Anywhere (Sawtooth Mountains Stories, #3)

by Susan Fanetti

  “Yeah. As hard as the emperors and kings and colonists and settlers and soldiers and lawmakers tried to wipe us out and tie us down, we survived. It’s not pretty. We’re hurt, and broken. We might never be strong again, but we survived. They tried to erase us, and they failed. And here I was, a little Indigenous girl, standing at the edge of the Roman Colosseum, where slaves were forced to fight to the death for the amusement of the powerful, and I understood how totally fucking fragile and weak these people must have been, how insecure they were, to need so many reminders of their own importance. Someday, even this hunk of stone will dissolve into dust. Someday, it’ll be forgotten. And that will be a defeat, because they tried so hard to be remembered.” She turned her head and smiled. “I spat a big wad over the rail that day. It was a small victory, but it was important.”

  “I get it. Traveling in Europe is like colonizing them back.” And she wanted to share it with him because this was a place she’d felt powerful.

  Delight made her laughter waft high above them. “Exactly! Yes. I know it’s dumb, but ...”

  “It’s not dumb at all.”

  Yes, he was growing to understand Mac so much more completely on this trip. And to see that those ten years apart weren’t lost after all. Not for her. She had been searching. There had been a void inside her. Of understanding.

  “Scusi,” their tour agent came up to them. “Mi dispiace, forgive please, but closing soon. You must ...” he gestured along the walkway, urging them to move along.

  “Sorry,” Reese said, and stepped back. He took Mac’s hand, and they left the ruin of the Colosseum behind.

  *****

  After three weeks, three major cities, several small towns, three hotels, two tiny inns, a ferry trip to an island, an unexpectedly and memorably romantic train ride, an exhilarating drive in an Alfa Romeo convertible through the Tuscan wine country, and five days, so far, lounging in a Tuscan villa, Reese had learned a lot about Mediterranean Europe, several things about traveling in general, some very important things about Mac, and a few things about himself.

  First, and foremost, he was not a museum guy. He’d been to a few in his life—those Boise had to offer, basically—and he hadn’t had a strong opinion either way before. But now, after wandering through history and art museums for days on end, he’d come to understand that most of it was lost on him. He had about forty-five minutes of interest in each one, and then it was just more of the same. Mac, on the other hand, loved them, she stopped at every piece and read every sign, and it didn’t matter that she’d seen most of it before. His favorite thing about museums was her unadulterated enjoyment of them, even when she critique the colonizers’ spoils. That smile on her face was worth the dull hours spent in echoing halls staring up at armless marble women.

  In general, he’d grown bored of old shit. Madrid, his first experience of Europe, had bowled him over with its history and beauty. He’d relished every hit to his senses. Rome had been damn impressive, even more so after Mac had offered him the chance to see it through her eyes. He’d felt its impact more keenly after she added that perspective and pathos to his view. There was more to those ruins than durability; there was common human frailty, too. For ill as well as good, most of the world, maybe all the whole world, was like it was because the people who’d built Rome had been the way they were.

  Florence had bored the hell out of him, however. Just more old shit. More churches and museums and statues. Plazas and fountains. He was not looking forward to Milan—more museums and churches and fountains, no doubt. Though Paolo, their host here at the villa, had told him, under his breath, that the women in Milan were more beautiful than anywhere else in the world, so maybe there’d be an upside.

  Italian women were pretty hot as a rule, actually.

  Not that he’d noticed, of course.

  He was getting to know what he liked about travel and what he didn’t. He liked a decent hotel, and not so much the ‘charming’ little places where a chubby grandma was in charge. He liked to know they’d be left in peace in their room by a professional staff and wouldn’t bother a chubby grandma when they got romantic. He loved train travel and could tolerate air travel because it was quick. He also now knew that driving an Alfa Romeo was a hoot.

