Bittersweet Promises

by Patricia Watters

  "Right here."

  "You bring the tools, grease units and gas tanks in the small service truck. Curt, you move the Cat. And if anyone sees Swenson, tell him I'll expect him in my office."

  "Good luck," someone quipped.

  Tess ignored the man and left the cook shack.

  As she passed the old splitting stump, she paused to study the hatch work of ax marks on its wide, flat top. The sight of them brought back bittersweet memories. It was here she first saw Zak, the year the timber carnival was held at Timber West. That was ten years ago, when she was fourteen and Zak was eighteen, but she still remembered how his lean body glistened beneath the sun as he swung his ax while practicing for the wood-splitting contest. She'd stood watching, impressed by the play of muscles in his arms. Then she noticed he wasn't holding the ax the way her father taught her.

  He'd just propped a log on end and gripped his ax ready to swing, when she called out while walking toward him, "Hey, mister, you're holding that ax wrong."

  Zak looked at her in amusement and lowered the ax. "My name's not mister, it's Zakhra Bertsolari de Neuville."

  Even in her thoughts Tess stumbled over the long name, just as she had when she'd tried to pronounce it, finally giving up and saying, "You're either putting me on or that's a very weird name."

  Zak threw his head back and laughed. "It's not weird if you're Basque."

  At the time, all she knew about the Basque living in eastern Oregon was what she'd learned when her father took her to the Basque community of Navarre for their yearly festival. It had been like stepping into another world. She'd seen old women in long dresses and men wearing berets, many of them not dressed for the festival, but maintaining their old world culture and dress. And in the hills surrounding Navarre, she'd seen men in baggy pants herding strange looking sheep with curved horns and patrician noses and curly wool that hung like blankets.

  "Then you're from Navarre?" she asked.

  "I am." Zak rested the ax on his shoulder.

  She remembered how tall he was. She'd even had to shade her face to block the sun as she looked up at him and said, "What are you doing around here?"

  "I came to take part in the timber carnival. Who are you?"

  "TJ O'Reilly. My father owns this place."

  "Well, TJ O'Reilly, I suppose you can swing an ax and split dead center."

  "Sure." Adjusting her baseball cap so her hair would stay tucked inside, she grabbed the ax and said, "Go ahead. Set up a log."

  Zak eyed her with amused indulgence, then placed a log on end and stepped back. She focused on the line chalked across the end of the log, raised the ax high overhead, and sent it cracking into the log, splitting it in two. Zak picked up one of the sections, and said, "Not bad."

  Tess looked at him, incensed. "What do you mean, not bad? It split right on the line." She pointed to the chalk line tracing the edge of the split.

  "So it did. Learn to hold your ax right and maybe you'll pick up some speed." He took the ax from her and held it as before. "You'd better run along now and join your friends." He referred to a group of boys who stood watching a short distance away. She hadn't given much thought to boys before then. She'd more or less considered herself one of them. But after all these years, she still remembered the effect Zak had on her later that day.

  During the pole climbing contest she'd scurried down the pole and was standing with the other contestants—all of them about her age, and all of them boys—as the announcer boomed over the loud speaker, "Well, folks, TJ O'Reilly's done it again." The crowd cheered, Tess raked her hat from her head and tossed it into the air, and her father rushed over and gave her a hug.

  "I knew you could do it kid." He set her down and walked off. And she retrieved her hat, twisted her hair into a knot, and plopped the hat on top of her head to hold the knot in place. Then she looked past the retreating figure of her father and saw Zak watching.

  With a broad grin, he started toward her. "Learn to swing an ax the way you climb a pole and I'll bow out of the contest. That was good climbing."

  Tess had been vividly aware of Zak's lean face and square jaw, his dark unruly hair in need of a trim, his soulful gray eyes as he peered down at her. And for the first time in her life, she'd wished she looked more like a girl. She also knew the flannel shirt tucked inside her jeans and held in place by wide red suspenders hid every vestige of her changing figure.

