by BJ James
“Then we’d better do something about getting some nourishment into you while I still have enough supplies to suffice.” Before she could make any move to dismount, he reached for her, his hands clasping her waist, lifting her from the saddle.
“Ty!” She braced a hand on his shoulder as he swung her down. When her feet were firmly on the ground, she didn’t take her hand away. Nor did he. She was oddly breathless and her voice roughened with it. “I’m perfectly capable of getting off a horse.”
“Thanks to Tall Bear?”
“Exactly. I didn’t need your help.”
“I knew that,” Ty answered mildly, aware that her hand slipped from his shoulder to his chest, her palm light and warm over his heart.
“Then why?”
In the distance, Shadow bayed, the domesticated part of him melding with the wild as he ran a small rodent to ground. The rush of sound grew faint, fading to a nuance, and then nothing. The meadow was tranquil again. The sun was warm. The stream danced and chuckled over stones left by leviathan spears of glacial ice thousands upon thousands of years before. An eagle streaked across an endless sky and plummeted from sight.
In a primitive land a man fraught with primitive needs folded his hand over hers, keeping it hard against the thundering beat of his heart, and answered with the simple truth. “Why?” he parroted her question. “Because I wanted to.
“Now.” He moved a step away, but did not release her. “We’d best see to that breakfast.”
“Here?” Bewildered by his mood, not certain what she should make of it, or that she should make anything of it at all, Merrill was grateful for the change in subjects. “Shall I gather wood?”
Her doubtful glance was already ranging over the clearing in search of fallen limbs dry enough to burn, when Ty laughed and drew her with him down a meandering path. “You don’t think I brought you all this way to serve your first real appetite with food smoked by wet wood, do you?”
When she would have asked what else he could intend, considering that he’d packed in no dry tinder, the undergrowth thinned revealing a small shack. Ancient and dilapidated, its splintered wood blackened by age, the old homestead of some long-ago settler seemed to hunker into the land beneath the partial shelter of a mountain ash as aged.
The steps were tilted when they climbed them, the porch lurched and sagged when they crossed it. Yet both were solid underfoot. The door was secured by a small block of wood that spun on the single nail that held it in place. Leather strips served as hinges, swinging silently, neither creaking nor groaning as Ty pushed it open.
The homestead was comprised of a single room, with a tiny sleeping loft tucked overhead. Its floors were smoothly sanded, while the walls were rough sawn boards. In the only departure from the carefully preserved characters, heavy slatted shutters stretched from ceiling to floor and corner to corner. A narrow table that could have been taken directly from a turn of the century Shaker household, stood before it. Banks of cabinets appearing as old marched along the opposite wall, while the back was dominated by a fireplace. A massive fireplace of chinked river stone that should have overwhelmed the small house, but did not. An old, iron stove, rivaling the one in his kitchen, ruled one corner, while wood boxes at each side of the hearth were filled and neatly stacked.
“Ahh,” Merrill said as she moved to the fireplace and the heavy andirons that held a parcel of firewood needing only a match. “You’ve done this before, and keep it ready for the next time.”
Ty drew a match from his pocket, scraped a thumbnail over it, and tossed it in a fiery arc into the maw of the fireplace. Dry wood literally exploded into flames, sending smoke swirling up the chimney in a rush before he answered.
“I stop by for a meal now and then, when time and circumstance coincide.” Taking a metal rod from a hanger embedded in the rounded river stone, he rearranged a shifting log. “It’s a pleasant spot, I enjoy it when I can, and keep a few supplies for the hopeful occasion.”
“This doesn’t serve as a line shack and it isn’t part of the summer package? You don’t bring the guests here for an outing?”
“No.” He set the rod aside and leaned an elbow on the stripped tree trunk that served as a mantel. “Parts of Fini Terre are off limits. The house, the corrals closest to it, and this shack.”
