Love Me: The Complete Series (55 page)

“Hey, check that out. Someone carved a message into that tree.” Amanda pointed to their left.

Jackson followed her finger and stopped moving. “
Find me
. Think it’s related to the messages on the rocks?”

Amanda’s hands were cramping. She jostled the box to her other hip. “No idea. Usually people carve things like
Joe hearts Sandy
. I would think if you want to be found, you should include a little more info. Something like an arrow pointing in the general direction the person went would be helpful. Of course, I guess if you’re carving on a tree, you’re not exactly—”

“I think I got the picture. You ready to climb?” Jackson dropped the gear and pointed toward the ledge above.

Uh, not really.
“You’re sure this is safe without a spotter person?”

Jackson stepped into his harness and handed one to Amanda. “I’m going up first and I’ll take care of the ropes. You handled it great before so this should be a piece of cake.”

Amanda watched Jackson wrap the box in a blanket he’d extricated from his pack before he started upward with the blanket strapped across his shoulders above the pack. Forty minutes later, she pulled herself over the ledge and grinned from ear to ear. “I did it.” Sweat beaded across her forehead. Hell, it dripped. Everywhere.

He smiled. “You did.”

Amanda lay on her back staring at the stone crevices above them that formed a ceiling. She wheezed from exertion but the exhilaration that flowed through her veins was euphoric. If she weren’t in such a cramped space, she’d do a happy-dance. She’d hauled herself up the wall with no assistance and not one single tumble. Her chest heaved up and down as she gulped in air while her pulse calmed. “That was awesome!”

The rocks above were gray, brown, and pink—terra cotta was probably the accurate descriptor. They were darkened to black where the edges jutted down. She reached up. “Looks like there have been a lot of people here over the years. Don’t rocks change to smoky black over the years from the oils in hands and body touches?”

Jackson was wrestling around beside her and until that moment, she’d not bothered to look his way. A piece of clear glass interrupted her thoughts. “Oh, you brought wine?” She blinked and rolled to a seat before taking the golden liquid.

Jackson nodded. “Yes, and a few other things to celebrate your new success.”

“Success?”

He waved over the ledge.

Amanda sipped before glancing at a blanket covered with paper plates, cheese, fruit, and a mysterious Tupperware container. “How could you possibly know I’d climb up here without your help?”

He shrugged. “Okay, it was just dinner. I thought we should come back without the torrential downpour and see what else we can find.”

Jackson turned his back to Amanda and filled a couple of plates, then handed one her way. “Fruit, cheese, and some ham. It’s all I could throw together on a whim.”

“Yum.”

They ate and drank the wine in silence. Watching the sun dip further below the tree line was peaceful. The birds swooped over the trees periodically searching for a last-minute workout—or dinner. Their calls carried across the wind, a beautiful backdrop to the view.

Jackson poured more wine into her emptied glass. She peered through the liquid. This must be what rose-colored glasses felt like; looking through the world with a golden pink hue was damned romantic.

After a few minutes of sipping and enjoying the view, she reminded herself why they’d come. “The carvings on the tree have to be connected to this, don’t they?” She ran a finger over the stick figures that sported the same phrase.

Jackson didn’t shift his gaze from Amanda, which made her want another bird to dart by or a sound to distract him. “That would be my guess. It seems too much of a coincidence to have the exact same phrases in both places. What do you think?”

He was asking her to give a judgment but she hadn’t exactly been thinking or acting logically lately. She’d done many stupid things—like staying up all night reading love letters between a soldier and a girl, and showing up at a flower shop to spy on their suspected daughter—or granddaughter?

“Logic tells me not to answer that question.”

Jackson lifted an apple slice from one of his plastic containers and dipped it into brown, silky caramel. Amanda knew she was practically drooling as she watched. He lifted it, caught her staring, and changed direction. Jackson slipped the caramel-covered fruit between her lips. She bit down and he smiled as she closed her eyes in pleasure. “Forget logic for a moment and tell me what you really think. Don’t talk like a lawyer with a vested interest. Be human.”

What was that supposed to mean? “I
am
human.”

