Tallchief: The Hunter

by Cait London

  In the shadowy silence, Jillian had found more peace and sense than she had in her lifetime. Out in the Petrovna garden, just tilled and softened, a meadowlark trilled musically and the house was filled with silent, warm echoes of children playing, Alek laughing and Elspeth’s knowing, loving ways.

  Jillian’s own home had been based on status possessions, hosting parties, belonging to the right set. Love wasn’t an element. Nor was trust.

  She cruised the shuttle through the wool again. With each thought, she brought down the beater-bar to push the yarn tighter against the already-woven length.

  Every instinct she had told her that Adam hadn’t lied all those years ago. Another man might have taken advantage of her last night, her passion ruling her. But then her passion had never ruled her, had it? Or love of anyone, but her family?

  Questioning the past years brought her nothing but confusion. Her parents had been adamant that Adam had lied to get back at Tom. For what reason? Adam was the high school’s leading student and athlete, while Tom barely scraped through the courses.

  Tom. What did she remember of him? She had believed her parents without question. She’d never questioned, not as a girl. As a woman, she wanted to know more.

  Kevin, her husband. He’d wanted the passion she’d felt with Adam, and yet Jillian couldn’t respond to Kevin in that earthshaking way.

  Herself. She wove a vermillion stripe across the dragon-green, the symbol of Tallchief entering the ancient Scots plaid. She’d just discovered a temper that Adam could ignite, and the passion to go with it, the need to consume and to take. There was no calm, safe distance when she was near Adam, no protection against herself. A woman used to giving—in fact, she’d given her life to hating Adam—Jillian wasn’t used to her own greed, her own hungers.

  Why did her instincts tell her to trust Adam? That would falsify a lifetime of believing the damage he’d done.

  Why did she want to soothe the ache that she sensed in him?

  She glanced out at the fence where buttery daffodils were lined against the old gray posts. Her mother had ordered florist-cut flowers. The arrangement was no more lovely that the daffodils on Elspeth’s table, an old fruit jar serving as a container instead of cut glass.

  Jillian wove blue yarn, in and out, across the dragon-green pattern, and brought down the beater-bar. She’d been a girl trying to please parents who couldn’t be satisfied, and now she was a woman trying to untangle the past. How many women had sorted their thoughts while seated at a loom? she wondered, running her hand across the new Tallchief plaid that Elspeth had started.

  At a sound, she saw Adam lean his shoulder against the door. The shadows did not soften his rugged look, the wind-tossed hair, the black sweatshirt and faded jeans, the workman’s battered boots. He nodded a solemn greeting to her and lifted the thick wedge of buttered bread. “I borrowed the tractor and plow for Liam’s new garden place, and I’m returning it. Elspeth said to come in and get my share of her bread and to stay to help plant their garden later.”

  Adam settled on a wooden bench near the wall, his long legs extended. “It’s a good home, isn’t it?”

  “The very best.” This morning, she could find no anger for Adam, only the soft need to have him near. From his troubled glance at the cradle, she wondered if he didn’t need her, too; someone from the past who knew how deep his pain had cut. “Sarah was a lovely woman. Liam will come to understand.”

  “Don’t let me disturb you.” Clearly, Adam didn’t want to talk about Sarah’s deceit, or Liam’s rage.

  Jillian nodded and returned to her weaving and her thoughts. Companionship wasn’t what she expected of Adam, but that was what she felt circling her, the warmth of a friend, one who was solid and honorable and good.

  Strange that she would feel about Adam like that. “I can’t remember Tom anymore,” she said, sliding the shuttle through the weave. “All I can remember are feelings—unclear bitter images, and fear for my family.”

  He didn’t speak and, glancing at his face, she found sorrow. He looked down at his hands, rubbed them together as if he were forming a thought, and then shook his head.

  What troubled him so? Was it the loss of Sarah? Or her secret, harbored too long? Or was it Liam, storming and hurt by her deceit? After just meeting his brother, Adam was already torn between him and memories of Sarah.

  Why should Jillian ache to smooth his hair? To hold him close?

