Chapter Twelve
H e was going to have to make some modifications to Sarah’s Christmas present, Alex realized as he turned onto the newly built logging road. Continuing the driving lesson, he explained to Sarah that he was shifting the truck into four-wheel drive because of the five inches of unplowed snow. Though she’d done fairly well today, she was a long way from mastering the gas pedal. She would start out well enough, determined to get the tachometer exactly on 1500 rpm, but the moment she looked out through the windshield, she would start pressing harder and harder on the gas, as if she were trying to catch up with something.
Life, maybe? Did Sarah feel she had to rush headlong at life before it left her behind? From what she’d told him of her childhood growing up on Crag Island, Alex could well understand Sarah’s addiction to satellite TV. Almost everything she knew about the real world she had apparently learned from watching television and reading. It rather alarmed Alex to think that Sarah’s perception of life was based on sell-me-a-dream TV and larger-than-life fictional characters. But the truly scary part was that the woman actually thought she was worldly wise because of it.
Hell, Delaney was less naive than Sarah was, e specially when it came to men. His daughter had grown up in an all-male household and had seen the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of real men. Sarah’
s experience had been a parade of lechers, a bully of a husband, and a father who had lost his will to live when his wife died. From that decidedly narrow paradigm, Sarah had apparently concluded that real heroes only existed in books and on television and that looking for one for herself was a waste of time. Alex stopped the truck and shut off the engine when the road came to a babbling brook. “Did any of your fan club ever mention love, Sarah?” he asked as she started to open her door. Her hand stilled on the handle. “What?” She looked at him, her brow wrinkled in confusion.
“Love? What do you mean?”
“Just that. Did any of them ever say they loved you?”
“Well, sure,” she said dismissively. “Quite a few. What better way to get a girl into bed than to say I love you?”
“So several men over the years told you they loved you, but you simply didn’t believe them?”
She opened her door and slid out. “What they loved was my body. What brought this up?”
Alex shrugged and opened his own door. “Nothing, really,” he said as he got out. “I was just thinking about something Delaney told me this week.”
“What did she tell you?”
“There’s this boy at school who said he loves her.”
“Just before he tried to kiss her, I bet,” Sarah muttered. “I’d better have a talk with her.”
“I already took care of it,” Alex said, holding his hand up to halt her growing concern. “She’d be embarrassed if she knew I told you about the boy.”
“But why? This is girl stuff.”
“No, it’s father-daughter stuff,” Alex returned with a laugh, reaching into the bed of the truck and lifting out his surveying equipment. “She asked me because I’m a boy—in case you haven’t noticed. Delaney wanted to know if she punched the kid, if that would end his pursuit or only encourage him.”
“And you said?”
Alex gave her a wink. “I told her the truth, that men just love a challenge.”
Sarah stared at him nonplussed, then suddenly reached into the bed of the truck and grabbed the surveying stick that was at least two feet taller than she was. Alex had a moment’s worry that she was thinking about smacking him with it, but she spun on her heel and started marching toward the stream. He set up his tripod with a chuckle and attached the transit. “Be careful going through that brook,”
he called to her. “The rocks are icy.”
“I’ve been climbing over slippery rocks since I was three,” she snapped over her shoulder, wading into the stream while using the stick for support. Alex watched her carefully make her way to the other side, where she stopped and turned to face him. “Now what?”
“Look for an orange tag tied to a tree several yards up the road.” He lifted his tripod and carried it down to a flat rock next to the stream for a reference point. “Once you locate the tag, start scuffing the snow just below it. You should find a metal stake driven into the ground.”
She scanned both sides of the ditch as she slowly walked up the gently sloping road. She was about forty yards away when she stopped, plodded to the right side of the road, and started kicking the snow with her boots.
“I found it. Now what?”
Alex looked through the transit lens. “Place the bottom of your stick on the ground beside the stake,” he called out. He straightened with a smile and waved his hand in a twirling motion. “The other bottom end of the stick, Sunshine. The numbers are upside down.”
She snapped her gaze to him in obvious surprise at the nickname, then spun the stick and held it beside the stake. “Okay. It’s set.”
Alex jotted down the number in his transit’s crosshairs, then straightened. “Keep going up the road another twenty yards, look for another orange tag, find the stake below it, and do the same thing.”
“That’s it? Just hold the stick? Tucker could have done this for you after school,” she said as she started up the road through the fluffy snow. “What’s it mean when there’s a green tag on a tree?” she shouted as she turned and walked backward.
“Green?”
She stopped and pointed. “There’s a small piece of green ribbon tied to the limb of that tree. Is there a stake under it?”
“We don’t use green tags for anything. This is a spruce forest; we’d never be able to see them.”
She shrugged and started up the road but stopped again, walked over to a tree opposite where she’d seen the green tag, and touched one of the branches. Alex looked through the transit lens, turning the focus until he could clearly see what she was touching. He straightened with a frown. Nobody used green ribbon in an evergreen forest.
