Black Hills

by Nora Roberts

  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.

  Your friendship matters to me. You matter. But, Lil, we’ve got to get on with what we are. We’ve got to accept who we are.

  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 ?”

  “Nothing puts Farley off, but he’ll be grateful to get the bacon and eggs. I’ll ride over with you this morning.”

  “Great. Depending on how things go, I’m going to try to drive over and see Sam and Lucy. If you need anything from town I can head in, take care of it.”

  “I’ll put a list together.”

  Lil forked out bacon to drain as her mother came in. “Just in time.”

  Jenna eyed the bacon, eyed her husband.

  “She made it.” Joe pointed at Lil. “I can’t hurt her feelings.”

  “Oatmeal tomorrow.” Jenna gave Joe a finger-drill in the belly.

  Lil heard the stomp of boots out on the back porch, and thought: Farley.

  She’d been in college when her parents had taken him on—taken him in was more accurate, she thought. He’d been sixteen, and on his own since his mother took off and left him, owing two months’ back rent in Abilene. His father, neither he nor his mother had known. He’d only known the series of men his mother had slept with.

  With some vague idea of going to Canada, young Farley Pucket ducked out on the rent, hit the road, and stuck out his thumb. By the time Josiah Chance pulled over and picked him up on a road outside of Rapid City, the boy had thirty-eight cents in his pocket and was wearing only a Houston Rockets windbreaker against the wicked March winds.

  They’d given him a meal, some chores to work it off, and a place to sleep for the night. They’d listened, they’d discussed, they’d checked his story as best they could. In the end, they’d given him a job, and a room in the old bunkhouse until he could make his way.

  Nearly ten years later, he was still there.

  Gangly, straw-colored hair poking out from under his hat, his pale blue eyes still sleepy, Farley came in with a blast of winter cold.

  “Whoo! Cold enough to freeze the balls off—” He broke off when he saw Jenna, and his cheeks pinked from cold flushed deeper. “Didn’t see you there.” He sniffed. “Bacon? It’s oatmeal day.”

  “Special dispensation,” Joe told him.

  Farley spotted Lil and broke out in a mile-wide grin. “Hey, Lil. Didn’t figure you’d be up yet, all jet-lagged and stuff.”

  “’Morning, Farley. Coffee’s hot.”

  “It sure smells good. Gonna be clear today, Joe. That storm front tracked east.”

  So as it often did, morning talk turned to weather, stock, chores. Lil settled down with her breakfast, and thought in some ways it was as if she’d never been away.

  Within the hour, she was mounted beside her father and riding the trail to the refuge.

  “Tansy tells me Farley’s been putting in a lot of volunteer hours at the refuge.”

  “We all try to lend a hand, especially when you’re away.”

  “Dad, he’s got a crush on her,” Lil said, speaking of her college roommate and the zoologist on staff.

  “On Tansy? No.” He laughed it off. Then sobered. “Really?”

  “I got the vibe when he started volunteering regularly last year. I didn’t think much of it. She’s my age.”

  “Old lady.”

  “Well, she’s got some years on him. I can see it from his end. She’s beautiful and smart and funny. What I didn’t expect was to get the vibe—which I did reading between the lines of her e-mails—that she may have one on him.”

  “Tansy’s interested in Farley? Our Farley?”

  “Maybe I’m wrong, but I got the vibe. Our Farley,” she repeated, taking a deep breath of the snow-tinged air. “You know, in my world-weary phase of twenty, I thought the two of you were insane to take him in. I figured he’d rob you blind—at the least—steal your truck and that would be that.”

  “He wouldn’t steal a nickel. It’s not in him. You could see it, right from the start.”

  “You could. Mom could. And you were right. I think I’m right about my college pal, the dedicated zoologist, having eyes for our own goofy, sweet-natured Farley.”

  They followed the track at an easy trot, the horses kicking up snow, their breath steaming out like smoke.

  As they approached the gate that separated the farm from the refuge, Lil let out a laugh. Her coworkers had hung a huge banner across the gat
e.

  WELCOME HOME, LIL!

  She saw the tracks as well—from snowmobiles and horses, animals and men. Through January and February, the refuge saw little in the way of tourists and visitors. But the staff was always busy.

  She dismounted to open the gate. When they could afford it, she thought, they’d replace the old thing with electric. But for now, she waded through the snow to work the latch. It squealed as she dragged it clear so her father could lead her horse through.

  “Nobody’s been bothering you, have they?” she asked as she remounted. “I mean the public.”

  “Oh, we get somebody comes by every now and then, who can’t find the public entrance. We just send them around.”

  “I hear we had good turnout, and good feedback, from the school field trips in the fall.”

  “Kids love the place, Lil. It’s a good thing you’ve done here.”

  “We’ve done.”

  She scented animal before she saw them, that touch of wild in the air. Inside the first stretch of habitat a Canadian lynx sat on a boulder. Tansy had brought him in from Canada, where he’d been captured and wounded. In the wild, his maimed leg was a death sentence. Here, he had sanctuary. They called him Rocco, and he flicked his tufted ears as they passed.

  The refuge gave homes to bobcat and cougar, to an old, circus tiger they called Boris, to a lioness who had once, inexplicably, been kept as a pet. There were bear and wolf, fox and leopard.

  A smaller area held a petting zoo, what she thought of as hands-on education for kids. Rabbits, lambs, a pygmy goat, a donkey.

  And the humans, bundled in cold-weather gear, who worked to feed them, shelter them, treat them.

