Jenna Mindel - A Temporary Courtship

“I almost stepped on that one.” She laughed and kept walking forward, slow and hunched over. Her hair fell like a curtain, draping her face from view. Her gray slip-ons were dirty at the toes, and her pants had streaks of dirt on them, too. She wore a gold-colored windbreaker that made her easy to spot. That color also made her eyes glow. Like a cat’s eyes.

Darren wasn’t real fond of cats. Even his parents’ cat drove him nuts with all its hollering for attention, only to run away if he tried to pet it. Women were like cats in that way. He preferred dogs. Dogs didn’t tease.

“Ooh, here’s another couple.” She picked them properly and foraged on, poking her fingers under dead leaves and raking through the clumps of grass here and there.

Well, she wasn’t prissy. He’d give her that. He found a few more as well and checked his watch. Twenty minutes to go. He stood and glanced around the woods. Stella was out of sight, as were several others, but he heard lots of chatter. No one lost. That was good. Real good.

“So, what does a DNR officer do besides take a bunch of us resorters out in the woods to look for food?”

Resorters. Even that sounded pretentious.

“As a conservation officer,” he corrected her, “my job is to provide natural resources protection and ensure recreational safety, as well as provide general law enforcement duties.”

“That sounds like it came right out of a textbook.”

“It did.” Straight out of his employee handbook.

She smiled, causing those delectable dimples to reappear. “Do you like what you do?”

Here we go. The usual female digging. At first, Raleigh had liked the idea of what he did for a living—the whole man-in-uniform-with-a-gun thing. But then the limitations of his pay coupled with his desire to stay put in Northern Michigan had bothered her. Obviously too much. He should have believed her when she’d said she wanted to travel and eventually move away to a more urban area.

“I love my job.” Darren didn’t want to do anything else but grow within this region and climb the short ladder right here.

Bree nodded. “That’s good.”

Curious, he asked her the same. “What about you?”

“I play the cello.”

The cello. That was the instrument whose name he couldn’t remember. He stopped walking. “Hey, so that was you practicing before class.”

Bree grinned. “It was. Along with a woman who plays the violin in a string quartet here. There are practice rooms above the community room. Bay Willows is hoping to start a summer music school. They’ve bought up a couple of vacant cottages near the community building, but I suppose you know that.”

“I didn’t.” Something like that would only bring more people here. “You’re good.”

“I know.” There was no bragging in her voice. She’d stated a simple fact. Like any professional acknowledging a skill level.

“Do you give lessons, then?”

She spotted another morel and picked it. “Not really. I’m not into teaching little kids how to play, you know? I play with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra—well, I used to.”

“Used to?”

“I quit.”

He stared at her. She obviously wanted him to ask the reason, and the funny thing was, Darren wanted to know. “Okay. Why?”

“Last year, I applied for a two-year music residency that would encompass composing. I’d like to compose. And, well, recently I got called and accepted.” She let out a deep breath. “There, practice before delivery speech.”

He didn’t want to go there, but something about the vulnerable look in her eyes made him probe. “Is it a secret?”

“No. I’ve wanted to work under a composer for years, but I haven’t ever had the chance before. My parents don’t know yet, but then, it came together pretty fast.”

She looked old enough to make her own decisions. “And they’ll have a problem with it?”

Bree shrugged. There was obviously more to her story, but all she said was, “I’ll find out.”

He nodded and they fell silent, each one searching out mushrooms in opposite directions. After several minutes, he stood, stretched and spotted Bree a few yards away.

Her eyes were closed, her head tilted toward the sky. Her dark brown hair blazed with coppery color where the sun hit it.

His gut tightened. He didn’t want to care about why this woman worried over her parents’ reaction. He didn’t want to like her at all, but there was something about her that tugged at him. Like a rare wildflower that needed protection from getting picked.

At that moment, she opened her eyes, looked right at him and grinned. “I was listening to the sounds of the woods.”

He cocked his head. What was she talking about?

“You know, the birdsong and the breeze rustling those crepe-paper-looking leaves on those little trees over there.” She wasn’t putting him on.

“I can’t remember what they are. Some kind of aspen, maybe.” He wished he knew. He’d look it up.

“Interesting sounds out here.”

“Haven’t you been in the woods before?”

“I’ve summered here most of my life, but I’ve never ventured far from the main thoroughfares. Maybe Traverse City or Mackinac Island.”

He shook his head. “You’re missing the best parts of Northern Michigan.”

She turned interested eyes on him. “So, where are these best parts?”

He took the bait. “Open fields with hills rising behind them. A twisting river loaded with brookies. The Pigeon River Forest where elk roam. Come winter, there are awesome snowmobile trails, pine trees heavy with snow and blue moonlight.”

She gave him an odd look. “You sound like a poet.”

Darren kicked at the ground cover. He’d gotten carried away. “I appreciate the area, is all.”

“No desire to live elsewhere?”

“None.” He was a local. He’d always be a local even though he’d been an army baby. His mother had moved him and his brother Zach permanently to Maple Springs after their brother Cam was born. She’d wanted her kids to have a home, an anchor. Some of his siblings had flown far from the nest after high school, but Darren wasn’t a traveler. He’d gone to college only a couple hours away before attending conservation officer training academy.

The people who summered at Bay Willows came from all over. Mainly the Midwest, sure, but most were well-traveled and liked to tell where they’d been. They peppered their conversation with travel itineraries the way folks in old movies plastered travel stickers on their suitcases. Raleigh used to tease that he was backward, having never really been anywhere as an adult.

“Hmm.” Bree’s attention zeroed in on the ground. “Oh, here are some more.”

Glad for the distraction, Darren let the matter drop, because it didn’t matter. Bree Anderson was both educated and no doubt well-traveled. She was accustomed to a lifestyle he’d never had and never would have. With the supervisor position came a pay increase that would be more than enough for him. He didn’t care about making scads of money.

If Bree found him interesting, it was only temporary. He wasn’t the kind of guy a girl like Bree would keep for the long haul. Darren wasn’t good enough for the Bay Willows crowd. He’d learned that lesson pretty well. Darren only had to make a mistake once to know he’d never repeat it.

* * *

On the drive back to Maple Springs, Bree peered into her plastic grocery sack at the pile of blackish-tan edibles heaped there. She breathed in the soft, earthy smell of fungi. Nothing too strong or pungent, she had trouble coming up with a comparison for the aroma. She’d picked these delicacies in the woods, with her own two hands.

How cool.

“How many do you have?” Darren’s voice sounded awfully gentle for such a gruff guy.