Season of Storm

by Alexandra Sellers

  Eleven

  With a cry of protest Smith twisted her head around and saw the city beginning to recede in the distance. Her hands tightened into fists. She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them and moved to stand beside Johnny Winterhawk at the wheel.

  "What are you doing?" she cried, though somewhere in her being she understood that the radio broadcast had changed her life. "Where are you taking me? We were nearly there!"

  His eyes were haunted. He looked at her as though she were someone in his nightmare. "I'm sorry," said Johnny hoarsely. "I wasn't quick enough. I should have hired a helicopter, but I didn't think they'd move so fast."

  "But why....take me home, Johnny! Why is it so important? I'll say it isn't true! I told you that! Please take me home!"

  The wheel did not move under his fingers, and the speedboat slapped steadily through the waves towards the west. Johnny Winterhawk said nothing, just stood and watched the waves, his brow furrowed, his dark eyes squinting against the sun.

  "Please, Johnny—" she was beginning, when he interrupted her in a flat, calculating tone.

  "When I found you in my study you were phoning someone. Who?"

  "Oh!" Funny, she had forgotten. And now it seemed as though an age had passed since then. She gave an incredulous little laugh. "I was calling Rolly Middleton, my father's vice president of operations. It's a stupid title, really, because my father still runs everything. And Rolly—"

  "Did you get through?" he interrupted.

  "Only for a second. Then you—"

  "What did you tell him?"

  "I didn't tell him anything! You were there before I had a—" Smith broke off, biting her lip. What a fool she was! She should have said she'd told Rolly everything.

  "Did you tell him who was calling?"

  "I...no." Hadn't he heard anything of what she was saying before he cut her off?

  "Would he have recognized your voice?"

  Oh, God, what was the right thing to say? If he thought Rolly had recognized her voice, would he keep her safe, or kill her?

  "Yes," she said breathlessly at last, with a certainty she did not feel. "Yes, I'm sure he recognized—"

  Johnny Winterhawk interrupted again. "Is he your lover?"

  Smith choked. "Is he what?"

  "Your lover," Johnny repeated, his voice rough. "You called him when you could have called the police, and you're sure he recognized your voice." He looked at her from hooded hawk-like eyes. "And he has a sinecure in your father's business."

  It was no sinecure; her father was not the man to suffer fools for any reason. Rolly was simply very, very different from her father and therefore sometimes despised by him. He was also forty-three years old and his wife had just had twins.

  "No," Smith said. Her mind was a jumble of thoughts. Johnny Winterhawk was right: she could more easily have called the police than Rolly. She was aghast now, to think that she had broken into his office, not to call for rescue, but to try to save Cat Bite Valley from her father's chain saws! What on earth had possessed her? What had she been thinking of?

  "No," she repeated slowly, "he isn't my lover. I was calling him because with my father in the hospital, it would be his decision to send a logging team into Cat Bite. I was calling to...to tell him not to."

  Johnny Winterhawk went still, as though his whole body were listening for some distant sound. He turned with a look that riveted her.

  "Why?" he asked after a long moment during which she forgot to breathe.

  "We heard on the news that they wouldn't grant you an injunction, and I—I thought I could try to delay cutting until the commission reports." She took a deep breath, still feeling threatened by her own foolishness. "Rolly doesn't like making decisions—not that kind. I knew he'd be grateful if I took the responsibility."

  Johnny Winterhawk wasn't saying anything, he was just looking at her. "My father won't give in to that demand," she whispered urgently, indicating the radio with one hand. "He hates anything like that—blackmail or ransom. He hates anyone telling him what to do. He'll tell you to kill me and be damned."

  Johnny Winterhawk's gaze was steady, his voice firm. "I doubt that," he said.

  "You don't know him," she persisted. "Please don't take me back to the island. What difference does this ransom demand make? I can stop the cutting more easily if you let me go, I swear."

