by Lisa Jackson
CHAPTER SIX
“DAMN THAT WOMAN,” Travis said, shoving one hand through his already-rumpled hair. “Why can’t she make up her mind?” Then as if suddenly realizing he had an audience, he shook his head. “She’s going to marry Jean Pierre?”
“What’s it to you?” Bryan wondered.
“Nothing. Nothing. She can marry whomever she pleases, but when it affects you, then I care.”
Bryan’s fingers clenched nervously over the smooth metal of his crutches. “Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.”
“You want to live with your mother?” Travis demanded, pinning his son with a gaze that would make a grown man shudder. “In Paris?”
With the aid of his crutches, Bryan stood his ground and elevated his chin. “Don’t know.”
“You don’t even speak the language.”
“Couldn’t be much worse than here,” the boy said, his eyes slitting in anger. “You won’t even let me go up and see my friends, so what does it matter if I live in Podunk, Oregon, or Paris, France?”
“I told you Martin could come visit.”
“That’s not what I asked for, though, was it?” Bryan threw a scathing look around the room and started for the door. “Mom said to call her tomorrow and let her know what I want to do.”
“She wasn’t going to talk to me?”
“She’s ticked at you,” Bryan yelled over his shoulder.
“Why?”
“Because of these.” He lifted one crutch. “She thinks that if you were keeping better track of me, I wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”
Travis’s neck burned red with rage but he didn’t answer, and Ronni, feeling like an outsider, said, “Maybe Amy and I should come back another time.”
“No!” Travis was vehement. “Bryan, we’ll talk about this later, okay?” When the boy didn’t reply, Travis repeated, “Okay?”
“Yeah. Fine. Okay,” he agreed, obviously none too pleased as he managed his way across the room to stand at the tall windows and stare outside at the serene waters of the lake. His shoulders were slumped and Ronni’s heart went out to the boy. Though both parents loved him, he was obviously torn and missed his mother. The rebellion he aimed so pointedly at his father was in direct response to Travis’s authority, though Bryan probably didn’t realize it.
“Okay, so what now?” He motioned to the boxes and sacks and Ronni tried to turn her attention away from Sylvia—the mystery woman who lived half a world away from her son and ex-husband—to tackle the job at hand, a job she now wished she hadn’t started. She and Amy didn’t belong here in this tense room, intruding on a family with problems they needed to solve between themselves.
“I thought you didn’t have a tree, from what you’d said at the ski lodge, but I didn’t pick one out for you.” She began unpacking the sacks and boxes. “I think choosing the tree is a personal decision.”
“Who cares?” Bryan said from the corner of his mouth. “It’s just a stupid tree.”
“It’s not stupid!” Amy planted her little fists on her hips.
“Of course it’s not,” Travis said. “Bryan—”
“So let’s go down to the lot,” Ronni cut in, trying to forestall an argument that seemed ready to explode again between father and son. “I told Vic we’d stop by, so he’s expecting us.”
“Can’t I just stay here?” Bryan complained. “It’s such a hassle with the crutches and everyone stares at me.”
Travis looked about to disagree, but didn’t. “Yeah, fine. Whatever,” he said.
She saw the father, frustration etched across his features, and the son, a look of defiance across his, and her heart went out to them both.
* * *
They drove into town in Travis’s Jeep. Cascadia was deep in the throes of Christmas. Nativity scenes were on display at both churches, lighted candy canes were supported by lampposts and the D & E Christmas Tree Lot was doing a banner business. Cars and trucks were wedged into the few parking spaces surrounding the rows of trees. Colored lights, suspended around the perimeter of the lot, bounced in the wind, and the smell of fresh-cut cedar and pine mingled with the tantalizing scents of coffee and cinnamon. Everyone who walked onto the lot was given a free cup of coffee or spiced cider and entire families strolled through the rows of newly-hewn trees while sipping from paper cups.
Vic, in his plaid jacket and hunter’s cap, was ready to haul the chosen tree, chop off any unwanted branches and bind it to a car, or offer advice to potential customers. He was a big, rugged man, blond and blue-eyed, evidence of his Danish ancestry. He’d been raised in Molalla, a small logging community in the foothills of the mountains, and had moved to Cascadia when he was in high school. He’d worked in the sawmill from the time he was seventeen until recently when the local mill had shut down and he’d been forced to look for another means to support his family. Reduced to scavenging for odd jobs, his once-carefree face had begun to line and weather, his honey-gold hair showed strands of gray.
“Ronni!” He spied her and clapped her on the back. “I was beginning to think that you’d stood me up.”
“No way.”
Amy scampered through the trees and Vic caught her, spinning her off her feet. “How’s my favorite niece?” he said and she giggled. It didn’t matter to her that he had no other nieces, Victor Pederson was the only father figure she’d ever known. He plopped her back to the ground and said, “I think I’ve got just the animal you want.”
“A Christmas tree isn’t an animal!” Amy said, giggling again.
“Isn’t it? Well, I guess you’re right.” After quick introductions, Vic showed them a fourteen-foot noble fir, so large it was propped against the side of the next building—a vacant warehouse. “If you want this one, I’ll tie it to the back of the pickup and bring it over,” he offered. “No delivery charge.”
