Free Country by Danielle Steel Page B

and wishing they had come here together, knowing he would have loved it too, although he was never as moved by nature as she was, but this was impossible to resist. The beauty of the Grand Canyon had touched her deeply. She was mesmerized by it, as she sensed some movement near her, and turned to see a man walking toward the bench, on his way up from the trail below. He was wearing jeans and a tank top, had long hair to his shoulders, and tattoos on both arms and his chest. There was nothing menacing about him, and he looked about her age, despite the long hair and tattoos. He smiled when he saw her, and she nodded, a little disappointed that another hiker had turned up to distract her and interrupt her reverie and silent communion with Bill. She felt so close to him here, as though he too were now free, and somewhere nearby in the beauty of nature and this amazing place. She was planning to leave in a few minutes, but wasn’t ready to do so yet.
    The hiker sat down on a rock near the bench she was sitting on, and turned to her.
    “Gorgeous place, isn’t it?” he said in a heavy southern drawl, trying to be pleasant. She didn’t really want to talk, but she didn’t want to be rude. There was something about nature that made one feel obliged to be congenial to everyone, but this time she wanted to be alone. She saw that he had powerful shoulders and looked athletic, and he was wearing hiking boots. She wondered if he had been hiking all day, although he was carrying no backpack with supplies. All he had was an old military surplus canteen slung over one tattooed arm. She noticed that he had an old pinup-style girl tattooed on one shoulder, with a name under it, and an eagle on the other side. “I come here every year, to get my head back on straight,” he told her, and she smiled. It was why she was there too. She wondered if most people did, or just as tourists to see one of the wonders of the world. In fact, she had come for both. “There’s nothing like this place to feed the soul.”
    “I know,” she finally answered him, her hair pulled back in a haphazard ponytail with an elastic she had found in her pocket when she started to get too warm. She looked very young with her blond hair and blue eyes. “I’ve always wanted to see it. It’s even more beautiful than I thought it would be. It takes your breath away,” she said in an awed voice. He hadn’t moved any closer, and was sitting on a rock nearby, sipping from his canteen. His face was flushed. He had walked at a good pace.
    “It still does that to me, after all these years. I came here for the first time when I was a kid, and it just gets to me more every year.” She nodded, easily able to imagine that could be true. One would never tire of this, no matter how many times you saw it. And even seeing it for the first time, she knew she wanted to return. “Did you travel from far away?” he inquired casually, just being friendly to another hiker, not with any special interest in her. She felt nothing frightening or overly personal from him, he just seemed like a nice person.
    “San Francisco. I was in Las Vegas last night, so I thought I’d stop here today on the way back.” As she said it, for a flash of an instant she remembered the stories one heard of female hikers being molested and murdered in other places, but he seemed so gentle that she felt guilty for her thoughts.
    “That’s when I get here too. I work in Vegas a couple of times a year.” He looked like he might be a transient worker of some kind. He wore no jewelry or watch, and the torn jeans and shirt he was wearing he could have gotten from Goodwill. And his hiking boots were ancient and battered and might have been secondhand too. She didn’t ask him what kind of work he did in Vegas, just as he didn’t ask her why she’d been there. The rules of the road on nature trails were to be friendly but not intrusive, and he respected the same boundaries she did. They were just fellow