Bound to Happen (17 page)

“Archibald?”

“Leslie, honey, you are looking at one of your national birds. That is a bald eagle, hence, his name. He and his wife have taken to nesting in the vicinity. We met last year.”

The bird seemed huge, even from a distance. She couldn’t see his white head, but she could make out white tail feathers. Either way, she had to take the identification on faith, because she wouldn’t know a bald eagle unless it had a nameplate attached to it. Whatever the species, there was something definitely thrilling about seeing him, she decided as she watched the bird glide through the sky. At one point Leslie felt the bird ought to flap his wings to keep up his speed, but he didn’t. She found herself holding her breath as he continued to float on the air without effort.

“Isn’t he wonderful?” she whispered.

“Mm.” Joe, too, had his gaze fixed on the eagle. “I was really glad to see him again this year. They don’t always come back to nest in the same place every year, and they almost never build their nests this low. They like the higher altitudes. Last year the ranger said there wasn’t another pair of them for two or three hundred miles.”

They watched in silence until the bird gracefully flew out of sight. It was like the finale to a wondrous and magical episode in their lives, a signal that it was time to pack up and go back to reality.

“Tell you what,” Joe said, as he tucked in his shirt and kicked Leslie’s other moccasin closer so she could reach it. “I’m nearly finished with this report I’ve been working on. I’ll take a day off, and we’ll go up and check out the eagle’s nest, see how many babies they had this year. Last year there were two. I’ve been hoping the little ones would fly in to see their folks this summer, but I haven’t seen them.”

“I’d like that … I think.” She cast him a dubious glance. The mountains were growing on her, there was no doubt about that. But she’d never be the gung ho, outdoorsy type. Nature wasn’t in her nature. She was about to explain this to Joe, when something else he’d said triggered a response in her mind. “I thought you were working on another book. What’s this about a report?”

“Actually that’s what I wanted you to think, so you’d leave me alone. But the truth is, I’m working on a labor of love, and I won’t get a penny for it. Although there is a thread of a chance it may save my cabin.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There’s a development company in Denver that’s planning on putting a ski run through my cabin. Since I lease it from the state, there’s not a whole lot I can do about it alone. But I’ve joined forces with an environmental group. They want to save the inner Rockies as wilderness land and keep the ski resorts and campgrounds limited to the outer, lateral mountains.”

“How does it look? Can they make that happen?” Leslie asked, hoping desperately that the sinking feeling in her stomach and the salty, nauseated feeling of knowing the truth could somehow be changed by Joe’s inside knowledge.

Joe shook his head and something pierced her heart. The pain and guilt and hopelessness were more than she could bear. She opened her mouth to tell Joe the truth of what she’d done, but he was already speaking again. “I think it’s been pretty much decided. All the reports and environmental impact studies are done, and the permits are granted by the state long before the development company actually takes over and puts money into a project. But this group has been protesting all along, so they’ve been granted an appeals interview with a review officer of the forest service. They’re hoping they can come up with enough support or adequate evidence to get the whole decision thrown into the district court. Then, depending on the judge, there might be a chance.”

“How does it look though? Do you think they can do it?” she asked anxiously.

“Wilderness doesn’t bring in a lot of revenue for the state, Les. The group needs a miracle.”

“Your report?”

“No. It’s not going to make much difference, I just don’t know how else to help. We’ll send it to other naturalist groups around the country and deliver it to the review officer, but it’s not going to make or break our case. You ready? Got everything?” Leslie nodded, in too much turmoil to speak. “Ah, don’t look so down in the mouth, sweetheart. I know hiking isn’t your favorite pastime, but you didn’t really get all that far from the cabin. Two, three miles, tops.”

Leslie frowned. “Are you joking? I walked all day yesterday and only went three miles?”

“A
H.” LESLIE MOANED
in ecstasy. “A little lower. Oh. yes. Right there.”

“Here?” Joe asked as he leaned over Leslie’s shoulder and planted a kiss on the top of her head.