  "I'm sorry, Peaceable Woman," Johnny Winterhawk said, as, away in the distance, she saw the small dark shape that was the island. "But an hour ago there was no evidence to corroborate your story if you told it. It would have been your word against mine. Now the hotheads who decided on this course of action have given you all the corroboration you could want."

  "I would deny it all," she said with emphasis. "Why can't you believe that? My father couldn't browbeat me."

  He smiled and shook his head. "You're an innocent," he said. "You have no idea of what they would do to you to get that information. Believe me, this is not the time for me to let you go."

  "When will it be the time?" she demanded harshly.

  "I don't know," said Johnny Winterhawk. "But I'll find a time and a way to let you go, Peaceable Woman. You've got my word."

  Smith snorted. "Your word!" she snapped. "What good is your word when you obviously can't even keep your cohorts in line? You knew they were going to pull this today, and all you could do was try to forestall them! You couldn't stop them, could you? That's obvious. What good is your word going to do me when my father starts cutting down trees in Cat Bite Valley? And he will, as sure as you're standing there. Because, I told you before, my father doesn't care about me! He will certainly care one hell of a lot less about my life than he will about giving in to terrorism! That's a principle, you see!"

  Her voice was growling with emotion and sounded deep and unnatural. "What good is your word going to do me when your friends decide to deep six me in revenge for their lost hunting grounds?"

  His hand closed around her wrist, and he snapped her close to him so that her breast was moulded against his upper arm and her thigh pressed his. When she looked up at his profile, his jaw muscles were tight.

  "My friends are fools, but they are not murderers," he said, watching the water. "No one is going to deep six you, no matter how many spy novels tell you otherwise. Please try not to panic. I'll take you home as soon as possible, whether you think my word is good or not."

  His calm voice and the touch of his body were soothing the frightened animal in her; involuntarily Smith heaved a sigh and her breathing calmed. She was half conscious of a desire to bury her face against his chest and howl out all the pain she had ever known.

  "Anyway," he said softly, "you're judging your father too harshly. Unless he's an absolute madman he will not start cutting down trees yet. At the very least he will bargain for time."

  "He hates me," Smith said flatly, and felt the smart of tears. "He's hated me ever since my mother died."

  "Even so," said Johnny.

  "You think he'd worry about public opinion," she said, somehow wanting to prove her point. "But you're wrong. There's only one way to stop the cutting in that valley of yours, and that's to let me go."

  But the black boat did not alter course.

  When the shadow of the island fell over them again, now that she knew where to look she could pick out Wilfred Tall Tree's cabin down at the shore, and above, through the trees, the flash of sun on glass. Smith stared fixedly up, blinking and swallowing against the tears that threatened, glad of the wind that blew tendrils of hair across her face. She didn't know where the tears were coming from, but she wished they would stop.

  Johnny Winterhawk slowed the engine, and then his fingers fastened gently under her chin. He turned her face toward him and looked down into her eyes. Smith's heart leapt painfully against her ribs, and she gulped on a sob.

  He smiled at her. "Come on," he said coaxingly. "Let yourself cry. You're a brave, strong woman, but the past couple of days have been pretty rough on you. Come on now.
"

  Smith tensed her jaw and swallowed and blinked back the tears. "I'm all right," she said.

  "Ah, Peaceable Woman," he said. "There can't be another woman in the world like you. I salute you."

  Johnny Winterhawk bent his head, and his mouth met her full, trembling lips with a sweetness that spread through her soul like honey. Her arms crept up to his shoulders, and she clung to him with a helpless need that shook her to the roots.

  When he lifted his head she drew back and looked at him.

  "I love you," said a voice that Smith recognized as her own.

  She clapped her hand over her mouth and jerked out of Johnny Winterhawk's light hold as though his touch burned her. "I can't imagine why I said that!" she cried. "It isn't true in the least!"

  She glared at him as though she expected him to contradict her.

