“You and I are alike—we’re both risk takers, Jenessa!” Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN EPILOGUE Copyright

“You and I are alike—we’re both risk takers, Jenessa!”

Then Finn reached out for her, his arms hard around her waist. This time his intention was quite clear: he was going to kiss her.

“Don’t, Finn—please don’t. You’re changing everything, and I don’t want that.”

“You can’t fool me—you don’t play it safe any more than I do.”

“There are some risks I choose not to take. Getting involved with you is one of them!”

Although born in England, SANDRA FIELD has lived most of her life in Canada. While she enjoys traveling, and passing on her sense of a new place, she often chooses to write about the city that is now her home. Sandra says, “I write out of my experience. I have learned that love with its joys and its pains is all-important. I hope this knowledge enriches my writing, and touches a chord in you, the reader.”

Look out for Sandra Field’s next book,

HONEYMOON FOR THREE, next year!

Cory wanted a baby—no strings attached! Her exhusband had done more than enough to convince her that men were surplus to requirements. Apart from one basic detail—she needed a lover. Someone who would make a baby...then a convenient exit. Slade Redden fulfilled all her criteria. But their lovemaking had left him wanting...more! He didn’t want a one-off deal—he wanted Cory for always. It took only one night to make a baby. Slade had nine months to make a wife!

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Untouched

Sandra Field

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

JENESSA REED swung her four-wheel-drive Toyota into Ryan’s driveway and turned off the ignition. What she needed was a hot shower, a home-cooked meal and ten hours of sleep. In that order. Picking up her haversack from the passenger seat, she climbed out of the van and for a moment surveyed Ryan’s house with rueful affection.

The architecture, she had long ago decided, could only be labelled Newfoundland Eccentric. The core of the house was square, two-storey and altogether unremarkable, but over the years Ryan had added two porches, a sunroom, a root cellar, a studio where he did folk art that sold like hotcakes to the tourists, and a couple of balconies from which to survey a view that was far from inspiring. Some of these additions had been painted, some not. Two were askew. The overall effect expressed perfectly Ryan’s innate exuberance and his total lack of interest in what his neighbours might think.

‘I’m home,’ Jenessa called, heading for the back porch.

The door opened. ‘About time,’ Ryan grumbled, taking her haversack and urging her indoors. ‘And me with a new job all lined up for you.’

‘Oh, no,’ Jenessa groaned, ‘I’ve got to recover from the last one first.’

He poured two mugs of ink-black tea from the pot that sat all day long on the stove and said unsympathetically, ‘A wild-goose chase makes more sense than tryin’ to sight whales in late August.’

She had been guiding a small group of German tourists, who under her tutelage had bagged their limit of Atlantic salmon and had then requested to be shown whales. ‘I drove the entire length of the northern peninsula, just about froze to death out on the ocean and was seasick twice.’ Jenessa grinned. ‘But we saw fin whales, humpbacks and porpoises—so my clients were happy.’

‘Hope they tipped good.’

‘Enough so I don’t need another job right away.’

‘You’re to meet some guy by the name of Finn Marston tomorrow night on the late flight. Said he’d explain what he wanted when he got here.’

‘How long does he want me for?’ she said in a resigned voice.

‘Didn’t say. Forceful kind of guy—didn’t give me much chance to get a word in edgeways. Plus it was a lousy connection—he was callin’ from some place in Indonesia.’

Anyone who could prevent Ryan from taking his fair share of the conversation had her instant respect. ‘Indonesia...did he speak good English?’ she asked. She had spent ten days in July trying to teach the intricacies of fly-fishing to three admittedly very handsome but unilingual Spaniards.

‘Yeah... he’s Canadian, by the sound of him.’

‘I wonder why he’s coming?’ Jenessa said. ‘I suppose he wants to catch the last of the fishing season ... I’ll tell you one thing—he’d better not have ocean-going mammals on his list.’

She levered the lid off the can sitting on the table and helped herself to one of Ryan’s molasses cookies. ‘You made these because you knew I’d be back today, didn’t you?’ she added, smiling across at Ryan. He never hugged her when she came home, but he would make sure she had all her favourite things to eat.

‘Gotta put some flesh on your bones,’ Ryan muttered. He was a small man, no taller than her five feet eight, and wiry as a fox, his beard and hair still showing vestiges of their former fiery red, his eyes a snapping brown. He was her one tie to a life that had fallen apart when she was thirteen; Jenessa valued him both for that and for himself. Father-surrogate and true friend—not a bad combination, and one she knew she was fortunate to have.

Taking another cookie, she said with a caution that in the past had often been justified, ‘You did tell this Finn Marston that I’m a woman, right?’

Ryan dunked his cookie in his tea. ‘Well, now, not sure I did. Like I said, I didn’t get much chance to talk. This guy’s more used to givin’ orders than listenin’ to other people, I’d say.’

‘Ryan, I wish you wouldn’t do that to me,’ Jenessa complained. ‘I hate turning up at the airport when someone’s expecting a six-foot hunk of brawn in a red flannel shirt and what they get is me instead. All you have to do when you’re talking to them is use the correct pronoun—she. One short word and that does it.’

Ryan and she had had this discussion before. ‘And lots of them wouldn’t hire you then; you know that as well as I do, Jenny. I keeps my mouth shut, they get the best guide this side of Gander airport—and we’re all happy.’

Jenessa rolled her eyes. ‘You’re the best guide this side of anywhere—maybe you should go to the airport to meet the forceful Mr Marston.’

‘I taught you everythin’ I know and I’m too old to go crashin’ around in the woods.’ He leered at her. ‘More interestin’ things to do round home.’

Not all his interests lay in the areas of folk art and home improvements. Another of them was the widowed Mrs McCarthy, whose lemon meringue pie could have graced any restaurant in Toronto. ‘How’s Grace?’ Jenessa said on cue.

‘She’s fine,’ he answered airily. ‘Want some more tea?’

Ryan’s tea, taken in any quantity, would corrode a moose hide. ‘I’m going to clean up,’ Jenessa said. ‘Any messages for me?’

‘Ruth called. She wants you to go over and see the baby after supper. It’s got a tooth, she said. Can’t see what’s so special about that; we all got teeth.’

‘It’s their first baby, Ryan; of course they think he’s special.’

‘Not so special I see you makin’ any moves to get one.’

Surprised, Jenessa stopped midway across the kitchen. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re pushin’ twenty-six and I don’t see no signs of you gettin’ yourself hitched.’

She felt a pang of mingled hurt and dismay. ‘Don’t you want me living here any more, Ryan?’ Her eyes widened. ‘Are you and Grace planning to get married?’

‘Course not! She’d have me paintin’ the balcony and mowin’ the grass; she likes things all shipshape, does Grace. And I’m not about to change my ways.’ His brow wrinkled in one of the formidable frowns that signified deep thought. ‘In the last five years you’ve met more men than a stag has cows. So how come you haven’t married any of ’em?’

She said flippantly, ‘None of them asked me.’

‘You don’t even date ’em!’

‘They’re my clients, Ryan; there’s such a thing as professional ethics.’

Ryan’s opinion of professional ethics was both brief and perilously close to obscene. Jenessa added suspiciously, ‘Are you sure you don’t want Grace to move in here?’

He opened the oven door. ‘As sure as I am that if you don’t hustle my roast’ll be ruined.’

Jenessa left the room, trailing upstairs to her bedroom, whose balcony overlooked a clump of wind-scoured spruce trees. Ryan had never before implied that he even noticed her single state, let alone that he thought she should end it. Maybe—she blinked at herself in the mirror—he wanted to dandle her own baby on his lap. It was the nearest he would get to being a grandfather, after all.

Ryan? Interested in babies? She had to be joking.

Oddly unsettled, she gathered up some clean clothes and headed for the shower. But three hours later, when she was sitting in Ruth and Stevie’s kitchen with baby Stephen regarding her unwinkingly from solemn, navy blue eyes, Ryan’s remark was still on her mind.