Travis gave a curt nod. “Can’t beat a deal like that. How about a stand? You sell ’em?”
“Absolutely!” Vic said. “Over here.” In a lean-to tent he showed a couple of different styles of tree stands that could support a large tree. Within minutes, the decision was made and the men shook hands. “I’m off in half an hour. I’ll bring tree, stand, the whole ball of wax, over to the Johnson place then.”
“Can I ride with you?” Amy asked, clinging to her uncle and showing him her dimples.
Victor was easy. “You bet, pumpkin. If it’s okay with your ma.”
Ronni wasn’t convinced. Amy, if the mood struck her, could be more than a handful and Victor was already busy. “You sure you want her?”
“Heck, yes, I’m sure. When do I ever get a little girl to spoil?”
“All right,” Ronni said, caving in to her daughter’s wishes yet again. “But Amy, you be good, do just what Uncle Vic says.”
“I will,” she called brightly as she dashed off through the rows of trees propped against lines of sawhorses.
“She’ll probably get you fired,” Ronni said worriedly.
“Not a chance. Delmer and Edwin think I’m the god of Christmas-tree sales.” Laughing, he adjusted the brim of his hunting hat. “Now, don’t worry about Amy-gal. She and I will get along just fine.”
Ronni believed him and secretly prayed that Shelly’s unborn baby was a little girl for Vic to spoil and love. Travis paid for the tree and shook Victor’s hand once more. He helped Ronni into the Jeep, then climbed behind the wheel.
“Seems like a nice guy.”
“Vic? Yeah, he is,” she agreed as the Jeep lunged forward, rocking over potholes in the old, cracked pavement. She tried not to think about the fact that she was alone with Travis, or that his knee was only inches from hers and his hand on the gearshift knob was near enough that his fingers could easily graze her thigh. She shifted slightly, huddling closer to the passenger door even though she told herself
she wasn’t intimidated, that just because he was more purely animal male than she’d been around in a long time, she had no reason for the nest of butterflies that seemed to roll and flutter in her stomach.
The silence stretched between them and she blocked her mind to his scent, a mixture of soap and leather, and refused to notice the way his lips compressed in a sexy, blade-thin line. She didn’t want to be reminded of how starkly male he was. He was a complicated man, she decided, and right now she didn’t need or want any complications in her life.
“What do you do when you’re not rescuing idiots who get lost on the mountain?” he asked, shifting down to take a corner as the streetlight changed from green to amber. They passed the old theater building, built like a World War II Quonset hut and now boarded over. “You have some kind of shop on your property, don’t you?”
“It’s a warehouse, really. A few years ago, I started advertising in some magazines about items unique to Oregon—items I sold through mail order. I got a handful of orders, found some new inventory, advertised again and each year I sold a little more.”
“More what?”
A service station, its lights dimmed for the night, flashed by and then they were on the outskirts of town where the once-thriving sawmill was now shut down. The gates of the fence were chained and padlocked shut and a single tall security lamp gave off an eerie blue glow. Her brother-in-law had spent most of his adult life working at this very mill and now it seemed, with the restrictions on old-growth timber, environmental concerns and forest depletion, the sawmill would never reopen. And Victor would take Shelly and the boys and move away.
She realized then that Travis was waiting for an answer. “Oh. What do I sell?” she said, shaking away her case of melancholy. “A little of this and that, odds and ends that I think are difficult to find anywhere else. Myrtle wood, that’s big here and hard to get in other places. And specialty jams and jellies made from native fruits. Books on Oregon. Some Native American art—mainly from Northwest tribes, jewelry, handcrafted pieces, even chain-saw sculpture and kits for tying fishing flies indigenous to Oregon. It’s all kind of a hodgepodge. Some of the Christmas decorations I brought over are last year’s stock.”
“Sounds like a big operation.”
“Bigger by the year. I hired my sister to do the secretarial stuff and handle some of the orders and when it really gets busy, I call a temporary agency in Portland. It’s not a huge operation by any means, but it’s grown so that I make enough money to support myself and Amy without having to worry too much.”
“But you’re still part of the ski patrol and search-and-rescue team?” The town had given way to the forest and only a few lights from hidden cabins sparkled warmly through the thick stands of fir and hemlock.
“Have been for a long time,” she admitted, looking out the window and touching the fogging glass with a finger. She wondered how much she should tell him, or if she should bother explaining at all.
“You must love it.”
Sighing, she glanced over to him and his gaze touched hers for just an instant. Even though she knew little about him, she sensed that he was trustworthy, a man who cared. “My husband, Hank, was killed on Mount Echo nearly four years ago—a few months after Amy was born.”
His jaw tightened. “I didn’t know.”
A pang of the same old sadness stole into her heart and she felt as if the temperature in the Jeep had dropped twenty degrees.
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, God, so am I,” she admitted. “So am I.” She focused past the front end of the car and the dual splashes of light offered by the headlights. “He and a partner, Rick, were up on the ridge, setting off charges to make the mountain avalanche-safe before the runs were opened. But something went wrong. A charge went off early, though no one can tell me why. Hank and Rick tried to outrace the snow but Hank’s bindings failed. It didn’t really matter anyway; Hank and Rick were both killed, buried in the snow.” She shuddered at the thought.
