Black Hills (12 page)

“You call me when you’re back this way, Dave. My mother will fix you the prince of home-cooked meals.”

“I’m on that.”

She shoved her thick braid off her shoulder, peering down, her dark eyes searching. She spotted the blop of red. Her mother’s car, she thought. Had to be. She braced against the turbulence, keeping that spot of red as her focal point.

The landing gear rumbled down, the red became a Yukon, and the plane dipped toward the runway. When the wheels touched, her heart lifted.

The minute Dave gave her the nod, she unbuckled to grab her duffel, her pack, her laptop case. Loaded, she turned to her pilot, managed to get a hand on his beard-grizzled face, and kissed him hard on the lips.

“Almost as good as a home-cooked meal,” he said.

As she clanged her way down the short steps to the tarmac, Jenna rushed out of the tiny terminal. Lil dumped her gear, and met her mother on the run.

“There you are. There you are,” Jenna murmured as they gripped each other in rib-crushers. “Welcome back, welcome home. Oh, I
missed
you! Let me look at you!”

“In a minute.” Lil held on, breathed in the scents of lemon and vanilla that said
Mom.
“Okay.”

She eased back, and the two women studied each other. “You look so beautiful.” Lil reached out, flicked her fingers over her mother’s hair. “I still can’t get used to it short. Sassy.”

“You look . . . amazing. How can you look amazing after six months of tramping around the Andes? After spending nearly two days on planes, trains, and God knows what else to get home? But you look amazing, and ready for anything. Let’s get your stuff, get you out of the cold. Dave!”

Jenna hurried toward the pilot, caught his face, as Lil had, kissed him, as Lil had. “Thanks for bringing my girl home.”

“Best detour I ever took.”

Lil hefted her pack, her duffel, let her mother take the laptop. “Safe skies, Dave.”

“I’m so happy to see you.” Jenna wrapped an arm around Lil’s waist as they walked against the wind. “Your dad wanted to come, but one of the horses is sick.”

“Bad?”

“I don’t think so. Hope not. But he wanted to stay close, keep an eye on her. So I get you all to myself for a while.”

Once the gear was loaded, they settled into the car. The hybrid her green-minded parents used was neat as a parlor, and roomier than the Cessna’s cabin. Lil stretched out her legs, let out a long sigh. “I’m dreaming of an endless bubble bath, with a bottomless glass of wine. Then the biggest damn steak this side of the Missouri.”

“We happen to have all those in stock.”

To cut the glare from the snowpack, Lil dug out her sunglasses. “I want to stay at the house tonight, catch up with you guys before I go to the cabin, get back to work.”

“I’d kick your butt if you planned to do anything else.”

“Yay. Tell me everything,” Lil insisted as they drove out of the lot. “How is everybody, what’s been going on, who’s ahead in the Joe v. Farley Never-Ending Chess Tournament? Who’s fighting, who’s having sex? Note I’m trying not to ask specifically about the refuge, because once I get started I won’t be able to stop.”

“Then I’ll just say everything’s fine in the area you’re not asking about. I want to hear all about your adventures. The journal entries you e-mailed were so rich, so interesting. You need to write that book, honey.”

“One of these days. I have enough already put together for a couple more solid articles. Got some great photos, more than I sent you guys. I looked out of my tent one morning, not fully awake, really, just glanced out, and I saw a puma up in a tree, maybe twenty yards away. Just sitting up there, studying the camp, like she was thinking, What the hell do they think they’re doing here?

“There were mists rising, and the birds had just started to chatter. Everyone else was asleep. It was just the two of us. She took my breath, Mom. I didn’t get a picture. I had to force myself to ease back and get my camera. It only took seconds, but when I looked back out, she was gone. Like smoke. But I’ll never forget how she looked.”

Lil laughed and shook her head. “See, you got me started. I want to hear about here. About home.” She flipped open her old sheepskin jacket as the car’s heater pumped out blissful warmth. “Oh, look at the snow. You’ve all been hammered. Two days ago I was sweltering in Peru. Tell me something new.”

“I didn’t tell you when you were gone. Didn’t want to worry you. Sam fell and broke his leg.”

