Chapter 10
Juniper
If she had been looking for quiet and solitude when she came to Wyoming, the cacophony that greeted the break of day her first
morning in the cabin would have quickly disabused her of the notion.
June sat before dawn on the porch of Carson Wells’s writing cabin, listening to the sounds of the mountain waking up. Somewhere
in the distance, a rooster crowed, a horse whinnied and a couple of dogs barked.
Closer to her temporary home, she heard the sharp piercing cry of a hawk circling above the trees, joined by the chittering
of squirrels and the morning song of dozens of birds flitting through the treetops.
It was worlds away from the city sounds she was used to.
Steam swirled up from her tea into the cool morning air that smelled sweet and clean.
She hadn’t slept well the night before. She didn’t know if it was from the unfamiliar surroundings or from the low edge of
anxiety that seemed to simmer just below her skin.
Her entire world seemed wrong , somehow, and she wasn’t doing a good job of adjusting to the changes.
She lifted her face to the sun slanting in from the treetops.
She would have loved a big cup of coffee. Or two or three. She had never been much of a breakfast eater, preferring coffee
and the occasional piece of toast. Her doctor had warned her against too much caffeine, though, and she couldn’t have toast
without a smear of butter, which her doctor had also warned against.
The kitchen had been stocked with all kinds of food: fruit, vegetables and other heart-healthy options. With all the restrictions Dr. Singh had given her, she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to eat.
Good thing she didn’t have much of an appetite.
She wanted to bury her head in the sand and forget about everything. It would be so much easier if she could pretend her cardiac
arrest had never happened.
She didn’t have that luxury, though. Her life had changed, whether she liked it or not. She would have to figure out how to
go on from here.
The mountains beyond the cabin stretched toward the sky, rugged yet somehow comforting, too. She had a sudden fierce longing
to explore them, to discover all the canyons and peaks and plateaus of the terrain that Carson Wells had described in his
writings with such evocative grace.
The wind whispers through the crevices, carrying with it the stories of time—of glaciers that carved these peaks, of wildfires
that roared through the underbrush, of the quiet persistence of life that clings to every inch of this sacred ground.
The words from Purgatory River seemed all the more resonant as she sat on a porch swing that had been used by the man who had penned them.
She found it so strange to be here, to be sleeping on the bed he had sometimes used, sitting at the kitchen table where he
wrote, gazing at the same scenery that had inspired him.
She had picked up a copy of his second book, Beneath the Dusty Sky , the night before and had read several pages. As always, she found something new to savor in his books each time she picked
one up.
A literary masterpiece worked because a person could make new discoveries about the words, about themselves, about the world
around her every time she read it. This time, June caught an undertone of sadness and loss as she read. Of loneliness.
She somehow didn’t feel lonely here in his writing retreat. She felt... comforted, surrounded by all of the books and the emotions and memories that seemed embedded in the log walls.
She was shaking her head at her own fanciful thoughts when she sensed movement out of the corner of her gaze. She turned to
find an animal bounding down the path between the trees toward her.
After her initial surprise, she recognized the dog she had met the day before in the back seat of Beckett Hunter’s pickup
truck.
“Oh. Hello, Hank,” she said as the Australian shepherd climbed the steps and greeted her eagerly, his entire hindquarters
jiggling as his tail wagged with enthusiasm.
She petted him dutifully. “What are you doing here? Does your person know where you are?”
He didn’t answer, of course, only gave her a happy look that warmed her heart. Apparently, she had made a friend during that
short ride from the airport.
“You shouldn’t be wandering around on your own. It’s not safe. Are you lost?”
Again, no answer. She looked toward the path, half expecting the dog’s owner to come striding through the trees.
Ali had told her that Beck Hunter’s house wasn’t far away, on the other side of the creek. The dog must have wandered away
from home that morning.
Did Beck even know he was gone? How irresponsible to simply let his dog traipse through the forest on his own, where anything
could happen to him.
