Chapter 15
Juniper
She was trying to hang on to her anger at Beckett Hunter but was finding it harder with every moment she spent with him.
As she turned on the lights inside the writing cabin, she replayed their conversation.
It’s a lousy system and it’s wrong. I want to say things are changing, but any progress is far too slow.
He had sounded genuinely upset about being unable to prosecute Robin’s boss.
She understood entirely too well about the hard choices that sometimes had to be made. As a top-level executive at a tech
company with thousands of employees, she sometimes had to make decisions that still kept her up at night.
All that stress. How was she going to return to it?
Her chest felt tight again and she tensed, somehow not at all surprised when she felt the little jolt from her ICD that was
becoming painfully familiar.
She sank down onto the nearest chair, her fingers automatically pressing against her heart while she caught her breath and
fought for calm.
She was mortified when she lifted her gaze to find Beck watching her with concern.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“It’s nothing.” She forced a smile. “Just the device in my chest shocking me back to life.”
He looked aghast and she instantly regretted her flippant response.
“I’m still breathing. Don’t worry. I’m not going to croak right here in front of you. Probably.”
She muttered that last word in a much more bitter tone than she intended, which earned her a careful look from the entirely
too perceptive Beck Hunter.
“At some point in this journey, I expect I will learn to be grateful I’m still alive and be able to focus on being a medical
miracle instead of another statistic. I’m not quite there yet.”
“Understandable.”
Her eyes suddenly stung at the compassion in his expression and she furiously fought away tears.
“I would tell you that the tough things we all have to face only make us stronger, but personally I know that’s BS. Sometimes
life deals us things that would crush even a champion bodybuilder.”
What did Beck Hunter know about life’s crushing trials? she wondered. She wanted to ask, but he turned away before she could,
as if he regretted opening the door into his life even a crack.
“I’ll grab those diaries for you,” he said, heading into Carson’s office.
Grateful that he wasn’t focusing on her momentary pity party, June followed him. She had to admit she was curious about Carson’s
office.
The room was exactly as she might have envisioned, with more of those floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a huge desk made of timber
and a gorgeous oil painting on the wall of a red-rock mesa in the setting sun.
“Wow. This is beautiful.”
He looked around as if seeing the space for the first time. “It is. I still don’t know why Carson didn’t work here more often.
I can probably count on one hand the times I saw him at his desk. He mostly preferred working at the kitchen table, in his
armchair by the fire or outside on the porch.”
She loved picturing him at work, pen in hand and a pensive look on those rugged features.
“More often,” Beck went on, “he would pack one of his notebooks into a bag and head off into the mountains, either on foot or riding one of the horses. He wouldn’t come down until past dark some nights.”
Her mother would have loved learning these insights into the writer she had admired so very much.
“I wish my mother had been able to meet him. She would have been over the moon.”
His expression tightened briefly before relaxing again. “I thought your mother had a signed first edition of his debut novel.
So she must have met Carson at least once.”
“She did, though she didn’t talk about it much. I meant she would have loved to meet him here, in the surroundings where he
was most comfortable and creative.”
“Ah,” he said. “Well, he didn’t let many people see his space here. I guess you should consider yourself lucky.”
“I do, actually. About staying here, anyway. And I feel extraordinarily fortunate that I will have the chance to look through
some of his personal writings.”
“Right. I’ll grab the journals.”
He headed to the walk-in closet, where she could see a huge safe, twice the size of a typical gun safe.
“Would you like me to go into the other room?” she asked.
“Why would you do that?”
“I don’t know. So I don’t spy on the combination or something and break into the safe in the middle of the night.”
He laughed, a low, sexy sound that somehow seemed to ripple down her spine, much to her dismay. “These diaries are the only
thing of value in here and I’m handing them over to you.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
He worked the mechanism on the safe, not bothering to hide the code. The door slid open smoothly and from inside the cavernous
space, he pulled out a large archive-grade box, then a second one and a third.
“Carson went through at least a few journals a year, always the same kind.”
He held one up and she saw it was a medium-size black hardcover notebook she recognized as top quality and exclusive.
“He started each writing day by jotting down some of his thoughts. He said it was his way of purging his mind of all the minutiae
before he settled down to the serious business of writing.”
“You said you haven’t read any of them?”
“I’ve paged through a few of them, but it feels very personal, reading someone else’s journal. Especially when that someone
was a good friend.”
She looked at the boxes and was suddenly overwhelmed at the task. “It’s going to take time for me to get through all of these.
Perhaps I should only take out a few at a time. What if the cabin catches on fire while I’m staying here and they’re all lost
to the world?”
He smiled a little. “Probably smart.”
“I guess that means you’ll have to come back to open the safe again when I work my way through these, but I would rather be
safe than sorry.”
He shrugged. “I’ll give you the code.”
She stared. “You would do that?”
“Why not?”
“You’re surprisingly trusting for a former prosecuting attorney.”
“About some things,” he said with enough of an edge to his voice to make her wonder what might be behind it.
“Where do you want to start?” he asked.
“I guess at the beginning, for continuity’s sake.”
“Sounds good.” He looked through the boxes and pulled out several that looked older than some of the others.
“These are the earliest, I think. By the dates on the cover, he started them a few years before Purgatory River came out.”
It seemed almost mystical to imagine him paging through these books, recording his hopes and fears. She took the notebook
from Beck and opened the pages at random.
The entry she scanned was a fairly banal one, where he talked about a phone call with his agent the day before and how he had written eight pages that day.
To paraphrase Steinbeck, I have sat long at my work and the pen felt good in my hand.