  She continued to weave as Adam sat in the shadows, and the sense that she wasn’t alone curled around her, peacefully. She had no idea how much time had passed with Adam sitting still, watching her as she wove. Whatever primitive passion had ruled them last night, calm wove between them now—they were people who had shared a past and who knew more about each other than anyone else.

  Then the Petrovna pickup pulled into the ranch yard and Alek was laughing with the children. As Jillian looked outside the window, she noted Elspeth standing absolutely still, staring at the weaving room. “I could use some of Elspeth’s ability to understand,” Jillian said softly.

  “It’s a good place for thinking,” Adam said quietly.

  “Tell me what you think.”

  He shook his head and stood. “It’s for you to do the sorting. I already know.”

  “Know what?”

  But Adam was walking out into the daylight, already lifting a child upon his shoulders as if he’d always been a part of the Tallchiefs. When Jillian came outside, she felt like an outsider, unprepared for the excitement of a farming family about their garden.

  Alek and Adam were already busy with the tilled ground, using stakes and thread strung between them to set the lines for beans and corn. The deep male voices rumbled over the bright April day, and Adam called to Jillian. “You need some fresh air. Don’t just stand there. Come help.”

  “Me? I have no idea about gardening.” Gardeners had tended her family lawns and plants, then later on, struggling for her independence, she hadn’t had time for anything more than a few houseplants.

  “Time to learn. If you’re not afraid of getting your hands dirty.” With experience, Adam crouched to scoop up the soil, to feel and study it, and she wondered how many crops he had helped tend, in how many lands. They had lived in two separate worlds, and now there was only sunshine and his challenge to get her hands dirty. It all seemed so simple.

  In the end, Jillian enjoyed herself. With the official title of “seed dropper,” she was to place three seeds in each hole. When the garden was planted, Adam looked across it and grinned at her. The warmth sailed across the fresh April air and caught her, bringing her own heady sense of lightness and right.

  “I’m going to look at a beauty of a pickup. Want to come along?” He studied her with those cool gray eyes and that tilt to his head, as if he didn’t expect her to accept.

  She stared at her nails, garden dirt beneath the short length. She’d played classical piano, not with sand and mudpies, and now—The lash of her mother’s scolding cut into her, and she tossed the echo away into the April sunshine. She wasn’t a girl any longer and yet, she felt new and clean and so incredibly strong. It was a day to savor, to experience whatever life tossed at her.

  It had tossed her her first tractor ride, sitting on Adam’s lap as she’d driven across a wide, rolling field, the cattle staring at the intrusion. She’d learned to shift gears and clutch and gas, according to his directions, his hand firmly over hers. Delighted with the novel experience, Jillian had laughed out loud.

  Adam’s hand had turned her face slowly to his. He’d eased away the strands that the wind had pushed against her face. “That sounds good—you laughing.”

  “I feel good. Capable, in charge,” she’d mocked herself with a grin. “I love this. I don’t know why.”

  “Just don’t charge over that fence.” That time his kiss was light and gentle, catching the sunlight and her happiness and giving it back to her.

  Jillian forced herself away from Adam’s searching gaze, from
the friendship she felt tangling with something deeper. The easy caress of his hand on her back said he was a man who enjoyed touching her.

  The “beauty” Adam was considering purchasing—a dented, rusty, blue 50’s Ford pickup—stood inside a weathered barn. Chickens had roosted in the back, and when checking beneath the hood, Adam removed a mouse nest. He and the farmer who wanted to sell it, quickly dealt with the cobwebs.

  The old farmer peered at her. “You can have my missus’s canning jars in the back of the pickup with the deal. She’s not doing that anymore and she said if Adam’s girlfriend looked like the loving kind to give them to you. Passing on canning jars means something hereabouts. You look like a nice couple, one of those fierce Tallchief boys and a soft woman to tame him. They’re yours, if you want them. The wife and me are all packed and moving out to Las Vegas to be with our grandchildren.”

