“What?” I looked heavenward, too, as if the answer were written up in the clouds.
“I’m such a hypocrite!” Grace tapped her heart, then nodded firmly as if making a pact with herself and her Wednesday Walkers. “I’m telling you to get out there and love when I’ve been Chicken Little myself: He’s older than I am, and I don’t want to be widowed twice!”
“Well, that’s scary!”
“But no more being afraid. Especially when you finally meet the right guy who’s worth the risk,” she said, and nodded in the direction of the trail.
“What—” I started to ask even as I followed her gaze up the trail to Quattro, who was loping nimbly down the long flight of hand-carved stairs toward us.
Call it a miracle, call it a cosmic shift in the universe, but Quattro wrangled Grace’s backpack from her with two measly sentences: “I’ll just carry this up to the next rest stop. Your group’s ready for lunch, but they wanted to wait for you guys.”
Honestly, I didn’t think Grace was capable of releasing a single burden, dead set as she was on carrying her own weight. So when she shrugged off her backpack, my eyebrows shot up so fast, they could have launched off my forehead.
Grace explained rather lamely—“I need a little alone time”—then flew up the steps. Flew as if she had sprouted wings. I didn’t know who to glower at: her for playing Cupid, or Quattro for tucking her forty-pound backpack easily under his arm while I strained under the burden of mine.
Show-off.
But to tell you the truth, I rather liked this male display of strength.
“From up above, it sounded like you guys were having a party,” Quattro said as he unzipped his rain jacket, opening it to a T-shirt that hugged his chest.
No matter how often I declared my Boy Moratorium and how hard I fought my attraction to Quattro, my mouth went dry in a way that had little to do with dehydration. I zeroed in on his pecs. Sexy to the end! I cleared my throat now. “Just some girl talk.”
“Dare I ask?”
“Do you speak girl?”
“Obviously not. Kylie’s a mystery.”
“Why didn’t she come here with you guys?” I asked.
“Nationals for her dance team fell this week. But Dad and I had to come.”
Now was the moment to change the subject, redirect our conversation to a safer, surface-layer zone. Instead, I deep-dived and asked, “Why?”
“Mom’s birthday. Her heart was set on Machu Picchu.” He shot me a wary look, then waved me ahead of him on the trail. “A couple years back, she said it was time to tap into her Scottish ancestry, but Dad was too busy working to go with her. So she and some of her friends went to Scotland. The Isle of Skye. They wanted to see their roots and the fairies.”
I inched closer to him now, unsure I had heard him correctly. “Fairies? As in—”
“Yup.” He mimed fluttering wings with his hands and looked somewhere between adorable and dorky.
I burst out laughing. Just watching his face light up made me want to photograph him—to capture him in this misty light. But I pictured Dad’s withdrawn face just as Quattro’s closed.
“Anyway,” he said, “right after she came home, she told Dad to book this trip.”
“Why?”
“She wanted me and Kylie to get in touch with our roots. We’re a quarter Scottish, part Chinese, some black, and the rest Peruvian. We’ve got some real ground to cover.”
“So her last wish was to come here?”
“It was.” His words may have been soft, but they rang with finality. Just as I knew he would, because it’s exactly what I would have done to keep things light, Quattro deflected. “I hear the last leg of this trek is a killer. So how’s about we make it a little more challenging?”
“As in…”
“You know the Sun Gate in Machu Picchu? The two stone pillars on top of the mountain?”
“Yeah…”
“So how’s about if I touch it first, you drive me to Voodoo as soon as I move to Seattle?” Quattro said.
I placed one hand on my hip. “And what happens when I get there first?”
“I’ll drive you.”
“And that’s supposed to be my prize?”
“Maybe it’s more of a consolation prize,” he conceded.
“Fine,” I said, surprising him. He cocked his head suspiciously just as I continued, “It’s the least I could do for including your picture in my college portfolio.”
“Wait—”
Before I could fashion a smirk, I had to lick my dry lips. His eyes were arrested on that slight movement. The mood shifted. He stared at my mouth with a distinctly appreciative look.
Quick, now, deflect.