by Nancy Warren
The rest of her life. It appeared she’d be spending it alone.
Or without Mike Grundel in any event.
She sighed with self-pity. She’d marry someone like Harrison Peabody and end up like…
She kicked a nearby rock, then hopped on one foot, wincing with pain. No, she wouldn’t marry someone like Harrison Peabody and live her mother’s life. Once Tess had proven herself here in Pasqualie she’d take a reporting job in another town. She’d start over where people didn’t know her father, her background, her trust fund balance. She’d sell the BMW—Dad would be hurt but he’d get over it—and buy a little beater. Or rely on public transit—that was probably a good way to get stories, anyway. She’d talk to the people she met on buses and trains, the real people. She’d hear their stories and write about them.
Life would begin over again. It wouldn’t include Mike Grundel, and that, thought Tess, raising her chin with defiance, was fine by her.
Once she raised her chin, she noticed another woodpecker staring at her; the same one for all she knew. Then, clearly finding her too uninteresting to interrupt his dinner hour, the bird began rapping at the huge tree trunk.
She watched for a moment, enjoying the single-minded way the bird attacked. It was pecking at a triangular gash in the tree that looked as though it had been made by an ax. Hmm.
That was odd. They were on Nate Macarthur’s land. If he wanted to identify a tree for some reason, why not use bright-colored flagging tape? She watched the bird for another minute, certain that triangle hadn’t been made by nature. Were the gouges designed to be overlooked by a casual observer? She squinted and carefully scanned the area on either side of the woodpecker’s tree and soon found another tree marked the same way, which made her more certain the triangular cut was both man-made and significant.
There was a narrow track, overgrown and barely discernable that ran parallel to the marked trees. In fact, had she not noticed the tree markings, she never would have identified the trail. Worth investigating?
Definitely.
She bit her lip, wondering if she should go back for Mike. But she was still mad at him and this could be yet another dead end. She’d follow the gouged trees wherever they led and then follow them back to the main trail.
Digging a hat out of her pack and a sweatshirt to protect against scratchy branches and insects, she plunged into the narrow path.
“Ugh,” she cried as a spiderweb slapped her face, leaving whispy tails behind as she batted it off her cheeks and nose. Holding her hands in front of her face, she set off again, more slowly.
She continued to follow the trail and soon it widened. Anticipation accompanied her. Was the sound of the river getting louder?
Goose bumps shivered up her arms.
Within ten minutes she found herself in a clearing. She blinked with surprise against the bright afternoon sun that beat down on freshly turned earth and the stumps of newly cut trees.
“And I thought stealing a mailing list was unethical,” she fumed out loud as she scanned the area.
The clearing was marked with yellow surveyor’s tape. There was no possible way she’d strayed outside Eugene Butterworth’s land in this short time. She rubbed her burning nose impatiently—this had to be it. The site of Cadman’s development. Now, all she and Mike had to do was prove it.
She dropped her pack and dug around in it for her camera. She gazed about her, considering, then set up her first photo.
Once she’d snapped half a roll of the clearing and surveyor’s tape—evidence that some kind of development was planned—she followed another short path to the river’s edge. Here the Pasqualie was at its widest. There was a natural beach, a calm bay that would be good for swimming. Was this the hotel site? As she gazed across the river, she saw a single deer frozen in the act of drinking from the water’s edge. It had seen her, long before she’d seen it, and its whole body quivered, alert and ready to flee.
Edging slowly back so as not to frighten the creature, she turned to retrace her steps at a trot. Mike needed to see this. He had contacts she didn’t. He could find out what was going on.
She followed the path back to the main trail.
“Mike!” she yelled, and started running toward where they’d left the car, guessing he wouldn’t have hung out at the river this long. She jogged and yelled until she had a stitch in her side and had to stop.
“Tess!”
She cocked her head and listened. With surprise she noted how frantic Mike sounded. His voice was almost hoarse as though he’d been shouting for a while.
“Mike!” she yelled as loud as she could. “Come here.”
“Don’t move. I’m coming.”
She tipped her face to the sun and caught her breath while her mind spun with possibilities. How quickly could they go to press with their story? What facts did they still need? Should she start hinting to Earl, the managing editor, that she’d be bringing him a news story?
In her excitement at the find, she’d forgotten they’d parted badly until she saw Mike’s face, set in hard lines, red from exertion. Was he still angry?
He stalked right up to her and grabbed her. She flinched and tried to pull back, but he only yanked her into his arms, almost squeezing the breath out of her, his lips crushing hers to finish the job. She felt his heart pounding through his shirt. He was breathing hard and his shirt was damp, as though he’d been running. She tasted anger, fear and a swirl of emotions she couldn’t name as his tongue plundered her mouth with possessiveness rather than finesse. She clung to him as answering feelings slammed into her chest. Then he lifted his head before they both passed out from lack of oxygen, looking anything but glad to see her. “I thought you were lost.”
Guilt hit her like a slap. She hadn’t stopped to think he might worry. Perhaps because it hadn’t occurred to her he would. But his thumping heart and arms still tight around her told her one thing: she wasn’t simply an opportunity. He cared.
