“You need your family, Liam. What the hell are you waiting for?”
Not in a million years would he tell anyone from his Hollywood life about Raina Donovan, even if he thought they’d understand.
“I’ll be on my way soon.” Chagrin swept over him. “Annie, if it’s getting too crazy, dealing with the media, I can come back.”
“Are you trying to insult me now? I can handle these bozos with both arms tied behind my back.” She paused. “Go home, Liam.”
He glanced in the direction of the cabin he couldn’t see from here. “Soon, I promise.”
“You’re a good guy, one of the few real people in movieland. Maybe too real.”
Liam had to swallow hard. “Annie…”
“Listen, tiger, my macchiato is getting cold. You know how that pisses me off.” Affection and worry colored her tone.
“Heaven forbid.” He tried for a chuckle and didn’t quite make it. “You’re the best, Annie.”
“Don’t you forget it.” Her voice softened. “Take care, cowboy. You’re in the wrong mountains. Get the hell back home. The clock is ticking.” Without further fanfare, she was gone.
Tick, tock. No one understood that better than he.
Liam closed the cover of his phone and leaned back against a tree. He wanted to talk to his dad in the worst way now, but for once in his life, Liam wasn’t confident that his acting skills were up to the task.
His dad would only worry. This should be a happy time for all of them.
And Liam had a list of tasks to complete before he could go, no matter that he’d generated the list himself and no one would be the wiser if he didn’t complete it.
He made his way back to his car to drop off the phone. He’d go inside, have a talk with Raina about what should be accomplished before he could leave in good conscience. If he put his energy into work instead of lusting after a woman who wasn’t asking for anything from him, maybe the list wouldn’t take too long to finish.
He’d call his dad later, when he had a better sense of the time involved.
Good. All right. He had a plan. He headed back to get it started.
Raina opened the ancient wooden quilt chest made for Gran by the grandfather Raina had never met. A travelin’ man, Gran had called him, a wanderer with a restless heart and itchy feet. I knew the price, child, Gran had answered Mama’s easily cast blame once, when neither knew Raina was awake. ’Course I did. Didn’t matter. If I’d turned that man away, somethin’ in me would have died forever.
What about me? Mama had screamed. Didn’t I deserve better? I was a bastard, an unwanted child.
Gran’s voice had held a fury Raina had never heard before. That is a lie and you know it, Clary. I wanted you. You were all I’d ever have of him.
To hell with him, Mama had lashed out. To hell with you, too. You’re just as selfish as he was, to bring a child into the world as some kind of goddamn souvenir.
Instead of as an afterthought? Gran had asked. At least I loved your daddy. I knew who he was.
And that was how Raina had discovered that she was an accident, a bastard child of a man her mother couldn’t have picked out from the jumble of careless nights if her life had depended upon it.
A pretty pair, aren’t we, Mama?
On that last visit, she’d told Gran that she’d been aware of the circumstances of her birth for years. Gran had been too wise to try any pretty stories or make excuses. Donovan women don’t need a man, Gran had said. We are warrior queens. All that comes down in your blood, Rainie girl.
Raina had thought differently. I love you, Gran, but I can’t be like you, she’d confessed. I don’t even want to. I have a man now, and I’m going to be the one who breaks free. I’m leaving this mountain to make something of myself.
Raina lifted one last quilt and leaned into the chest, peering through the shadows, almost afraid to see. To breathe.
There. Hands clenched on the wooden lip darkened and worn to satin by decades of human touch, she stared. Deep in the shadowed corner, its brass hasp dulled with age. Raina would have recognized it anywhere, though she hadn’t laid eyes on it in twenty years.
Gran’s book, the one she’d scratched in late at night by candlelight, using one of the turkey quills she’d sharpen with the wicked little knife that was never far from her hand.
