by Linda Jacobs
“To complement dinner.” He displayed a bottle of brandy.
Though Kyle didn’t usually drink hard liquor, she thought it might stave off her awareness of the impending new moon.
Wyatt drew his hat lower against the wind sweeping down the canyon and strained to detect the trail’s pale track. Between Nez Perce Peak and Little Saddle Mountain, the moonless night was deep as velvet. As he emerged into the high valley, he saw the faraway glow of cabin windows. Though it was certainly his imagination, he could swear he caught a whiff of aromatic beef stew on the wind.
Kyle’s original recipe was one he’d sampled before, during a party at her mountain townhouse. Although the memory was repressed so deeply Freud would have been proud, it broke through the way a river rafted winter ice.
That night, as Kyle’s gathering wound down, Wyatt stayed behind to help her police the area. He was on the deck picking up beer cans when she came out through the sliding glass doors. No doubt because of the hot August day she wore a loose-fitting white cotton dress, a startling departure from her usual khakis and tailored shirts.
Though the evening air had cooled, she raised her hands and lifted her hair off her slender corded neck. “Leave that, Wyatt.”
He finished the task, twisted up the trash bag and carried it out to the curb.
Kyle followed.
Lightning split the sky, and wind ruffled her hair and dress. They stood beside his truck, talking of nothing, the way people bargain with an evening’s end. A choker of silver lay just below where the pulse beat in her throat.
Wyatt ran out of small talk and reached for his keys.
Kyle put her hand on his forearm. “Are you sure you’re okay to drive? The last thing you need is to have an accident when the rain comes.”
He stood not a foot away from the woman he’d always thought of as one of the boys.
Was it because of the soft way she was dressed, or perhaps the shine of her eyes with their fascinating blend of blue and green? All he knew was he was shaking with the need to make a move forward, a simple adjustment that would not be simple at all.
“I’ll be fine,” he lied, getting into the truck and slamming the door.
He really had been okay. After a few days of telling himself that professors and students slept together all the time, he concluded that even bringing up the subject would ruin their relationship. Her friendship and their easy way of working together were too valuable to risk for a few minutes pleasure.
Yet, watching her with Nick Darden gave him second thoughts. If he had been forthright about his feelings for her after he’d finished his degree, perhaps he wouldn’t be in this foul mood tonight.
Last evening, alone with her beside the raging bonfire, he’d been hard pressed to keep his secret. With the firelight casting her features in relief, she’d looked more beautiful than he could ever recall seeing her.
It might be foolhardy to press on, but Kyle had asked him to.
He also had a superstitious desire not to be alone for the witching hour of Brock Hobart’s prediction.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
SEPTEMBER 26
Kyle reached a languorous hand and poured more brandy for her and Nick. They’d moved from the dinner table to the tired sofa, and she was startled to note that by her watch it was past midnight. The cabin was getting chilly as they let the fire burn down to diminish the hazard of sparks when they turned in.
The thought of bed made her raise her glass and take another ample swallow. It delayed the moment when she and Nick would go into the bunkroom. In the half-light of the dying fire and her candle lantern that he’d accepted as compromise when he turned off the Coleman, he looked as young as when they’d first known each other. All the details were there, down to the scruffy beard from not shaving in the field.
Kyle tipped her cup and found it empty. “Oops.”
Nick smiled. “I think you must be drunk.”
She giggled.
He placed both hands on hers and leaned in. “I’ll bet you’re so wasted you can’t beat me at Hearts.”
With deliberate enunciation, she challenged, “I could never get so drunk that I couldn’t whip your ass at Hearts.” Her hands felt hot where he touched them.
She got up and stirred the embers. Trying for nonchalance, she grabbed her candle lantern to take to the bedroom. Nick followed, plucked her sleeping bag off the top bunk, and dumped it below with his.
Kyle felt a flush of awareness the way she had earlier when he sniffed at her hair. No, this tide flowed warmer, as they stood together before the narrow mattress. Flashes of a field camp Sunday afternoon when they were alone in the 4-H barracks naked atop a sleeping bag.