  Relaxing in Tuscany, in a cottage that was both rustic and nicely decked out? With nothing to do but wander through woods and vineyards, eat incredibly good, rich food, and fuck his woman? Now that was a vacation he could do again. And again. Four times, last night, in fact. They’d booked a week just for this, and he’d be bummed when they moved on. But he’d be moving on with Mac, so the next thing would be great, whatever it was.

  Hands down, no contest, the best part of traveling was doing it with Mac. On this trip, a side of her he’d caught only glimpses of before, even while they were first together, was out in front all the time. She was open and happy and mellow. Confident. Powerful. All of that had always been in her, was her at her core. But at home, troubles pressed down on her and made her spirit work too hard. When they’d left Jasper Ridge, she’d left her burdens behind.

  She’d packed light.

  He’d understood why she’d run, and now he understood why she’d stayed away. He wanted to find a way that she could not pick up that baggage when they got home.

  Or a way that he could carry it for her.

  After a morning spent in the vineyards with Paolo and Berto, learning about their grape-growing and winemaking processes—not stomping grapes by feet, though apparently they still did that from time to time, mainly for festivals—Reese went looking for Mac. She wasn’t in their little cottage. She wasn’t in the main house, where Paolo’s wife, Ludovica, was baking some kind of fragrant bread—they gave their guests the whole Tuscan experience here at the Buonucci Vineyards.

  “She go de trees,” Ludovica said as soon as he walked into her kitchen. She flapped her hands at the back door.

  The olive orchard, she meant. Mac was walking through the orchard. She’d been right that most people they needed to speak to spoke English, but it wasn’t always fluent English. Still, it was better than he could do in their language.

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  She gave him a flirty smile. “Prego, cowboy.”

  That one, he knew, meant ‘you’re welcome.’

  *****

  There were little iron settees, rough wooden benches, and sometimes just a couple rickety folding chairs scattered through the orchard. Their placement seemed haphazard, as if they’d been left behind by long-ago picnickers, but Reese assumed they were intended to be part of the charm.

  Paolo and Ludovica had, in their strongly accented, imperfect but still impressive English, shared some of the difficulties they’d had with this very old family business. When they’d learned about the Apple Jack Saloon, they’d seen Reese as a kindred spirit. And he was. He knew what it was to take over for one’s father.

  To keep things running, they’d had to convert some of the older buildings into rental villas. The one Reese and Mac were staying in had once been a barrel-making shop, a craft they now outsourced, primarily to cut costs. They weren’t innkeepers, Paolo said, but you did what you had to do to keep the bills paid.

  In his time running it, the Jack had always been in the black, but he remembered his father’s struggles to get it there and keep it there. His grandpa hadn’t been much of a businessman, but his father had. He’d rebuilt the Jack into a thriving business, and he’d taught Reese well. The stress had probably killed him, but he’d left Reese with a good living, and a legacy.

  He thought Paolo and Ludovica were doing okay.

  Mac was sitting cross-legged on a wooden bench, under an old, gnarled olive tree. He saw her before she saw him, so he stopped and watched for a minute. She was reading; there was a little bookshelf in their cottage, filled with paperbacks in about six different languages. They’d spent a couple nights curled up in front of the fire, reading aloud from some of the English ones. It was cozy and just
about perfect for a vacation fantasy—though James Patterson wasn’t really a romantic read. Still, the reading material hadn’t slowed them down on that front.

  It was about the middle of March, and so far they’d been really lucky with the weather. Nothing but sun and clear skies every day so far, in Spain and Italy, and seasonable or warmer temperatures. Today promised to be quite warm for the time of year. It wasn’t quite noon yet, and he’d taken off his hoodie; a flannel shirt had been plenty while he’d walked through the vineyard.

  Mac wore her leather jacket over a long skirt—she’d picked up two more since that first night, and wore skirts at least half the time. This one was plain black and snugger than that first wonder, and she tended, like today, to wear her boots with it, but it was still sexy as hell.

  She looked up with a smile as he approached. “Hey. Did you learn all there was to learn about wine? Are we going to plant a vineyard in the back lot?”

