by Tami Hoag
“Don’t go spastic on me, Wade. Wizzer’s okay.” She waved a greeting. “Hi, Wizzer!”
“Red!” the old man called in a booming voice, two thousand dollars’ worth of capped teeth flashing white in the nest of his salt-and-pepper beard.
“He calls me Red,” Bronwynn said in an aside to Wade. She shot him a warning look. “Don’t get any ideas about that, Grayson.”
Wade was too caught up in staring at Wizzer. Since when did hermits cap their teeth? he asked himself. The older man might have been sixty, he might have been seventy, but he didn’t top six feet, and he was built like a fireplug. A wild cloud of hair swirled around his head and onto his shoulders. It would have been difficult to say where the hair ended and the beard began. A Princeton T-shirt spanned his thick chest and stretched over shoulders that were layered with the kind of muscle that came from swinging an axe. He wore a red plaid kilt and argyle wool knee socks. When they set down the coon cage, he engulfed Bronwynn in an exuberant bear hug.
“Wizzer, this is my friend, Wade Grayson,” Bronwynn said when he let her go and she could breathe again. “Wade, meet Wizzer Bralower.”
Wade’s jaw dropped. “Wizzer—Alastair Bralower? The Wizard of Wall Street?”
“Guilty!” Wizzer grinned and laughed as if it were a huge joke. He clasped Wade’s hand in a lumberjack grip. “Good to meet you, Wade. Red tells me you’re a congressman. I don’t keep up on political stuff anymore. Hell, you look like a Beach Boy. You don’t happen to know all the words to ‘Little Deuce Coupe,’ do you?”
“Ah—no.”
Wade was astounded. People had been looking for this man for years, and there he was in the backwoods of Vermont wearing a kilt. Obviously he’d flipped out. Wade shook his head. “You just vanished. There were rumors you’d been kidnapped by the Soviets to mastermind a financial takeover of the Western world.”
Wizzer made a rude sound. “What a pile of toadstools. Typical, though, I suppose.” Offering no explanation for his disappearance, he hunkered down by the cage. “So these are the little bandits?”
“Bob and Ray,” Bronwynn said, giving in to her need to name the critters.
While Wizzer and Bronwynn discussed the raccoons, Wade looked around. They had reached a clearing in the woods no bigger than the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant. To one side of the path stood an honest-to-goodness log cabin. An old whiskey keg sat at one corner, ready to collect rainwater from the roof. There was a pile of split wood and a wide stump with an axe stuck in it. Some distance from the cabin a black iron kettle hung over a smoldering fire. A neatly hoed garden was fenced off with chicken wire. It was hardly the setting in which one expected to find a stock market tycoon.
“I know just the place for these little fur balls, Red,” Wizzer said, offering the raccoons a piece of beef jerky from the leather pouch that hung at his waist. “There’s a stream not far from here with plenty of fish and plenty of cover on the bank. Raccoon paradise. They’ll love it.”
Wade and Bronwynn trudged along behind with the captive coons as Wizzer led the way through the woods, singing “Surfin’ USA.” When the cage was opened at last, and Bob and Ray scampered off, Bronwynn had to fight back tears. Wade sighed in resignation and reached for her hand. What a funny little witch his Bronwynn was, he thought.
His Bronwynn. He liked the sound of that, but what would Bronwynn think? She had let go of her idea of swearing off all men. They had established a relationship neither of them had tried to name yet, a relationship neither had been looking for. Would she shy away if she knew he was feeling possessive? It scared him a bit. He had never allowed a woman to get close to him. His work had come first, above everything, including his own health, he was realizing slowly.
Every day since he’d become involved with Bronwynn he’d been at war with himself. Part of him demanded he give his attention to the work he’d brought along with him. Part of him said the work could wait until after he’d seen Bronwynn and rescued her from whatever mischief she’d managed to get herself into. Two weeks earlier he had fallen asleep worrying about the federal deficit, now Bronwynn was his first thought in the morning and his last at night.
He was a good congressman, conscientious, dedicated. Was there room in his life for a distraction like Bronwynn Prescott Pierson? He tried to imagine going back to his drab apartment in Alexandria and the life he’d had before Vermont, and felt strangely empty.
