The tracks were faint and in a location almost inaccessible by vehicle. And they'd definitely been made after the late May rains by someone driving in from the south and east, being careful to keep below the first ridge and out of sight of curious or casual eyes.
Jake leaned against a tree and surveyed the ridges and valleys spreading out before him in the vast, undulating terrain. A little of it was primal forest, most of it old second growth, and some the overgrown remains of long-abandoned forty-acre allotments. All of it was wild and untamed.
He still shuddered when he topped the first ridge and started into the hills, still found himself looking back over his shoulder, and he supposed he always would. But daily now, except for the day before, he searched a part of his place or a part of Megan's. He didn't know what he sought, just that he must. He didn't know who was coming onto the property or why, just that someone was.
Travel at night would be more difficult for an intruder, he speculated, even someone familiar with the old logging trails and the locations of the worn-out fences with their rotting posts. Without lights, it would be easy to drop into a washout or over a ledge. With lights, in a location where there ought to be none, whoever it was ran the risk of being spotted. But it appeared that the time after dark was the time of choice. Unfortunately, the nights he had watched and waited, no one had come.
And when they did come, what in the hell were they doing back here?
Whoever it was had been at this particular location not too long after a rain and had stopped in a patch of mud that later dried, keeping the impressions of a wide deep-treaded tire and a large booted foot with a worn-down wide, flat heel.
Two people had gotten out of the vehicle—a four-wheel drive of some sort because nothing else could have gotten to this spot—one on each side of it, and had walked a short distance, each in a different direction, before returning to the vehicle, turning it around, and leaving in the same direction from which they had come.
The trail of the two men on foot was too cold for Deacon to follow. The good side of that bad news was that no one had left anything for Deacon to find, either.
These tracks weren't made last night by the vehicle Jake had heard then; he still hadn't found any sign of that one. But they couldn't have been here more than ten days or for that matter, because of how quickly the ground dried up here, less than eight or nine.
Jake knelt down and plucked a broken and brittle briar vine from the trail. If this were the first time he had found sign of trespassers, he would probably write it off—as hunters, someone out spotlighting a deer. He wouldn't like it but wouldn't be overly concerned. But he'd heard no unexplained rifle shots, and, in spite of all his contacts, no gossip.
No, whoever had been here was after something more than out-of- season game. He was pretty sure the search had begun about the time Max Renfro moved out, which he now knew was because Megan's attorney had evicted him so she could take possession.
And while he had seen evidence of trespass in several locations, this particular intrusion, as did most of them, just happened to be on Hudson property. "Now what does that mean?" Jake asked softly.
Deacon whined once, as though trying to answer, and came to Jake's side.
Still looking with narrowed eyes over the sprawling landscape, Jake ran his hand through the dog's ruff. "I know, boy," he said. "I don't believe in coincidences either."
He could try to follow the vehicle's trail, but that would be futile. If he were lucky to find enough signs to get any kind of decent fix on its direction, as soon as it met up with one of the old logging roads he'd lose it again.
And it was getting late. Not late as in dark, true dark wouldn't come for hours yet, but late enough on the southeastern side of the ridge for the shadows to be warning that night approached. Late enough that he figured it was time he made the mile or so hike back to where he had left his pickup. And late enough that his body had begun to complain of not enough sleep and too much physical effort the last two days.
Back at his place, he showered. He debated shaving but decided not to because Megan might think that smacked too much of a male ploy. For the same reason, he dressed in work clothes, clean but nothing that would feed any possible suspicions that this was more than a neighborly visit.
From his refrigerator he took two steaks and a loaf of Barbara's mother's French bread he had gotten from the freezer earlier, a bottle of wine, and the makings for a salad.
He needed feeding, but that wasn't the reason he was taking the food to Megan.
She needed caring for.
And maybe, if he ever again got rested, he'd understand why it was that he was the one who needed to do the caring.
He found her sitting in a canvas chair on her front porch, holding a tall glass of iced tea and with her slender, elegant, bare feet propped on the porch rail.
She looked freshly scrubbed and shampooed, and her light brown hair framed her delicate features like a halo, showing in them an ethereal beauty he'd never glimpsed beneath the stylish hair and careful makeup he remembered. She wore more of her shapeless clothes, but now, even though he didn't know why she wore it, he knew what was beneath that disguise: fragile bones, long slender legs, and a body that was too thin right now but had gentle feminine curves in all the right places.
