DESI'S RESCUE Page 5

  A sign currently obscured by a little circle of women with hand-lettered placards on sticks, circling in protest in the parking lot. "Remember Claude Tsosie?" one read and another read, "How Can a Killer Tend Your Animals? Boycott Rousseau Veterinary Clinic."

  Desi stamped on the gas and roared into the parking lot, the lava of her anger boiling up to the point of explosion, burning in her throat and ears and chest. She had a blistering vision of slamming her foot down on the gas pedal and mowing the lot of them down.

  Instead, she curved the big truck into her parking space and turned it off, slamming the door as hard as she could. It was heavy steel, and it made a satisfying clunk behind her as she marched across the lot. The dentist's wife, a dark-haired woman with giant blue eyes, who'd had a crush on Claude from the moment he arrived in Mariposa, led the group. Probably her meet-and-greet from church, Desi thought darkly, and stormed up to her.

  "Get off my property," she said. "Move your little posse over to the sidewalk or I'll call the police."

  Alice Turner blinked. Her tight little mouth curled the slightest bit. "The police? The ones who have accused you of Claude's murder, you mean?"

  "Get. Off," Desi said, pointing to the sidewalk.

  Alice waved a languid hand, and the four women circling the parking lot moved to a sidewalk where Desi had no claim and started circling there, droning some chant.

  Idiots! The whole lot of them had been taken in by Claude's charm and his apparent sincerity and modest talents as a painter.

  Mostly they'd been taken in by his good looks.

  For Claude Tsosie had been a very beautiful man. Not just a little bit handsome, not buff or cute or a hottie. He'd been drop-dead gorgeous, like a painting or a statue, or something conjured up by a woman's fertile imagination. Just over six feet tall, lean and loose limbed, graceful as a hawk, he'd grown out his long, heavy, black hair until it reached his waist. He had twinkling brown eyes and high cheekbones and a beautiful mouth, and long-fingered graceful hands and even a very good voice.

  The ultimate female fantasy.

  Desi, too, had fallen for it.

  Standing in the parking lot, with a load of fencing about to be delivered, and a wolf lost in the woods because of vandals, Desi consciously unclenched her fists. Her anger was a dangerous and volatile thing these days. The lava could burn her, too, if she let it get out of control.

  And yet, what else was there to hang on to? Sometimes she was afraid it was the only thing that kept her going.

  She dropped off some papers at the clinic, checked messages and headed back up the mountain, dogged by a sense of futility. What was the point of all this struggle? She and Claude had come here to build a life, to make a family, their dreams simple and sweet. Desi sought a place she might finally call home, a place where she could be accepted and loved as herself, at long last. Claude had dreamed of selling his paintings, and wanted to build their home while she built her veterinary practice.

  For a time it had gone just that way.

  She didn't know when it had gone wrong. Or if it had always been wrong and she was just too smitten to notice, or if he'd gone bad when she started getting busy with the practice or if—

  Stop it. There was no point trying to unravel anything in the past. She had to focus on the now. On the future. On taking care of her land and the hot springs, the wolves and the wild natural beauty of the little piece of earth she'd been given to tend. Today, right now, she would focus on that.

  Judge Yancy popped into her mind and she remembered that she'd promised to go see him. Glancing at her watch, she saw that it was nearly one and she had to be at the wolf center to sign for the fencing when it arrived. She'd have to put off her visit to him.

  Pausing on the dirt road—no one else would likely be on it, anyway—she called up the call history on her cell phone and found the judge's number. "Yancy, here," he said. The years of southern living lazed around his soft consonants.

  "Hi, Judge. It's Desi Rousseau. How's Lacey?"

  "'Bout the same, I reckon."

  "All right. How about if I come by and see her later this afternoon? I've got to meet the fencing people and get my assistant going on the patch job. Maybe around four-thirty?"

  "Well, I was hoping to serve you some lunch." He sounded slightly annoyed.

  Desi frowned. The last thing in the world she wanted was another irritation. "Look," she said with an edge to her voice, "it's been a bad morning. I appreciate your support and I'm not trying to blow you off, I'm just swamped, all right?"