‘You look very thoughtful,’ Ruth commented.

Ruth’s husband Stevie was a wilderness guide, like Jenessa, and Jenessa had met Ruth through him. The two women had liked each other right away, and if Jenessa had a confidante it was the tall, black-haired Ruth, whose practicality was leavened with a lively dash of romanticism. Jenessa tickled Stephen under the chin, trying to get him to reveal the new tooth, and blurted, ‘Ryan thinks it’s time I got married and had a baby myself.’

‘That’s natural enough, I suppose. You are nearly twenty-six.’

‘I’m not in my coffin yet,’ Jenessa retorted. ‘Anyway, I’m not like you. I really have no desire to get married—I never have had.’

‘You spent a week with Luis, Sanchos and Miguel and didn’t even fantasize about weddings?’ Ruth had invited the three Spanish fishermen to a lobster boil in her backyard, including Jenessa in the invitation as a matter of course. Now as she folded a towel with a decisive snap she went on, ‘They were awfully sweet, Jenessa, you’ve got to admit that.’

‘I liked them. But I didn’t want to marry them.’ Jenessa managed a smile. ‘Individually or collectively.’

‘You didn’t lust after them—any of them—even the tiniest bit?’

Jenessa shook her head. ‘Nope.’

‘You could be so pretty if you just paid a bit of attention to yourself,’ Ruth mourned.

‘When you’re guiding a fisherman through a bog, mascara isn’t a top priority.’

‘You’re not in a bog now,’ Ruth snorted, giving Jenessa’s jeans and T-shirt a disparaging look. ‘Your clothes are clean, I’ll give you that. But they’re not what you’d call sexy. And I’d be willing to bet you cut your hair yourself last time.’

‘With my Swiss army knife,’ Jenessa admitted. ‘I have another client flying in tomorrow, so I won’t have time to get it cut before then, either. Anyway, Ruth, when you’re stuck in a lodge miles from anywhere with a bunch of men, which I am a fair bit of the time, it doesn’t seem appropriate or sensible to go around flaunting your sexuality. A sure way to get in trouble, thank you very much.’

‘I don’t think you know how to flaunt your sexuality,’ Ruth replied vigorously. ‘I just wish you’d go to St John’s one of these days and spend the day in a beauty salon. You wouldn’t even have to go to St John’s—Marylou, next door, has just come back from a seminar there, so she knows how to do all kinds of neat new haircuts. Your hair is such a gorgeous colour ... you know that cherrywood paddle of yours, how it shines when the sun hits it? That’s what your hair’s like—and you’re the only person I know with green eyes.’ Ruth paused, her head to one side. ‘Maybe you just haven’t met the right man.’

Jenessa didn’t think it was that simple. Touched by Ruth’s description, she said hesitantly, ‘I know I don’t fit ... I never have, really. All those women’s magazines with their advice on make-up and lovers and clothes—I can’t relate to them at all. If you want the truth, they scare me to death. I suppose it’s got something to do with never knowing my mother and growing up with my dad at Spruce Pond—no other women there. No other people, come to that.’

‘I’m not meaning to be critical,’ Ruth said hastily. ‘I like you just as you are.’

‘That’s good,’ Jenessa said with an impish grin. ‘Because I’m likely to stay this way. I’m not at all unhappy as I am, Ruth. I don’t know how to flirt, that’s true, and I’m not out plaguing some man to marry me—but I really like my life the way it is. I love my job... how could I ever give that up? Marriage and babies kind of crimp your style.’

‘They’re worth it,’ Ruth said placidly. ‘Stephen, my duckie, smile at Jenessa.’

Stephen gave a huge yawn, exposing one tiny pearlwhite tooth, and let his head plop against Jenessa’s shirt. She held him close, liking his baby-powder smell and his warm weight, yet knowing that in a few minutes she could hand him back to his mother without the slightest twinge of regret. She didn’t have any impulsion to have a baby of her own. Or to attract the man whom one required in order to produce the baby. But it was one thing to acknowledge to herself that she didn’t fit the normal societal expectations of what a woman should be like, and quite another to have both Ryan and Ruth, in one day, suggesting that she should change her ways.

She was fine as she was. Besides, the man wasn’t born for whom she would give up her job.

So why should she change?

Jenessa spent the next day washing and ironing the clothes in her backpack and helping Ryan varnish a pine bench for a customer from Massachusetts. She could have used the time to go to Marylou’s and get her hair cut, but some unacknowledged streak of stubbornness kept her from doing so.

That evening she presented herself at the airport just as the propellor-driven plane was coasting toward the terminal. The same stubbornness had caused her to dress in stone-washed jeans and a forest-green shirt with a businesslike leather belt around her waist. She knew most of the small crowd of people waiting at the gate; she was chatting to Ruth’s mother and father, who were meeting their youngest son, when the first passenger pushed open the door. While she’d been waiting, Jenessa had conjured up a mental image of the forceful Mr Marston: he’d be short—short men, in her experience, were often aggressive—greying, and would light up a very expensive cigar as soon as he entered the terminal.

She had often played this game; her record of success was interestingly high.

Ten people got off the flight from Halifax. The short ones were women, the sole man with grey hair was Tommy MacPherson from Norris Arm, and the only one smoking was Ruth’s youngest brother, a fact that would annoy Ruth considerably: Ruth was a reformed smoker and dead set against cigarettes.

A tall man with a thatch of untidy dark brown hair had halted just inside the doorway, surveying the small crowd with visible impatience. He was wearing a blue wool shirt, a well-worn pair of jeans and leather hiking boots; a haversack was slung over one broad shoulder. The only thing she had got right, Jenessa thought ruefully, was the aggression.

Quickly she walked over to him. ‘Mr Marston?’ she said with a pleasant smile.

He did not smile back. ‘I’m Finn Marston, yes.’ His voice was deep, gravelly with tiredness.

‘I’m Jenessa Reed,’ she said. ‘The guide you hired.’

His lashes flickered. ‘I’m not in the mood for jokes.’

‘Neither am I,’ she said crisply, wishing that just for once she could be taken at face value rather than having to justify her existence to her male clients. ‘I’m the person Ryan recommended to you.’

‘You’ve got that wrong. Ryan said nothing about a woman—because if he had I wouldn’t have hired you.’

‘Well, you did hire me,’ she said with another pleasant smile, although this one took more effort. ‘And I’m very good at my job. Ryan booked a room for you in the best motel in town; I’ll take you there now, if you like. Or do you have other luggage?’

He looked her up and down with an insolence that could only be deliberate, from her jagged crop of toffeecolored hair to the shiny toes of her leather loafers. ‘If I hired you, I can unhire you,’ he said. ‘I’ll get a cab to the motel—what name does it go by?’

His hair was as badly in need of cutting as her own, she thought inconsequentially; his eyes were a very dark blue, reminding her in colour, if not in expression, of Stephen’s. The stubble of beard on his chin was also dark, and there were dark shadows under his eyes. He looked, she thought with a faint stirring of compassion, truly exhausted: it was a long way from Indonesia. ‘A cab won’t be necessary; I’ll take you. Luggage?’

‘Miss Reed, I don’t think you heard me—you’ve just been fired.’

‘Mr Marston,’ she replied with rather overdone patience, ‘this is at least the fiftieth time I’ve played this little scene. Canadians, Americans, Swedes, Spaniards ... hunters, fishermen, photographers ... they all think I should be a man or they think it’s extremely funny that I’m a woman. But I can give you references from every one of them as to my competence. I do agree with you that Ryan should have told you I’m a woman. I disagree that that should make any difference to you whatsoever.’ She smiled at him again. ‘The luggage carousel’s just started up; we shouldn’t have long to wait. That’s one advantage of these short hops—the stops are brief. Have you flown far today?’

His mouth tightened. ‘Too far to get any enjoyment out of playing verbal games. The name of the motel, Miss Reed.’

