“Your mother’s hoping this is temporary. That there won’t be enough going on to merit a full-time warden in the area, after all, and you’ll go back to your usual area.”
Which was close enough to his parents’ house on the outskirts of Augusta, Maine, so he could pop in for supper a couple nights per week. “We’re close enough to the big lake here so I’ll be kept busy even if everybody on the ATV trails behaves. And it makes sense that it’s me. I don’t know Whitford or the new trails, but I’m familiar with most of the area since we’ve been coming here my whole life.”
“She says it’s too far away.”
“Did Mom write this down for you, or are you winging it?”
“You spend almost forty years with the same woman and tell me if you need a script.”
Matt wasn’t even capable of spending two years with the same woman, though not for a lack of trying. “It’s not like I’m an only child. She has two daughters, a son-in-law and grandchildren to fuss over.”
“You know your mother. Until you find a wife, she’s terrified you’re going to starve to death wearing dirty clothes.”
“Maybe Whitford’s where I’ll find a woman who won’t spend our entire relationship trying to change me into the version of me she wants.”
His dad’s chair creaked as he shifted sideways to get a better look at him. “They’re not all like Ciara, son. And, to be honest, there were warning signs right from the beginning. You just didn’t want to see them.”
That was probably the truth. It had been easy to ignore the jabs at his wardrobe and the way she’d steered him toward doing activities she wanted to do. But over the nearly two years they’d been together, Ciara’s hints about things she wanted changed had gone from subtle to big neon signs flashing her dissatisfaction with him.
They’d been arguing about his job a lot toward the end. At the beginning, Ciara hadn’t minded a boyfriend who wore a uniform, carried a gun, made decent money and—according to her—was hotter than any of her friends’ boyfriends—but it wasn’t enough. The long and erratic hours made her unhappy. The questionable odors that often accompanied him home made her face screw up in a way he found really unattractive. And stripping to his boxer briefs in the yard and spraying himself off with the garden hose before he could go into his own home had made him unhappy.
Still, he’d clung to the relationship. When things were good between him and Ciara, they were really good. Until the company Christmas party for the bank where she was a teller. He’d put on the suit she told him to wear and did his best to make his tie straight, but he could feel the judgment rolling off her like toxic waves.
He was getting her a glass of punch when he overheard her talking to a couple of her coworkers about the engagement ring she was sure he’d bought her for Christmas. “Knowing Matt, he’ll hide it in a pile of moose poop and make me hunt for it. I just hope he’s wearing a decent shirt for once so I won’t be embarrassed to put a picture of us on Facebook.”
Breaking it off with her two weeks before Christmas wasn’t something he was proud of, but he couldn’t look at her without feeling a burn of shame that really pissed him off. And he couldn’t stomach the thought of her spending another holiday with his family.
“I’ve dated a few times since Ciara, Dad. I know they’re not all like her.”
“We liked Wendy.”
“She wasn’t cut out to be a game warden’s wife.”
His dad snorted again. “We heard about that and don’t think we’re too stupid to see you’re testing these poor women.”
“It’s not testing. It’s making sure we’re right for each other.”
“Really? So you just happened to, during the course of one shift, roll around in mud, get bear shit on you and get sprayed by a skunk?”
Okay, so that might have been a test. And Wendy had failed. “I bet when you were dating mom, she never looked at you like you were something she needed to scrape off her shoe.”
“You’d lose that bet.”
Matt seriously doubted that. His mom gave her husband some good-natured ribbing after a day of fishing or a trip to camp like the one they were on now, but Connie Barnett was never ashamed of the man she’d married.
Someday he’d find a woman who didn’t wrinkle her nose at him or nag him because he’d rather wear a T-shirt that came free with a case of beef jerky than a fancy button-up shirt from the mall.
Whether or not he’d find her in Whitford remained to be seen.
*
BY THE TIME Tori pulled onto Hailey’s street, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to get out of the car. The new hiking boots had been tossed onto the floor of the backseat, but her muscles were already protesting the day’s adventure by stiffening up on her.
“You going to make it?” Tori put the car in park and grinned at her. “I’d offer a piggyback ride, but you’re a lot taller than me, so it would just be awkward.”