Broken Promises (2 page)

"You haven't worked with these men," Gib insisted. "You might find you've bit off more than you can chew with Jed Swenson."

"I'm not intimidated by male chauvinism," Tess said, "and from what you've told me that's what I'll be facing with Swenson." She noted the shadows under her father's eyes and the sharp angles of his face and realized how much older he looked since his heart attack. "Please, Dad, just go home and let me handle things here on my own."

Gib's thin lips pressed together in determination. "I need to stop by Carl Yaeger's first and make sure he knows I don't have one foot in the grave. Ezzie said he was here asking questions about the equipment, and I know damn well he'll be pushing to buy us out again."

"This is exactly what the doctor was talking about," Tess said. "You come here and suddenly you've got to see Carl Yaeger and heaven knows what else, when all you're supposed to be concerned with is your heart." She sighed. "Please, Dad, go home. I'll stop by tomorrow and fill you in on everything."

"Damn, you're a stubborn woman," Gib said. "Come hell or high water you're determined to do things on your own, whether it's running this place or running away from home." Saying nothing more, he turned and headed toward his truck.

"Dad?" Tess called after him, feeling a knot in her stomach with his last statement, knowing their old grievance was still there. Her father glanced back and waited.

"Wish me well."

He studied her for a moment, then smiled, and said. "Just don't be too hard on my men."

Tess warmed under his rare smile, but when she saw his truck turn out of sight, the apprehension she'd felt over the past few weeks returned. His heart attack jolted her. Now, she felt a desperate need to restore the relationship they'd once had before it was too late. Leaving her job in
Seattle
and returning to Baker’s Creek to take over his logging operation was a start. He'd seemed pleased, and at last, after seven years, they were speaking civilly.

She climbed into her Jeep and headed down the dirt road, and five minutes later, pulled to a halt in front of her cabin. She'd gone directly to the camp from Baker's Creek and hadn't yet settled in. Grabbing her bags of groceries, she stepped onto the porch and opened the front door. The aroma of smoke-suffused stones in the hearth filled the air. Images of evenings spent around crackling fires took her back in time. She could still see her father sitting opposite her at the chess table, eyes intent, shoulders square, his hair peppered in gray but still thick. Then the image gave way to hunched shoulders, and tired eyes, and pallid skin. So much still needed to be said, and there might be so little time.

Curious, she opened the cupboard. The chess set was still there. She and her dad played chess most evenings while at the cabin, and at fourteen, she could play a fair game, occasionally winning. She lifted the box out of the cupboard and set it on the chess table and arranged the pieces, just in case her dad stopped by...

Her practical sense interrupted her reflections. It was almost ten, and she still had to oversee moving the equipment to the ridge before her meeting with Swenson. After putting her groceries away and carrying in her bags of clothes and personal belongings, she pulled the cabin door shut and paused on the porch. Through the woods, the de Neuville cabin lay only a few hundred feet away. Shrugging off disquieting thoughts about the intimacies that had taken place in that cabin, she climbed into the Jeep and started back to the logging camp.

As she drove, her gaze was fixed on the dirt road, but her mind was on Zak. At what point had she realized he wouldn't be back? During her last bitter argument with her father, the week before she ran off and married David? But after a year of waiting for Zak, she'd had enough of her father's harangue about how Zak used her and had no intention of coming back, and David offered an alternative. Marriage, and a life somewhere else. But even that failed. Although they'd worked well together in their construction business, their personal life had been trying, and she knew the marriage would never work because she simply didn't love David. Maybe she'd never gotten over Zak. After seven years, she still wondered where he was, and felt an emptiness.

***

While Zak listened to his father's tirade, he watched his six-year-old son, Pio, who was guiding a small truck along a pattern in the rug, the boy's youthful face taking the edge off Jean-Pierre de Neuville's angry words. A neighbor had just called to inform them that Gib O'Reilly had cut four trees on their land adjoining Timber West...

"...and furthermore, I'll see O'Reilly rot in hell. This time he's gone too far," Jean-Pierre said, voice rising with impatience, as he paced between his desk and the window. "
Gratianne
!" he bellowed down the hallway to his wife. "Call Bill! I'm taking O'Reilly to court!"

Gratianne de Neuville appeared from the hallway, her gaze shifting between Zak and her husband. "That is absolute foolishness, Jean-Pierre," she said. "It's only four trees. All you'll get from a lawsuit is more white hair and high blood pressure?"