He’d been bewitched by a pair of parti-colored eyes, he thought, frowning to himself as he trailed behind. Bronwynn was walking arm in arm with Wizzer, asking him a million questions about the different plants along the trail. Like a curious child, she had to touch and smell them all. Twice Bralower had to save her from sticking her patrician nose into some nasty poison ivy or itch weed. Wade just shook his head and tried to steer his mind toward thoughts of the next superpower summit, but the closest his brain came to thinking about Russia was picturing Bronwynn stretched out naked on a sable throw.
When they got back to Wizzer’s cabin, Bralower invited them in for tea. The cabin was one spacious room, neat as a pin with blue Priscilla curtains at the windows and drying herbs hanging from the rafters. A stone fireplace dominated one end of the building. One wall was lined with bookshelves that were crammed with books on herbology, natural remedies, theology, and mythology. Sitting on the quilt-covered bed was an enormous blue tabby cat that looked as if it weighed about twenty pounds. Tufts of hair stuck out of his ears. His tail was a plume of long fluffy fur.
“That’s Thoreau,” Wizzer said by way of introduction. “Big sucker, isn’t he? He’s a Maine coon cat.”
Bronwynn went pale, her freckles standing out in sharp relief across her nose as she stared into the cat’s wide gold eyes. “A coon? . . . He wouldn’t—I mean, you wouldn’t let him—”
“Hang loose, Red,” Wizzer said with a chuckle as he poured their tea into stoneware mugs with pictures of Garfield on them. “It’s just a name. He wouldn’t know a coon from a crocodile, but he’s death on mice.”
They all sat down at the scarred pine table. Bralower studied Wade. Wade stared back with frank speculation in his eyes, wondering whether or not he would get a straight answer if he asked the man what he was doing there.
Finally Wizzer let loose a full-bodied laugh. “All right, College Boy, it’s plain you’re dying to know, so I’ll tell you. I lost everything in the last big stock market crash.” He glanced around his tidy cabin with a smile. “Can’t say that I miss any of it. I wasn’t really happy. I’d gotten too caught up in it—the work, the pressure. I didn’t even realize it until I’d gotten out.”
Bronwynn nodded sagely, her gaze on Wade. “Couldn’t see the forest for the woods.”
“Trees,” Wade corrected automatically.
Wizzer laughed and slapped him on the back hard enough to collapse a lung. “Don’t sweat the petty things, College Boy.”
“But what do you do out here?” Wade asked hoarsely, wondering if there was a big handprint permanently branded into his back.
“I live. I garden. I contemplate mankind and the power of myth.” He opened a drawer that ran the length of the table, pulled out a shiny brass cylinder,
and handed it to Wade. “In my spare time I build kaleidoscopes.”
Wade raised the toy to his eye and looked through at the brilliant-colored patterns. Each one seemed to be trying to outdo the last as he rotated the cylinder. His logical mind knew he was looking at nothing more than the reflections of bits of colored glass, that a kaleidoscope was nothing more than a pair of mirrors and a couple of lenses. In his heart as he looked at the bright, pretty colors he thought of Bronwynn and magic.
His heart lodged in his throat. It wasn’t at all like him to be whimsical. What was she doing to him, he wondered as he lowered the kaleidoscope and looked at Bronwynn. She was busy gazing into another of Wizzer’s creations, one with a polished wood cylinder. Her face was alight as if she’d never seen anything so wondrous or beaut
iful. She was wealthy enough to buy herself virtually anything she wanted, yet she was enchanted by something as simple as the toy she held.
After they’d finished their herbal tea and snacked on bread made from some part of a thistle, Wade and Bronwynn headed back down the trail toward Foxfire, leaving Wizzer behind them brewing dandelion wine and singing “Surfin’ Safari.”
“Well,” Wade said as they stepped out of the woods into Bronwynn’s backyard. “I should go home and get a little studying done.”
