Follow A Wild Heart (romance,) (24 page)

"You're finished up at Itasca, aren't you, Logan? How'd it go?"

Logan summarized the field session, making the couple laugh with his droll descriptions of poison ivy and overturned canoes, and then Edith said, "Didn't you get my note, Logan? Jack Jameson is finally out of the hospital, and tomorrow I'm having a little get-together to welcome him home. I sent you an invitation. Why don't you and—" she hesitated for an instant, as if she weren't certain of the name "—Karena come? About eleven tomorrow morning. It's brunch."

Logan started to politely refuse, but Edith insisted stridently, and her husband added briskly, "Of course they're coming. Jack will have a million questions for him, as well."

"Karena?" Logan hesitated and looked questioningly at her, and she knew by the expression on his face that he'd like to go. With a horrible sinking sensation she said as positively as she could, "That's fine with me, Logan."

The arrangements were completed, Edith and John smiled warmly and moved away, and Karena tried to recapture the magic of the gallery, but all she could think of was the ordeal she would be facing at eleven the next morning.

Dear heaven, the last thing she wanted to do was visit these people Logan worked with and meet even more strangers. She wasn't equipped for meeting people; she'd never learned the rules everyone else seemed to intuitively understand. And yet, how could she refuse? While visiting her, Logan had been confronted with Otis, Gabe, even Ole Svenson, and he'd never complained once.

She'd just have to get through the best she could. In the meantime, there was still tonight.

Edith and John Kelsey's house
was in a smart new suburb of St. Paul, not too far from Logan's apartment.

Logan pulled up nearby and parked. Karena had been sitting close beside him in the car, and he knew by her silence and the way her hands twisted on her lap how nervous she felt. He gave her a warm hug and a lingering kiss before he opened the car door.

"You're absolutely gorgeous, and I'm going to have to beat my colleagues off with a stick."

She wore the same shirtwaist she'd worn the previous night, and she hoped Abby was right about it's multipurpose appearance. It had been either that or a pair of white jeans.

Her hands felt cold and her stomach cramped as John and Edith met them in the doorway with a warm greeting. Laughter and loud voices sounded from the room behind them, and Logan took her icy hand in his warm grip and drew her into the crowd.

"Sally, Joe, I'd like you to meet Karena. Joe teaches math..."

Every single woman present was wearing either well tailored slacks, form fitting jeans or pants of some sort.

"Logan, you old reprobate. How's it going? Get the lady a tequila sunrise, it's John's specialty, and come over and say hello to Joanna. How was Itasca?"

Everyone, with the single exception of Karena, knew everyone else intimately. She was introduced to one person after another, and not one name registered.

All the women gave Logan a kiss, as if it were the most casual thing in the world, and they all, men and women together, gave her a curious look disguised behind a smile. Logan was drawn into a group of men surrounding another man who wore a cast on his leg.

"Jack Jameson, those notes you supplied are the worst I've ever seen. Now try and explain—"

Logan was gone.

"You're not with the college, Karena?" one of the women—she thought it was Joanna—asked politely. Joanna wore navy leather pants and a white sweater, big silver hoop earrings and lots of eyeliner.

"No, I live in the woods north of Bemidji."

"And what do you do?"

"I work for a logging company. I'm a log scaler."

Blankness. Then, "How interesting. And how did you meet Logan?"

"We met at the fair in Bemidji."

"Oh, I see. How... quaint."

Karena could tell right away Joanna figured she'd probably been running some concession, maybe cotton candy or hot dogs. Well, let her think that. It was easier than trying to explain logrolling and ax throwing anyway, and Joanna was easing away, her eyes darting around looking for someone else to talk with.

Edith appeared at her elbow. "Karena, dear, you must have some food." She drew Karena over to the laden table in the adjoining dining room, piling sausage rolls and tiny biscuits and pieces of fruit on a plate and handing it to her peremptorily.

"You're not at the college?"

"No, I'm from Northome. I'm a log scaler."

"How, uh, fascinating. You must tell me more about it. My goodness, there's Gladys. Gladys, have you met Karena? Gladys, whatever happened to the vote at the faculty
women's club last Tuesday? I had to leave early, and…"

Nervous perspiration was trickling down between Karena's breasts. She took the plate, a napkin, a fork, and the glass she'd been holding and looked around desperately for an inconspicuous place to sit down. Logan was still involved in fast-paced, laughter-punctuated conversation in the other room, and everyone else seemed gathered in groups of two or three, laughing and talking together in loud, excited tones.

She chose the stairwell finally, because it seemed the only unobtrusive, unoccupied place. Her stomach was knotted, and eating didn't hold any appeal at all. Maybe if she had a chance to just sit quietly and think positive thoughts, as Abby would undoubtedly tell her to do, she'd be able to manage until it was time to leave.

But within three minutes, an auburn haired woman wearing a shiny cinnamon colored jumpsuit with a dramatic brown leather belt caught sight of her hiding place, smiled and said, "Mind if I join you? I'm Adelle Lindstrom; we were introduced earlier," and sat down gracefully on the step below Karena.

Karena managed a weak smile and a murmur of agreement when Adelle commented on the food, and then there was silence for several minutes while Karena pretended to eat, and Adelle actually did, with gusto.

Adelle soon set the plate down on the step beside her with a rueful air, and said, "I'd better stop while I still fit in this rig."

"It's very attractive," Karena said, remembering the simple little jumpsuit she'd bought before that first picnic with Logan.

"We were flying to Burma last spring—Andy's working on his doctorate—and my wardrobe consultant insisted this was the thing to take, it packs like a rag. The color's good, I'm autumn, you know, and then I found the belt at that little leather shop in the plaza."

She narrowed her eyes and studied Karena intently. "What season are you? Don't tell me, don't tell me, you're summer, right?"

