He lurched upright. “Where am I?”
“Where do you think?” Beth walked toward him and sat down next to him on the couch. “You’re in the railcar Garrett gave me as a wedding gift.” She stared at her husband in the most nauseating way.
Of course Simon was on a train. One guess as to where it was headed. He turned away from her. His sister. The one person on earth he should be able to trust. A movement behind Beth caught his eye as Carrie stepped into view. What was left of his heart sank to the deepest pit of his stomach. He glanced between the two women—the reason he now lived as half a man in the first place. Hadn’t his forgiveness of their antics last year been enough? He lowered his voice to a growl and turned his gaze to Carrie. “What did you do?”
Tears filled her eyes, but he refused to let her frail emotions sway his ire. “You had no right.”
“It wasn’t Carrie’s fault,” Beth defended.
He gave his sister a stare designed to frighten her. “Let me guess. It was one of your plans.”
“No.” Carrie glared. “It was my idea, and it’s a good one.”
“Good as any I’ve seen.” Aunt June stepped forward and planted her hands on her hips like she was apt to do whenever she wanted the men to feel as if they’d been properly scolded.
Simon glanced between Garrett and the Devil May Cares, but he couldn’t say anything. Simply shook his head.
“You need help,” Garrett said, and wrapped one arm around his wife. “We all agreed this was the only way.”
“Did you think I would wake up and thank you for drugging me and kidnapping me?”
“I wouldn’t call it kidnapping,” Carrie spoke up. “Maybe if you think of it as unknowingly transporting you to camp then it may not seem so wrong.”
“You’re a fool like my sister.” His heart twisted, and his stomach grew nauseous. Why? Why would she do this to him? He never should have let the damned Jezebel lure him out of his home. What she had done was worse than the moment the cougar ripped the flesh from his chest. This woman tore his heart clean out with one deceiving moment.
“Pardon me?” Beth elbowed him in the ribs, and he flinched.
“No!” Carrie snapped. He stared into her sky-blue eyes, fired with righteous passion. “You’re the fool. You have a whole camp full of people who depend on you, trust in you, and need you. Yet because a few people in Missoula are too weak to be comfortable around your scars, you take to the bottle. Lose yourself. We brought you up here to—”
“To what?” Simon lurched to his feet. “To fix me? Nothing can heal me, but apparently who I am is not good enough for a Delilah like you.” He turned his attention to the rest of the group. “Any of you.”
Without waiting for someone to object, he stomped toward the door. To hell and back with them. He didn’t need anyone to fix him, and he certainly didn’t need anyone telling him what he could do as a man, or where he could go, or in his case, not go.
“Simon—” He heard Carrie’s voice call behind him.
“Let him go,” Aunt June said as he walked out into the cool mountain breeze. Night surrounded the trees like a cloak to a thief. And it was. This blasted place took everything from him, and left him a wretch.
Off in the distance a fire lit the towering trees surrounding a camp. Greenhorns, shave tails, he thought to himself as he stared at the scene. Only new loggers in camp would be up this late instead of catching what little sleep they could.
“Simon.” Garrett’s voice sounded behind him.
He stopped and faced his friend. If anyone could make right this situation, it was Garrett. “Don’t try to stop me from leaving, Gar.”
Garrett stopped before him, and he felt more than saw his arms extend. “I wouldn’t think of it.”
“Then what do you want?”
“Everyone on the rail car did what they did for you. Especially Carrie and Beth. I know how Beth’s plans can go, and I don’t usually condone them, but we need you here just as much as you need to be here. You’re the leader of the timber beasts. Without you, they couldn’t get the job done.”
“There are other men on the crew who could lead.”
Garrett’s feet shuffled over the pebbles on the ground. “Not this year. The Devil May Cares took two of your men to fill the open positions, and with the new railroad logging, we’ve taken on a lot of greenhorns. The beasts need an experienced logger. Especially one who knows how to work the new system.”
“What about Earl or Fredrick?”