Hank sniffed around her pockets with a hopeful kind of look. “I don’t have anything to feed you. I’m sorry,” she said. She
had a feeling he wouldn’t be interested in any of the healthy offerings of her kitchen. She wasn’t even interested in them.
The dog seemed to sigh and June had to smile.
“I should keep you here with me,” she said as she scratched between his ears. “If you don’t go home, maybe the man would learn
not to be so careless.”
Hank rested his chin on her knee and gazed up at her with soulful, adoring eyes.
“I suppose it’s not your fault your owner is who he is,” she said after petting the dog. “Let’s go see if we can find him.”
She rose from the swing with a rattle of chains and opened the door wide enough for her to grab one of the walking sticks
she had seen near the door in an umbrella stand that looked like a hollowed-out log. She had no idea what kind of terrain
she would find between the cabin and Beckett Hunter’s place. Better to be prepared.
Plus, this way she would have a weapon if she needed to beat off any cougars or bears.
Or Beckett Hunter.
She headed off along the path in the direction the dog had come and where Ali had said Beckett lived.
The path was covered in pine needles that crunched under her feet. Wildflowers bloomed in patches of red and purple and it
all smelled delicious.
How did someone ever get used to this kind of grandeur? Did they become inured to it?
Another line from one of Carson’s books ran through her mind.
Here, in the solitude of the mountains, one can feel the pulse of the earth, ancient and eternal, a reminder of the beauty
and power that exists beyond the grasp of human hands.
She had always been drawn to the Rocky Mountain region. While she had visited Idaho before and went on a ski vacation once
to Colorado, she had almost deliberately chosen not to come to Wyoming during any of her infrequent vacations.
Why was that?
She did not have a good answer, especially when her mother used to talk often about the time she spent working in Jackson
Hole.
Perhaps she knew that visiting would only cause her to miss her mother more, as Elizabeth had loved it so much.
She walked through the forest, listening to the birdsong and enjoying the cool breeze that ruffled her hair. The morning seemed perfect, like something out of one of those relaxation videos on YouTube that she watched when she couldn’t seem to wind down after another eighteen-hour workday.
She had almost missed this.
All of it.
The realization chilled her more than the morning mountain air.
She had been dead, not breathing on her own for several minutes before the paramedics arrived, kept alive only by Alison Wells
and her fierce determination.
Why had she survived? Was there something else in store for her?
She was only thirty-four years old, but she felt as ancient as the mountains. Old and withered and exhausted. Even walking
this short distance left her tired.
And what was next for her? Try as she might, June couldn’t quite picture herself returning to her hectic corporate life of
travel, meetings, product launches.
While she could certainly afford to retire and live off her investments as one of the three founders and major stockholders
of Move Inc, she couldn’t see herself living a life of leisure.
Anxiety pressed in on her and she forced herself to breathe, pushing away the stress. She didn’t have to decide anything right
now. She was only days removed from a major life change, when everything she thought about herself, everything she planned,
had vanished in a literal heartbeat.
“Are we getting close?” she asked the dog. She could swear he beamed at her before he bounded away again along the trail.
Ahead, beyond the treetops, she could see the roofline of a decent-size structure. Curious now, she walked farther and then
had to catch her breath as the trees opened up, revealing the property beyond.
How was it possibly fair that someone like Beckett Hunter lived in such an enchanting place?
The house was beautiful, smaller than The Painted Sky ranch house, made of log and stone. A pasture surrounded by split-rail
fences held four horses who grazed in the morning sun. Closer to her was a large wood-framed outbuilding with a peaked roof
and a massive barn-style sliding door.
From inside, she heard the low buzz of power tools that seemed to ring through the whole property.
The large door was open to the morning breeze, and the dog ran straight inside before June could call him back.
“Hello?” she called out. “I brought back your dog.”
When no one answered, she took another step closer, then another, until she could peer through the doorway.
It was a workshop of some sort. As her eyes adjusted to the lower light inside, she saw someone working with a power tool,
polishing a slab of wood. His back was to her and she saw strong muscles working beneath a snug red T-shirt.