The fire flared and crackled noisily. Its golden light glowed warmly over Leslie’s skin and danced in her ebony hair. Joe’s bare chest was cast into angular shadows that seemed to move and change shape as he used his strength to ease Leslie’s aching need. She turned her head to the light, and Joe smiled at the euphoric expression that had relaxed her tense features of moments ago. “Feel good?” he asked in a low, soothing voice.

“Mm.”

“Want me to stop?”

“No,” she murmured, barely conscious. “But if you’re getting tired, you can.”

Joe laughed. “Listen, this beats chopping wood all to pieces. I just thought you might want to move this back rub over to the bed. You’re getting pruney, and the water’s not even warm anymore,” he said, shaking Leslie’s tepid bath water from his hands and reaching for her towel.

“And you have to get back to work,” she added for him, since he wasn’t likely to say it. Joe was so different, she mused dreamily. In the past few days he seemed to have undergone a metamorphosis from the crabby, temperamental writer, to a gentle, considerate lover, whose uppermost thoughts were focused on her alone. Even his writing seemed to take a backseat to her needs and desires.

At first it had been a heady experience. She’d never held so much power over another human before. Nor had anyone ever had such an effect on her. She loved Joe. She loved him better the more she knew him. She loved him more with each passing day. And with each day she learned that her power over him wasn’t something she wanted to abuse. The fact that he would spend his time with her doing whatever she wanted to do instead of locking himself up in the cabin to write wasn’t what she wanted. Well, she loved it actually, but not at the expense of his first love, his writing. She was careful to keep to the routine he’d set up when they first arrived at the cabin so he could work. She did this unselfishly and without resentment because she loved him and because his mountain needed him more than she did at the moment. “I think I will get out now. I feel much better.”

“You didn’t have to do all the laundry today. You could have done it in stages. Jeans today, what few T-shirts I have left tomorrow, whatever’s not done the day after that. Then again, you’re not exactly a halfway person, are you? It’s all or nothing, right?”

“I’m afraid so. And believe me, this isn’t the first time I’ve been punished for being that way.” She stood stiffly and let Joe wrap her tightly in a soft yellow towel, held securely in place by his loving arms.

“I’m not complaining. I like your tenacity, the way you stick to things. When you say you love me, I know you don’t just think you do, you feel it, or you wouldn’t say it. And you’ll see it through to the end, wherever it leads us, because that’s the way you are.”

Leslie turned her head so she could place a tender kiss on his mouth. “I do love you.”

The now familiar look of contentment and boyish happiness softened his gaze and gently curved his lips as he regarded her adoringly. “I know you do,” he said before he kissed her in a way that revealed the fathomless depths of his own emotions.

When he released her so she could get dressed for bed and he had returned to his little computer, Leslie couldn’t shake the feeling of dissatisfaction that crept into her heart. Joe had said he loved her only once and that had been in the throes of passion. She didn’t doubt his love, exactly. His whole attitude toward her was a statement of deep affection. The way he looked at her, his kisses, his touch, other things he said, told of his love for her. But he never came right out and said it.

While she attached the hose that would drain the water in the small bathtub into the kitchen sink, she wondered if Joe’s previous lover was the cause of his reluctance to say I love you. The woman had hurt him badly, and Leslie, for the first time in her life, actually hated someone she didn’t even know. Then again, love made you think and do and feel a lot of strange and irrational things. And, happily, Leslie wouldn’t have it any other way.

Had she ever been more satisfied with her life, she wondered, as she crawled up onto the middle of the bed with her next Darkwood novel to wait for Joe. She didn’t think so. She’d never felt more whole. It was wonderful to be the Leslie she was and the Leslie she’d always wanted to be at the same time.

She and Joe had spent hours discussing a variety of subjects. Those she wasn’t well informed on, she asked Joe about. He would explain or give his opinion without reproach or disapproval. Those she was familiar with she spoke freely and intelligently about and, she suspected, had amazed Joe with how truly bright she was. Neither one of them had given an accurate account of themselves when they first met, she supposed.

