12. Doreen
DOREEN
It was evident to Doreen within a few steps off the cabin porch that she probably should change her mind. The rain was coming down sideways, and the wind roared among the trees on the valley hills—really roared, a noise like heavy traffic all around her.
But going back would mean giving in. She glanced behind her. Warm yellow light spilled through the windows of the cabin. There was no sign of Wick coming after her, and that cemented her fury.
You literally told him not to.
How very dare he listen to her!
She stormed along the ponds. Anger kept her hot enough that she barely minded the sideways rain soaking her jeans, her hair under the hood, and anything else it could get to. The slicker kept her torso mostly dry, but cold rainwater ran off the hem onto her thighs in a steady stream. The hood seemed to be doing very little to keep her head dry. She had to use one hand to keep it from blowing down, and the other held her purse clamped under her arm beneath the rain slicker, in an increasingly futile hope that she could manage not to soak her phone again . She could feel cold water running in around her neck and going up her sleeves.
Exposed to the full force of the wind after leaving the shelter of the cabin, she had to lean into it to keep from being knocked sideways. Occasionally, when the wind changed direction, she nearly fell over, coming very close to toppling into the pond on one occasion. That would be exactly the ridiculous note this day needed to end on, she thought grimly. Rain stung her face like icy needles.
It was a relief, at first, when she entered the trees where the road led out of the valley. The forest blocked the wind, so she could relax a little, stand upright, and walk faster without having to fight the storm quite so hard. The rain was still slanting sideways, but spent most of its force on the trees, so it fell on her without seeming to come from all directions at once.
But the forest was eerie in its own way. The wind roared in the trees around her like a freight train. The sound covered the noise of her footsteps and made her feel as if she was floating through the wet, stormy world. Night hadn’t fallen yet, but it was dim, and nearly dark under the trees. The footing was terrible. Rainwater sluiced down the road, and she could see why Wick didn’t want to drive in this kind of weather. The road was the clearest path for the water pouring off the highlands, so it turned into a frothing, muddy stream. Although it wasn’t deep, a few inches at most, it hid her view of her sodden feet and the uncertain footing underneath. She could feel slippery mud and tree roots. A couple of times, she lost her balance and went to her knees. At least she was so wet that she literally couldn’t get wetter.
Even more alarming was a crash in the bushes that sounded like it was no more than ten feet away from her. Doreen jumped and sped up. The second time she heard a similar crash, she realized that it wasn’t some sort of animal, an elk or a bear charging around in the wet woods. They had probably all gone to ground like sensible creatures. What she was hearing was the thing Wick had warned her about, tree branches or whole trees shattering with the force of the storm and plummeting down to the forest floor.
She reassured herself with the reminder that she had only seen a few downed branches, and one fallen tree, on her entire walk yesterday. What were the odds that she just happened to be standing underneath the one tree that was going to fall on a trail in the entire woods?
Yes, but Wick said that Mauro is out clearing trails all the time. He might have got the rest of them.
Doreen shivered and tried to walk faster.
On top of everything, she was starting to regret her behavior back in Wick’s cabin. It was true that a platform of secrets was a weak base to build a relationship on. But they were his secrets, and she felt increasingly guilty about having pried into them, and then thrown his own reticence into his face.
It had simply been so hard to see past her own anger and resentment at being shut out. If she hadn’t completely blown it with Wick, she made herself a sincere promise that she was going to hold on to the guilt she was feeling now, and try not to do anything like that again. It was just so satisfying to bury herself in her own sense of rightness, even to the point of pushing away someone she had come to deeply care about.
Her future. Her mate.
Doreen stopped in the trail, halfway up the hill. Water ran past her shins.
“I am so stupid,” she said out loud.
Her badger seemed to agree with her.
There was no reason why she had to make good on her threat to walk all the way back to the lodge. In fact, now that the fury which had been carrying her along like floodwaters was starting to recede, she realized that if she just let go of her pride a little bit, she could go back.
Another branch or small tree crashed down in the forest very close to her. She jumped again.