"My blood pressure's more likely to go up if I do nothing," Jean-Pierre said, pounding his fist on his desk. "O'Reillys been a thorn in my side ever since we bought that piece of land."

Zak eyed his father with annoyance, and said, "You forget you bought the place out from under O'Reilly. Maybe he has a legitimate gripe."

Jean-Pierre's eyes narrowed. "He came out pretty damn good with the logging contract I gave him on that land."

Zak eyed his father's angry face. The only time he ever heard his father use profanity was when O'Reilly was the subject. "It's only four trees," he said, "hardly worth paying an attorney."

"There's a principle involved," Jean-Pierre insisted. "O'Reilly will regret the day he cut those trees." He dismissed the subject and left the room.

Gratianne shrugged. "You've seen it at the festival, son. Two old rams go head to head, butting until one finally drops." She passed off her husband's tirade with a nonchalant wave of her hand, adding, "He'll get over it, but he has to chew on it awhile."

Zak looked at his mother's calm face, and relaxed his grip on the armrest. The feud between his father and O'Reilly induced the same reaction it always had. He felt like cursing the two of them, the father he loved for the intolerance accompanying his pride, and Gib O'Reilly for his stubbornness. "He'll chew on it until Vince walks in and stirs things up," he added. His younger brother refused to accept their father's resolve to cling to the old ways, and with the issue of the trees pending, Zak was glad he had the job at the wildlife park near Baker's Creek. Not only was his new job satisfying, and his work with threatened and endangered species rewarding, but it allowed him to stay at the cabin instead of in his father's house. He'd had his fill of pointless arguments between his father and his brother, and he didn't want to be around for more of his father's harangue about Gib O'Reilly. "I'd better get going," he said.

Pio stopped what he was doing and went over to Zak, who picked him up, and said, "Work hard in school this week and listen to Grandmama and Grandpapa, and remember I love you."

Pio wrapped his arms around Zak's neck and said, "I don't want you to go."

"I don't want to go either, son," Zak said, "but I'll be back next weekend, and before you know it you'll be staying with me at the cabin." When that didn't lift Pio's spirits, Zak added, "When Lily has her kittens you can pick out one to keep."

Pio squirmed from Zak's arms, dropped to the floor, and raced toward the kitchen saying, "Grandmama, Papa says I can have one of Lily's kittens..."

With Pio's happy face in the forefront of his mind, Zak climbed into his truck and left.

Forty-five minutes later, he pulled into
Spencer
Wildlife
Park
and stopped in front of a concrete-block building housing offices for park administration, storerooms for veterinary supplies, and cages for sick and injured animals. When he stepped into the building, his assistant poked his head from behind a partition between cubicles, and said, "You'll have to put off the nest flight for a week or so. I just got word that the plane's in for servicing."

"Can't we get it back sooner?" Zak asked. "If we put the flight off too long, the young eagles will have fledged, and an empty nest won't do us much good.

"It's an engine overhaul."

"What about the airpark? Can't we get a charter?"

"I already checked. Nothing will be available for at least another week."

"Then check around some more," Zak said, knowing timing was critical. If he didn't check the nests before the young birds fledged, he'd have to wait until next spring to complete the project. They were already running late, and he'd hoped to have the eaglets moved by now.

Gathering his topographic maps, he left for the cabin.

As he was heading down the highway, a Jeep, driven by a woman passed him going in the opposite direction. He glances in the rearview mirror. It wasn't the face that held his attention; he hadn't had time to catch the woman's features. But there was no mistaking the long black hair whipping around her head. He looked in the rearview mirror again, but the Jeep had disappeared over the crest of the hill. Still, it left him wondering.

A few minutes later he turned off the main highway. A couple hundred feet down the dirt road, he passed O'Reilly's cabin, noting the split wood stacked on the porch. He clenched his jaws. Obviously O'Reilly was staying there. Until now, the cabin had looked unoccupied. The thought of O'Reilly only a couple of hundred feet through the woods didn't sit well. Just ahead, he wheeled the truck into his own drive, jumped out, and headed inside.

Four hours later, he rolled up the topographic maps scattered on the table in his cabin and slipped them into a tube. The afternoon had been a wash. His mind hadn't been on eagle nests or the Grizzly Mountain Wilderness Area. His thoughts kept returning to O'Reilly, and he knew he wouldn't be able to focus on nests until he'd checked out his father's allegations about the trees. Rolling out a survey map, he studied the area where the trees were supposed to have been cut, noting that it was near a small concealed hollow he knew well. He hadn't been there in seven years, and he wondered if the names he'd carved in the old oak were still legible.

