Man From Tennessee

by Jennifer Greene

  She was determined to work herself into a better frame of mind. Last night she had slept long and hard, but dreams had haunted her. Kern’s lovemaking had been rapturously consummated in one dream; yet in another he had thrown the name of tease at her, which churned like pain inside. In a third dream he had repeated over and over, “There’s only one way it can end for us, Tish. In bed. I can get you out of my system so easily if I see once and for all how cold and ungiving a woman you are!”

  Daylight had come as a relief. She felt a need to do something physical to distract her from the increasing confusion she felt around Kern. Brushing crumbs off her hands from the roll, she shoved them in her back pockets and walked.

  Kern’s land was a unique blend of landscapes. At the highest level was the spruce and fir forest, dense and abundant with berries at this time of the year, trillium sometimes blanketing a long stretch of forest floor. Some of the most spectacular waterfalls were above those areas he kept private, one of which she knew was uniquely special to any place on earth, yet it was not where she headed.

  Below the fir-tipped peaks was the kind of land the campers came for, the cove-hardwood forest the region was famous for. It was magical to walk through. The huge tree trunks, some so wide four or five men couldn’t span their arms around them, stretched to the sky, forming leafy umbrellas high above her head. Yellow poplar, oak, basswood, hemlock-she remembered only a few of the names. Sunlight dappled down in long dusty streaks, shining on dogwood and rhododendron and an incredible number of wildflowers that only flourished in this protected area. Soft mosses covering the rich dark earth felt spongy beneath her feet.

  An unusual wistfulness touched her expression as she walked. The city was her life now. She had roots established and a frenetically paced job that usually suited her well. But unwillingly, she could too easily remember that it wasn’t a cement-and-computer world where she’d wanted to raise her children, but here, with nature’s values and nature’s laws.

  A hot whispering breeze brushed against her checks as she continued on, trailing a sprawling pattern of delicate white mountain laurel that bordered the path. Half an hour later she glimpsed the roof of Kern’s horse barn, and a wry smile touched her lips. Out of simple curiosity she headed that way. It was very dark inside, and the smells seemed doubly pervasive because of it. Trisha loved the smell of leather that was well cared for and recently polished, fresh hay and the scent of the horses themselves.

  She noticed that two stalls were empty and suspected that either Kern or Jack had rented the horses out to campers. One horse stomped his feet at the sound of the stranger entering; another let out a plaintive whinny, bored after yesterday’s rain and inactivity. She stroked the silky necks as she ambled by. Four of the horses she’d never seen before, but of course Kern would have expanded his stock in five years.

  “Would you ride with me?”

  Trisha whirled, startled by the sudden tiny voice that seemed to come from nowhere. “Hello,” she offered cheerfully to the pigtailed little blonde dejectedly leaning against the stable door. She recognized the child from breakfast the day before. “It’s Georgia, isn’t it?”

  The child nodded. “Would you go for a little ride with me?” she requested again. “My mom’s sick, and my dad promised but now he can’t. I can ride real good, but no one will let me go alone.”

  Trisha crouched down to be more on a level with the big sad eyes. “Oh, I’d love to, honey, but I’m not very good with horses. I wouldn’t even know how to saddle one.”

  The big blue eyes fluttered wide with hope. “You don’t need saddles. You just put on a big blanket. We could just go for a little while. Mr. Jack’ll say okay, and so will my daddy. Please? Oh, please?”

  “Honey, I just can’t…”

  One huge crystal of a tear formed in the child’s eye and slowly dribbled down her cheek. Trisha sighed. The first time she had gotten on a horse she had set off at an instant gallop and all too soon found herself head over heels, rolling on the ground. Her relationship with horses from then on had been never to travel in the direction of the stables without sugar, carrots or apples, all of which she was willing to deliver with crooning words and petting, and all from the other side of the wooden gates.

  Georgia’s mother was still in her nightgown and nursing a cold. Her father was making tea for his wife. Trisha went into humorous detail as to her utter lack of experience with horses, her proven lack of control over them, and the more relevant fact that Georgia was their only daughter. The Shearers were clearly more interested-and grateful-in the idea of a babysitter.