She jammed her hands in the pockets of her jeans. ‘Are you Canadian, Mr Marston?’ As he nodded, she went on, ‘Then you surely must be aware that in this country you can’t fire someone because of his or her sex.’

‘So sue me. There’s my bag, and I’m sure the cabbie will know the name of the best motel in town—in a place this size there can’t be that many to choose from. Goodbye, Miss Reed.’

She said clearly, ‘I wish you luck finding a replacement. Ryan tried four other outfitters because he knew I was just coming off a job, and no go with any of them.’ With a tinge of malice she added, ‘To further enlighten you as to the law, as a non-resident you can’t go further into the woods than eight hundred meters from the highway without a guide. Good luck, Mr Marston.’

Her cheeks were pink with temper and her shirt made her irises look very green. Something flared to life in his somber blue eyes and just as quickly was smothered. ‘Thank you for your help,’ he said sardonically. Turning away from her, he heaved a battered duffle bag off the carousel and strode toward the exit. She watched as he climbed in the back seat of a taxi and drove off; he did not look back.

From behind her Ruth’s mother said, ‘My, what a handsome man ... I do love those big, rough-hewn men, don’t you, dearie? Client of yours, Jenessa?’

Ruth’s mother Alice, for all her many good points, was the most avid gossip in town, and her question was a blatant appeal for information. ‘Ex-client,’ Jenessa said, trying hard to sound as though it didn’t matter in the least that she had been unceremoniously fired in full view of several friends and acquaintances. ‘He’s done me a favor, actually—I could do with a few days off.’ She smiled at Ruth’s brother. ‘How are you, Dougie? Job going well?’

Ten minutes later she stalked into Ryan’s kitchen. Her temper, far from subsiding on the drive home, seemed to have gathered momentum. Handsome, she fumed inwardly, throwing the keys to her van on the table. Rough-hewn. Huh! Rude, chauvinistic and ignorant would be a more accurate description of Mr Finn Marston.

Ryan was sitting at the table painting a duck decoy. Matters weren’t improved when he said, after scanning her features, ‘Well, well... looks like this Marston fella woke you up a bit—haven’t seen so much colour in your cheeks since you were a kid with sunburn. What’s up, Jenny?’

‘Ryan,’ she said, ‘don’t you ever again neglect to warn a client that he’s getting a female guide. A woman. One of the so-called weaker sex. Do you hear me?’

As she yanked a chair back and sat down, kicking off her loafers, Ryan daubed jade-green on the teal’s wing feathers. ‘Wanted a man, did he?’

‘However did you guess? Did he wait to see my references? Was he interested enough to ask if I knew the area he wants to go? Can a caribou outrun a black bear?’

‘Never knew one that could,’ Ryan said, his mouth twitching. ‘It don’t sound like the two of you hit it off.’

‘I hope he ends up with the worst guide in the entire province. Someone like Larry, who’ll drop him off in the woods and then go and get drunk. I hope the mosquitoes carry him away. I hope he gets treed by a moose. I hope he falls in a bog in his nice leather hiking boots.’

‘So what did he look like?’

She mimicked Ruth’s mother, batting her lashes and simpering, ‘Tall, dark and handsome. Rough-hewn. That duck decoy’s handsomer than he was.’

Ryan gave the decoy a complacent appraisal. ‘He sure got under your skin.’

Ryan, she realized belatedly, was thoroughly enjoying her show of temper; she was normally a very tolerant woman, a trait that stood her in good stead in the woods. The last thing she needed was Ryan speculating why one man had disrupted her composure, especially in view of yesterday’s conversation. ‘I needed a few days off anyway,’ she said, trying to modulate her voice. ‘We could finish papering the kitchen.’

One wall had been papered in the spring, before fishing season started. ‘Good idea... in the meantime, seein’ as how you’re unemployed, you could make me a coffee. And don’t skimp on the sugar.’

‘No coffee unless you promise you’ll tell everyone who phones for a guide that my name is Jenessa and that I’m not a man!’

‘Guess I’ll git my own coffee,’ Ryan drawled.

Raising her brows—for when had she ever been able to make Ryan do something he didn’t want to do?—Jenessa got up and reached for the coffee in the cupboard.

CHAPTER TWO

AT NINE-THIRTY the next morning Jenessa was standing on the second from the top rung of a step-ladder in the kitchen. The radio was blaring a lachrymose ballad about a cowpoke who had lost his one true love. It was a warm day; her brief blue shorts and ribbed vest top in an eye-catching shade of yellow had been chosen with coolness in mind rather than modesty. Draped in wet folds of wallpaper, she was seriously questioning her sanity. She hated wallpapering. Always had. She might be exceedingly neat-fingered when it came to starting a fire from birchbark and shreds of wood in the middle of a downpour in the forest, but when it came to straight edges, plumb lines and recurring patterns she was a dud.

Ryan had ordered the wallpaper from a nature company; it was replete with partridge, loons and owls on a gloomy green and blue background. She had to match the loon chick under her left palm with the one in the preceding row—which meant she was going to have to decapitate the topmost row of partridge.

As the old pine floorboards creaked behind her, she said irritably, ‘Turn the radio down, would you, Ryan, and pass me the knife? If I hadn’t been in such a foul mood last night, I would never have suggested doing this—and don’t say it serves me right for losing my temper.’

A hand reached up with a yellow-handled knife. It was a tanned, smoothly muscled hand with long, lean fingers; it was definitely not Ryan’s hand. With a shriek of alarm Jenessa twisted on the step-ladder, which gave an unsettling lurch. ‘You! What are you doing here?’

Finn Marston grabbed the ladder with his free hand, holding it firm, and said, ‘From all reports I gather you’re more to be depended on in the wilderness than you’d appear to be at the top of this ladder. Where’s your father?’

‘Father?’ she repeated idiotically. ‘My father’s been dead since I was thirteen.’

‘Ryan’s not your father, then? But you live with him?’ he rapped.

In the morning light, shaven, his hair shining with cleanliness, Finn Marston did indeed qualify as handsome, Jenessa thought grudgingly. More than handsome. There was something quintessentially male about him: he made her think of the proud stance of a caribou stag out on the barrens.

Although he still looked tired out. The kind of tiredness that one night’s sleep did nothing to allay.

She said flatly, ‘My living arrangements are none of your business. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get this piece in place before it dries.’

She took the knife from him with the very tips of her fingers, adjusted the strip of wallpaper so that the loon chicks matched up and sliced the top of the paper level with the edge of the ceiling. The row of partridge heads slithered to the floor. Bending, Jenessa picked up the sponge from the top step of the ladder and started smoothing the wallpaper flat. Finn Marston was still holding the ladder, so close behind her that as the ballad ended, predictably, at the graveside, she could hear his breathing.

She tried to ignore him; when that didn’t work, she waited for him to say something, anything, the silence scraping on her nerves as she bit back any number of questions of her own, none of them polite. When there was not a single air bubble left under the damp paper and she knew she could delay facing him no longer, she turned awkwardly on the ladder and sat down on the top step, her bare feet curving round a lower rung. This put her several inches above him, a position she liked. She hadn’t known Finn Marston long but she already knew she needed every advantage she could get.

She might be aware of her advantage; it hadn’t occurred to her that the smooth curves of her legs and the shadowed hollow between her breasts were now practically under his nose.

His face changed, marred by a cynicism so intense that Jenessa was bewildered. Then, with a jolt, she realized what he was thinking. He thought she was posing for him deliberately. What was the phrase she had used at Ruth’s? Flaunting her sexuality.

Laughter bubbled in her chest, so far from the truth was he, nor did she bother hiding it. Not moving an inch, she watched as his cynicism was gradually replaced by a puzzlement too obvious to be anything but genuine. She had knocked him off balance, she thought, and wondered with a cynicism all her own how many women were able to do that. Not many, she’d be willing to bet.

