Buzz Off - By Hannah Reed Page 0,20

of our state forests. I’d completed that scenic journey many times. From where we sat I could see the Ice Age Trail following the west side of the river.

Before long, rain was falling in sheets and the windbreaker broke down as a working tarp. Hunter held the canoe in place with a firm grip on a thick maple branch, otherwise we would be spinning out of control in what I feared might develop into funnel weather.

If the firehouse tornado siren went off, it meant we were in big trouble.

I remembered fantasizing about an adventure similar to this when I watched Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner fight their way through a Colombian rain forest in Romancing the Stone. And again when I saw Six Days, Seven Nights, where Harrison Ford and Anne Heche crash-land on a deserted island. How she couldn’t adore him from the very beginning was beyond my comprehension.

Recklessness and romance. That’s what I craved.

Hunter had that same starlike male sexiness that Ford and Douglas had. But I didn’t look half as good as Kathleen or Anne did with mud all over and their hair plastered to their faces. Not to mention the cold. Suddenly, I was freezing to death in wet clothes that clamped onto my body like cling wrap. It didn’t feel good at all, and totally not sexy.

“How are you doing?” Hunter asked, with water streaming down his face.

“I need a hot shower.” I tried to keep the whimper out of my voice. My kayak could go fly a kite for all I cared.

“You’ll have to settle for hot conversation instead,” Hunter said, still holding us in place with one hand clutching the branch. The other arm squeezed me closer to his body, where I got a really good view of his feet.

They were tanned and toned and shiny wet from the rain, with wisps of man hair on each toe.

I needed to redirect my thoughts before he tuned into them, an ability I’ve discovered that most men possess as long as it involved sexual context. “I wanted to thank you for trying to get Grace to agree to an autopsy,” I said, wiping mascara from my face. Movie stars never lost their makeup, even after a night between the sheets. So much for this particular fantasy.

“Grace is a stubborn woman when she makes up her mind,” Hunter said.

“Her sister-in-law said someone from the beekeepers association was picking up the honeybees tonight.”

“Don’t you want them?”

“Of course I do, but apparently Grace didn’t think I was the best choice. And the bees aren’t really mine, at least not legally. Manny owned them. Grace can do what she wants.”

“Maybe she felt that if you had them, the bees would be too close to home for her. They’d be a constant reminder of the day she lost her husband.”

I shivered as the wind gusted again, driving rain into my skin like pinpricks. “Let’s get out of here.”

“We’ll have the wind at our back. We can give it a try.” He pulled me closer, if that was even possible. “First, promise to give Carrie Ann another chance.”

“What’s it to you?” I blurted out, pulling away enough to meet his eyes. “Why all the sudden concern?”

“Because she came to me for help.”

“Why would she do that?”

He shrugged. “What do you say?” he pressed. “Give her another chance?”

I couldn’t refuse those deep blue eyes. I sighed. “As long as she stays sober, comes in on time, and does her job. Yes, I’ll give her another chance. But you owe me.”

“Thanks. Come on. Let’s go. The storm is passing.”

Which was true. As quickly as the rain had started, it was ending. The clouds didn’t exactly part and the sun didn’t shine, but the end was in sight. If only the wind would die down. When Hunter pulled away from me, I tried to wring some of the water out of my halter top.

The adventurous romantic fantasy I had envisioned was completely ruined.

“Is that your kayak?” Hunter called out. I followed his gaze.

“That’s it!”

My kayak must have been lodged between clumps of cattails in the marsh, and the wind and torrential downpour had set it free. Designed for speed, it came at us fast with the wind gusting at its stern and vegetation streaming behind it like it had risen from a watery grave. We paddled like mad to intercept it before it crashed into the rocky bank on our side of the river or had a chance to change course and take off