by Jan Springer
The sweet treat along with some hot black coffee had sealed his fate for Eve. She was back. She was a great cook, and she belonged to them. There was no way he would ever let her go now.
He remembered asking her who’d taught her how to make pancakes as she’d never made them before, and she’d gotten a wistful smile floating across her lips and a faraway look in her eyes. She had never said, and that’s when he’d felt a spear of jealousy zip into him, and it had been hitting him off and on since. He knew he shouldn’t be letting it get to him. He should be thanking whomever had taken such great care of Eve because she’d returned to them very healthy, beautiful, and best of all, wanted their help in getting her to remember her relationship. Man, right now he felt pretty lucky. Very lucky indeed.
* * * *
“Wow, that’s a beautiful cabin,” Eve couldn’t help but say out loud as a fluttering of something she could only name as falling instantly in love hit her. The four of them sat on their horses as they surveyed the lush valley below. Situated about four hundred yards from a pristine aqua-green-colored creek, the one-floor cabin contained a wraparound veranda at the front and at one side of the building. The cabin was made out of squared logs with light gray cement chinking and a lone steel pipe chimney protruded from the southeast corner of the building. The front of the cabin faced south and had plenty of large windows. The backdrop consisted of towering pine trees and snowcapped mountains.
The area appeared untouched by the Catastrophe’s cold weather. The vegetation looked healthy and green, and Eve could only stare in disbelief.
“Trader Jack says the mountains shield this particular valley from the cold winds, which allows everything to look normal,” Riley said from beside her.
Normal, the perfect word for this gorgeous, breathtaking place.
“Hey, look over there, on the hill. Trader Jack loves deer meat. I’m going to get him one,” Maddox whispered as he pointed to several deer that grazed quietly about a half mile away on a hillside.
“He’ll appreciate it. That’s for sure.” Kayne chuckled.
Without another word, Maddox kicked his horse in gear and headed downwind of the deer.
A momentary pang of sadness sliced through Eve as she watched Mad slowly slide his rifle from his scabbard. One of those deer’s lives would be snuffed out tonight. But Eve forced herself to push away the sadness. That’s the way things were now. Empty bellies needed to be filled, and there was no time for empathy or guilt. It was survival of the fittest.
“Where is the old guy anyways? Usually he’s sitting on his rocking chair on the porch, smoking his pipe at this time of the evening,” Riley commented from her left side. He was squinting into the sprays of golden sunshine that doused them, but Eve knew darkness would fall upon the valley in a half an hour when the sun dipped behind the mountains.
“Yeah, you’re right. He should be there. Something’s wrong. Let’s ride in and find out,” Kayne said and quickly spurred his horse into a fast lope.
“Careful.” Eve called out, sensing Kayne’s urgent concern and realizing herself that something was amiss down there. They’d mentioned Trader Jack didn’t like the cold and always had a fire going. The fact that no smoke uncurled from the chimney led her to believe that Kayne may be right.
From beside her, Riley grinned at her. “Didn’t know you cared for Kayne, Eve.”
“I care,” she blurted and urged her horse to follow Kayne. She realized instantly that yes, she cared very much for Kayne, despite not remembering him as much as the other two men.
“Don’t worry. He’s probably out in the creek fishing or something.”
Even though Riley threw her a reassuring grin, Eve noticed the smile didn’t reach his eyes. He looked worried.
They picked up their pace and followed Kayne, who was now pushing his horse into a full-out lope.
“The place looks abandoned,” Riley said several minutes later as they neared the cabin. “He’s been gone for awhile.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Look at the layout. Everything’s overgrown. He was a stickler for keeping those vines from taking over his stairs. The windows are dirt-smeared. He must have left.”
Regret shoved through Eve. She’d been looking forward to meeting this old man. The guys had spoken fondly about him all day.