Nick set the brandy bottle and their cups on the floor beside the bed and rummaged in his bag for cards and a pack of Marlboros.
She climbed into the far end of the bunk against the wall and spread her sleeping bag over her legs. “I haven’t seen you smoke.”
“When I drink.” Taking a position at the opposite end of the bed, Nick covered his own legs, struck a match, and applied it to a cigarette. The end of the white paper curled into ash and the smell of tobacco smoke surrounded them. He tossed her the cards. “Deal.”
She shuffled. He cut. She dealt them each thirteen and placed the rest on the bedding between them. Nick took a deep drag and held it in.
Kyle gathered her cards and began to sort them. The candle shed barely enough light to tell the spades from the clubs.
Across from her, Nick exhaled a smoke cloud. “At least you still play Hearts.”
She gave him an even look. “Some things you don’t forget.”
A grin crinkled the corners of his eyes. At field camp, the nightly game had begun about the time most students went to bed. Once the barracks got dark and quiet, a small cadre of serious partiers played until drowsiness overtook at least one of the players. Kyle had been a latecomer to the game, joining only after the night she and Nick went to his tent.
In the dim light beneath the upper bunk at the Nez Perce cabin, Nick arranged his cards. His foot brushed hers as he led with the two of clubs. Kyle followed suit with a six, gathered up the hand and played the eight. His foot was back while their eyes stayed on the cards.
Another few tricks and most of the clubs were cleaned up. Pondering his next lead, Nick raised his eyes to Kyle’s. Holding out the cigarette, he kneaded her calf with his toes.
As if from a distance, she watched her hand float up. Relaxed from the brandy, she opened her mind and her mouth and drew in the smoke. The first drag choked, the second smoothed the rough edges.
“More.” He leaned to hold the Marlboro to her lips.
More was what she wanted. Like Alice through the looking glass, she passed from her existence as Dr. Kyle Stone to the girl who’d won Nick Darden’s heart.
If only for summer’s end.
His foot inched higher. As though she was outside herself, she saw them facing each other. It would only take the smallest move by either of them.
Nick made it, slicking his undershirt over his head.
If she said no, she felt certain he would put away the party and let her climb into the narrow top bunk. He’d dutifully crawl into his sleeping bag, and she could listen to him breathe the way she had each night they’d been on the mountain, the cadence punctuated by the soft snoring she’d once imagined would become her nightly music.
Kyle leaned against the wall and watched Nick’s progress toward her.
She didn’t want to say no. She wanted it the way it used to be, the quick breath and pounding of the blood. To forget the miles and the years that had separated them. To desire him the way she did when she awoke sometimes before dawn, heart racing. In dreams, he was always youthful and brilliant, captured in sunshine.
Now, in the candlelit bunk, Nick’s sparkling eyes promised it could all be true again. His hands were sure when he captured the hem of her fleece top and drew it up to cup her breast.
Kyle raise
d her lips to meet his.
Wyatt had the cabin in close sight, a dark shape against starlight. The windows no longer glowed and he did not believe he could smell the stew anymore. Of course, by this hour, Kyle would have given up keeping a hot meal for him. She and Nick would have gone to bed.
With a nudge to Thunder, he indicated he wished to go faster.
To his surprise, the horse shied as though he’d seen a snake on the trail.
“Easy, boy.” Wyatt smoothed the stallion’s neck with his hand.
Thunder reared with a snort and flare of nostrils.
Wyatt kept his seat with the ease of long practice as his mount threw up his head repeatedly. When a soothing tone failed, he said sharply, “Settle down.”
Thunder whinnied, a high shrill cry.
Wyatt released the reins and slid to the ground. There was no point in putting a tight lead on a frightened animal, especially when shades of charcoal prevented him seeing what was wrong. Bears were seldom nocturnal with a new moon, but he gave a sharp look at each of the hulking boulders. Human activity in their range might have pressured them into night hunting. From his belt, Wyatt removed his can of pepper spray repellent.
