Page 50 of Landing Her Eagle
“I don’t know. I spoke to Logan about it last night, and I hope he wouldn’t interfere, but he’s a goober sometimes.”
Mallory rises from her desk and heads to our kitchen area. “I need a double cocoa with extra marshmallows. Want one?”
That sounds scrumptious, so I grab my mug and follow her. I decide to walk on the wild side and add a touch of French vanilla powdered creamer to mine.
“Ooh, good idea,” Mallory enthuses. “Ooh, do you think they make peppermint creamer? That would be yummy in the cocoa.”
Nodding, I say, “We should ask Betty to check when she’s ordering the coffee supplies.”“Speaking of orders, did you have what we need for Saturday?”
“Yep. I borrowed a camera that can mount on a head strap and a microphone. The strap will arrive tomorrow, and I borrowed the camera and microphone from Shelby. The weather forecast says it will be good for Saturday. Her boyfriend, Finn, is a Fish and Wildlife Services officer based at the refuge, and he’s told me some interesting things about the trail I’ll incorporate into my tour.” I dump a handful of marshmallows into my cocoa. “Thank you so much for being willing to do this with me, Mallory. I’ve been researching and watching other online tours around the world, but I haven’t found anything recorded locally. New Jersey is the butt of a lot of jokes, but there are so many wonderful things here that I want to share with the world.”
She smiles at me. “Daphne, it sounds like fun. Thanks for asking me. When you’re famous and have your own show on the Travel Channel or you’re a contestant onDancing with the Starsbecause you’re a social media influencer, I expect to be introduced to your famous friends and offered tickets to tapings.”
I don’t want to be famous, and dancing alongside minor celebrities sounds like hell. All I want is a new gig, a lot of time with Logan, and a bit of freedom. This idea that is quickly turning into a new dream—the first dream I’ve had in years—could do just that. This time, I’m going to hope for the best instead of imagining the worst.
* * *
Logan and I have worked out a schedule of texting, leaving each other voice messages, and FaceTiming when our schedules sync. He is in Golegã, Portugal at the National Horse Fair. All week he’s been sending me samples of the pictures he’s been taking, and they’re gorgeous. Action shots from the show jumping and dressage competitions, scenic pictures of the area, portraits of the horses—they’re all wonderful.
The practice tour Mallory and I did at the wildlife refuge went well. We walked a short eco trail loop that offered a splendid view of the Atlantic City skyline, the bay, and looped through a wooded area. The refuge is on a major migratory bird route, so there’s a ton of different varieties of birds to see. In early November, it’s Canada geese, snow geese, cormorants, ducks, and seagulls. There are always seagulls, but you never seebabyseagulls. It’s odd; if you visit in the spring, you’ll see goslings and ducklings but no baby gulls. I think they fly up from the bowels of hell fully grown. Damn devil birds.
I’ve been editing the video after work this week. We did the loop three times to get as much footage as possible. Since I’m wearing a head-mounted camera, I filmed everything from my point of view, so I had to make sure I was describing what I was seeing and not observing one thing while talking about another.
“And we’re live!” My hands are trembling slightly as I hit the keys necessary to upload my video. I add links to my social media accounts to get a few views, hopefully. Shelby is a popular social media influencer with hundreds of thousands of followers, so she’s sharing links too on her platforms.
“Shared!” Shelby says.
Mallory and Shelby have come over to cheer me on, drink wine, and Mallory is going to crash in the guest room. Her parents live in Florida, and she bought the family home from them. They came back up north to attend a family party, announced they were staying with her, and are driving her crazy. She was afraid to admit that to me since I lost my parents, but I get it. I loved my parents, and we were close, but we had our moments where we got on each other’s nerves. I can’t imagine having a relationship with them as an adult, especially if they came into my home and treated it like it was still their house and acted like I was still a child and not a grown woman. Shelby’s boyfriend is going to pick her up and take her back to his house a couple of miles away.
Shelby and I joined Mallory for brunch on Sunday morning with her girlfriends, and it was a lot of fun. I made a promise to myself to not let these new friendships fade once Logan comes home in just over four weeks. It would be so easy to immerse myself in our relationship to the exclusion of everyone else, and I don’t want to be the girl that ignores her female friends when her boyfriend is available. I want to have a balance between my romantic relationship and my friendships.
“Time for wine,” Mallory states, and she opens the cans of rosé so we can kick back on the couch to watch a few fall-themed Howlbark movies. Mallory comes from a family of wolf shifters, and Shelby is human like I am, but her boyfriend is a Bigfoot shifter, so we enjoy the shifter romance movies. It’s funny how they’re formulaic like the regular Hallmark movies with the shifters being seen in their other form and stirring feelings in the others. They usually do shifter/human pairs so there’s theoh no, we’re so differentmoments of doubt until we get to theno matter what form we shift into, we’re all the same deep down insidemoment of realization before the declarations of love. It’s hokey, but it’s what I need right now. We’re ready to relax and pig out with our mini buffet of cupcakes, leftover Halloween candy, chips, cheese and crackers, and bottles of water on the coffee table in front of us. I grabbed fleece blankets so we can be cozy while we binge. I haven’t had a slumber party with girlfriends since before my parents died, and this is fun, especially with the addition of wine. I’ve never had canned wine before. I’m surprised at how tasty it is. There’s a lot of things I’ve never done before, but I’m going to. No more being hide-in-the-shadows Daphne. It’s time for me to embrace the adventurous side of me that I’ve buried for the past decade. Time to embrace a lot of things. And Logan.
