by Nora Roberts
She’d take time every day she could manage it, she decided, fanning out from the town, into the park, maybe dip just a little into the backcountry. She was better outdoors, always better in the open.
When she had her first full day off, she’d take one of the easier trails and hike up to see the river. But for now she’d better get started doing what her guide suggested and break in the hiking boots.
She set out at an easy pace. That, at least, was one of the advantages of her life now. There was rarely any hurry. She could do what she chose to do in her own time, at her own speed. She’d never really given herself this in the time before. In the past eight months, she’d seen and done more than she had in the previous twenty-eight years. Maybe she was a little bit crazy, and she was certainly neurotic, phobic and slightly paranoid, but there were pockets of herself she’d managed to fill again, and pieces of herself she’d worked back into place.
She’d never be again what she’d once been—the bustling, ambitious urbanite. But she’d discovered she liked whatever she was forming into. Now, she paid more attention to details that had once blurred by. The play of light and shadows, the lap of water, the sensation of the spongy, thawing ground under her feet.
She could stop where she was, right now, and watch a heron rise, silent as a cloud, from the lake. She could watch the ripples fan out over the surface, wider, wider, until they reached the tip of the paddles plied by a young boy in a red kayak.
She remembered her camera too late to capture the heron, but she captured the boy and his red boat, and the blue water, and the dazzling reflection of the mountains that spanned its surface.
She’d attach little notes to each photo, she thought as she started to walk again. In that way, her grandmother would feel part of the journey. Reece knew she’d left worry behind in Boston, but all she could do was send chatty e-mails, make a phone call now and then to let her grandmother know where and how she was.
Though she wasn’t always perfectly truthful on the how.
There were houses and cabins scattered around the lake, and someone, she noted, was having a Sunday barbecue. It was a good day for it—grilled chicken, potato salad, skewers of marinated vegetables, gallons of iced tea, cold beer.
A dog paddled out into the water after a blue ball, while a girl stood on the banks laughing and calling encouragement. When he retrieved it and paddled back to shore, he shook like a mad thing, showering the girl with water that caught the sunlight and fired like diamonds.
His bark was full of insane joy when she threw the ball again, and he leaped back into the water to repeat the cycle.
Reece took out her bottle of water, sipping as she veered away from the lakefront and strolled into the evergreens.
She might see deer, or a moose, even elk—maybe the same one she’d spied that morning—if she was quiet enough. She could do without the bear the brochures and guides said lived in the forests of the area, even if the guidebook claimed most bears would leave if they sensed a human nearby.
For all she knew the bear would be in a pissy mood that day and decide to take it out on her.
So she’d be careful, she wouldn’t go far, and though she had her compass, she’d stick to the trail.
Cooler here, she thought. The sun couldn’t get to the pools and pockets of snow, and the water of the little stream she came across had to force itself through and over the chunks of ice.
She followed the stream, listening to the hiss and plop of the ice as it slowly thawed. When she found tracks and scat, she was thrilled. What sort of tracks? What sort of poop? she wondered. Wanting to know, she started to dig her guidebook out of her pack.
The rustle had her freezing, cautiously looking over. It was a toss-up who was more taken by surprise, Reece or the mule deer, but they stood staring at each other in mutual shock for one breathless moment.
I must be upwind, she thought. Or was it downwind? As she reached slowly for her camera, she made a mental note to look that up again. She managed a full-on shot, then made the mistake of laughing in delight. The sound had the deer bounding away.
“I know what that’s like,” she murmured as she watched it race away from human contact. “The world’s just full of scary stuff.”
She tucked the little camera back in her pocket, realizing she couldn’t hear the dog barking any longer, or any rumble from cars driving on the main road of town. Just the breeze moving through the trees like a quiet surf, and that hissing bubble and plop from the stream.
“Maybe I should live in a forest. Find myself a little isolated cabin, grow some vegetables. I could be a vegetarian,” she considered as she took a running leap across the narrow stream. “Okay, probably not. I could probably learn to fish. I’d buy a pickup and go into town once a month for supplies.”
She began to imagine it, painting the image in her head. Not too far from the water, not too deep in the mountains. Lots and lots of windows so it would be almost like living outside.
“I could start my own business. Little cottage industry. Cook all day, sell the products. Do it all over the Internet, maybe. Never leave the house. And end up adding agoraphobia to my list.”
No, she’d live in the forest—that part was good—but she’d work in town. It could even be here, and she’d keep working for Joanie.
“Give it a few weeks, that’s the best thing. See how it goes. Get out of that hotel, that’s for damn sure. That’s not going to work for very long. Where else though, that’s a problem. Maybe I’ll see about—”
She let out a yelp, stumbled back and nearly landed on her ass.
It was one thing to run into a mule deer and another entirely to come across a man lying in a hammock with a paperback splayed over his chest.
He’d heard her coming—hard not to, he thought, when she was holding a verbal debate with herself. He’d assumed she’d turn off toward the lake, but instead she veered straight toward his hammock, eyes on the toes of her barely scuffed hiking boots. So he set his book down to watch her.
Urban female picking her way through the wilderness, he mused. L.L. Bean backpack and boots, Levi’s that at least showed some wear, water bottle.