Bronwynn stepped in front of him to open the gate of Muffin’s pen—one of Wade’s first projects—glad he couldn’t see her expression. If she ever got her hands on that Murphy character, he was going to be one sorry son of a gun. Three days after Muffin had eaten Wade’s Pentagon report another one had shown up. She’d been doing her darndest to distract Wade from it ever since.
Forcing a light tone, she said, “Okay. Thanks for helping with Bob and Ray.”
Wade frowned as he watched her unhook the sheep’s gate. Muffin bleated an excited greeting, rubbed her head against the leg of Bronwynn’s jeans on the way out of her pen, then stopped and fixed Wade with an imperious glare before moving on to join Tucker under a maple tree.
“I’d hang around and help you with the house, but I really need to get through that report.”
Bronwynn shot him an absent smile then bent to check on the sheep’s water bucket. “That’s fine, Wade. I understand.”
“We can’t all drop out on our responsibilities the way Alastair Bralower did,” he said testily.
“Nope, we can’t.” She hooked the gate open so Muffin could go in and out as she chose. “Of course, some of us try for a balance. And then some of us . . . don’t.”
Wade planted his hands on his hips. He scowled as she exited the pen. “My work is important, Bronwynn.”
“I never said it wasn’t.” She dismissed the topic with a bland smile she knew was setting Wade’s teeth on edge. She almost could hear him grinding the enamel off. “I won’t be able to have dinner with you unless we make it late. I rented a steamer from Hank. I’m going to remove the old wallpaper in the kitchen. Once I get going I know I won’t want to stop until I’m finished.” She pressed a quick kiss to his cheek. “See you later.”
Wade watched her start toward the back porch, her long, slim legs carrying her gracefully away from him. What could Bronwynn possibly know about running a steamer? Probably about as much as she knew about patching holey jeans. The ones she was wearing were worn out in both knees, and one spot on her delectably rounded derriere was held together by single strands of fraying white thread. When she stooped to examine the rip in her screen door, Wade could see panty lace through the near-tear.
His dark eyebrows drew together in an annoyed stare as he strode across the lawn. “What do you know about running a steamer? Do you have the proper electrical outlets for something like that?”
She shrugged and raked her baby-fine hair back out of her eyes. “ I guess. It has three prongs on the plug. All I have to do is find an outlet with three holes, right?”
Wade pressed his eyes closed and shook his head. “I don’t know how you ever managed to survive to maturity.”
“I guess it was a miracle,” Bronwynn said dryly.
An hour later they were in the middle of the hot, dirty job of removing the hideous kitchen wallpaper—or rather, Wade was in the middle of it. Bronwynn, who had changed into a lightweight cotton sundress, was standing in the middle of the kitchen floor with her arms impatiently crossed over her chest, watching Wade take over.
It happened every time. Every time he begrudgingly told her he’d help with a project, he invariably herded her away from the work and ended up doing most of it himself. Bronwynn nipped at her lower lip and told herself it was just as well if it kept Wade away from the pressure cooker of his own work. It was exactly what she wanted to happen, exactly what she had planned to happen. Still, it rankled.
She was caught in a trap of her own making. She played the careless incompetent to insure Wade would take over, but she hated having him think she wasn’t capable of handling manual labor. Every once in a while she wanted him to see she could handle the job of renovating Foxfire. What she wanted was to have it both ways. It was Wade’s fault she couldn’t.
“Chauvinist,” she muttered.
“What’s that?” Wade called over his shoulder above the hiss of the steamer and the rock music coming from Bronwynn’s ever-present boom box.
What the heck, Bronwynn thought mischievously. She took a step closer to the ladder he was standing on and smiled up at him. “I said you’re a chauvinist.”
Wade looked thunderstruck. He turned the steamer off. “I most certainly am not a chauvinist.”
“Are too.”
“Am not.” Pressing his lips together into a firm line, he broke off the childish bantering. He wagged a finger at her. “I’ll have you know I was endorsed by a number of women’s organizations.”
He was so cute when he got peeved. It was all she could do to keep herself from hugging him. She definitely couldn’t resist egging him on. “Oh? Which ones? The League of Women for Congressmen with Cute Butts?”
