“What’ve you got going on with Gloria?” Sandy asked. “Who volunteers to unsaddle sweaty horses?”
Kristine shrugged. “I make this work look glamorous?”
“You’re totally sleeping with her, aren’t you?” Sandy whispered.
“No,” she answered honestly, ignoring Sandy’s calling after her that she wasn’t going to get off that easy. Her escape faltered when she met an equally pushy Dozer taking a rest from his chopping.
“Jesus, Teeny. I’m dying here, and you’re screwing around?”
“I’m not screwing around,” she answered, quickly filling the pannier with wood.
“Right.”
“I’m out here busting my ass to help you out,” she snapped. The mountains echoed her tone with another rumble of thunder.
“Like you were helping Nard?” He shook his head and went back to his chopping.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“C’mon. Everyone knows where your mind is and what you do when things get tough.”
“I…” She started to say that she’d never screwed around on any of the backcountry trips but realized she couldn’t honestly say that. A flash of lightning lit up the sky. Kristine balled her fists and bit her tongue to keep from saying he didn’t know her half of the story. No point in telling him when he’d probably side with Nard anyway. He clearly held the same opinion of her that he’d always had. They all believed that sex was the only thing on her mind, that she was easy. In the past, she’d always gotten by at the Lodge by ignoring the guys, their taunts and attitude. She realized that maybe that was part of the problem. “I’m not some backcountry ho.” He ignored her, his slow, steady swing taking bites out of the log he was splitting into kindling. Kristine felt the first drops of rain, bringing her back to her work. She stomped to the kitchen, dumping her load, still fuming over Dozer’s comments.
“What’s wrong with you?” Sandy asked.
“Nothing,” Kristine said, seeing that Gloria was on her way back to the kitchen too.
Sandy looked in the same direction. “Your girlfriend is an angel. We’ve got enough wood if you want to take off,” she said with a wink.
“She’s not my girlfriend. Where’s your tarp?”
Sandy furrowed her brow in response to Kristine’s clipped tone and fetched the tarp. Kristine worked in silence, brewing over Dozer’s words.
Gloria returned, her eyes still full of sparkle. “All the saddles are piled up. Do you want to cover them with something?”
“I’ll throw a tarp on them when I go for more wood,” Kristine said, watching Sandy observe them.
With a sly look, Sandy said, “Thanks again for the warning about the bear and your help. You know, you two should just stay for dinner, wait out the storm.”
“Oh, thanks,” Gloria said. “But I think I’ll head out. You close to wrapping up?”
Kristine knew from Sandy’s satisfied smirk that she understood that Gloria was anxious to get Kristine out of the backcountry. “I still have the stock to help with and probably a few more camp chores.”
“Take some snacks with you,” Sandy prompted impishly. “You want to keep your strength up.”
“I’m off then,” Gloria said, grabbing a handful of trail mix. Her eyes asked for assurance, so Kristine gave her what she hoped was a convincing smile. Gloria hesitated for a moment, and Kristine willed her not to comment on her shift in behavior. “Thanks for the snacks,” she said to Sandy before turning back to Kristine. “Don’t get lost,” she said, shouldering her pack and hitting the trail.
“I know the way.”
Lightning lit the sky quickly followed by the ground-rumbling boom of thunder. The storm was almost on top of them. Dozer wheezed back to camp with the last of the wood. “Itching to take off?” Dozer said, his eyes on Gloria as she disappeared down the trail.
All business, Kristine refused to look in that direction. “Let’s get the tarp up.” Dozer’s accusation about where her priorities were made her realize how instead of dealing with the past as she had resolved to do, she was hiding out with Gloria. She dug into the remaining chores, ducking in and out of the tarp as the rain picked up to a pour.
She stayed past dinner and helped Dozer put up the barrier on the trail that would keep his stock from returning home when he turned them out for the night. Leaving on the cusp of nightfall, she was almost tempted to huddle up under the saddle pads, spend the night and head home in the morning, but she trusted Digger to get her home in the dark. The storm had moved through the valley, leaving the sky bright with stars. She kept wondering what she’d do if she found Gloria still on the trail. However as she’d argued, Gloria set a good pace and had beaten Kristine back.