Raina extended an arm, then yanked it back as though the book would burn her. You can be one of us, Rainie girl. Your mama doesn’t have the knack, but you do. All that’s required is that you accept the sacred duty, the stewardship of this mountain and all the souls who live upon it.
But Raina, who’d borne responsibility for her mother since childhood, had not wanted any more. She’d craved freedom from it. To be rich, to travel, to be the one cared for, instead.
Everything she’d left this mountain to obtain had turned to dust in her hands.
And Raina was only too aware that having nowhere else to go was no substitute for the calling that Gran had intended.
Hal’s whistling stirred Raina from her contemplation, had her drawing back her hand from the leather cover she could not yet summon the courage to touch.
His heavy steps mounted the stairs. Crossed the porch.
Raina grabbed a stack of quilts and dropped them back inside as she would smother a deadly fire. Gran was wrong. She was an Donovan in name only. Never a queen, though she’d once aspired to rise in the eyes of the world. Not a healer like Gran, certainly not a wisewoman.
But a warrior…somehow, facing the battle of her life, Raina must find that warrior inside herself.
She’d barely closed the lid when the cabin door opened. She wheeled around, hands hidden behind her.
“Raina, I have to talk to you—” He stopped. “You okay?”
She straightened. Moved away. “Sure.” Busied herself smoothing the quilts on the bed. “What did you want?”
He drew his questioning gaze from the chest. “I’d like to make a list of the things that should be done before winter.”
“Why?”
His voice was still a stranger’s. “So I know how much longer I need to stay.”
She matched his tone. “You can leave now. I thought I made that clear.”
His brows snapped together, but he continued as though she’d said nothing. “I’ll have the barn roof finished today, and I can have the logs on both it and the cabin chinked by the end of tomorrow, I think. Then you’ll be able to get a cow for milk and maybe a couple of hogs to breed and raise for meat. There are volunteer tomato plants buried in the garden. No telling what else is underneath the weeds. It’s too late to plant for this year, but I can get the soil turned under—”
“Who asked you?” Temper pushed her past the desire for distance. She poked a finger into his chest. “Who died and made you God so you could figure out my life for me?”
“So what are you planning, huh? Or do you even have any plans? Have you given a second’s thought to how much wood it will take to get through a winter? Who’s going to chop it if I don’t? You don’t have the muscles or the money to hire it done. Think Frank or Noah or anyone else is going to come chop it for you free?”
The name stopped her cold. “Frank?”
“Yeah. Remember him, the guy who still believes he has a claim on you?”
“What? How do you—when—” She began pacing. Her skin buzzed with nerves. “Who are you to be talking to anyone about me? Have you ever heard the word privacy?” She spun on one heel. “Did I ask you to get involved? No.” Her mind rocketed back to a day long distant, an angry young man with tears in his eyes. “What have you done?”
“I met him at the store. He doesn’t like you much, Raina. Stay clear of him.”
“I intend to. I only want to be left alone.” She glared at Hal. “Forget your list. I’ll do it myself.”
“Goddamn it, Raina, you could die here!” he roared. “How the hell can you claim to know this place and not understand the risk you’re running? Personally, I expe
ct you’ll be gone before Thanksgiving. It doesn’t take a genius to see that you’re not even vaguely prepared to survive a winter alone. Stop kidding yourself, why don’t you?”
Every word, every question was battery acid poured over her skin. Into her heart, opening it up to the terror that never left her.
No one was more aware than Raina of just how unfit she was. No one. She could very well not survive here, and she knew it. She’d come back to this place understanding that she was dead if she stayed out in that world, that sooner or later she’d fall back into the life that would burn out like a Roman candle…or merely fizzle into the outer reaches of purgatory.
Maybe she wouldn’t make it through the first winter, but at least she would die in the only place she’d ever truly been alive.
Somehow, that insight steadied her, and an odd thing happened.
Raina found the first hint of the warrior within her. With no one to live for and nothing left to lose, she had little to fear but loneliness, and loneliness was an intimate acquaintance. It had been her most reliable companion for most of her life.