From her vantage point she was only a couple of feet away from him. His face, close up, interested her in spite of herself. Over the last few years she had become fairly adept at reading character, actively trying to develop this talent as one of her survival mechanisms in the male-dominated environment in which she worked. If she applied her talents to Finn Marston’s face, what did she see?

Overwhelming exhaustion first, an exhaustion ground into the tightly held jaw and dark-shadowed eyes. He had been driven unmercifully for far too long; and she suspected that he himself was the one to have plied the whip, for he would do to himself what he would not allow others to do. Yet there was a formidable intelligence informing his features, as well as the will-power she had had a taste of last night. His eyes, deep-set, were indeed the same navy blue as Stephen’s; however, while Stephen’s were lustrous with the innocence of the very young, Finn Marston’s were guarded and wary. His mouth was a firm, ungiving line. She was suddenly visited with the urge to see it smile.

Her survey had taken her only a few seconds. ‘Now,’ Jenessa said coldly, ‘perhaps you wouldn’t mind explaining why you walked in this house without knocking and without an invitation?’

‘The door was wide open and the radio was making so much noise you didn’t hear me knock,’ he said. ‘Where’s Ryan?’

‘He went out to the shed to get a hammer and nails. Ryan frequently gets waylaid, but I’ve no doubt he’ll return sooner or later. Why are you here?’

‘What’s his relationship to you?’

‘Of the two questions, I’d say mine was the more relevant.’

‘Would you, now?’

‘Yes,’ she said sharply, ‘I would. Quite frankly, Mr Marston, after last night I don’t care if I ever set eyes on you again.’

He said evenly, not a trace of apology in his tone, ‘You were right—there aren’t any other guides available. Or, to be accurate, there were two, both of whom I figured were capable of guiding me from the motel to the nearest bar and no further. You’ll also be glad to know that everyone I spoke to sang your praises. Short of Ryan, I gather you’re the best guide in the area. So I came here to see if I could rehire you. You or Ryan.’

‘You’ll have to ask Ryan yourself. I, as you can see, am otherwise engaged.’

‘A thousand a week, all expenses paid.’

Jenessa blinked; she had never been paid that much in her life. ‘And how much would you pay a man? Two thousand?’

‘I’d pay him what I’d pay you.’ He paused and added tersely, ‘I’m sorry I went off the deep end last night. My only excuse is that I was jet-lagged and just about asleep on my feet.’

‘Which is exactly when our true selves emerge,’ she said promptly.

His fingers tightened around the ladder. ‘I’m not going to grovel. You heard my offer. Take it or leave it.’

‘Oh, I’ll—’

The porch door slammed shut and Ryan bellowed, ‘Jenny, we got a visitor; there was a cab sittin’ out in the yard. Who do you suppose came to see us in a—? Well, who’ve we got here?’

Ryan, thought Jenessa wryly, did not look his best. He had a baseball cap jammed backward on his head, his shirt was paint-spattered and one knee was out of his jeans. He was carrying an unpainted decoy instead of the hammer and nails. She said sweetly, ‘Someone who wants to hire you as a guide, Ryan. Allow me to introduce Mr Finn Marston... Thaddeus Ryan.’

She sat back on the ladder, her face lit with an amusement that Finn Marston could not have missed. Ryan grinned at the other man. ‘Couldn’t get anyone else, eh? Figured that’s what would happen.’

‘The joke’s on me,’ Finn Marston said tightly. ‘Maybe we could all have a good laugh and then get down to business.’

‘Oh, Jenessa’ll go. She hates wallpaperin’,’ Ryan said, plunking the decoy down on the table.

‘I will not!’

‘Fifteen hundred,’ Finn Marston said. ‘And that’s my last offer.’

Angrier than she could ever remember being in her life, Jenessa choked, ‘You seem to think that this is about money, Mr Marston—that you can buy me. Well, you can’t! You embarrassed and insulted me in front of a group of my friends last night, and nothing you’ve said or done today has caused me to forgive you. Now, if you’ll kindly let go of this ladder, I’ll put up the next piece of wallpaper. Ask Ryan to guide you—his hide’s tougher than mine.’

‘Can’t,’ said Ryan. ‘Takin’ Grace to the bingo social on the weekend.’

There was a small silence, during which Finn Marston’s gaze locked with Jenessa’s and Ryan filled the kettle. Hugging her bare knees, Jenessa refused to let her eyes drop. Consequently she was the first to see in her adversary’s face something that could have been the beginnings of respect. He let go of the ladder and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘How about if I take back everything I’ve said so far and start over? Will you listen? At least give me a fair hearing?’

‘I might,’ she said, raising her chin.

It was not an overwhelming endorsement; but plainly he realized it was all he was going to get. He paused, searching for words. ‘I live in a man’s world, Jenessa Reed. It’s a tough and dangerous world, and I’m at the top of the heap—I’m the one who gives the orders and I expect instant obedience. Because if you don’t obey you can end up dead. I’ve had very little to do with women the last few years, and I’ve never had a whole lot of respect for them. So the thought of being guided through the wilderness by a woman didn’t—and still doesn‘t—fill me with joy. Although I was tired last night and less than diplomatic, my feelings are the same today. I’d much prefer you to be a man.’

He gave her a smile that was a mere movement of his lips. ‘It would also seem that I have no choice—you’re the only guide available. So I’m asking you to reconsider.’

‘You’re honest,’ she said slowly, ‘I’ll give you that.’

‘I’ve never had much use for lying. Honesty saves trouble in the long run.’

A pragmatist rather than a moralist, Jenessa thought. The workings of Finn Marston’s mind were beginning to interest her rather more than she liked; simultaneously her intuition was warning her to run a mile. She said, ‘I’ll be equally honest, then. I’m not really in a position where I can afford to turn down a week’s work; the winters are long around here. But I won’t take a penny more than seven hundred a week, and if we’re in a tight spot out in the woods and I tell you to do something I’ll expect you to obey me. No questions asked. We can have a lovely argument afterwards about male dominance—but at the time you’ll do what I say.’

‘Because it’s your territory.’

‘That’s right.’ She smiled suddenly, a smile that lit up her face. ‘I’ve never lost a client yet, and I don’t plan to start with you.’

While he didn’t smile back, his face did relax slightly. ‘Eight hundred a week.’

‘Seven.’

The kettle screamed on the stove and Ryan banged three pottery mugs on the table. Spooning instant coffee into them, he said, ‘Quit fightin’, you two. If you’re hell-bent on overpayin’ her, Marston, tip her at the end of the trip.’ His grin was frankly malicious. ‘Let’s drink to the partnership, eh? One thing’s for sure—I doubt it’ll be dull.’

Finn Marston turned away from her and Jenessa scrambled down the ladder. Somehow, in the last ten minutes, she had agreed to go to an undisclosed destination for an unknown length of time with a man who set off all her alarm bells. She put a healthy dollop of honey in her mug and watched as Ryan sloshed in the boiling water. ‘You haven’t told me yet where we’re going or for how long you’ve hired me, Mr Marston,’ she said.

‘I’ve got all the maps back at the motel. Maybe we could go there next and I can show you; it’d be simpler than trying to explain it here. I don’t have any idea how long it’ll take. I do know I don’t have any time to waste—I probably shouldn’t be here at all. So we’ll be moving as fast as we can.’

‘At least tell me if we’re going into the interior.’

‘That’s the understatement of the year,’ he said, his voice holding an edge of bitterness.

‘Do you have knee-high rubber boots?’

‘Not with me.’

‘We’ll go to a supplier in town and get you a pair,’ she said. ‘Leather hiking boots are useless in a bog.’

‘All right,’ he said.

For the first time she saw a flash of humor glint in his eyes. She chuckled, beguiled by the way it had lightened his features. ‘Instant obedience,’ she remarked. ‘You learn fast.’

‘You’re the only guide available—right?’ he said drily. Turning to Ryan, he asked, ‘What kind of duck is that?’

