Broken Promises

by Patricia Watters

  By late afternoon, the landing was cleared of logs, and Tess felt weary. The day had been long and trying, both physically and emotionally. And soon she'd have to make her father face some tough issues. They couldn't be ignored. Their recent quarterly tax payment had drained their reserve, and with the expenses of clearing the landslide, the increased royalty, and the extra pay to the truck drivers, Timber West's operating capital would be close to depletion. And they still had a loan payment to meet.

  When she arrived at her cabin that evening, she headed for the bathroom to soak away her worries in a tub of warm water. Forty-five minutes later, dressed in jeans and a flannel work shirt, she opened the door to Zak's knocking. He greeted her with a bottle of wine in one hand and a cardboard box tucked under his other arm. "You look like you survived the day," he said.

  "Just barely," she replied, her gaze shifting to the navy tee shirt hugging Zak's thick chest, then drifting down his faded jeans.

  "I hope you're hungry," he said. He set the wine on the table, then opened the interlocking flaps on the cardboard box and lifted out a grocery carton of frozen lasagna, followed by a gold-foil-wrapped loaf of garlic bread, a plastic package with mixed salad greens, a bottle of salad dressing, and a deli carton with what looked like mixed fruit in whipped cream.

  "I'm starved," Tess said, eyeing the spread of food. She started for the stove to turn on the oven, when Zak took her wrist, and said, "Go sit down. I'll do dinner." He took a couple of coffee mugs from the cabinet above the sink and set them on the table, then twisted the lid off the bottle of wine and filled each mug.

  Tess noted that the wine bottle hadn't been corked, and when she didn't see the black and gold label, she said, "I presume this isn't from the de Neuville stock."

  Zak gave her a wry smile. "Gallo Hearty Burgundy. But don't tell my father." He handed her the mug. "Relax. Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes. I already heated the lasagna part way so it won't take long."

  Tess settled against the couch, sipped her wine, and silently watched Zak making his way around her kitchen, shuffling through drawers and cabinets for dishes and silverware, and setting things around the table. It was odd watching him putting a dinner together, even if it was a packaged meal. Years before, neither of them were in the least domestic. They'd talked about the way they'd run their house some day, but they'd never shared a meal in her cabin or his. It had always been about Adam and Eve and satisfying that part of their relationship. She realized now that maybe there wasn't anything more to it than the thrill and excitement of forbidden pleasures, of seeing a naked man, and having him see her, and letting him do things that brought out reactions in her that she'd never known before, and which were strictly taboo...

  "What are you thinking about?" Zak asked. "You seemed far away."

  Tess raised her eyes to meet his. "Umm... about the... first time we met." She took a slow sip of wine to allow her thoughts to focus on something other than where they'd been moments before. "I was just wondering... what you thought of me."

  Zak dumped the package of mixed salad greens into a bowl, and said, while setting the bowl on the table, "I was impressed by your agility... the way you scampered up that pole."

  "I meant the very first time we met, before the pole climb," Tess said.

  Zak cocked a brow. "You mean when you grabbed my arm while I was practicing for the wood chopping contest?"

  "I didn't grab your arm." Tess said. "I only suggested that you hold your ax differently. But besides that, what did you think?"

  One corner of Zak's mouth flicked in a smile. "I thought you had the biggest, most beautiful eyes I'd ever seen on a boy."

  Tess stared at him. "You thought I was a boy?"

  "Umm, hmm. You shocked the hell out of me when you took off your hat after the pole climb and all that hair fell around your shoulders."

  Tess eyed him over the rim of her mug; "What did you think the next time you saw me, when you came to work for my dad?"

  Zak grinned. "Let's put it this way. When I caught sight of you in that snug shirt, I almost busted out of my pants just wondering if you were going to pop a button."

  At the time, Tess didn't know what happened to men when they became aroused, but before the summer was through, the idea of Zak busting out of his pants every time she was around had become their private joke. She wasn't sure what to think of his reference to it now though, or if he'd even meant it to be anything more than a casual comment.

  "You did strange things to me then," he said, his voice lower, huskier, "just like you're doing now." Tess inadvertently lowered her gaze and saw the blatant bulge in his jeans, and before she'd realized what she'd done, Zak said, "It doesn't happen just because I'm around a woman."

  "Then why now?" Tess asked.

  "You know why... the same reason it happened before. Because I'm around you."

  "Umm... yes," Tess mused. "Like I said before, all sex and no substance." Which also explained why Zak could walk away from her and into the arms of another woman without looking back. If the woman was good in bed, that's all he'd need. And she couldn't deny that she'd tried to give Zak everything she could possible think to give him, sexually. It hadn't been just for him, although she'd hoped that would make him love her more, but she'd been just as obsessed with wanting the things he did for her...

  "Is that all you thought it was?" Zak asked. "Sex without substance?"

  Tess shrugged. "Pretty much, unless you remember something I don't."

  Zak sat on the couch beside her, and said, "I can't do anything about what's happening in my pants right now. It happens when I'm around you, and it's not just about wanting to have sex with you. Right now I'd rather kiss you and have you kiss me back than hop into bed with you for a round of hot, heavy sex."

