Dreamkeepers (18 page)

“What did you expect me to do? Stay and play second fiddle to Nancy?” she almost shouted. “And have that creepy sister of yours look down her nose at me?”

“Watch it, Kelly. Katherine means well. If you’d stayed, you would have seen that I can handle Katherine. But you had to get back here, didn’t you? You love this place and . . . Mike and Marty . . .”

“You’re damn right I do and you’re doing your best to buy them away from me. Can’t you be satisfied with what you have? Why did you have to come here and mess up my life?”

“Why not? You sure as hell messed up mine.” He stuffed the last garment in the bag and zipped it shut. “I’m staying here, Kelly. You’re not going to ruin this vacation for me.” He looked at her squarely and she saw new lines of weariness in his face. She was glad if she had pierced his consciousness just one little bit. “I intend to build that glider with Mike and Tram. While I’m here you’d better pull in your horns and act civilized.”

“I can’t believe you want to stay here! What about the divorce? What about Nancy?”

“What about her? She knows better than to interfere with my plans.” He picked up his suitcase and she moved out of the doorway. He pulled on his boots while her mind screamed,
Get out! Get out!
He turned and impaled her with his eyes. “You don’t understand one thing about me, do you, Kelly?” His tone was soft, but his frustration was apparent.

Somewhere in a quiet, little corner of her heart she might have felt pity for the man who was so rich in material things and so lacking in what really mattered—love and compassion. But she couldn’t close her mind to the memory of Katherine saying, “He didn’t want you showing up in Boston.”

“I understand enough. Don’t come here again.” There was a slight tremor when she spoke, but her eyes met his unwaveringly.

“You needn’t worry.” He picked up his suitcase again. “I brought Bonnie and Clyde back with me. The least you can do is go up there and welcome them back.” He went out the door.

Kelly stood in the middle of the room for countless minutes, his words echoing in her mind, his ravaged face fixed in her memory. Was he ill? Stop! she told herself. Stop thinking.

Outside, she was met by an exuberant Charlie with a new red frisbee in his mouth. She took it from him and sent it sailing into the air. Charlie made great, bounding leaps to catch it. He tossed his head, let his toy fly out of his mouth, then pounced on it with his front paws before nuzzling it out of the snow and racing back to her. His big, shaggy body almost upset her when she grabbed the frisbee and held it away from him.

“Oh, Charlie,” she laughed. “You’re a lover, not a fighter, but that’s all right with me.”

Inside the kitchen door she stomped the snow from her boots before removing them. “Welcome back, you two.”

Bonnie was seated in a wheelchair and Clyde was trying to make coffee in the new electric urn.

“Kelly! You don’t know how glad I am to be back here,” Bonnie exclaimed. “It’s just like comin’ home, honey. How y’all been? I worried about you, even if Clyde told me not to.” Bonnie’s bleached hair was piled high and her makeup was all in place. She looked well-rested and as perky as ever. Her encased leg rested on a prop attached to the chair.

“I missed you, Bonnie. How are you doing, Clyde? You trying to figure out how to operate that thing?”

“We missed you, too,” Bonnie continued. “Every day I’d say to Clyde, ‘I wonder how Kelly is doin’ with the cookin’, and he’d say, ‘You just quit your worryin’, honeybunch, that gal’s been down the trail and she’ll manage.’”

Kelly grinned at Clyde. “And I did, Bonnie. My cooking is not up to your standards, but we didn’t starve.”

“Well . . . ain’t ya going to say anything a’tall about all the new stuff?” Bonnie’s eyes glittered with excitement. “I tell you, Kelly, I ain’t never had such a time in all my life. Clyde said that I ain’t better get used to pointin’ and sayin’ that I’ll take this or that. He said it was a once in a lifetime for me, and Clyde’s right. It sure was fun.”

Oblivious to Kelly’s irritated expression, Bonnie continued. “Jack picked up me and Clyde and this here chair and took us down to the department store. Clyde pushed me around and Jack says for me to point out anything I needed out here and not to pay no attention to what it cost. He said it didn’t make no difference if it was on sale or not, to get the best. I had those clerks a runnin’ in circles! I’d point and they’d jump. I said it wasn’t hardly fair for me to have all the fun, but he said you could go anytime you want to get more things.” Bonnie paused and waited and Kelly realized she had to say something.

“Good for him,” she said, but her sarcasm was lost on Bonnie, who was off on the description of how they’d picked out the radio antenna.

