by BJ James
Five
The door banged at Ty’s back as he stamped into the kitchen and tossed his hat and then his jacket aside. Traces of snow that had fallen in the night still clung to toes and heels, and the edge of his jeans. Dusting it away, he straightened, ruffled a stubborn flake or two from the ends of his hair as it curled over his shirt, then drew a long grateful breath.
The kitchen was a maze of intriguing fragrances. Freshly baked loaves of bread cooled on a rack by the stove. Beside them sat an apple pie made from dried fruit sent from Alabama by Matilda Prescott, then shared by Cora Franklin. From a pot simmering on a burner wafted scents of lemon, exotic spices and tea. An exquisite feast for the senses.
A mug waited within reach. Merrill’s anticipation that he would need something to quell the chilled numbness left by the cold.
“You’ve died and gone to heaven, O’Hara,” he murmured. “What else could feel and smell like this.”
Kicking his boots aside, and pouring the fragrant tea all in one motion, he padded in stocking feet to the great room. Leaning against the doorjamb, as the heat of the fire reached out to him and the tea worked its magic, he watched the source of this pleasant welcome.
She sat before the fire, slippered feet just touching the floor, a box on the sofa beside her, notebook and papers in hand. Her head was bent, her attention focused on some painstaking task. There was quiet purpose in what she did, and concentration so absolute she was completely unaware that he watched. Or that Shadow raised his head from her foot in silent greeting.
Absently she reached for her own mug, missing on the first try when she didn’t look up from her work. More successful the second time, she brought it nearly to her lips, paused, looked to her left at a stack of paper, then swiftly to her right at another. In a sudden quickening of interest, or the rush of a thought, the tea was left forgotten and untasted, and the mug set aside. Drawing a pencil from the ribbon that held a disheveled topknot, she scribbled on a pad, tapped the pen against her cheek, then scribbled again.
The pattern was repeated twice more, each of these times with the tea not put aside and forgotten. On the third, she paused in mid scribble. For an endless instant she didn’t move. Then, her breasts rising in a breath deeply drawn and slowly released, without turning, she murmured, “You smell of fresh air.”
“Do I?” His voice was husky from the chill, from the constant singsong chant his horse liked. From things he wasn’t ready to deal with.
Her head tilted down a degree. A tiny nod. “And horses, and leather, and woodsmoke.”
And an underlying scent that was his alone, clean and woodsy, and more seductive than any perfumer could create.
“I made a fire for a short break down by the lower meadow.” He explained the woodsmoke that would cling stubbornly to him until he washed it away.
There was a frisson of alarm in her, betrayed only by the thread of it in her voice. “You were in the lower meadow?”
“For a while.” He heard the concern and cursed himself for causing it. “I’m here now.”
“Yes,” she said simply, the moment of tension easing. Laying aside the pad and the pen, she turned to him, at last, her face alight. A look he waited for each day.
“Ty.” There was genuine pleasure in her voice, as the sight of him and the sound of his name in the stillness lifted her heart. “You’re early.”
“Only a little.” In the background soft music played. Romantic classics, Jamie McLachlan and his piano, at his best, reproduced in compact disc. The perfect accompaniment for the warmth and balm of homecoming. Perfect for this vision of her.
“I didn’t hear you come in.” Her look moved over him, noting the glitter of melted snow clinging to the tips of his hair, the darkening of chilled flesh drawn taut over craggy cheekbones making his eyes, and their hidden thoughts, that much more intriguing. “How...” Hesitating, refusing to ponder the nature of those thoughts, she regrouped, gathering her scattered wits. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Long enough.”
“How long is that?” Her eyes were brighter, her cheeks more flushed.
“Long enough to see that you’re quite engrossed in what you’re doing. A herd of buffalo could stampede through here and you wouldn’t have noticed,” he drawled as he pushed away from the door and crossed to the fire. Bracing one arm on the mantel, he nodded toward the box and the neat stacks. “What have you found that’s so interesting?”