  And Jack proved equally helpful, bustling promptly ahead of them to put the reins and blanket on a huge roan at the far end of the stables. “Kern already told me to give you any help you wanted if you wandered down here. I thought he said for sure you wouldn’t be near the horses, but it doesn’t matter. Mildred’s just a lamb, and I’ll show you a good easy trail to follow. You won’t run into any trouble. If you’re worried at all, though, I’ll get a mount and go with you. Kern said-”

  “No, thank you,” Trisha said firmly, aware of the blonde’s admiring look. She grinned. “Some humiliations are better faced alone. A lamb, you say?”

  “Really, she’s very gentle.”

  It was not as if she had other plans for the morning, and a short trip around the campgrounds wasn’t going to kill her. Georgia comfortably vaulted in front like a pro, and Jack helped Trisha slide on just behind her.

  Three hours later Trisha snail-paced the walk to Kern’s with a gamboling Georgia at her side, seeking lunch. Hurrying was not the order of the day. Unconsciously she stiffened still further at the sight of Kern at the door, his arms folded across his chest as if he had been waiting. His eyes narrowed only momentarily on the child and then rested on Trisha, who was making a monumental effort to walk normally.

  “I was about to send out a search party for you. There was a time you wouldn’t go a quarter mile off the trail on your own, bright eyes; and in this country, if you haven’t forgotten, one leaves word before just taking off for hours at a time.”

  “It never occurred to me that you would be worried,” she answered honestly, not at all pleased that just looking at him was enough to promote an image of last night, of steel-gray eyes softened in passion. She swept past him to the cool bright kitchen with the child in hand, all too aware he was radiating both impatience and exasperation. “I’m sorry, Kern. I knew you were busy and I never planned on being in your way. Jack knew where we were. Have you had lunch?”

  “I would have, but I kept expecting you to come in. Rhea had been coming over to fix meals, but somehow she’s under the impression that she’s not wanted here for the moment. I wonder who could conceivably have given her that idea.”

  It didn’t seem particularly wise to answer that. She ran a quick brush through her hair and washed her hands in the bathroom, returning to the kitchen to make sandwiches, with Georgia perched on the counter next to her. It was Georgia who put cheese, meat and lettuce to the bread slices. The first finished product, wobbly though it was, was presented proudly to “Mr. Kern,” who now sat in a kitchen chair, watching both of them.

  “I’ve never been fond of bolo-” Kern started to say, and was quelled at the pride in the five-year-old’s eyes.

  Trisha was ridiculously proud of him for rallying. “Thank you, honey,” he told her. The child beamed. “Have you been with Trisha all morning?”

  Georgia nodded shyly.

  “Then would you mind telling me, honey, where the hell-”

  “Kern!”

  “Where the two of you have been for the last four hours?” he amended.

  Georgia’s sandwiches were decorated and cut to look like faces, raisins for eyes and carrot curls for smiles. The child sat next to Kern. Trisha had no intention of sitting anywhere. Ever. In the next life there were be no horses, certainly not bony ones. She munched as she continued working, slicing and paring vegetables; there was enough time to m
ake a decent soup for Mrs. Shearer’s evening meal.

  “We’ve been riding,” Georgia said shyly.

  “Have you?” Kern said, as if he were properly impressed. His glance at Trisha reminded her that he knew very well her feeling for horses.

  “T’sha rode behind me,” Georgia explained seriously. “We rode all over the whole mountains. Mildred didn’t want to go home. I didn’t either. And Daddy said T’sha could have me all day. I didn’t even fall off once.”

  “And T’sha?” Kern prompted with equal gravity.

  “We were going up this huge mountain and T’sha slid off his back. It took ages and ages to get her back on again.”

  “Did it now?”

  “We picked berries,” Georgia continued, with growing confidence in the tall, fierce-looking man who seemed remarkably interested in her morning. “Wild berries. And Mildred ran away. Boy, can she go! I helped T’sha catch her.”

  Trisha burst out laughing. “Some help! I did the running and you called out between mouthfuls of berries.” She swiped at Georgia’s face, then at the counter and table, clearing up swiftly and efficiently. She resisted the urge to wipe off Kern’s lazy grin as well.