  "That's the problem," Tess said. "You act like you can just pick up where we left off, yet you've been avoiding telling me why you left so suddenly. I realize my father didn't exactly escort you graciously from your cabin when he found us together, but you could have at least told me that your father was sending you to France. I would have waited for you. But when you left without a word, I didn't know what to think. I waited a year, hoping to hear from you, and when I didn't, I married a man I didn't love."

  Zak sighed, rested his head against the back of the couch, and said, while staring at the ceiling, "The day after your father caught us at my cabin, I was served with a restraining order against having any contact with you. Then to make sure I understood, after I returned to Navarre, your father came there and threatened to charge me with statutory rape, in front of my father, and told me to have no further contact with you, not even to explain why I'd left, or he'd report me as a sexual predator. That's when my father sent me to France. My father also wanted me out of your life, not just because I was having sex with an underage girl, but because you weren't Basque. If you had been, he would have insisted we marry instead of sending me to France."

  Tess said nothing, while trying to absorb everything Zak had told her. At least she understood why he left without contacting her. But there were two questions remaining, and his answer to them would make the difference between giving a relationship with him another try, or walking out of his life the way he'd walked out of hers. "What you told me still doesn’t explain why you married so soon after you left," she said. "I thought we had something special."

  "We did have something special," Zak replied, "but by then I saw no future for us. Then when I started working at the winery, Mirande was there, and her fiancé had just dumped her, and she was pretty devastated by that, and we just sort of gravitated to each other, you know, misery loves company."

  ...and the girl Zak left behind was long forgotten...

  So that answered one of the questions, but not to Tess's satisfaction. It took a moment before she could ask the other, but the answer to it was the one she needed most. "Did you love her?"

  Zak seemed to be pondering that for a few minutes. "I suppose, in a way," he said. "W
e enjoyed each other's company, and once we'd married, I never gave it much thought."

  "But you told her you loved her," Tess said, then realized what a ludicrous statement that was. The woman wouldn't have married Zak if he hadn't told her that.

  Zak nodded. "She was my wife."

  ...and so was I... Tess wanted to say ...because we exchanged vows at the grotto, and you gave me a ring, and promised me the world...

  "Then you must have planned on staying in France," Tess said.

  "No," Zak replied. "It was understood that we'd live in America where I was expected to work with my father at the winery and eventually take over. We moved to Navarre shortly before Pio was born. The first couple of years everything was okay. But then Mirande started getting homesick for France, and she wanted to go back to see her folks, and so they could see Pio, and I agreed."

  "How long was she gone?" Tess asked, wondering how long a new bride would want to stay away from her husband... From a husband like Zak.

  "She never came back," Zak said. "She kept extending her visit, and eventually she told me she didn't want to leave France. So I went over there, hoping to talk her into coming back with me, but she refused. The hardest part was leaving Pio. Mirande wouldn't let me take him to America for any length of time."

  Tess looked at him, bewildered. "But you're his father, and Pio is American. You could have gotten custody."

  "That's also the way my father saw it," Zak said. "But I couldn't do that to Pio, or Mirande. They were very close, and a young boy needs his mother. But, Mirande agreed to let me see Pio whenever I wanted, as long as he stayed in France. My father didn't see things that way, and he was mad at me because I had a Basque wife and couldn't hold onto her. Things got so bad between us I couldn't work with him at the winery anymore, and that's when I left home and went to college in Washington. Ironically, after I left, things were better with me and my father."

  "You said you and your wife separated. Why didn't you divorce?" Tess asked.

  "We discussed it the last time I visited," Zak replied. "There seemed little point in trying to hold together a marriage divided by the Atlantic ocean. Then, the time ran out."

  Tess wondered if Zak continued loving his wife all those years, hoping things would work out, or if he loved her still, even though she was gone? "How did she die?" she finally asked.

  "She was hit by a car while riding her bicycle," Zak replied.

  "That must have been a shock."

  "Yeah, it was. She was still the mother of my son. I guess it hit me hard because of what I knew it would do to Pio. You can relate to that better than I can."

  "I suppose I can," Tess said, remembering the pain she'd felt when her mother died. She still didn't like talking about that period in her life.

  "How long does it take to get over?" Zak asked.

  "I don't think you ever do," Tess said. "You just learn to accept it. But you never stop wondering how it might have been with the family together."

  Zak glanced over at her. "What about you? Why did you divorce?"

  Tess stared at her hands. The problems between her and David were because of Zak, she realized now. Focusing on the other issues in the marriage, she said, "David started taking chances in business, trying to push the company beyond its capabilities, and we had a lot of heated arguments about it. But the real reason my marriage failed was--" she couldn't stop herself from looking at Zak as she said, "--I never found what I wanted."

  Zak held her steady gaze, and said, "Neither did I." Leaning towards her, he moved to kiss her, but this time Tess didn't push him away. Instead, she put her arms around his neck and kissed him back, long and hard, tasting the aroma of wine on his breath as her tongue toyed with his. But before the kiss could deepen, she moved her lips from his, and said, "That was for old time's sake, Zak. Please don't make anything more of it."