  Jillian glanced at the cardboard box filled with jars, some of them blue with age, some with zinc lids. They were lovely and almost seemed to glow softly with another woman’s tending. She ignored the “girlfriend” remark; it mattered little. She was just here with Adam, having a nice day. “Thank you. I’d love to have them.”

  “Get in and start it, Jillian,” Adam said, and she stood still, locked by his confidence in her. She’d driven automatic shifts and had taken buses and metros, but the pickup had a starter button and clutch and gas pedals. At her helpless look, Adam nudged her aside and slid into the seat, starting the motor. With a hurried kiss and a grin, he was gone and the old pickup truck was rumbling around her, and Adam was bending beneath the hood.

  “Rev it up,” he called, and when she did, he and the farmer toyed with adjustments, the pickup truck shuddering and roaring in the old barn. Jillian held on to the worn steering wheel and wondered why she was enjoying herself, smiling at Adam when he raised his head to grin at her. He had that little-boy look, delighted with a new toy.

  In the end, he wrote a check and shook hands with the farmer, who was clearly losing his beloved. Adam grinned at Jillian, who stood beside him, stunned at the men’s language. “She’s a little sweetheart. Treat her right. She’s got heart.”

  Adam looked down at her. “I’ll get Alek’s tractor back to him later. Do you want to drive, or do you want me to?”

  “It’s your pickup. You drive.”

  Adam ran a caressing hand over the pickup door. “Jillian. Don’t be difficult or polite. Do you want to drive this beauty or not?”

  While Adam used the cleaning towel the farmer had given him, Jillian considered the cracked dashboard, the ancient gearshift, the missing windshield wiper and the one that was stuck in the center of the glass. “Beauty” coughed and sputtered all the while, shaking as though she’d die at any time. “You drive.”

  So there Jillian was, in a rusty, dented, aged pickup with Adam driving and whistling, and caressing the steering wheel and gearshift. The country lane was bumpy with weeds in the center, and Adam proudly noted how the pickup “purred.”

  Then he slid the old pickup into a grove of trees off the road and turned off the engine. The vehicle sputtered, coughed and died. Adam turned to her. “I have something to tell you,” he murmured.

  But just then, the pickup burped once more as if struggling to run again, and Jillian couldn’t help laughing. “Yes, she’s a beauty all right.”

  Adam scowled at her, clearly taking offense. “Well, she is. I’ll have her purring in no time—she just needs a little loving and—”

  He turned slowly to her with that dark hungry look, and she knew that he wanted to hold her. “Come here,” he ordered softly.

  “Why?” she asked, and wondered at the excitement in her. She knew. Suddenly she was that girl again, alive, love dancing around her when Adam looked at her. But this time he was a man and she was a woman who knew the consequences of coming too close, and she’d already tasted that burning fever.

  There in the shadows of the old pickup truck with its creaks and groans, Adam’s hand tilted her face for his long, slow, seeking kiss. Its sweetness twisted through her, and with his arm around her now, she lifted her arms to draw him close, tethering that wild mane in her fists.

  The kiss changed, slanted, fused and the storm of hunger circled her once more. Adam lifted her on his lap and nuzzled her cheeks, her throat, and kissed a lower path while caressing her breasts. “Jillian,” he whispered as she slid her hand up inside his sweatshirt, smoothing the scars the shark had given him, the one across his arm.

  She loved touching him, the contrast of smooth warm skin with muscles and cords flowing beneath, the roughness of flat nipples etching her palm, the tight flat stomach, the way his navel—

  He shuddered at that light, curious touch, his breath ragged. Watching her, Adam slowly pulled off his sweatshirt and his hands slid to her waist. She nodded in answer to his silent question, and he pulled away her cardigan and unbuttoned her blouse.

  His hands and eyes treasured her, and her fear did not come. Not even when he lifted her, slid open her jeans, and caressed her softly, intimately. She met the rhythm, cruised in it, floated in pleasure.

  From nowhere the storm came and slammed into her, hot, hungry, almost savage in its demand. Whatever had become soft and willing, gently changed, and pulsed and pleasured, growing until it exploded, tossing her against him. The deep vibrations went on beyond her control, gradually diminishing until she lay limply against Adam.