  Winterhawk was concentrating on edging in toward the dock, and for a moment he didn't answer. Then he glanced at her. "Of course you didn't mean it," he said calmly.

  They were silent while he docked, then Smith stood on the dock and watched as he padlocked the hatch. Against her, of course: there was a ship's radio inside.

  Smith couldn't forget what she had said to him, though Johnny Winterhawk seemed to. She felt the heat rise in her cheeks every time she thought of it. She couldn't imagine what had made her say it. She had felt as though someone else were speaking, not herself at all.

  "Why, Peaceable Woman." Johnny Winterhawk's deep, caressing voice broke in on her thoughts, and she looked up to find him beside her on the dock, gazing at her feet. "You made yourself a pair of moccasins!"

  Smith grinned up at him, and suddenly it was easy to forget what an idiot she had just made of herself.

  "I had to," she confessed. "Yours were too big for me to fill."

  Johnny Winterhawk lifted his head and laughed, and the late sun glinted on the wings of his black hair and on his thick eyelashes. She watched him, laughing, too, while pain like a small fist closed on her heart. He was beautiful the way a work of art was beautiful, like a statue in glowing dark marble; and he moved her the way art sometimes moved her. It was as though the sight of him matched some image that resided in the deepest recesses of her being. She could not have drawn the image or described it; she would not even have known it existed. But Johnny Winterhawk stepped into the shape and brought it to life, and the little fist tightened its hold on her heart.

  A river of knowledge ran in her too deep for her to touch, and its incomprehensible murmur filled her ears like a mysterious oracle.

  He should have let me go home, she thought. But some small, silent part of her looked up at the forest and was glad he had not.

  Twelve

  The moon was just past the full, and its light shone brightly into her room, patterning floor and bed with shadow leaves that moved with every breath of wind.

  Shulamith had known she would not sleep long before she undressed and crawled into bed, the sheets cool on her naked skin. She didn't toss and turn. She lay quietly watching the moonlight make its slow progress across the room, listening to the noises of nature that seemed like silence.

  Finally, with a sigh, she took her arms from under her head, swept back the bedcovers and got up. She slipped on the dragon robe and buttoned it up to the high mandarin neck, then stealthily opened the door.

  She was expecting to see the sleeping form of Wilfred Tall Tree, but the mat across her doorway was empty. With a glance up and down, Shulamith closed the door behind her and moved silently along the hallway.

  As she stepped out of the house onto the balcony, she was enveloped by beauty. Moonlight bathed the world—the sea, the gorge, the forest, the house—and the sounds of the breaking waves and the rustling of the branches were sharp and clear on the night air.

  Johnny Winterhawk was sitting in a deep, low chair, shirtless, in boxer shorts, his muscular bare legs bent up in front of him, his hands folded across his naked stomach. His face seemed full of angles in the moonlight, and his eyes were dark, unreadable hollows as he looked up at her. Smith crossed to the railing and stood looking out over the magnificent gorge. The breeze tangled her hair and turned the silky cloth of her robe cool against her skin. She shivered a little.

  "There is a story in my tribe," Johnny Winterhawk's low-pitched voice said behind her, and Smith turned to him, resting her hips against the wooden railing to listen, "told to me by my grandfather, whose grandfather had told it to him—that many generations ago one of my ancestors saw a strange woman come up out of the sea, in the place where Cat Bite River meets the ocean. She was not like anyone he had ever seen, it is said, for she had pale skin and hair like fire.

  "My ancestor's name was Iniishewa, or Tree By Itself. He had two young sons, but his wife had died. Iniishewa felt his soul fly out of him to the woman when he looked at her, and he wanted to make her his wife.

  "In the Chopa nation, strangers were not welcome. Usually they were killed or sold as slaves. But the people might be asked to accept a stranger as one of them."

  His quiet voice was hypnotic in the moonlight. Shulamith stood watching him, watching the play of muscle under the skin of his face as he spoke, watching the breeze lift the glinting black hair.