“Scuff the snow under the tag,” he shouted. He looked through the transit again, angling the lens to see her feet.
“There’s nothing here,” she called back. “There seems to be some sort of path leading into the woods, though.” She looked across at the other tag, then back into the woods where she was standing.
“It crosses the road right—”
Sarah dropped the stick with a startled yelp and started down the road toward Alex at a flat-out run. “Something’s in there!” she screamed as she splashed through the brook without even slowing down, her eyes wide with terror.
Alex braced himself for the impact and caught Sarah as she sloshed out of the stream. He immediately tucked her against his side and moved off the road before setting her down at the base of a large tree. Before he could even crouch beside her, she scurried further behind the tree and yanked him down. He landed with a startled whoosh just as Sarah wrapped her arms around him tightly enough to make his ribs hurt.
Alex grinned through his wince, not willing to squander this opportunity to hold his wife. His smile widened as he watched a large bull moose step into the road right where Sarah had been standing.
“Easy now, you’re safe,” he whispered into her hair when he recognized this particular moose. “I won’t let anything hurt you.”
She squirmed, trying to see up the road, but he tightened his arms as he watched the majestic bull look across the brook at their truck. Alex let out a barely audible, guttural grunt. The moose, sporting a rack of antlers that spanned five feet, perked his ears and focused his large brown eyes on the tree they were hiding behind. “Shhh,” Alex whispered against Sarah’s hair. “Don’t make a sound.”
The bull gave a soft grunt of its own, then started walking toward the stream, its cavernous nostrils flaring as it tried to catch their scent. Alex waited until it stepped into the stream, then slowly turned Sarah around—still holding her protectively in his arms—and whispered, “The rut’s over, but this guy is obviously still hopeful. Have you ever seen anything like him, Sarah?”
She sucked in her breath and tried to shrink even smaller against him. “Why is he coming toward us?” she whispered.
“Because he thinks he just heard a lady moose.”
“Y-you called him?” she squeaked. “When you grunted? But why?” she cried in a whisper, trying to look up at Alex while still keeping an eye on the moose.
The bull stopped at the front of their pickup and started licking the road salt off the bumper. Alex gave another soft grunt that made the moose lift its head, zero in on their location, and take several steps toward them.
Sarah squeaked again. Alex stood up with her still wrapped in his embrace and moved to put the tree between them and the moose standing less than ten yards away, eyeing them curiously. The large beast was so close that they could hear him breathing. Alex could also hear Sarah’s heart pounding.
“Sarah, meet Thumper,” he whispered in her ear. “Tucker named him. About three years ago, Thumper came to visit us at the lodge when he was a two-year-old adolescent. He hung around for nearly a week and kept butting his head into one of the skidders parked in the yard, so Tucker started calling him Thumper.”
“H-how come your talking isn’t making him run away?”
“Because even though he’s five now, he still hasn’t gotten any smarter. If anything, he’s grown bolder.”
“Will he charge us?”
“Maybe,” Alex teased, tightening his arms. “If he’s disappointed to learn we’re not the girl moose he heard.”
Sarah sucked in her breath again.
“Then again,” Alex continued, working to keep the amusement out of his voice, “he might decide a pretty little blonde with big brown eyes is even more appealing.”
Sarah leaned to her right to put more of the tree between them and the moose. He felt her heave a calming sigh. “He’s not my type,” she whispered, never taking her eyes off Thumper.
“No? He’s a handsome fellow in his prime, considered quite a catch among the lady moose in this area. Look at him,” Alex said, leaning them back to the left. “If he grunts again, he’s saying he loves you.” Alex bent over Sarah’s shoulder just enough for her to see his smile. “Will you believe him?”
“Just as much as I believed all those other males,” she whispered tightly, darting her gaze to him briefly before looking back at Thumper. “He’s no different. He’s just interested in a good time before he starts looking for his next victim.”
The venom in Sarah’s voice punched Alex square in the gut.
“Go find your own girl, Thump,” he said loudly, waving an arm in the air. “Go on, get!”
Thumper jerked his head with a startled snort, took several steps back, then spun on his rear legs and headed for the stream in a trot that sent clods of snow shooting into the air behind him. Alex turned Sarah to face him. “Which one of your infamous fan club broke your heart?” he asked. He gave her a gentle squeeze when she only looked up at him mutely. “What did he do—tell you he loved you, take you to bed, then go his merry way? No,” Alex said before she could answer. “He definitely didn’t get you into bed. So how did it play out? What stopped you at the last minute?”
Sarah gave a heavy sigh. “I actually had my bags packed,” she said quietly, her face pale with the obviously painful memory as she looked up at him. “I’d been married to Roland for only two years, and James had been staying at the inn for a week when he swept me off my feet with his offer to take me back to Boston with him.”
“But?”
