Kitabı oku: «Journey's End»

One

Snow!

Tynan O’Hara looked into a cloudless Montana sky and offered another silent plea. He cajoled. He implored. Before that he’d commanded, demanded. And he’d cursed.

But Mother Nature, that fickle and wily lady, hadn’t listened. No more than Valentina had listened.

“When will I learn to say no, and mean it?” he asked the wolf sitting patiently at his feet.

As it echoed through the comfortable, but spartan room, the sound of his deep voice would have been startling if there had been ears other than his own and the wolf’s to hear. He spoke softly for a man so large, his words filled with unshakable, ironic calm even in anger. Anger directed at himself, destined to be short lived as his anger always was.

Leaving the window and its ever changing view, he crossed to a woodstove. The scarred and monstrously ugly antique, more than thrice his thirty-five years, had proven more than thrice as practical for his needs than one less ugly and more modern. Lifting a battered tin pot from the iron top, he refilled a tin cup nearly as battered. Sipping the brew that would have grown hair on his chest if it weren’t there already, he returned to his study of sprawling pastures and silent mountains. The latter, riddled with deep gashes of chasms carved by the great rivers of ice called down by the unheeding Mother Nature aeons before, forever fascinating.

Ty moved with an easy grace, walked with an agile step. Attentive and poised as he was in everything.

Given his manner, his coal black hair, his chiseled cheeks and darkly weathered skin, were it not for his eyes, he might have been mistaken for a member of the nearby Indian tribe. But as there were no ears to hear the soft, deep voice, neither were there eyes to see the eyes that were as blue as a Montana lake, bluer than its sky. Irish eyes, an arresting reminder of his black Irish heritage, in a thoroughly American face.

The quietude with which he surrounded himself, with which he unfailingly reacted, told less of his share of the fabled Irish temper than of a remarkable control. Which, now, as he looked out over the rugged land, was sorely tested.

This was his home, his time. The season of the tourist, the interim when he served as guide and outfitter for the temporary guest, was over. The season purposely cut short, with most of the horses moved to more temperate pastures; the summer hands decamped, scattered, taking up their winter’s work.

And Tynan O’Hara had returned to the small cabin no tourist and few ranch hands had ever entered.

He wasn’t misanthropic. Far from it. He truly enjoyed these people he called summer folk, enchanting the ladies with his easygoing charm, engaging the gentlemen with his down-to-earth approach to life and living. And all of it easily, naturally done, with Ty hardly realizing that he had. He was always glad to see them come, the wide-eyed and eager adventurers with childhood dreams of the West tucked in their hearts and shining on their faces. He delighted in sharing with them this land, the land that had chosen him, the wilderness that fulfilled his own dream and halted his restless wandering.

Yet when summer was done, and the mildest of autumn past, he was equally as glad to see them go. As delighted to have the land he called Fini Terre to himself once again.

Now winter loomed and, with no respect for the calendar, could arrive at any minute. When it came, born on westerly winds created by the ever changing Pacific Coast weather, like all survivors of this challenging parcel of earth, he would be ready.

In a barn divided into both stable and garage, there was a truck, a snowmobile, and a snowplow. Stored in sheds set apart were gasoline and hay to fuel whatever form of transportation he wished or would need.

A plentiful supply of wood was chopped, split and stacked in a shed attached to the small cabin. An ample reserve of food and medical supplies had been laid down in the cellar, along with a selection of his favorite wines. Just in case, though he didn’t know what case, there were kegs of water, as well. In this place of clean streams, lakes, and snow, it required a stretch of the imagination to envision the lack of water becoming a problem. Within the cabin, itself, there were lamps and oil, candles, and books. Even snowshoes and skis, and every other conceivable supply, from flashlights to extra buttons.

As efficiently as the ever busy red squirrel, he had prepared. And like an old bear he looked forward to the six foot snows and was ready to hibernate. Like an old bear in a tuxedo, he admitted ruefully when he thought of the generator, waiting and ready for when the electricity would inevitably fail; the sophisticated radio he would use only in the event of an emergency; and a state-of-the-art computer residing in the small, anterior room off the gallery that he called his lair.

“What the hell happens now when the snows cover the windows and seal the doors?” he asked the wolf as he regarded a sky that showed no sign of granting the very weather of which he spoke. “What will I do when the electricity stops and the generator dies, and the lonelies creep in?”

The lonelies.

His name for a very integral part of living as he did. That endless interval when Spring is nearly a dream realized, yet Winter lingers arrogantly, behaving its worst, its mood most capricious. A condition perfect for sending one plummeting into depression and the madness of cabin fever, or for strengthening one’s resolve and renewing one’s soul as it did for Ty.