The summer he went to work for Gib O'Reilly, he hadn't seen Tess in three years, and he could hardly believe his eyes when he saw her again. The skinny, flatchested kid who'd confronted him about how to hold an ax, had turned into a strikingly beautiful woman who stripped his mind of all reasoning. And hers too, it seemed. It was like they'd been obsessed with each other from the start. He could still visualize her eager face as she took him to a place she'd discovered where they could be completely alone...

"My father will never find us here," she'd said when she showed him the cavern-like hollow, the secluded place they'd named
the grotto
. She'd tugged him down onto the mossy forest floor and snuggled against him, and after they'd made love, she looked at him, her dark eyes holding the afterglow of passion and sparking with excitement, and said, "Carve our names on this tree." She'd reached out to touch the oak hovering over them.

He playfully nibbled at her breast, mumbling, "I'll leave my mark here first." Then he rolled away and slipped the knife from off the belt he'd left laying on the ground with the rest of their clothes. While he carved, Tess laughed at the sight of him, so intent on his task while standing naked. And when he'd finished, she stood in the curve of his arm and smiled when she read, "Adam loves Eve." From that time on, whenever they met at the grotto, she called him Adam, and she was his Eve...

He took one last look at the survey map, then grabbed the machete and headed toward the northeast boundary... And the grotto.

Twenty minutes later, he started chopping his way through heavy undergrowth. With each slash of his machete, he made his way toward the edge of the woods where the downed trees should lay. But as he stripped away limbs from an encroaching maple, the sharp voice of a woman rose above the whacking of his blade. "Hey! What the hell do you think you're doing!" she called out. He looked up, the machete freezing in his hand, when he saw the dark-haired woman marching toward him in long, angry strides...

CHAPTER TWO

Tess had no idea who was slashing through their woods, but he'd better have a damn good explanation. "You're on Timber West land," she yelled, as she headed toward the man, who stood with the machete clutched in his raised hand.

Then he lowered his arm, and said, "Tess?"

The once familiar voice brought Tess to a halt. She cupped both hands over her forehead to shade her eyes, then stared at the tall, dark-haired man standing at the edge of the forest. All the clever things she imagined saying to Zak, if they ever met again, escaped her. The only thing she was aware of was the tall, broad-shouldered figure closing the gap between them.

"How long have you been here?" he asked, as he approached.

"Here?" she repeated, taking in the details of a face that had almost faded from memory--his dark wavy hair, always in need of a trim, his wide forehead, his deep set, gray-green eyes, and his firm chin with the hint of a cleft she'd once teased with the tip of her tongue. The last time she'd seen him he was only twenty-one, yet she'd considered him a man, but she was totally unprepared for the full-grown man facing her now. Although he'd reached his impressive height at twenty-one, his chest had not been as thick, or his shoulders as broad, or his day-old beard as heavy. Her pulse quickened as he approached, and she had to swallow before words would come. "I... umm... just came to see who was in the woods," she said, in an unsteady voice.

"I meant, how long have you been at Timber West?" Zak asked.

"Oh... umm... about a week," Tess replied, aware of his eyes scanning the length of her.

Even after all the years of bitterness she felt towards him at his disappearance from her life without a word, she still wished she didn't have a yellow hardhat perched on her head, or was wearing an old dirty work shirt, and faded jeans, and scuffed boots. "That is, I've been about a week in Baker’s Creek... one day here at camp that is... well, at the cabin too," she replied, the words seeming to stumble over each other. She willed herself to concentrate on anything but the breadth of Zak's shoulders, and the thick wall of his chest, and a face that was even more handsome than she remembered.

"Then you're living in the cabin now?" he asked.

"I'm back and forth between here and Baker's Creek," she replied. "I'm looking after Timber West until my dad's back on his feet. You knew he had a heart attack, didn't you?"

"No, I didn't. I'm sorry to hear that," Zak said.

His tone was unconvincing, and Tess knew the angst between him and her father still stood. She pulled off the hardhat and ran her finger through her hair to dislodge the tangles, and Zak's eyes immediately focused there. When he said nothing, Tess wondered if he was remembering how it had once been, when he'd run his fingers through her hair and bury his face in it and tell her she smelled like the forest...