She’d amazed herself quite frequently of late as to how attuned she had become to so many new experiences. Joe was an obvious one, but even the mountain seemed to touch her—and not always with guilt. She found she didn’t have to be a jock to enjoy the mountains and the out-of-doors. Just sitting in the shade by the woodshed, she would find herself in such a quiet, peaceful state of mind, she wondered how anyone survived in the hubbub of the city. She still was leery of the animals, but she enjoyed the birds immensely. She was almost to the point of wishing that she and Joe could stay together in the mountains forever.

Part of that wish, however, stemmed from shame and cowardice. She hadn’t told Joe of her involvement with the development company that eventually would destroy his mountain and his cabin. She wanted to be truthful. It was her nature to be honest and up-front. But the words she needed to tell Joe didn’t seem to exist in her vocabulary. She’d tried to tell him, more than once, but short of simply blurting it out, there didn’t seem to be an easy way. She found it preferable to think that the right words would suddenly occur to her at the right moment and tried not to dwell on it too much. But the fact remained ever present and very heavy in her heart and mind.

Then again, if they were never rescued, there was a good chance she’d have to do the laundry again, and her back might not hold out.

“Now which one are you reading?” Flat on her stomach, her mind wandering, Leslie was startled to hear Joe’s question and feel his long, half-naked body slide over hers. He wrapped his arms around her from behind, his chin coming to rest on her left shoulder. He kissed her cheek and nuzzled her neck. Her stomach muscles coiled into a tight knot of desire, as her heart picked up its pace and began to throb excitedly in her throat.

“Ah … this one is about …” It was hard for her to think and speak simultaneously when Joe’s hands were moving on a predetermined path to his ultimate goal, that of making her totally senseless with need for him. It was especially difficult when he didn’t play fair and used his tongue and mouth to torment an ultrasensitive area on her neck. He knew every nook and cranny on her body by now, and he obviously had no scruples when it came to getting what he wanted. What they both wanted, she admitted to herself with a wily smile. “Ah … Spit and Max have just … um … found the two orphans, whose parents were—”

“Were killed by marauding Indians,” Joe finished for her, slipping to one side so his lips could get to the opening of the night shirt she was wearing. “If I tell you how it ends, will you put the damn thing down and let me make love to you?”

“Don’t you dare tell me how it ends. He hasn’t even met the woman yet.” She glanced at Joe and was going to pretend to keep on reading, but something in his eyes caught her attention. “What’s so funny?”

“You.”

Leslie’s eyebrows rose disdainfully, as she failed to see the humor.

“I never would have imagined that you’d end up a Darkwood junkie. His readers are usually male. He’ll be very hard to live with once he develops a female following as well. I’m not sure he can handle hordes of women throwing themselves at him for his autograph.”

“You know him?” she asked, ignoring his innuendo about her hero.

“Why else would I have all his books? You don’t think I’d actually choose to read that junk do you? He gives them to me.”

“You really know him? Personally?”

“Yep. And if you’re real nice to me, I’ll get him to give you an autograph,” he said enticingly as he slowly ran his index finger from her bottom lip down the middle of the V of her shirt to the first secured button. He looked up at Leslie with a very evil glint in his eyes.

“That’s blackmail.”

“I know.” He confidently slipped the first button through its hole, while his other hand slithered knowingly up her thigh and under the tail of her shirt.

“I can’t believe you’d stoop to this. I’m … ah … I feel backed into a corner here,” she said, turning slightly so she could touch him, feel him, use him as an anchor to keep from spinning off into nothingness, as her mind grew dark and thoughtless. Ripples of sensation became torrent waves of excitement. “I feel so helpless.”

“I know.” Joe’s voice was a hoarse groan of desire and passion as he covered her mouth with his, taking what he knew to be his alone. Taking it, not greedily, but slowly and with relish until he had consumed it all. Then just as painstakingly he gave it back, knowing Leslie to be a safe vessel in which to keep it, trusting her with all that was precious to him … their love for each other.

Emotionally drugged and exhausted, they lay in each other’s arms. Without a care or complaint, they simply were happy to be alive and in love.

“Roll over,” Joe said suddenly.

“Why?” Leslie asked lethargically.

“Trust me. Just roll over and don’t look.”