  There wasn’t room for them both on the little bench, so he pulled her to her feet, sat down, and set her on his lap. “Nope. Wine is too damn much work. I’m happy just placin’ an order and havin’ it roll up in a truck. It was cool to see, though. Paolo knows his shit.”

  “Ludovica invited me to help her make dinner tonight.” They were the only guests right now; the peak tourist season was still several weeks off. So they’d been getting what Reese and Mac were calling ‘bonus features’—deep insights into winemaking, lessons in Italian cooking, trips into the little village to meet their hosts’ friends.

  He rested against the back of the bench and looked up at the blue sky, his view dappled by new leaves. A deep breath filled his lungs and brought a scent somebody really should bottle. “You know, I could spend the whole trip right here.”

  Mac curled close, setting her head on his shoulder. “It’s pretty great. Traveling when you can afford a few nice things is like seeing a totally different world. You want to skip Milan? We could stay a few days longer, at least, and go straight to France. If they don’t have anybody renting our cottage next week. I’m sure we can rebook our train.”

  He could definitely skip another old Italian city to spend more time here. “You okay with that?”

  “I’ve been to Milan. I’ve never had this before, a romantic sojourn with the man I love. I could keep having it for a while longer.”

  Reese stood up, keeping Mac in his arms. “Then let’s go find Paolo.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Reese ended the call and stared at the screen of his phone. The current background photo was him and Mac, snugged cheek to cheek, stupid grins overtaking both their faces, with the Eiffel Tower behind them.

  Eight countries in ten weeks. Uncharacteristically, he’d chased a sudden whim in giving her this trip, but it had been the best decision he’d ever made. He’d seen amazements and wonders to last a lifetime—and mountains of old shit he doubted he’d remember next week. But for all his deepened understanding of the western world, he’d gained something vastly more important. For the first time since he’d first noticed her, for the first time in all their relationship, past or present, Reese knew Mac, and she knew him. Who she really was. Her strengths and weaknesses, her joys and fears.

  He’d thought he’d known her before. In their first three years together, he thought he’d known her better than anyone—and maybe that was even true. But he’d known only what she’d shown him.

  In all these weeks roaming a world foreign to them, stripped of everything but each other, they’d spoken deeply and constantly about things that truly mattered. About who they were, and what they wanted. Now, he knew her, all the way through. And God, he loved her more than ever. His heart ached with it, all the time.

  They’d had to get clear of Jasper Ridge for it to really happen, they’d had to leave all their baggage at home, but now they had a much stronger foundation to stand on when they went back.

  Pack light. It was more than travel advice. It was the key to life itself. And to love.

  But now they were coming to the end of their trip. This was their final day in London; tomorrow, they’d be on a plane for New York, and the last little sliver of their trip—a few days in the last place she’d been before she’d come home.

  Home was getting antsy for their return, apparently. He glared at the screen some more.

  “That sounded bad,” Mac said. They were sitting at a sidewalk table at a café just across the street from the Tower of London. The Tower Bridge cast an afternoon shadow over them, and the Thames rolled steadily beside them.

  He sighed and set his phone on the table. He’d called home about weekly while they’d been away, a routine check-in mainly to assuage his low-grade anxiety about being away from the Jack for the first time ever, and those check-ins had been routine and unremarkable for two and a half months. He’d left strict instructions with Linda only to call in the event of an emergency.

  And Linda had just called for the first time.

  “It’s not great,” he told Mac now. He picked up his glass of Guinness and took a few deep swallows. “Evan Hall and his buddies came in last night and tore the place up.”

  “Shit! About Natalie? Is she okay? Did he hurt anybody? Is the Jack okay?”

  Evan Hall was was an isolationist who hardly left the reservation except for his drug dealing—work he generally contracted out. It was hard for the Feds to get to him, and the tribal police were stymied by the tribe’s fear of his gang, the Warriors, and their own territoriality against outside law. Hall had been virtually made of Teflon for years, until the Feds had gone for Natalie, his much younger—and at the time underage—girlfriend. He’d done deals across the state line with her in the truck with him, and the Feds had nabbed her for trafficking.