“Jack said to the man we wanted to listen to the ball games and the man said what we needed was a satellite and we could watch them on TV and Jack said . . .”

Kelly’s mind tuned out Bonnie’s chatter. Jonathan had won Bonnie over just as he had won Marty and Mike. Damn! Wasn’t he going to leave her anything?

“Kelly. Kelly . . .” Bonnie’s voice sounded far away.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Bonnie. I was wondering about lunch.”

“That’s what I said. What should I do about lunch?”

“Mike won’t be here. The rest of us can have soup and sandwiches. I’ll fix it.”

“I’ll do it. My arms ain’t broke. Help me out of this thing, Clyde. Jack said if I sit all the time I’ll lose my figure.”

Kelly clenched her teeth. If she heard “Jack said” one more time, she would scream!

The afternoon was one of the longest Kelly had ever lived through. By evening she was so uptight she felt ill. Jonathan spent the day in the dormitory room. “Gettin’ settled in,” Clyde said as he passed through the kitchen carrying boxes to the shed. Bonnie’s exuberance was dampened somewhat when she realized that Jonathan was not going to live in the cabin with Kelly. She continually gave Kelly inquiring looks that Kelly ignored, and after a while Bonnie settled into a gloomy silence.

Sheer willpower and the determination not to let Jonathan intimidate her forced Kelly to remain at the lodge for the evening meal. She was even able to smile occasionally, speak pleasantly when spoken to, and choke down a portion of the food on her plate. Not once did her expression reveal the panic that rose in her throat each time Jonathan looked at her.

The men talked about the glider they planned to assemble and the tower to hold the huge antenna. Jonathan talked easily, discussing ways to fly the machine when it was completed, asking advice, drawing each of the men into the conversation, never once becoming condescending. Marty and Bonnie listened eagerly but Kelly felt like an outsider, excluded.

When the meal was over, the men continued to sit at the table. Kelly and Marty loaded the new dishwasher and made fresh coffee. Kelly put on her coat to take food scraps out to Charlie, then continued down the path to her own cabin. She had never felt so alone or so miserable in her life.

That weekend the retired couple and the two wildlife photographers anived, and Kelly worked with Bonnie preparing meals. The shed had been turned into a workshop and the big woodburning stove kept it warm enough for the men to work without gloves most of the time. Jonathan spent his days there, coming in with a red nose and, at times, frost on the beard he was growing. He never attempted to speak to Kelly alone and most of the time he ignored her. But it was obvious to Kelly that everyone else adored him.

“I don’t understand why you’re being so stubborn, Kelly,” Marty finally commented. “Why don’t you talk things out with Jonathan? I’m sure he’ll meet you halfway. You’re just making yourself miserable.”

Kelly looked at her for a long time, biting back bitter words. Finally she said: “I love you dearly, Marty, but . . . please mind your own business.” Tears came to Marty’s eyes, but Kelly refused to say more.

The following weekend brought blessed diversion in the form of Andy Mullins, who arrived with another couple, and Kelly’s spirits responded immediately to Andy’s buoyant personality. He threw his arms wide when he saw her.

“There she is! Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Alaska!”

“Hello, Andy. I thought you were going back to the reservation.” She held out her hand which he clasped in both of his.

“I called in sick. Told them I had terminal longing to see a pretty girl at Mountain View Lodge.” He turned to the couple with him. “Kelly, meet Bob and Maggie.”

The woman was a pretty, dimpled blonde with a flawless complexion, who looked at Kelly with disinterest. The man with her was short and stocky and could scarcely keep his adoring eyes from his companion’s face. Here was a couple they wouldn’t need to entertain, Kelly thought with a twinge of envy. The couple followed Clyde to their room, but Andy lingered with Kelly.

“How are things going with you?” His eyes roamed over her face. “Don’t lie.”

“Okay. I’m . . . so-so, Doc.”

“Did your husband go back to tea-town?”

“No. He’s staying here at the lodge. In the dormitory.”

“Separated?” He searched her eyes, and she nodded.

“I’m sorry you’re so unhappy.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “There’s nothing I can say, except that the hurt will go away after a while.”

“Promise?” Her lips quivered and she blinked to hold back tears.

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

Andy hung his parka on the rack beside the door. “You know something? I like it here. I really do.”

“You sound surprised. I think it’s Bonnie’s cooking you like. Come see her. She’s reigning supreme in the kitchen once again.”