She glanced down at her work, the color of her cheeks deepening, growing more lovely. “These.” Gathering up a handful, she showed him what had prompted the sparkle of excitement. “They were in the cabinet by your music collection. Photographs, hundreds of them. So arresting, so...so...” Defeated, she abandoned her search for the perfect word. “I couldn’t not look at them.”
Shuffling through a stack, drawing out one that pleased her most particularly, she held it up for his inspection. “These are yours, aren’t they? You took them.”
There was no mistaking the old box, nor its contents. “They’re mine.” Setting his tea on the mantel, he took the photograph from her, identified it and returned it. “This is one of many taken over the years.
“My father has a passing interest in photography.” He almost laughed aloud at the understatement. There was very little that didn’t interest Keegan O’Hara And any interest, passing or not, was only a step below obsession. “When the five of us were small and traveling the world, he encouraged us to record and remember what we saw.”
“With cameras.”
“Can you imagine it? Five little O’Haras dashing about, cameras in hand, out to see and conquer the world. At mother’s suggestion some of us kept journals or diaries of our travels. One didn’t.”
“Not Devlin’s style?” she ventured, gleaning the assumption from Valentina’s family descriptions. She couldn’t conceive of the family’s boldest venturer keeping either.
“Hardly. He’d rather climb a mountain of ice, or surf with sharks. In fact, he’d rather do most anything, than keep a journal. He was terrific with a camera, though.” Chuckling he added, “Kieran compromised by keeping his in lists on whatever scraps of paper were handy. We were always finding them strewn over the house, the maison, the casa, or whatever our lodgings were called, in whatever country.
“My favorite was at our home base on the Chesapeake. It read something like this—‘saw a bird, patched a sail, slayed a dragon, kissed a girl, I think I liked it. No, I’m sure I liked it.’”
“And I’m sure he was a while living that one down,” Merrill suggested, amused.
“There was more. With Kieran,” Ty explained, “there was always more. Lists within lists, detailed description and explanations. This time they were of the bird, in a running column. A discourse and analysis of wind currents, their effect on sailing, in a running column. An explanation that the lizard frightened the girl and made her cry. How he caught it and put it in his pocket to release somewhere else.”
There was laughter in the look that met hers. “Do I have to tell you the girl, the kiss, and why a twelve-year-old would like it received the same descriptive attention as the bird and the wind?”
Her smile grew wistful as she imagined the wonder and delight of a young boy, his voice just sliding into bass, analyzing his first kiss. “In running columns, no doubt.”
“Exactly.” Ty smiled as well. “The last got a bit graphic for Mother. Body responses and such, down to the last increment. But she never said a word.”
“And your dad?”
“Keegan O’Hara was never one to squelch literary ingenuity, of any sort. His one suggestion was that, in deference to the tender ages of our sisters, Kieran should be a tad more careful with such lists in the future.”
“Keegan O’Hara, diplomat, scholar, and a gentleman.”
Ty took up his tea, sipped, and set it aside again. “Heart and soul.”
“Was it his influence that led you to make Fini Terre into what it is?�
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“In that his influence made me what and who I am, yes. In that he is, in part, responsible for the skills I took into the world, yes. Beyond that...” Pausing he turned to the windows, to the mountains rising like gleaming towers to touch the horizon. “Beyond that, what you see, is my responsibility, my choice. Foibles and merits, alike, rest precisely at my door ”
“You must admit, given the country, what you do at Fini Terre is an unusual concept.” She chose another photograph to make her point.
“Unusual in that it isn’t geared for hunters?” He barely noticed her nod. “I tried that for a year or so. Then I realized that I was perpetuating the things I most wanted to leave behind. From there it wasn’t a stretch to think that there were others out there like me. People who want to hunt with something other than bullets. Who wanted to experience the land, but would leave the wildlife as they found it.”
“You tailored Fini Terre to meet a need.” A stack of photographs threatened to topple over. Catching it, she restacked it neatly. “Along the way, returning to the camera yourself.”