Try as he might, Wade couldn’t form an angry retort. His reputation was being questioned, but he couldn’t quite force himself to get angry about it. He consistently voted for equal opportunity for women, but he was the one holding the wallpaper steamer, wasn’t he?
It didn’t have anything to do with Bronwynn’s gender, he told himself. It had more to do with the fact that Bronwynn plus power tools added up to disaster.
“You want to run the steamer?” he asked. “Do you remember what happened when you wanted to run the carpet cleaner in the parlor?”
“How was I to know that rug was wool?” she asked. “It was ugly anyway.”
“And what about the day you wanted to run the electric hedge trimmer?”
“Too much shrubbery distracts from the beauty of the house.” Her lips twitched and she gave in to the giggles. Wade laughed along with her. She raised her hands in defeat. “All right, I admit I’m not terribly mechanical.”
“Muffin is more mechanical than you are.”
He had a valid point. She really wasn’t very adept with power tools, even when she was trying to be. She tossed a scrap of wallpaper at him. “Please, Wade, please let me run the steamer,” she begged, fighting back laughter. “I’m bored to tears standing down here with nothing to do but clean up the mess.”
His gaze was speculative. “Hmmm . . . I don’t know. Do you really think I have a cute butt?”
“Hand it over, Grayson,” she said sternly.
“Gee, I don’t think I can, Bronwynn,” he said, peering over his shoulder. He patted a hand to the seat of his jeans. “I’m kind of attached to it.”
“I’m going to attach my foot to it in a minute. I rented that darn steamer. I’m not taking it back until I get to use it.”
“Okay.” He capitulated with a long-suffering sigh. “But you will let me show you how to use it first, and you will pay attention.”
“I promise.”
Instantly she was on the ladder with him, snuggling up against him as she tried to get a good close look at the machine.
“Bronwynn,” Wade said, “two people should never be on the same ladder at once.”
She made a face. “Wade, you’re such a fussbudget. It has to be strong enough to hold us both; our combined weight isn’t that much. You know they must build these things strong enough so enormously fat people can use them too. Otherwise it would be discrimination, right?” She snatched the steamer out of Wade’s hands and began examining it. “Now, how do you work this puppy?”
As she turned half her attention to the steamer and half to the Springsteen song on the radio, she nearly shoved Wade off the ladder. He grabbed hold of one side and prayed they wouldn’t end up on the floor amid a pile of splinters. When he was reasonably certain she could handle the steamer without endan
gering herself, he climbed down.
“I wonder how Bob and Ray are adjusting to forest life,” Bronwynn said as she worked. She paid no mind to the sway of the ladder as she began moving to one of her favorite songs. The possibility of danger never entered her mind—not when she was on a ladder, not when she crossed a Boston street against the light.
“Oh, I imagine all their new animal friends are holding a housewarming for them tonight,” Wade said sardonically as he searched through the rubble of junk-food wrappers on the marble-topped work island, looking for his cigarettes.
Watching Bronwynn dance around on the ladder was enough to make him long for a roll of antacid tablets. Oddly enough, he didn’t have any with him. He found a half-crumpled pack of cigarettes and extracted a slightly bent one. He lit it, drawing the smoke in deeply as he leaned back against the work island, wondering if it really was only his third of the day.
“Anything would be preferable to being made into a coat,” Bronwynn said. “I’m not much for fur coats myself. They give me the creeps. It makes my skin crawl to think I’m wearing something that used to be alive.”
She aimed the steamer at the green wallpaper that sported little copper kettles and crossed forks and spoons. She already had carefully measured the walls and ordered new paper in a dainty country print with a blue background. “I’ve often wondered about camel hair too. I mean, is it really the hair of camels or is that just a name? Haven’t you wondered about that?”
Wade regarded her with a look of puzzlement. If he lived to be a hundred, he’d never figure out the way her mind worked.
Methodically, he tapped ash into a Styrofoam cup and took another long pull on his cigarette. As he exhaled he said, “Bronwynn, I wonder about things like political unrest in the Third World. I don’t have time to wonder whether or not my top-coat is courtesy of some hairy hump with legs wandering around the deserts of Saudi Arabia.”