Ryan loved to talk about his decoys and was soon launched on one of his many hunting stories. Jenessa drank her coffee then pushed back from the table. ‘I’m going to change; I’ll be back in a few minutes,’ she said.

Ten minutes later, showered and dressed in jeans, a plain short-sleeved safari shirt and sandals, she was back in the kitchen, her over-long hair clinging damply to her neck. Finn Marston stood up as soon as she entered. ‘Thanks for the coffee, Ryan,’ he said.

‘Any time.’ Ryan gave an uncouth cackle. ‘Don’t run from a black bear and don’t let the stouts bite ya.’

Jenessa raised her brows and led the way out of the kitchen. ‘A black bear can run forty-five miles an hour out on the barrens,’ she explained, leading the way to her red van. ‘So there’s not much point in trying to run away from one. And a stout’s the Newfoundland version of a deer fly—unceasingly hungry and oblivious to any brand of fly dope that I’ve ever tried. They’ve been known to drive caribou crazy in the early summer.’

‘Are you trying to discourage me?’

‘And talk myself out of seven hundred a week?’ she said limpidly, starting the motor and steering the van between the potholes in Ryan’s driveway.

‘You don’t work just for money.’

‘I work because I love being outdoors,’ Jenessa said with sudden intensity. ‘I couldn’t bear to be cooped up in an office all day.’

‘I suffer from the same problem,’ he said. ‘What’s your relationship to Ryan?’

His change of subject made her edgy. ‘He was my father’s best friend, and he taught me just about everything I know about the woods. I’ve lived with him since I was sixteen.’

‘But your father died when you were thirteen. Did you live with your mother for the next three years?’

That three years had been the worst time of Jenessa’s life. Braking at a stop sign, she said carefully, ‘Would you be asking me these kinds of questions—personal ones, I mean—if I were a man?’

‘You’re not.’

She crossed the street, driving past a row of small bungalows and deciding that two could play that game. ‘Why don’t you have much respect for women?’ she asked.

He gave a short laugh. ‘There are no flies on you, stout or otherwise. By the way, I didn’t bring any fly dope—maybe we could buy some.’

‘I’ve got lots. The flies aren’t that bad now; we’ve had a few cold nights.’ She swung round a corner, aware that he hadn’t answered her question any more than she had answered his. ‘We’ll get the boots from my friend Stevie; he’s the only one in town who carries them. Have you got rain gear, Mr Marston?’

‘As we’re going to be spending the next few days together, why don’t we go with Finn and Jenessa?’ he said impatiently.

Normally Jenessa preferred being on a first-name basis. But for a reason she couldn’t fathom, hearing her name on Finn’s lips made her feel as though he was laying claim to some part of her, a part that was strictly her own. Chiding herself for being overly imaginative, she said coolly, ‘Fine. Rain gear?’

He nodded. Efficiently she ran through a list of personal gear he’d need, finishing, ‘We supply tents and sleeping-bags and all the food. Here we are... Ruth’s home, by the look of it, but not Stevie.’

Ruth greeted them cheerfully, clearly impressed by Jenessa’s latest client. She led them to the room in the basement where she and Stevie sold a wide array of hunting and fishing equipment, and pulled out a stack of boxes. ‘Your size should be here,’ she said to Finn. ‘Try them on and feel free to walk around outdoors in them.’

As he slipped his feet into the first pair of rubber boots, Ruth remarked with rather overdone casualness, ‘Jenessa, I was just talking to Marylou—her ten-thirty appointment was cancelled; you should take a run over.’

‘I don’t have the time,’ Jenessa said shortly. As Finn stood up, she knelt at his feet, pressing on the toes of the boots to see how they fit, her shirt pulled tight over the slim line of her back. ‘They seem a little small,’ she said dubiously, glancing up at him. ‘If we do any amount of walking, it’s really important to get a good fit.’ .

With a directness that no longer surprised her, he said, ‘Who’s Marylou?’

‘The hairdresser next door,’ she answered repressively. ‘I think you should try a half-size larger.’

He did so, and said with a satisfied grunt, ‘They feel better—maybe I will walk outside in them, if that’s okay.’ The smile he gave Ruth would have charmed the birds from the trees, Jenessa thought sourly; she got the tail end of it as he added, ‘Come with me, Jenessa; you can probably tell if I’ve got the right ones better than I can.’

She trailed up the steps behind him. He walked across the front lawn, glanced at Marylou’s sign and wrapped his fingers around Jenessa’s elbow. ‘If I’ve got to take to the woods with a woman, I’d at least prefer her to look like one,’ he said, and steered her unceremoniously toward Marylou’s side-door.

Jenessa’s jaw had dropped. She snapped it shut, dug her heels into the grass and sputtered, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘Getting you a haircut. Maybe she’ll do mine at the same time.’

‘You can shave your head for all I care,’ Jenessa stormed, tugging fruitlessly at his fingers. ‘My hair’s fine as it is and Ruth’s mother, who lives right across the street, is undoubtedly glued to the window watching us. This’ll be all over town by evening.’

‘Then you’d better stop struggling, hadn’t you?’ he said.

He was a good five inches taller than she and stronger by far. Disconcertingly strong, she thought with a quiver of unease. ‘What do you do for your living?’ she asked.

‘If I’m not allowed to ask personal questions, neither are you. Come along.’

One thing Jenessa had learned in her life was when to give up fighting the odds. Vowing to herself that no matter where she and Finn Marston went she’d walk him through every bog she could find until he begged for mercy, she stalked into Marylou’s beauty parlor.

Marylou favored frilly curtains, crocheted mats and artificial flowers; Finn’s big body looked totally out of place. Marylou herself was plump and pretty, her forgetme-not-blue eyes concealing a shrewd grasp of business. With frigid politeness Jenessa said, ‘Marylou, this is Finn Marston—I’m guiding for him. He wants a haircut.’

Finn had been looking around with interest. He pointed to a photo of a woman’s head that had been mounted on the wall and said, ‘Could you give Jenessa that cut, Marylou?’

‘Sure I could—it’d look real nice on her.’

Jenessa glared at him. ‘He’s the one who needs the haircut. Not me.’

Marylou said amiably, ‘I’m free until lunchtime, so I can do both of you. You first, Jenessa; you just sit down right over here.’

Finn said equally amiably, ‘I think she cut it with a hacksaw last time.’

Tom between fury and a crazy urge to laugh, Jenessa said, ‘What’s the matter, Finn—having problems with your masculinity? Got to assert yourself now because I’m the one who’ll be giving the orders once we leave town?’

Marylou was swathing her in a plastic cape at the sink. He said succinctly, ‘You’ve got it wrong—you have problems with your femininity. I’ll be back in a few minutes.’

Ryan, Ruth and now Finn—it was too much. But Marylou had turned on the tap full force and Finn was striding out of the door in his new rubber boots. Jenessa leaned back and closed her eyes, any number of clever rebuttals seething in her brain. She paid scant attention as Marylou shampooed and rinsed her hair, then combed it out and started to cut. Finn Marston had better not push her too far, she thought darkly; she hadn’t signed any contracts, so she could resign any time she liked and leave him in the lurch.

He didn’t think she looked like a woman. Whatever that meant.

One thing was sure: he hadn’t intended it as a compliment.

CHAPTER THREE

MARYLOU chattered on about the plot twists in the daily soap operas, keeping herself between Jenessa and the mirror. The blow-drier wafted warm air around Jenessa’s ears. Then Marylou brushed her hair in place, snipping a few loose ends with her scissors. She swivelled Jenessa round to face the mirror, saying with immense satisfaction, ‘Ever since I took that last seminar I’ve been wanting to get my hands on your hair, love—not bad, eh?’

Stunned, Jenessa looked at the stranger in the glass. Her hair was now tapered over her ears, emphasizing the slender length of her neck and the shape of her eyes with their brilliant green irises, and bringing her cheekbones into new prominence; wisps of hair, polished like the cherrywood to which Ruth had compared it, softened her forehead and clung to her nape. ‘It doesn’t even look like me,’ she said stupidly.

