Broken Promises (8 page)

"Which also gave your father a bigger reason to press the issue with the trees and the logging road and shut Timber West down," Tess said. "That way, you're not tempted to chase after a woman who doesn't meet your father's standard as a wife for you. So when you see him next weekend, you need to assure him that there's nothing between us, and never will be. That way maybe he'll agree to some kind of reasonable settlement."

 
Zak fixed his eyes on her, and as he stood looking at her, his mouth compressed in a slash, and the muscles bunch in his jaws. Then he folded his arms, and said, "Is that the way you intend things to stay? That there will never be anything between us again?"

Tess studied his rigid face, uncertain how she felt. Even if Zak justified leaving her without a word, she still didn't know if she could trust again. He'd barely put the gold ring on her finger when he'd married another woman. "I don't know," she said, finally.

He waited, and when she offered nothing more, he said, "I think you just answered my question," then turned and left.

***

Tess spent the next four days logging and
yarding
, and by late Thursday afternoon logs rose high on the dock. She returned to her cabin that evening, took a bath and fell into bed, exhausted. The trucks were expected to arrive early the next morning and she was thankful she wasn't needed on the ridge for loading. She'd been so troubled by her heated meeting with Jean-Pierre de Neuville, and her last encounter with Zak, that she hadn't been sleeping well, until finally, by the end of the week, and from pure exhaustion, she managed to drift into a sound sleep, only to be interrupted early the next morning by a loud knocking on the door.

"TJ! Open up. It's Broderick."

Pulling on a robe, Tess shuffled to the door and squinted up at Broderick. "What's wrong?"

"Big problems!" Broderick said. "There was a rock slide on the ridge road last night and the Cat's out of commission, and the log trucks are boxed in on de Neuville's land and Swenson's charging a parking fee."

"Wait a minute," Tess said, "I'll be right out." She threw on her clothes and rushed out of the cabin. "How bad is the slide?" she asked.

"Bad," Broderick replied. "The road's buried."

"What's the problem with the Cat?"

"Broken steering hose. Lost all the hydraulic fluid."

"That won't take long to fix," Tess said, "but we'll need a new hose. Follow me to camp.

In the machine shed, Tess searched for the hose she'd seen earlier in the week but couldn't find it. "I've got to get to the ridge," she said. "You go to Baker’s Creek and get a new hose and put it on our account and get back as quick as you can."

Ten minutes later, Tess crossed the de Neuville land and pulled up behind a line of empty log trucks parked in the road, then edged the Jeep along the steep embankment to get around the trucks and continued up the road through the Timber West gate. When she arrived at the landslide, she was baffled. Heavy rains could cause rocks to slide in some parts of the road, but this wasn't one of them, nor had they had any soaking rain for weeks.

The sound of a vehicle brought her head around. To her surprise, she saw Zak's truck approaching. He pulled up behind her Jeep and jumped out. "I heard about the rock slide," he said. "For whatever it's worth, there won't be a parking fee."

"That will help," Tess replied, "but I'll still have to settle up with the drivers for their lost time." She scanned the rock pile blocking the road, her gaze following the path of the slide up the relatively gently sloping hillside. "It doesn't make sense," she said. "There's plenty enough vegetation to hold the rocks in place along this hill."

"Yeah, it seems that way," Zak agreed. "I'll hike up there and take a look around and see if I can find out what caused it. Maybe there's a spring up there."

Tess sighed. "Meanwhile, I'll see if I can get things moving down here."

Forty minutes later, Broderick arrived with the hose and they started work on the Cat. Before long, Curt was back moving rock, and Tess went on ahead to see what Zak was doing. He'd been standing on the slope, studying something in his hand for some time. When he saw her, he started toward her, and as he approached, he held up an orange cord. "Dynamite," he said. "This is a piece of fuse."

Tess picked her way over the loose rocks to where Zak stood. "So that's what helped the landslide along." Taking the cord from him, she said, "Pretty coincidental that the steering hose on the Cat broke just after the landslide, and that the spare hose was missing, and it all happened right about the time the trucks were due to haul."

Zak looked to where the men were working. "Anything else out of the ordinary been happening?" he asked.

"Yes. Bull lines have been breaking right and left, even when we're skidding logs on flat grade. We're lucky no one's been hurt."

Before Zak could respond, Curt yelled to Tess from the Cat, "About fifteen more minutes and you can send the trucks through."

Tess waved her reply, then turned to Zak, and said, "I've got to go."

"I still want to talk to you," Zak said. "Can I stop by your place tonight? I'll bring something for you to eat so you won't have to worry about dinner. You'll be beat after today."

Tess looked at the line of trucks and said, with a weary sigh, "I suppose that would be okay."

Zak smiled, triggering the usual reaction. Tess's heart started hammering and a rush of adrenaline shot through her, making her arms and legs feel weak. And for the first time since she insisted there would never be anything between them, she realized she'd seriously misjudged her feelings for Zak. She also knew she'd have to maintain a physical distance between them when he came to her cabin. He had too great an emotional hold on her, and she could be all too willing if he kissed her and wanted more. And there were still too many unanswered questions.

By late afternoon, the landing was cleared of logs, and Tess felt weary. The day had been long and trying, both physically and emotionally. And soon she'd have to make her father face some tough issues. They couldn't be ignored. Their recent quarterly tax payment had drained their reserve, and with the expenses of clearing the landslide, the increased royalty, and the extra pay to the truck drivers, Timber West's operating capital would be close to depletion. And they still had a loan payment to meet.

When she arrived at her cabin that evening, she headed for the bathroom to soak away her worries in a tub of warm water. Forty-five minutes later, dressed in jeans and a flannel work shirt, she opened the door to Zak's knocking. He greeted her with a bottle of wine in one hand and a cardboard box tucked under his other arm. "You look like you survived the day," he said.