“But I heard him on the phone in the parlor the day we were supposed to leave. The ferry stopped running at six, so I’d made arrangements with a friends’s husband to take us to the mainland at midnight.”
“But?” Alex repeated, forcing himself to relax his grip.
“But James was talking to a friend in Boston, boasting about how he was bringing his buddy back a hot little surprise from Maine.” Sarah glared up at Alex. “James told him to change the sheets on his bed and clear his calendar, because he wouldn’t want any distractions for at least two weeks. And that he couldn’t ever complain again that James never brought him any souvenirs.”
Alex reared back in surprise but didn’t let go of Sarah. “The bastard was bringing you back to his friend? While making you think you were running away with him?”
Her eyes answered for her. Alex pulled her forward and wrapped his arms around her, holding her head to his chest. Holy hell, no wonder she didn’t trust men. She had to have been, what, nineteen?
“And so you’ve painted every man since James with the same brush.”
“Just like you think every woman is like Charlotte,” she said into his chest, her body as rigid as stone. She gripped the back of his jacket and tugged until Alex released her enough that she could glare up at him. “Or are you going to stand here and tell me you didn’t immediately decide I was just like her?”
“No more than you’re going to tell me I’m like James.”
Sarah went soft in his arms and smiled. “Does this mean you’re not going to tell me you love me?”
she asked, batting her lashes.
Alex let go, stepping back as if he’d just been punched again, and gaped at her. “Not on your life, lady,” he finally said. “Three feet of snow will be covering hell before you ever hear those words from me.”
Her smile turned smug. “Then you just keep on grunting at moose,” she said, stepping around him and walking over to the truck. “Because, like Thumper, you’ll eventually come across a female you can charm,” she finished as she got in and closed the door.
Alex stood staring at her for a full two minutes before he finally walked down to the brook, ignoring the icy water that soaked his feet as he waded across and angrily plodded up the road. Dammit to hell, she’d done it to him again. The maddening little witch had given him just a peek inside that beautiful head of hers, only to suddenly turn her provoking smile to full wattage and completely disarm him.
It was a defense, he suddenly realized. Blunt, catch-you-off-guard humor backed up by a disarming smile was Sarah’s weapon of choice whenever she found herself in a tight situation. Hadn’t she tried to defuse the tension that first morning in her bedroom by claiming no point, no foul? And down on the dock, when he’d kissed her, hadn’t she suddenly smiled and calmly stated that most men wanted her? And at the hot tub, she’d caught him off-guard by suddenly changing from a cornered victim to a smiling fury.
Whenever things started to get a bit heated, Sarah simply went all soft and feminine on him. Oh, yeah, she knew exactly what an unexpected smile from a drop-dead beautiful woman did to a man. And besides having no compunction about using her considerable charm to disarm a guy, she was damned good at it. If she had smiled at Thumper, they’d probably be sitting in a tree right now, trying to get rid of a lovesick moose.
He was going to have to be more careful in the future. But being forewarned, he would be forearmed the next time Little Miss Dazzling Smile tried to turn the tables on him. Alex reached down and picked up the surveying stick she had dropped, his mind shifting to how it must have felt when Sarah had realized she was nothing more than a vacation souvenir being brought back to a friend. Damned hurtful all the way to the soul; not that dissimilar to how Alex had felt when Charlotte had told him that getting pregnant with Delaney and Tucker had been nothing more than calculated gambles that hadn’t paid off.
Yeah. Long-term hurtful.
Alex’s absent gaze strayed down the path where Thumper had come out, and he frowned. Instead of broken branches, as there should have been on a well-traveled game trail, he could see where a hatchet had taken off the limbs of several trees. He walked down the trail, rounded the corner, and saw that it continued up the mountain ridge, hatchet marks clearing the way as far as he could see. He’d dismissed the green tags the moment Thumper had stepped onto the road, deciding a hunter had tied the camouflaged ribbons to mark an active game trail. It wasn’t uncommon for Maine guides to scout an area for deer or moose, and as long as his crew wasn’t cutting an area, the Knight land was open to hunting.
But no hunter ever messed with game trails by cutting them wider. In fact, they were careful not to disturb anything. So who had marked and widened this path? Not snowmobilers. Grady wouldn’t have given the local snowmobile club permission to make a trail through a section they’d be logging later this winter.
A breeze stirred the trees overhead, sending a flurry of snow down Alex’s collar just as the sun disappeared behind a cloud. A deep chill of foreboding raced up his spine as he stood in the center of the man-made trail, and Alex zipped his jacket up and headed back to the road. He waded through the stream, then picked up his tripod and carried it on his shoulder back to the truck. There he removed the transit, put it into its protective case, and set everything in the bed of the truck. He stood staring up at Whistler’s Mountain, rising above the trees, then finally climbed behind the wheel. He didn’t know which worried him more, the fact that Sarah might never see him as anything more than a horny bull moose or the unsettling feeling that something dangerous had invaded his woods.