Riley nodded toward Kayne, and she returned her focus to him also. He’d stopped short of the cabin and was facing the side veranda. His right arm was lifted in the air, signaling for them to halt. Uneasiness slammed into Eve, and she quickly slid her rifle from the scabbard, readying it in case of trouble. A gentle touch to her elbow from Riley had her easing off the trigger. He shook his head and nodded to the wraparound veranda that faced the sunset. The golden rays of sunshine shone on something that looked like a heap of clothes crumpled on the floor near an upturned white wicker chair.
“Don’t let Eve come any closer. I don’t want her to see this.”
“What is it?” she called out, but instincts told her she knew what the rumpled heap would be.
Trader Jack.
Before she could protest, Riley grabbed the reins to her horse and began leading her and her horse away from the cabin.
“I can handle this,” she complained, but one look at the firm set of Riley’s mouth made her realize that maybe she couldn’t.
“It’s Jack. I recognized his clothes. I’ll bring you down to the creek and come back for you, after we’ve…” He let his words trail off and didn’t say anything else.
To her dismay, emotions, thick and raw, welled inside her. Her eyes blurred as tears sprung up. She’d really had been looking forward to meeting the old guy, and this unexpected turn of events really pissed her off.
Damn! Why couldn’t people stay alive? Why couldn’t they learn to be careful and live off the land, like C.J. had taught her?
“You okay?” Riley asked a few moments later when they reached the creek. It was colder down here, and she stifled a shiver as the wind wrapped around her. She inhaled a shaky breath and nodded firmly, trying very hard to push aside these unwanted emotions of sadness and loss for a guy she’d never even heard about until this morning.
“I will be.”
Riley grinned, and this time the smile reached his eyes. “It shouldn’t take long. Water your horse and grab a bite to eat. I’ll come back as soon as I can.”
Eve tried to return his smile, but all she could manage was a wobbly, false grin. She sat on her horse and watched him go. A couple of minutes later a gunshot echoed through the valley, making her jump. Far off, on the side of the hill Maddox had pointed to only moments earlier, all of the deer were sprinting away, except for one. It tried to take a few steps, stumbled weakly, dropped to the ground, and was still.
Eve broke down into tears. She wept for Trader Jack, and she wept for the innocent deer.
* * * *
Kayne Durango winced at the intensity of emotions bombarding him. Trader Jack had been a fine friend, and the Durango Gang had visited him often over the past several months since finding him in this valley. The past couple of times when they’d visited him, the gang’s members had been dwindling, and the old guy had found it amusing to learn that first three and then another three of the gang had found women and left the gang, choosing to lead normal lives. Well, as normal as life with three guys and one woman could get in the days after the Catastrophe.
He shivered as cold blasts of wind shifted around him, and from the corner of his eye he caught sight of something moving on a nearby veranda post. It was a heavy-duty piece of cardboard, and it had been nailed to the post just beneath the ceiling to ensure it didn’t get wet from any rain.
Kayne immediately recognized Trader Jack’s scraggly handwriting.
To Whomever Finds Me,
Stepped on a rusty nail a few days back. Figure my time has come. Leave me here if you are foe. I only want friends to bury me. I bequeath my land and estate to the remaining members of the Durango Gang, a
nd I know they’ll find a nice place to plant me.
See youse in the hereafter, Trader Jack
“Poor bastard,” Riley whispered from beside Kayne.
Kayne jolted at his friend’s unexpected arrival. He hadn’t heard Riley coming up the stairs and joining him. Hadn’t realized he’d let his guard down long enough to have gotten himself killed had it been someone other than Riley, Mad, or Eve.
“We’ll need to get shovels,” he muttered as he swallowed the thick lump of emotion threatening to clog his throat.
“Four of them at the back door. He must have gathered them for whoever came along and found him. No sign of his horses. He must have set them loose. Chickens are gone, so is his cow. The barn door was left open, so they got out. Coyotes or grizzly probably got them by now. We should have come back here and checked on him sooner.”
Kayne detected the guilt in Riley’s voice. Tucked his own guilt down deep inside of him.