“I’m sorry,” he said as if he meant it.
“It’s not your fault.”
He wheeled into the long tree-lined driveway of the old lodge. “It sounds like it was no one’s fault, that it was a freak accident.”
“Maybe.” She closed her eyes a second, trying to dispel the horrid image of Hank, her beloved Hank, caught in the rage and terror of thousands of pounds of snow.
“There’s something else,” he said as if reading her mind. They passed through the open gate to the lodge. Snow was beginning to fall again, sticking to the windshield before melting. Through the trees, from the windows of the lodge, soft, golden patches of light welcomed them.
“Hank shouldn’t have died that day,” she said, her throat closing.
“Of course he shouldn’t have.”
“No, you don’t understand,” she said, feeling that painful gnawing in her insides, that raw scraping of guilt. “I mean, he wasn’t supposed to be on duty that morning.” She rubbed a drop of condensation from the window as he parked in front of a dilapidated garage. Swallowing hard, she said, “It was my shift. I was the one that was supposed to be up there that day.”
She felt rather than saw him move, and when his hand reached forward and his finger hooked beneath her jaw, she didn’t fight him, just turned her head to look into dark, caring eyes. “You’ve been blaming yourself,” he said, shaking his head, his breath whispering across her face.
“No, not just myself. I spread the blame around.”
“But deep inside, you think you were at fault.”
“Yes.”
“And do you also think you should have been the one to die?”
She nodded, feeling the heat of his curled finger on the soft skin near her chin.
“You can’t beat yourself up over an accident you couldn’t have prevented.” Travis stared at her long and hard. “I didn’t know your husband, but I’m willing to bet that he wouldn’t have traded places with you.”
Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried not to think of Hank or the pain.
“Let it go,” Travis advised, and when she opened her eyes, his face was nearly touching hers and the fog clouding the inside glass of the idling Jeep seemed to cut them off from the rest of the world. His fingers slid around her neck to her nape and with just a little pressure, he drew her close. “It’s over, Ronni.” His eyes searched her face. “He’s gone and he wouldn’t have wanted you to shroud yourself in guilt and grief forever.”
His words were a soft balm on her old scarred wounds. “What do you know about it?” she asked, her voice hoarse.
But he didn’t answer. Instead, his lips brushed over hers in a feathery kiss that brought goose bumps to her skin and an ache to her heart. She didn’t want him to kiss her, or so she told herself, but she was unable to resist the sweet, delicious pressure of his mouth when it found hers again. Her breath was lost somewhere deep in her lungs and her heart was knocking wildly against her ribs.
She should stop, she should break away, but when his arms surrounded her, she felt her body yield and soften against him and she sighed willingly, opening her mouth against the touch of his tongue.
How long had it been? Years. Since Hank. Tears were hot against the back of her eyes and her throat clogged.
When he lifted his head, he brushed a strand of hair off her cheek. He looked about to say something, seemed to think better of it and switched off the ignition.
Ronni’s fingers scrambled for the door handle. She needed to put some distance between herself and this man. “I, uh, think we’d better go inside. Vic will be here with the tree soon.”
Travis stared at her a second, then pocketed his keys. “Right.”
Opening the passenger door, she slid to the ground and silently called herself a fool. What had come over her? She hadn’t kissed a man since Hank, never once wanted
another man to get close, and yet in the Jeep, she’d felt the old stirring of lust and longing that she thought she’d buried along with her husband.
He caught up with her at the porch and his fingers curved over the crook in her arm. “Ronni—”
“What?” She turned and his arms wrapped around her. As she gasped, he kissed her again, this time with more urgency, his lips hard and strong, hers soft and pliant. Her pulse thundered and her legs seemed to turn to liquid.
His tongue slid into her open mouth and she felt a thrill of anticipation spread through her bloodstream, warming her from the inside out, creating a hunger she’d thought she would never again experience. With a groan, he leaned closer, the kiss deepened and his hands tangled in her hair. “Ronni,” he whispered hoarsely when he finally lifted his head.
He tucked her against him and she felt the strength of his arms surrounding her, the tickle of his breath as it swept over her crown. Her heart was pounding like a jackhammer.
“I—I can’t get involved with anyone,” she said, cringing at the breathy tone of her voice.
“Me neither.” Tipping her chin with one hand, he stared into her eyes. “But if I could…”
“Don’t even think about it, Keegan,” she teased, even though her own thoughts were racing ahead to what it would feel like to make love to him, to sleep in his bed, to wrap her arms around him and wake up in the morning smelling his scent. She bit down on her lip at the wayward turn of her mind. She was a woman who had no interest in a relationship, a person who had pledged her life to her child, someone who had tried to defy gender by being both mother and father to Amy.
“You can’t blame yourself forever,” he said.
“Why not?”
“And you can’t go on punishing yourself.”
“I don’t!” she snapped. She was too sane, had her feet planted too firmly on the ground to fall into the trap. Or did she? “So who do you think you are? Sigmund Freud?”