She watched him from her vantage point on the porch, not moving, while he parked in her turnaround and offloaded the bag of food. Only when he approached the porch did he see the confusion in her eyes and realize that she was studying him with an intensity that was frightening when he thought of what unknown doubts she was processing.
He propped a booted foot on the first step but did not move closer to her. Instead, he cocked his knee and rested the bag on his leg. "Peace offering," he said, nodding toward the bag.
She nodded her head once, a tiny little gesture that seemed to negate her dark thoughts, and formed her features into a smile—a smile that second by second became genuine, warm, and at last welcoming.
"Why do you need a peace offering?" she asked softly.
Deacon had no qualms about approaching her. He'd already climbed onto the porch, nosed at the two sleeping kittens near Megan's chair, and rested his head on her thigh. Lucky dog, Jake thought, surprising himself. It seemed that Megan wasn't the only one having intense thoughts.
And she wasn't the only one having trouble making her smile appear natural.
He nodded toward Deacon. "For taking your new best friend away from you this afternoon," he said. "Will steaks and homemade bread again make it up to you?"
"That depends," she said, seeming to shrug off some last indecision. She patted Deacon's head, swung her feet down from the railing, and placed her glass on the railing where her feet had been. She stood and walked toward him but stopped just short of touching him.
"On what?"
She grinned a four-alarm all-stops-out grin that melted him clear down to his boots before he had time to dodge, before he'd even realized he needed to, and filled him back up with a wild, angry longing he couldn't understand and a frustrated, futile heat he would have denied just minutes before, wanted to deny now.
He wanted this woman. Wanted her now, wanted her always, had wanted her since before time. And he was never going to have her.
Damn! He pushed away all the strange emotions, as he tried to push away the desire that had just ambushed him. This was the last thing he needed now; it was the last thing she needed. The need to care he'd been experiencing was a humane if not understood need, but this was something much more basic. Yeah, it was basic, all right, he acknowledged, as his body continued to make all too clear to his unwilling mind just how basic it was, and how little his rationalizations of the past two days and attempts to convince himself that this didn't, shouldn't, or couldn't exist had affected what could only be embarrassing to both of them and unwelcomed by her.
Damn!
"Depends on what?" she repeated after him. She reached out but hesitated again, looking at him strangely, intently, as though suddenly aware of where his uncontrolled thoughts had taken him. Her radiant smile faltered and then returned, tremulous and as false as those he had seen in her pictures. He watched as she straightened, tensed, and then deliberately relaxed, feature by feature. She lifted her hand and took the bag from him. "On who made the bread, of course," she said lightly, with only a hint that the lightness was as false as her smile.
Jake followed Megan through the quiet, shadowed house to the kitchen, which had been rearranged, scrubbed, and now appeared spotless. He glanced at the neatly displayed dishes behind sparkling glass and white-enameled cabinet doors, and at the clean white counter, bare of clutter, bare of anything except one pale blue antique canning jar holding a spray of wild flowers and pasture grasses. Color. Not much. But Megan had gone to a great deal of trouble to bring it into the house.
She'd gone to a great deal of trouble in the house.
Megan slid the bag onto the pine table and lifted the loaf of French bread from it.
"From the looks of the house, you didn't get much rest this afternoon."
Her hand clenched on the top of the paper bag. "Yes. Well, some days are like that," she said with a shaky laugh.
He remained silent, knowing that sometimes that was the best way, the only way, to question.
"I had a telephone call," she admitted finally. "From Dr. Kent."
He walked to the table and began helping her lift groceries from the bag, not drawing back when his hand brushed against hers, sensing, without knowing why, that she needed the contact. "Problems?" he asked.
"Nothing I can't handle," she said softly. "I hope."
"Megan—"
She lifted the loaf of bread. "This is the same kind of bread we had last night, isn't it?"
He nodded, not willing to change the subject but not wanting to force her into talking about something unpleasant. And the mysterious telephone call had obviously been that.
"Have you realized," she asked, still softly, still obviously trying to find a safer topic, "that we've known each other for two days and this is the fifth time you've fed me?"