Okay. Yes. Pride could take a backseat to common sense just this once. Wick would probably be happy that she’d come back, even if he was still mad, which gave her a hollow feeling since he hadn’t even bothered to come after her. But she did care about him, and maybe—maybe it was all right if he was just like everyone else, he didn’t want Doreen to be loud and pushy and angry, he just wanted her soft and sweet. She could be soft and sweet for a little while, finish her weekend fling on a less sour note, and then she had a job in the city to go back to.
Having made her decision, she turned around, squinting through the rain and the dusk, and made the unpleasant discovery that the path she was standing on curved out of sight downhill. She didn’t remember the road doing that; it was a straight shot down the mountainside as far as she could remember, but there were a number of places where trails branched off. Was it possible she had accidentally turned on one of those, misled by the terrible weather and the rushing water making everything look the same?
Doreen began splashing down the hill. It turned out that going down was harder than going up; she had to struggle not to slip and fall. After turning the corner, she walked for a while and soon began to wonder if she was going back the way she’d come, because it seemed that now she was walking horizontally along the hill. Also, the space between the trees felt too narrow to navigate in a truck, even by the standards of the one-lane rutted roads that Wick normally drove on.
When she came to a Y junction of the path, she was forced to admit that she had taken a wrong turn somewhere since she left the valley. She was now on the network of paths that covered the mountainside, and she had no idea which way to go. Backtracking her steps seemed like the best way to get unlost, but it hadn’t helped her just now. She could find herself on yet another wrong turn. The branches and side paths looked different when approached from each direction.
Also, she was starting to shiver.
And getting hungry.
Okay, Doreen thought. Pride no longer mattered, her fight with Wick no longer mattered—the only thing she needed to worry about now was not turning into a statistic on the mountainside. Fortunately, she had an advantage that most lost hikers didn’t.
She could turn into a badger.
And it was starting to look like she might have to. With her thick fur and low-to-the-ground build, not to mention her badger-ish ability to forage her own food in the woods, she could weather the storm just fine.
But it would mean sacrificing her clothes, her phone, and everything in her purse, which included her wallet and car keys. If it came to a matter of survival, she’d give all of that up in a hot instant, hoping that Wick and the lodge owners could help her retrace the way she’d gone and find her purse after the storm blew out. Her phone and anything paper would still be ruined, but she could replace those things. She couldn’t replace her life.
Feeling a little better with a Plan B, she began sloshing back the way she’d come. At least she was pretty sure it was the way she’d come. Then the path turned downhill, and Doreen groaned.
Okay, she was lost. Plan B (for Badger) might become Plan A soon.
Doreen stopped and stood still again. “Wick!” she called. Her voice was lost in the roar of wind in the trees.
No way he could hear her, or find her in this.
Abruptly, something was different in the freight-train rush of the wind around her. A new sound. A deep, ominous cracking sound.
And then a fast-moving force slammed into her, knocking her aside an instant before the world filled with crashing and rustling and flying twigs.
Doreen found herself lying in the mud, half covered with something large and heavy. It moved, and she rolled over, gasping and pushing herself up with a suffocating feeling that she was going to drown in the heavy, wet muck.
“Sorry,” said Wick’s familiar, wonderful voice. “Are you hurt?”
Doreen managed to sit up. Wick was kneeling next to her, stark naked. When she turned to look where she had been standing, what she saw made no sense to her; it looked like a dark wall. After a moment, she realized she was looking at a fallen tree composed mainly of a mass of dead twigs and a thick trunk. The splintered wood where it had snapped off was pale in the gathering gloom of falling night.
“Doreen?” Wick’s hand was on her shoulder, his voice more urgent now. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” she managed. She put her muddy hand over his, squeezed his fingers and clung. “Yes, I ... I’m fine. I’m sorry too.”
They helped each other up. Doreen felt shaky and unwell (adrenaline crash, she supposed) and she was glad of someone to lean against, especially since he also seemed to be leaning on her. “Are you hurt?” she asked.
“No. I’m fine.”
“How on earth did you find me? I don’t even know where I am.”
Wick smiled his lopsided grin. “Believe it or not, I just knew. It was like I knew you were in trouble and something was drawing me to you.” The smile grew warm. “Maybe there is something to this fated mate business, after all.”