"Just barely," she replied, her gaze shifting to the navy tee shirt hugging Zak's thick chest, then drifting down his faded jeans.

"I hope you're hungry," he said. He set the wine on the table, then opened the interlocking flaps on the cardboard box and lifted out a grocery carton of frozen lasagna, followed by a gold-foil-wrapped loaf of garlic bread, a plastic package with mixed salad greens, a bottle of salad dressing, and a deli carton with what looked like mixed fruit in whipped cream.

"I'm starved," Tess said, eyeing the spread of food. She started for the stove to turn on the oven, when Zak took her wrist, and said, "Go sit down. I'll do dinner." He took a couple of coffee mugs from the cabinet above the sink and set them on the table, then twisted the lid off the bottle of wine and filled each mug.

Tess noted that the wine bottle hadn't been corked, and when she didn't see the black and gold label, she said, "I presume this isn't from the de Neuville stock."

Zak gave her a wry smile. "Gallo Hearty
Burgundy
. But don't tell my father." He handed her the mug. "Relax. Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes. I already heated the lasagna part way so it won't take long."

Tess settled against the couch, sipped her wine, and silently watched Zak making his way around her kitchen, shuffling through drawers and cabinets for dishes and silverware, and setting things around the table. It was odd watching him putting a dinner together, even if it was a packaged meal. Years before, neither of them were in the least domestic. They'd talked about the way they'd run their house some day, but they'd never shared a meal in her cabin or his. It had always been about Adam and Eve and satisfying that part of their relationship. She realized now that maybe there wasn't anything more to it than the thrill and excitement of forbidden pleasures, of seeing a naked man, and having him see her, and letting him do things that brought out reactions in her that she'd never known before, and which were strictly taboo...

"What are you thinking about?" Zak asked. "You seemed far away."

Tess raised her eyes to meet his. "Umm... about the... first time we met." She took a slow sip of wine to allow her thoughts to focus on something other than where they'd been moments before. "I was just wondering... what you thought of me."

Zak dumped the package of mixed salad greens into a bowl, and said, while setting the bowl on the table, "I was impressed by your agility... the way you scampered up that pole."

"I meant the very first time we met, before the pole climb," Tess said.

Zak cocked a brow. "You mean when you grabbed my arm while I was practicing for the wood chopping contest?"

"I didn't grab your arm." Tess said. "I only suggested that you hold your ax differently. But besides that, what did you think?"

One corner of Zak's mouth flicked in a smile. "I thought you had the biggest, most beautiful eyes I'd ever seen on a boy."

Tess stared at him. "You thought I was a boy?"

"Umm, hmm. You shocked the hell out of me when you took off your hat after the pole climb and all that hair fell around your shoulders."

Tess eyed him over the rim of her mug; "What did you think the next time you saw me, when you came to work for my dad?"

Zak grinned. "Let's put it this way. When I caught sight of you in that snug shirt, I almost busted out of my pants just wondering if you were going to pop a button."

At the time, Tess didn't know what happened to men when they became aroused, but before the summer was through, the idea of Zak busting out of his pants every time she was around had become their private joke. She wasn't sure what to think of his reference to it now though, or if he'd even meant it to be anything more than a casual comment.

"You did strange things to me then," he said, his voice lower, huskier, "just like you're doing now." Tess inadvertently lowered her gaze and saw the blatant bulge in his jeans, and before she'd realized what she'd done, Zak said, "It doesn't happen just because I'm around a woman."

"Then why now?" Tess asked.

"You know why... the same reason it happened before. Because I'm around you."

"Umm... yes," Tess mused. "Like I said before, all sex and no substance." Which also explained why Zak could walk away from her and into the arms of another woman without looking back. If the woman was good in bed, that's all he'd need. And she couldn't deny that she'd tried to give Zak everything she could possible think to give him, sexually. It hadn't been just for him, although she'd hoped that would make him love her more, but she'd been just as obsessed with wanting the things he did for her...

"Is that all you thought it was?" Zak asked. "Sex without substance?"

Tess shrugged. "Pretty much, unless you remember something I don't."

 
Zak sat on the couch beside her, and said, "I can't do anything about what's happening in my pants right now. It happens when I'm around you, and it's not just about wanting to have sex with you. Right now I'd rather kiss you and have you kiss me back than hop into bed with you for a round of hot, heavy sex."

"That's the problem," Tess said. "You act like you can just pick up where we left off, yet you've been avoiding telling me why you left so suddenly. I realize my father didn't exactly escort you graciously from your cabin when he found us together, but you could have at least told me that your father was sending you to
France
. I would have waited for you. But when you left without a word, I didn't know what to think. I waited a year, hoping to hear from you, and when I didn't, I married a man I didn't love."

Zak sighed, rested his head against the back of the couch, and said, while staring at the ceiling, "The day after your father caught us at my cabin, I was served with a restraining order against having any contact with you. Then to make sure I understood, after I returned to Navarre, your father came there and threatened to charge me with statutory rape, in front of my father, and told me to have no further contact with you, not even to explain why I'd left, or he'd report me as a sexual predator. That's when my father sent me to France. My father also wanted me out of your life, not just because I was having sex with an underage girl, but because you weren't Basque. If you had been, he would have insisted we marry instead of sending me to
France
."

Tess said nothing, while trying to absorb everything Zak had told her. At least she understood why he left without contacting her. But there were two questions remaining, and his answer to them would make the difference between giving a relationship with him another try, or walking out of his life the way he'd walked out of hers. "What you told me still doesn’t explain why you married so soon after you left," she said. "I thought we had something special."