“Oh, God.” Instantly the pleasure on her face, in her heart, dissolved. “When? How bad?”

“About four months ago. His horse shied, reared—we’re not quite sure—but he fell, and the horse tromped on his leg. Broke it in two places. He was alone, Lil. The horse headed back without him, and that’s what alerted Lucy.”

“Is he all right? Mom—”

“He’s doing better. We were all scared for a while there. He’s fit, but he’s seventy-six, and they were bad breaks. They put pins in, and he was in the hospital for over a week, then in a cast, and then therapy. He’s just starting to get around again, with a cane. If he wasn’t so tough . . . The doctors say he’s remarkable, and he’ll do fine. But it’s slowed him down, no question.”

“What about Lucy? Is she doing all right? The farm, the business? If Sam’s been laid up all this time, have they got enough help?”

“Yes. It was a little rough at first, but yes, they’re doing okay.” Jenna took a quick breath, which told Lil more tough news was coming. “Lil, Cooper’s back.”

It was a sucker punch to the heart. Just reflex, she told herself. Just old memories taking a cheap shot. “Good, that’s good. He’d be a lot of help. How long is he staying?”

“He’s back, Lil.” Jenna reached over to rub her hand on her daughter’s thigh. Both the tone and the touch were gentle. “He’s living at the farm now.”

“Well, sure.” Something inside her jittered, but she ignored it. “Where else would he stay while he’s helping them out?”

“He came out as soon as Lucy called him, stayed a few days, stayed until we were all sure Sam wasn’t going to need more surgery. Then he went back east, settled whatever he had to settle, and came back. He’s staying.”

“But . . . He has his business in New York.” That something inside squeezed her sternum now, making it hard to breathe. “I mean, after he quit the police force and went private, he . . . I thought he was doing okay there.”

“I think he was. But . . . Lucy told me he sold the agency, packed up, and told her he’d be staying. And he has. I’m not sure what they’d have done without him, truth be told. Everyone would’ve pitched in to help, you know how it is. But there’s nothing like family. I didn’t want to tell you about it on the phone, or by e-mail. Baby, I know it might be hard for you.”

“No. Of course not.” Once her heart stopped aching, once she could take a deep breath without pain, she’d be fine. “That was a long time ago. We’re still friendly. I saw him, what, three or four years ago, when he came out to visit Sam and Lucy.”

“You saw him for less than an hour, before you suddenly had to go to Florida, for the full two weeks he was here.”

“I did have to go, or the opportunity came up. Florida panthers are endangered.” She stared out the window, grateful for the sunglasses. Even with them everything seemed too bright, too
much.
“I’m fine about Coop. I’m glad he’s here for Sam and Lucy.”

“You loved him.”

“Yes, I did. Past tense. Don’t worry.”

It wasn’t as if she’d run into him every five minutes, see him everywhere. She had her work, her place. He, apparently, had his. Plus, no hard feelings, she reminded herself. They’d been children; they’d grown up.

She ordered herself to put it away, all away, when her mother turned onto the farm road. She could see smoke puffing out of the chimney—a homey welcome—and a pair of dogs racing from the back to see what was up.

She had a quick and poignant memory of weeping into the comfort of another pair of dogs on a hot summer morning. Twelve years ago this summer for that first miserable goodbye, she reminded herself. And really, if she was honest, that had been the end. Twelve years was long enough, plenty long enough, to get over it.

She saw her father coming from the barn to greet them, and pushed all thoughts of Cooper Sullivan away.

 

 

 

SHE WAS HUGGED, kissed, plied with hot chocolate and cookies, slobbered on by the pair of hounds her parents had named Lois and Clark. Out the kitchen window the familiar view spread. The fields, the hills, the pines, the bright wink of the stream. Jenna insisted on washing the clothes stuffed in the duffel.

“I’d like to. Makes me feel like Mommy for the day.”

“Far be it from me to deprive you, Mommy.”

“I’m not a fussy woman,” Jenna observed as she took the load Lil gave her. “But I don’t know how you can get by with so little for so long.”

“Planning, and the willingness to wear dirty socks when choices are limited. That’s actually still clean,” Lil began when her mother pulled another shirt out of the duffel. Jenna only lifted her eyebrows. “Okay, not so much clean as not filthy.”

