Follow A Wild Heart (romance,) (14 page)

"I've only had the house six years. I lived with Mom and Pop in Northome after I was widowed. Pop had bought their house in town that year. So I've been in the Northome area about nine years now, nearly ten."

She unhooked the fence and Mort came dancing out, tossing his head with glee. Karena affectionately rubbed his velvety ears, and he planted his feet wide apart, holding very still for the ecstatic treat. She murmured affectionate nonsense to him, and when Logan softly said, "Go on, Karena, I want to know," she continued her story.

"When Eric was killed, we were living in a small camp in Wisconsin. As you probably know, loggers don't have life insurance plans, and we were pretty hard up. There'd been a forest fire shortly before, and the loggers had only been back at work a few days after being laid off for months."

Mort tumbled down the path beside them, kicking at bushes with his front hooves.

"The people in the camp where Eric was working took up a collection that paid for Danny and me to come back here, with enough money left over to support us while I figured out what kind of job I could do."

Absentmindedly, she reached out to restrain Mort, remembering details from those long-ago days.

"That was a big problem, finding a job. I didn't even have a high school degree, so my options were limited, but I was absolutely determined to find a job I could do that would allow me to live in the woods. I had a horror of cities, and I didn't even like living in a village like Northome, so it was unbearable to think of having to raise Danny in a city and work there. Women were just starting to get into the logging business then. Someone happened to mention log scaling as a possible career. I enrolled in a course, Mom took care of Danny for me, and a company Pop had worked for hired me on when I passed my tests. I had to travel a fair bit in the beginning, from one camp to another, but finally I got on a steady job close to home with Northwood. As soon as I could, I bought this land and my father helped me build the house. That was just before Mom died."

Logan noticed the careful control in her voice when she spoke of her mother, although her tone was absolutely matter-of-fact. He was affected deeply by what she was describing, more by what she didn't say than what she did.

Karena was a brave woman. An almost proprietary pride in what she'd accomplished made warmth spread and glow through his chest. She'd managed so well, created a secure home for herself and her son, succeeding in what he well knew to be an essentially male dominated business at a job that afforded her a good living.

But life wasn't easy, even now. The few hours he'd spent here tonight had given him only the vaguest inkling of what it was like to live without any modern conveniences.

How alone she was, here with her son.

But he remembered clearly her insistence, that day by the lake, that alone wasn't necessarily lonely, and seeing her in her own environment, he had a sense of her completeness.

Why was it disquieting for him, seeing just how self reliant and contained her world was, seeing firsthand her independence and ability to function in what to him were disturbingly primitive surroundings? No indoor bathroom, no electricity apart from the small generator he'd watched Danny start this evening. Hearing her tell him these facts was vastly different than being here and coping himself with what they represented in terms of comfort.

"Go have a bath, Mort," she was instructing the moose. The moose calf gamboled down to the water's edge as if he understood, and went splashing in.

Logan laughed, a rumble of amusement that made her turn in surprise and grin at him impishly. He could see her teeth flash in the moonlight, catch a glimpse of her soft eyes gleaming in shared amusement.

"He knows his name, and you learn to develop the voice of authority over the years with a kid like Danny to contend with," she explained. They ambled farther down the pathway to the lake, comfortably side by side. Logan captured her hand in his, softly stroking his thumb across the slight roughness of her knuckles.

"I'm probably covered in moose hair," she protested ruefully, but he squeezed her fingers reassuringly.

"Exotic and unique," he pronounced, swinging their two hands between them and feeling the jolt of awareness she created so unwittingly in him rise and grow as their shoulders brushed and he caught the scent he identified as Karena, sweet and flower like in his nostrils.

The lake was shiny pewter, and a ribbon of moonlight lay across it, like a magic pathway for dreamers or lovers. Mort splashed close to shore, and a loon laughed with insane hilarity.

Logan turned to look at her, to feast his eyes on every line, to make up for the endless days and nights since he'd last seen her. The slight uncertainty he'd felt before was stronger now, watching her here in the moonlight by the lake.

There was easy familiarity in the way she sank down to rest on an old log, half hidden beside the path. She drew her knees up and curled her arms around them, and he could see contentment on her features as she slowly turned her head in a swiveling motion, checking that all was as usual in the darkness surrounding them.

"Have a seat," she suggested formally, patting the log beside her, and he folded his legs close beside hers.

"I come down here each evening, winter and summer," she confessed softly. "There's something about the stillness that reaches down inside of me, makes a sort of puddle of calm after a hectic day at work or an argument with Danny. Problems don't seem as important after I sit here for half an hour or so."

He looked beyond her, to the eerie moonlit vista of the water and the dark hulking trees at its edge, the silence loud in ears used to cars and buses and voices, and with a feeling of disquiet he admitted that she belonged here in a way he didn't think he belonged anywhere. There wasn't one spot in his world that gave him the comfort she described, no special area he prized over any other and returned to every night to recharge his soul as she obviously did here, and suddenly the irony of his recent fantasies about Karena struck him full force.

Hadn't he harbored some dramatic concept of himself as a slightly nearsighted knight who'd come to rescue her from her primitive wooded prison, set her free from isolation rather like a modern-day Pygmalion?

Instead, she was making him feel he was the one who'd escaped from a concrete dungeon, and he didn't want to feel that way at all. The bottom line was that he wanted Karena to need him.

He corrected that, sitting silently watching the moon rise over the water.

Not just need him. More than that. He wanted Karena to love him.

She was aware of his breathing, of the various scents his hair and clothing carried, of the hard muscles in the hand holding hers. Her body was responding to his closeness in a fashion she found alarming, and she started talking nervously in an effort to distract herself.