  Zak reached out and took the bill of her hat and lifted it from her head, releasing her hair, then took a lock in his fingers, looked at it thoughtfully, and said, "What's your real name, TJ?"

  For an instant she couldn't remember. It was his eyes that caught and held her attention. Their color fascinated her. She'd never seen eyes that color. Not quite gray, not quite green...

  He gave her a smile that lit up his entire face. "Let me guess. Tammy Jo."

  "What?"

  "Your name."

  Focusing on his question, she said, "Well, it's... Theresa Jena. Tess."

  "That's a pretty name, Tess. You should use it." He slipped the hat into her hands and walked away, leaving her staring after him.

  The next time she saw him was the year she'd turned seventeen. Zak's father bought the adjoining property and hired Timber West to log it, and he sent Zak there to burn the piles of limbs and brush left from logging and to repair the cabin and outbuildings on the property. That was also the summer Zak gave her a promissory ring and vowed to love her forever, then left without a word.

  She looked up from the grid of ax marks when she heard her father's truck pulling into the clearing. Drawing in an agitated breath, she marched toward him in long strides, and said, "Dad, what are you doing here?"

  "I wanted to be here when you faced the men," Gib O'Reilly replied.

  "You know you're not supposed to be here," Tess snapped.

  Gib straightened. "The doc said I could do things in moderation."

  "He specifically told you to stay away from Timber West until after your next checkup."

  Gib squared his thin shoulders. "I figured if I'm around, the boys won't give you a bad time."

  "If they give me a bad time I'll handle it. I'm not exactly new to this." She thought of the hours she'd worked helping David with their construction business. Even after their three-year marriage ended, when she became Tess O'Reilly again, she'd joined Pacific Coast Construction in Seattle, continuing to work with men.

  "You haven't worked with these men," Gib insisted. "You might find you've bitten off more than you can chew with Jed Swenson."

  "I'm not intimidated by male chauvinism, and from what you've told me that's what I'll be facing with Swenson." Tess noted the shadows under her father's eyes and the sharp angles of his face and realized how much older he looked since his heart attack, which alarmed her. "Please, Dad, just go home and let me handle things here on my own."

  "I need to stop by Carl Yaeger's first and make sure he knows I don't have one foot in the grave," Gib groused. "Ezzie said he was here asking questions, and I know damn well he'll be pushing to buy us out."

  "This is exactly what the doctor was talking about," Tess said. "You come here and suddenly you've got to see Carl Yaeger and heaven knows what else, when all you're supposed to be concerned with is your heart." She sighed. "Please, Dad, go home. I'll stop by tomorrow and fill you in on everything."

  "Damn, you're a stubborn woman," Gib said. "Come hell or high water you're determined to do things on your own, whether it's running this place or running away from home." Saying nothing more, he turned and headed toward his truck.

  "Dad?" Tess called after him, feeling a knot in her stomach, knowing their old grievance was still there. Her father glanced back and waited.

  "Wish me well."

  He studied her for a moment, then smiled, and said. "Just don't be too hard on my men."

  Tess warmed under his smile, but when she saw his truck turn out of sight, the apprehension she'd felt over the past few weeks returned. His heart attack
jolted her. Now she felt a desperate need to restore the relationship they'd once had before it was too late. Returning to Baker’s Creek to take over his logging operation was a start. He'd seemed pleased, and at last, after seven years, they were speaking civilly.

  She climbed into her Jeep and headed down the gravel road, and five minutes later, pulled to a halt in front of the cabin. But when she stepped out of the jeep, in the distance she caught what sounded like someone hacking at something near the boundary between Alesander de Neuville's property and Timber West. Her father ordered some thinning along the property line earlier, but no one should be there now, unless it was the elusive Jed Swenson, in which case she'd have some words with him to remind him who was boss.

  She headed up the logging road toward the sound. On the opposite side of the road from her log cabin, and a few hundred feet further, she was surprised to see a truck parked beside the cedar cabin on Alesander de Neuville's property, the same cabin where Zak stayed the summer he'd worked for her father, so she assumed de Neuville had rented it out.