“What will it do to Simon McKinzie’s walking wounded? What miracle does he expect of me?”

The wolf grinned, thumped his tail once on the bare floor, and kept his own counsel. Tilting his head, he presented the soft, vulnerable underside of his ebony throat to be scratched.

“No answer, huh?” Without interrupting his vigil, Ty stroked the wolf. “I guess you’re thinking it’s my own fault, that we wouldn’t be in this predicament if I’d only said no to Valentina. But could you say no to your sister? Wait!” In a forestalling motion he lifted his hand from the wolfs throat. “Don’t tell me, I know. But I promise you, sport, you’d be as big a sucker as I’ve always been if your sisters were like Val. Or Patience.”

The wolf turned an uncertain look at him.

“You don’t think so, I take it?” A nearly silent rumble drew taut the furry black throat as the wolf turned to stare again out the window. “Better think again. You’d understand if you knew their history with me. No,” he corrected. “You’d understand better if you knew my slavish history with them.”

With a self mocking shake of his head, Tynan O’Hara murmured, “I keep telling myself the day will come when I won’t be such an easy mark for either of my sisters. But, in my heart, I know that will also be the proverbial cold day in Hell.”

The rumble became a soft growl, as the wolf grew uncommonly impatient with his master’s uncommon monologue.

“I know, sport,” he soothed the wolf. “I’m not completely blinded, I see it, too.”

A flash of light where there should be only grass and rolling hills had caught human as well as canine attention. Setting the cup aside, with hands shoved abruptly into the hip pockets of his jeans, his mouth drawn into a stark line and eyes narrowed against the brilliant unsullied sky, Ty waited with the wolf for a second flash.

“There,” he muttered. A sound not unlike a growl itself.

As if needing only this cue, the wolf drew himself to attention. Ears perked and acutely tuned. Eyes, no less blue than any fourth generation Irishman’s, riveted. As the ridge of fur bristled the length of his spine, he stood like a shadowy sentinel by the side of the human he’d chosen as his own.

The light flashed, then again in another place, drawing ever closer to the cabin. “And there,” Ty confirmed grimly. “Coming too fast.”

The flash, light glinting off the windshield of a vehicle approaching as if it expressed the turbulent mood of its driver, became constant. In a matter of minutes, if it made the grade that dipped, then rose to the cabin, the Land Rover would be in his yard.

The vexing winter boarder would have arrived.

“Easy, easy,” Ty said as much to himself as the wolf. A plume of dust heralded the threatened advent. Sighing, he groused again under his breath, “It looks like there will be three of us for the winter after all.”

Curious at the strange mood of his human, or perhaps in commiseration, the wolf nipped gently at the corded seam of Ty’s jeans.

“Are you wondering why I don’t stop grumbling and live up to my word?” In a stroke of his finger under the animal’s throat, Ty lifted its gaze to his. “Are you thinking a promise is a promise, especially to Valentina? Is that it? Well, you’re right. So, I suppose we’d best go make like a welcoming committee.”

With the wolf at his heels, he stepped to the door and opened it. At the edge of the porch he paused, breathing in deeply, savoring what he feared might be his last comfortable breath for a while. “Just one more question, Shadow.” He addressed the wolf by its name for the first time. “What the hell are we going to do with a woman in our all male sanctum for eight long, cold months?”

The wolf gave him another slow, considering look.

Lifting a sardonic brow, Ty laughed, “Spare me the ‘if you don’t know, Buster, I’m not going to tell you’ looks. Believe me, that’s a complication I don’t need and don’t want.”

The wolf only looked at him, silent and still, hackles at half mast.

“If we’re lucky, maybe she’ll hate us on sight. Hopefully, in time to hightail it back to the train crossing tonight and the airport tomorrow.”

Descending the steps, man and wolf crossed the small lawn. At the edge of the drive they waited. With no appreciable sign of caution, the approaching vehicle disappeared into the declension that set Tynan O’Hara’s world apart. “There’s still hope, Shadow. Until the very last, there’s hope. Who knows?” Ty shrugged heavy shoulders clad in a dark woolen shirt. “Maybe two ugly guys won’t be her idea of winter companions.”

The Land Rover topped the rise, skidded to a halt, obscuring car and driver in a cloud of dust. A shower of loose stone pelted Ty’s shins and boots. The wolf took a discreet step back as if disassociating himself from the man as much as avoiding the flying debris, Ty coughed and blinked, observing the desertion wryly.

“Okay, have it your way, traitor,” he said softly, without rancor. “One ugly guy and a conceited mutt.”

“A good-looking guy and man’s best friend,” Merrill Santiago sputtered through clenched teeth as she glared through the sifting haze her protesting tires had created.