Her light shone in her small camper. Kristine rode past.
“Hey,” Gloria called out, swinging her head out of the door. “I was starved and already ate, but I saved a plate for you.”
“I’m going to get this guy home. Then I think I’ll wash up at home. Stay warm,” she added lamely. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
Gloria wasn’t letting her off that easily. She shoved her feet into sneakers and jogged over. Kristine could read the concern in Gloria’s eyes. She put her hand on Kristine’s thigh, sending a bolt of electricity through her body. “No, not okay. I know something happened out there.”
“Nothing happened,” Kristine lied. “I’m just beat is all.” She nudged her mount forward, feeling Gloria’s hand slip away. When she hit the road, the last stretch before home, she put her own hand on her thigh where Gloria’s had been, missing the warmth of it. She unsaddled without hurry, working another internal dialogue about her ill-fated trip with Nard so long ago, this time with Dozer. In this version, she told him everything. She turned out her stock and went inside to shower, barely saying anything to Gabe.
As the water ran over her, she remembered when she threw the stone into Rosalie Lake and vowed to stop carrying the past. Despite being given the chance to do just that in her exchange with Dozer that afternoon, she had not let go. Emotions washed over her: anger at her inability to tell Dozer the truth and guilt for blowing Gloria off. She threw on a pair of sweats, long-sleeved tee, sweatshirt and jacket.
“Forget something out there?” Gabe asked when she emerged from her bedroom.
“Gloria held supper for me. I’ll be back later.”
“I haven’t eaten yet,” he said, balancing on the back two legs of the chair, angling for an invite.
“So go scrounge something down at the Lodge.”
“Why is it I suddenly feel like a third wheel? I thought we were all buddies.”
“Girl talk tonight.”
He let the chair slam back down to the floor. “In that case, the Lodge it is. I’ll drop you, if you like.”
Kristine opened her mouth to turn down the offer but then thought of how much harder it would be to chicken out if Gabe dropped her off. The sooner she got there, the better, before she talked herself out of it.
Chapter Sixteen
Her table strewn with reports, Gloria tried her best to put Kristine’s weirdness out of her mind, but she kept circling back around, trying to figure out when things had shifted between them, how Kristine could have gone from steamy promising kisses to aloof so quickly. She glanced at the clock, wondering if she should walk down to the Aspens and demand an answer. Kristine’s rebuff stung, and she found it hard to ignore. Exasperated with her inability to let it go, she scooped up the reports and dropped them into a drawer hoping she could lose herself in a novel. She gathered up her toiletries and made a run to the bathrooms to get ready for bed.
When she returned, she found Kristine sitting on her step. She rose as Gloria approached. Gloria was tempted to say that she was beat and send Kristine home but accepted that Kristine had come back and invited her into the camper.
“Do you want the plate I fixed for you?”
“No, thanks,” Kristine said, sitting down at the table. Gloria sat down across f
rom her. “You don’t have to tell me what happened out there. I didn’t mean to push.”
“No. I do. It’s just…it’s a long story, and one the people here don’t know. I’m not sure where to start.”
Gloria reached for Kristine’s hand. “This isn’t about today.”
“No. It’s about Nard.”
Kristine’s statement didn’t make sense to Gloria, but she waited, guessing that Kristine needed to work up the courage to talk about what clearly haunted her.
Kristine continued, “When I first started at the Lodge, I didn’t even notice him. He was in the backcountry most of the time, and I was at the corrals. The day-ride girls used to make fun of how every summer he had a new girlfriend and take bets on how much any one of them would know about horses. So many of them were such bimbos. My last summer, he didn’t have a girlfriend. All of a sudden he zeroed in on me. Every time he was in from a trip, he’d try to convince me to sleep with him, said that if I would just give guys a try…”
Gloria rolled her eyes in sympathy.