She waited until the machine stopped and he lifted the wood and blew away sawdust before she took a few more steps into the
building.
“Hello.”
The worker whirled around in surprise and she was glad she had waited until he was done. She wouldn’t want anyone to cut off
any body parts because of her.
“Sorry to bother you. I’m looking for Beckett Hunter. Do you know where I can find him?”
He lifted the safety glasses and the ear protectors that had concealed his identity and she blinked when she realized that
muscular back she had noticed belonged to the man himself.
“Oh. Morning. Sorry. I can’t hear anything with these things on. I hope you haven’t been there long.”
“I just got here.”
“I tend to lose track of time when I’m deep in a project.”
“Time is not the only thing you lose track of. That must be why you didn’t notice when your dog disappeared.”
She gestured toward Hank, who was lapping at a large water bowl before wandering over to a dog bed in the corner.
“He didn’t disappear. He’s right there.”
“Because I brought him back. He came by Carson’s cabin this morning. I was afraid he might take off into the mountains and
get attacked by a cougar or something.”
He grinned, looking ridiculously attractive for a man who wore safety goggles on his head. “Hank knows better than that. He
has his morning routine. He likes to greet my horses, then go say good morning to all the animals over at The Painted Sky.”
“When was the last time you fed him? He seemed to be starving when he came to the cabin.”
His eyes crinkled at the corners with amusement, reminding her again what an astonishingly good-looking man he was.
“Don’t let him fool you. He puts on a good show, but he gets plenty to eat. As part of his morning routine, he always used
to stop by and visit with Carson, who invariably gave him a treat. The man’s been gone six months yet Hank still wanders over
to the cabin every day about this time, hoping he might be there.”
The thought made her sad, for a host of reasons. For Hank, who would never find Carson at the writing cabin again. For Alison,
who had lost her father so recently. And for the world that had lost a man of immense talent and insight.
“If you want, I can drop off some of his treats so you have something to give him when he wanders over. Or you can ignore
him and eventually he’ll stop coming around.”
She quite liked the dog and didn’t want to discourage him from the habit of stopping by, even if she was a poor consolation
prize for Carson.
“I can pick up some treats for him. At some point I have to catch a ride into town for some supplies, anyway. Is there a particular
kind of treats he likes?”
“He’s a very indiscriminate eater. I mean, he eats spiders and deer poop.”
She grimaced. “Remind me not to let him lick me.”
He smiled again. “Good luck with that. You might have noticed Hank has a mind of his own.”
“Don’t you have a fenced yard where you can keep him? What if he ran out to the road and was hit by a car?”
“He’s a ranch dog. He doesn’t go anywhere near the road. He knows better.”
“He’s a dog. Not a doctoral candidate.”
“I don’t know. He’s a pretty smart dog.”
She didn’t want to argue with him about his dog’s intelligence quotient. “What are you making?” she asked instead.
She looked around the workshop and for the first time noticed various other huge pieces of gorgeous wood.
Her gaze drifted to the piece he had been working on. It wasn’t only wood, she realized. Weaving from edge to edge was a striking
blue that seemed to cut through the piece of timber like a river through a steep canyon.
“Eventually, it will be a console table for a Hollywood director who is renovating a house in Jackson Hole.”
She looked around the workshop and saw other similar pieces in various stages of completion. Each one she could see was breathtakingly
lovely.
She moved to take a closer look at the piece he had been working on, and all the pieces suddenly clicked into place.
“Oh, my gosh. You’re B. Hunter.”
She shot him a look when he said nothing and saw what looked like discomfort in his eyes.
“You are, aren’t you? I can’t believe this. Last year we bought one of your tables for our conference room and paid a fortune
for it. I love having meetings in that room. It always feels like we’re having a meeting on the banks of a beautiful river.”
Now she saw pleasure join the edge of embarrassment. “Is that right?”
“And you have a YouTube channel where you demonstrate how you make these. I’ve watched it. I should have recognized the workshop.”