30
LOGAN
It takesa moment for me to remember where I am before I start my day. I know I’m not home with Daphne, but that’s where I want to be.
“Why did I think I wanted to do all these festivals this month?” I groan, rolling to my side to take in the view out the window. “This sucks.”
I’m doing this because it will enable me to sell many of the pictures I take to publications, companies, and websites immediately. The photos not snapped up with exclusive licenses I can put on stock photo sites for use on blogs or book covers. I’m also researching uploading images to an online portal that allows them to be printed on surfaces like mugs, pillows, shirts, whatever people want. I want to have my photos create an income for us without having to travel constantly. My family is wealthy, and Andy and I and our cousins have trust funds. Liam and I are old enough to access the funds, but we both plan on leaving them to grow for the future. Pierre has invested some of mine. I could support us on my trust fund, but we were raised to work and have careers. I want to be able to earn enough with my photography to be able to support Daphne and our family. Maybe this way, I can have a future with Daphne, with us both in the same hemisphere more often than not, ideally in the same bed.
I feel the call of nature, so I get my butt out of bed and enter the bathroom. The tile work is busier than my style, but I like the color combination of shades of tan and green. The bathroom attached to our bedroom back home could use an update. I think I’ll suggest this color combo to Daphne.
“Dude, you look like crap,” I tell my reflection while I wash my hands. I haven’t been sleeping well. One week of sharing a bed with Daphne has ruined me for sleeping alone. I’ve never felt like I couldn’t sleep without someone in bed beside me before. Other than Daphne, I haven’t shared a bed with anyone since my few flings in college, and that wasn’t the same. I grab my phone off the nightstand and unlock it to see if there are any new texts from Daphne. My heart sinks. No texts. Even though we messaged last night before I turned in. Now that it’s the weekend, we should be able to FaceTime more. I’m eager to see her face.
“What’s this?” I click on the notification that Daphne has posted a video. It’s public, so I’m praying she didn’t post something personal by accident. We’ve been sending each other flirty videos that are progressively getting hotter. Clicking the link, I see Daphne’s smiling face, and I can’t help but smile in response. She’s outside, but I’m uncertain where.
“Hi! I’m Daphne, and today I’m going to share with you the Eco Trail at the Wildlife Refuge in Shifting Pines, New Jersey. I hope you enjoy experiencing this how I see it. If you’d like to be notified when I upload future tours, be sure to give me a thumbs up below and follow the link to sign up for my email newsletter to get more information on the places we explore.” The view then switches to what Daphne sees. She must be wearing a head-mounted camera. Where’d she get that?
She steps onto the trail and starts speaking. “The Eco Trail is right past the visitor center and before the start of Wildlife Drive. It straddles marshland and forest. If you’re at the refuge in the warmer months, beware that it is very buggy, with mosquitoes, gnats, and greenhead flies. It’s November now, so bugs aren’t much of an issue, thank goodness. You’ll always want to take precautions against ticks. This trail has two paths. First, we’ll follow the boardwalk along the marsh. In the distance, across Reeds Bay, you can see the skyline of Atlantic City. Yes, this gem of nature is just miles away from the casinos of Atlantic City.” She walks both forks of the trail, explaining what she sees, pointing out flora and fauna, reminiscing how she used to walk these trails with her parents, pointing out a plank she purchased as part of a fundraiser for the refuge and had engraved with her parents’ names as part of the boardwalk.
I didn’t know she’d done that.
“Wow, Daph, you’re doing it,” I murmur, my eyes glued to the video. She’s so warm and personable, it feels like I’m there with her. I’ve never walked this trail or flown over this part of the wildlife refuge, but she’s being so descriptive and informative, it’s easy to imagine what it’s like. She also lets nature speak. She doesn’t feel the need to chatter constantly, so I can hear the leaves rustling and birdsong. I like that she doesn’t pretend to be an expert. She admits when she sees a bird she can’t identify and encourages viewers to share their best guesses in the comments. I’m so proud of her. I know she doesn’t enjoy being on camera, but she worked out a way to do it without that being necessary. I’m assuming she had company—probably Mallory—because I can’t imagine she’d walk around talking to herself. She gave a tour, just like she always dreamed of doing. I feel the sting of tears, and my throat tightens. If she could do this by herself, I can imagine how great she’d do if she had a group to lead and interact with. She posted the video last night, and it has a couple hundred views so far. I’m sure her friend Shelby is helping spread the word.
“Let’s get you more viewers, sunshine,” I say as I share the video on my personal social media and in a few photography and tourism groups I’m in. This deserves to be seen by as many people as possible. It’s the middle of the night for Daphne, so I don’t message her. I grab a notepad from my carry-on and discover the envelope that arrived in the mail the day I left home. I’d forgotten all about it. It’s a flyer for a photo tourism company in Michigan. They must have bought a mailing list from a photography supply business because I’ve never heard of them. Their flyer isn’t that good, but they have a website, and I have free time, so I grab my laptop and check it out.