Was that her cell phone sticking out of her pocket? Who the hell was she going to call?
She’d scooped her hair back, looping the tail of it through the back opening in the black cap she wore. Her face was pale, the eyes huge and startled, and a deep, rich Spanish brown.
“Lost?”
“No. Yes. No.” She looked around as if she’d just dropped in from another planet. “I was just taking a walk, I didn’t realize. I must be trespassing.”
“You must be. You want to wait here a minute, while I go get my gun?”
“Not really. Um. That’s your cabin, I guess.”
“That gives you two for two.”
“It’s nice.” She studied it for a moment, the simple log structure, the long sweep of the covered porch with its single chair, single table. It was a lovely thing, she decided. A single chair, a single table.
“Private,” she added. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. I like it private.”
“I meant…well, you know what I meant.” She took a deep breath, twisting and untwisting the cap on her bottle of water. It was easier for her with strangers. It had come to be the pitying, the concerned glances of those she knew she’d been unable to bear.
“You’re doing it again. Staring at me. It’s rude.”
He lifted an eyebrow. She’d always admired people who could do that, as if that single brow had an independent set of muscles. Then he reached down, unerringly hooked a bottle of beer. “Who decides that kind of thing? What’s rude in any given culture?”
“The PRS.”
It only took him a moment. “The Prevention of Rudeness Society? I thought they disbanded.”
“No, they continue their good work, in secret locations.”
“My great-grandfather was a member of the PRS, but we don’t talk about it muc
h seeing as he was a complete asshole.”
“Well, you’ll have this in any family or group. I’ll let you get back to your reading.”
She took a step back, and he debated whether to ask her if she wanted a beer. Since it would have been an almost unprecedented gesture, he’d already decided against it when a sharp sound blasted the air.
She hit the dirt, throwing her arms up to cover her head like a soldier in a trench.
His first reaction was amusement.City girl. But he saw, when she neither moved nor made a sound, it was more than that. He swung his legs off the hammock, then crouched down.
“Backfire,” he said easily. “Carl Sampson’s truck. It’s a wreck on wheels.”
“Backfire.”
He could hear her murmur it over and over as she trembled.
“Yeah, that’s right.” He put a hand on her arm to steady her, and she tightened up.
“Don’t. Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me. Don’t. I just need a minute.”
“Okay.” He got up to retrieve the water bottle that had gone flying when she dropped to the ground. “You want this? Your water?”
“Yes. Thanks.” She took the bottle, but her shaking fingers couldn’t manage the cap. Saying nothing, Brody took it from her, unscrewed the cap, handed it back.
“I’m fine. Just startled me.”
Startled, my ass, he thought.
“I thought it was a gunshot.”
“You’ll hear that kind of thing, too. Nothing in season—hunting, that is—but people around here target shoot. It’s the wild, wild West, Slim.”
“Of course. Of course they do; it is. I’ll get used to it.”
“You go walking in the woods, the hills, you’re going to want to wear something bright. Red, orange.”
“That’s right. Of course, that’s right. I’ll make sure I do next time.”
Some color had come back into her face, but in Brody’s judgment, it was pure embarrassment. Even when she pushed herself to her feet, her breath remained choppy. She made a halfhearted attempt to brush herself off.
“That completes the entertainment portion of our program. Enjoy the rest of your day.”
“Plan to.” A nicer guy, he thought, would probably insist she sit down, or offer to walk her back to town. He just wasn’t a nicer guy.
She kept walking, then slowed to glance over her shoulder. “I’m Reece, by the way.”
“I know.”
“Oh. Well. See you around.”
Hard to avoid it, Brody thought, even when she walked fast and with her eyes on the ground. Spooky woman with those big, doe-in-the-thicket eyes. Pretty though, and she’d probably edge up to sexy with another ten pounds on her.
But it was the spooky that intrigued him. He could never resist trying to figure out what made people tick. And in Reece Gilmore’s case, he figured whatever ticked inside her had a lot of very short fuses.
Reece kept her eyes on the lake—the ripples, the swans, the boats. It would be a long walk around the curve of it, but that would give her time to settle down again, and for the burn of embarrassment to cool. It was already transforming into a migraine, but that was all right, that was okay. If it didn’t ease back, she’d take something for it when she got back to the hotel.
Maybe her stomach was twisted up, but it wasn’t that bad. She hadn’t gotten sick and completely capped off the mortification.
Why couldn’t she have been alone in the woods when the stupid truck backfired? Of course, if she had been, she might still be curled up there, whimpering.
At least Brody had been matter-of-fact about it. Here’s your water, pull yourself together. It was so much easier to handle that than the strokes and pats and there-theres.
Because the sun hurt her eyes now, she dug into her backpack for her sunglasses. Ordered herself to keep her head up, to walk at a normal pace. She even managed to smile at a couple who strolled along the lake as she did, and lift her hand in a wave in answer to the salute from a driver in a passing car when she finally,finally reached the main road.
The girl—Reece couldn’t pull her name out of her pounding head—was on the desk again at the hotel. She shot Reece a smile, asked how she was, how she had enjoyed her hike. Reece knew she answered, but all the words seemed tinny and false.