No, he hadn't realized. At least he hadn't found it necessary to keep track of the number of meals. Sharing a meal with her had seemed so natural, so necessary, he hadn't even questioned whether he should, except for last night when he had invited guests; he'd just accepted that he would.
He'd never been accused of being overly sensitive, but something in her voice caught at him. He lifted the steaks from the bottom of the bag and placed them on the table. "Am I imposing?"
He turned to look at her, and he could have sworn that for a fleeting moment he saw in her eyes her awareness of him as man that matched the awareness he had felt on the porch, still felt, of her as woman.
She sucked in a sharp breath and turned away from him. "Of course not," she said quickly. With jerky motions she crossed the room and knelt in front of a lower cabinet. "I don't have a charcoal grill," she said, rummaging through the cabinet, "but I have one of those electric-griller things. You know, the kind of thing you get as a gift and think it's going to be so wonderful and then never use—"
"Megan."
Her words quieted, her hands stilled. With what he could read only as reluctance, she swiveled to look up at him, her face pale, her eyes dark.
Embarrassing and unwelcomed. Well, hell. He'd sure called that one right. She's not for you, old man. Not now. Not ever. The words swirled through the silence surrounding them. From a book he'd read? A film he'd seen? Something he'd heard that had surfaced from his unconscious to taunt him with unwanted truth? It didn't matter. What mattered was what he could do now to salvage the situation.
"I need a friend," he said softly. "You need a friend. I need a meal; you need a meal." He rested one hip against the table and dragged up a smile. "Deacon needs a bone. That's all this has to be."
She gave one last tug at the box in the cabinet, pulling it out to the floor, then sank down to sit cross-legged beside it. "The problem is," she said, finally looking back at him with eyes that held more pain than any ten people should ever have had to bear, "is that sometimes I feel so damned needy. Don't let me impose on you. Please, Jake."
He crossed the room in three strides, reaching for her. Hesitating only slightly, she placed her hands in his, and he tugged gently, bringing her to her feet and into his arms. He felt what seemed to be an almost instinctive resistance in her, but he had only a moment to wonder about her reaction before she surrendered to the haven he offered her.
And it was a haven. He promised her that silently. He promised himself.
"Do you know," he asked gently, "how few people there are in my life who would worry about imposing on me?"
She shook her head against his chest and pulled away to look up at him questioningly. "About as many as there are in mine?" she asked.
He caught her back to him in a hug that he was careful to keep passionless. "We're quite a pair, Megan McIntyre." He refused to call her Hudson. The woman he held in his arms would never willingly have been the wife of someone like Roger Hudson—not if she'd known what he was.
With one last quick tightening of his arms, he released her. "A hungry pair," he said lightly. "Let's get that gadget unloaded and fired up so we can eat."
They sat on the front porch, side by side in the canvas chairs with their feet propped on the rail. The tiny old side table between them held a flickering citronella candle, their stemmed glasses, and the last of the wine.
Megan sighed, sank more deeply into her chair, and let the breeze and the music of the night creatures wash over her. She hadn't thought, when this evening began, that she could be comfortable with Jake ever again.
Her reaction to him tonight had stunned her with its intensity, but it hadn't surprised her. She'd had hints over the past two days that she was marching blithely along toward something much more involved than a familial relationship, much more involved than a neighborly friendship, much more involved, obviously, than Jake wanted to be. Much more involved than she had any right to be—at least until she straightened out the mess her life was in.
What surprised her was that she could feel anything at all after the desolation and disillusionment of her marriage, after the horrors she had survived, after the strange, frightening occurrences of the past two days.
The last thing she had expected was to look at Jake Kenyon stepping from his truck tonight and feel her body tightening and readying itself for his possession, to feel the caress of his eyes, intended or not, bringing her to tingling anticipation of a more physical caress, to know that she had waited all her life to know this man, only this man, in all the ways it was possible to know him. And he wasn't hers.
But he had eased them past that horribly embarrassing moment when she had all but thrown herself in his arms and begged him to carry her off to bed and this time not leave her to sleep alone.
She heard a muted sound beneath the cricket symphony, a sound she had heard often during the nights she had lived here, that of a car's engine. She cocked her head, listening, wondering if this time she would be able to tell from which direction the sound really came.
She turned to say something to Jake and found him listening too.
"I think the hills must capture the sound," she said, "and throw it back without regard for direction or distance or us poor confused city folk who are used to seeing headlights when we hear cars in the night."