The door creaked open. Then another reflection joined hers in the mirror: the man who was the cause of this. He was staring straight at her, dark blue eyes meeting green. He looked, she thought in utter panic, like a hunter who had caught sight of his prey.

‘Looks nice, doesn’t it?’ Marylou said complacently. ‘I won’t charge you full price, dear, because it gave me the chance to try something new. Did you say you wanted a cut, Mr Marston?’

With a palpable effort Finn dragged his gaze from Jenessa’s. ‘Just a trim,’ he said.

Jenessa got up, threw a couple of bills on the counter and croaked, ‘I’ll be at Ruth’s.’ She ran outside and across the lawn, feeling the breeze on her bare neck, and had she been asked she couldn’t have said what—or whom—she was fleeing.

In Ruth’s kitchen she skidded to a halt. Ruth, Stephen and Ruth’s mother Alice were all in the kitchen; Alice was the last person Jenessa wanted to see. If her brain had been working, she thought frantically, she would have realized Alice would have rushed straight over to Ruth’s on a fact-finding mission. Ruth said, ‘Jenessa—your hair is gorgeous!’

‘My, my,’ Alice said coyly, ‘never knew you to change your looks for a man, Jenessa. He must be someone pretty special.’

Jenessa could not begin to answer this. She reached out for Stephen, cuddling him and playing with his pudgy little fingers. ‘How’s the new tooth, sweetie?’ she babbled. ‘I’d love a cup of tea, Ruth. Stevie’s getting home tonight, isn’t that what you told me?’

‘No,’ said Ruth, ‘I never told you that. He’s not back until next week.’ Taking pity on her friend, she said firmly, ‘Mum, why don’t you run home and fetch us a few doughnuts to go with our tea? You make the best doughnuts in town.’

When Alice came back a few minutes later, Jenessa was ladling cereal into Stephen’s mouth and Ruth was determinedly discussing the local by-election. But Alice was not so easily discouraged. Into the first pause in the conversation she said, ‘Looked to me like you and that handsome Finn Marston were having a tiff on the front lawn, Jenessa—I hear you’re going into the woods with him, though.’

She managed to make this latter phrase sound thoroughly clandestine. ‘I’m guiding him, yes,’ Jenessa replied. ‘Oops, Stephen, we missed that one.’

‘After all this time—when I’d just about given up on you, dearie, I might as well tell you the truth—I do believe you’re finally falling in love,’ Alice crowed.

The spoon dropped with a clatter on to the high tray, cereal spattered Jenessa’s shirt and she said with more force than wisdom, ‘I’m not in love with him; don’t be silly, Alice! He’s a rude, chauvinistic, controlling——’

She broke off, for Finn Marston had just opened the screen door and must have heard every word she’d said. Feeling a strong urge to burst into tears, she wailed, ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me—I’m never rude to my clients—it’s one of my unbreakable rules ... and I’ve got cereal all down my clean shirt! Wallpapering would be better than this.’

Finn beat Ruth to the sink, took the cloth from the dishrack and wet it under the tap. Then he advanced on Jenessa. ‘Hold still,’ he said.

‘Oh, no,’ she said warmly, ‘I’m quite capable of wiping my own shirt, thank you.’

‘You’re like a hedgehog,’ he said. ‘All prickles.’

‘There aren’t any hedgehogs in Newfoundland.’

‘There’s one right here in the kitchen.’

She yanked the cloth from his hand and scrubbed at her shirt. ‘I’m never rude to clients and I never go to beauty parlors,’ she muttered. ‘I wish I knew what was going on here.’

‘Do you really not know?’ Finn said with sudden intentness.

She glanced up. His hair, newly trimmed and entirely civilized, made his features look all the more rough-hewn; she had no idea what he was thinking. ‘No,’ she said.

He said quietly, speaking to her alone, ‘Then I’ll tell you ... I was in Tunisia once and I found an old ceramic pot buried by a dried-up pond. The pot was stained and dirty and filled with mud. So I took it back to the camp and washed it very carefully and polished it with a soft cloth—and then I saw that it had an exquisite design of tiny green birds and marsh reeds etched all around the lip. It was very beautiful.’ He looked at her, his dark blue eyes fathomless. ‘That was why I wanted your hair cut.’

A tide of hot color swept across Jenessa’s cheeks. For several seconds she was literally speechless. Then she whispered, ‘Beautiful? Me?’

‘Jenessa, where have you been all your life? Yes, beautiful.’

Alice gave a sigh of repletion. ‘My, oh, my, I wish I’d had my video camera for that,’ she said soulfully. ‘Better than Another World.’

Jenessa scarcely heard her. Like a woman in a dream she walked over to the little mirror that hung over the sink and stared at herself. She had no need of make-up, she thought. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes shining; she looked as fully alive as a brightly colored butterfly dancing from flower to flower in the sunlight.

Behind her Finn said abruptly, ‘We’d better go. We’ve got to figure out our route, and I need some kind of time frame so I can phone my company. Thanks for the boots, Ruth—coming, Jenessa?’

Trying to gather her wits, Jenessa dropped a kiss on Stephen’s fluffy hair, hugged Ruth and Alice, whose eyes were almost popping out of her head, and walked outside to the van. Driving gave her something to focus on, and Finn said not a word as they crossed town to the motel. She parked in front of his unit and followed him into the room. The door clicked shut behind them.

His luggage was neatly stashed against the wall, the blue shirt he had been wearing last night was hanging over the back of one of the chairs and a bundle of papers and maps had been thrown on the bed. The maps seemed to steady her; she knew about maps, knew how to read them and transpose the thin lines on the paper to the actual contours of the land. She took a deep breath and said with commendable matter-of-factness, ‘Show me where you want to go.’

He sat down on the edge of the bed, unfolding a map of the whole province as well as two detailed topographical maps. ‘We’ll fly by helicopter into this lodge,’ he said, ‘I have connections with the oil companies, and I can get a ’copter any time I want one.’

Casually Jenessa sat down beside him, one leg tucked under her, following the line of his finger to a lake well south of the highway. Her eyes widened in dismay. Caribou Lake. Of all the thousands of lakes in Newfoundland, Finn Marston wanted to go to Caribou Lake.

‘The lodge is called Caribou Outfitters. Run by a guy called Lloyd MacDonald—calls himself Mac; I’ve already talked to him. Do you know the area at all?’

‘I know it very well,’ she said raggedly.

He shot a quick look at her. ‘You’ve been there before?’

‘Many times.’ With at least partial truth she said, ‘I used to work for Mac. A couple of years ago. I don’t see why you need me if you’re going to his lodge; he has his own guides.’

‘I’m only using the lodge as a base. This is where I really want to go.’

With true incredulity Jenessa watched his finger move still further south into a network of lakes and still waters that she could have traced on the map with her eyes shut. In a cracked voice she said, ‘That’s Hilchey land—what do you want to go there for?’

‘You’re familiar with it?’

‘He’s dead—old Mr Hilchey. He died six months ago. Why do you want to see his property?’

‘I asked you a question, Jenessa—are you familiar with that land?’

She gave a short, unamused laugh. ‘I’ve walked every ridge and barren, and canoed every waterway from Caribou River to Indian Brook.’ And if she had ever hated anyone in her life, it had been George Hilchey.

Finn spread out one of the topographical maps. ‘It’s a huge area; how could you know it so well?’

The names on the map jumped out at her. Osprey Falls, Beothuck Pond, Juniper Lake. Names and places that she had discovered as a child and loved with all the passionate intensity of a child. To the east lay Spruce Pond, where she had lived with her father for thirteen years on a tiny cove in sight of two tree-clad islands; her eyes shied away from it, for she had never once gone back there and now doubted that she ever would. She said, hard-voiced, ‘Why do you want to go there, Finn?’

His mouth tightened. ‘Curiosity,’ he said.

‘That’s no kind of an answer!’