  Tansy spotted her first, and gave a whoop before racing over from the big-cat area. A pink flush from cold and pleasure bloomed on the cheeks of her pretty, caramel-colored face.

  “You’re back.” She gave Lil’s knee a squeeze. “Get on down here and give me a hug! Hey, Joe, I bet you’re happy to have your girl back.”

  “And then some.”

  Lil slid off the horse and embraced her friend, who swayed side-to-side making a happy mmmm sound. “It’s so good, so good, so good to see you!”

  “Likewise.” Lil pressed her cheek to the soft spring of Tansy’s dark hair.

  “We heard you’d caught Dave and managed to get back a day early, so we’ve been scrambling.” Tansy leaned back and grinned. “To hide the evidence of all the drunken parties and fat-assing we’ve had going on since you left.”

  “Aha. I knew it. And that’s why you’re the only member of the senior staff out and about?”

  “Naturally. Everyone else is nursing hangovers.” She laughed and gave Lil another squeeze. “Okay, truth. Matt is in Medical. Bill tried to eat a towel.”

  Bill, a young bobcat, was renowned for his eclectic appetite.

  Lil glanced back at the pair of cabins, one housing her quarters, the other offices and Medical. “Did he get much?”

  “No, but Matt wants to check him out. Lucius is chained to his computer, and Mary’s at the dentist. Or going to. Hey, Eric, come take the horses, will you? Eric’s one of our winter-term interns. We’ll make the introductions later. Let’s—” She broke off at the harsh, bright call of a cougar. “Somebody smells Mama,” Tansy said. “Go ahead. We’ll meet you in Medical when you’re done.”

  Lil wound her way, following the trail formed by feet trampling through the snow.

  He was waiting for her, pacing, watching, calling. At her approach, the cat rubbed its body against the fencing, then stood, bracing his fore-paws against it. And purred.

  Six months since he’d seen her—scented her, Lil thought. But he hadn’t forgotten her. “Hello, Baby.”

  She reached through to stroke the tawny fur, and he bumped his head affectionately to hers.

  “I missed you, too.”

  He was four now, full-grown, lithe and magnificent. He hadn’t been fully weaned when she’d found him, and his two littermates, orphaned and half starved. She’d hand-fed them, tended them, guarded them. And when they’d been old enough, strong enough, had reintroduced them to the wild.

  But he’d kept coming back.

  She’d named him Ramses, for power and dignity, but he was Baby.

  And her one true love.

  “Have you been good? Of course, you have. You’re the best. Keeping everybody in line? I knew I could count on you.”

  As she spoke and stroked, Baby purred, hummed in his throat, and looked at her with golden eyes full of love.

  She heard movement behind her, glanced back. The one Tansy had called Eric stood staring. “They said he was like that with you, but . . . I didn’t believe it.”

  “You’re new?”

  “Um, yeah. I’m interning. Eric. I’m Eric Silverstone, Dr. Chance.”

  “Lil. What are you looking to do?”

  “Wildlife management.”

  “Learning anything here?”

  “A lot.”

  “Let me give you another quick lesson. This adult male cougar, Felis concolor, is approximately eight feet long from nose to tail and weighs about one-fifty. He can outjump a lion, a tiger, a leopard, both vertically and horizontally. Despite that, he’s not considered a ‘big cat.’ ”

  “He lacks the specialized larynx and hyoid apparatus. He can’t roar.”

  “Correct. He’ll purr like your aunt Edith’s tabby. But he’s not tame. You can’t tame the wild, can you, Baby?” He chirped at her as if in agreement. “He loves me. He imprinted on me as a kitten—about four months of age—and he’s been in the refuge, among people, since. Learned behavior, not tame. We’re not prey. But if you made some move he sensed as attack, he’d respond. They’re beautiful, and they’re fascinating, but they’re not pets. Not even this one.”

  Still, to please herself and Baby, she pressed her lips in one of the small openings of the fence, and he butted his mouth to hers. “See you later.”

  She turned and walked with Eric toward the cabin. “Tansy said you found him and two other orphans.”

  “Their mother got into it with a lone wolf—at least that’s how it looked to me. She killed it, must have or it would have taken the litter. But she didn’t survive. I found the corpses, and the litter. They were the first cougar kittens we had here.”

  And she had a scar near her right elbow from the other male in that litter. “We fed them, sheltered them for about six weeks, until they were old enough to hunt on their own. Limited human contact as much as possible. We tagged them and released them and we’ve been tracking them ever since. But Baby? He wanted to stay.”

  She glanced back to where he’d joined his companions in his habitat. “His littermates reacclimated, but he kept coming back here.” To me, she thought. “They’re solitary and secretive and cover a vast range, but he chose to come back. That’s the thing. You can study and learn the patterns, the biology, the taxonomy, the behavior. But you’ll never know everything.”

  She looked back as Baby leaped on one of his boulders and let out a long, triumphant scream.

  Inside, she shed her outer gear. She could hear her father talking to Matt through the open door of Medical. In the offices, a man with Coke-bottle glasses and an infectious grin hammered away at a keyboard.

  Lucius Gamble looked up, said, “Yeah!” and tossed his hands in the air. “Back from the trenches.” He jumped up to give her a hug, and she smelled the red licorice he was addicted to on his breath.

  “How’s it going, Lucius?”

  “Good. Just updating the Web page. We’ve got some new pictures. We had an injured wolf brought in a couple weeks ago. Clipped by a car. Matt saved it. We’ve gotten a lot of hits on the pictures there, and the column Tansy wrote for it.”