Kelly held the swinging door open. Andy posed in the doorway, his smiling eyes sweeping the kitchen. “Where’s my queen of the cookstove?”

“Andy!”

Bonnie’s chair rolled out of the storage room. Jonathan followed behind carrying several canisters. Kelly stood by the door, a fixed smile on her face. Jonathan glanced from her to Andy with a rigid expression and a tiny muscle jumped in his cheek.

“Beautiful as ever,” Andy said, taking Bonnie’s hands. “And I see you’ve still got the fellows trailing after you. How are you, Templeton?” He held a hand out to Jonathan. For a second Kelly thought Jonathan wasn’t going to take it and the smile slipped from her face. Then, looking as if he detested both of them, he shook it.

“Doctor.”

The sound of the deep voice touched something in Kelly’s memory, making her heart jump.

“I never got to thank you for sending me that candy, Andy. Or for what you done that day.” Bonnie held onto Andy’s hand, patting the back of it.

“I’ll tell you what,” Andy said with a leering grin. “Since I missed out on wrapping up that sexy leg of yours, I’ll take a blueberry pie and call it even.”

“It’s a deal! Push me over to the table, Jack, and I’ll get started. Clyde fixed me this here table, Andy. I can get my leg under it and work just fine.”

“Is that ugly old Clyde still hanging around?” Andy teased. “I might have to ship him yet to get you away from him.”

“You’re a flirt, Andy Mullins. A plain old flirt.”

“Shhh . . . Don’t tell Kelly. She’s suspicious of me as it is.”

Jonathan watched Kelly, his eyes shuttered. “I thought you were due back at the reservation,” he commented without looking at Andy.

“I got an extension to attend another seminar and come back here to see my girls,” he answered lightly. “How’s Charlie doing?” he asked Kelly. “Suppose we can hitch him to the sled and go for a ride? I ride . . . you mush.”

Kelly laughed. “Oh, no! This is a democracy! We take turns.”

“I hate taking turns!”

“Tough! The policy at Mountain View Lodge is share and share alike.”

“Not everything,” Jonathan said stiffly, bitingly.

Andy seemed not to notice his tone. “I thought there was a catch somewhere,” he said gloomily. “Oh, well, if I’ve got to mush, I’ll mush.”

Kelly was kept so busy fetching and carrying for Bonnie while she prepared the meal that she didn’t have time to think of the conversation until later. When she did and remembered Jonathan’s tense words, “Not everything,” she saw in her mind’s eye a hollow-cheeked figure. Jonathan had lost weight. She hadn’t looked at him, really looked at him, for a while. She hadn’t noticed before that the work he was doing in that cold shed was taking a toll on him physically. Soon the glider would be ready to fly and he would be leaving. Then she could finally begin to rebuild her life.

“I think that doctor has a crush on you.” The meal was over and Marty and Kelly were cleaning up after having sent Bonnie off to her room to rest.

Kelly looked up from scraping food into Charlie’s bowl. “Andy is like that with all the women. He just likes to flirt.”

“Jonathan didn’t like it,” Marty said with a warning tone that pricked at Kelly’s patience. “I think it bugs him to have men pay attention to you.”

“That’s too bad! He can shove off anytime he wants. No one’s holding him here,” Kelly retorted bitterly.

Marty stopped working to look at Kelly with puzzled eyes. “Why do you get so angry? You used to be the most happy-go-lucky person I knew, but lately you’re like a bear with a sore foot.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap.”

“Oh, Kelly. Everything would be so wonderful if you and Jonathan could iron out your differences.”

“Don’t count on it, Marty, because it isn’t going to happen.”

“Are you interested in Andy?” Marty asked hesitantly.

The simple question sparked an idea in Kelly’s mind and she thought a moment before saying, “He’s very nice.” She allowed her eyes to go dreamy for an instant. “He’s nice, he’s kind, and he’s fun. I haven’t had any fun in a long time and I admit I like to be with him.”

“I hope that’s me you’re talking about.” Kelly spun around, her eyes wide. “Mike! Stop sneaking up on me!” She moved to hit his arm but he grabbed her hand and twisted it behind her.

“Now, me proud beauty. I’ve got you in my power,” he said in a villainous voice.

“Let go or I’ll tell Marty about the girl you talk to on the radio, the one with the melodious voice.”

“What girl?” Marty was quick to pick up.

“All right,” Mike said, and let go of Kelly’s arm. “But you’re a killjoy.”