That knowledge, plus the excitement of her find, made her want to prove a point.
“I’m sorry you were worried,” she said, leaning back to look into his lean, sexy face. He hadn’t bothered to retie his hair and it flowed freely. She longed to push her hands through it.
“Who says I was?” His breathing was almost under control, more than his hands, which were roaming her back, warm and possessive.
“I could have been lost,” she said, rising on her toes to nip at his jaw.
“I’d have found you.”
She shot him a provocative glance from under her lashes. “I could have been eaten by a wolf.”
A flash of white teeth and then he closed in on her. “You still could.”
He was so wrong and she was determined to prove it to him. She sank into the kiss, feeling the possessive sweep of his tongue, the nip of teeth and the strength in the muscles that held on to her as her body went limp.
There was hunger, sure, and need—all those primal instincts that he brought out in her—but there was also tenderness and she understood that it would take him a while to accept it, and her, and what they had together. But, if there was a woman who could tame this wolf, she was determined to be the one. When he left her mouth to run kisses down her throat she dropped her head back on a sigh and said, “I found something.”
His hand closed on her breast. “So did I.”
Her chuckle turned into a soft moan as he caressed her. “Surveyor’s tape.”
“Surveyor’s tape?” He pulled back and gaped at her.
She nodded, tamping down her racing desire temporarily. “Fresh. In a suspiciously new clearing.”
Her breast was forgotten and the light in his eyes changed from desire to professional excitement faster than a stoplight changes from yellow to red. “Where is it?”
“Follow me.”
She led him back to the trail, glad she’d left her red plastic water bottle on a rock as a marker—even knowing the path was there, it would have been easy to miss.
>
Minutes later they stood in the center of the clearing.
Mike gazed around him, a zealot’s gleam burning in his eyes. “Damn, light’s going. It’ll be hard to take pictures.”
“It wasn’t twenty minutes ago when I took half a roll.”
He grabbed her hand and surprised them both by kissing it. “This is it. All we need to do is get confirmation that Cadman’s behind this.” He gestured to the clearing and Tess found herself thinking that would be a bigger hurdle than he thought. The man might be a cheat and a liar, but he wasn’t stupid. Mike squeezed her hand and she felt his bloodlust. He was ready to close in for the kill. “Good thing I thought of coming up here.”
She turned to him, eyes narrowing. “Good thing I found the clearing.”
“Good thing we’re working together,” he said, pulling her easily into a long, steamy kiss.
SUNDAY FOUND TESS back at B.I.B. headquarter. Sundays were quiet on campus so she had lots of time to think about what she and Mike had discovered yesterday. She wanted to warn Jeremy about the signs of imminent development, but Mike had urged her to wait. He was off today, tracking down confirmation that Cadman was behind the development. At least, that had been the plan when they’d said good-night. In spite of his persuasion and her own desire, she hadn’t invited him into her bed. Much as she’d wanted to, she had to try to protect herself from the hurt she could see coming her way. And wasn’t that a case of closing the stable door after the horse had bolted?
Tess entered another new name to the membership list at B.I.B. headquarters, muttering furiously to herself. She knew the couple vaguely; they owned a cement company and she’d bet her BMW they’d signed over their proxy to Cadman or one of his minions.
There was increased urgency to the story now that it was clear development was on its way on B.I.B. land. She was angry. Angry with Ty Cadman and his cronies for what they were about to do. Angry with people like Mrs. Peabody who didn’t bother to look into the causes she was funding and who would hand over her proxy without a moment’s consideration. More names Tess recognized appeared on membership application forms in her in-box, adding to her annoyance.
She was even angry with Mike for thinking he could confirm Cadman was behind the development. If Cadman was half as smart as most people thought, he’d be hiding behind Nathan Macarthur, making it look as if Butterworth’s great-nephew was doing some clearing and surveying for his own purposes until the project was so far gone it would be too late to stop it.
Well, if Cadman was smart, she and Mike would have to be smarter. She was through with her filing within an hour, but her shift was two hours. She wondered how Mike was faring and if he’d have a chance to brief her on his findings before dinner tonight. Of all nights, her mother had chosen this one to invite the Cadman family for dinner to celebrate Jennifer’s engagement to the heir to an oatmeal fortune. Tess had never met the man, but there was something so not sexy about oatmeal. Besides, Jennifer was too much like her father for Tess to hold out high hopes that she’d marry anyone Tess might actually like.
She sighed, already dreading the evening and wishing she’d never agreed to go. Then, having finished her filing and computer work, she looked around for something else to do. She wasn’t the type to sit idle. Besides, she’d already sneezed twice. The place could use a clean.
Glancing around, she decided a little organization wouldn’t go amiss.
She’d start with the small storeroom Jeremy had shown her earlier. Here were the records of the society, boxes of flyers and membership applications, printed on one-hundred percent recycled paper with biodegradable ink, all which seemed to be recycling and biodegrading in record time to dust.
Jeremy and his colleagues were probably brilliant at what they did, but their organizational skills sucked. Why were the membership forms at the back of the storeroom? They should be at the front.
