Essential Beginnings (3 page)
“And why would that be?” Mav asked, genuinely wanting to know why she would think that. She hadn’t taken the time to get to know him, so that presumption was a little out of left field. “Because I work around the city of Chicago?”
“There’s just not a lot to do around here. Not a lot of action,” Henley replied with a small shrug, appearing uncomfortable with his question. “It’s home for me, but I like the quiet.”
“And what do you think I do on Friday and Saturday nights?” Mav couldn’t keep himself from pushing her just a little bit further. Did she think he partied it up every weekend? Is that why she had such a low opinion of him? “Do you think I’m out on the town drinking until I can’t stand up and stirring up shit?”
“No, I didn’t say that. You can do that here at Miner’s Bar.” Henley was shaking her head in defense and she’d furrowed her brow in displeasure at his misinterpretation. His curiosity was somewhat appeased when she continued to elaborate and her frustration was rather endearing…not that she would agree. “What I mean is the only women here are either married or over seventy years old. You’d get bored within a month and—”
“I’m sorry,” Mav said, not apologetic in the least and damned tired of tiptoeing around the subject that they’d both been avoiding. He held up his coffee to gesture toward Ms. Stein, who was more in her early sixties than she was in her seventies. “I think you’re over exaggerating. I also wasn’t aware you knew my taste in women. How do you know I don’t prefer a woman with a little more experience?”
“What?” Henley asked with an exasperated laugh. When Mav didn’t even crack a smile, her own faded until those naturally shaded rose lips were in a perfectly shaped O. Her eyes switched over to Ms. Stein, who was sitting in the corner of the diner with her eyes glued to the television. “I-I didn’t…I mean, I never thought—”
“No, you didn’t. You should try it sometime,” Mav commented, unable to keep up the ruse any longer. He stepped closer until he could feel her body heat and she had to tilt her face up to his. He would have given anything to kiss her, but this wasn’t the place or time. “Henley, the only woman I’m interested in has been you, and when you finally come out from under that cabin tucked back at the edge of civilization and return to the land of the living…at least you know I’ll be close enough to hear you when you change your mind.”
“Here, Henley,” Ernie said, coming at just the right moment to save Henley from replying. Mav stepped away, allowing her to grab the small piece of paper out of Tank’s hand. It wasn’t hard to notice that there was a slight tremor in her fingers, and Mav patted himself on the back for finally managing to get a spark out of her that wasn’t tainted with irritation. Maybe Ernie was right. It was time Mav took a step forward and pressed Henley a little harder. “I’ll meet you over at the store in around twenty minutes to help carry out the bags. I want to make a quick stop at Marvin’s Hardware Store.”
Mav figured Henley purposefully didn’t look his way again as she and Ernie finished their conversation. She’d schooled her features with a half-smile that was only meant for Ernie. Mav would have given anything to know her thoughts, but it wasn’t long after that she departed and tipped the bell above the door. Mav was left behind to stare at Ernie’s weathered face and sharp blue eyes, bringing them right back to where they’d started…shit.
“Do you really want to take the chance of leaving Henley here?” Ernie smoothed down his mustache as his focus became even more precise. “All I’m asking is that you stay another day to play it safe, Marine.”
“Henley is safer here than any other place in the United States according to you.” Mav finally slipped his shades on and stepped around Tank, holding up a hand to the residents still eating their meals or watching the news. “You all behave until I make it back here this winter. I’ll be back for the holidays if I don’t have to work.”
A round of goodbyes echoed throughout the diner as Mav exited the door with Ernie on his heels. Mav hadn’t even bothered to look at the television. He was torn between returning home to his responsibilities and caving into the demands of a worried man who was more like a father. He did his damnedest to steel his mind against his wavering decision. He made it to his fully outfitted Jeep Rubicon before turning to make Ernie understand why staying behind over a common natural occurrence wasn’t feasible.
“Son, I try to never ask of you anything that you can’t deliver,” Ernie said, beating Mav to the punch. “If I have to bring up the favor you owe me then it might as well be now…so I’m calling in my chips.”
Mav barked out a humorless laugh and leaned back against the door to his somewhat dirty vehicle. He never would have imagined that Tank would bring up something that happened when he was a green recruit out of boot camp.
Mav had started out hanging with a couple of fellow Marines in his new command that were headed down the wrong path and Master Gunnery Sergeant Yates had pulled Mav’s young ass out of the CO’s line of fire when he roasted Mav’s running partners at NJP. An Article Eleven hearing so early in his career would have certainly ruined any chance of Mav getting ahead in the Corps. MGySgt. Yates had seen something in Maverick’s character that caused him to call in a favor. The CO had deferred to his MGySgt. A lieutenant colonel in the Corps rarely took counsel from anyone outside a select few that have earned his loyalty. Mav had benefited from the fact that MGySgt. Yates held the CO’s trust and confidence. Unfortunately, that meant that Mav had attracted the MGySgt’s ire and would have to pay the piper for his earlier poor choices.
As Mav’s mentor, Ernie had ridden him hard and made a fine Marine out of the young wayward youth. It had directly determined how his career in the Marines had played out. He owed Ernie his career and start in life. It wasn’t something he could dismiss out of hand. Ernie never cracked a smile; his subdued features made it obvious he would resort to any level to get Mav to stay.
“I’d say that was a low blow, but you and I both know I could never repay you for saving my ass.” Mav took a deep breath, trying to figure out some excuse he could tell his sergeant back home that he wouldn’t be making his shift on Wednesday. And now he would owe another trooper a big favor—so much for having the holidays off. “Fine. I’ll stay for one day. But I head out tomorrow if nothing happens by morning.”