Ty shrugged, straining the supple flannel of his work shirt. “The summer people get a kick out of seeing a cowboy behind a camera. They figure that for the most part we’re on the front end.”
“What I see here is more than a cowboy entertaining summer people,” she declared, tapping a stack. “I’m far from an expert, but I know when something is well done. When it’s startling and memorable.”
“They were never meant to be taken seriously. Just part of the fun.”
“The end product of fun, in this case, is marvelous. You turn your guest’s photos into books. A private printing as a lasting memento. But have you ever considered doing the same with your own? Putting them in order, a flowing sequence, writing a caption for each. Something that prompted you to take the picture. What you feel when you look at it.”
She hadn’t asked who wrote the most interesting journal of the O’Haras’s travels. Or which had a way with words. There was no need. Her gaze settled on Ty, seeing a boy only a little younger than his two brothers, only a little older than his sisters. A boy with a way with the camera as well as words. “There’s a book here, and you could find a publisher, I’m sure of it.”
Tossing a picture back to the box, he said succinctly, “There isn’t a book here, Santiago. Not one for the public market, but thanks for the confidence.”
“Are you angry that I dragged them out? Am I poking my nose where it shouldn’t go?” She couldn’t think of a reason, but it occurred to her that he might not want her to see them. “Have I intruded again?”
Going to sit by her side on the sofa, he took her hands in his, as he might a troubled child. “You haven’t intruded and I’m not angry. You aren’t poking your nose where it shouldn’t go. Drag the box any damn place you wish. If I cared that you would see them, if they were some great dark secret, they would have been under lock and key.”
“Then do you mind if I put them in order, into a scrapbook. Something your summer people might enjoy.” She tried to be casual, but failed mightily. “It would be something to amuse myself with while I’m cooped up here.”
“Something instead of baking bread and pies, and making tea?” Yesterday it was Bear Sign, the doughnut-like sweet every cowboy loved. The day before, chili, the likes of which he’d never enjoyed. The day before that, the barn had been cleaned. He’d asked her to stay close while there were real bear signs about the range. No taxing chore when the weather was mean and nasty. But in these mellow days of the mildest Montana winter in history, a real cause for going stir crazy.
“A change of pace,” she said. “To pass the time in the afternoons and evenings.”
Her words were innocent, the sting of guilt they elicited unintentional. Yet they went straight to his conscience. He’d tried to convince himself that it was for the book that he shut himself away from her. That it was going so well that he spent his late afternoons and evenings slaving over a red hot computer. But if he were truthful, which in the end was the only way he knew to be, the book was an excuse. A way of not dealing with Merrill and the desires and passions she stirred in him. He wondered if this flurry of cooking and cleaning, was her panacea for a troublesome libido as well.
God help him, the aching hunger was his constant companion. He had only to look at her, or hear her voice, or feel the brush of her hand against his, and it was there. The need, the longing. A thirst only she could quench. It was in him now, like a demon, a sweet demon, driving him mad.
“Make what you like of the photos,” he heard himself say in a voice unlike his own. “But for now, put them aside. I have something to show you.”
At her look of askance, in a sudden rush of impatience, he took the pad and pen from her and pitched it aside. “Are you up to cross-country skiing.”
“I beg your pardon?” She was looking at him as if he’d lost his mind, and he wasn’t certain that he hadn’t.
“Cross country skiing,” he repeated each word with exaggerated care. “Can you?”
“Of course.” She was puzzled at the mercuric change in him. “But why?”
“Because I have something to show you.” Relenting in his strange mood, he admitted a truth he hadn’t faced until now. “Because it’s a good day for it, and the reason I came home early.”
“You want to go skiing?” She was having difficulty with this about-face in a man normally as steady as Ty. “What about the bear?”