She couldn’t wait to dive into more.
“Here’s the code for you,” Beck said, scribbling some numbers on a sticky note he pulled out of a small box on the desk, bound
with saddle-colored leather. “When you finish those and are ready to start more, you won’t have to wait for me.”
She felt profoundly honored that he trusted her with something so important.
“Thank you.”
“I’m grateful for your help. You’re providing a valuable service, giving an important perspective.”
She didn’t know about that. What perspective did she have to offer, except that of a devoted reader? “Are you sure you’re
not simply finding some busywork to keep me from pulling out my hair?”
He gave a low laugh. “Positive. If a side bonus is preventing you from going bald, even better.”
She returned his smile. Despite her initial antipathy toward Beck, she was gradually coming to like the man.
“Did you finish the table I saw you working on the other day?” she asked as they headed out of the office to the main living
area.
“No. It’s going to take a few more days.”
“I suppose you can’t rush a creative genius.”
He made a face. “You can’t rush a perfectionist,” he corrected. “It’s a curse. If I see the slightest flaw, I try to figure
out a way to fix it. I wish I could take the Japanese approach and embrace the flaws. Have you heard of kintsugi ?”
“Yes. That’s translated to golden repair , right?”
“That’s right. When a piece of pottery cracks, instead of trying to hide the damage, it is repaired with gold to highlight
the crack and show the beauty of imperfection.”
She knew the philosophy. She wasn’t sure she would ever be able to do that, embrace her own cracks and wounds.
“I meant what I said the other day. I’m still interested in coming to watch you work. The whole process fascinates me. What
will you be making after this one?”
“Another console table for the house in Jackson Hole. This one’s for the front hallway. I have a gorgeous piece of oak I’ll
be using for the slab.”
“When do you start? I would love to watch you from the beginning.”
He looked uncomfortable at the idea. “I’m not sure when I’ll get to it. I usually have several projects going at once. And
I’m really not accustomed to having spectators while I work.”
“You said Carson used to come and watch you.”
“He would sometimes pop in and hang out with his notebook, but I think he was focused on the company rather than the process.
He’s really the only other person who has ever been interested.”
“Except your legions of online fans,” she pointed out, which only made him look more uncomfortable.
“ Legions is a bit of an exaggeration. They don’t really count, since I can ignore the camera.”
“You can ignore me, too,” she assured him. “I’ll be quiet. You won’t even know I’m there.”
At his skeptical laugh, she gave him an indignant glare. “What? I can do unobtrusive.”
“I’m sorry to break it to you, Juniper, but you couldn’t fade into the woodwork if you tried.”
What did he mean by that? She didn’t have a chance to ask before he continued.
“I guess if you really want to, you can watch me. It’s pretty boring at first, mostly building the form and making sure I have all the supplies I need.”
“That’s fine with me.”
“I can’t promise I’ll be very good company. I tend to get completely absorbed when I’m working, which is why I have to set
up the camera first thing. If I didn’t, I would completely forget it was there.”
She couldn’t imagine being so engrossed in a project that she forgot a camera was recording her actions.
“I don’t need conversation. I would like to observe what you do. It’s a process that fascinates me. While I enjoy watching
your videos, seeing it in person would be even better.”
He still seemed baffled at her interest, but finally shrugged. “Fine. I’ll let you know when I’m ready to get started.”
“Thanks, Beckett.”
“Beck. You don’t have to call me Beckett.”
“And I’m June. Hardly anyone calls me Juniper.”
“I like it, though. Junipers are some of my favorite trees. They represent strength and resilience and can grow in both acidic
and alkaline soils, in even the most harsh conditions. They can grow out of rocks and can survive and thrive even with very
little water.”
She did not represent her namesake tree, at least not right now. She wasn’t thriving at all.
“Should we head home?” he asked Hank, who had come in with them and was curled up on a small rug in front of the fireplace.
The dog cocked his head and gave a sharp bark, almost as if he understood every word.
“Good night,” Beck said.
“Same to you.” She held up the journals. “Thanks for these. I’m excited to dig in.”
“You’re welcome. I hope we haven’t given you too daunting a task.”
“I’m up for it,” she assured him, though she wasn’t entirely certain that was true.
She watched the man and his dog head off through the trees in the moonlight until the darkness quickly swallowed them.
After she could no longer see them, June returned to the cool, quiet cabin.
She suddenly realized she was exhausted. She had hardly done anything that day, but she still felt as if she had hiked to
the top of Bridger Peak then raced back down.
Dr. Singh had told her it would take time to regain her energy. Her body had sustained a shock, literally and metaphorically,
and was trying to adapt to the new normal. Whatever the hell that meant.
She let out a breath and sank down onto the long sofa, setting Carson’s journals on the coffee table.
Life somehow didn’t seem as bleak as it had that morning. She now had two things to look forward to. First, she would have
the chance to dig into the journals that could reveal the famous author’s psyche. And second, she couldn’t wait to watch Beckett
Hunter at work again.
Both men fascinated her.
She was attracted to Beck.
She remembered again seeing him at the ranch house, when she had felt tingles in places long dormant.
She wasn’t even sure she liked the man yet, but she was definitely drawn to him.
What did it matter? Through the fabric of her shirt, she traced a hand over the bandage covering her incision, below her collarbone.
She could be attracted to Beckett until the cows came home. Nothing would ever come of it. What would he—or any other man—want
with someone like her now, someone whose new normal involved an implantable device in her chest, a history of cardiac arrest
and the potential for further complications in the future?