Along with the warrior came its sidekick, pragmatism. There was a strong, healthy man right in front of her who, for whatever incomprehensible reasons, felt bound to help her. With his efforts, for however long he’d stay, she could accomplish more than twice as much as by herself.
There was a time for independence, but there was never an excuse for stupidity.
“All right.” She had herself in hand now. Understood the path. “Let’s make that list.”
“What?” He goggled at her as if she’d grown an extra head.
She shrugged. “You’ve got some misguided Galahad complex and a strong back. I’m determined to make it through the winter after getting a late start. You want to help, and I’m saying yes. Let’s get to it.” Amazingly enough, she found that accepting his help made her feel better, not worse. Not weaker.
She was the one doing the choosing.
Meanwhile, Hal looked poleaxed. “I don’t get it.”
“I’m not crazy.” She smiled. “Not that crazy, anyway. Stubborn, yes, and maybe too proud, but since I can’t seem to get rid of you, I might as well be practical.”
“So you want me to stay.”
“Not really, but…yes.”
“You don’t want my money.”
“Forget it. No more charity. I can’t afford to pay you now, but I’ll figure out a way if you can be patient. We’ll keep track of your hours, and I’ll sign a note with you to repay every cent you spend and every hour you work, if it takes me a lifetime.”
He appeared ready to argue, but he stilled the protest unvoiced, and she saw a glimmer of something that just might be respect rise in his eyes. He held out a hand for a shake. “Agreed.”
She slid her own into it, smiling back with a lightness inside her that she hadn’t felt in more years than she could count.
He got an odd expression on his face. “What about the, uh—the physical attraction? How do we handle that?”
“It won’t be a problem.” She wouldn’t let it. “I told you I don’t like sex.”
He grinned then, that smile that was wide and white and would make any normal woman’s heart flutter. He burst out laughing. “You are so wrong about that, and maybe if you’re lucky, I’ll be the one to show you why.”
Her heart wasn’t fluttering, damn it. She wouldn’t let it. “You wish.” She turned away, hunting for paper and pencil.
His chuckles trailed along behind her. “You know, babe, I think I just might.”
Raina pretended she hadn’t heard him.
And so they passed the next few days in an odd companionship, busy outdoors from sunrise to sunset, working in the evenings by firelight and lantern until their weary bodies screamed for sleep.
He refused to consider swapping places alternate nights, insisting—falsely, she thought—that the floor was better for his back. She dug into Gran’s chest for more quilts to pad his pallet. They took turns on kitchen duties, and each day, Raina remembered more that she’d seen Gran do.
Finally, Raina decided the time had come to be practical about Gran’s book. She would never be capable of taking Gran’s place with the people of the valley, even if they’d want her, but she’d better be prepared to care for herself. Until she could get a complete system for food and warmth up and running, what meager funds she had would be stretched too thin for doctor visits if she was injured or ill.
Tomorrow she would get out the book. Today, she would tackle the garden. Hal had repaired the barn roof, chinked the logs on both it and the cabin and had oiled and sharpened tools he’d found. This morning he was using a scythe to mow the waist-high growth and clear paths between the cabin, barn, springhouse and garden.
Raina had done her best not to watch the play of muscles in his back and arms as he cut wide, powerful swaths, pausing only long enough to yank the T-shirt hanging from his waistband and wipe sweat from his face.
They’d done their best since the truce to act as merely agreeable strangers. They’d both worked hard, and Raina had hoped the exhaustion of a body unaccustomed to such strenuous effort would lull her into instant sleep when her head hit the pillow.
It wasn’t working for her. Sneaked peeks beneath folded arms showed her that slumber didn’t come quickly for him, either.
Buried under their careful truce and silence, desire was a steady hum. He was a beautiful man, but strangely enough, his allure came from sources beyond the physical: his powerful determination to help her, his quick mind, his easy humor. And dancing in the shadows, an inexplicable sorrow only visible when he didn’t know she was watching.
