by Vella Munn
“What are my feelings?” she whispered as her breath mingled with Chas’s.
“The same as April’s. No different. They’re no different.”
He was gone. Michon stood, still swaying, aching from the loss of that essential contact. Her feelings were the same as April’s! How could he say such a thing? April couldn’t have loved him. She wouldn’t have wounded him the way she had if there’d been love. Michon would rather die than cause Chas pain.
But he was ripping her apart. Did that mean he felt no love for her?
Michon struggled under the massive weight of that cruel question as she went about the evening chores that, fortunately, had become routine. What kept her from helpless tears was a small knot of anger that became even more determined every time she thought about how Chas was drawing a comparison between her and some woman she’d never met. How could she be like April? April had turned her back on Chas—something Michon would never willingly do.
There were times during the next two hours when she feared her grip on her emotions wasn’t going to be enough. It was only by tightening the vise inside that she was able to join the others around the campfire while Skip played his guitar. Chas was almost directly across from her, his face a mixture of lights and shadows, as flames played tricks on her eyes, turning him into a ghostlike figure.
Once again she could stand it no longer. Michon rose and stepped through the night to her bed. She slept badly and awoke knowing that her eyes were marred by deep circles. She joined the girls in the river for a cold bath, and dressed in faded jeans and a long-sleeved chambray shirt. If only there were something to protect her heart, she thought, as once again she took her place in Chas’s canoe.
For some reason he seemed more disposed to talk this morning. As she took pictures he filled her in on the area’s history. She learned of the John Day Queen, a river steamboat that sank in 1890 while being lined down the Clarno Rapids. According to Chas, the Clarno Rapids had spelled doom for more than an ancient steamboat. “Take the river for granted, and it’ll take you,” he said.
“I’ll remember that,” Michon whispered, drawing a silent parallel between the river and what her heart was doing to her.
At one point Chas indicated the shore. “Crissy Scott’s grave is there,” he explained. “She was five when she nearly drowned. She came down with diphtheria a few days later and died.”
“Five years old,” Michon whispered. “It’s tragic.”
“Life can be tragic,” Chas said. “She was buried by a Scotsman named Farquer. Her parents worked for him and he felt responsible for her death. Farquer never married, but when he was in his thirties he fell in love with a fourteen-year-old girl. She turned him down.”
“Can you blame her?” Michon asked. “There’s no way they could have been right for each other.”
“Age isn’t everything.”
“No,” Michon admitted. “There are a thousand reasons why two people can’t live together.”
Michon sought relief from silence by attaching a telephoto lens to her camera and getting some interesting shots of an abandoned wooden wagon, a rusting wagon wheel propped against what had once been a fence, a juniper tree silhouetted against the sky. She could feel Chas’s eyes on her, but didn’t turn to see if she could read the message in them. She was tired of being compared to April, of constantly having her name brought up. Her only defense was to ignore the man in the canoe with her or at least to make him believe he was being ignored.
She felt as if she’d spent her entire life in a canoe when Chas finally pointed toward a sandy beach and indicated they should go ashore. Michon’s legs failed her as she started to step onshore, and she had to grab at Chas for support. He held her tightly, almost savagely. “Are you going to say you’ve had enough?” he challenged. “You want to be home in a soft bed, don’t you?”
“You’re wrong,” she hissed as she broke free. “I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything. I don’t know what I have to do to convince you of that.”
For a moment lines appeared on Chas’s forehead. “Maybe you wouldn’t,” he said softly. “After dinner I’ll show you a cave.”
Michon shuddered, but turned away so he couldn’t see her reaction. It wasn’t that she was afraid of being inside a cave. It was having Chas so near her in the confining space that would test her resources. But the day had given her the guidelines she needed. They’d come close, maybe as close as a man and woman could get. But he no longer wanted that kind of relationship. If she was to keep whatever remained of her sanity she would have to hold him at arm’s length.
The cave Chas took her to as the sun was setting was about ten yards deep and some fifteen yards wide. Chas explained that sometimes wild geese used the cave for shelter. Michon stared at the opening, struck by the unique view of the river it afforded her. “I’ll have to come here in the morning,” she said to keep the conversation going. “I should be able to get some pictures using the cave opening to frame the river.”
“You like that, don’t you? Taking pictures, I mean.”
“I may have a use for them someday.” It was cool and damp in the cave, and Michon shivered slightly in her thin Windbreaker. “Maybe I’ll show them to my students.”
“What?” She could feel his breath on the side of her face as he spoke.
“Don’t mind me,” she supplied. “But I’ve been thinking about teaching history. These pictures are better than anything students could read in a book.”
Michon could feel Chas’s arm wind itself around her waist, but she refused to acknowledge it. “You’d make a good teacher,” he whispered. “I’ve watched the kids relate to you.”
“I like them. I try to remember what I felt when I was their age.”
Chas had turned her around, so there was no ignoring his presence. “You aren’t what I thought you were the first day we met.”
“What am I?” she managed.
