by Cindy Gerard
He avoided both her pinched frown and the inevitable by checking out the lodge. In its day, it could have been something. By John Taylor’s accounts, it had been more than something. He supposed if you looked past the disrepair of the buildings and the general deterioration caused by years of brutal winters, some people would see a certain rustic appeal in the log cabins. All he saw, though, was a shambles.
The lake, however—and he admitted this grudgingly—was intriguing. So was the surrounding forest that somehow managed to grow out of a rock-studded landscape, then blended to shades of gray at the water’s edge.
Lake Kabetogama. How many times had he listened to John go on about his beloved Kabby, his lake of rough waters and glacial blue skies? And about his daughter, Jo, who was the light of his life, his sweet little princess who he’d reluctantly left with his sister in Minneapolis when he could no longer give her what she needed.
Adam met her eyes again and suddenly felt very old and uncomfortable confronting this woman/child, who was more pauper than princess and about as sweet as alumroot.
Hell, just look at her. She wasn’t any bigger than a minute and appeared to be made up mostly of unruly red hair and big green eyes—impatient green eyes, he corrected himself—that complemented what she’d already shown him was a testy nature.
She wasn’t a raving beauty, not in the classic sense at any rate. But neither was she plain. When weighed individually, her features weren’t striking. But her full lush lips, strong cheekbones, and a nose that could have defined the word “pert” all blended together into an intriguingly, if not exotically, striking face. A face that announced innocence and insolence in bold-faced letters, and pride with a capital P.
He supposed that if a man chose to look past that pride and her prickly disposition, he’d find a fiery woman underneath, a woman worth pursuing—if a man had a penchant for pursuit. Which he didn’t, Adam assured himself as he assessed her slight, compact figure one more time.
Dragging his gaze back to her face, he reminded himself that she was John’s kid, and John was one tough old bird. Every indication was that the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree. If he was certain of one thing, it was her moxie. She’d need plenty of it if she was going to make a living from this run-down resort.
As if reading his thoughts and taking grave exception to them, she met his stare in kind. I’m tough, she said without uttering a sound.
Yeah, brat, I know you are. And he was glad to see that she could fight her own battles, since there didn’t appear to be anyone around to fight them for her.
“Your business, Mr. . . .”
“Dursky,” he said, knowing he couldn’t put it off any longer. “Adam Dursky. I’m a friend of your father’s.”
She didn’t flinch. She didn’t even change the tempo of her breathing. But something flashed in her eyes—surprise, pain, maybe even anger—at the mention of her father, and he knew he had her full attention.
She pushed away from the pump. With long, purposeful strides, she walked back to the hoist and untied the rope that suspended a sixteen-foot motorboat half in, half out of the water. When the rope stuck then slipped again, she let loose with a string of curses that would have made a biker blush.
He rolled his eyes skyward. Lord, she was a piece of work. Why he felt compelled to help her when she’d clearly like to spit in his eye, he didn’t know.
Shaking his head, he limped to the hoist and slowly but forcefully pried the rope from her hands. Like the rest of her, her hands were small but strong. When he accidentally brushed one with his own, she snatched it away as if he’d burned her. He felt the burn, too, and decided it would be wise not to wonder at the reason.
In edgy silence, she let him maneuver the rope through the pulleys while she guided the boat into the cradle and secured it a couple of feet above water level. As they worked together, he couldn’t help but approve of her grit, and of the way she moved with an economy of motion that was swift, sure, and efficient. And of the way her hips sweetly filled the confines of her wash-faded shorts.
He nodded at the boat. “That’s a nasty hole,” he said, ending a silence that had become too heavy and a fascination that was growing too strong.
She poked at the gouge in the boat’s hull, breaking away the rough edges. “This lake is full of rocks. Every once in a while, you hit one. It’s going to have to dry out before I can do anything about it.”
She turned and walked over to a building that could have been a pump house or a bait house. He couldn’t tell and really didn’t care. All he could think as he watched her was, As tough as she is, she’s running now. She suspects why I came and she doesn’t want to hear it.
Well, dammit. He didn’t want to tell her, but he hadn’t traveled all this way just to leave without seeing it through.
“Look . . .” he began, wishing he’d never left Michigan. “I guess there’s no easy way to say this.”
She uncoiled a garden hose and flipped a switch on an antiquated electric pump that began noisily drawing water from the lake. “Then why don’t you just get it over with?”
Careful of the uneven ground, he limped up behind her and watched as she rinsed down the dock. “Your father is very ill. He’s in a hospital in Detroit.”
The silence stretched so long, he’d begun to think she hadn’t heard him. Then in a very tight voice she said, “I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time, Dursky. I don’t have a father. My father died a long time ago.”
Without meeting his gaze, she shouldered past him and walked to the pump house.
“Are you telling me you’re not John Taylor’s daughter?” he asked when it became apparent she wasn’t going to elaborate.
Her shoulders stiffened. She let out a tired breath, flipped off the switch, and began rolling up the hose. “What I’m telling you,” she said, measuring her words, “is that I was thirteen when my mother died. It wasn’t long after that my father decided to die too. He drowned himself in as many bottles of Southern Comfort as he could find.”