Jackson leaned forward and dropped a kiss on her mouth. “I know. You’re a great attorney as well, but right now I’m not asking the attorney, I’m asking the woman. What do you think about all this stuff? Is it important to Dad’s contract, or are we just chasing some nice little fairy tale because it sounds cool? The attorney in me wants to say it’s all a bunch of crap, but the man wishes—”

“It were more? Me too. I want to think that if we can just find our soldier boy, the contract will all fall in place.”

Jackson nodded and fed her another apple. “Or not.”

She hated to wish for his company to lose a deal but something about the story made her heart ache for these two lost lovebirds. Had they found each other before she died? Was he still searching? “Maybe they actually
did
find each other and strolled happily around with their matching walkers in a retirement home somewhere.”

A screech split the air. Amanda bolted toward the inside wall and stared into the shadows of the trees. Her eyes ping-ponged from left to right, searching for trouble. “What was that?”

Jackson spilled his wine glass as he darted around. “Sounded like a scream.”

A booming male voice thundered through the trees and a few birds flitted into the distance above the trees. “Found you!”

Was that laughter? “You did, you did! Silly goose.” That voice sounded feminine.

The trees shook in the distance.

“Silly gosling.”

More laughter, and two figures burst onto the walking path below. Jackson watched over the edge while Amanda played it safe and stayed against the wall. Would they see the ropes? Would they climb up the wall? Amanda swallowed the massive lump in her throat.

There was no escape.

Amanda found her voice and whispered, “Should we pull the ropes up so they don’t find us?”

Jackson kept his vigilance on the figures. “That would call more attention than just leaving them. I think they’re gone anyway. They disappeared into the trees. Did you see the girl?”

He leveled his gaze on Amanda and her face turned pink. No, she hadn’t seen a thing because she was curled up in a ball against the rocks. Okay, she was a coward. “Hey, that was a blood-curdling scream. They could be dangerous criminals and we’re hiding in their turf. They could be armed.”

“Well, the guy was walking with a cane and hunched over in a pretty scary limping sort of way. Still, I think we could outrun them if we needed to—the chick was wearing leggings that looked a lot like the ones our Caroline from the florist shop was wearing.”

“Really? Let me see.” Amanda crawled forward and peered over the edge. They were gone. “Let’s go find them.” She grabbed one of the ropes and clicked into her climbing harness.

Jackson settled a hand over hers while shaking his head. “Oh, so now you’re brave? No. You’ll scare them even more than they scared us. Besides, if it is her, we know where to find them without making a horror film scene out of this forest.”

“Are you seriously not going to at least
try
? We might lose them forever. I mean, they’ve already been lost for nearly fifty years.”

“That girl is probably under thirty so I doubt that. If you go running down there to find her after the wild-eyed jealous rant you made at their store, she’s likely to call the cops on us.”

Hmmm. “Good point. What do we do?”

“We wait. Do you think that was Jacob?”

“How the hell do I know? I was plastered against the wall, remember? You saw him. Did he look eighty years old?”

The sun had disappeared and the glow of its final shards of light silhouetted Jackson. Amanda could no longer get clear expressions from his features. “Could be. He moved pretty slowly.”

“Slow as in old or hurt? Or slow as in scary and dangerous?”

Jackson snickered. “Don’t worry, beautiful. I won’t let him hurt you.”

She raised a brow. “You know, I’m sure that’s probably true but if he’s hurt he can’t climb, right? So, maybe we should just hang out here for a while, enjoy the food—and safety.”

Jackson put his thumbs under his armpits and waved his arms like a bird. “Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck. You’re chicken, aren’t you? You went from ready to chase them down to hiding out in a nanosecond. Make up your mind, Amanda.”

She looked at the food, then at the man across from her with his arm slung over a leg. She wasn’t scared at all. Hot and bothered, yes. Frightened, nope.

“We stay.”

His eyes turned hot and smoky. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

• • •

When Amanda woke hours later, the scent of candlewax was the strangest of accents to pine and dirt smells. The soft rise and drop of Jackson’s chest underneath her head was comforting—just as the thud, thud, thud of his heart. The moon was full and had replaced the earlier sunshine, casting a surreal glow over the landscape below. This was the closest thing to camping that Amanda had experienced.

