Tess said nothing, while trying to absorb everything Zak told her. At least she understood why he left without contacting her. But there were two questions remaining, and his answer to them would make the difference between giving a relationship with him another try or walking out of his life the way he'd walked out of hers. "What you told me still doesn’t explain why you married so soon after you left. I thought we had something special."
"We did, but by then I saw no future for us. When I started working at the winery, Mirande was there. Her fiancé had just broken off their engagement and she was devastated by that and we gravitated toward each other. You know, misery loves company."
And the girl Zak left behind was forgotten.
So that answered one of the questions, but not to Tess's satisfaction. It took a moment before she could ask the other, but the answer to it was the one she needed most. "Did you love her?"
A long silence stretched before Zak said, "We enjoyed each other's company, and once we'd married I never gave it much thought."
"But you told her you loved her." Tess realized what a ludicrous statement that was. The woman wouldn't have married Zak if he hadn't told her that.
Zak nodded. "She was my wife."
'So was I because you gave me a ring and we made vows and you promised me the world...' Tess wanted to cry. Instead, she said, "Then you must have planned on staying in France."
"No. It was understood that we'd live in America where I was expected to work with my father at the winery and eventually take over. We moved to Navarre shortly before Peio was born. The first couple of years everything was okay, then Mirande started getting homesick and wanted to go back to France to see her folks, so I agreed."
"How long was she gone?" Tess asked, wondering how long a new bride would want to stay away from her husband. From a husband like Zak.
Zak gave a little shrug. "She never came back. She kept extending her visit, and eventually told me she didn't want to leave France, so I went over there, hoping to talk her into coming back with me, but she refused. The hardest part was leaving Peio. Mirande wouldn't let me take him away from France for any length of time."
Tess looked at him, bewildered. "But you're his father, and Peio's American. You could have gotten custody."
"That's the way my father saw it, but I couldn't do that to Peio, or Mirande. They were very close, and a young boy needs his mother, but Mirande agreed to let me see Peio whenever I wanted, as long as he stayed in France. My father was livid because I had a Basque wife and couldn't hold onto her. Things got so bad between us I couldn't work with him at the winery anymore, and that's when I left and went to college. Ironically, after I left, things were better between me and my father."
Tess still couldn't follow the reasoning. "You said you and your wife separated. Why didn't you divorce?"
"We talked about it the last time I visited. There seemed little point in trying to hold together a marriage divided by the Atlantic Ocean. Then time ran out."
Tess at Zak's far-away look and wondered if he continued loving his wife all those years, hoping things would work out, or if he loved her still even though she was gone? "How did she die?"
Zak's face disturbed, he said, "She was hit by a car while on her bike."
"That must have been a shock."
"It was. She was a good person, but mostly I worried what it would do to Peio since they were so close. You can relate to that better than I can."
"I suppose I can." Tess remembered the pain she'd felt when her mother died. She still didn't like talking about that period in her life.
"How long does it take to get over?" Zak asked.
"I don't think you ever do. You just learn to accept it, but you never stop wondering how it might have been with the family together."
Zak looked at her, curious. "What about you? Why did you divorce?"
Tess stared at her hands. The problems between her and David were because she'd married on the rebound and never loved David. Focusing on the other issues in the marriage, she said, "David started taking chances in business, trying to push the company beyond its capabilities and we had a lot of heated arguments about it. But the real reason my marriage failed was—" she couldn't stop herself from looking at Zak when she said, "—I never found what I wanted."
Zak held her gaze. "Neither did I."
Leaning towards her, Zak moved to kiss her, but this time, instead of pushing him away, she put her arms around his neck and kissed him back, but before the kiss could deepen, she broke it and said, "That was for old time's sake. Please don't make anything more of it."
Zak studied her for a few moments, then shrugged with indifference, and replied, "I didn't plan to," then went back to what he'd been doing.
They ate in strained silence. It seemed all of Tess's questions had been answered and Zak had nothing more to offer. But having gotten her answers, she felt a hollowness she hadn't felt in years. It was troubling and confusing because the answers he'd given her were unsatisfactory, and she didn't know how to reconcile them. He'd married just a few months after he left. Yet, if she'd known he was coming back, she would have waited indefinitely for him.
They mate for life, and when one dies the other begins a lonely journey...
The irony was, she'd thought she and Zak had mated for life.
But maybe it was for the best. Soon she'd be consumed in learning who was behind setting off the blast that caused the landslide, and worrying about how to pay Alesander de Neuville for his trees, and confronting her father about his part in forcing Zak out of her life and leaving her to believe he'd left on his own. Some things had to be said.
CHAPTER 8
While Tess headed toward the ridge, her thoughts were on Zak. She hadn't seen him since he brought dinner to her cabin two days before. She knew he'd spent the weekend in Navarre, but she also suspected if he'd been at his cabin he wouldn't have stopped by. With her comment following his kiss, she hadn't given him a reason. But she'd felt the sting of his specious explanation for why he married so soon after being forced to leave, his misery loves company marriage. Yet, in six months she would have been eighteen, and they could have married without her father's consent. But it seemed her father wasn't the only issue.