  Reese didn’t know many details, but Logan’s wife, Honor, a skillful defense attorney, had gotten Natalie a pretty sweet deal of reduced charges and probation, which probably meant she’d given them something—like Evan Hall. But that deal had been worked out a year ago, with no movement on Hall or the Warriors, as far as Reese had heard. Everything had gone on as it always had.

  Natalie’s family had done all they could to keep Hall away from her, and he’d let her go. People said maybe he really cared about her and wouldn’t hurt her. People wondered if maybe Natalie had given the Feds something else, or maybe Honor was just that good that she’d worked a deal without Natalie having to inform on anyone. By now, people had stopped thinking about it at all.

  Except that last night, Hall and his gang had stormed into the Jack looking for her and torn the place apart.

  “Yeah, about Natalie. She’s okay. She wasn’t working. It sounds like they fucked things up good looking for her anyway. But nobody got hurt. They just made a lot of noisy threats and broke a lot of shit.”

  Mac paled. “Enough to close you down?”

  “For a couple days. They took out the back of the bar, broke some windows. I gotta call Victor, make sure his family is safe, and see what he knows.”

  “We should change our flight, go straight home when we land in New York.” She poked her fork around the remains of her late lunch and didn’t meet his eyes.

  He wasn’t ready to take her back to Jasper Ridge, and she wasn’t ready to go. Those days in New York would have served as a buffer to ease their reentry. But she was right—they had to get back now. Not only to deal with the damage and likely insurance nonsense, but because Evan Hall was a dangerous son of a bitch, he’d turned his wrathful attention on the Jack, and Reese couldn’t leave Linda to deal with that.

  “Yeah.” He blew his sudden dejection out with a heavy breath. The damage to his business barely made a blip in his thinking. He was worried for Natalie and Linda, and the other people he employed. He was worried for the whole Thomas family. Broken glass and lost booze—that could all be replaced. But if Hall was making that kind of a ruckus, he wouldn’t limit himself to property damage for long.

  Mac was still studying her plate, drawing patterns in the
remains of her sauce with the tines of her fork. She hadn’t looked up again, and Reese knew why. They’d had a great day. They’d had a great trip, but it was over, before they’d gotten themselves ready, and the baggage they’d left behind was landing on their heads before they’d crossed the ocean.

  He grabbed her hand and squeezed. “Hey.”

  She looked up and gave him a halfhearted smile.

  “I love you. Taking this trip, being just us together like this—this has been the highlight of my whole damn life, Mac.”

  Now her smile was real. “Mine, too. I’m a little scared to go back and lose it.”

  “We won’t. It’s too important, so we won’t let it get lost.”

  *****

  Reese drew the brush through Mac’s hair. She hadn’t cut it since she’d come home, so it fell below her shoulders now, but it was still at least a foot shorter than she’d worn it before. Brushing her hair had long been for them a kind of foreplay and intimate relaxation both. They sat together in the middle of the hotel bed, both naked, Reese resting against the headboard, Mac between his legs, resting on his body. He loved the way she relaxed utterly into the feel of it, and he relished any chance to have her hair in his hands. It was thick and blue-black, and so perfectly straight that it never seemed to muss or tangle. As he brushed, he let the strands fall away, and each time, they landed in the same position on her back, arranging themselves into a perfect, gleaming curtain across her bare bronze shoulders.

  Jesus Christ, she was beautiful.

  “I’m scared to go home,” she whispered on a soft sigh.

  “I told you, baby. We won’t lose this. We won’t let it be lost. And this isn’t the last time we’ll go away.”

  “Are you sure? The one time you leave home, and somebody from my world broke up your business.”

  He stopped brushing and leaned forward, turning her head so she could see his eyes. “Hall is not your responsibility, and my world is your world, too. We are our own world.”