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“Good morning, Baby Silva,” he calls with a jovial wave that seems more mocking than genuine.
“Is this what you do?” I reply, wagging a finger at him as I approach the picket fence surrounding the yard. “Just sit outside wearing your underwear, hoping a girl comes by to admire you?”
His gaze licks across my skin. My legs, my stomach, my chest. “Are you saying that you’re admiring me? Because I kind of thought you were the only girl in the world who didn’t. For anyone else, I’d have skipped the boxers entirely.”
My lips purse as I make a show of looking him up and down. “I’m happy to see that a night of rest has restored you to factory settings. The earth is healing. This is exactly the type of assholery Richard wants from you. He’ll be thrilled to know you’re ready to live up to your reputation again.”
For the briefest flash, something close to wounded crosses his face. But it’s there and gone before I can analyze it.
“Well, if it doesn’t mess with my reputation too much, I’m going to offer one last time to accompany you up to Prickle Point. I’m assuming that’s where you’re going and that you didn’t just walk this way to shit-talk me to my face. I can even put some pants on for you—unless you prefer I don’t.”
He winks.
I roll my eyes and forge ahead.
“Yes, yes, you do have a bad habit of behaving rather gentlemanly when I’m around, but you don’t need to do that. I’m on the job. I’m twenty-five. Don’t need a chaperone. And who knows, someone who actually wants to see you in your underwear might swing by. I’d hate to spoil that opportunity for you. So…” I hike a thumb over my shoulder and back away. “I’ll see myself out.”
I expect him to toss back a witty jab—deep down, I’m even hoping for one. A little more of this back-and-forth with him would, at the very least, be entertaining. But all he offers me is a dip of his chin as he raises his coffee cup in my direction. Then he leans back, eyes drifting over the fields while rocking gently in his chair, dismissing me.
I swallow and drop my gaze, smiling down at my feet awkwardly as I hustle out of sight. I pass his house and head toward the wide metal gate that leads off the Brandt property. Desperate for an escape.
Once I hit the trailhead, thoughts of Emmett fade away, replaced by a single-minded focus on my job. I snap photos of the area with my phone—the small parking lot and several angles heading up the trail to the mountain’s summit—so production can see where the cameras will need to go. As I explore, I jot a note to contact the local parks board to get a permit for filming. I take video footage, illustrating the difficulty of the main path and noting a halfway point with a bench that could work for shooting B-roll interviews.
Then, I make my way to the top. This mountain is more like a steep hill, but the view from the crest would still be worth it if it were a harder trail.
I prop my hands on my hips, take a deep breath, and allow myself a moment to soak in the views. The lake, the trees, the perfectly spaced rows of vines from all the different wineries in the valley below. This part of British Columbia feels almost desertlike, the scorching sun undulating in waves over the dry loamy soil and glinting off the shimmering lake. Native prickly pear cactuses bloom along the slope before me, giving the entire setting a dreamlike quality.
Once I’ve caught my breath and looked my fill, I lift my phone and start snapping away to give production a road map of the location. It’s as I’m taking a video and explaining the approximate size of the summit that my foot catches on a piece of dry, ropy root.
And with only a few stumbled steps, my center of gravity is shot. Suddenly, I’m falling backward down the slope of the hill. I don’t fall fast or hard, it’s more of an embarrassing, clumsy, childlike roll down a hill.
A hill that is quickly revealing why Emmett refers to it as “Prickle Point.”