Adam knew the story. He’d heard it all from John, had listened more than once as John had poured out his guilt and his regret. Avoiding her eyes and the pain he knew he’d see there, he looked out over the lake. He did not want to get more deeply involved in this. He’d come as a favor to John, to deliver a message, and then he was going to leave.
Only he knew he couldn’t go. Not yet. Not with those wounded eyes asking him for answers that would make sense of John’s senseless and wasted life.
“He speaks of you often,” he said, forcing himself to look at her.
Her eyes flared with anger before they clouded with hurt. “Does he? Does that mean he told you how he dumped me on an aunt who didn’t want me, and promised to come back for me? Did he tell you how he let this place—my home—go to ruin? How the only memories he left me are attached to an endless string of bill collectors?”
She stopped suddenly, as if realizing how much she’d revealed and was not happy about it. Pinching her eyes shut, she swore. Then looking everywhere but at him, she physically pulled herself together. “He shouldn’t have sent you here.”
If she’d really written her father out of her life, Adam thought, his news wouldn’t be bothering her. Realizing that, he pushed a little harder. “John didn’t send me. Coming here was my idea. I thought you might want me to take you back to see him.”
Her stubborn eyes told him she did want him to, but she wasn’t going to admit it. Back in her tough-guy role, she just shrugged as if to say, “Well, you thought wrong, buddy.”
She was a hard case, all right. He really didn’t need this aggravation, but he had no one to blame but himself. Disgusted that he’d ever conceived this stupid idea of coming to find her, even more disgusted that he was letting her get to him, he made one final, ruthless effort. “It makes no difference to you that he may not make it?”
The anguish that information obviously caused her was almost her undoing. And his. He’d meant to get her attention, not cut her to the bone. He’d accomplished both.
Her silence was as long as it was tense. When she spoke, her voice sounded brittle with the effort to conceal her emotion. “It’s like I said. As far as I’m concerned, my father is already dead.”
If he’d seen any indication that she’d give in, he would have pressed it. Angered by her stubborn pride but accepting her decision, he shrugged. “It’s a real shame no one ever taught you how to be direct, kid.” Her face was as void of feeling as her voice had been until he added, “Or how to forgive.”
She paled, then blinked hard. Hugging her arms tightly around her waist, she spun away from him and looked out over the lake. “Good-bye, Mr. Dursky.”
He studied her stiff back and gave up. “Yeah. I guess it is.”
Telling himself he was relieved to wash his hands of her, he gave Cooper a farewell pat on the head and snagged his jacket and duffel. He was halfway up the drive, damning her pride, his own stupidity, and his bothersome leg in equal measure when he heard her call his name.
“Dursky . . .”
He stopped and turned to face her. She looked as tentative as if she were about to pass her hand over a flame.
“Have you got a car parked up there?” she asked finally and with such guarded hope, he knew she wasn’t going to like his answer.
“Nope. No car. I hitched a ride.”
The oath she muttered was short and concise. The scowl she gave him was a dandy. “Then you aren’t going anywhere tonight.”
“Come again?”
Looking disgusted but resigned, she sighed heavily. “I said, you aren’t going anywhere. You’ll never catch a ride back to the main road this late, and up here you don’t want to be on any road after dark.
“Bears, city boy,” she explained when he frowned. “They own these woods. Within half an hour of sunset, there’ll be more black bears on the pavement than there are cracks. And you’d be a pleasant change of menu from the nightly fare down at the dump.”
Her mouth thinned to a grim line, she shut and locked the bait house. “Cabin number one is in pretty good shape.” She pointed vaguely toward the cabin closest to the lakeshore. “You can spend the night there. Give me half an hour to clean up and I’ll throw together a meal.”
When he just stood there, she planted her hands on her hips and answered his scowl with one of her own. “Look, I don’t like it any better than you do, but neither do I want to spend the rest of my life with yours on my conscience. The sad fact is that I’m stuck with you, so don’t mistake this for hospitality, because it’s not.”
“Hospitality?” he muttered under his breath as he watched her turn on her heel and head for the main lodge. “The thought never crossed my mind, Red. It never crossed my mind.”
But another thought had, he realized as his gaze traced what was beginning to be a familiar and pleasant route up the length of her slim, sleek body. A disturbing thought. He was relieved he had a reason to stay . . . which implied he really hadn’t wanted to go . . . which suggested he was a little more intrigued by that little redheaded waif than was either warranted or wise.
Two
Stretching his good leg out on the cabin’s deck railing later that night, Adam laced his hands behind his head and stared across the vast, murky satin of the lake.
Were it not for the water lapping in a soft, hypnotic cadence against the wooden pilings of the dock, and a bit more aggressively against the outcrop of stone lining the jagged shore, the quiet would be deafening.
The darkness was absolute. As he sat there soaking it all in, his thoughts kept straying to the girl. Jo Taylor. Joanna. The redheaded Rapunzel with the little-girl face and the sailor’s mouth.
Her meal had been hot and filling; her company tolerable but distant. He had to give her credit. She knew how to mind her own business. And, he’d decided, she was every bit as tough as she appeared.