“I got good at avoiding him when he was in, but then he started pulling me out on his trips. Out there, I’d always get the cook to say she needed my help guarding the kitchen because I didn’t trust having my bedroll out near the stock where he slept. I always stayed near the guests. That only helped a little. He’d still find ways to get in my space when we were saddling and packing, those were the hardest.” Her voice took on a hard edge.
“And you couldn’t get out of the trips?”
Kristine shrugged. “Everyone wants to be on the overnighters. I’d been fighting to get out there and pack for ages, but all the cowboys were like Dozer. They didn’t want me around, so I kept taking the trips with Nard, thinking he’d eventually get the message that I didn’t want to sleep with him. That last trip was big enough that Leo made me second packer and sent Gabe as the helper.
“We had a new cook, too. She’d been doing day rides but wanted to try to cook, and since I’d been hanging around the kitchen on other trips, I shared some tips with her. She was probably my age. Since Gabe was the helper, he rode with her and the guests and did the kitchen chores. The three of us got on really well. It’s the only time I remember being in the backcountry and being relaxed, having fun without watching my back.
“But Nard was watching. He saw what I didn’t, and on the third day out, when we stopped to camp, he saw Nicole follow me down to the river. I don’t know what I was thinking. I shouldn’t have. I knew better than to fool around with anyone on trips, especially with Gabe out there. But that night after everyone had turned in, I slipped off to her tent.” Briefly, she looked guilty, but before Gloria could comment, Kristine’s expression darkened. “I was on my way back to the kitchen where my bedroll was when Nard grabbed me.” She looked down, like she was embarrassed and sounded apologetic when she said, “He caught me off guard.”
Gloria hated Nard for putting that tone in Kristine’s voice. She stroked the veins on the back of Kristine’s hand, admiring the strength that it took to come back to the Lodge.
“He said he was tired of me being a tease and accused me of going after Nicole to turn him on. I told him to stop. I was very clear about not being interested him.” Her eyes sparked anger before fading with the memory that had to be playing in her head. “But he said I was in no place to argue, not as the campfire slut.”
“At the beginning of the season everyone seemed to know that you had that reputation,” Gloria said softly.
Kristine looked away. “I crossed a line in the backcountry. I knew it, and he knew it, and when I refused him…he got so angry. I thought I could shake him off, but his hands were everywhere. He was so much stronger than I thought. I…” She swiped tears from her eyes. “I couldn’t get away from him. I tried, but I fell backward, and then he was on top of me. I tried to kick him, and he struck me across the cheek, telling me not to fight him. I was dazed, stunned. He laughed.” Her voice caught. “He laughed and said, ‘That’s right. I knew you wanted it.’”
Gloria didn’t know what to say. She feared that she knew what came next and squeezed Kristine’s hand, willing her to feel the strength she was offering.
Kristine wouldn’t meet her eyes. After a long silence, she continued. “I hated myself trapped there underneath him. He made me a helpless girl.”
“You weren’t helpless,” Gloria argued. “You were overpowered. There’s a difference.”
Kristine stared at her hands. “You don’t understand. He took everything from me, everything I’d been trying to prove. I felt so small.”
Gloria ached for the woman sitting in front of her. Questions she wanted to ask buzzed around her brain, but she didn’t want to ask something insensitive, something that would worsen the memory. “Wasn’t there anyone…?” she risked.
“Of course. Everyone was within shouting distance. If I could have made a sound. But I was so shocked, so rattled. By everything. I couldn’t get my thoughts unscrambled enough to make any noise. I would have been in real trouble if one of your friends hadn’t shown up.”
Gloria blinked, confused. “He didn’t…?”
“No.” Kristine looked away, retreating into the memory. Gloria watched as Kristine seemed to search for what to say, her gaze darting everywhere but back to Gloria. She couldn’t understand why Kristine seemed more upset after she clarified that Nard had not raped her.