My father wanted you out of my life because you weren't Basque…
Which meant, Zak would have been marrying her without his father's approval. So he followed the path his father laid out for him when he sent Zak to France to marry a Basque woman, a role the girl from Baker's Creek could never fill.
Both fathers had been determined to keep them apart. But even now, knowing Zak married soon after he left, when she thought about the part her father played in sending him away she felt the old anger rising. To threaten Zak with statutory rape and prison was even beyond what she might have expected from an overprotective father, and as soon as she squared things away on the ridge, she'd address it with him.
She crossed the de Neuville land and continued to the pole-timber area where she found Curt on the bulldozer dragging a log to the landing, and Sean Herring and Harv Dempsey limbing trees. The skidder sat idle. When Curt saw her, he cut the throttle on the dozer and jumped down, then walked toward her in long strides. "One of the tires on the skidder's blown," he said.
A knot twisted in Tess's stomach as she considered the cost of another new skidder tire. It seemed Timber West was operating in a vicious circle. They needed to keep the equipment running in order to get the pole timber cut, and they needed to sell pole timber in order to keep the equipment running. She eyed the skidder with disgust. "Skidder tires don't just blow, and since dynamite caused the landslide, the skidder tire was probably shot or slashed."
"I don't think so this time," Curt said. "It looks like it ran over a spike."
Tess examined the skidder tire and found a hole the size of a half-dollar. "It looks more like it's been shot. Where's the spike?"
Curt shrugged. "We couldn't find it. We're just assuming that's what did it
."
"I'm not assuming anything. Meanwhile, we'll have to use the Cat until the tire's fixed or replaced." She looked at the idle machine. "Where's the new skidder driver?"
"I sent him back to camp," Curt said. "There was nothing for him to do here."
Tess drew in a weary breath. "With the skidder out we'll have to let him go until we get the skidder running again. I can't afford to pay someone to sit around. Meanwhile, I'll contact Northwest Tire and see about getting someone out here."
After arranging for someone to look at the skidder tire, Tess climbed in her Jeep and headed for Baker’s Creek and a confrontation with her father. Spotting her aunt talking to a neighbor a couple of houses down, she tapped on the horn and pulled over. When Aunt Ella peered through the passenger window, Tess said, "How did Dad come out with his checkup yesterday?"
"Fine," Ella replied. "Now he thinks he can take on the world."
"Did the doctor put any restrictions on him?"
Ella shook her head. "Only that he isn't to start working yet. But the doctor also said we shouldn't fuss over him, that we should let him spout off some."
"Well, he'll get his chance in a few minutes. I have a giant bone to pick with him. What's he doing right now?"
"Working on his truck."
"Then I'd better get this over with." Tess parked in front of the house and found her father in the driveway, his head under the hood of his truck. Walking over to stand behind him, she said, "Dad, I want to talk to you."
"Hand me that five-sixteenths open end," he replied.
Tess looked at the array of tools spread out in front of his tool box and selected the wrench and placed it in his outstretched hand. Without looking up, his fingers curled around the wrench and he retracted his arm.
"How could you do what you did seven years ago?" Tess asked, annoyed that her father wouldn't acknowledge her.
"Hold this." He extended a hand with the wrench. "Now I need the gauge."
Tess lifted the gauge from the pile. "Dad, I asked you a question." She placed the tool in his hand. "You sent Zak away with a threat of statutory rape and prison and led me to believe he left on his own. How could you do that to me?"
Gib handed the gauge back to her. "Now I need the wrench again."
Tess shoved the wrench against his palm. Typical. Her father's means of dealing with something he didn't want to face. Ignore it and it would go away. Well, this time it wouldn't go away. "Dad, I'm not going to let this rest. I waited a year for Zak to come back and still you said nothing. How could you deceive me in that way?"
Gib slowly backed from under the hood and faced Tess. "At the time, you were in your teens, and Zak was a grown man, and he was using you."
"He was not using me. We planned to be married as soon as I turned eighteen, but you took that choice away from me."
"I couldn't think beyond what I found at Zak's cabin that day, a grown man using my little girl. All I wanted was Zak out of your life any way I could do it."
The image of her father bursting into the cabin and finding the two of them coming out of the bedroom, Zak fastening his belt and her buttoning her shirt, leaving no question in her father's mind what had taken place, emerged, and the scene that followed of her father dragging her out of the cabin with the words to Zak, "You'll be hearing from me," still stung.
"Would you have prosecuted Zak if he hadn't gone away?" she asked.
"Absolutely, and he knew it. If you choose a life with him now it's your choice, but at the time you were too young to know your own mind." He looked at her solemnly. "I'm sorry, honey. All I can say is I did what I thought was best for you at the time. Maybe it would have been different if your mother had been around but she wasn't, so I had to decide on my own. Can you forgive me?"
Tess looked into her father's eyes and realized, right or wrong, he'd only been thinking of her. She shrugged. "I suppose I'll have to. I probably would've done the same thing if I'd had a wild thing like me for a daughter."