‘It’s all the answer you’re going to get. George Hilchey used to have a summer place here on this lake—I want to visit it, and check out the area while I’m there.’

‘I wish you’d told me this last night,’ she said tautly. ‘It would have saved both of us a lot of trouble. For reasons that are nothing to do with you, I can’t possibly go there.’

His eyes narrowed, the force of his will-power like a blast of cold wind. ‘You’ll go,’ he said.

‘One of Mac’s guides will take you in—you’d have to go by canoe.’

‘Canoe?’

‘It’s the only way to get there.’

‘I’ve never been in a canoe in my life!’

‘A new experience for you,’ she said ironically.

‘Jenessa, in case you haven’t heard of them, there’s a marvellous twentieth-century invention called a float plane. It lands on lakes. This place is riddled with lakes.’

‘You see these crosses on the lake? Those are rocks. Big rocks. They don’t bother marking all the little ones. Plus there are deadheads in those waters—submerged logs—from the days of the log jams on the rivers. No pilot in his right mind is going to risk a float plane on those waters.’

‘We’ll take the helicopter in.’

‘No clearings. Hilchey’s summer place hasn’t been used in twenty years—the alders will have taken over.’

‘For God’s sake!’ Finn exploded. ‘It’ll take days to get in there by canoe.’

‘A week, I’d say.’

‘Then another week to get out—I haven’t got that kind of time to waste.’

She shrugged, tamping down a mixture of emotions too complicated to analyze. ‘Have the helicopter fly low over the land; that should satisfy your curiosity. It’ll cost you a small fortune, mind you. Although,’ she added with a touch of malice, ‘you’ll be saving seven hundred a week.’

‘But you’re saying the ’copter can’t land at the summer house.’ He got up from the bed, prowling round the room like a caged bear. ‘Couldn’t you get there in less than a week?’

She shook her head. ‘That’s back country ... a strong wind can easily hold you up for a couple of days. Besides, if your guide has any sense, he’ll keep you two or three days at the lodge learning the essentials of canoeing before you set out. There’s whitewater on some of those rivers, and you’re miles from anywhere.’

He glared at her. ‘So now it’s three weeks!’

‘Finn,’ she said curiously, ‘how long is it since you’ve taken a holiday?’

‘I forget.’

‘The wilderness has its own time scheme. Dawn and dusk, winds and rain ... you can’t force it or control it.’

‘I don’t think you understand—I run a multi-million-dollar business,’ he snapped. ‘Big-league stuff.’

‘Then go back to it and forget about George Hilchey’s summer house,’ she said indifferently.

He thrust his hands in the pockets of his jeans. ‘It’s a wonder to me that none of your clients has ever shot you rather than the moose.’

Jenessa laughed, abandoning their argument, because after all it was nothing to do with her how Finn got to the old summer house. ‘One or two of them have contemplated it, I’m sure.’

Her eyes were dancing, her pose on the big bed unselfconsciously graceful. Finn took a step toward her, halted and said levelly, ‘Excuse me a minute.’

He went to the phone, punched a great many numbers, eventually said a few phrases in a language unknown to Jenessa, and finally rapped, ‘Jonah? Finn here. What’s up?’

Jenessa smoothed the map flat, fighting back a wave of nostalgia for the woods and waters of her childhood, and heard Finn say, ‘You did? On the second attempt? It fit the flange? Then it was worthwhile doing the trial run... When do you think you’ll pull out? You’ll join them in Venezuela by Thursday? Yeah ... I’m thinking of taking two or three weeks, Jonah. By the sound of it you’re coping just fine without me. If you need anything while I’m away you’ll have to go via Moswell’s helicopter and a place called Caribou Lodge; the ’copter pilot will know where that is. You did a fine job. Get Brian to keep on top of all the finances, won’t you? Okay, all the best.’

He put down the receiver and turned back to Jenessa. ‘What time can we be ready to leave?’

‘I’m not going!’

‘You agreed to guide for me. You can’t go back on that.’

‘You mean you can fire me but I can’t quit?’

Without emphasis Finn said, ‘You wouldn’t want me putting the word round that you broke a contract, would you? Even if it was only a verbal one.’

Jenessa got a lot of her work by word of mouth. In a surge of pure rage she said, ‘Is this the way you act in the business world? No wonder you made it to the top.’

‘I do what it takes. You’re going to guide me to the Hilchey place, Jenessa—I won’t take no for an answer.’ He gave her the faintest of smiles. ‘Anyway, I’ve just agreed to take my first vacation in over five years—you can’t let me down now.’

With utter clarity Jenessa thought, I have a choice here. I can stay home and wallpaper the kitchen. Safe and ordinary and boring, and if Finn blackens my name I’ll survive. Or I can risk going back to the place where I grew up. Seeing it from the perspective of an adult. I’m twice as old as I was when I left... I’m not thirteen any more, raw with pain and filled with fear. Maybe the old magic will have gone. Maybe it’ll be just another place, nothing special.

Maybe it’s time I laid that particular ghost to rest.

‘Why are you so interested in the Hilchey land?’ she demanded. ‘Are you some kind of high-powered lawyer settling the estate? Although you don’t act like any lawyer I ever knew.’

‘Not once in my life have I ever contemplated joining the legal profession,’ Finn said pithily. ‘I only wish I understood why that land’s so important to you—why you won’t tell me what your connection is with it.’

She couldn’t possibly explain it to him. As she shook her head, her green eyes wary, he said, ‘I’ll ask Ryan.’

‘Not if you value living, you won’t.’

‘I’ve stepped into something, haven’t I?’ he said slowly. ‘Something pretty major as far as you’re concerned. Maybe Mac will tell me when we get to the lodge.’

‘Mac will tell you exactly what he thinks you want to hear—he’s a master at that.’

‘And to think,’ Finn remarked, ‘that I almost didn’t come here because I figured I’d be bored.’ In one of the swift shifts of topic that she had almost come to expect of him, he added, ‘Are you afraid to spend two or three weeks alone with me?’

She raised her chin. ‘I’ve never been afraid of a man in my life.’

‘There are some you should be frightened of.’

‘You’re not one of them,’ Jenessa said, and wondered if she was speaking the truth. If her behaviour of the last eighteen hours was anything to go by, perhaps she should be afraid.

‘So what time are we leaving?’ Finn repeated softly.

One last chance to see the land she had roamed as a girl. To choose risk over safety. Biting her lip, she muttered, ‘Ryan will organize the gear but I’ll have to look after the food... I’d say by four. I’ll talk to Mac and tell him we’ll be there in time for supper.’

She was staring down at the map and missed the triumph that raced across Finn’s face. He made another phone call, arranging for the helicopter to take them to the lodge. Then he sat down on the bed again. ‘So, Jenessa Reed,’ he said, ‘we’re on. We’re spending the next two weeks together.’

The choice, she had known all along, hadn’t only been a matter of the land. Her mouth dry, she said, ‘As employer and employee.’

‘We’re already more than that, and you know it.’

Certainly she had never been so outspoken to any of her other clients. ‘That’s all we are,’ she said stubbornly.

With unexpected violence Finn said, ‘I don’t have a clue what’s going on here! But I’ll tell you one thing—you’re totally unlike any other woman I’ve ever been with. Nor, for some reason, can I believe that I only met you last night.’

Inwardly terrified, outwardly composed, Jenessa quipped, ‘You feel as if we’ve been arguing forever?’

Some of the tension eased in his face. ‘You’re certainly the most contentious woman I’ve ever met.’

‘But you said yourself the sample was small,’ she answered gently, and stood up. ‘I’d better go; I’ve got a lot to do. I’ll be back here at quarter to four.’

Finn stood up too, his body moving with a lazy grace. Very deliberately he held out his hand. ‘I’m glad we’re going to be together,’ he said.