  “I’m beginning to get the feeling there’s a reason you’re not sitting down for your lunch, Tish,” Kern drawled.

  “Are you?”

  “Could I touch your beard?” Georgia requested. “I’ve never touched a beard.”

  His eyebrows rose slightly at the request, but he obligingly bent down.

  “Kind of scratchy,” Georgia judged.

  “I can’t shave with my left hand,” he said as justification. “But in another day or so-”

  “Oh, keep it, Kern,” Trisha said impulsively, and then could have bitten her tongue. What was it to her if he were clean-shaven or bearded, and the slate-gray eyes were suddenly on her like a floodlight. “Or shave it off. As you like, of course,” she added with careful indifference.

  “So you suddenly have a liking for beards, do you?”

  “No, I-”

  “Suddenly you put together an old-fashioned mountain breakfast in fifteen minutes flat. I see you’ve got your makeup off and a smudge of dirt on your jeans. And up on a horse again…” He shook his head in mocking disbelief, but his eyes held a gleam in them that reflected last night’s memories. Those things were not the only things that had changed in Trisha. “If you don’t watch it, you might just fall in love with the mountain life all over again, Tish-”

  “You must not have been listening to the story,” she said stiffly. “If you needed proof I’m a city girl, Kern, all you had to do was hear how I fell off the most placid ‘lamb’ in your stables!”

  Kern stood up, stretching lazily. “Would you like a good rubdown, bright eyes? If you’re complaining of stiff muscles…” His eyes took in the fit of her snug pair of jeans, the way it would all fit together without the pair of jeans. Unwillingly Trisha could feel a faint color escape to her cheeks, imagining, as he meant her to, his palms intimately working on…muscles.

  “There’s no need,” she said crisply. “Besides, right after I finish here I’m taking Georgia’s mother some soup. She isn’t feeling well, and after that-”

  After that she’d taken one look at the camp’s log-cabin headquarters, and decided to make it the afternoon’s project. She had to have something to do with herself for two days, and the need for cleanup was a direct measure of Kern’s inability to get around since his accident. Jack certainly hadn’t objected to the idea; he had all but thrown his arms around her at the offer to reorganize the chaos of files and first-aid supplies and camping equipment.

  “Somehow I’m not surprised you managed to make arrangements to be away from here for the afternoon,” Kern said dryly. “I thought you’d choose shopping, though, Tish. It’s a much farther distance to town.” He waited, but she offered no reply. “Rhea’s invited the two of us over for dinner at seven.”

  Trisha turned from the door where Georgia was already headed out, her back suddenly stiff. “Well, you go, of course,” she said casually. “I don’t think I will, Kern. By then I’ll be tired.”

  He was silent for a moment, and she looked back at him, unable to read the oddly disturbed look in his eyes. “That’s what you want, Tish?” he said deliberately.

  “I-yes, of course it is.” To think of Kern with another woman…but of course it was the only answer she could give. She was not part of his life anymore; he wasn’t even asking her to be part of his life again. He was only asking her to sleep with him, and she had to be certain he understood she wasn’t interested.

  It was past nine. About a dozen people were stretched out lazily around the campfire, all of them more or less in the same condition: grubby, sleepy and sated from the community dinner cooked on the fire not an hour before. Trisha had a half-full can of beer in her hand-she never drank beer-and her tousled blonde head and shoulders were slumped against a huge old log, with Jack on one side of her and little Georgia on the other. She surveyed her stretched-out legs and the absolutely filthy appearance of her jeans with rueful amusement, half listening to the lazy conversations around her. Jack had just put down an old country fiddle that seemed to know all the old Appalachian hill songs, and she was still humming a few in her brain, too tired even to put on her shoes.

  “It was a bear and her two cubs, I swear it was…you’ve never seen anyone run so fast in your entire life…”

  “The trout were just jumping for the bait…”

  The stories were getting better as the hour was getting later. The smoke from the fire curled in a lazy spiral straight up the cloak of trees surrounding them, making a natural tepee. The night was sleepy warm, and she could hear the hooting of an owl in the distance.