  A pause, thick with reaction, stretched between them, and Desi's heart sank. The last thing in the world she needed was to lose one of her very few allies.

  But when he spoke, he said only, "You're right, honey. Sorry about that. You need any help?"

  "No, but thanks for the offer." She tried to smile, but a sense of foreboding thickened in her lungs. "I'll see you after a while."

  * * *

  It was one damned thing after another, Tam thought as his cell phone rang in his pocket when he was—finally—leaving the pub, the box of freezer-burned meats under his arm. He glanced at the screen and recognized the number as belonging to his dead mate Roger's wife. For a minute he hesitated, thumb hovering over the button. She'd been devastated by Roger's death and he wanted to be there for her, but today his mind was on other things.

  Oh, don't be an arse, he thought, and punched the button. "Hello, Zara. How are you today?"

  "Hi, Tam. Are you busy?"

  He'd had some practice with the levels of despair in her voice. Today she sounded fairly good. "Not so much, eh. I'm about to hop in my car and take some meat to a wolf sanctuary. What's up?"

  "It's nothing very much today, honestly. I was wondering if you could come to town and help me settle some things with Roger's estate sometime soon."

  The drive was nearly 150 miles, one way, to Denver. Driving these days caused a lot of pain in the leg he'd shattered in the same accident that killed Roger. "How'd you like to drive up to Mariposa, instead, sweet? It's gorgeous up here, and there's plenty of room for you."

  "Really?"

  "Sure, why not?" He shifted the box on his arm, putting it on the roof of the car. "I'll have to work a bit, but we can maybe get out and have a tramp through the woods. How'd you like that?"

  Her voice sweetened. "That would be really great, Tam. I'd love it. I'll see what's going on with work and give you a call at the start of next week. How's that?"

  "Good. Anything else?"

  "No, thanks. Except—how are things with you?"

  He glanced up to the tops of the craggy peaks, to the sunlight cascading down the mountain sides and dancing on the clear, thin ice covering the stream. A memory of Desi Rousseau's unbound breasts, moving gently beneath her sweater this morning crossed his internal vision. "Can't complain," he said, and managed to keep the impatience out of his voice.

  "I'm glad."

  "Well, give me a call next week, eh? We'll figure it out then."

  They hung up, and Tam was happy to get moving. The day was bitter beneath the warmth, so he zipped his thick coat up to the neck and slapped on a stocking cap. There was snow in the wind.

  By the time he made it up the mountain to Desi's place, long shadows were falling across the high meadows and the sun was nothing more than a ribbon of soft gold along the edges of the peaks. He spied Desi, wearing a pair of overalls that hid her voluptuous curves, wrestling with a length of wire fencing.

  "Hello!" he cried as he got out of the car. "Need some help?"

  She shook her hair out of her face. "I'd love it. It needs to get finished by dark and I'm pushing it." As he approached, she pointed. "If you'd keep that part stretched tight, I can get it fastened."

  He did as he was told, and wordlessly squatted to stretch the lower piece when she'd done the top. She was quick and skillful, her gloved hands working with clean efficiency, her attention fixed wholly on her task.

  "One more," she said, straight
ening. "Then we're done."

  He walked to the next post, and it was plain that a wide section had simply been cut out of the fence. Tam touched the severed ends. "No idea who did it, eh?"

  Gripping her wire cutters, she stretched the fence and slid a thumb through one square. "I have my theories," she said. "Hold that, would you?"

  He grabbed it. "Theories?"

  "Developers want the land. Several developers. It's worth a fortune with the hot springs and the meadow, which is buildable."

  He glanced over his shoulder at the kennels, encircled by a stand of long-needled pines with cinnamon-colored trunks. It was grassy and wide and currently filled with a handful of wolves, watching them curiously. Wind ruffled the fur of a big, dark gray one. His dark yellow eyes seemed lit from behind as they bored into Tam. Primeval hackles rose on his spine. "He's a scary one."

  Desi raised her head. "He's a rescue from Montana. They'd kept him in a garage for three years. He's not, understandably, all that friendly to humans."

  "Are you afraid of them?"

