She let out a peaceful sigh.
Despite everything, Kira felt calm here. She really did love her job.
Sometimes in the mornings she’d have a group of schoolchildren here on a field trip, taking them around the safe tracks near her cabin to educate them about the kinds of birds, plants, and animals they might see in a forest like this, but they mainly came in summer and spring, when it was warmer. Sometimes hikers came through looking for information and maps, though she didn’t have to be there for that – if she had to be out, she’d leave the maps in a box by the door with her work phone number in case they needed to get in touch with her.
Most mornings she had a few emails to deal with, but rarely anything urgent. She glanced at her inbox after her computer had finally warmed up, but there was nothing new, and so, after she’d finished her cup of tea, Kira stood up, stretched, and decided she’d go check on a few trails that had needed fixing up the last time she’d looked at them.
Locking the door behind her, Kira started out down the trail that ran through the woods from directly behind her cabin. Despite the early chill, the morning was warming up nicely: blue sky was visible through the branches of the trees, and it seemed like the rain that had been forecast for overnight had come and gone.
That was all the more reason to check the trails – if there’d been any movement of mud or debris, then Kira would have to clear it up, or arrange for some workmen to come and sort it out.
She whistled a tune as she walked, happy to be out here in her element. Her parents had used to joke that maybe she was a forest sprite or something that had been left with them – Kira loved being out of doors so much even as a child that she’d sometimes insisted on sleeping in the yard in a tent, instead of in her bedroom.
And there’d always been silly stories about the Girdwood Springs Forest – sightings of mysterious creatures, feelings of magic in the air, people insisting that there were animals who lived there with human-like intelligence… but personally, Kira didn’t believe a word of it. People who thought the woods felt magical in a supernatural sense just spent too much time behind a desk, in her opinion. She would have been able to tell them that the woods always felt magical, and it had nothing to do with… well, actual magic.
But what I wouldn’t give for some magic right now,Kira sighed as she lifted the gate with ‘NO ENTRY’ written across it from across the damaged trail, replacing it behind her. She shook her head, scolding herself for her gloomy thoughts. She might have been a natural pessimist, but she knew that brooding wouldn’t do anything. She’d just have to do her best to keep her mind off the mess with Tongle & Heit Developments for now.
They were half the reason this trail had been made so unstable, however – it hadn’t just been the recent rain, but also the fact they’d had seemingly half their land surveyors out here crawling over every inch of it, subjecting the trails to more boots in a couple of days than they’d usually see in a whole year.
Kira had managed, finally, to force them to leave, but it’d meant calling the local cops, making a huge fuss, and threatening to go to the press – until finally, Tongle & Heit’s head honcho, a sleazy-looking guy wearing a suit, for some reason, in the middle of a hiking trail had told her All right, fine – we’ll leave for now, Ms. Dearborn. It’s not like we’ll have long to wait until this land will be ours, anyway.
Just remembering his words and picturing his smirk, Kira had to shudder. Who even talked like that?! Only villains from cheesy ’80s movies said stuff like that! But maybe fact and fiction weren’t so far apart as she’d thought.
Shaking her head again, Kira continued on her way. Don’t think about it! Didn’t we just say we weren’t going to think abou—
“HEY!” she called out, breaking off her thoughts with her own outraged yell.
She’d called out before she could think – because there, standing in the middle of the trail that had clearly been marked ‘NO ENTRY’, was a man for whom those words apparently meant nothing at all.
“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?!” Kira yelled again, as the guy turned. She hurried as quickly as she could down the slippery, muddy trail. She could feel her anger growing inside her – not only did this guy risk being injured, she also suspected he might be from Tongle & Heit, up to their old tricks after saying they’d leave, even if they’d said it in the most obnoxious, ’80s movie villain way. “These trails are closed! And if you’re thinking you can just wander all around here after you’ve been told a hundred times –”
As Kira hurried down the track toward him, she finally got a good look at the guy’s face and –
Okay, wow,Kira thought, her brain taking a totally different route to her mouth, which was still blasting the guy for wandering around somewhere he clearly shouldn’t have been. He’s… uh… a little bit hot…
Well, upgrade that to a lot hot, Kira thought, as the sun broke through the branches, illuminating the incredibly stunning blue of his eyes. They were almost as blue as the sky itself, and surrounded by thick, dark eyelashes. His skin was slightly tanned, and his hair was black as jet. And he was tall. Almost too tall. Kira found herself having to lift her chin to look up into his – handsome, square-jawed, manly – face.
Okay, but none of that matters! He’s still trespassing! And I still think he might be from Tongle & Heit, when they told me and the cops they’d leave!
“Didn’t you see the sig—” Kira started to say, before, of course, she felt one of her feet shoot out from under her in the slippery, muddy ground of the ruined trail.
And of course, there was nothing nearby for her to grab on to, so she couldn’t really do anything but resign herself to her flailing descent.
So of course, she was going to fall flat on her ass.
Right?
Oh – okay. Wrong. Apparently.
Just as she was bracing herself to land square on her tailbone on the muddy ground, Kira felt a pair of strong, strong arms wrap themselves around her shoulders, holding her up and preventing her fall.
Strong – and warm.
It took Kira a moment to realize what was going on: she was being held gently by the man she’d just been yelling her head off at, his arms cradling her gently against his chest. Looking up, Kira found herself gazing wordlessly into his blue, blue eyes.
Uh. Okay, she thought, feeling kind of breathless and dazed. And she knew she couldn’t put it down just to almost having had a very nasty – or at least somewhat undignified – fall.
For a long moment – or maybe it was an hour, Kira honestly wasn’t sure she was an accurate judge of time at the moment – they stared into each other’s eyes.
“Oh.” The man finally seemed to shake himself awake, blinking. “I – uh –”
“You can put me down now!” Kira forced herself to squeak out, knowing she sounded a little more like an indignant field mouse than the park ranger who was supposed to be the one enforcing the rules around here. “And then you can tell me just what the hell you’re up to!”