  “What I’d give for a life like this all the time,” a short, stoop-shouldered man murmured from the distance. “Hey, Jack, what do you have to do around here to buy a piece of ground?”

  Jack stirred, edging up to a sitting position beside Trisha. “The way I understand it, there isn’t any land for sale around the Smokies. The government gets first shot, unless it’s an issue of direct inheritance. It was Kern’s grandfather who willed this to him, as I understand it.” He looked to Trisha for confirmation, who simply nodded, her eyes half closed as she stared into the fire.

  “I just read the park has some 516,000 acres. I wouldn’t think anybody’d need more than that,” someone else said.

  “Well, from here, we can’t protect enough land like this,” came another lazy voice from the far reaches of the fire. “I’ve been to the Rockies and I’ve been to the Tetons. Each mountain area’s got its own flavor-this one isn’t the grandeur, it’s the richness. You just can’t get tired of it; there’s more different colors of green than an artist could come up with; there’s the change in seasons and no end to the wildlife. I keep wondering how God even came up with it…”

  Smiling, Trisha half sat up, curling up her knees and resting her arms across them. Her soft-spoken voice seemed part of the night, gentle, warm and sensual. “There’s a Cherokee legend about how these mountains came into being. The Indians say that at the beginning of the world everything lived in the sky, all the animals and the people. The world was just an ocean, no land, but unfortunately it got to be crowded up there in the sky, so the Cherokees sent down a little water beetle just to check out the possibilities. Well, the beetle dove to the bottom of the water and brought up mud and more mud, and finally that mud burgeoned up to form some land. But it was still too soft for anyone to live on, so the people sent down a giant buzzard to find a dry spot, but he became tired about the time he was over what was to be Cherokee country. His wings were flapping when he sunk down on the land, and all that flapping dried the mud in the pattern of mountains and valleys…”

  “These mountains and valleys, they say.” Kern’s voice vibrated low as he wended his way through the lazy pairs of legs to get to her side. Through a chorus of greetings he seemed to be looking only at her, and
before she was even aware of it, Jack had obligingly moved and made a place for him next to Trisha. Long, jeaned legs suddenly stretched out next to her. An afternoon and evening of Jack’s subtle admiration invoked none of the disturbing sensations that Kern’s presence instantly did. Ebony hair and beard, ebony eyes by firelight-he was the pirate who savored his treasure, this land and its richness. Savored, protected, cherished, would kill to keep, she thought whimsically.

  “Tish used to love the old Cherokee legends. Has she told you about the Little People yet? They’re the keepers of history to the Cherokee, the spirits who come out only at night to share the legends and songs that are too old for any man to remember.”

  Helplessly she found herself turning to look at him. His deep voice was droning out stories for the others, but his eyes captured hers. For a long unbroken moment there were only two of them, and Kern was the scarred pirate, with a physical power no man could match and a devil fire in his eyes when he looked at her. And for that moment she was his golden treasure, fragile, unable to deny his right to take and hold-and keep. The image held for as long as he stared at her, so strong that she could feel the change in her heartbeat, as real as the night wind that touched her skin. Answering someone’s question, he turned away, and she shivered suddenly in the darkness.

  “One of those Cherokee spirits just walk over your grave, Trisha?” asked the woman, chuckling, on the other side of Georgia.

  “Some ghosts just refuse to rest,” Trisha admitted, and with an uneasy little laugh brought her attention deliberately back to the group.

  With her just-washed hair turbaned in a towel, Trisha surveyed the meager contents of her traveling wardrobe with irritation. The navy dress had a spot; the cream outfit had been worn twice; the jeans and shirt were filthy; and she’d been wearing the nightgown for five days straight. A long hike was what she’d had in mind for the day, with a grandfatherly man named Edwards she’d met the night before at the camp, a regular visitor of Kern’s. As she scooped up the clothes in one hand and carefully wielded her coffee cup with the other, she told herself that with luck she’d have the washing chore done in an hour and have the rest of the day free until four, when she and Kern had to pick up Julia.