  Determined to shrug off memories of the intimacies that had taken place in that cabin, she quickened her pace. Still, the memories haunted her. She could not remember the exact moment she'd decided Zak wasn't coming back, but after a year of waiting for him, she'd had enough of her father's harangue, and David offered an alternative—marriage, and a life somewhere else. But even that failed. Although they'd worked well together in their construction business, their personal life had been trying, and she knew the marriage would never work because she simply didn't love David. Maybe she'd never gotten over Zak. After seven years, she still wondered where he was, and felt an emptiness.

  As she continued up the road, with each long stride it was becoming increasingly clear that the sounds were those of someone methodically hacking his way through the forest. Stepping up her pace, she cut through the woods and headed directly toward the sounds, and as she made her way toward the clearing where the properties met, she saw the man, just ahead, and well inside Timber West land. His back was to her, and he had no idea she was there as he whacked away at the limbs from an encroaching maple while making his way toward the clearing where the downed trees lay. She had no idea who the man was, or why he was slashing through their woods, but he'd better have a darn good explanation.

  "Hey! What do you think you're doing!" she called out. "You're on Timber West land."

  The man stopped, the machete clutched in his upraised hand. Then he lowered his arm, turned slowly, and after a long stretch of silence, he said, "Tess?"

  The once familiar voice set Tess's heart pounding, and as she stared in shocked surprise at the man now facing her, all the hurtful things she imagined saying to Zak, if they ever met again, escaped her. The only thing she was aware of was the tall, broad-shouldered figure quickly closing the gap between them.

  CHAPTER 2

  "How long have you been here?" Zak asked, as he walked toward her.

  "Here?" Tess repeated, taking in the details of a face that had almost faded from memory—his gray-green eyes with their flickers of gold, his firm chin with the hint of a cleft she'd once teased with the tip of her tongue, his mop of dark curly hair, still in need of a trim,. The last time she'd seen him he was only twenty-one, yet she'd considered him a man, but she was totally unprepared for the flesh-and-blood man facing her now. Her pulse quickened as he approached. "I, umm, just came to see who was hacking away in the woods."

  "I meant, how long have you been at Timber West?" he asked.

  "Oh, umm... about a week," she replied, aware of his eyes scanning the length of her. She was tempted to assail him with the barrage of questions that had haunted her over the years, but managed to muster the pride to hold her tongue. Yet, even after all the years of bitterness she felt towards him at his disappearance from her life without a word, she still wished she didn't have a yellow hardhat perched on her head, or was wearing an old work shirt, faded jeans, and scuffed boots. "That is, I've been about a week in Baker’s Creek, one day here at camp, well, at the cabin too," she replied, words seeming to stumble over each other. She willed herself to concentrate on anything but the breadth of Zak's shoulders, and the thick wall of his chest, and a face even more handsome than she remembered.

  He eyed her with curiosity. "Then you're staying in the cabin now?"

  She nodded. "I'm back and forth between here and Baker's Creek. I'm looking after Timber West until my dad's back on his feet. You knew he had a heart attack, didn't you?"

  "No. I'm sorry to hear that."

  His tone was unconvincing, and Tess knew the angst between him and her father still stood. She pulled off the hardhat and the knot of hair that had been tucked inside tumbled loose. And Zak's eyes immediately focused there. His faraway look had her wondering if he was remembering how it had once been, when he'd run his fingers through her hair and bury his face in it and tell her she smelled like forest.

  Restlessly she fingered the hardhat, her palms feeling damp against its smooth surface. Uncomfortable with Zak's intense gaze, she looked at the machete in his hand, noting the strength of the fingers curved around the handle. Masculine, sun-bronzed hands that once drove her wild. She even gave up her virginity to Zak because she knew she'd be with him forever. He'd promised it would be that way, and they made vows.

  Dismissing that time-worn thought, she glanced at the woods where Zak had been hacking away, and said, "What are you doing?"

