Reluctant Deception - Cambria Smyth Page 0,55

at the star-filled sky overhead, her mind racing with thoughts of Chris.

"Beauty fleeing the Beast?"

Chris's instantly-recognizable voice floated through the night from somewhere behind Libby. He appeared before her and gestured to the bench.

"Mind if I join you?"

Libby watched uneasily as he removed his black tuxedo jacket, carefully folded it in half, and casually laid it over the arm rest. With a sigh, he unbuttoned the shirt cuffs and slowly rolled up the sleeves. Oblivious to her examination, he loosened the formal bow tie and opened several buttons at his neck, revealing a sculpted chest sprinkled with dark hair. Libby swallowed hard at the memory of his perfect body as it looked during their workout several weeks ago now. Suddenly, she felt as though the sun had risen anew with the heat invading her body.

When Chris caught her peering at him, she stammered in embarrassment. "F-forgive me, I know how rude it is to stare."

"You're forgiven," he replied lightly. "I find myself staring at you sometimes, too. Especially tonight." Chris laughed and raised his eyebrows in a wolfish leer.

"That was a nice acceptance speech you gave this evening, Chris," Libby proffered, evading the sensual awareness always present when he was near. "You may not believe this, but it wasn't my intent to make you into a preservation advocate with my tour of the orphanage after dinner!"

"Don't worry, you haven't," he began slowly. "But I meant every word. You can be very persuasive, Libby. You helped me see this old place in a different light and I wanted to express my thanks publicly."

The sincerity in his eyes caught and held Libby.

"Sometimes it takes an outsider to show you something new about a place you've passed by a hundred times before but never noticed," Libby countered. "A man I used to date was an avid fisherman," she continued. "You know, the kind of guy who'd rather catch his own bait than buy it from the store? Well, we had just started dating and one Sunday afternoon he took me to a spot to catch herring, a kind of bait that he used."

Libby paused, deep in remembrance, then continued.

"It was a lovely place on the Mullica River. You could only get to it by walking along an abandoned railroad line that crossed the river back in the early 1900's. We parked his pick-up truck and starting walking down the dirt road where the tracks used to be, scanning the marshes along both sides of the old rail bed for herring. The water is shallow there and you can see the fish splashing close to the surface. They're only there for a week in the spring, maybe two, spawning before they head back down the river to the bay."

"I noticed up ahead of us that the old railroad bridge was still there, spanning the river. Of course, the rails had been removed long ago, but the huge oak beams that held them were in place. You could actually cross the river there if you didn't mind balancing on those 12" beams."

"Well, I got all excited about finding the bridge and as I looked more closely at it, I became very curious about two metal beams placed smack dab in the middle of the wooden ones. I thought maybe it had been a drawbridge or could move somehow, so I convinced him to go out with me and look at it."

"We gingerly made our way over the river but even standing on top of the metal beams, we still couldn't figure out what purpose they served. From our perch out there we had a beautiful view of the river. The sun was low in the sky and you could hear the ducks quacking over the noise of the fast-running water below us. In the distance, he pointed out a beaver, paddling swiftly to get to the other side."

"After admiring the scenery, we turned around and headed back to the embankment. Then we retraced our steps along the road, still searching the marshes for herring. Finally, we found some hiding in the weeds along the banks and my friend caught of few dozen in his net."

"I'll never forget. As he started emptying them into the holding tank he brought along on the truck, he began to laugh. He said he'd been down that old railway hundreds of times and, sure, he'd seen the bridge. But he'd never noticed the metal beams sitting amid the wooden ones."

"Then I started laughing. I told him that if he hadn't