The thought of trudging out into the wilderness and facing heat, bugs, snakes, and other wild things wasn’t her cup of tea. Nor was going a day without a shower and shampoo. Nope, her idea of a vacation involved a Marriott, a beach, and a spa. The worst experience in her mind was washing sand from the crack of her ass after lying on a lounger while waves crashed nearby.

Yet here she was, camping on a ledge above the trees in the middle of nowhere—at night.

With Jackson. And there wasn’t a spa on the planet that could entice her away.

Her right side was warm and toasty against him. She shifted and he pulled a blanket over her shoulders with his free hand. “Are you cold, babe?”

Babe? To her knowledge, no one in her life had ever used that term in conversation. Not about her. Sure, he’d used it at the flower shop but that was just an act. This time there was no one to hear or impress. “Nope, not a bit. Kinda toasty, in fact.”

“Good, we’d better get moving, then.”

Amanda felt a lot better about doing so with the sun shining down and the shadows diminished. She glanced at her phone. Crap, dead battery. One of the pitfalls of camping was obviously lack of electricity, along with running water. “What time is it?”

Jackson, ever prepared, had a watch. “Seven a.m.”

“Holy crap, we have work. Oh my God, they’ll fire me if I keep disappearing like this. Yes, let’s go.”

Amanda ditched fear for urgency and scaled down the rocks almost as skillfully as Jackson. As they tromped through the trees, sunlight hit the trunks and emphasized something neither of them had noticed before: There were more messages scrawled into the tree trunks. In fact, as Amanda took in the forest, she stopped in her tracks and gasped. “Look at the trees.”

Jackson stopped with his chest to her back. “Whoa.”

There were at least six more trees carved with phrases.
Find Me. Found You. Love Me. Love You.
“Do you think it’s some sort of game?”

He shrugged. “I have no idea. Do you want to go see where they lead?”

Amanda took a couple of steps into the pine-laden dirt, then stopped. She had a meeting at ten. What to do? She really wanted to go back in there and see more, but—she had a job to do. She shook her head. “No, I can’t. I have to go to work. There’s a meeting at ten.”

His fingers rested on her shoulder and squeezed. “No worries. They’ll still be there Saturday. I’ll pick you up in the morning and we’ll check it out. Okay?”

“Sure.”

“Or I could just come over Friday and we’d get an even earlier start?” He gave her a shove toward the car.

He was inviting himself to stay over? It felt kind of like a step toward—something more. “I suppose you could.”

Friday night seemed like eons away but when it finally came, Amanda was nervous. She’d rushed home after work and showered, then changed into yoga pants and a loose shirt. When would he arrive? They hadn’t really set a time. What would they do? Her mind went straight to the bedroom and she snickered.
Get your mind out of the gutter, woman.

He pounded on the door at seven. Anyone else would use the doorbell. In his hands were red boxes of DVDs. “Thought we could watch a movie and order pizza if you’re okay with it. It’s not going to torture you to stay in and take it easy?”

She took in his jeans hung low on his hips, and the T-shirt that clung to him like he was candy. Hmmm, staying in with
that
wasn’t exactly torture. How was he so good at encouraging her to do things she thought she hated? Like rock climbing, eating pizza, and—she glanced at the movie label—watching horror flicks. Those were such frivolous and dumb things.

“Sure.”

• • •

They left at six thirty Saturday morning and were in the trees within an hour. Morning dew coated everything in a glistening sheen. Their feet would be soaked in minutes. Amanda ignored the way her shoes made a squishing noise with each step and trudged behind Jackson. She loved the way they rolled as he walked. She could look at that all day.

The messages on the trees repeated themselves off and on. There were also carvings of dogs and other things interspersed with the words like a kid had spent hours there.

“Look, there’s a cabin.” Jackson pointed toward a tuft of smoke that rose between the thicket.

It was closer to a shack than a cabin. Judging by the smoke and the fact that the ground surrounding had been manicured neatly, the place was inhabited. “This is starting to feel like a scene from some horror flick. Why the hell did we watch that movie last night?”