скачать книгу бесплатно
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.’
