The Belle and the Beard by Kate Canterbary (carter reed TXT) 📗

deeper down the trail. "Let's see what we find. We have a good amount of American holly. You can see the berries on that one. Some of the last blooms of the season are still hanging on to that hardy geranium over there. It's probably too late for any lady's slipper but we'd find them over here, on a mossy slope. They like to hang out with the fiddlehead ferns and swamp azalea, though they don't all grow at the same times."

She leaned into me as we walked, her shoulder against my bicep, our joined hands brushing her thigh. "And you know this from looking at it? You don't have to examine it more closely or anything?"

"All these trees and plants have characteristics you can pick out from a distance. I don't need to examine the holly because I know its shape and its dark, glossy leaves. Nothing else in this area is exactly like it."

"That's wild to me," she said softly. "I just…I don't know. I can't imagine knowing something so well I can name it and explain it from twenty feet away." She tipped her head to the side, resting on my shoulder. I stared at her birthmark a moment longer than necessary. It was so cute. Like a splash of creamy coffee, if that could be cute. Whatever. I thought it was cute. "Not something new anyway. Not something I learned from the start."

"Who says you have to start over?"

"Um, you did. Yesterday. In a different forest that somehow looked exactly like this one. Are you sure they aren't the same? Is this a prank?"

"Different parks, I swear." I shifted to press a quick kiss to her forehead. "Just because your last job was wrong for you doesn't mean everything about it was wrong."

"You say that," she started with a laugh thick in her words, "but I was making some lists last night—"

"I told you to sleep last night, Peach."

Surprising the ever-loving shit out of me, Jasper dropped my hand to loop her arm around my waist, slide her hand under my shirt, and brush her fingers down my back. It wasn't the gesture itself. An arm around the waist was nothing, considering I came this close to dry humping her against the kitchen sink last night. Not to mention the tree yesterday afternoon. It was that she initiated. As far as I could remember, she'd never been the one to reach out. I'd assumed it was part of her aloof vibe.

As Jasper had mentioned once before, my assumptions were wrong.

In this case, it was good to be wrong.

"You did but I had to think," she replied.

I gathered her close, my arm tightening around her shoulder. "I'm sure you did. What did you come up with?"

She snickered. "I promise you, it's not even close to interesting."

"You were up all night instead of sleeping like you needed, so you better believe I want to hear what came from all that stressing."

A sweet grumble sounded in her throat. "I didn't come up with anything good. Just the same stuff—writing a book, consulting, think tanks. Then I made some lists of things that could be promising, like teaching government or public policy."

"I bet you'd be good at that. You know government the way I know these woods."

"Maybe. I don't know. I'd probably have to go back to school for that. Working in the Senate doesn't automatically qualify me to teach anyone unless I want to start a YouTube channel and that sounds terrible."

"What do you think about going back to school, then?"

"Not my favorite idea. Grad school is expensive. It takes a long time. There's also a load of busywork involved. Writing papers a certain way, researching things that don't matter anymore, debating odd bits of constitutional history. That's not how government works and I don't have any patience for people who think they know how it works based off their in-depth analysis of tweets and The West Wing. I'd end up yelling at people every day. I'd get a reputation real quick."

"You would terrify them. I'd pay to watch."

"You know, at least six men have told me I've appeared in their nightmares."

"Not that you're bragging."

She smiled up at me. "I would never."

"All right, so, teaching doesn't stay on the list. Cross that off. What else? There had to be something you liked about working for the senator. Something that got you out of bed in the morning."

"Blind panic usually got me out of bed in the morning. Like pimples, problems developed overnight. Mornings were about damage control."

"You can't say things like that to me, Jas. You just can't. It makes me want to wrap you in blankets and tuck you into my bed for a very long time. At least until I'm finished strangling that boss of yours."

At that, Jasper buried her face in my chest. "Don't be nice to me. It's confusing."

"You'll have to suffer, then." I kissed her hair again because she was right there and I couldn't have her right there without kissing her. I could not. "Back on topic. What did you like about your job, and for fuck's sake, don't give me another reason to swaddle you because I'll do it."

For a moment, she didn't respond, didn't move a muscle. Then, she tipped her head back, casting an unfocused gaze on the woods behind me. "I liked the purpose. Even when the actual work was tedious or nothing more than creating diversions. I felt like I was doing something that mattered. That it was bigger than me. Timbrooks has always been an imperfect candidate but he voted the right way when it mattered. That was enough for me. That justified it. I could forgive and excuse everything else when we were advancing the right issues."

"That's the piece to hold on to," I said. "Advance the right issues. Do something that matters—to you."

"As great as that sounds," she started, still watching the trees, "no one working on those issues wants anything to do with me.