Follow A Wild Heart (romance,)

by Hutchinson, Bobby

  One way or the other, Logan vowed silently, despite Danny's voice going on and on making plans for filling the next two days with activities, he'd find time to be alone with this woman, time to openly discuss his feelings with her, time to get to know her. There were so many things he wanted to tell her, so much they needed to find out about each other.

  But for now, it was wonderfully pleasant to just sit close to her and drink huge mugs of the coffee she'd prepared for him, laugh with her at the irrepressible Danny and his wagging tongue and absorb the breathtaking beauty of her and of her woodland retreat as dusk settled, strewing the sky with trails of red and crimson, sending fiery reflections down to dance in the lake.

  Several hours later, Karena lifted sweet smelling sheets and blankets, with which to make up Logan's bed, out of the cedar chest in her bedroom. He'd spent the evening more with Danny than with her, and she was glad, because it had given her time to get used to having him here.

  She wrinkled her nose at that idea. Getting used to being around Logan wasn't remotely possible, because he roused far too many feelings and responses in her to allow for relaxation or familiarity this soon.

  She took the linen out to the porch, shaking a feather pillow into its case, a smile tilting one corner of her mouth as she remembered making this pillow with her mother, when she was a little girl. They were living in a cabin, in a camp further north that year, and they'd raised the geese that supplied the feathers, plucked and cleaned them, sewn sturdy cases from heavy cotton ordered from the catalog and then stood on a still, hot autumn day in the backyard, laughing together, taking handfuls of down carefully from a sack and stuffing these pillows to exactly the right plumpness.

  It roused feelings of nostalgia in Karena, remembering the comfortable closeness she'd had with her mother. Anna had been the only woman Karena had ever known intimately, and after Karena's husband died, the parent child relationship had changed to one of woman to woman friendship. They'd been able to ta|k to one another honestly, and Karena wished Anna were here now. It would be so good to talk over the confused emotions Logan raised in her, to see the situation through other, trusted eyes.

  What would her mother think of Logan?

  Karena's hands stilled momentarily. Anna's reactions would be colored by her experience. She had wanted more out of life for her daughter than she'd had for herself.

  Anna had followed her husband's job, moving from one logging camp to the next over the years, raising her daughter, patiently turning each rough cabin into a home with her clever hands.

  "You must have an education, my Kari," Anna had insisted stubbornly over and over through the early years, herding her small daughter back indoors to the hated correspondence lessons, insisting she be sent to the city to board when correspondence was no longer enough. "Only through book learning can you better yourself, become something more than just a logger's wife like me, living in the bush."

  And Karena had answered passionately, every time, "But I don't want more, I love it here, this is what I want for my life."

  "How can you know, when you have nothing with which to compare?" her mother would argue, exasperated. "You're too young to know, just as I was, and by the time you start to wonder, then it's too late."

  They'd fought bitterly over her education, Karena and her mother, but the love between them had never faltered. So what would Anna think of Logan?

  "He's a fine-looking man, just as your father was when he was that age," she'd probably say. "But make sure he knows how to laugh a little, Kari. Your father is too stern a man, not like Gabe Philips. Gabe now, he's not so goodlooking, but he knows how to laugh, that one."

  Cautious, her mother would be, with that touch of bitterness that was sometimes present just under the surface of her accented speech, that hint that life hadn't quite fulfilled its promises to her.

  Anna would have made a successful career woman, Karena mused, fluffing the handmade patchwork quilt over the neatly made bed. Danny had a great deal of his grandmother in him, that same insatiable urge for strange people and places, for excitement and change. And for education.

  The idea of more education or a high-powered career made Karena shudder with dread. In that area, she and her mother had always been poles apart. The life Karena had was exactly the one she wanted; it was perfect. Except— She stilled her wayward thoughts, plumped the pillows up one last time and made her way into the kitchen.

  Except she didn't want to live her perfect life without a partner.

  Chapter Six

  "And right here, it says that moose got to North America in the first place by crossing the Bering Strait 175,000 years ago, walking out of the Ice Age. Isn't that something, Logan?"

  Danny was reading out of his beloved wildlife encyclopedia. Soft yellow light spilled over the familiar room, over Danny's blond head and over Logan, making the strong lines of his face a field of light and shadow, creating a mystery of his eyes behind the reflecting lenses of his glasses.

  "And here, it says moose grow faster than any other animal, see?"

  Logan's eyes flicked up from the page as soon as Karena entered the room, drawn to her as if by radar, and he shot her a sweet, lazy smile that made a lump catch somewhere in her chest. Awareness of his presence grew in her.

  He would be sleeping here tonight, only a room's distance from where she lay.

  He would be here when she awoke in the morning.

  There'd be time to talk with him.

  It suddenly seemed like riches beyond measure, having him staying under her roof.

  "Time for bed, Danny," she said a bit breathlessly, and her son made his usual dramatic protest.

  But Logan said genially, "Goodnight, Dan."

  There were no further delays.

  "Would you like to walk down to the lake?" Karena asked. Her heart seemed to beat faster than normal around him. Better to be outside, she decided, where the night air was cool and there was darkness to hide the telltale flushing on her cheeks.

  She rummaged under the curtain by her cupboards, finding the mosquito repellent and handing it to him.

  "The bugs aren't quite as bad as usual this year, but you still should use a bit of this."

  He nodded and smiled, rubbing the oily lotion on his arms and neck, then proferring the bottle to her.

  "You?" he inquired, and she shook her head with a grin.

  "Somewhere over the years, I became immune to mosquitoes. The blackflies bother me a bit in the spring, but that's it."

  She led the way out the door, disturbingly aware of him, close behind her as she walked down the familiar path toward Mort's pen.

  He was agonizingly aware of her slim back, her trim hips in their snug washed-out jeans, so close he could reach out a hand and...

  "How long have you lived here, Karena?" His deep tones merged with the darkness. He wondered if the young husband she'd mentioned that day at Itasca had lived here with her, built the house.

  "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 w
anted 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.