“Earl didn’t come back this year. We’ve taken Fredrick on, but I don’t know if he’s going to work out. You’re it. You’ve got a few yearlings and two-year-olds out there, but the rest of your crew is new this year. They need you, Simon. Without you, I don’t think we could do this. The year-round crew is working overtime, but even that’s not enough. It’s up to us to get the trees felled and down the hill. The mine we contracted last year needs their logs, and I’ve placed a new order for my father’s railroad company as well. We’ve got work to do.”
“I’ll think on it.” Simon stepped away from his friend toward the trail at the base of a nearby hill. He needed to think, and there was only one place to do that: the cabin he and Garrett had built their first year here. The one far up in the mountains where no one would bother him.
“Are you going to Mother Goose’s Cottage?”
He stopped and turned back to his friend. “Yeah. And thanks for that, by the way.”
“For what?”
“Allowing my sister to give it such a silly name.”
“You didn’t mind last year.”
“Last year I was a fool.”
Simon felt Garrett move, and at the same time noticed his friend’s silhouette shift against the dark of the mountains behind him as if he searched the trees. “It’s late.”
Simon gave a sarcastic laugh. “What? You think I’m too weak to walk the trail alone at night?”
“Not at all. I simply wanted to let my buddy use my knife.” The sound of Garrett undoing his buckle filled the space surrounding them. His hand brushed Simon’s bicep as he extended his arm. “It’s not a statement of my trust of you. It’s simply a weapon in case you run into anything up there.”
Simon took the knife, opened his belt, and slid it into place behind his back. Part of him didn’t believe Garrett. Tonight proved the people in his life thought little of him. And while Garrett had never lied to him before, he didn’t stop the women from pulling off another loathsome scheme. This time at Simon’s expense. But Garrett was right. He needed a weapon. As far as he could tell, the only thing Carrie had taken from his house was him. Without supplies, he was vastly unprepared for the dangers of the forest, or the logging season. He buckled his belt.
“Thanks.”
Carrie.
The damned woman would pay for what she’d done. He expected this sort of behavior from his sister, but not Carrie. Not the woman who’d come to keep him company every day since they had returned from that fateful season. Not the woman who’d taken up the majority of his thoughts for over a year. She would pay for what she’d done to him. One way or another.
Chapter 3
Carrie searched the group of men hovering near the cook table waiting for the noon meal, but Simon was not among them. He’d stormed out the night before after serving her a justified, yet hurtful, retort. She deserved it. She should have been honest with him.
“Ms. Carrie,” a young logger she’d never seen before said as he shoveled a mouthful of the shepherd’s pie into his mouth. “Are you courting anyone? With the way you cook, I’m surprised no one has scooped you up like one of your biscuits.” He bit into a buttermilk biscuit and smiled.
“No. No suitors here.” She waved the suds-soaked spoon toward what was left of the food after the men got to it. Dishes clanked in the wooden wash tub as one of the new rivermen s
lid his dishes into the water. “Just me and my vittles.”
“Will you marry me, then?” The young man smiled. “I could live to be a hundred and never grow old of this pie.”
“You’ll have to get in line, young Max.” Aunt June set a jug of milk in the center of the crowded table. “Carrie here has a string of suitors waiting for her at home. She’s a picky one. So far no one is good enough. Gets that from her godmother.” Aunt June winked at Carrie.
The young man groaned, clutched his heart, and leaned back as if wounded. “Tell me where the line starts. I’ll beat the tarnation out of any fool in front of me.”
Despite the nagging worry of Simon in the back of Carrie’s mind, she smiled. “I’ll warn them you’re coming.”
“Speaking of, after the big bugs from the mill leave, we’ll be deciding who the crew bosses are next to the lake. Cuffs up and chins down.” A logger Carrie recognized from the year before sat back and gave a toothy grin while chewing. “Even though you’re a greenhorn, you can get a shot.”
“I may be a greenhorn here,” the young man who’d proposed said, “but I ain’t no namby-pamby. I’ll clean your plow if that’s what you want.”