"Sometimes the northern lights play across the sky over in that direction," she gestured with their joined hands, "and quite often in the fall the geese land in the marsh at the end of the lake, and I hear them talking to each other as they settle for the night. Deer come down to drink, and there's a pair of raccoons living nearby." Her words ended with a small gulp as his arms encircled her shoulders and drew her against him.

"Karena, it's the damnedest thing, but I think I'm falling in love with you," he said abruptly, and she could smell the intimate freshness of his breath as she drew air sharply into her lungs. Her heart hammered until the pounding seemed to fill her ears, and his words echoed over and over inside her head.

"I had no idea it could happen this quickly," he added wonderingly, and there was a sort of reverence in his voice. "I want you to know exactly how I feel about you, and what my hopes and my plans are so there's no misunderstanding between us."

He put his fingers gently across her lips as she tried to stammer some sort of reply. "Don't say anything yet. I couldn't stand it if you said you didn't want me or couldn't love me; I'd have some sort of seizure and froth at the mouth, so just listen, all right? And----,” his arms tightened and drew her still closer with a fierce intensity.

"—I'm also going to have some kind of seizure if I don't kiss you right now."

He slid his glasses off and folded them into his pocket with one economical motion, then tilted her chin gently up toward him. His lips, soft and hard at once, closed over hers. The night sounds faded as their mutual slight hesitance gave way to warmth, and warmth escalated into heat, and before either was quite prepared for it, heat became scorching fire that enveloped them equally in need, reinforcing all Logan's dreams and all Karena's wondering.

His hands cradled her back, and one slid up to cup her short, silky curls, then down again to trace the tender nape of her neck, the softness of her shoulder under the sweater she'd pulled on carelessly over her thin blouse. She gasped as his hand slipped down to cup a breast suddenly full and heavy, and her skin felt hot wherever his fingers touched. His lips moved back and forth, teasingly light and then demandingly hard until hers parted. His tongue touched delicately inside her mouth, possessing her, asking, demanding, and for endless pulsing moments his mouth consumed her.

"How I've wanted you in my arms," he whispered thickly when the kiss had ended. "It's all I've dreamed of since those days in Bemidji."

She wanted him, too. Her hands ached to slip beneath his shirt, travel wantonly over the heated, hard contours of chest and back. Instead, she rested her palm on his chest, lightly stroking the hair-roughened V below his throat.

"You smell of mosquito repellent," she murmured inanely, sniffing at his cheek, and a rumble of delighted laughter interrupted the path his lips were following down her neck when she added shakily, "I can't think what they put in that stuff to make me feel this way."

His laughter faded, and he said softly, "What way is that, Karena?"

She understood that he needed to hear her confirm the response her body gave silently, but it was difficult for her to formulate her feelings into words. She grew still in his embrace, and silence lengthened as Logan tensed with foreboding.

Then she blurted on a long, sighing breath, "As if I'm addicted to you, as if it's necessary to be with you. As if I've always known you'd come someday. I thought of you, too, and of this, every day over the past two weeks. But I decided it was hopeless, that for you, the time we spent in Bemidji was just a nice way to pass the weekend."

He made a disbelieving sound in his throat, and she hurried on a trifle sharply, "How was I to know? I'm not exactly a swinging single, and I was afraid to even hope I might see you again. You didn't write, or anything. Then, when you drove in today, I could hardly believe it. Right here, this minute in your arms, I still feel as if I'm dreaming it all."

A loud splash and the wild laughter of a loon close to where they sat made them both jump slightly.

"Noisy dream you're having," he said wryly, and she giggled. He sat with her enfolded a bit awkwardly in his arms, and she listened to the hammering of his heart, and the answering thunder in her own blood.

"I know this sounds like a lame excuse, but I've been insanely busy at work. I had to fly to Illinois last weekend, which is why I didn't come sooner. And every damn letter I tried to write you came out sounding like a scientific report," he explained.

So he had the kind of job that sent him flying off casually to Illinois. Parts of him were becoming familiar, but others were still forbiddingly strange.

"It's okay, Logan. You're here now, that's all that matters," she said softly.

He released a huge, pent-up sigh, and his lips claimed hers once, and then again and again, in long, pulsating kisses that made her twist closer to him, made desire uncoil hotly in the depths of her stomach. Their need was urgent, dangerously potent between them, and mutually they drew a little apart, aware that it was still too soon, that there was no need to rush.

There was time now, languorous time to wait in delicious anticipation for that first magic joining and Logan tried to formulate his thoughts into words for her.

"I want to court you, Karena." Logan's voice was thick and unsteady, reminding himself as much as her of the strong emotion he was feeling. "Nothing like this has ever happened to me before, and I want to make every step along the way special for us. I want to make memories with you, so we can pull them out when we're old and gray and tell our grandchildren how it was between us." He chuckled wickedly. "Well, an edited version, anyway."

The passionate certainty in his voice thrilled her. It was an overwhelming sensation, having him project their lives so far into the future, having him bare his innermost thoughts and feelings to her. His honesty convinced her of the depth of his feelings for her, but his next words made an uneasy chill ripple down her arms and into her heart.

"I want to get to know your family, meet your father and your friends. Will your dad be around this weekend, perhaps?"

Apprehension surfaced in her thinking, about Otis and his reaction to Logan. She already knew her father would disapprove. He'd disapproved, and managed to discourage, every man she'd dated since her mother died.

All three or four of them, she thought bitterly. Cold reality engulfed her, and she disentangled his arms gently and got to her feet. He stood up, too, confused by her sudden withdrawal.