“What is it, Thunder?” he asked. “What’s out there?”
As the big horse continued to paw and stomp, the ground gave a sudden leap.
Wyatt sat down hard.
In the instant that Nick’s lips met Kyle’s, her lantern gave a jerk. The flame fluttered and the bed frame jumped and crashed. Her dreamy sense shattered as her and Nick’s teeth clashed together, and she tasted blood from her lip.
“Get down.” He was off the mattress, grabbing her arm and dragging her to the floor.
The beds walked across the bouncing boards. Bark rained from the log walls and bits of dried mud from the chinking landed in Kyle’s hair. She lifted a hand to knock them away, feeling stupid with drink.
“Out of here,” Nick shouted. He crawled toward the door.
Kyle stared at her light and was reminded of a swinging lantern casting weird and dizzying shadows over a ruined picnic table. She froze, crouched on hands and knees.
The candle went out, plunging the bunkroom into blackness. A scream built in the back of her throat, but she couldn’t make a sound.
She remembered that, too. After shrieking for hours into the darkness, there had come a time when she opened her mouth and nothing came out. All the while, she heard the screaming inside her head.
Nick was back, tugging her shoulders to draw her across the shuddering floor. In the other room, half-burned logs spilled from the fireplace. The rag rug smoldered, sending out acrid dusty smoke.
“Make it stop!” She clapped her hands over her ears to shut out the din.
The floor bucked again, and a hail of chimney stones crashed through the roof.
Kyle tried to crawl, but she couldn’t. A sour rush of brandy filled her mouth.
In the hideous light of the now burning rug, she saw Nick sprawled bare-chested.
Wyatt vaulted into the cabin. He grabbed the rug by an edge and pulled the thick pile through the doorway.
Blackness, barely relieved by pulsating ruby embers, smothered her like thick cloth. In that instant, the earthquake stopped.
Nick’s laughter broke the sudden silence like someone switched on a radio. Not a bray of mild hysteria like her own on Dot Island, but the joyous peal of a person truly enjoying himself. Someone who tried the newest and wildest roller coasters, downhilled double black diamonds, and chased volcanoes for the pure adrenaline shock.
“Outside,” Wyatt ordered, his silhouette darker than the sky in the doorway.
Kyle realized with dismay that her top was rolled around her chest, exposing her bare waist where Nick had shoved it up. She dragged it down.
Though she heard Nick shuffling toward the front door, Kyle swiveled her head toward the bunkroom. Her duffel held at least three flashlights and a supply of batteries, so she crawled toward the ebony maw. Christ, why had she drunk so much?
After the brilliance of the burning rug, the bunkroom seemed darker than before. She felt around blindly for her bag, her hand striking several metal bars arranged at crazy angles.
A beam flashed into the room’s depths, revealing that the bunk beds had come apart. The upper frame and mattress hung canted like the collapsed sections of the Bay Bridge in San Francisco’s 1989 earthquake.
A hand gripped her shoulder from behind.
“Nick.” It came out a sob.
“Sorry to keep disappointing you,” Wyatt gritted.
An aftershock jolted, and the bed frame came down in a clatter. Kyle grabbed Wyatt’s knees with both arms. “Why doesn’t it stop?”
In a few seconds, the ground movement ceased.
Wyatt pried her hands from around him. “Get outside.”
Another shock brought a piece of heavy metal down in a blow to her ankle. The scrape sent a wave of nausea through her, one so strong that she gagged. Only by an effort of will did she keep from vomiting on Wyatt’s boots.
“You’re drunk,” he accused, stepping back.
Giving up the search for her lights, she followed his flashlight through the front room and onto the porch. Nick was already outside, his face and bare chest pale in the starlight, arms crossed against the cold. Kyle went down the steps in sock feet; gravel underfoot reminding her that her soles had not yet recovered from losing her shoes while trying to get into the swamped RV.
She sat on a boulder, put her head in her hands, and shivered in her inadequate fleece, feeling both sick to her stomach and ashamed that Wyatt was seeing her this way.