Jake's frown eased only slightly. "Possibly."
She grinned at him. "That sounds like a cop talking." During the evening she had passed from painful physical awareness to an easy companionship that allowed her to tease this man. It was amazing. He was amazing. Because he was the one who had made that passage possible.
He made a muffled nonverbal response but returned to his relaxed well-fed slouch in the chair.
"So," Megan said. "Tell me about the bread lady. Is she the same as the biscuit lady, or do you have a whole army of women baking for you?"
Jake took a sip of wine, replaced the glass on the table, and crossed his hands over his chest, sighing contentedly as Deacon had earlier when he'd finished off the steak bone. "Just one."
"Barbara's mother," Megan prompted, remembering their conversation the morning before.
"Mattie," Jake said. "Mattie Hinkle. The second love of my life, in chronological order, not in devotion."
"And the first?"
"Aunt Sally, of course." Jake half turned toward her. "You have no idea how many good memories just being here with you, like this, has given me back."
"I'm glad," she said, wondering at his choice of words. Given me back, he'd said, not brought back.
"I was so angry when I came to live with her. I'd known her forever—my parents had bought the place where I live now right after they got married—but that was when I had a home of my own to go to, and parents of my own to love."
"Barbara said you were only twelve."
He nodded. "A kid high on amphetamines driving his dad's hay truck. The poisons back then don't sound as disastrous as the stuff our kids are killing themselves with now, but it was just as deadly. He came across the center line right at the crest of Backbone Ridge. Dad tried to escape him, but he rammed my folks' pickup into the side of the mountain. They were dead before the medics got there. The boy came out of it without a scratch."
"Oh, Jake, I am so sorry."
"Yeah," he said. "Me too."
"Was that when your interest in law enforcement started?"
"Maybe. I don't know anymore. I don't guess it really matters."
He lifted the bottle of wine and divided the remainder between their two glasses. "Anyway, I think Aunt Sally and Mattie had their first argument over me. I was hiding in the barn, nursing my pain and my rage and my fear of what was going to happen to me when I heard them. They'd been friends forever, had even gone off to Teachers College together."
"Teachers College?" Megan sounded out the antiquated term.
Jake saluted her with his wine glass. "I told you, forever. And I had never heard either one of them raise her voice to the other. But there they were, out on the screened-in back porch, yelling loud enough to be heard halfway to Prescott about who was going to be the one to get to take me—get to, not have to—to raise and to love.
"I hadn't been able to cry; I thought I was too big for sissy stuff like that. Well, I wasn't. I bawled like a baby. And when I came out of the barn I learned Aunt Sally had won the argument for the simple reason that Mattie already had Barbara and she had no one.
"She gave me the room you're using now. It was still a sleeping porch then and my favorite in the house, but before winter she had it enclosed and insulated, and she had all those double-sash windows installed so I wouldn't feel so closed in. She helped me keep my folks' place at least minimally maintained. And she did love me. For six years. Until she died my freshman year at college.
"And then Mattie came to me. She told me she loved me like one of her own anyway, so I might as well start acting like I was."
Megan felt the pressure of tears behind her eyes. How could she possibly be envious of someone who had lost two families—now a third—to death? "For someone—" Her voice caught and she hesitated but knew she had to say it. "For someone who's had so much tragedy, you've been . . ."
"Blessed?" Jake asked.
"Yes," she said.
"Yes. I'm sorry I let myself forget that for such a long time."
They were silent for several minutes, just listening to the night noises, now augmented by the lonely singing of a distant pack of coyotes. Megan suspected they were both listening to memories from their childhood. She felt vaguely guilty for the bitterness that rose in her when she remembered growing up in a house that was too big, too well furnished, and too restrained for the solitary child she had been. She hadn't had the tragedy Jake had survived; she'd been too young when her mother died to remember anything about her. Well, except the emptiness and, strangely, the guilt of suddenly not having her. But she hadn't had the love either, and just for a moment she envied him that.
"You'd like Mattie," Jake said quietly, interrupting her thoughts. "And Mattie would like you."
Megan swallowed, trying to dislodge an unwanted lump in her throat. "Would she?"