“There’s been no sign of him for a week. He’s moved on, or returned to sleep.” As he stood, he took her with him. When she swayed against him, unbalanced by the suddenness of his move, the easiest thing to do was to put his arms around her, to hold her. The hardest was to let her go. “Easy there,” he muttered as he set her from him. “Are you okay?”
“I’m...” The assurance she intended never reached her mind or her lips as her look collided with his. The fierceness in his stare was startling, stealing rational thought away. A demon rode his shoulder, one that sent him ranging the land until it was time to lock himself away in his lair. A demon they both must face one day. One day soon.
Unsettled by the notion, by his touch, unable to face the fury building like a storm in him, she looked away. “I’m fine.”
Ty nodded curtly. “We’ll leave when you’re ready.” He took a step back, putting the safety of distance between them. “Shadow can’t go this time. I’ll see to the fire and the stove, then take him to the barn. Remember to dress warmly. When you’ve finished, I’ll be waiting outside.”
Merrill stared after him long after he’d whistled for the wolf, long after the door closed behind them. “One day,” she whispered, as certain the time would come as she was of the next beat of her heart.
Hurrying then to her room, taking down her hair as she went, she dressed for an afternoon in the snow. When she’d finished, combed and groomed and wisely dressed, she found herself lingering by the window, moving the shutter aside. Shadow was nowhere in sight, but Ty was there by the corral, attending a final chore. She watched him in this rare unguarded moment, desire such as she’d seen in him shivering deep inside her.
“One day,” she spoke her conviction softly. “One day soon.”
The shutter clattered against the wall as she turned from it, hurrying to the day at hand.
“They’re magnificent. I’ve never seen anything more beautiful.”
Ty laughed softly at her whispered wonder. “A buffalo is beautiful?” He shook his head as if despairing of her judgment. “Remind me not to be too flattered by any compliment you might give me.”
He was only teasing, for they were beautiful, these massive creatures that once roamed the plains in herds so great they were days in passing.
“You don’t fool me, Tynan O’Hara,” Merrill retorted from her perch in the cluster of rocks high above the meadow where the buffalo grazed. They were the reason Shadow had been denied a run. Ty hadn’t wanted the risk of spooking the small herd before
she saw them. “You wouldn’t have brought me here, it wouldn’t even have occurred to you, if you didn’t think they were beautiful too.”
“Guilty as charged.” Easing from one stone to another, careful not to startle the herd, he moved closer to her. Even with the snow, the day was mild. But still cold enough that they should move on soon. Yet he was loath to hurry her as she watched in fascination.
“Look!” She clutched his sleeve, capturing an attention she already commanded. “He’s scraping the snow away.”
The bull stood with his nose buried in the snow, his great head tossing from side to side, until a patch of grass showed pale green. “He’ll do that until he’s grazed his fill,” Ty told her. “If they haven’t moved on by tomorrow, I’ll bring down some hay.”
“Move on? Where would they move to? For that matter, where did they come from?”
“The Triple C. Carl and Catherine Carlsen keep them pastured in the spring and summer. But since the mountains form a natural basin those of us here give them free range of our unfenced pastures in winter. We keep an eye out for them and notify the Carlsens where they are.” Reluctant as he was to take her away, it was time they pushed on.
The buffalo were only part of his afternoon agenda. “The Triple C will be our next stop, if you’re up to more skiing.”
“The Carlsens, another of your nearest neighbors?”
“Right.”
The look she turned on him was filled with pure horror. “Forty miles away.”
“That’s by the roads.” She wore a knit cap that left only her face exposed, he tugged it lower over her forehead. “We go as the crow flies.”
She looked at him dubiously, through narrowed eyes. “How far does the crow fly?”
“Five more miles. All of it downhill.”
“Of course, that makes sense,” she commented dryly. “Forty by the road, five by snow.”
With two fingers he tilted her chin. “What’s the matter, Santiago? Don’t you trust me?”
In a flash the tension between them returned. Both knew his question had little to do with roads or crows flying. Both knew her answer would set the path they would inevitably take.