Gib rested his hands on her shoulders. "You weren't a wild thing. Headstrong and willful, maybe, but not a wild thing."
Tess smiled. "That bad, huh?"
Gib smiled back. "That bad." He wrapped his arm around her shoulders. "Now, can we bury the hatchet and get on with our lives?"
Tess blinked away a mist of tears. "I'd like that."
Gib grabbed a bundle of curls and gave her head a jiggle, and Tess caught the old glint in his eyes, and for the moment, all she wanted was to turn her back on logging operations, and skidder tires, and land feuds, and just be Daddy's little girl. And for the first time in years, she felt like the rift between them over Zak was finally closed.
She also had second thoughts about bringing up the matter of the increased royalty, or Alesander de Neuville's threat about the trees, but decided it had to be addressed. They didn't need a law suit on top of everything else. She went to the Jeep and got the survey map, but before getting into that, she told her father about the rock slide, the skidder tire, and finally about the feud between Curt Broderick and Jed Swenson.
"What were Swenson and Broderick feuding about?" he asked.
"It has to do with where you had the men cut trees along the property line running between Timber West and de Neuville's property," Tess replied.
Gib eyed her with puzzlement. "Why were they feuding about that?"
Tess fingered the survey map. "Two more trees were cut on Alesander de Neuville's land. Broderick claims Swenson cut them, and Swenson claims Broderick cut them."
"What difference does it make? It's on de Neuville's land."
"That's the problem," Tess said. "Alesander de Neuville didn't order the trees cut and he claims you're still cutting trees on his land."
"De Neuville doesn't know what the hell he's talking about," Gib snapped.
"Here's the map." Tess held out the roll. "Just take a look and you'll see what he's talking about. It really does look like that strip of land is his."
Gib refused to take the map. "I don't care what de Neuville claims, or what's on that map. I know where the property line runs, the same place the fence ran for eighty years, and I don't much give a damn what some nincompoop from the county surveyor’s office says."
"Regardless of what you believe, if the county and the judge disagree you'll be paying the penalty for wrongfully cutting ten trees, and Timber West can't afford it. Now will you please promise you won't tell Herring or Dempsey or Broderick to cut anymore trees?"
Gib looked at her, his eyes intense. "No one, including Alesander de Neuville or a judge, is going to tell me I can't cut trees on my own land."
"Then you'd better be prepared to pay out a whole lot of money because Alesander de Neuville's about to haul you into court."
"Fine. He can do that. Any other problems?"
Tess sighed. "Yes, all kinds of problems. A broken hydraulic line on the Cat right after the landslide, trucks having to wait for the Cat, deadhead fees to the truckers, and that's only the beginning. It appears the rock slide was caused by dynamite. We found pieces of fuse in the rocks."
"Wait a minute. You're talking like someone's trying to shut us down."
"That's what it looks like. Ever since I let Swenson go, everything's gone to hell in a handbasket. I think he's trying to make it impossible for me so I'll quit and you'll hire him back."
"I'd never hire Swenson back."
"He probably thinks you would, and making it look like Curt cut the trees might get Curt fired and him rehired. Who knows what Swenson has on his mind? It might just be revenge for me firing him in front of the men."
"Don't be too quick to accuse Swenson until you have some facts," Gib said.
"Well, I should have some facts pretty soon, at least on whether the skidder tire was shot. Meanwhile we have yet another expense."
Gib eyed her warily. "What other expense?"
"The royalty on the logs. It's gone up."
"Yaeger raised the royalty on us?" Gib stroked his chin. "I didn't
think he'd do that. But then, he's been trying to buy that piece of land for years."
"Carl Yaeger didn't buy it. Alesander de Neuville did."
"I'd heard something like that but figured it was a rumor. At least he's letting us go through. How much is the royalty?"
Tess's fingers curled around the map. "Ten dollars per thousand."
"What!"
"He's using the money to fix the road," Tess said.
"He's spending my money for nothing," Gib shouted. "That road's only an access road for hauling, not a freeway!"
"It's his land. He can do what he wants."
"He can go to hell! And if I want to cut trees on my land I'll cut the damn trees, and you can tell that to Alesander de Neuville the next time you see him." He stormed into the garage, leaving Tess staring blankly after him.
***
When Tess arrived at the cook shack the following morning there was no aroma of coffee, no biscuits baking, and no bacon or potatoes or eggs frying on the griddle. Instead, she looked at a table bare of plates or utensils, and saw a group of men standing around with scowls on their faces. "What's going on?" she asked. "Where's Ezzie?"
"Don't know," Herring replied, "but this is the third day in a row this week he's been late."
"Late from what? He only has to go from the bunkhouse to the cook shack."
"That's the problem," Herring said. "He's not comin' from the bunkhouse. He's shackin' up with Becky."
Tess stared at Herring as visions of Ezzie courting a woman tried to form in her mind. "Becky Tyson from the Blue Ox Café?"
Herring nodded. "Ezzie's been pickin' up pies there."
"But Ezzie bakes his own pies," Tess said.
Bittersweet Promises Page 9