“A good-looking guy and a wolf,” she reassessed her opinion as the furor of her arrival settled, permitting a better view. “The first probably not an iota different from the latter, when one gets past the mustache of one and the fur coat of the other.

“Just what I need!” Gripping the steering wheel as if it were her lifeline with the world she’d left behind, she shivered in distaste. “A winter in exile, fending off mister wonderful, while his wild beast chews off my leg.” Fingertips tapping in a fast paced rhythm that matched her mounting dismay, she exhaled wearily, dispatching a tangle of gold streaked bangs from her eyes.

Instinct and trust in Simon McKinzie warned that she was judging wrongly and unfairly. That there was, no doubt, far more to the character of this man than a craggy and arresting face. Perhaps more than she would want.

Her bleak gaze strayed from man and beast to the land, the essence of wilderness. Depression and the first stirring of angry frustration could not blind her to its far-reaching magnificence. Within the bounds of a single glance lay a panorama of natural beauty. A vast sanctuary hewn by chaos and cataclysm and the simple wearing of the ages. Rugged, diverse, a land pristine and undisturbed. Inhabited by none but wild creatures and stalwart men, as those who waited in uncanny stillness.

Beneath the weight of twin blue gazes, she felt a sudden urge to run, and continue to run. Until those piercing eyes could not touch her, and would never see into the darkness of her soul.

But no. She would not run, would not even walk away. She’d given her word, the last remaining measure of her integrity. In a moment of mental turmoil she had succumbed first to Valentina’s gentle persuasion, then to Simon’s kind, but implacable coercion, agreeing to this sojourn into the wilderness.

She’d promised to stay...and she would.

“For the winter.” A time that seemed to stretch as endlessly before her as the sea of mountains surrounding her. “Only that.”

Catching up a small duffel bag she jerked open the door and climbed from the rented Land Rover. Standing stiffly on cramped legs, with her shoulders back and her head up, she tried not to stare at the land, the wolf, and the man. “Tynan O’Hara, I presume.”

“Yes, ma’am, presumption right on target,” Ty drawled and took a step forward to take her bag. When she refused with an impatient jerk, he smiled and hooked his thumbs in the back pockets of his jeans. Concealing his surprise that the dazzling creature who stood before him bore so little resemblance to the stevedore he expected, he continued in his own imperturbable manner. “Unless you’d taken a wrong turn nearly forty miles back, it would be hard to presume anything else.”

“Forty miles!” She stared at him then. “Forty?” In spite of her best efforts, her temper flared. “Do you mean to tell me we’re that far from civilization? Just the two of us?”

“I doubt you would call the next ranch civilization exactly.” Ty fought back a grin. It was hard not to grin when one was eternally afflicted with attention deficit when it came to anger. And especially when faced with a woman who was, maybe, a fraction more than half his size, twice as angry, and looked as if she’d stepped off the pages of a fairy tale. “But it is that far by public roads, give or take eight or ten miles and a shortcut or two.”

“Give or take? Eight or ten?” She shook her head, and curls of many hues of gold tumbled around her shoulders. “In the guise of a strong suggestion, Simon ordered me to Montana for some R and R, and peace and seclusion. He didn’t say it would be in the middle of nowhere.”

“The middle of paradise.”

Merrill was too caught up in her own tumult to notice his correction. “Valentina and Simon said I would be lodging with Valentina’s brother. But I didn’t expect he would be, ahh...you would be so...” With a fretful frown, she shrugged, a small lift of elegant shoulders. “Let’s just say, I expected you would be older. Maybe not an old coot, but still not quite so...” Biting back the word virile, she settled for half truths, “...so young!” Seizing on the word, she belabored the obvious. “I didn’t expect you to be so young.”

Ty chuckled, and then his laugh spilled out like rich, dark brandy flowing over her. The sound was heady and soothing, and if she’d been in a receptive mood, comforting. “Laugh if you will, Mr. O’Hara. But, frankly, I don’t imagine that you’re any happier about having me here than I am about being here.”

“Winter boarders are rare.” And allowing himself to enjoy this first meeting with a beguiling woman was scarcely the same as enduring a winter of confinement with her.

“How rare?” Merrill persisted, refusing to settle for his noncommittal response. “On a scale of seldom to never, for example.”

“Never.” Ty was nothing if not honest, and if togetherness was their destiny, he would begin as he intended to be.

Through narrowed eyes, she took his measure, noting the strength in the lean hard body, the calm of his pleasingly rugged face. He had the sophisticated presence of one who had lived hard and fully, and well. And yet, in his prime, he’d chosen solitude. Magnificent solitude, but solitude nevertheless, with only the wolf as his companion. She wondered why.