Determined to clean and organize those shelves, she threw the door open and stepped inside.
Something dark and heavy hit her over the head.
“Ow!” She crashed into wooden shelves, feeling dazed, then waited in the dark, her hands held up in case there was more to come. After a few seconds of stillness, she found the light switch.
With the single bulb burning in the ceiling, she recognized her assailant as the triple panel display the group used for environmental fairs, lectures and information sessions.
She wrestled it into a back corner then rubbed the rapidly rising goose egg on her head.
She narrowed her gaze through the dust storm she’d raised until she made out the boxes she wanted handy. She put those boxes together, near the front of the storeroom where she could access them easily.
The display leaned against the back wall, just waiting for her to turn her back so it could tackle her once again. She forced her way around it until she could see what was behind it. More boxes, some with dust inches thick, hulked in the dark, making her nose itch to sneeze again.
Surely her penance for swiping the mailing list needn’t be this harsh?
She pushed her hair behind her ears. If some of those old boxes could be eliminated, she could make a proper spot for storing the display panel.
She dragged it out into the main office, took a deep breath of relatively fresh air, then plunged back into the stuffy closet.
She decided to start with the oldest boxes, working on the theory that if no one had bothered to raise the lids in years, how important could the contents be? She was certain she could get rid of a few boxes or find a more remote storage location, thereby freeing up more space for the items B.I.B. used regularly.
She rolled up her sleeves and went to battle. Generations of dust bunnies fought back, sending clouds of ancient particles swirling, but she persevered, coughing and spluttering, until she opened the first box.
As she’d suspected, it was nothing very interesting. Old news clippings, yellow and frail with age, greeted her eye. Gingerly she took out a few, then a few more. Yep, there was nothing but newspaper in there. It looked to her that whoever had kept these papers had been too lazy to cut out the article in question and had just saved the entire paper.
Still, it was kind of interesting to scan the front pages and find out what had been going on in the area in the 1920s and 1930s.
However, these should be scrap-booked and archived, not left in a box to disintegrate. She put the box aside. Perhaps she’d take it home and get started. Enthusiasm built. She could use some of the old stories as background for the feature she was planning to write about Bald is Beautiful. Despite Mike’s cynical attitude, she was determined to do her bit to save those eagles nesting on Pasqualie River.
Two more boxes contained old newspapers. She blew her nose and wondered just how long it would take to put this mess into some kind of order. Maybe she should shove the boxes back and forget she’d ever seen them. Her back ached and she foresaw hours and hours of work sifting through the old papers just to archive them.
She rolled her shoulders. She’d open one more. If, as she suspected, it also contained old newspapers, she’d lug it and the other three to her car. The remaining boxes would have to wait.
She raised the lid of the fourth box and her eyes opened wide. Not newspapers, but an old leather-bound journal met her gaze. She lifted it out, and there was another beneath it. Had someone begun an archive long ago?
Resting her back against the cinder block wall, she opened the cover of the first book carefully.
She had to squint to read the spidery writing on the mildew-spotted page, barely illuminated by the single naked bulb hanging in the middle of the storeroom.
Eugene Butterworth, Field Notes, July 1921 to February 1922.
She could feel a tingling sensation at the end of her nose, and this time it had nothing to do with dust but with the book in her hands. Eugene Butterworth’s field notes? In his will he’d donated all his papers to the society, but she couldn’t believe they’d just stuck them in a box and forgotte
n about them. Of course, he hadn’t become really famous until after his death. Her hands trembled slightly, as though she held the Hope diamond.
Eugene had written detailed notes about the life of the native peoples, the flaura and fauna. The bald eagles he’d come to love so much.
And he’d illustrated his journals.
She studied the drawings, so intricately rendered and yet filled with life. A fledgling as it tried to fish. A black bear pausing to drink at the water’s edge. A native woman with a baby at her breast. A few sketches for paintings that she’d seen in the Seattle Art Gallery.
A gasp escaped her lips.
This man who’d become a world-renowned nature artist had illustrated his journals. Slowly, she turned more pages. There were probably forty detailed drawings, some in color, some in ink or charcoal, scattered throughout the book.
She picked up the second journal, and found more of the same. The man’s paintings hung in art museums and private collections throughout the country and around the world. These journals were probably worth a lot of money, and they’d been shoved in a dark closet for years, forgotten.
She held the journal against her thumping heart, reveling in the knowledge that a mildly guilty conscience and strong neat-freak tendencies had led her to an honest-to-goodness treasure.
But what the heck should she do with the journals?
Her first thought was to take them to her apartment where she could study them. But if she felt guilty over filching a membership list, she’d never sleep knowing valuable journals that didn’t belong to her were secreted in her apartment.
Nobody had looked at these boxes in years. Common sense told her they’d be safe here while she did some more research. She held on to just one journal to show Mike, then put all the boxes back—even the ones containing nothing but newspapers. She didn’t want anyone else snooping in here. Not quite yet.
What she needed to find out—and soon—was, who legally owned these journals? Her mind was cart-wheeling with possibilities. And hope.
