Force Of Nature

by Peggy Webb

  This time she got a response. He moved around the edge of the cliff so he could position himself right above her.

  “Did you make the shot from up there or did you come down here?”

  She searched the rock face for footholds. Her head hurt, her ankle throbbed and her throat was parched. There would be no relief. She could see the bright red rim of her thermos on an outcropping of rock near the top of the cliff, with what appeared to be her cell phone lying nearby.

  “This does not look good,” she said, and then she began a systematic search for a way out of the ravine.

  Darkness dropped like a curtain, and Hannah sank onto a small boulder, exhausted and weak. Her hands were bloody from failed attempts at climbing. She’d had only one small bite of jerky all day and no water. There was no way she could survive without water.

  The wolfman was still up there watching her. He’d watched all day, adjusting his position as she’d roamed looking for escape.

  She had made no further attempts to talk to him. What was the use? He couldn’t understand her and she had to conserve her strength.

  Maybe she’d think of something tomorrow. She crawled into her bed of rocks and tumbled into the blessed oblivion of sleep.

  Someone was calling her name. “Hannah… Hannah. Can you hear me?”

  “I hear you. Daddy? Daddy, is that you?”

  “Yes,” he said, and suddenly Michael was there, not the fading father she’d last seen lying in a narrow white bed but a younger, robust version of him, the black-haired, green-eyed laughing man she remembered from childhood.

  “How did you find me, Daddy?”

  “You called me.”

  “I want to go home now, but I’ve lost the way.”

  “You’ll find a way. Don’t give up, Hannah. Don’t give up.”

  She wanted to ask him questions. She wanted to say, How will I find a way? but Michael was fading and in his place was the shadow of a tall man backlit by the moon, a man with long flowing hair that glinted silver under the stars.

  Hannah woke up crying. High above her the wolfman looked like something carved from the mountain.

  “Help me,” she called, knowing that soon her voice would be too weak to carry. “Help me.”

  There was no movement from above, no sound. “Please, please help me.” Still he didn’t move.

  She lay back in her rocky bed, spent.

  Don’t give up.

  “Daddy,” she called, but she knew he’d only been a dream. There was no one to help Hannah except a man who had lived among wolves so long she didn’t know whether he had any language left or any capacity for human feeling.

  Suddenly inspiration seized her, and she yelled at the top of her voice.

  “Hunter Wolfe!”

  He dropped into a crouch and leaned far over the edge of the cliff to peer down at her. Hannah couldn’t believe it.

  Did he recognize his name? Did it trigger some memory?

  She dragged herself into a sitting position and lifted her arms toward him.

  “Hunter Wolfe, help me. Help me!”

  He leaped into the air and for a heady moment she thought he was flying. Then she saw the rope, and as she watched in amazement the man she’d called Hunter Wolfe descended into the ravine.

  Chapter Ten

  November 4, 2001

  I can’t bear to look at Michael. I can’t bear to talk to him for fear I’ll let everything I’m feeling slip out, and oh, that would be too horrible. I love him. He’s my life, my heart, my soul. I want him to know that, to believe it, and yet…

  Well, I might as well write it all down so I don’t forget, so I don’t slip up and let it happen again. Here’s what happened: I spent the night at Belle Rose so I would feel fresh this morning when I cornered the Bear (Clarice’s term, not mine). The new director here is Larry Baird. “He looks just like a great big old cuddly teddy bear,” Clarice told me after she saw him in the hall, and I told her, I don’t care what he looks like, I’m not putting up with sloppy care from the new nurse. She didn’t even check Michael’s pressure points, and besides that she didn’t even talk to him.

  Say something to him, I told her, Let him know who you are and that you care, and she said, “I have thirty other patients. I don’t have time to spend talking to one.”

  Cold, that’s what she is. And bordering on incompetent. I will not sit back and let my husband get bedsores. Nor will I see him treated like a piece of meat.