Inside the cabin, she heard him kicking the remains of the embers back onto the hearth. She should have done that.
In a moment, he emerged carrying an armload of sleeping bags, which he dumped at the base of the porch steps.
Something else she should have thought of.
“You want this?” She looked up in the dimness to find Wyatt with her jacket extended at arm’s length. Carefully, she took it. He made another trip for her and Nick’s boots, throwing them to the ground. Last, he brought out one of Kyle’s flashlights, turned it on, and placed it in her hand.
In the glow, she saw Nick sneer. “Kyle’s a big girl. I think she can take care of herself.”
“Looks like you were taking care of her all right.” Wyatt’s tone dripped disgust.
“Want to mind your own business while you toss me my jacket?”
For a moment, she thought Wyatt would refuse, but he bent, snagged Nick’s coat off the earth, and flung it short. “You’re drunk, too.”
Nick lunged, missed the catch, and had to retrieve the garment from the ground.
“You’re drunk all right,” Wyatt drilled. “Both of you half-naked …”
“Naked’s how it’s done, cowboy.”
Disbelief penetrated her brandy haze. If anyone had told her a week ago that two men would be fighting over her, she would have told them they were crazy.
Nick drawled on, his voice affected by the booze. “You need some lessons on how to get a gal in the sack …”
Kyle’s trouble was that she didn’t know whom to root for. Neither Wyatt nor Nick sounded like themselves, or at least, the selves she imagined she knew.
“Stop it,” she ordered.
“If I need lessons,” Wyatt came back, “I’ll get them from somebody who has the guts to stick around after he gets a woman to fall for him.”
She heard the hurt in his voice, a reminder that Marie had dumped him the way Nick had her.
Nick dropped his coat and advanced on Wyatt.
Kyle pushed up off the cold rock. “I said for you guys to cut it out!”
Bare-chested and barefoot, his hair disheveled as though he and Kyle really had been in bed going at it, Nick swung a right hand roundhouse.
Wyatt threw up his arm but Nick missed. “Look, I’m sober and I don’t need …”
“No, you don’t need anything here.
” Nick drew back and wound up to strike again. “Kyle and I go way back.”
Wyatt parried another blow, catching this one on his forearm.
“Damn it!” Kyle shrieked. “Will you stop?”
In the instant Wyatt’s attention shifted to her, Nick brought up his left. It connected with Wyatt’s cheekbone, just below the eye. The sound wasn’t like in the Old West movies when John Wayne hit with a satisfying punch; this dull thud sounded sickening.
“Nick, no!” Kyle dropped her light and it landed to shed a half circle of illumination on the surreal scene.
Wyatt’s eyes flashed and she could see his clenched teeth. “All right, you sonnuvabitch.” He brought up his hands and thrust at Nick’s chest, sending him sprawling amid the grass tufts on the rocky slope.
Lying on his back, Nick spread his hands at his sides in a gesture of surrender. But it was mock, for he raised his head and glared at Wyatt. “Okay, cowboy, we can’t settle this ‘cause she’s the one who decides.”
Suddenly, both men were staring at her. Kyle had never felt so inelegant in her disheveled state, so helpless at watching two men she cared for fight … but at Nick’s words, she had also never felt so powerful.
Nick, no matter that he had left her long ago, wanted her once more. Wyatt, bless his heart, was defending her honor against the man who had broken her heart.
Her gaze darted from Nick to Wyatt and back. “This is ridiculous …”
“Hey, look at that!” Lying on his back, Nick pointed to the rising new moon. “Old Brock would be proud.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
SEPTEMBER 26
Hours later, Kyle lay in her sleeping bag beneath the sky. The fingernail of pale moon reminded her of when she was five, looking through her father’s telescope at the brilliant pockmarked surface. He’d shown her Saturn’s gauzy rings and the big red spot on Jupiter that glared like a baleful eye.
Once Dad had pointed out a little spark moving fast against the black of beyond and told her it was a Russian Sputnik.