She could not, without adding bad manners to contentiousness, refuse to shake hands with him. Reluctantly she stretched out her own. His grip was firm, his palm warm against hers. She looked down, in one glance seeing the lean length of his fingers with their well-kept nails and the dusting of dark hair on the back of his hand, where the bones and sinews moved under the tanned skin. His wristwatch with its new leather strap looked expensive. His forearm was tanned as well, corded with muscle. Then the faint tang of his aftershave drifted to her nostrils, and underlying it she caught something far more elemental and more powerful: the scent of the man himself.

She glanced up, her nerves as alert as if she had just sighted a fresh bear track on the trail, her senses acutely aware of the sound of his breathing and the warmth of his body across the space that separated them. She had touched a man before, of course she had. But never had she felt such an instinctive vigilance, so total and instant an involvement; with a lurch of her heart she found herself comparing it with the strange bond that united the hunter and the hunted. Pulling her hand free, her green eyes bewildered, she muttered, ‘Two weeks could be a very long time.’

‘It’ll be as long as we need,’ Finn said cryptically. ‘I’ll see you later.’

She hurried outdoors into the sunshine, wondering what she had gotten herself into. She had told the truth when she’d said she’d never been afraid of a man; even Mac had never really frightened her.

But Finn Marston was different. Dauntingly different.

He wouldn’t take no for an answer. And he thought she was beautiful.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE next few hours were hectically busy for Jenessa. She drove straight home and told Ryan about the proposed trip to the property that George Hilchey had owned. As Ryan raised bushy white brows, she warned, ‘I don’t want to talk about it and I swear if you so much as breathe a word to Finn about my connection with that land I’ll move out and I’ll never come back.’

This was indeed a dire threat. Ryan solemnly ran a dirty finger across his throat and said, ‘You want me to load up the two backpacks?’

‘That’d be a great help. Water tablets, flashlights, tents, tarp... you know what we need, Ryan. The food’s going to take a bit of organizing; I’ll head out to the grocery store after I call Mac.’

She got through on the radio-phone to Caribou Lodge on the first try. ‘Mac? Jenessa Reed here. I’ll be arriving at the lodge around five-thirty today with a man called Finn Marston; can you put him up for a couple of nights?’

There was a fractional pause. ‘So he hired you, did he? I didn’t have a guide free.’

She knew Mac well; beneath the innocuous words he was angry. ‘As you’ve already spoken to him, then you know what he wants,’ she said calmly. ‘We’ll be canoeing to the old Hilchey place, but I’ll want to be around the lodge for two or three days first; he’s never been in a canoe before. Any problem with that?’

‘He can have a room in the lodge. You can go in the guides’ cabin.’

‘We can rent a canoe?’

‘A seventeen-foot wood and canvas.’

‘Great. We’ll bring our own food and gear. Thanks, Mac.’

‘See you,’ he grunted.

Mac didn’t want them there. She’d bet her bottom dollar on it. More undercurrents, Jenessa thought, and for the life of her couldn’t understand what they might be. Yes, she’d turned Mac down two years ago. But they’d met since then and he’d been at his most charming, as though to show her that he couldn’t care less. Frowning, she started on the grocery list.

At quarter to four she stuffed the last pair of clean socks into one of the side-pockets of her backpack. Ryan had already loaded Finn’s into the van; although she hadn’t had the time to check its contents, Ryan had been packing for long trips most of his life and wouldn’t be likely to have forgotten anything. Paddles, life-vests, the Duluth packs with the food... they were all in the van, too.

‘Move it, Jenny,’ Ryan hollered.

She swung the pack on her back and hurried outside, and they arrived at the motel at five to four. Finn was standing outside, his duffel bag and haversack at his feet. He put his gear in the back where Ryan was sitting and sat in the front beside Jenessa. ‘We’re late,’ he said.

‘The helicopter won’t go without us,’ she responded evenly, and swung out into the traffic.

When they got to the hangar, the oil-company helicopter was parked on the tarmac. Jenessa had met the pilot before, a man in his forties by the name of Wally. She introduced Finn and they started loading gear in the helicopter. Crouched in the rear, she said, ‘Could you pass up those two canvas bags, Finn? Careful, they’re heavy; they’ve got all our food.’

Finn grasped the leather handles of the first bag, levering it up to the level of the helicopter floor. Jenessa leaned forward to take it from him, and as he gave a final heave saw him gasp with pain, his features contorted. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked in quick concern.

He shoved the pack toward her, not meeting her eyes. ‘Yeah... out of shape, that’s all.’

He didn’t look like a man who was out of shape. But she swallowed any other questions because Wally had begun his pre-flight check and they were already late. Carefully she leaned her cherrywood paddle against the pile of packs and jumped down to the ground. ‘That’s it—let’s go.’

Ryan gave her a light punch on the arm and said gruffly, ‘Stay away from souse holes, won’t ya?’

Jenessa grinned at him. ‘Finish the wallpapering while I’m gone.’

She climbed into the back seat and strapped herself in. As Finn eased himself into the passenger seat, twisting his body in the confined space, another spasm of pain tightened his features. If there was something wrong, she thought grimly, he should have told her. She had first-aid training, but there were no doctors where they were going.

Within minutes they lifted off the ground. As the houses diminished beneath them, she adjusted her headset, amused to hear Wally, as much as he was capable of being deferential, deferring to Finn. Whatever Finn did, it must be big league; helicopters, as well she knew, didn’t come cheap and helicopter pilots were notorious for their independence. Then she saw Finn unfold his map. ‘Can you fly me over this island, Wally?’ he asked. ‘There should be an old house on it.’

‘Sure thing,’ Wally said easily. ‘The boss told me to take you wherever you wanted to go.’

Jenessa didn’t want to fly over the Hilchey land. She had counted on entering it gradually, adjusting day by day to the landscape she loved. Biting her lip, she watched as the town and the grey ribbon of highway dropped away behind them, to be replaced by the dense green of trees and the paler green of the barrens. Within half an hour they had reached Caribou Lodge, its tall windows bouncing back the sun’s glare. Wally followed the twisting course of the river south, pointing out the lakes and ponds to Finn. Her eyes glued to the window, Jenessa saw the white patch of Osprey Falls and the meandering trail of Beothuck Brook with its groves of silvertrunked birches. She had caught her first trout in that brook, and had swum with her father in the pool below the falls, the cold water making her skin tingle... Juniper Lake, Little Bog Pond, Cranberry Lake—one by one they slipped below her. Then, in the distance, the cove on Spruce Pond glittered in the sunlight.

She was too far away to pick out the cabin where she had grown up. To her horror her eyes crowded with tears, blurring the landscape into an impressionistic haze of blues and greens.

Finn turned in his seat. ‘Jenessa, do you—what’s wrong?’

Wally, too, glanced over his shoulder. Wishing both of them a thousand miles away, swiping away the tear that had trickled down her cheek, she choked, ‘Nothing.’

Finn’s eyes bored into hers. He knew she was lying. But he’d wait for an explanation, she thought uneasily. Wait as a hunter must wait. He said brusquely, ‘Can you pick out the house if we go over it?’

She nodded, fighting back emotions as keenly felt now as they had been when she was thirteen. She’d been a fool to agree to this, an utter fool.

Blinking hard, she saw below her the shores of the unimaginatively named Middle Lake, with its egg-shaped island in the dead center of the lake. As Wally brought the helicopter lower and the trees took on individual shapes and sizes, the angled line of a roof high on the cliffs at one end of the island sprang into view. ‘There,’ she said. ‘You can even see the remains of the wharf among the rocks,’

‘No place to land,’ Wally said cheerfully. ‘Too bad.’

Finn said nothing. He, like Jenessa, was staring at the ground, his jaw set, his face empty of expression.

Wally brought the helicopter round, heading north back toward the lodge. Jenessa gazed down at her linked hands in her lap, breathing deeply to settle her nerves. With a bit of luck Finn wouldn’t remember she’d been crying; and Mac had never been overly observant—he wouldn’t notice any traces of tears on her cheeks.

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