  So this morning I put on the blue sweater Michael likes and marched into the director’s office with my list of complaints. Ready to take on a passle of wild cats on behalf of my beloved.

  After I’d introduced myself I said, “Mr. Baird, the new nurse is not doing her job and I want the situation rectified.”

  “What seems to be the problem?”

  He pulled off his glasses, and right out of the blue I noticed they were the wire-rimmed kind that made him look sexy. I had no business at all noticing such a thing, so I jerked my list out of my purse and started shaking so bad he hurried over and took my hands and said, “There, there, Mrs. Westmoreland. Your husband has been here a long time, and I know how hard that is for you.”

  Well, you can imagine what all that sympathy did to me. All of a sudden I was bawling like a calf in a hailstorm and this new director was hugging me and I was sobbing all over his shirt and it felt so good to be held I didn’t want him to let go.

  As a matter of fact, he didn’t. He held onto me saying things like, “You go ahead and cry, Take your time, I’m not going anywhere.”

  Oh, it has been so long and it felt so good…

  I can’t remember how long I stood there with his arms around me, but I can remember what I was thinking. I was thinking, If Michael doesn’t come back, another man just might be possible.

  Not that he could ever take Michael’s place, or even come close. Not that anyone else would ever, ever make me feel the magic. There is only one true soul mate, and Michael is mine. I know that.

  I knew it this morning when I stood in that office like a ninny and let this strange man put his hands all over me.

  Well, not all over me. Not really. He never called me anything except Mrs. Westmoreland. He never did a thing except offer a friendly shoulder to cry on.

  I was the one making more out of it than a simple gesture of kindness. I was the emotional one. I was thinking, The door is closed and we’re alone and nobody has to know. Any minute he’s going to kiss me and I’m going to kiss him back, and who knows where that will lead?

  For one awful moment I wanted that to happen. I wanted to be swept away by a kiss. I wanted to be swamped with passion. I actually imagined rolling around on the carpet with a man who called me Mrs. Westmoreland.

  I don’t know who I am anymore. I can’t seem to hold onto myself as Anne Westmoreland whose husband adores her. I can’t picture myself as Anne Westmoreland, mother of three adult children and mother-in-law to two fine people. Any day now I could be a grandmother, and yet I can’t see myself that way, either.

  All of a sudden I’m this new woman seeing the possibilities for sex behind every closed door and feeling my sap rise and rise and rise…with nowhere to go.

  I guess I ought to be ashamed, but that’s the odd thing: I’m not. Don’t get me wrong. I still feel as if I’ve betrayed my husband on some level, and yet on some primitive level I feel this secret glee. I’m alive, I want to shout. There’s still a spark in me that won’t be squelched, no matter what.

  Maybe I will tell Michael, after all. Maybe he needs to know that I didn’t dry up and blow away simply because he left. Do I hurt? Yes. Loss is a monster that eats away at me every day. But I’m still here. I’m still me.

  Maybe that’s what I needed to discover this morning in Director Baird’s office, that no matter what happens there’s a spark inside me that refuses to be extinguished. I will survive. I know this now.

  No, not merely survive. I will triumph.

  Chapter Elev
en

  Hannah was awestruck. Hunter Wolfe stood not two feet from her, and every coherent thought she had flew out of her head. She was actually up close with the wolfman, that’s all she could think. She tried to take in everything at once, but couldn’t get past his eyes. They mesmerized her, those startling silver lasers. They burned through her with an intensity that made her shiver. And once she started she couldn’t seem to stop.

  She wrapped her arms around herself and spoke through chattering teeth, “Get me out of here.” He stood there staring at her. “Please.”

  That seemed to be the magic word, for suddenly he scooped her up, and then, holding her as if she weighed no more than a kitten, he leaped toward the rope that dangled from the cliff.

  Dizziness swamped Hannah…and sensation. Cocooned in fur she felt both safe and terrified. His arms were bands of steel, his face chiseled stone, his hair a golden thicket that blew into her face as they swung upward.