  Zak studied her solemnly for a few moments, then shrugged his shoulders with indifference, and replied, "I didn't plan to," then went back to what he'd been doing.

  They ate in strained silence. It seemed all of Tess's questions had been answered, and Zak had nothing more to offer. But having gotten her answers, she felt a hollowness she hadn't felt in years. It was troubling and confusing, because the answers he'd given her were unsatisfactory, and she didn't know how to reconcile them. He'd married just a few months after he left her. Yet, if she'd known he was coming back, she would have waited indefinitely for him.

  ...they mate for life, and when one dies, the other begins a lonely journey...

  The irony of it was, she'd thought she and Zak had mated for life.

  But maybe it was for the best. Soon she'd be entangled in learning who was behind setting off the blast that caused the landslide, and worrying about how to pay Jean-Pierre de Neuville for his trees. And confronting her father about his part in forcing Zak out of her life and leaving her to believe he'd left on his own. Some things had to be said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  As Tess headed toward the ridge, her thoughts were on Zak. She hadn't seen him since he brought dinner to her cabin, two days before. She knew he'd spent the weekend in Navarre, but she also suspected that if he'd been at his cabin he probably wouldn't have stopped by. She hadn't given him a reason to, with her comment after his brief kiss. But she'd felt the sting of his specious explanation for why he married so soon after being forced to leave her, his misery loves company marriage. Yet, in less than a year, she would have been eighteen, and they could have married without her father's consent. But it seemed her father wasn't the only issue...

  ...my father wanted you out of my life because you weren't Basque...

  Which meant, Zak would have been marrying her without his father's approval. So he followed the path his father laid out for him when he sent Zak to France to marry a Basque woman, a role the girl from Baker's Creek could never fill.

  Both fathers had been determined to keep them apart. But even now, knowing that Zak married soon after he left, when she thought about the part her father played in sending him away she felt the old anger rising. To threaten Zak with statutory rape and prison was even beyond what she might have expected from an overprotective father, and as soon as she'd squared things away on the ridge, she'd address it with him.

  She crossed the de Neuville land and continued to the pole-timber area where she found Curt on the bulldozer, dragging a log to the landing, and Sean Herring and Harv Dempsey limbing trees. The skidder sat idle. When Curt saw her, he cut the throttle and jumped down, then walked toward her in long strides. "One of the tires on the skidder's blown," he said.

  A knot twisted in Tess's stomach as she considered the cost of another new skidder tire. It seemed Timber West was operating in a vicious circle. They needed to keep the equipment running in order to get the pole timber cut, and they needed to sell pole timber in order to keep the equipment running. "Skidder tires don't just blow," she said. "And since the landslide was helped along with dynamite, the skidder tire could have been helped along too."

  "I don't think so this time," Curt said. "It looks like it ran over a spike."

  Tess examined the skidder tire and found a hole in it the size of a half-dollar. "It looks more like it's been shot," she replied. "Where's the spike?"

  "We couldn't find it," Curt said. "We're just assuming that's what did it."

  "I'm not assuming anything," Tess said. "Meanwhile, we'll have to use the Cat until the tire's fixed or replaced." She looked at the idle machine. "Where's the new skidder driver?"

  "I sent him back to camp," Curt said. "There was nothing for him to do here."

  "Well, with the skidder out, we may have to let him go," Tess said, "at least until we get the skidder running again. I can't afford to pay someone to sit around. Meanwhile, I'd better go to Northwest Tire and see about getting someone out here."

  She climbed in her Jeep and headed for Baker’s Creek, and after arranging for someone to look at the skidder tire, she drove to her father's house. Spotting
Aunt Ruth talking to a neighbor a couple of houses down, she tooted the horn and pulled over. When Aunt Ruth peered through the passenger window, Tess said to her, "How did Dad come out with his checkup yesterday?"

  "Fine," Aunt Ruth replied. "Now he thinks he can take on the world."

  "Did the doctor put any restrictions on him?" Tess asked.

  "Only that he isn't to start working yet," Aunt Ruth replied. "But the doctor also said we shouldn't fuss over him either... that we should let him spout off some."

  "Well, he'll get his chance in a few minutes," Tess said. "I have a giant bone to pick with him. What's he doing right now?"

  "Working on his truck."

  "Well, I guess I'd better get this over with." Tess parked in front of the house and found her father in the driveway, his head under the hood of his truck. Walking over to stand behind him, she said, "Dad, I want to talk to you."

  "Hand me that five-sixteenths open end," he replied.

  Tess looked at the array of tools spread out in front of his tool box and selected the wrench and placed it in his outstretched hand. Without looking up, Gib's fingers curled around the wrench and he retracted his arm.

  "How could you do what you did seven years ago?" Tess said, annoyed that her father wouldn't acknowledge her.

  "Hold this." Gib extended a hand with the wrench. "Now I need the gauge."

  Tess lifted the gauge from the pile. "Dad, I asked you a question," she said, handing him the tool. "You sent Zak away. How could you have done that to me? You sent Zak away with a threat of statutory rape and imprisonment and led me to believe he left on his own."

  Gib handed the gauge back to her. "Now I need the wrench again."