The older logger erupted in laughter. “Is that a bluff, or do you mean for real play? Ain’t no one beat me yet.”
“There’s always a first.” The young man turned his attention back to Carrie. “If you’ll excuse me, Ms. Carrie, I need to show this old timer a thing or two.”
Carrie chuckled and motioned toward the lake. “By all means.” The poor boy didn’t stand a chance against a seasoned logger. According to Simon, they settled everything with fisticuffs.
She searched the men, but knew he hadn’t yet snuck into camp. A hollow pit grew in her stomach. Where was he? “Aunt June, if we’re done, I got something I need to do.”
Her godmother stared at her with a calculating gaze for a few heartbeats before nodding. “I’ll take care of the rest.”
“Thank you.” Carrie wiped her hands on the apron she wore, untied it, and hung it on the peg next to the door of Aunt June’s cabin.
She pivoted to search for Elizabeth when Aunt June spoke up behind her. “If you see him, you tell that handsome man that Ms. Victoria will be visiting with Paul this year. Since she took over everything, even the railroad logging operations, she’s been a bang-up boss lady. Make certain he’s here. Don’t want him to get fired before he even starts.”
Carrie smiled. Even though her godmother talked strict, when it came to Simon she turned into a mamma bear. “He’ll be here.” She spun on her heels to go find Beth.
In a few seconds, she ran up the steps of the railcar and yanked the door open. “Beth?”
No answer. What did she expect? There was no way Elizabeth would be hidden in the railcar. Carrie slammed the door and headed for the railroad logging.
The tracks arced around the section of timber they had cut the year before. The log train rested at the top of the loop that would take the train back home. Beth stood next to her husband near the tall, carriage-like pulley positioned on a flatcar in the center of the train. “Get the pulley to the front!” Garrett shouted at his men.
The machine jerked and started to roll on wagon wheels from car to car, taking the gaps without issue as steam billowed from a stack sticking from the top. She stopped next to Garrett and Beth. “That’s quite a contraption.”
“Another of Wall’s ideas. The man has proved to be much more than peavey and cowboy boots,” Garrett said as the train jerked and he snapped his attention to the contraption, and then back at her and Beth. “Excuse me, ladies.”
Garrett ran toward the machine, and Carrie adjusted her step to get closer to Beth. “Have you seen Simon today?”
“Garrett said he went up to Mother Goose’s Cottage last night. He should be back any minute.” Her friend bit her lip and shook her head, but Carrie knew better. Whenever Beth bit her lip, she was nervous or worried.
“Aunt June said he should be there for Victoria and the big bug from the mill.” Carrie peeked over Garrett’s shoulder to the trail at the base of the hill that led to Mother Goose’s Cottage. She’d never been there herself, but Beth had disappeared up there several times last year.
“Carrie,” Beth said with a warning tinging the word. “Do not go up there by yourself.”
Carrie stretched her hearing beyond her friend to the base of the trail and into the trees. Half-expecting to see Simon climb down the mountain, she barely heard what Beth said, but she waved her hands in the air. “Of course.”
Beth grabbed her shoulders and turned her until their faces grew close. “You cannot go up there alone. Garrett took a look up there this morning. The winter team moved the Grove, and now there are trees with widowmakers, not to mention the fact that they are clear-cutting a spot farther up the mountain, near the trail.”
Carrie focused on Beth’s eyes. “I won’t go,” she lied.
Her friend studied her until Carrie repeated. “I won’t.”
Beth let go and stepped back. “Simon will be fine. He’s lived among these hills for years. He knows the start of the season is today. He’ll be here.”
“You’re right.” Carrie kicked the corners of her lips up in a smile she hoped didn’t show her true thoughts. “I’d better get back to help Aunt June prepare for supper. She wants me to make a cherry pie.”
“All right.” Beth eyed her with disbelief.