There was something sharp and guarded about his words. “What I mean is, I thought you were kind of empty-headed, thinking about nothing except how you looked. You’re much more adult than that.”
“Is that a compliment?” How could she go on speaking? Her emotions were wild, winged things flying erratically in the circle of her heart.
“It’s always a compliment to be called an adult. Not all of us achieve that status.”
Something about Chas’s words frightened her. She couldn’t see his face so didn’t know what emotions were in his eyes. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled herself up on tiptoe until her mouth found his. She felt his arms around her waist, pulling her close, sheltering her from the dread she’d been living with.
Chas smelled of sage and river water and a clean wind. His body was as hard and strong as the canoe she’d ridden in all day. As she surrendered to her physical needs she accepted the knowledge that she’d never wanted anything as deeply as she wanted Chas Carson tonight. Her lips parted; her tongue sought to touch and taste him. When his hands found her Windbreaker and pulled it off her shoulders she could only sob deep in her throat.
She clung to him desperately, gripping him with a strength born of a need she was experiencing in an intensity she never believed herself capable of. Anything! She would sacrifice anything to feel Chas’s naked body against hers!
He freed her of her bra and sheltered her exposed breasts in his hands. Her lips found his cheeks, his chin, the delicate strength of his lashes. Was there anything to equal this moment? Love in a wilderness cave, a haven for wild geese? Nothing could be more perfect.
“What are you doing to me?” he groaned as his lips explored her neck. “You’re a devil. An irresistible devil.’’
Michon had never thought of herself as a woman who had control over men, but Chas’s words made her reckless. She slid her fingers under his shirt and buried them in the soft mat of hair on his chest. What did it matter that he had barely spoken to her for the past two days? Nothing mattered except the shelter they’d found
and the lovemaking she hoped would come to pass here.
Chas’s lips were on her own, sealing them together as firmly as her heart was already sealed to him. His fingers were in her hair, gently brushing through the tangles created by the wind. A year ago she would have been embarrassed by her disheveled appearance, but windblown hair and sunburned cheeks went with the John Day. They were her badges, proof that she was capable of running the river.
I love you, Chas! The words built in her throat, came up against her lips and waited for the kiss to end so she could expose them. The woman she was had never experienced the kind of emotions that found solution in nothing less than the word love. That time had come now. And she wanted—no, needed—Chas to know.
But he seemed in no hurry to end their kiss. His breathing quickened and became deeper. They were pressed together, her breasts finding shelter in his chest, her body throbbing with an ache she could sense in him also. They’d had a fight. It was over. And the magic they’d reached before in a frontier cabin was going to be repeated tonight.
Finally he drew back, his eyes traveling slowly down her form. “Do I pass inspection?” she asked. “I feel like I’m some kind of toy you can’t decide whether you want to play with.”
“Play? Is that what you think?”
“No,” Michon stammered, shaken by the sudden cold in his voice. “I—it was just a figure of speech.”
“A fitting one.” His hand dropped to his side. His eyes returned to her face. “Children play with toys, don’t they? Is that what this is, Michon? You have some new game for the little boy to play.”
“Chas? No! I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She reached for him, but he pulled back.
“The hell you don’t! I don’t need to be hit over the head, Michon. You said you want to become a teacher. You can’t want anything to do with a little boy who wants nothing more than a river to play on.”
Michon grabbed his arm with fingers that punished as much as his words were punishing her. “You’re crazy! Do you think I lured you here to play games? You’re the one who invited me, remember?”
“What did you expect? I can’t sit in the same canoe with you all day and not react.” If he felt the nails digging into his arm his hard eyes didn’t reveal it. “Maybe it’s hard for you to accept, but I’m not interested. Little boys don’t play adult games.” Only then did he jerk his arm out of her grasp. For a moment their eyes locked and then he was gone, his shoes slapping harshly against the cave’s floor.
Michon rocked back, unmindful of the cave wall on her naked back. What had happened? What had she said? His eyes during that last cruel contact had ripped her apart. She’d received the message all too well. She was dirt at his feet.
“Why, Chas? Why?” Her words echoed against the confining walls and came back to echo hollowly inside her. Twice now she’d done something to turn him from a man into a savage, hating creature. And, cruelest of all, she had no idea what that something was.
Michon sank to her knees. She didn’t feel the cold rock floor or the biting air on her naked shoulders and breasts. She reached out blindly for her blouse, but it was several minutes before she gathered enough strength to slip into it.
Chas was gone. She’d been a breath away from telling him she loved him and now there was no reason for speaking the words.
He hated her. And she had no idea why.
Chapter Thirteen
Michon took two final pictures of the Cottonwood Bridge and removed the exposed roll of film from her camera. She held the roll in her hands, eyes on the straight, narrow bridge, and almost barren hills rising around it. Bushes of some sort and a few straggly trees grew close to the river, but most of the landscape looked as dead as she felt inside. For the past two days Michon had been a silent, miserable partner in the bow of Chas’s canoe. Ever since the incident in the cave she’d been holding onto her sanity with fingers that threatened to lose their grip. She could have told him that she had no intention of getting into the same canoe with him again, but some shred of pride, a feeling that she had something to prove, didn’t allow her to place distance between herself and the river guide.