  Out of the corner of her eye she spotted her thermos and her cell phone.

  “Wait, please. I need to get that.” He hesitated and she reached out and snatched up her prized possessions. At last, water. She uncapped the bottle and swigged only enough to sooth her parched throat while he watched her.

  There was both curiosity and intelligence in his eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered, and then they were airborne again, swinging high above the ravine that had almost claimed her life.

  It would have if Hunter Wolfe hadn’t rescued her. When they reached the top, he placed her gently on a rock, then stood sentinel as if he’d been given a commission from some unknown source.

  The bearskins he wore had been fashioned into crude pants and tunic and did nothing to hide the fact that he was wondrously made…and exuberantly male. Hannah felt the heat from the roots of her hair all the way down to her toes.

  In a matter of moments she’d changed from a woman about to die at the bottom of a ravine to a woman ignited by sexual fires that stole reason. This was no animal standing before her but a man, a man who was driving her crazy.

  She had to do something, anything.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You saved my life.”

  And then she touched him. He didn’t flinch, didn’t move, and she wound her battered hand around his and held on.

  “If you hadn’t come for me, I would have died at the bottom of that ravine.”

  He glanced at her hand, and then slowly his fingers closed around hers. His hands were powerful, like the rest of him. She’d never been in the presence of a man who exuded such power, such male energy. It was like standing in front of a blazing furnace.

  She wanted to lean on him. She wanted to feel his arms around her once more. She wanted to bury her face in the skins he wore and cry until there were no more tears.

  Hannah had never felt this way in her life. She could blame fatigue and exposure for her feelings, but she was too smart. There was something else at work here, something she didn’t dare analyze.

  All she knew was that she could not let Jack take this man off the mountain and put him in a cage, for that’s what tight confinement would be to him. Instinctively she knew that something wonderful and magical, some spark deep inside him would die. And she wasn’t about to let that happen.

  When she stood up, her face was only inches from his. He didn’t move, but she stepped back so fast she would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her. And held on. Oh, he held on, and it felt so good Hannah felt like swooning.

  “You have to come with me,” she said. “Come with me. Back to my camp. Come, Hunter Wolfe. Please, come.”

  He picked her up and started down the mountain. Did he understand or did he merely sense that she needed rest in her own surroundings, much like a wounded she-wolf returning to her den?

  Why question fate? With the moon and the stars lighting their path, Hannah curled her hand into his fur tunic and leaned her head against his chest, just to rest, just for a moment.

  The female was sleeping. That was good. Sleep would heal.

  He moved swiftly through the night. Soon the snows would fall again, and he wanted to get her back into her den before they came.

  Strange feelings coursed through him. What was that name she called him? It echoed in his mind and stirred long-buried memories: fire, so much fire, and screams that had haunted him for years.

  He put them out of his mind so he could focus on the task at hand. He would have taken her to his cave, but her den was closer. He crawled inside with her, put her in her nest then lay down beside her. Her body was soft and sweet-smelling. It seemed natural to hold on.

  Hannah woke with a start and found herself staring straight into the eyes of her rescuer. Furthermore, he was wrapped so closely around her, she couldn’t have moved if she’d wanted to.

  And she definitely didn’t want to. They stared at each other with frank curiosity. And something else, too. A sexual awareness that was almost palpable. He was fully aroused and not at all embarrassed by the fact, and she was having fantasies that made her skin burn.

  She touched his face. “Who are you?” she whispered. “Are you Hunter Wolfe? Are you the little boy lost in the wilderness, all grown up?”

  He didn’t blink, didn’t move. Only his eyes seemed alive. They studied her with an intensity that made her shiver.

  She could not let Jack take this man. She would not.

  “They’re going to send men here to capture you. Do you understand anything I’m saying? They’re going to keep you in a facility that will be nothing more than a cage to you.”

  The thought of Hunter Wolfe in confinement brought tears to her eyes, but Hannah didn’t care. All that mattered now was getting her rescuer to safety.