Having lived the congregate military life, Merrill understood the need to keep something private and for oneself. She didn’t consider it selfish or self-centered, but simply a quiet pleasure, or dire necessity. With Tynan O’Hara, she was positive it was a case of quiet pleasure.
For his sister’s sake he’d given her sanctuary and shared his home with a brooding stranger. Now he’d shared this, given her this. A shack on a lonely, isolated stream, but plainly more than a piece of history to him. She wondered why he’d brought her here?
While she pondered, Ty moved from the fire to the shuttered doors folding them back, revealing another group of doors. His task done, he faced her, and with his gallant bow presented a view to rival any on earth. Beyond him, beyond this wall of heavy beveled glass opened a sprawling deck, patio, terrace, Merrill had no idea what it should be called. Beyond that lay a startling panoramic view of a rolling meadow and the stream he’d promised, with hemlock touching the sky in stately spires. A pastoral magnificence to rival any she’d ever seen, any on earth.
“It’s....” she shook her head, she hadn’t the words for this, a gift to sooth the most troubled soul. “I can understand why you stop here when you can.”
“The terrace catches the morning sun.” He grinned. “The midday sun, and the evening sun. With your jacket, you should be warm enough to sit there while I build a fire in old Bessie.” A flick of his wrist introduced the ancient stove. “While she’s heating up, I’ll see to the horses, then breakfast.”
Drawing herself from a trancelike state, she insisted, “I can help.”
“No.” Ty clasped her arms, his hands sliding to the sloping curve of shoulder and nape, splayed fingers carefully kneading the painfully taut muscles they encountered. “You can help best by watching the fire, and the view.”
Merrill knew not to argue, something in his manner warned it would be futile. She simply nodded again, and closing her eyes, gave herself to the bliss of the magic his fingers made.
His laugh was soft, the touch of his lips against her forehead softer, as he released her. “You look like a kitten that only needs the warm sunshine to make her purr. Go.” He turned her from him, pushing her gently toward the terrace. “Sit. Listen to the stream, breathe air like none on earth. I’ll be back before you know it.”
The mouthwatering scent of frying bacon woke her. There was, she decided in her drowsy wisdom, no better complement for the marvelous perfume of an evergreen world. She hadn’t meant to nap, when she found herself drifting had even struggled against it But the cushion she’d found in a small closet off the side of the terrace, and the chaise were too comfortable and she’d fallen like a stone into her first truly restful sleep.
“Good morning...again,” Ty said as he forked bacon from a smoking skillet. Coffee perked on another flat surface of the stove. The table was set, a pitcher of orange juice set on a shelf that served as sideboard.
Merrill stood in the doorway, yawning behind her hand. “Sorry, mountain air, nature’s sleeping pill.”
And pain, and turmoil, and sleep deprivation, Ty added to a mental list “I’m glad you did. Nothing could have given a better stamp of approval for this venture.”
“You’ve been busy.” Merrill watched him, moving competently, surely. As comfortable before the ancient stove as on a horse. When he broke eggs into the pan with a single hand, a feat she’d never mastered, and tossed the shells aside, he was utterly and completely and all the more masculine.
That he was handsome with his Stetson discarded and hanging on a peg, leaving his dark hair falling over his forehead didn’t escape her either. More than handsome, an undeniable fact of which she was increasingly aware
, one she couldn’t risk dwelling on. Casting about for some distracting chore, she found nothing.
“Did you leave anything for me to do?” She strove to put a teasing plaintive note in the complaint.
“Sure,” he retorted cheerfully. “The most important part.”
“What would that be?” She asked, though she knew the answer.
“This.” He guided her to a chair. Drawing it out, with the slightest pressure he seated her and returned to the stove to take a pan of biscuits from the warming closet at its top.
The terrace doors were thrown open, giving the effect of bringing the meadow and all it embraced to her. Rivaled by nothing, not even a painting.
Perhaps it was a vista to take her breath away, but the aroma of the foods he had prepared were more than any match for it. The appetite she thought sleep had stolen from her returned with ravenous might.