“Good.” Ernie wasn’t triumphant in any way. What concerned Mav was the fact his mentor appeared rather assured in his judgment of what was to come. “Walk with me to Marvin’s shop and then we’ll help Henley carry out the items I’m having her pick up at the grocery store. The list is extensive, but when the town realizes that the world is about to plummet into ten years of winter…it’ll be people like Rat who will clean off the shelves intent on schilling his neighbors out of any chance at surviving the week while not giving a good goddamn about anyone other than himself.”
“You’ll show me these calculations you’re talking about?” Mav asked, pushing himself off of his Jeep and falling into step beside Ernie. “I’m going to need something a little more concrete than those docudramas you keep watching, and that includes all that conspiracy theory horseshit too.”
“We’ll make an evening of it,” Ernie promised gruffly, pulling a battered baseball cap out of his back pocket and sliding it over his silver hair. “After you come to see and believe that what I’ve said over the years is in fact the truth…that’s when you’ll sound like the zealot and not me.”
“Why is that?” Mav inquired, not understanding where Ernie was going with this. Mav didn’t want his coffee to go to waste, so he took a drink of the now lukewarm liquid and grimaced. He tossed the cup into the trashcan when they finally crossed the road with regret, knowing he would need the caffeine later. “You think I’ll drink the Kool-Aid, Master Guns?”
“Oh, you’ll drink it all right. Every last drop, son.” Ernie pulled open the door to Marvin’s hardware store but stopped to look at Mav. “And that’s when you’ll be calling the rest of our Marines to haul their asses back up here before it’s too damn late. By that time we’ll have to defend what we’ve got.”
H
enley still couldn’t
believe that Mav had caved into Ernie’s demands regarding staying for another day. It shouldn’t have mattered to her, but somehow it did. To add on to her bad day, the old coot had talked her into having dinner with both of them this evening. She would have tried her damnedest to get out of it, but it wasn’t like they didn’t know she didn’t have anything else to do. She had considered an outright refusal though, but that would have certainly have made her look like the bitch Mav undoubtedly thought she was. She did have two reasonably solid justifications for not going, but it wasn’t like she could tell Ernie she didn’t want to hear his nonsense regarding a supervolcano and she certainly couldn’t convey to Mav that she wasn’t going to deal with the underlying attraction between them right now. She was screwed no matter how this evening ended, but she could make certain it wasn’t in the literal sense.
It was quite cool here in the evenings despite it being spring, so Henley had changed into a pink lightweight fleece sweater. She didn’t want Mav to think she was going to any extra lengths in her looks just because he was going to be there, so she purposefully didn’t put on any make-up and used a hair tie to secure the long strands in a semi-bun on top of her head. She took one last look in her bathroom mirror before she was satisfied with her appearance.
Henley made her way into the living room after having closed the blinds in her bedroom and turning on her small bedside lamp. The sun was just now setting, but it would be dark by the time she returned. The small cabin was only one of two out of twelve cabins that contained a modern indoor bathroom. Ernie claimed the other at the front of the property. Her cabin was the last in line uphill from the main lodge. The remaining ten cabins were for guests and they used separate two-hole outhouses behind each unit. The idea was that log cabins provided a rustic and primitive experience, yet each had electric power and a natural gas heat pump. The outhouses also used a shared septic system and were heated since they were also equipped with a shower stall and sink—so much for truly roughing it.
Ernie had capitalized on the fact that people wanted the facade of primitive camping, but without the inconvenience. Two 400kw military surplus generators, converted to burn natural gas, powered the entire Lost Mountain Lodge complex. One was designated for primary power with the other in standby as one hundred percent backup. Ernie had purchased them—along with enough replacement parts to build three more—at a Defense Reutilization Marketing Office (DRMO) auction back in Twenty-Nine Palms, California. It cost him nearly as much as the auction to truck the entire lot of gear north to Washington and up to the top of his valley below Lost Mountain.
The lodge and ten of the log cabins had already been on the property when he bought the place nearly fifteen years ago, but it wasn’t the land that closed the deal for Ernie. It was the plentiful native mountain spring water source and the natural gas well that provided enough fuel and water to sustain the camp indefinitely.
Henley loved the simplicity that the fishing cabin gave her, especially after having lived a life where she was basically on call twenty-four seven. The paparazzi that had surrounded her back then hadn’t even allowed her to go to the grocery store without having her picture plastered all over the gossip magazines and websites while sporting no make-up and crudely asking the public if she’d gained weight in the jeans she’d been wearing. Never mind dressing in a dress or a skirt. They would line up to take pictures as she’d exited her vehicle in hopes of catching a shot of her panties. Unfortunately that had happened one too many times. The anxiety had eaten away at her until she’d literally lost those pounds they’d been referring to and she’d ended up in the hospital with esophageal ulcers. It had been a constant battle with her self-esteem and in the end…it just hadn’t been worth the effects on her personal well-being.
And that was the problem with Mav. He didn’t see her as anything other than a woman on the front page of the magazines. Henley remembered meeting him as if it had been yesterday instead of three years ago when she’d returned home with only one suitcase to her name, leaving everything else behind in California. The group of men he’d been with had been so nice, Mav included, and she’d thought of no one other than him that entire first year…until he’d returned for his annual visit.
Finding a couple of magazines with her picture plastered on the front pages in the back of his truck had caused her more pain than what she’d felt in her stomach when she’d been in the hospital. Those magazines had been issued a couple of years prior, so he must have gone to some lengths to get a hold of them. One of the issues had even been recalled due to slander, although luckily at the time it hadn’t been about her. She’d thought Maverick was different, but even he saw her as nothing more than an object. She’d asked for that life and she’d gotten it, so she had no one to blame but herself. It had been easier—still was—to keep her distance from him. The pull she felt from him made her want things that she knew she could never have without giving up a part of her pride. That wasn’t going to happen.