyway.
“Hey-aaaay, y’all!” the girl called out in a cheerful drawl, waving at them. “I’m Kayla. Aunt Dottie’s off down the slopes gathering firewood to cook supper. Said she’s starving.”
Kayla placed one hand on the man’s left arm. “And this handsome gent is Mr. Nick Kramer. We’re going to be invaded by men! Smoke jumpers, at that.”
Jo studied the tall, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped man. Although athletic-looking in faded jeans and crewneck, he had a falcon-quick, alert gaze that evidenced a keen intelligence. He wore his cola-brown hair in a short brushcut; his eyes, she saw when he drew nearer, were amber-brown.
Not only was he incredibly handsome, she marveled, but he seemed most unaffected by it. Her experience with good-looking men—like Ned—had been that no woman could compete with their narcissism.
This man might not be vain, but that, she told herself, didn’t mean he wasn’t flawed in some other important area.
She covertly studied him.
One corner of his mouth pulled up a bit when he smiled, conveying self-confidence, cockiness.
Surely that in and of itself was a fatal flaw.
Finding her comfort zone once more, Jo dismissed her initial attraction to him as simply a brief surge in hormones following a dry spell. Besides, the last thing she needed on this trip was a man, handsome or not.
“Nick’s not just a smoke jumper,” Hazel interjected. “He’s a Hotshot.”
“Hazel,”