  "I came to check on the trees your father cut on our land," Zak replied.

  Tess looked toward the clearing where her dad ordered trees to be thinned, her gaze coming to rest on four trees, now limbed and laying in a row. "My father didn't cut any trees on your land. He's thinning the trees along the property line."

  The muscles in Zak's jaw bunched. "Those trees aren't on Timber West land. According to the survey my father just had done, this strip doesn't belong to Timber West. I have the survey map at the cabin."

  "Then the map's wrong. My father knows where his land runs."

  "The map's not wrong. The county did the survey."

  Tess eyed Zak with irritation. "My father doesn't cut trees on someone else's land."

  "He did this time. Has he even bothered to look at the map?"

  "He doesn't need to. He owned this land long before your father bought his piece. He should know where the property line runs."

  "He should, but obviously he doesn't." Zak drew in a long slow breath. "Look, if we're going to be neighbors, let's not get into the feud between our fathers. Come by my cabin and I'll show you the survey map and you can square your father away before he cuts any more trees. My father's angry enough about losing four. He's threatening to sue."

  "My father doesn't need this right now," Tess snapped. "He's supposed to stay quiet. If your father makes an issue out of four trees, regardless whose property they're on, my father will be on his doorstep and you know it."

  Zak sighed. "Then you'd better make sure he doesn't cut any more trees. According to the map, the line goes right through the, umm… hollow."

  Tess noted that Zak carefully avoided saying the word, grotto. "Then you've been there?" She immediately chastised herself for bringing up something as intimate as the place where they'd first consummated their love, the place where they'd exchanged vows intended to be repeated before a justice of the peace at the courthouse as soon as she turned eighteen.

  Zak eyed her soberly as he said, "I went to the area to look for the survey stake, which is about forty feet north of—" he hesitated "—the old oak."

  Say it, Tess wanted to scream. Admit it's our Adam and Eve tree. "Look, I have to get back to camp," she said. "Please, just don't let your father start legal action yet."

  As she turned to go, Zak caught up with her and took her arm. "At least come to my cabin and look at the property line on the map. If nothing else, maybe we can figure out a way to keep a couple of stubborn old goats from locking horns."

  Tess was so unsettled by t
he feel of Zak's hand on her arm she could barely remember to breathe. But that was only because of the newness of seeing him again. Whatever there'd been between them before was irrelevant now because her father's health took priority, which meant, the matter with the trees had to be settled before Zak's father made a legal issue out of it. "I'll come, but I won't be finished at camp until late."

  Zak released her arm. "Then I'll see you when you're done."

  Tess nodded and turned toward camp.

  She almost welcomed the diversion of dealing with a bunch of obstinate men, if only to keep her mind off the fact that the man who'd been the focus of her life, her very reason for being, she'd believed at the time, and who she'd been unable to scrub from her mind, was living not more than a couple hundred feet from her, and time had done nothing to temper the white-hot flame that was once again building.

  ***

  It was dusk by the time Tess and the men finished moving equipment and setting up for cutting pole timber. When she dismissed the crew, she felt relieved. After seeing Zak, it had been difficult concentrating on the job. She had so many questions, the main one being why he'd left seven years ago without a word. True, her father caught them together and dragged her away, but that shouldn't have stopped Zak from somehow getting word to her about where to meet and marry when she turned eighteen. But unless he volunteered the information, she wouldn't ask. Pride wouldn't allow her to do so.

  She also wondered how long he'd been staying at the cabin and why he was there. At the end of his summer working for her father, the plan was for him to return to his parent's home in Navarre, which was over sixty miles away, where he'd help at the winery and raise sheep on land set aside for that purpose, and when she turned eighteen they'd slip away and marry then announce it to their families.

  She felt uncomfortable knowing he was back, and she couldn't shake the feeling that going to his cabin was a serious mistake. If she's ever to rebuild her relationship with her father, Zak could not be a part of her life. Yet the subject of the property line had to be addressed.