Dry-eyed and efficient, she’d set about settling him in and making sure he had the necessities to get through the night. Her father was not mentioned again. Well, that was fine with him. No hysterics, no sloppy show of emotion. She didn’t want to admit she had feelings for him, didn’t want to go see him. Fine. Coming here had been a long shot and it hadn’t worked out. Tomorrow he’d be gone. Morning couldn’t come soon enough to suit him.
He’d intended to be on the road before sunrise, but she’d made a believer of him about the bears when she’d carefully wrapped and then stowed the supper’s garbage in a locked storage shed. At first light, though, he was out of here. Then he could forget about her and this place.
The longer he sat in the darkness, though, the more apparent it became that he wasn’t going to forget either soon.
There was an eerie, almost ethereal element to the north country that was at once compelling and repelling. Compelling was its beauty, stark, serene, unspoiled. Repelling was its isolation and the diminished sense of self-significance amid the fathomless depths of the water and the magnificence of a seemingly endless sky.
And then there was the woman. He was still having difficulty with her. She was a kid by appearance, and a seasoned survivor of the school of hard knocks by necessity. But she was a hardhead by choice, he suspected, and he surprised himself by fighting a grin.
His grin faded when he envisioned the defiance so evident in her emerald-green eyes. Some man needed to show her that there was more to being a woman than simply being a survivor. Some man needed to make those eyes shine with a different kind of fire.
She’d be a tiger in bed, he mused, as fierce in the giving as in the taking of pleasure. Unbidden, his body reacted to a picture of pale limbs bathed in moonlight, of small breasts quivering to a man’s touch, of a sleekly muscled body arched amid tangled sheets and a silken curtain of red hair. Yeah, he decided, trying to distance himself from that picture and the fire it created in his loins. Some man needed to show her . . . but it wouldn’t be him. It damn well couldn’t be him.
The unexpected creak of her screen door opening and closing snapped his head around. Statue still, he listened to the crunch of her footsteps as she walked down the rocky path to the lake. Then he saw her in the night, and he realized he’d been waiting for her.
Her slim, dark silhouette skimmed like smoke through the shadows and rekindled that swift, intense heating of his blood. An explicit wanting. A profound sensual awareness.
She’s a kid, for Pete’s sake, he reminded himself angrily as she sat cross-legged on the weathered boards of the dock and stared out across the water. Not your style, Dursky. Not your speed. And in this life or any other, she was not an option.
He clenched his jaw. Knowing he should leave, yet feeling compelled to stay, he watched Cooper, his dark coat catching a hint of starlight, amble up beside her.
She thought she was alone and appeared even more childlike than she had in the daylight as she draped an arm over the Lab’s nudging shoulder, then linked her other arm around his chest.
Something inside him tautened, knotted, when she buried her face in the dog’s thick fur. Go inside now, Dursky, he ordered himself coldly, sensing what was about to happen. She was not his problem. And she was not his cure.
Yet his heart was pounding heavily; his throat felt oddly constricted as he listened to her first muffled cry.
So the tough little nut had a crack after all, he mused, wishing it had come as a bigger surprise. Wishing he didn’t have to fight the urge to go to her.
Closing his ears to the sounds and his mind to the proof of her vulnerability, he rose and limped soundlessly into the cabin.
In the darkened bedroom he lay down, reminding himself that in the morning he’d be gone. The next day Jo Taylor and Shady Point Lodge would be nothing more than a memory. Her tears were not his concern. And for the h
undredth time, she was not his problem.
And neither was it a problem that he felt her pain and her loneliness bone-deep and compared it to his own . . . or that for the first time in a very long while he fell asleep wondering if the bottom of a bottle of bourbon was still an appealing sight.
During all those years Jo had spent in the Cities, her homesickness for Kabetogama and Shady Point had always been at its worst in September. Autumn was her favorite time of year in the north country. Besides the glorious colors, there was something about the air—the crispness, the scent of falling leaves, and in the mornings the nippy promise of winter—that made Kabby unique from any other place she knew.
This morning, however, chin-deep in lake water that was running a chilly sixty-four degrees, she found herself wishing fervently that it was the middle of July. And wishing that she could quit thinking about Adam Dursky.
It wasn’t that she’d expected him to tell her good-bye or anything before he left, she thought as she breaststroked away from the dock, heading toward the skittish mallard that was helplessly trapped in the water some thirty yards out.
Dursky had done her a favor by slipping quietly away early that morning. She was glad she hadn’t had to face him, glad he was gone. It was just that . . . Just what, Taylor? she asked herself, fighting an unwanted sting of disappointment. Just that you’d wanted to see him one more time?
No. She hadn’t wanted to see him again, she told herself firmly, then shuddered from the continued shock of the icy water. He was a loner with an attitude, nothing but trouble. She didn’t want to think about him anymore, or about the memories of her father he’d stirred up. What she wanted was to keep her mind on what she was doing so she wouldn’t end up drowning right along with the duck she was determined to save.
“Easy, big guy,” she cooed through chattering teeth as she drew nearer to the frightened drake. “You poor thing. You’re exhausted, aren’t you, baby?”