  "Iniishewa took the fire-haired woman to the women of the tribe and asked them to accept her into the tribe so that he could marry her. The women discussed the matter for four days, and in the end they voted against her. The fire-haired woman was put to death.

  "Iniishewa left the tribe then, abandoning his two sons, and went to live in the forest. He spent the rest of his life alone, waiting for the fire-haired woman to take another form and come to him to give him back his soul that he had lost to her."

  Johnny Winterhawk pulled himself up out of the chair and came to stand beside her at the railing, gazing out over the gorge. Smith remained where she was, her back to the sea, unable to move. Waves of electricity seemed to flow between their bodies. She gazed at the house behind them, unreal and magical in the moonlight that poured over it like a waterfall, and wondered whether if she closed her eyes it would disappear, and she would be standing in a forest above a rocky gorge with a man who would demand that she return his soul....

  When the silence became terrifying she asked, "Did he find her again?" and Johnny Winterhawk turned and took her in his arms.

  His kiss was more pain than pleasure, because she was too desperate for it. She was like a child who has never been held, her yearning for his touch so deep that the fulfilment created an even deeper ache of remembered emptiness. Wherever he touched her, her blood rushed to meet his flesh so eagerly she felt bruised.

  She would not have believed that such need could exist in a human being. She had stepped into a trickling stream, and now she was drowning in a rushing river that had no bounds.

  Shulamith began to tremble in his hold, and in answer Johnny Winterhawk's arms tightened around her, and his kiss and his body grew fierce. Her palms were against the heat of his naked chest, and she felt the muscles move under his skin as his hand moved convulsively in her hair.

  Every ache that had never been healed with love rose to his kiss with an urgency that shook her. She could not remember her name, because she had no name. She was only a small, nameless, wounded soul that wanted the aching peace of his mouth on hers.

  He tore his mouth away and buried his face against her throat, crushing her body to him. In a hoarse urgent voice he whispered her name. Then he drew back and looked down at her. He raised a trembling hand to her cheek. "You are unbelievably beautiful," he said huskily.

  He lifted his head into the moonlight, and its cool glow bathed the harsh features of his face, and that swamping desperate emotion left her with a cold rush, and fear took its place.

  Smith jerked her palms away from his chest and strained back against the terrifying pressure of his arms and body. For a moment it seemed as though he would not let her go, and then his hands fell to his sides. She took one step away, but it was like te
aring muscle from bone. She dropped her face into her hands and tried to control her wild breathing.

  Never in her life had Smith been so deeply stirred. She felt all at sea, and it was a frightening feeling. She hated it. She hated Johnny Winterhawk.

  "You hypnotized me!" she cried, before she could stop herself. That was insane, of course. She hadn't meant to say that.

  Johnny Winterhawk laughed. "Funny," he said, "I was going to say that to you. ''

  Her stomach was churning; without knowing why, Smith wanted to scream. She gazed out over the railing and imagined she heard her scream rushing down the gorge and out over the ocean into the night. She jerked her gaze back to the harsh dark face above her.

  "You have to leave me alone," she said, her voice low and quiet on the night air. He grunted as if she had struck him. "Don't touch me anymore. I don't like it."

  "You do," he said.

  "No."

  He lifted one hand and touched her cheek. A sudden wind gusted noisily through the trees and a long tangle of her hair reached out to him, wrapping his wrist in its own caress.

  Johnny smiled grimly. "You see."

  Smith's skin shivered with too much sensation. His chest was so powerfully muscled, he was so big and dark. She drew the lock of her hair back. It retreated reluctantly, clinging around his wrist with a life of its own.

  "No." But the lie rang flat on the night air.

  "I will teach you to like it."

  "No," she said again. She closed her eyes as panic fluttered in her stomach. The thought of how he would teach her to like this disturbing confusion of feeling, desire and abject need left her shaken. All he could in fact teach her was to accept that she more than liked it, that already it felt like a basic survival need. Like water, like mother love.