That was why it had seemed familiar to her, she realized.
“You never show your face in the videos,” she said. “Only your hands.”
She recognized his hands now, big and callused, with a pale scar running from the tip of his index finger to the first knuckle.
They didn’t look at all like an attorney’s hands.
“Nobody needs to see my face. They only need to see the work.”
She couldn’t help thinking that if he did show his face, he would have far more people watching. At least people of the female
variety.
She had stumbled onto his channel one night by chance when she had been watching a relaxing nature video to help her mind
calm after a frenzied day at work. For some reason the algorithm had played a B. Hunter video next, with him pouring the resin
in a channel he had hand-carved through a piece of wood, going with the natural grain of the wood.
She had been mesmerized by those powerful hands shaping exquisite pieces out of wood and colored resin. It had been oddly
soothing, too, especially with no sound beneath it.
She had been the one, in fact, who had told Adam about the artist and he since had become a passionate collector of B. Hunter’s
work.
“You have to let me watch you create something.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Do I?”
“Okay, you don’t have to. But I would really love to see the process from start to finish.”
“You can watch this video after I’m done. Don’t worry. I’ll cut out this part, with you haranguing me about my dog, who was
only stopping by your place for a friendly visit.”
She couldn’t quite believe that the man who created such works of art was none other than Beckett Hunter. She didn’t like the man, she reminded herself. He was rude and abrasive and arrogant.
His blunt refusal to take action had left at least one woman devastated, unable to find justice. She couldn’t forgive him
for that.
But he was most definitely an artist, one who fascinated her.
“I would be so quiet, you wouldn’t even know I was here.”
“Trust me, I would know,” he muttered.
She frowned, not sure what he meant by that. “Does Alison know about your work?”
He shrugged. “It’s not a secret. Everyone in town knows. I show some of my work at a gallery in town.”
A dozen questions raced through her mind. Did he do this in his spare time or was this now what he did in place of prosecuting
criminals in California? Or not prosecuting them, as the case may be?
“Making videos of my work was Ali’s idea, actually, and her friend Xander. He has a friend who does all the editing and producing
of the videos. I shoot them and he adds the audio.”
“The production value is great. It’s strangely relaxing, watching you take a big hunk of wood and turn it into a work of art
in only a few moments.”
“Don’t believe everything you see on the internet. A big table like the one you have in your conference room takes more than
a week. We edit out the boring parts, like building the frame and letting the resin dry in layers.”
He seemed eager to end the conversation. “Anyway, thanks for bringing back Hank. I can’t promise he won’t stop again tomorrow.
Old habits can be hard for some dogs to break.”
And for plenty of people. She now had no choice but to let go of some of her old habits, like not getting enough sleep, working too hard and drinking coffee for breakfast. She wouldn’t recommend a cardiac arrest as a motivating factor to anyone.
“Can you find your way back to the cabin?” he asked, clearly eager for her to go so he could return to his work.
“I can follow the path.” She held up the walking stick. “And I have this, in case I run into any bears along the way.”
He gave a short laugh. “In the extremely unlikely event that you did run into a bear, what exactly were you planning to do
with Carson’s favorite walking stick? Didn’t anybody teach you not to poke a bear?”
“You’re not supposed to poke a sleeping bear. Isn’t that the saying? I would only poke a bear that was charging at me, just long enough to slow him down so I could
try to outrun him.”
“I think you should be safe. We occasionally see a black bear around here, very rarely, but they’re likely to be more afraid
of you than you are of them.”
“I doubt that’s possible.”
“Do you need me to walk you back?”
She did not want to find any other positive traits in Beckett Hunter, besides his undeniably beautiful carpentry, but June
had to admit it was kind of him to suggest it, especially when she had interrupted his work.
“I should be fine. Thanks for the offer.”
She didn’t press him about letting her watch him work. As she waved goodbye and headed back to the cabin, she thought it probably
wasn’t a good idea, anyway.