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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.