Restlessly she fingered the hardhat, her palms feeling cold and damp against its smooth surface. Uncomfortable with Zak's intense gaze, she looked down at the machete in his hand, noting the strength of the fingers curved around the handle. Masculine, sun-bronzed hands that once drove her wild. She even gave up her virginity to Zak because she knew she'd be with him forever. He'd promised her it would be that way, and they made vows...

Dismissing that time-worn thought, she glanced at the woods where Zak had been hacking away, and said, "What are you doing?"

"I came to check on the trees your father cut on our land," Zak replied.

Tess looked toward the clearing where her dad had ordered trees to be thinned, her gaze coming to rest on four trees, now limbed and laying in a row. "My father didn't cut any trees on your land," she said. "He's thinning the trees along the property line."

The muscles in Zak's jaw bunched. "Those trees weren't on Timber West land," he said. "According to the survey my father just had done, this strip doesn't belong to Timber West. I have the survey map at the cabin."

"Then the map's wrong," Tess insisted. "My father knows where his land runs."

"The map's not wrong," Zak argued. "The county did the survey."

Tess eyed Zak with irritation. "My father doesn't cut trees on someone else's land."

"Well, he did this time," Zak said. "Has he even bothered to look at the map?"

"He doesn't need to," Tess replied. "If you remember, he owned this land long before your father did. He should know where the property line runs."

"He should, but obviously he doesn't." Zak drew in a long slow breath. "Look, if we're going to be neighbors, let's not get into the feud between our fathers. Come by my cabin and I'll show you the survey map and you can square your father away before he cuts down any more trees. My father's angry enough about losing four. He's threatening to sue."

"My father doesn't need this right now," Tess snapped. "He's supposed to stay quiet. If your father makes an issue out of four trees, regardless of whose property they're on, my father will be on his doorstep, and you know it."

Zak sighed. "Then you'd better see that he doesn't cut any more trees. According to the map, the line goes right through the... hollow."

Tess noted that Zak carefully avoided saying the word, grotto. "I suppose you've been back there already?" she asked, then wondered why she'd bring up something as intimate as the place where they'd made love more times than she could remember.

Zak looked at her soberly, as he said, "I went to the area to look for the survey stake, which is about forty feet north of--" he hesitated "--the old oak tree there."

Say it, damn it, Tess wanted to scream. Admit it's our Adam and Eve tree. Her heart pounded and blood rushed to her face. She backed away. "Look, I have to get back to camp," she said, hearing the shakiness in her voice. "Please, just don't let your father start legal action yet."

As she turned to go, Zak caught up with her and took her arm. "At least come to my cabin and look at the property line on the map. If nothing else, maybe we can figure out a way to keep a couple of stubborn old goats from locking horns."

Tess wanted to smile, but she was so unsettled by the feel of Zak's hand on her arm that she could barely remember to breathe. But that was only because of the newness of seeing him again.
 
Whatever there was between them before was irrelevant now because her father's health took priority. Which meant, the matter with the trees had to be settled before Zak's father made a legal issue out of it. "I'll come," she said, "but I won't be finished at camp until late."

Zak gave her arm a squeeze and released it. "Then I'll see you when you're done."

Tess's nodded and turned toward camp. She almost welcomed the diversion of dealing with a bunch of obstinate men, if only to keep her mind off the fact that a man she'd once lusted after, and whom she'd been unable to scrub from her mind, was living not more than a few hundred feet from her, and time had done nothing to temper the white-hot flame that was once again building.

***

It was dusk by the time Tess and the men finished moving equipment and setting it up for cutting pole timber. When she dismissed the crew, she felt relieved. After seeing Zak, it had been difficult concentrating on the job. She had so many questions, the primary one being why he'd left without a word. But unless he volunteered the information, she wouldn't ask. Pride would not allow her to do so. She also wondered how long he'd been staying at the cabin, and why he was there. It had always been understood that he'd eventually live with his family and work at the winery, which was sixty miles away. She also felt uncomfortable knowing he was so close, and she couldn't shake the feeling that going to his cabin was a serious mistake. If she was ever to rebuild her relationship with her father, Zak could not be a part of her life. Yet the subject of the property line had to be addressed.

 
Feeling weary and emotionally drained, she closed camp for the weekend and returned to her cabin. But instead of a bath intended to strip off dust and grime and forest debris, she immersed herself in a tub of warm water and leaned against the sloped porcelain back of the footed tub, and inhaled the fragrance of jasmine. She'd never used colognes or bath salts when she was seventeen because Zak didn't want her to wear scents of any kind, claiming he liked the smell of warm fresh woman, and he'd prove it to her by nuzzling her all over.