“I’ll bring you a sweater, some jeans. That’ll hold you until these are clean and dry. Take your bath, drink your wine. Relax.”

She sank into the tub her mother had drawn. It was, Lil thought with a long, nearly orgasmic groan, nice to have someone fuss over her a little. Working in the field usually meant living rough, and in some cases close to primitive. She didn’t mind it. But she sure as hell didn’t mind having her mom draw her the Jenna Chance special bubble bath, and knowing she could indulge in it until the water went cold.

Now that she was alone, now that there was plenty of time, she let Coop back into her head.

He’d come back when his grandparents needed him—she had to give him credit for that. The fact was, no one could question his love or loyalty in that direction.

How could she hate the man, one who had, apparently, changed his life to see that his grandparents’ home and their business were protected?

Besides, she had nothing to hate him for.

Just because he’d broken her heart, then squeezed the still dripping juices of it onto the ground so they had clung to his boot heels when he’d walked away from her—really, was that a reason to hate anyone?

She sank in a little more, sipped her wine.

But he hadn’t lied, she had to give him that one, too.

He’d come back. Not at Thanksgiving, but at Christmas. Only for two days, but he’d come. And when he hadn’t been able to come that summer, she’d accepted an offer to work in a refuge in California. She’d learned a lot over those weeks, and she and Coop had kept in touch as much as possible.

But things had already started to change. Hadn’t she felt it even then? she asked herself. Hadn’t some part of her known?

He hadn’t been able to come out the next Christmas, and she’d cut her own winter break short for a field study.

When they’d met at a halfway-between point the following spring, it had been the end. He’d changed, she could see it. He’d been harder, tougher—and yes, colder. Still, she couldn’t claim he’d been cruel. Just clear.

She had her life west, he had his east. Time to toss it in and admit they’d never make it work.

No, he hadn’t been cruel, but he’d shattered her. All she’d had left was pride. The cold pride that had allowed her to say he was right, and to look him in the eye when she’d said it.

“Thank God I did,” she muttered. Otherwise his coming back would be both mortification and misery.

The best way to deal with it, to get everything off on the right foot, was to face it head-on. As soon as she could manage it, she’d go over to see Sam and Lucy, and Coop. Hell, she’d buy him a beer and play catch-up there, too.

She wasn’t a teenager with a fluttering heart and raging hormones anymore. As of the previous summer she was Dr. Lillian Chance, thank you very much. She was cofounder of the Chance Wildlife Refuge right here in her own corner of the world.

She’d traveled to, studied and worked in other corners of the world. She’d had a long-term, monogamous,
serious
relationship with a man. A couple of others not so long-term, not so serious, but she’d basically lived with Jean-Paul for nearly two years. Not counting the times she’d been traveling—or he’d been traveling—in different directions.

So she could handle sharing her corner of the world with a childhood sweetheart. Really, that’s what they’d been,
all
they’d been. It was simple, even sweet, she decided.

And they’d keep it that way.

She dressed in the borrowed sweater and jeans, and lulled by the bath, the wine, her old room, opted to take a power nap. Twenty minutes, she told herself as she stretched out.

She slept like the dead for three hours.

 

 

 

THE NEXT MORNING, she woke in the hour before dawn, rested and ready. Because she hit the kitchen before her parents, she made breakfast—her specialty. When her father walked in for coffee, she had bacon and home fries in the skillet, and eggs already whisked in a bowl.

Handsome, his hair still full and thick, Joe sniffed the air like one of his hounds. He pointed a finger at her. “I knew there was a reason I was glad you’re back. I figured I’d be eating instant oatmeal for breakfast.”

“Not when I’m around. And since when have you had to eat instant anything in this house?”

“Since your mother and I compromised a couple months ago and I agreed to eat oatmeal twice a week.” He gave her a mournful look. “It’s healthy.”

“Ah, and this was oatmeal day.”

He grinned and gave her long ponytail a tug. “Not when you’re around.”

“Okay, full cholesterol plate for you, then I’ll help you with the stock before I ride over to the refuge. I made enough for Farley, assuming he’d be here. Does oatmeal put him off ?”