She saw him send her a quick incredulous glance before he chuckled softly. "Yep," he said. "Problem is—or maybe isn't—she'd put you on the bread list. You'd have to get a freezer just to keep up with the food she'd send over. You'd get fat, maybe fall through that rotten back-porch floor. So I guess I've either got to keep you away from Mattie, or Patrick and I have some work to do around here."
He did it so neatly, Megan was laughing before she realized that Jake had committed himself to another major job on her house and many more hours in her company.
"Jake, you don't—"
"Mattie's almost eighty now," he said. "Barbara wasn't born until quite late in her life. Her miracle child, she calls her. But when she was younger, she used to walk all over these hills. That waterfall where I found you this afternoon?"
Megan nodded, because he seemed to want some response but she had no idea what.
"That's not only one of Deacon's favorite places, it's one of Mattie's. But she can't get up there anymore.
"In fact, she can't get much of anyplace anymore since her arthritis has gotten so bad. She can't do the fine quilting or crochet she used to do. She can't do much of anything. Except bake. She swears that kneading dough keeps her hands from freezing up completely.
"And visit. She loves to visit. And she loves to meet new people."
Megan knew there was only one response possible. The number of people Jake had drawn into her life had just increased. "I'd love to meet her."
Jake dropped his feet to the wooden porch floor, stood, stretched, and yawned. "I think I'll go over to Patrick's tomorrow and bring my horses home. Do you want to go with me?"
"Horses?" Megan dropped her own feet to the porch, but the sound didn't cover up the small squeak in her voice.
"Two," Jake said. "Do you ride?"
She suppressed a shudder. "Not on a bet, cowboy. But I think I'd enjoy going with you. That is, you are going to bring them back in a trailer, aren't you?"
She heard a soft rumbling laugh from Jake as he lifted the table and carried it to its place against the wall. "Trailer," he confirmed. "Sometime after lunch, I think."
Deacon stretched to his feet and walked to Jake's side. Bending, Jake ruffled the dog's fur, then made some motion with his hands Megan didn't quite see.
"This old reprobate's pretty well ruined," Jake said. "I guess it won't hurt to leave him with you a little while longer. It's obvious whose company he prefers."
He was already one step down before Megan realized he was going. Just like that: walking off and leaving his dog there to guard her yet again.
"Jake?"
He stopped on the first step and turned at her soft question. Rising from her chair, she crossed to where he waited. Even a step below her, he was still taller than she, still an imposing figure, especially silhouetted against the dark night.
"I—" What had she meant to say? The soft flare of the candle cast odd shadows across his face, emphasizing the scar. But the scars were a lie, a disguise that hid Jake Kenyon from the world.
With something like horror, she realized she had lifted her hands to his face, that her fingertips now grazed his cheeks. She drew them slowly away, fighting the flush of embarrassment that heated her from her toes to the ends of her ill-cut hair. "I'm—I—Thank you for tonight. Again."
He caught her hands in his and squeezed them gently. For a moment she thought he bent closer to her. For a moment she thought she saw something flicker to life in the depths of his dark eyes. But he released her hands and stepped down one more stair.
"You're welcome," he said quietly. "Don't sit out here on the porch all night," he added, turning as he reached his truck. "And don't forget to lock up the house."
Shaking her head, Megan didn't know whether to laugh or to throw something at him. "And don't forget to brush my teeth and wash my face before I go to bed, right?"
He looked at her, illuminated by the light of his open truck door, and she saw embarrassment written clearly on his face before chagrin replaced it. "I deserved that, didn't I?" he asked.
"Apology accepted," she said lightly. "Now go home." Before she dragged him back up on the porch and embarrassed both of them even more than she had already.
She stood on the porch, listening to the sounds of his truck engine until they mingled with the night sounds, and then sat down on the top step and draped her arm over the waiting dog.
"What am I going to do about Jake, Deacon?" she asked. "About everything? Why did he really leave you with me?"
But other than a companionable whine, Deacon didn't answer. Jake was gone. She was alone at last, with a job she didn't want to do but had put off much too long.
Sighing, she rose and blew out the candle. She picked up the wine bottle and glasses in one hand and opened the screen door.
"Come on, fellow," she said to Deacon. "I have a feeling I'm going to need a guard dog, or at least a friendly face, before this night is over."
Then, after locking the door as Jake had insisted, she hurried through her nighttime routine and went in search of something to use for a diary.