She might have been speaking Swahili, for all the sense it made to Karena. "My birthday's in June, I thought that was Cancer," she said doubtfully.

"Not your birthday, silly, your season, your colors. Haven't you had your chart done?" Adelle said incredulously.

"I've never heard of it," Karena confessed, feeling more stupid by the second. "Do you teach at the college?" she asked, to change the subject, anxious to avoid any more confusing wardrobe comments.

Adelle shook her head. "I don't teach, I work as a librarian. I met Logan when he and Bernice Zimmer were an item. No wonder she's so bitchy lately. I wondered if they'd broken up. How about you; are you at the college? How did you meet our Logan?"

Karena remembered overhearing Edith asking Logan about Bernice the night before. Our Logan. She swallowed hard and went through the litany that had become all too familiar: logging company, log scaler, meeting Logan at the fair.

Adelle's gaze flickered over Karena, the plain dress, the unremarkable hairdo, the simple shoes. Then the woman got gracefully to her feet, leaving her plate on the stairs.

"There's Annabelle, for heaven's sake, excuse me, won't you?"

A few moments later Karena caught the curious glance Annabelle shot her, and the amused expression on her face when she turned back to the whispered conversation she was having with Adelle.

Painful recollections of weekend afternoons flooded back to Karena, of her cousin Marissa and Marissa's friends— sharp-edged, polished girls like Adelle and Annabelle would have been then—giggling cozily together in the bedroom supposedly shared with Karena in her aunt's cramped little house, of sly glances and hurtful whispers that inevitably drove her out to spend long, lonely hours in the park.

Teenage girls could be incredibly cruel when another girl didn't fit their mold, and Karena hadn't fit by a long shot.

She didn't fit now. She'd never known how to fit in with females like Adelle or Marissa, or any of the women she'd met here today.

What was she doing here, she asked herself wildly, feeling miserable and out of place. She wasn't fifteen anymore, boarding in her aunt's home. She had a place of her own, where she belonged. Suddenly she wanted only to be home.

She wanted to leave, she had to leave, just as she'd left that stuffy little bedroom years before when the girls played word games designed to illustrate how comically naive the girl from the bush was.

Panic started to build inside of her. If she didn't get out of here soon, she was going to make a fool of herself by bursting into tears, embarrassing Logan.

Where, oh where, was Logan?

Jack had laughed himself silly over Logan's woes at Itasca, but he'd cleared up a lot of questions Logan had as well, and the conversation had moved on to football. Logan hadn't heard how the Vikings made out in the last two games in the series, and he appreciated the lengthy update the others provided.

At first, he kept an anxious eye on Karena, but he saw Edith talking with her, saw Karena smiling, and he relaxed.

When he broke away and went to look for her, she was sitting on the stairs with Adelle Lindstrom, eating and chatting, and Logan suddenly realized how hungry he was.

He filled a plate with food, started over toward Karena and was interrupted by his host, who insisted on taking him downstairs and showing him a new wine-making kit he'd just bought.

When Logan came back upstairs and retrieved the plate of food, Karena and Adelle were no longer on the stairs.

He ate quickly, watching for Karena to come out of the bathroom at the end of the hall. When the door opened after a lengthy delay, however, it wasn't her.

Vague anxiety gnawed at him, and a guilty feeling that he should have kept her near him. He knew these people, after all, and she didn't. He set his plate down and went to find her.

A quick survey showed she was nowhere in the house, and a second, more thorough search confirmed it. Now he felt something akin to panic. Where would she go?

He made a quick excuse to John, and bolted for his car. She wasn't there, either. He started to feel desperate as he turned the key impatiently in the ignition and drove slowly up and down the streets, watching for her, willing her to be there, just ahead of him. But she wasn't either on the streets or, when he screeched into the lot, at his apartment. Too late, he realized she didn't even have a key, and he cursed his own stupidity as he raced for the elevator and the only other place he could think of where she might have gone.

The problem was, St. Paul had more than ninety parks.

Chapter Ten

In the park that was closest to his apartment he found her kneeling in the grass and trying to coax a squirrel to come and get the acorn she held. She was shivering a little in her thin dress, and he stripped off his corduroy jacket.

Relieved, and guiltily furious with himself for leaving her alone at the brunch, he sounded much harsher than he intended when he strode up to her and lifted her to her feet, clumsily shoving her arms into the too-long sleeves of his jacket.

"For God's sake, Karena, what the hell do you think you're doing? What happened back there? Why did you just walk out on me like that without a word?"

She looked up at him, at his thick wavy hair falling across his forehead, at the way his eyebrows beetled together in a frown above the rim of his glasses. It was the first time she'd ever seen him really angry with her, and a hopeless feeling of sadness welled up inside of her.

She doubted there was any way to make him understand. Logan was so easy in his dealings with people, how could she explain rationally her particular brand of reclusive shyness? She struggled for an explanation that would make sense to him, all the while knowing it was futile. If he'd known her this long, and he still didn't understand, what could she say?

"I couldn't stay there anymore," was what she finally managed. "You were talking, and I—I sort of lost you."

No, she hadn't asked anyone to find him. There'd been someone in the kitchen, getting ice out of the fridge. She'd waited until they left, and then gone quietly out the kitchen door.

Logan's hands closed and tightened on her upper arms. "Karena, this is childish. Those people are my friends. Surely you could just have come over to me and said that you wanted to leave, or sent somebody to tell me. Just walking out that way, it's—"

It dawned on him suddenly that he was acting more concerned over his friends' feelings than he was about hers. What was the matter with him, anyway? His voice gentled, and there was puzzled concern in his tone.

"What is it, Karena, what really happened back there to make you feel this way? Did somebody insult you?"