“Maybe you could get one of those man dolls people use to cheat their way into carpool lanes.”
“Mitch would probably like to think it wouldn’t be the same. Hey, aren’t you supposed to be paddling around in a canoe or something right now? I remember something about Liz covering for Tori because Tori and you were going on some kind of adventure hike. Then I was wondering if I hallucinated that because I only sleep five minutes a day now and I’d never heard your name and hiking used in the same sentence before, but I know Liz worked today.”
“Let’s pretend it was a postpartum hallucination.”
“Ooh, that good? Tell me. And tell me every single detail very, very slowly because Mitch won’t interrupt me while I’m on the phone. As soon as I hang up, quiet time’s over.”
Hailey told her every detail she remembered, pausing every once in a while so Paige could laugh at her or lecture her about new boots and trusting homemade concoctions from internet sites.
“Wait, tell me again about the guy that found you? Do you think he lived in the woods?”
Hailey realized she might have overplayed the poor guy’s Deliverance factor a little. Or a lot. “He said it was a camp, I think. And he said his family goes there.”
“So he wasn’t a weird hermit guy, then?”
“He had a satellite phone.”
“Oh, well then. There you go.”
“That’s what Tori said. I have no idea if hermits have satellite phones. But he heard me call him Jeremiah Johnson.”
“Jeremiah Johnson was kind of hot.”
Hailey rolled her eyes, even though Paige couldn’t see her. “No. Robert Redford, playing him in the movie, was kind of hot. In real life, I think Jeremiah Johnson was probably pretty gross.”
“In the movies, the guy who comes to the rescue is never pretty gross.”
Gross was a bit harsh. So the guy needed to be reacquainted with hot, soapy water and a razor blade. And laundry detergent. Those were all things that could be fixed. Underneath all that, he’d had a great body, a voice she could imagine would make reading the phone book out loud sexy, and there was something about his eyes. He had really pretty eyes. Brown, but lighter than hers, and thick eyelashes.
In the background, Hailey could hear Sarah start winding up to a full shriek and Paige sighed. “I bet he woke her up on purpose.”
“Go kiss Sarah for me and let your husband pee. Call me if you get bored or you need a break while Mitch is on the road, okay?”
They hung up and Hailey finished the rest of her iced tea. Next up was a long soak in a hot bubble bath.
And she’d put on an audiobook, too, to keep her mind from straying yet again to how jealous she was of her best friend. All of her friends, actually. They were all living happily ever after, while she was still waiting for her prince to come.
She wished she could be more like Tori. Tori had no interest in being anybody’s wife and intended to live the rest of her life having torrid and temporary love affairs with any guy who tickled her fancy, and then moving on before the fancy-tickling turned sour.
While Hailey figured Tori just hadn’t met the guy who’d change her mind yet, she admired the principle. Even a torrid and temporary love affair would be enough at this point in her life.
But it had been so long since a man tickled her fancy, she was starting to wonder if her fancy simply wasn’t ticklish anymore.
*
IT WAS STILL dark enough for the truck’s headlights to be on when Matt drove into town on Saturday morning. It had taken him over an hour the previous evening to clean himself up, but now he was in uniform, fairly well caffeinated, and ready to start the day.
As small towns went, Whitford was pretty typical of many in Maine. Tourists drove through on their way to the lakes or to a ski resort or the mountains, but rarely stopped. The town had some appeal, but it existed more out of habit than anything else.
Until recently. In an attempt to save their snowmobile lodge, the Kowalski family had worked with a nearby ATV club and the state to get access from the trail system to the lodge. From there, riders had access to Whitford, and business had definitely picked up for places that offered food, lodging and gas. That trickled into the rest of the town’s economy and the residents went out of their way to welcome the four-wheeling crowd.
It had been more successful than even Josh Kowalski—the youngest brother, who ran the Northern Star Lodge and had spearheaded the effort—had imagined, and that was where Matt came in. Even with a department ATV that Whitford police chief Drew Miller had managed to finagle a grant for, the local law enforcement couldn’t keep up with the increase in off-road traffic.