  As she leaned over him, her hair and her tears fell on his face.

  “I can’t let them take you. Come with me. You must come with me.”

  Chapter Twelve

  November 6, 2001

  The most amazing thing has happened. I still can’t believe it. Another secret I have to keep from Michael. (I didn’t tell him, after all, about Larry Baird. Just in case he’s been holding on until I found somebody else; just in case he would say to himself, Hmmm, all right, Anne is going to be okay now, she has somebody else to take care of her, so I can fall into this deep dark sleep and not bother about trying to find my way home.)

  That’s not true, of course. I don’t know what happened yesterday, but it will never happen again. I saw Larry Baird when I got here this morning, and he was nothing to me except a slightly paunchy guy with a bad haircut. Nothing at all. Of course, I stopped to chat when he said, “Good morning.” Anything less would have been impolite, as Mother has so often told me, but I can say in all honesty that the thought of him touching me made my skin crawl. And not in a good way.

  Anyhow, back to this big secret: Hannah called me. From Denali. She said, “Mom, go out and buy some men’s shirts, large, and some pants, probably 34 waist and inseam, and a pair of men’s jogging shoes, size ll. No, better make that l2. And buy food, too. Lots of red meat and fish.”

  I asked her, What’s going on? and expected her to say something like, I’m bringing home an indigent Alaskan, but of course, with Hannah nothing is ever that simple. When she told me about Hunter Wolfe, I naturally asked the question on any mother’s mind. “Is he dangerous?” I said.

  She didn’t answer me, not directly anyhow. She said, “I have to bring him home, Mom. I have to save him because he saved me.”

  When she told me how she fell into that ravine, and how he got her out I relived those awful days of Michael’s accident. I nearly lost two of them, was all I could think.

  Are you all right? was what I asked her first, and she told me yes, her cuts were superficial and she’d tended them, and then I said, “If this man really is Hunter Wolfe, and if he’s been living in the wilderness for twenty years without human contact, how did you ever convince him to fly home with you?”

  “I don’t know. I used gestures, pantomime, ev
erything I could think of, but I think it was my tears that did the trick.”

  Hannah, in tears! That’s unbelievable. Nothing short of a miracle. It occurs to me that something more is going on here than a simple rescue.

  Yesterday I bought the clothes she asked for then drove to her place on the river. It’s so peaceful up there I felt like staying. I told her I’d get Clarice to stay with Michael and I would be there when she arrived with this wild man, but she told me, No, Mom, I have to do this by myself. Besides, she told me, the fewer people who know, the safer he will be.

  “How are you going to handle Jack?” I asked, and she said, “I called and told him the wolfman fell into a ravine and died. When he asked how I could be certain, I told him blood was everywhere, that I went back the next day to be sure and wild animals had already ravaged the body.”

  “Did he believe you?”

  “He has no cause to think otherwise.”

  “I don’t want you to jeopardize everything you’ve worked for.”

  “I won’t. Besides, I’m freelance, Mom. Jack’s not the only game in town.”

  I was worried about the flight, too, because she said the snows have already started and I thought about her flying that light plane with ice on the wings.

  Be careful, I told her, and she promised she would, though I know she won’t. Caution is not in Hannah’s nature.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was one thing to be in the same park as Hunter Wolfe, and quite another to be confined in the cockpit of a twin-engine plane. He sat in the passenger seat as forbidding as a strange monolith, his arsenal of weapons resting across his lap. There was the rope he’d used to rescue her—vines twisted together in an ingenious way—a lethal-looking handmade knife, his bow and the bearskin quiver filled with handmade arrows, their tips razor-sharp. She knew this because she’d already pricked her finger trying to help him get in the plane.

  When he’d seen the blood, he’d bellowed in outrage, then lifted her off her feet and set her aside while he climbed aboard. She got in on the other side, wondering how he’d react when she tried to buckle him in.