Expanding her smile, Carrie pivoted on the green meadow grass and hurried toward Aunt June’s house. She waited until she was far enough in the trees at the end of the meadow before she tossed a glance over her shoulder. Luckily, Beth now yanked on a pulley line behind Garrett as they struggled to secure the machine.
Carrie’s heart thumped in her chest, and she ran toward the base of the trail. She searched the surrounding meadow and trees, but all of the loggers were gathered by the machine.
Her thighs burned as she raced up the hill and out of sight. When she crested the hill she slowed and clutched her side as she walked to calm her breath. She’d never run so hard. Thank God Aunt June had made her buy the cowboy boots. At least she wasn’t tripping over the tiny heel of her only pair of sturdy shoes like last year.
A few feet away a tree creaked as it swayed in the wind, and she studied the top branches as she walked past. High up, a broken branch from another tree balanced in the boughs. It swayed, and the branch moved an inch. A tingle of numbness slid down her legs, and her breath grew rapid.
Another glance around the trees aligning the path proved Beth’s words true. Widowmakers like the one she had just seen dotted the branches above. If she remembered correctly, the men would be up ahead in the new Grove.
Keeping an eye through the trees for movement, she ran up a small incline. She was about to take a corner when the sound of two male voices echoed off the trees ahead. Her chest tightened, and she leapt onto an animal trail off to the right. Ducking low behind the brush aligning the path, she headed farther into the forest. Ahead, the trail twisted in the direction she needed, and a quick glance to the treetops above showed no widowmakers. With luck the path would twist around and connect with the trail to Mother Goose’s Cottage. It looked like it did, anyway.
Carrie slowed and peered through the brush toward the other trail. To her relief, she stood alone. No one could see her. Now if she could find Simon before Victoria showed up. If only he could find his way out of his darkness. Otherwise this whole debacle would be for naught.
The crash of disturbed brush sounded before her, and she paused. Her blood pumped hard through her body and thrummed at her temples as a deer leapt before her and took off to run away. She pressed her palm to her chest and stopped to search her surroundings.
As expected, she stood alone, but the trail veered to the left instead of looping around back to the path. Behind her, the trail all but disappeared. S
he spun around and rushed down what she could make of the path, only to stop when it forked two ways.
Dear Lord, which way had she come? She clenched her teeth to ward off the urge to cry. Another sound to her right made her jump, but it was only a squirrel skittering up a tree trunk. She focused on the path, studying both sides of the fork. Which way should she go? With a deep breath, she headed down the one on the right, praying to God it was the right way.
* * * *
The squeal of a train slamming to a halt filled the trees surrounding Simon. He watched as the last load of loggers leapt from the boxcars with their usual whoops and hollers. He’d been one of those poor fools in seasons past, but no longer. Now the charm of a season filled with hard work and male camaraderie felt more like a prison—one with trees for bars, and a small backstabbing beauty for a sheriff.
He pressed his pockets to search for his flask, but he knew it wasn’t there. He sniffed his clothes. The stale stench of the bourbon he’d spilled the night before made his mouth water, but he cringed. Damn. At least the big bugs wouldn’t smell liquor on his breath. The last few hours he’d stayed at the once peaceful meadow to think, but all it did now was remind him that things could never be the same. His life had changed, and not for the better. But what could he do besides stay and work? At least the physical exertion of felling a tree would help ease the constant tension in his shoulders, even if only a little.
Simon rounded Aunt June’s cabin to find the start of the season hubbub. In the center, Paul Smith stood with Victoria, barking occasional orders and talking quietly to the cunning beauty in between shouts.
A hollow ache started in his throat and slid past his chest to settle in his stomach. Last year Victoria had showed up like a queen visiting her lowly subjects. Here she stood again with an even more arrogant stance and righteous calculation etched on her face. She certainly didn’t wait as long this year to show her true intent. At least she had been smart enough to let Garrett, her then fiancé, go when she found out he loved another. Especially when all she wanted was the company anyway. She had gumption, he’d give her that much.
Wild Passion Page 3