Kristine cleared her throat and continued, “The cook started screaming her head off because a bear was in the kitchen. Everyone for miles around must have heard her. Nard crushed my mouth with his hand and said, ‘Don’t even think we’ve finished this.’ There was no way I was going to give him a chance to finish anything, so I bailed. I was pretty banged up, but I rode out that night and became their joke. Dozer said something today about how I was too busy screwing around to help him, just like before. He doesn’t know. None of them know. To them, I’m just a flake. I’m still the one who was wrong.”
“But you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“But I did.” Kristine’s eyes blazed.
Gloria didn’t understand her adamance and sought to reassure her. “You did what you needed to do. You took care of yourself. There’s nothing to be ashamed about there. And you’re here now. I think that takes an amazing amount of courage.”
Kristine slipped her hand away from Gloria’s. She sat folded in on herself and looked so vulnerable, so completely different than Gloria had ever seen her. “Yeah, look at me, so courageous. For two months, I’ve been trying to earn back some respect, but there’s no way they’ll forget what they think they know.”
“Why didn’t you tell Dozer the truth today?” Gloria asked gently.
“What was I going to say? I got scared and ran. I quit the wreck. I bailed and lost control.” She swallowed hard.
Gloria hated the resignation she heard in Kristine’s voice. “He attacked you and if it weren’t for the cook calling him, he would have raped you. That’s assault,” she insisted.
Tears began to stream down Kristine’s face. Gloria grabbed a box of tissues and scooted around so she was sitting next to Kristine. “None of this is your fault.” She put an arm around Kristine and held her while she cried, wishing that words could fix the hurt she was feeling. She stroked Kristine’s hair and touched her lips to her forehead, using her chin to pull Kristine closer. “You are the victor here. You came back. That earns you my respect.”
Kristine nodded against her chest. “Can I stay here?” She whispered so softly Gloria almost missed it.
“Absolutely,” Gloria answered, honored that Kristine would trust her to ask. She wanted Kristine to know that she understood why Kristine had stepped away from her that afternoon and that she wasn’t expecting anything more now. “Whatever you need. This folds into a bed if that’s what you’d like.”
“No…if it’s okay, I’d like…to be next to you.”
“Of course.”
She gave Kristine a spare toothbrush, box
ers and an old tee, changed into similar sleep attire and crawled into bed. Kristine’s confession explained so much, the tension between Kristine and her colleagues and her reluctance to get involved. She sensed Kristine’s need to not let anything distract her.
Kristine returned from the bathroom and locked the door. “Lights out?”
“I’m good,” Gloria replied.
Kristine crossed the short space between them and crawled under the covers. Gloria wasn’t sure what to do with her body. She wanted to hold Kristine, but she didn’t want her to think that she was pushing for something sexual. She didn’t want any of her actions to come across wrongly, so they simply lay next to each other. Gloria wondered what Kristine was thinking about, and then she felt her move, shift just enough so that her hip and thigh touched Gloria’s.
“Do you want to turn?” Gloria asked. “I could hold you if you’d like.”
Instead of turning away from Gloria, Kristine rolled to her side to face Gloria. It was too dark to see her, so Gloria had no insight to what she wanted. She was about to scoot to her hip when she felt Kristine’s hand slip into hers. Silently, she lifted Gloria’s arm and nestled her head on Gloria’s chest. “Is this okay?”
“Yes,” Gloria answered, happy to open her arms and let Kristine in. It still amazed her to see such a vulnerable side to someone who typically exuded such strength and confidence. “Thank you, Kristine. Thank you for trusting me.”
Kristine nodded but said nothing, and Gloria guessed she must have been emotionally beat because her body soon relaxed into sleep.
Good thing she’s snuggled on my right side, Gloria thought, certain that the pounding of her heart would have kept Kristine awake had she been on the left. She willed her breathing to slow, her heart to calm. When had she ever held anyone like this? Post-sex, she’d tangled limbs with women but quickly drifted to sleep. Holding Kristine, she felt far from sleep with the range of emotions she felt, still angry at Nard and all of the cowboys for what happened, sad for how wounded Kristine was, and surprisingly protective of the woman she had known for such a short time. Strangely, she realized that though she’d had sex with plenty of partners, she’d never experienced intimacy that could compete.
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