A plate appeared before her. Bacon, eggs. “Grits?” Leaning back in her chair, she looked up at him. “I haven’t seen grits in years.”
“My mom sends them. A distinctively Southern taste, I hope you like them.” He was setting the biscuits and a jar of what was obviously homemade jam at her elbow. “And, before you ask, my culinary skill and patience don’t extend to making jam. A neighbor dropped these by a few weeks ago.”
“A neighbor,” she drawled, remembering he had said the closest was forty miles away. “Just dropping by.”
“Cora Franklin, just dropping by,” he agreed and didn’t explain that the forty was diminished considerably when cutting cross country. Rugged country that those who live in Montana had come to accept as part of everyday existence. “The jam was part of a care package her aunt sends regularly from Alabama. A very genteel, Southern lady, who considers Montana the jumping-off place. Or to translate, the end of the world. Wouldn’t surprise me if Matilda thinks the Indians still go on the warpath, gathering the scalps of every white man who crosses their path.”
“Matilda?”
“Matilda Prescott, ninety-two-year-old maiden lady, daughter of Jacob Prescott, founding father of Prescott, Alabama. She isn’t quite clear on her history anymore, but she knows her way around a kitchen.”
Ty worked as he spoke, setting a cup of steaming coffee before her, then uncorking a bottle of champagne. In a whisk of his wrist, the foaming brew was contained and poured along with the orange juice, into two stemmed balloon glasses.
“Mimosas in crystal? Here? Now?” Merrill blurted in surprise.
Cocking a wicked brow at her, Ty drawled, “You know a better place? A better time?”
Merrill considered, but only for the space of a glance at the land beyond the shack. “No better place on earth,” she decided. “No better time.”
“My sentiments, exactly. A celebration of your first time to really be a part of the country. And,” he set the glass by chipped and mismatched crockery with a flourish befitting the finest table, “considering the hour, and that this is now more brunch than breakfast, it really isn’t so sinful, is it?”
“Sinful?” Merrill lifted the mimosa from the table, savoring the feel of fine crystal as she drew another deep breath laden with the cleansing scents of Montana. Pleasures enhanced by the magic Ty had wrought. “The only thing that’s sinful, is what a glutton I’m going to be.”
Taking up his own glass, Ty touched it to hers. The belllike ring of it seemed to fill the air. “I’ll drink to that.”
Glass in hand, Merrill strolled across the terrace. An addition obviously, but of wood as aged and rough as the shack itself. Ty had explained the material for it had come from a barn at the back. He was quite evidently as accomplished at demolition and construction as cooking.
“You did all of this?”
“Most of the work consisted of simple repair.” Ty sat on the steps, watching as she glided back and forth. The sun was at its meridian, the snow only a memory, yet a definite harbinger of days to come. But for now the temperature was pleasant. The jacket she’d abandoned at breakfast still hung alongside his from a peg by the door. “All I did was use materials that were available.”
“In keeping with the rest of the house,” she observed. “Preserving its historic identity is important to you, isn’t it? Everything about this place is important.”
“It’s a favorite, and what could be prettier than this?”
Merrill sat beside him on the step, her hand cradling her glass. “When you come here, it isn’t always like this.” She lifted the glass, letting the sun reflect in rainbows from it. As the shack should have been overwhelmed by the fireplace, the flawless crystal should have been a ridiculous mismatch and sorely out of place on the stark table with battered crockery. But it hadn’t. It all seemed delightfully in keeping with her host and Montana.
A man and land of intriguing contrasts.
“When I come here, the fare is usually whatever is in my saddlebag. I don’t bring in a packhorse, and I’ve never shared a mimosa on the terrace with a beautiful woman before.”
Merrill blushed, something she thought she was long past. The pallor giving way to the wave of color, made her even more alluring in Ty’s sight.