“We couldn’t anticipate this happening, Ri. Shit happens. Nothing we can do about it. Let’s get him a nice place to rest.”
Riley inhaled sharply beside him, and Kayne noticed the glitter of tears in the younger man’s eyes. Felt them swelling in his eyes, too. Riley nodded, and they set about getting down to the unpleasant task of saying good-bye to a dear friend.
* * * *
It was a quiet evening inside the warm cabin. Earlier, from her perch by the creek, Eve had watched Maddox approach the cabin leading his horse with the dead deer draped over its back. Moments later, she’d watched Kayne, Riley, and Mad head out to a nearby set of saplings. A little while later, they’d come out with what appeared to be a stretcher. They headed back to the cabin, and Eve hadn’t been able to watch anymore. Instead, she bit back her tears, collected some wood, and built a small fire for warmth and companionship for herself and an increasingly skittish Snowball.
Darkness had fallen quickly. With the looming, snowcapped mountains surrounding her, she’d felt quite small and vulnerable, so she’d remained huddled beside the fire until she’d seen a buttery glow of lights splashing out of the log cabin. Despite the sadness tearing up her insides, the sight of life had been quite welcome. A few minutes later, Riley had come to collect her and Snowball. Not soon enough for her horse, though, for she’d started prancing nervously around, compliments of the eerie green lights flickering in the night sky.
Her horse would be happy to be out of the cold night air and inside a barn tonight. So was she. It felt good to be huddled beneath a warm Navajo-style Indian blanket. It had a rustic image of clouds and lightning bolts woven through it, and the comfortable couch she sat on was red-and-white checkered squares and very long and wide and quite comfortable.
Trader Jack had a nice cabin. She just wished he’d been around. If he had been, she wouldn’t be feeling so guilty sitting here enjoying his home. The guys had shown her the note he’d left behind, stating he’d stepped on a rusty nail. He’d probably died of blood poisoning, which could have been treated had there been a doctor or a hospital nearby. Maybe if Maddox had been here when Trader Jack had fallen ill, he would have known what to do. He’d been a paramedic before the Catastrophe had struck.
Eve gasped at that revelation and then smiled. She’d just remembered something. Maddox had been a paramedic in Ontario before the Catastrophe. Kayne had been a builder in a small town in Northern Ontario, and Riley had been a computer programmer in some elite company in the Silicon Valley.
Wow, she really was getting her memory back. She pulled the blanket tighter around her body and hugged herself while she listened to the softly crackling fire. The fireplace was beautiful, built out of gray basketball-sized rounded stones that looked oddly like the ones that protruded from the glacier-fed streams that were rampant in the valleys of the mountains.
She was alone in the cabin. Maddox was out in the barn skinning his deer. Kayne had decided to venture up a nearby hillside to where he’d seen a silhouette of what appeared to be a newly constructed windmill of some sort. Riley was sitting outside on the porch, keeping an eye out for any unexpected visitors.
She assumed they were probably grieving in their own way about the old man who’d died. Alone with their own thoughts, they would figure out a way to deal with it. Just as she would have to do.
Apparently Trader Jack had had a fledgling trading business here in this valley. He’d told the guys that he put people up through the night several times a month as they traveled through. He used the barter system to get things he needed in exchange for what people wanted from him.
Eve grinned as she looked around the living room. The man had been a genuine pack rat. He’d collected everything for his business. From the pine rafters, he’d hung everything from copper frying pans to dried herbs to an array of homemade birch bark candle chandeliers. Three of the walls contained pine shelves filled with books, pottery pitchers, granite bakeware, and an abundance of what appeared to be homemade, thick white candles.
C.J. and herself definitely could have used a lot of this stuff in the little cabin they’d sequestered themselves in. But C.J. had wanted nothing to do with men, and Eve hadn’t seen any reason not to go along with her. Thinking of her friend brought more sadness shifting through her. This time of night C.J. would be snug as a bug in the double bed they’d shared for warmth. With no one to keep her company. No one to ease her fears after the nightmares that frequented her.