Curious and intrigued, as she hadn’t been for months, she searched the glittering depths of his gaze, seeking, but never fending, the true man beneath the easy charm. At the edge of their space, the wolf lurked, watchful and still, as if waiting to pounce or play. One gorgeous creature as much an enigma as the other.

“Am I to assume, then, that it’s usually just you, the wolf, the mountains?” Her voice was stilted and stiff, as if rusted from disuse. “And, of course, a hundred feet of snow.”

“Three quarters and a half.”

The laconic answer blindsided her, leaving her confounded. “Three quarters and a half? By that do you mean three quarters and a half of a mountain, three quarters and a half of a hundred feet of snow, or...”

“Neither.” A silent signal brought the wolf to his side. “This is Shadow, he’s only three quarters and a half wolf, and just so you’ll know, the snow rarely exceeds six feet,” he drawled. “In all else, you assume correctly.”

“She snookered you, didn’t she?”

It was Ty’s turn to be blindsided. “Snookered? She?”

Suddenly and for no apparent reason, for the first time in longer than she could remember, Merrill was enjoying herself. “Wrapped you around her little finger, broad shoulders, stubborn chin and all, I’d bet.”

“You think that’s possible?”

In this case, Merrill hadn’t a doubt. “If it were the right woman. Yes,” she nodded thoughtfully. “Most definitely possible.”

“And who would you suggest that woman is?”

“Your sister, my colleague and friend. Valentina Courtenay, nee O’Hara.”

Ty didn’t bother with denials that would seem foolish in the face of events. Shrugging the broad shoulders she’d described, he conceded, “I’ve never learned to say no to her, and now I’ve come to the conclusion I never will.”

“Let me guess. She let you believe I was a man when she asked that you share your winter refuge.”

“Until the last minute.”

Merrill laughed, the haunted look faded from her gaze for an instant. “If it’s any consolation, I think she only wanted what she considered best for me.”

“Peace, respite, isolation.”

The remnants of laughter lingered, stealing worry and years from her face. “Good guess.”

Ty smiled in response. The tiny quirk of his lips that in summer set the hearts of both big and little girls lurching. “Not much of a stretch, when they are the commodities this part of the country possesses in abundance.”

Merrill found her gaze drawn again to the majesty befitting the name he’d given it. Fini Terre, a description as much as a definition for a ranch lying on the far northern boundaries of his country. A tribute to its namesake, a plantation as far south, where the O’Haras had spent a happy summer long ago.

“Fini Terre, Land’s End.” A name fraught with hidden meaning for a land of tranquility. Valentina had called it Journey’s End. Perhaps it was both, or one in the same, for this man. “More than commodities,” she mused. “A gift.”

“A gift Val thinks you have need of. Will you let it heal you?”

Temper stirring again in another of the mercuric mood swings that had plagued her for weeks, Merrill reacted caustically. “I said nothing about healing, or needing to be healed.”

“No,” Ty agreed mildly, “you didn’t. But we all need repair, in one degree or another, at some time in our lives. A need even greater when we seek out the solitude of places such as this.”

“As you did when you chose the land?”

“The land chose me, claiming me for its own. As, perhaps, it will you, Merrill Santiago.” As it had begun already. He saw it in her face, and in her eyes. He had only to look past the seething brew of guilt and resentment to know she was half in love with Montana from the start.

“Perhaps,” she ventured, temper mellowing as quickly as it ignited. Sustained anger required too much effort. Sustaining any mood or thought, or expressing any desire required more emotional energy than she had to expend.

“Then you’ll stay?” And suddenly, he wanted to give her the peace and the healing Simon and Valentina had sent her to find.

“I would be a less than pleasant companion.”

“Then we needn’t be companions at all. Neither friends, nor enemies.”

“No?” His answer startled her, making her wonder again what manner of man he was that he could make her feel and think as no one else had for so long. “Sealed away from the world, alone and isolated, underfoot and tripping over each other in a small cabin? Out of human necessity we would become one or the other.”

“Not unless we both want it.”

“This is insane, you must realize that,” she declared, but with little emphasis. “You can’t have wanted anyone to disrupt your winter idyll.”

“I didn’t.” The truth, always the truth. The only way Tynan O’Hara knew.

“But now you do.” A statement, not a question, of what she heard in his words, in his voice.

“Seems so.”

“Why?”

As she faced him, not challenging so much as simply questioning, the mountains at her back had begun to catch the late afternoon sun, framing her with their red glow. He was struck again by her small stature, the slender compact body, the deceptive fragility. She was an agent of The Black Watch. More than that, one of Simon’s Marauders, the elite among the elite. Men and women singled out from all over the world, chosen by Simon for their uncanny gifts and uncommon skills. Discreetly recruited, exquisitely trained, informed. Ruthless when necessary. Moral, loyal. Dangerous.