  Securing the last section of fence, she stood up and looked back to them. "I'm respectful. I know they could kill me. But I've also been careful to establish my authority. Wolves are hierarchal, and they respect the pecking order very seriously. Juneau is the alpha, but he lets me share leadership."

  "Would they let me touch them?"

  "Some will. Not him." She looked up at him, smiled slightly. "He senses that you're an alpha. Give him some time and he might."

  "Am I?"

  She rolled her eyes, straightened. "You try to pretend you're just a charming second, but wolves know."

  "And so do you."

  She nodded. "If you want, you can help me gather my tools."

  "All right."

  To his disappointment, her extraordinary fall of hair was bound up in a heavy braid. He supposed such hair was impractical when she was working, but he found his eyes on the end of it, and he thought about pulling the bright pink rubber band off and unweaving that richness of hair.

  He hurried to catch up with her, conscious of the sore muscles above his knees from snowshoeing yesterday. "Any sign of the wolf?"

  "Not yet."

  "She'll turn up, yeah?"

  She lifted a shoulder, let it fall. "I don't know." She turned to let him catch up. "And somebody shot the other wolf for some unknown reason, so Fir isn't safe out there at all."

  A soft, pale twilight sank into the clearing, and cold blew out from beneath the trees. A mist, thick and somehow out of place, rose just beyond the trees. He caught a scent that made him think, fiercely and suddenly, of home—his youthful home, when his mother was still alive, before he'd gone to live with his grandparents. "What's there?" he asked, pointing.

  "The hot springs," she said, and dropped her gloves and wire cutters into a red tool box. "Would you like to see them?"

  "I really would." He glanced at the car. "Don't let me forget I brought you some meat for the wolves, and the donations from the jar. Forty-three dollars."

  Her smile, showing that deep dimple, was reward enough. In addition, she leaned forward and kissed his cheek, squeezing his hands. "Tam! Thank you!"

  She smelled like lemons. A suspiciously hot sensation burned his ears. Was he flustered? Surely not.

  "Not a problem," he said. Patted her upper arm, which was surprisingly solid.

  "The spring is this way," she said, and waved him toward a path tamped down in the snow beneath the trees. It was darker there, mysterious, full of sounds that could be animals—or spirits. He paused, listening, raising his head toward the heather sky he could glimpse through the arrows of trees.

  "This is a holy place, yeah?"

  Desi paused and turned to look up at him with a sharp, measuring expression on her face. "Some think so."

  He stood there, listening, and it was possible to almost make out the whispers, the spirits speaking among themselves. "I fancy I can hear the trees speaking," he said, with a wry little smile so she wouldn't think him daft. "Like a forest in a fairy tale."

  The dark surface of her eyes showed a rippling, like wind over water. "Right over there," she said, pointing into the trees, "was a graveyard. The bodies were not buried, but put on platforms. It's very sacred ground, and one of the things I'd like to keep holy."

  Tam touched his chest. "Didn't the Indians have something to say about you getting the land?"

  "It belonged to a ranch, all this land did. It was huge, like 500,000 acres or something like that. When it was first settled, the Indians here didn't have much say over anything." She paused, then seemed to decide something. Turning in the direction she had pointed, she ducked under the trees and waved for him to follow. They tramped through the snow, sometimes quite deep, for a few hundred feet, then paused. A small Indian symbol, clouds and lightning, topped a hand-lettered sign covered in a laminate. The sign said: "Please do not cross this sacred line of trees. It is the council ground of our ancestors and we wish to respect their peace. Mariposa Ute Council."

  "I gave them the land back," Desi said.

  "How did you know what it was?"

  She pointed to a treehouse sort of structure. A spine of a feather, attached by a cord, blew in the wind. He blinked, and it disappeared. "I could tell what it was, but to be sure, I asked Helene about it. Do you know Josh's mother?"

  "I've met her once or twice."

  "She's a medicine woman, a very honored teacher."

  A whistle, high and eerie, wound through the trees. Tam felt his body tense. "What was that?"

  The dimple flashed in her white cheek. "Are you scared?"

  He shrugged, trying to get the ghosties off his neck. "Not exactly. But I wouldn't mind moving on."