Adam checking out Eve, was the way he explained it.

And she'd lay back and let him do his exploration until neither of them could stand it any longer, at which time they'd settle into serious lovemaking.

But Zak wasn't a consideration now, and she liked the hint of flowers on her skin. It also gave her a feeling of empowerment, going against what she knew Zak would expect of the Tess O'Reilly he'd left behind.

After her bath she sorted through her clothes, debating what to wear. Seven years ago she would have worn tight jeans and a snug fitting shirt that emphasized her figure, because Zak liked her dressed that way, calling her his little logger lady. But he also liked it when she wore nothing but maple vines, or fern fronds, or garlands of flowers when dressed like Eve. Her face flushed hot when she remembered how Zak looked the last time they were at the grotto, when he was naked and aroused, and she'd draped a garland of columbine around his hips and teased him with the flower petals until he'd pulled her down on the mossy floor of the forest and finished the job she'd started...

Shoving that image back into the recesses of her mind, she held up a black jersey with long sleeves and smoothed it against her chest as she peered into the mirror. Although Zak liked her dressed as his logger lady, David encouraged her to emphasize her femininity, claiming he liked her in black because, with her black hair, it made her look mysterious.

Without further deliberation, she tugged the jersey over her head, put on a pair of black slacks, and slipped her bare feet into some fake alligator flip flops. After dragging a brush through her hair, leaving it loose around her shoulders, she grabbed a flashlight and left.

At Zak's cabin, she stepped onto the porch and knocked lightly.

When Zak opened the door, he said nothing as his gaze moved slowly down the length of her, causing her breath to quicken and her cheeks to burn. Uncertain what to make of his silent perusal, she said, "You're the one who suggested I come, so am I invited in or not?"

"Sorry," Zak said. "I didn't mean to stare. It just seems strange to see you dressed like that."

He moved aside, and as she passed him, she caught the drift of men's aftershave, which surprised her. Zak never wore aftershave before. But maybe that was because she'd told him she wanted her Adam to smell like ferns and moss and whatever clung to him on the forest floor, and he'd laughed and promised to remain her nature boy. So, it seemed, turnabout was fair play. He was going against everything she liked, just as she was doing with him.

Once inside, she wondered what to say next. It had been so easy for them to talk before. But now, what was there to say to a man who promised her the world, then shattered her dreams without so much as an explanation?

Zak broke the awkwardness by lifting a bottle of wine from a wooden rack, and saying, "You're over twenty-one now. Do you want a glass of wine? It's from my father's private stock."

Tess gave him a quick nervous smile. "I suppose," she said, but her eyes weren't on the bottle Zak held up for her to see, but instead, on his broad chest in the snug, long-sleeved white jersey. Not the kind of shirt she expected. Years before it would have been a worn denim work shirt, unless he was working in the afternoon when the sun was hot, when he'd be bare-chested. He'd been slimmer then, and she could see from the muscular contours beneath his shirt that his chest was thicker and his biceps more developed, as if he'd been working out. The patterns on his shirt were also different from what she might have expected... random designs in dark grays, like a giant tattoo. Catching the direction of her gaze, Zak looked down and said, "It's a Christmas gift from my brother. I thought it would be right for chopping my way through brush."

"And the aftershave?" Tess asked, before she could stop herself.

"I wore that to catch your notice," Zak replied.

"It did, but it doesn't suit you," Tess said.

He eyed her with amusement. "I could say the same about you in black, but I'd be lying."

Tess shrugged. "My ex-husband like me in black."

"And you're still trying to please him?" Zak asked.

"No," Tess replied. "It's the first thing I grabbed before coming here."

"Good choice." Zak handed her a wine glass, and as he was filling it, Tess saw that he'd poured from a bottle with the distinctive black-and-gold de Neuville label with a gold ram's head on it. She found it strange to be drinking wine with Zak. Although they'd made love too many times to count, that same summer Zak never offered her wine because she was only seventeen. She never questioned why giving her alcohol was an issue with him, while having sex with her wasn't, because she didn't want him to have a reason to stop. The fact was, she was hoping to get pregnant that summer so she could tie him to her forever. But when he gave her the ring, and talked about marrying her when she turned eighteen, she didn't worry anymore because she knew his love was forever...