Page 26 of Magic Blooms
He actively avoided the question. “It’s not a terrible idea. If you don’t mind a middle-aged drunk hitting on you.”
“I don’t want him to hit me. I want him to talk to me.”
Joshua frowned and once again I realized I’d said the wrong thing. Stupid colloquialisms.
He just shook his head. “Give me a chance to change into something clean, and we’ll head into town. It’s about time he’ll be closing up the office for the day, anyway.”
I looked his clothes up and down. The worn jeans and t-shirt seemed like his normal casual attire, though he was now coated in a sheen of moisture. Okay, maybe I could see why he would need to change.
For some odd reason, though, the sight of him covered in sweat didn’t disgust me like I expected. If anything, I liked the way he wore the residue of a hard day’s work plainly for all to see. Unabashedly. It made me?—
“Are you going to be okay out here?” he asked, interrupting my errant thoughts.
Another bug landed on me, and I swatted at it with a groan. Stupid distractions.
“Fine. C’mon in. Just don’t touch anything while you’re inside,” he warned with a stern expression.
Don’t touch anything. Don’t say anything rude. Don’t say anything to imply I’m not from here. There were just so many don’ts in this place. I found it all very exhausting.
I followed Joshua inside, careful to sidestep Ranger where he lapped water out of a steel bowl. A short flight of creaky stairs led up to a simple covered porch. It didn’t boast the stylish architectural details that Fox’s End did, but the porch was sturdy, and it gave the house some character. I could imagine that if the bugs weren’t so bad it could be relaxing to sit out here and look out over the swamp, gators and all.
I wonder if most people around these parts felt the same way, or if that was just my elemental nature calling to me.
The inside of Joshua’s cabin proved to be surprisingly cozy and nicely furnished. Once again, it was by no means fancy. But everything inside appeared new and clean, well cared for. I didn’t know what exactly I had expected from a man who lived alone in the wilderness like this.
Then again, I supposed I never knew what to expect when it came to Joshua.
“You feed them,” I said suddenly, the thought just occurring to me.
He turned to face me. “What?”
“The gators. You had that box ready to go the second you decided you needed it. And I’m going to guess that there aren’t usually so many of them in one place, either. They’re here because they were waiting for food.”
He regarded me with shining eyes. “You don’t know what the phrase ‘hitting on’ means, but you’re an expert in gator behavior now?”
“Call it good instincts.” I offered him a closed-lip smile.
Joshua held up his hands in surrender and chuckled. “I feed ’em because I like ’em. Besides that, if I give them food, they’re less likely to attack me should I ever decide to take a swim myself.”
I smiled at this, and for some reason that seemed to annoy Joshua all the more.
“What?” he bit out.
I shrugged. “I mean, you’re feeding swamp monsters and going out of your way to help Lorraine. I can’t believe how nice people in Elyria are.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “Ha, you just wait until you meet Art.”
eleven
I went in unsure of how Joshua and I might succeed in luring Art out for a drink, but in the end the task proved surprisingly easy. Joshua fired up Old Sparky and drove us into town, where we then sat and waited outside the building marked with an aged sign that read “Dr. Art Fitzsimmons.”
After no more than ten minutes of us waiting there, an older man with thick white hair and a scratchy looking mustache pushed through the doors and out into the early evening air. Dr. Fitzsimmons, I presumed.
We spotted him at the same time, and Joshua immediately jumped out of the truck. He then reached within and pulled from a store of charm so deep I would never have known it existed.
“Art,” he called with a hand raised in friendly greeting. “How’s it going, man? I’ve heard you had a rough one today.”
I couldn’t stop staring at Joshua as I clambered out of the vehicle and onto the walkway. Who knew he could be so pleasant when he wanted to be? Well, I guess that meant he had never really had wanted to for me.