  “Oh, Jillian,” he murmured against her lips, his body shaking and hard against her.

  “Take me somewhere,” she whispered urgently, wanting more, all of him, inside her. She wanted him to cleanse away the other times, far less sweet and fulfilling. “Love me.”

  He shook his head and rocked her. His expression was a mixture of sensual hunger and sorrow and frustration. On the road some distance away, a car drove by, and Adam said quietly, “Let me help you dress.”

  When she sat beside him again, and the old pickup rumbled down the bumpy farm road, Adam slid his arm around her to pull her close. She sensed that he needed her, that there were things he wanted to say. “What is it, Adam? What troubles you? Sarah?”

  She couldn’t help lifting to kiss his cheek and then Adam’s gray eyes slashed at her in surprise. His expression changed, opened to her, and she saw again the pain that had been there for so many years. He’d been a boy then, accused of lying, rigid with pride. “You give me peace, Jillian, and that is a hard commodity to find. I’ve hunted it in more lands than I can count. It’s no small thing to have that gift—to bring peace to someone else.”

  She brought him more than peace, Adam brooded that night as he studied the images Steve had sent him on the computer. Jillian’s style was there—animated, flowing, eye-catching.

  He wanted her, his body humming with desire. Yet she’d regret an impulsive loving later, when she discovered that he was Sam.

  What she believed was a lie hovered between them. Adam rammed his hand through his hair and struggled with his options, to leave or to stay, to tell everything and lose, or to hope that—Hope. How many times had he tossed that dream away? He’d hoped she’d believe him, and not her brother, all those years ago.

  Adam shook his head and damned himself for not telling her the truth, for letting his need for her consume him too soon—

  Jillian studied the jars, washed and lined up on her counter. They were beautiful, and she could imagine them standing filled with jams, peaches and green beans in a pantry—what a pretty image. Washing them had given her something to do, because she couldn’t concentrate on her Sam projects.

  Thinking about Adam’s hunger left little room for that. The images of the day rushed by her, Adam sitting as she wove, the quiet peace between them. The gardening and the tractor ride, the way he chuckled when she struggled for control of the big beast—the way he touched her gently, pulling her hair from her face for a kiss. She smiled, remembering his excitement over the “beauty,” that boyish grin at her catching her heart, holding i
t.

  Then later, her riveting need for him had shaken her, her body still restless. Was he feeling the same? Was he aching for her? Thinking of her?

  It had only taken weeks for her plan of revenge to turn to one of trust. Why did her instincts tell her that Adam could be trusted? How could she possibly question what her parents had told her? Nothing in the newspapers or the gossip supported his accusation against Tom.

  She smoothed the beads on the headband and carefully tied it around her forehead. Her hand flowed over her breasts, remembering his caresses, the heat of his mouth.

  Strange that she had always been so clinical about choosing her life, those people around her, always so safe. Adam wasn’t a safe man, not to her—he brought out emotions too wild and fierce, and that odd urge to soothe him.

  Jillian turned on her computer and only slightly mourned the time she’d lost during the day—actually living, enjoying herself. She stared at Nancy’s colorful package design, and knew that if she stepped back into the past, pain waited. She shouldn’t even think about reopening the bitterness, but she wondered how she would see the events now as an adult.

  She saw Adam’s harsh expression, those gray eyes flashing, his young face set and rigid with anger and pain. He’d wanted her to believe him.

  With a sigh, Jillian braced herself and began to hunt through old newspaper archives available through her computer. She couldn’t find anything, except the obituaries of her brother and parents, and the auction of the house and furnishings.

  The house. A Southern-style mansion had been built to make a statement that the Greens came from wealth and power, that they ranked in the town’s very best social circle—or higher. It had been filled with florists’ flowers, designer furniture and custom decor, and it was as cold as the crystal that glittered throughout. Completely absorbed in her own world as a society leader, Martha Green had never washed dishes or scrubbed floors. Maxwell Green had never dirtied his hands on an old truck engine or changed a tire. He wouldn’t think of manual labor, not even if a friend needed him.