Out of Sight. Michelle Celmer
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to keep her distance for the remainder of his stay. She’d had a speech rehearsed at lunch to let him down gently, but he had barely spoken to her. Just a friendly hello as he’d walked past her to a different table. Later, every time she’d looked at him—which she found herself doing more often than she was comfortable with—he had been engaged in conversation with another guest or staff member and hadn’t seemed to know she existed. Maybe she’d imagined the whole thing and he really hadn’t been thinking about kissing her. She used to be able to spot that kind of thing a mile away, but perhaps her feminine radar was rustier than she’d thought.
So odds were he hadn’t followed her but was instead out for a stroll and just happened to run into them. Which was good. She’d never had a guest interested in her, though it was known to happen, and the idea made her uncomfortable. The fact that she found him so fascinating was even worse.
“We’re taking a nature hike,” she said as he walked up and fell in step beside her. He was tall and fit and the way he moved was almost hypnotizing. She would have gone as far as to say he was graceful had he not been so glaringly masculine. She’d never known a man who displayed so much confidence with such a complete lack of arrogance.
“Shouldn’t you be in group therapy?”
Will shrugged and made a face. “Therapy isn’t really my thing.”
Interesting attitude considering he was at a retreat that specialized in therapeutic counseling. “Maybe it’s none of my business, but if you don’t want therapy, what are you doing here?”
He thought about that for a minute. “I’m not sure, really. I just knew I needed some time to work things through, to make some changes in my life. This seemed like the right place to do it—where I’m with people who understand what I’m going through.”
Well, she gave him points for honesty. “You should really consider it,” she said. “The therapy, I mean. It’s probably not what you would expect.”
“I’ll think about it,” he said.
They reached the clearing where her group would take their first rest. Overturned logs and tree stumps served as seats. “Okay, everyone, fifteen-minute break. I’d like you to take out your journals and write at least one page.”
“What do we have to write about?” one of the younger girls asked.
“Anything you’d like. It could be a page about something you saw in the woods that interested you or something you’re feeling. Anything at all.” It didn’t really matter what they wrote. Their journals were a warm-up exercise to get the kids loosened up and ready for their group therapy sessions later that afternoon.
The kids dropped their backpacks to fish out their journals, and Abi turned to Will. “You don’t have to wait.”
“I don’t mind.” He set his pack on the ground and sat on an overturned log.
Okay.
Whether she wanted his company or not, it didn’t look as if she had much choice now, not without causing a scene and possibly insulting or embarrassing him in front of the kids. Besides, what could be the harm in a little friendly conversation?
“Keeps to himself, doesn’t he?” Will asked.
She followed the direction of his gaze and saw Eric standing alone, leaning against a tree away from the group. He hadn’t taken out his journal and was instead whacking at the underbrush with a stick, his usual bored expression on his face.
Rather than insist, she let him be. Forcing him would only make matters worse.
She sat beside Will on the log. “I haven’t figured out how to approach him yet. I know there’s a way in, I just have to find it.”
Will leaned back and stretched his legs out in front of him. They were long and muscular and covered with crisp dark hair. She’d never been particularly attracted to men’s legs before, but she found her eyes drawn to his and even had a difficult time looking away. What was it about him that fascinated her so?
“He’s a problem kid?” Will asked.
Though she tried not to discuss one guest with another, she was grateful for the neutral topic. And being male, Will might have an idea how she could get through to a teenage boy. “The opposite, in fact. His parents are concerned because he’s become unusually introverted. They sent him here to pull him out of his shell.”
“Sent him here? I thought it was supposed to be family therapy.”
“It is usually.”
“Let me guess—the parents don’t have time.”
“Something like that.”
He shook his head. “That’s too bad.”
“Miss Abi!” Noah appeared in front of them, hopping from one foot to the other, clutching the front of his shorts. “I gotta pee bad.”
Add drama queen to his personality quirks. All he had to do was ask.
“That’s the cool thing about being a boy. Outdoor plumbing.” She nodded toward the dense forest on either side of the clearing. “You’ve got a couple hundred trees to choose from.”
He glanced around, a worried look on his face. “I don’t want to go out there alone.”
“Would you like me to come with you?”
His expression went from worried to horrified. “Yuck! You’re a girl.”
“Would you like Mr. Bishop to take you?”
He looked Will over in the blatant, honest way that kids did, then shook his head. “He’s a stranger.”
“Hmm,” she looked around, wondering how to solve this problem, then got an idea. “What if one of the older boys took you? Would that be okay?”
Noah considered that for a minute, then nodded.
“How about Eric?
“Yeah, okay.”
Perfect. Just the way in she needed. “Eric,” she called, “can I see you for a minute?”
His expression one of sheer disinterest, Eric tossed down his stick, shoved both hands in the pockets of his shorts and ambled over to them. Though he was only seventeen, he stood close to six feet tall. His sun-streaked brown hair was on the long side, and he brushed it aside with a jerk of his head when it fell into his eyes. “Yeah?”
He was trying so hard to not look lost and lonely, it broke her heart.
“Noah here needs to relieve himself, but he’s uncomfortable with the idea of a girl or a stranger taking him,” she explained. “Could you please take him far enough into the woods so he has some privacy?”
He shrugged as if it didn’t matter either way to him. “Sure. Come on, kid.”
He headed into the woods and Noah trailed behind him. Abi could hear him jabbering away. Maybe he would get Eric talking.
“That was good,” Will said.
Abi turned back to him and smiled. “Like I said, the moment would present itself. I just had to be patient.”
“You’re really good with the kids.”
“I love my job. Although, if you had told me four years ago that I would be doing this, I’d have said you were nuts.”
“Why is that?”
“Let’s just say I wasn’t into kids back then.”
“A lot of things can change in four years,” he agreed, a sad, almost wistful look in his eyes.
“Is that when it happened?”
He turned to her. “What happened?”
“The car accident.”
“Yeah,