  Desi laughed, but she tugged his sleeve to bring him back to the path. Steam billowed up in clouds as they came toward a clearing, and he eagerly pushed forward. "I grew up in Rotorua," he said. "Till I was twelve, anyway. It's like Yellowstone here—geysers and boiling mud and all that. I miss the geology of it."

  "Well, this is less dramatic, but very healing."

  The snowy path emptied into a bowl of land dominated by a wide pool, shining a soft lavender color in the gloaming. A waterfall poured down a grotto. Steam rose in clouds from it. "Must be pretty hot, yeah?"

  Desi gestured. "Be my guest. Feel it?'

  The air smelled of minerals and earth. Gladly he moved forward, thinking how good that water would be for his bum leg. He stuck his hand in the pool and let go of a long sigh. "Brilliant," he said, and stood back up. In the shadows of the trees to the north, he saw a low hut, shaped like a beehive.

  She saw the direction of his gaze. "Helene is my teacher, too," she said, but didn't elaborate. "It's a sweat lodge."

  He didn't push. Settling on a rock by the pool, he inhaled the scent of steam and mountain and impending night, the hint of sulfur that seemed to always accompany hot springs. He pointed to another rock opposite. "Take a load off, will you?"

  She hesitated, sticking her hands in her pockets. "I've got a lot to do before I stop today."

  "I'll help you. Sit for a minute." When she still did not move, he added, "You look knackered, love. We won't stay long."

  Desi nodded and came forward, gingerly perching on the rock opposite him as if he were Bacchus himself, ready to blow in his pipes and call an orgy.

  "I miss that smell," he said. "When I was a lad, that was what I smelled morning noon and night."

  "I think you really miss it, don't you?"

  "Sometimes."

  "So why stay here?"

  Tam rubbed a hollow place in his chest. "Me mum died when I was twelve and I was sent up north to live with her parents. They died, too." He smiled to show it was long ago. "There's nothing there for me now."

  For a minute Desi looked at him. Then she nodded and slapped her legs. "Well, I know a baby wolf who needs feeding. Would you like to do that?"

  "Yes," he said. "I'd like it a lot."

  * * *
/>   Chapter 5

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  As they walked back toward the caretaker's cabin, Desi scolded herself internally with a litany of cautions that came down to one: Don't fall under his spell.

  And if he'd been only charming or good-looking, she might have found it easier to resist, but there was something good and honest about him, something that felt steady and real. Sturdy. Unmoving.

  At his car she waited while he fetched the box he'd brought from the pub, then gestured for him to follow as she headed up the hill on a path tramped out in the snow. At the caretaker's cabin, a lamp showed through the high line of windows just beneath the eaves.

  Inside she stomped snow off her boots. "You want some tea?"

  Tam stayed by the door. "Want me to take off my shoes?"

  "Not necessary." She came close enough to take the box from him, and peeked inside. Despite herself, she gasped. She'd been expecting a little of this and that, scraps. This was a heavy box full of all kinds of meat. "Oh, this is excellent, Tam!"

  "No problem. And, yeah, I'd love tea."

  She pointed to the small kitchenette area, a stove the size of a butane tank, a fridge like a television. "If you wouldn't mind, then, put the kettle on and I'll run this meat out to the feed house and bring the pup back."

  "Am I making you nervous, Desi?"

  "No!" she lied breathlessly. "Why would you say so?"

  Tam looked at her mouth openly, rubbing his chest. She didn't move immediately. "Just a feeling," he said quietly.

  Her eyes were on his mouth. A sensual mouth, with an almost overly full lower lip. Beneath it, the smallest possible fringe of hair, squarely below the middle of his lip. A strong, square chin.

  The air around them thickened, seemed edged with a smoky resonance. Desi felt something walk down her spine as she raised her eyes to his, to the pale green that was so startling and beautiful, a curious softness in the powerfully male arrangement of features.

  He swallowed. "Go on now, get the pup," he said. "I'll put on the tea."

  Desi shook herself out of the little dream. Stung and flustered, she took a step backward and glared up at him. "I told you to stop that!"