She took a deep breath, as if needing to take a final reminder of river and sage and high desert country back with her. Her shoulders sagged and she knew her eyes looked as if she’d been beaten on the inside. But it didn’t matter. Chas had barely said two words to her since he’d left her half-naked in the cave. She wasn’t brave enough to break the silence.
Maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much if she weren’t surrounded by active teenagers, painfully aware of the several romances that had taken root during the expedition. Shanna and Skip were openly holding hands, and at least three other couples could be seen enjoying this last day on the John Day together.
Michon had no one to savor those last hours with. At the moment she was waiting with the kids and the assembled gear while Chas and Roger Parker were hiking to the spot where their vehicles had been left. Chas would load his rig with canoes and drive off alone, while Michon would climb onto the bus with the students and pray that the eighteen-year-old driver could get them back to civilization without trying to turn the bus into a racing car.
She didn’t want to leave. Even now, even though her nerves were torn and exposed, Michon hated taking her eyes off the river. There was so much she was grateful to it for. It was here that she’d been able to shake off what Chantilla had almost turned her into. She was proud of her naked, close-cut nails, the calluses on her palms, the tangles in her wind-dry hair. She supposed she’d start wearing makeup again, but how she looked had ceased to be an obsession.
Her closet full of stylish clothes would go unnoticed. What did students wear to college these days? The question wasn’t an idle one. Michon was determined to find out how much schooling she would need for a teaching degree. One of the first things she wanted to do was talk to Harry to make sure she was realistic in her determination. And if Harry asked about her and Chas—that was a mountain she’d face when the time came.
“Michon? Take some pictures of Skip and me, please?” Shanna asked, handing her an Instamatic camera, stopping her thoughts.
The hour’s wait until the pickup and bus came into sight passed quickly. Michon found herself becoming part of one conversation after another. Despite the numb feeling that had taken over her mind, she was still able to respond to the teenagers. One moment she was talking about popular singers and sports cars. The next she was contributing to a conversation about makeup techniques or laughing at a heated argument about the fastest base stealers in baseball. Did the teens have any idea what they were giving her? Not only had their presence protected what little sanity she had left, but she relished the opportunity to be allowed a glimpse into their world. They would keep her young if she became a teacher.
Was that all there was? She craved the opportunity to test herself in the classroom, but it wasn’t fair that that be the only thing she had left to look forward to. It could be different—so different—if only Chas would talk to her, explain.
Explain what? Even as Chas and several of the boys were loading canoes into the back of his pickup, Michon could sense that occasionally he was glancing her way. What was he thinking? Did he want to say something before he left? Did she have the strength to hear what that might be?
Maybe not, but hearing nothing was even worse. When Michon could no longer find anything to occupy herself with, she walked over to the pickup. No longer was she bothered by blisters. In fact she felt more comfortable in dirty tennis shoes and socks than she ever had in the heels she wore at work. The faded blouse that draped around her shoulders was like a favorite old blanket. The clothes hanging in her closet could never feel that way.
“What now?” she asked Chas. “What are you going to do now?”
“Do you care?”
“I care.”
Chas looked at her with a puzzled expression but didn’t pursue the comment. “I’ll be starting another of my little-boy
ventures. I’m entered in an upcoming marathon race.”
“Marathon race? That sounds exciting.”
“But not something a grown-up would do. Face it, Michon, some of us don’t want to say good-bye to our childhood.”
“Stop it!” Michon snapped. “I’m sick and tired of hearing you say that. If you throw that up at me one more time—”
“Why should it matter? Michon, you and I don’t have the same point of reference. I should have learned my lesson the first time it happened. But no, I had to risk getting kicked in the teeth again.”
“What are you talking about?” Michon was so upset she could barely speak. Were those the arms that had satisfied her every need? Were those hard, angry lines the same lips that had the power to touch her deepest desires?
“Ask April. She’ll paint the picture. She’s a hot shot real-estate appraiser, but maybe she’ll find the time.”
Michon clamped her teeth together. This was no way to end the conversation. “I’d rather you painted the picture, but since you insist on blaming me for something I don’t understand, maybe we should just drop things.” She folded her arms, facing him. “Maybe this trip didn’t turn out the way I wanted, but at least something good came out of it. I’ve changed, and I’m a lot happier with myself as a result. Maybe that’s it,” she said bitterly. “I grew up on this trip.”
He shook his head. “You always were. It’s I who—”
“Not now,” she stopped him. “I’ve heard the little-boy business before. I don’t want to hear it again, because it isn’t true.”
“What do you know about me?”
“Not much, I guess,” she admitted. “But I’ve learned that I’m ready to change my life. Make it into what I want it to be. Chas, we can all change, take chances. I’m going to become a teacher. If I can stick out my neck that much I don’t know why you can’t take a chance on involvement, as you call it.”
“Commitment to a person can’t be equated to commitment to a career,” Chas said softly.