Her sadness scattered at the sound of the front door opening. It was followed by heavy footsteps coming down the hallway, and Eve twisted to grab her rifle from the nearby coffee table. When she spied the six-foot figure of Riley, she placed her weapon down again. Right now, he was the person she wanted to see the most. Some instinct deep inside her told her he was the most compassionate of the trio.
She waited until he removed his outdoor wear and boots before turning to face him and allowing him to see the tears that were now flowing from her eyes.
When he saw her, concern burrowed his eyebrows. He cursed softly, and in a few quick strides he sat beside her on the couch. Quickly, he gathered her into his arms. He smelled nice. Of the rough outdoors and of the clean mountain air. He held her tightly, whispering softly into her hair that everything was going to be fine, and with that confirmation, she finally allowed herself to fully break down.
She cried. This time harder than when she’d sobbed by the creek earlier. Realizing she hadn’t fully mourned the old man who they’d found laying on the porch, she cried some more for him. Then she bawled for the deer still alive out there, having lost one of their own. Most of all though, she wept for C.J., being alone. The emotions ran deep inside of her, and she didn’t know how long she wept, but when her sobs finally subsided, she felt so much better. It felt as if maybe some of the healing process had taken hold this time, and she knew she was going to be okay now.
“Trader Jack has a hell of a big garden out back. It looks like he’d just tilled it a few days ago. There are seeds in the barn. He must have saved them from his last year’s crop. I know he had a pretty big-sized garden last year. He’s lucky to be in this valley. The mountains keep most of the cold air from getting in.”
She already knew all about the valley being sheltered, and she had a feeling he wasn’t sure what to say or how to comfort her, so that’s why he was babbling. Just having his strong arms around her, though, made her feel so safe. And loved.
“You look cute after you’ve had a good cry. Cute and so vulnerable,” he whispered. His brown eyes flared with intense emotion and protectiveness as he brushed a stray strand of hair out of her eyes. With such tenderness coming from a big man, one who obviously had intense feelings for her, made her suddenly feel all hot and excited at having him here with her. And she felt needy. So damned needy.
“Make me feel better, Riley,” she blurted, and then she bit her bottom lip, wondering if maybe he would refuse her.
His eyes widened slightly as if questioning if she really wanted the kind of comfort he craved t
o give her. But then the question disintegrated from his gaze, and suddenly his mouth melted over hers. His lips were firm, warm, and sensual. There was tenderness in his kiss. Tenderness for her hurting. And there was something else. An emotional turbulence. An upheaval. Something desperate and something wounded inside him. She had wounded him. She had hurt all of them by not remembering them. By not returning to them.
There was also restrained fire in his kiss. A wild passion she’d only caught glimpses of during those flashes of memories she’d experienced.
She sensed he needed her, too. Just as badly as she needed him right now. That he wanted sex. Heck, whom was she kidding? She wanted sex. With Riley. Now.
“Make love to me, Ri,” she whispered after breaking the intoxicating kiss. She longed to experience what they’d shared in the past, and she slipped her hands beneath his T-shirt. Ripples and ripples of warm, solid muscles flexed beneath her fingers as she touched his flesh. Such silky-feeling flesh.
His sharp inhalations and soft curses only increased her need for him to fuck her.
“I want to take you so bad, Eve. I want to see the pleasure splashing across your face. Pleasure just like I used to give you.” His voice sounded so husky, and his eyes twinkled with such obvious love, her heart clenched in happiness.
His mouth came down on hers again. This time, his lips slanted over hers with unrestrained passion. He tasted good, and she could feel the coiled need building deep inside her vagina. Could feel the rigid muscles lacing his abdomen as her fingers swept downward and then struggled to unclasp his jeans. She found the zipper, and within a heartbeat, she’d lowered it.