Last Summer(33)

“You’re hoping your wife reads the article. Why?” Ella asks when another thought occurs to her from her research. Nathan and Stephanie have been separated since before Carson’s death. She jogs to catch up. “Hey, Nathan, when was the last time you spoke with her?”

Nathan stops abruptly. Ella steps off to the side to avoid running into him again and bumps into a tree instead. “Oomph.” She rubs her shoulder.

Nathan points off to the right. “Look.”

She does. Through the trees, the mountainside drops into the wide topaz-blue sky. Above them, jet streams crisscross the flat blue atmosphere like a tic-tac-toe game. All around them, tree bark creaks, expanding in the sun. A bird of prey swoops and dives like a Cirque du Soleil acrobat. “Wow.”

“It’s incredible.” He grins broadly. “Never gets old.”

“I can imagine.”

“The view’s even better where we stop for lunch. That’s what I want to show you. We should be there within the hour.”

“How long have you lived here?”

“I bought the place several years back as a vacation retreat. Moved here permanently when Steph left.” He reaches for a water bottle. “Drink?”

“Yes, thanks.” She drinks some, then Nathan takes his share, sliding the canister back into the pack’s side pocket.

“What were you like as a kid?” she asks when they resume their hike, choosing to wait until later to delve into his reasons for using Luxe. “Were you always like that guy we see on Off the Grid!?”

“How would you describe that guy?”

“An adrenaline junkie. Lives life at maximum speed. He doesn’t fear death.”

“Wrong. He fears not living. Look around.” He gestures at the surrounding scenery. They’re walking amid a pine forest blanketed in snow. “Does this look like life at maximum speed?”

It looks like a guy hiding. Hibernating from the public, which isn’t living. But she doesn’t tell him what she thinks. She wants to keep him talking to the point where he feels comfortable doing so. It’ll be easier when she delves into the more difficult topic of his son. By then he should feel at ease with her. Again, she assumes. So she starts with a more neutral subject, his parents. Besides, she wants to understand who he was as a kid. What shaped Nathan into the man he is now? Someone willing to perform extreme feats in front of a camera and have them broadcast worldwide.

“Tell me about your parents. I read that your dad was an army captain,” she begins.

“He was. He’s the reason I served in the Special Forces a few years after college. As a kid, we moved around a lot. I get attached to land easier than people. Anytime we moved, I could count on Mother Nature being there.”

Poetic words for a rough-around-the-edges man.

Ella studies him. His strong shoulders and masculine hands. Workman’s hands. His long legs and rugged good looks, which, she admits, she isn’t immune to. His presence is compelling, and from what she saw of his survival series, he relishes being the center of attention. Like Damien, Nathan is partial to control. He must have derived those traits from his military father.

“What was it like growing up with them?” She read that his father, George Donovan, passed away five years previous. Massive heart attack. His mother, Rae, retired to San Diego.

“They did their best to make every home we moved to feel like a castle, even if it was military housing the size of a shoebox. Anytime Dad got leave, he and my mom would pull my sister, Heather, and me from school. We’d pile into Dad’s Wagoneer. No destination or care in the world. We’d just go.”

“That’s spontaneous. Your mom didn’t mind?” Ella thinks of her parents. Aside from day trips to the beach or museums, they never went on a real vacation, the kind where you pack a suitcase and travel somewhere for an extended stay. There was never enough money. She also can’t picture her mother roughing it outdoors. From what Ella recalls of her limited memory of her, her mother liked her fingernails polished and heels high.

Aunt Kathy did take her and Andrew to Disneyland a few times, but then her aunt got too sick to travel. Ella feels like she missed out on that part of childhood. It’s one of the reasons she loves traveling with Damien and for her job. Aside from her semester in Germany, she never had the opportunity to go places until she graduated from college and started her career.

Should she be fortunate enough to have kids again with Damien, she’ll take every opportunity she can to show their child the world.

“My mom was just as adventurous as my dad. Sometimes more so,” Nathan explains. “My grandparents homeschooled her. They raised her in a lakeside cabin in Alabama without electricity or running water.”

“She sounds hard-core.”

“She is. She was the one who took us camping when my dad couldn’t get away. One time she pulled off the highway onto a dirt road. We bumped along for what had to be a mile or so before she parked the car and announced that this was where we were going to spend the night.”

“In the middle of nowhere?”

“In the middle of nowhere,” Nathan echoes. “Heather and I grabbed the gear and my mom hiked us several hundred yards through the woods until she found a spot to set up camp. The night was warm, the sky gorgeous. We didn’t bother with tents and slept beside the campfire. It was perfect until I woke up at two a.m. with a shotgun in my face. I about shit my pants.”