Tapping the rim of the glass, she listened again to the musical tone. Like the provisions, she knew these had been carefully wrapped and packed in for her pleasure. “Thank you for the compliment. For the day.” A gesture encompassed the meadow, the stream, the stalwart hemlocks and the stark mountain rising against the horizon. “And thank you for this.”
“My pleasure.” Ty said no more, for a time they sat companionably in silence, listening to the stream, the rustle of the trees. He was first to speak. “If John Muir was right, if the ponderosa pine ‘gives forth the finest music to the winds,’ can the hemlock and red cedar be far behind?”
Merrill listened, there was music, in the trees, in the stream, in small breezes that played across the meadow. The day, itself, was music. “Tell me how this happened. How can there be snow, and then this?”
Ty hesitated, gathering his thoughts, then began. “Snow one day, moderate conditions the next. Confusing, to the say the least.”
“The very least.”
“It won’t be when you stop to realize that when weather is concerned, Montana has a personality.” At her look of askance, he smiled. “A split personality to be specific.”
“Split personality.”
“That’s right.”
“Which you are going to explain.” She wasn’t giving him the choice.
“Naturally.”
He was silent again, gathering his thoughts. “It’s simple really.”
“It is?”
“All one needs to define Montana, is to understand it.” As he had the wineglass the night before, with a flick of his wrist he turned the mimosa in his hand. “Most flatlanders and outsiders envision arctic weather when judging Montana. There are times it can be true. East of Glacier the winds do come out of the Arctic. Sometimes with as much force as a hundred miles an hour. Temperatures can vary in a twenty-four-hour period as much as a hundred degrees.
“Fini Terre is west of Glacier. The climate is milder, steadier, dominated by the weather patterns of the Pacific. There are winds. Yet little more than breezes when compared to the east. With the Pacific influence our weather changes by the day, the hour, the minute. Temperatures vary as rapidly, without the deadly extreme.”
“Last night and today are examples of those extremes?” Merrill had listened raptly, hardly moving.
Ty set his glass aside and folded his hands over his knee. “Part and parcel. The time may come when we dig down to find the latch, but in relative terms, the conditions will be mild.”
“Relative terms.”
“It will be cold, Merrill. There will be snow. Predator and prey alike will migrate. The eagle will begin in October. Others later, some, like the mountain goat, not at all. But whatever winter brings, we will survive, I give you my word.”
“With no more rides or days like this.”
; “Maybe, maybe not. The shack is never closed for winter.”
“Why do you keep it as you have? And why private?” Merrill questioned abruptly, hardly aware that she’d asked, or needed specifics.
“Look around you, imagine children here. Can you think of a more perfect hideaway? When we were young, my brothers and sisters and I always had a place that was ours. Only ours.”
Merrill looked around as he said, but could only imagine what it would be like to be a child, to have a place that was hers and hers alone. There had been no such luxury in her family. Her father had controlled everything and everyone. “You would like to have children?”
“Maybe. Someday.”
“They would be fortunate.”
Ty said nothing at first, remembering his own ebullient family. The fun, the daring adventure, the devotion. “I hope so, when or if my life comes to that.”
Rousing from his reverie, he caught a flyaway curl between thumb and forefinger, tugging at it playfully, “If this is a game of twenty questions, I have one for you.”
“One?” Merrill leaned away from him, aware that she missed the comforting brush of his arm against hers. “Only one?”
“For now.”
“That means you reserve the right to ask more later.”
“When the time comes.”
Merrill was discovering his laconic replies could be maddening. “What time would that be?”
“Who knows?” Heavy shoulders shrugged beneath faded denim. Beyond the hillside, Shadow barked and yipped, closer now, his far ranging run finished. “We take each day as it comes, and learn what it allows.”
“Today you would learn more about me.” She kept her voice calm, her tone level. She owed him this, yet it frightened her to give anyone carte blanche. Even one as kind as Ty. “If there’s something you need to know,” her voice wobbled then, betraying her, “ask away.”