She wanted her room.
She got up the stairs, found her key, then just leaned back against the door when she was inside.
Once she’d checked the locks—twice—taken her medication, she curled on the bed, fully dressed, still wearing her boots and sunglasses.
And closing her eyes, she gave in to the exhaustion of pretending to be normal.
4
ASPRING STORM dropped eight inches of wet, heavy snow, and turned the lake into a frothy gray disk. Some of the locals plowed through it on snowmobiles while kids, bundled into shapeless stumps in their winter gear, entertained themselves building snow people around the verge of the lake.
Lynt, with his wide shoulders and weather-scored face, took breaks from his snowplowing duties to refill his thermos with Joanie’s coffee and complain about the wind.
Reece had experienced it herself on her walk to work that morning. It blew like wrath down the canyon, across the lake, sparking fresh snow as it burned ice through the bone.
It beat at the windows, howled like a man bent on murder. When the power died, Joanie herself yanked on coat and boots to trudge outside and fire up her generator.
The roar of it competed with the scream of the wind and the thunder of Lynt’s snowplow, until Reece wondered why every mother’s son and daughter didn’t go raving mad from the unrelenting noise.
It didn’t stop people from coming in. Lynt turned off his plow to settle in with an enormous bowl of buffalo stew. Carl Sampson, with his cheeks red from the wind, puffed in to sit with Lynt and chow down on meatloaf, and stayed to eat two pieces of huckleberry pie.
Others came and went. Others came and lingered. They all wanted food and company, she understood. Human contact and something warm in the belly to remind them they weren’t alone. While she grilled, fried, boiled and chopped, she, too, felt steadier for the hum of voices.
But there wouldn’t be voices and contact once she finished her shift. Thinking of her hotel room, she fought her way down to the mercantile on her break for spare batteries for her flashlight. Just in case.
“Winter’s got to take her last slap,” Mac told her as he rang up her batteries. “Going to have to reorder these. Had a run on them. Close to running out of bread, eggs and milk, too. Why is it people always load up on bread, eggs and milk in a storm?”
“I guess they want to be able to make French toast.”
He gave a quick, wheezing laugh. “Might be they do. How you doing down at Joanie’s? Haven’t made it down there since this hit. I like to get by all the businesses that’re open when we get socked. Being mayor, it just seems the thing to do.”
“Generator’s going, so we’re still in business. You, too.”
“Yeah, don’t like to close the doors. Lynt’s got the roads clear enough, and the power should be back up in a couple hours. I checked on that. And she’s already passing. The storm.”
Reece glanced toward the windows. “It is?”
“Time the power’s back, she’ll be done. You’ll see. Only real trouble we’ve had from this is the roof of Clancy’s storage shed caving in. His own fault anyway. It was due for repair, and he didn’t get it shoveled off. Tell Joanie I’ll be down to check on things first chance.”
IN JUST OVER an hour, Mac’s predictions proved on target. The wind tapered down to an irritable mutter. Before another hour had passed, the juke—which Joanie refused to run on her generator—whined back on, hiccuped, then offered up Dolly Parton.
And long after the heavy fall of snow and brutal wind left town, Reece could see it raging in bruised clouds in the mountains. It added, she thought, to their fierceness, gave them a cold, aloof power.
It made her gratefu
l she could stand in the warmth of her hotel room and look out at them.
She mixed up vats of stew according to Joanie’s recipes, grilled pounds and pounds of meat and poultry and fish. At the end of every shift, she counted up her tip money, then tucked it in an envelope she kept zipped in her duffel bag.
Sometime during the day or evening, Joanie would stick a plate of food under Reece’s nose. She’d eat in a corner of the kitchen while meat smoked on the grill, the jukebox played and people sat at the counter and gossiped.
Three days after the storm, she was ladling up stew when Lo strolled back. He made a small production out of sniffing the air. “Something sure smells good.”
“Tortilla soup.” She had finally convinced Joanie to let her prepare one of her own recipes. “And it is good. Do you want a bowl?”
“I was talking about you, but I wouldn’t turn down a bowl of that.”
She handed him the one she’d just prepared, then reached up for another bowl. He slid up behind her, reaching up as she did. A classic move, Reece thought, as was her easy side step. “I’ve got it. Your mother’s back in her office if you want to see her.”
“I’ll catch her before I head out. Came in to see you.”
“Oh?” She filled the next bowl, sprinkled on the cheese she’d grated for it, the tortilla strips she’d fried. She thought wistfully how much better it would have been with fresh cilantro as she set it on a plate with a hard roll and two pats of butter. Shifting around, she put it in line. “Order up,” she called out, then took the next ticket.
Maybe she could talk Joanie into adding cilantro, and a few other fresh herbs, to the produce order. Some sun-dried tomatoes and arugula. If she could just—
“Hey, where’d you go?” Lo demanded. “Can I come, too?”
“What? Sorry, did you say something?”
He looked a little put out, and surprised with it. She imagined he wasn’t used to having a woman forget he was there. Boss’s son, she reminded herself, and offered a quick smile. “I get caught up when I’m cooking.”