More and more often, she had a sense that she was missing out on something special, that he might be the one man who was different, who could initiate her into a secret world where sex was more than physical and extracted no price, where a woman could afford to relax her vigilance. Where a man might be more than animal or tyrant.
Just then, Hal paused and looked around as if he sensed her contemplation.
Raina snapped out of her reverie, rushing to the well and filling a bucket of water, then took it to him.
“Thanks.” He dipped the cup she proffered and drank deep and long.
She watched the muscles of his throat move, followed the path of one drop of sweat as it rolled down his neck and over his chest, headed toward his hard, ridged belly.
When he grasped the bucket and brushed her hands, she jolted and lost her grip on the wood.
He caught it easily and grinned as though he knew what she was thinking.
She surveyed the paths he’d cleared. “You’ve made a lot of progress.”
He didn’t respond until she met his gaze. His mouth was curved, but his eyes were snapping answering sparks of heat. “You forgot your hat.”
“It’s cool today.”
He glanced upward. “Sun’s still strong, and your skin’s too fair. You’ll burn.”
Gran had worked hard outdoors virtually every day of her life, but she’d never gone without a hat and sleeves and had religiously applied a balm she made herself. As a result, her skin at eighty had appeared decades younger.
Raina had tried to like wearing hats but had been too much the tomboy as a girl and later, under Ben’s direction, had felt imprisoned, slathered with expensive creams day and night. She’d tried wearing Gran’s old straw hat here. “It won’t stay on.”
“That’s why it’s got a strap.”
“I don’t like it rubbing under my chin.”
“You won’t like skin cancer, either.”
“Yes, Daddy.” She stuck out her tongue.
He swooped in and slicked his own tongue down the length of hers.
Raina went rigid, stunned by the flash fire inside her. Her mouth softened, lips parting. Her eyes drifted closed. Ready. Waiting.
Something tightened around her head, and she blinked. The bill of his cap shaded her face.
His look scorched he
r down to the toes. “I’m not your daddy.” He upended the water over his head, then picked up the scythe and strode to the well to drop off the bucket.
Without another word, he went back to work.
Raina stared at him for a long minute, her insides like fresh custard, warm and quivering.
She touched the brim of his cap, smoothing her fingertips across it, aware of every thread, every space between them.
Then, breath escaping in a whoosh, she headed for the garden.
Once there, Raina doffed her gloves, needing a tactile connection to something that would remain once the overwhelming male yards away left. She knelt and forced herself to focus.
Tomato plants, yes. She spotted three—no, four—their fruit withered, much of it plopped on the ground, once-red skin crisped brown by the sun and popped open, spilling seeds that would mean new plants next spring.
Raina pulled weeds around them, clearing the dense growth and recalling how Gran would turn over the soil with a pitchfork, working into it dried, powdery chicken manure and castoff hay from the stall where her cow spent the night.
In that instant, Raina could feel the press of coarse hair against her cheek where she’d leaned into Boadicea’s side, fingers curled around the warm, rubbery teats as milk zinged into the bucket. The sharp, crisp scent of fresh hay mingled with the earthy, pungent cow dung, overlaid with the aroma of rich, buttery milk.
She smiled. Of course Gran would name a homely, placid, cud-chewing cow after a Celtic warrior queen renowned for defeating Roman legions.
Come to think of it, Boadicea the cow hadn’t been all that placid, either. More than once, Raina had danced to avoid hooves ready to crush her toes.
Carefully, Raina plucked three still-gooey tomatoes and set them aside to harvest the seed. Then she pulled a whole plant, lifted its creeping, hairy roots to her nose and sniffed the dirt clinging to them, smiling at the displaced earthworms wiggling in panic.
Burrow down, she thought. Seek shelter from the coming winter. I’ll feed you better next spring.
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