Perfect Touch (11 page)

“You held it all together. That's what counts.”

Jay whistled to the dogs, and the herd began moving slowly toward Fish Camp once more.

“You're really okay?” he asked her.

“I . . . don't know how to put it,” she said slowly, sorting through her thoughts. “Part of me was thrilled to be out in a place where I can't just call up a meal or connect to the entirety of human knowledge on my phone. And part of me thought I was flat-out crazy. Then wind rolled down from the pass and the air smelled like old stone and sweetgrass. I felt so alive and
real
. I could hear my heartbeat and feel the sun and the wind on my skin. And I wondered when I had stopped listening to my own body.”

When she was silent, he made an encouraging sound, needing to know more about her.

“San Francisco is an extraordinary place, both exciting and secure,” she said slowly. “There, I'm part of a huge, complicated system built by human beings. I'm one piece of a crowd that ignores all the other pieces that make up the whole. There are so many things to do, to see, to try.”

“And you miss it.”

She nodded. “And I discovered that out here I'm connected to a different whole that I had all but forgotten. That's why I ride when I can, to remind me there are many worlds. Different worlds. In my race to get away from my childhood, I forgot that. I forgot the part where I was a girl standing barefoot in tall grass on a bluff looking out over the Pacific Ocean, breathing air that hadn't touched anything since Japan.”

Jay watched Sara's lips while an emotion he couldn't name twisted through him. “I feel like that, too. Different worlds. I just have to figure out how to live a barefoot child's life in at least one of them.”

“What about the adult?”

“No worries,” he said rather grimly. “The adult knows that each
world reaches out and takes its toll in sweat and blood and dreams.”

Her dark eyes searched his, finding little comfort. “No free lunches,” she said. “Damn. I keep looking for one.”

“Speaking of lunch,” he said, “I have to call the Solvangs again. They didn't pick up a few hours ago.”

While he unbuckled one of the saddlebags, Sara watched the dogs watching the cows. She had learned that the dogs would detect trouble long before she did. And they were fun to see in action.

Jay pulled out the radio, switched to Fish Camp frequency, and said, “Ivar? Inge? Pick up the radio.”

He waited for someone to answer.

“Come on, Ivar,” Jay said. “Even you can't fish all day. Pick up!”

He waited.

And waited.

“Damn it,” Jay said, switching the radio back to standby mode. “They must still be out fishing or chopping wood or gardening or something. They're supposed to be within hearing of the radio at all times, but . . .” He shrugged. “They both are the independent kind. That's why they live at Fish Camp all year.”

“You think they could be fishing for trout?” Sara asked, not bothering to hide her greed.

“They're the best eating we have, unless we get mad enough and grill King Kobe.”

“Trout, veal, trout, veal. Who could decide?”

“If young Kobe doesn't clean up his act, we'll have both,” Jay promised.

“How much farther to Fish Camp?”

“Getting hungry again?”

“You bet. Riding is a lot more exercise than sitting in a chair.”

“We'll be able to see the lake part of Fish Camp from the top of the trail right up ahead,” he said. “From there, it's about twenty minutes to the cabins.”

“Trout. Veal. Trout. Veal.”

He smiled, then whistled at the dogs to pick up the pace. Soon they were up on the crest of the trail, looking down. The cabins were hidden among the trees, but the boathouse showed its weathered wood at the shore of a sapphire lake.

“You see any boat?” Sara asked, standing in the stirrups as she searched.

“No.” He tried the radio again.

No answer.

With a muttered word, he stowed the radio in the saddlebag.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“What?”

“You're looking like your neck itches. A lot.”

F
OR A FEW
minutes Jay concentrated on the dogs and the herd rather than Sara's question. Then he said, “It's not like the Solvangs to blow off my calls. One call, sure. Fish Camp is a pretty big place. Three cabins, a fenced pasture, a corral, a small barn, the boathouse, a little storage building Ivar turned into his tool shop and retreat. After winter, there are always lots of repairs to do.”

“Sounds like a miniature ranch,” she said, “but for fun, not work.”

“Mom used to call it the play ranch. When she was alive, all of us spent a lot of time up here in the summer. After she died, I spent almost as much time at Fish Camp as I did at the ranch house.”

“Stepmother problems?”

“Father problems, too. JD had a hard time adjusting to a son who was nearly as big as he was. Kept trying to treat me like I was in diapers. Ivar always accepted me as I was. And Inge”—he smiled—“Inge was
always making cookies and pies and sneaking bits to me when I just couldn't wait for dinner.” Then he said, “Lightfoot, get that calf!”

The dog was already on the calf, but it gave Jay a way to vent the tension that kept tightening his neck.

“If we show up unannounced, is it a problem?” Sara asked.

“No.”

If contacting the caretakers didn't matter, she wanted to ask why he was worried. But she didn't. He was in an edgy mood and didn't need her questions picking at him. Instead of talking, she fell into the easy silence they had often shared throughout the long, lazy day riding through the mountains. Usually the sound of hoofbeats on the trail, the clean, shifting wind, and the easy rhythm of riding a good horse relaxed and renewed her.

But not today. Her mind careened between the starving cougar and the kiss she had shared with Jay, a kiss that kept reverberating through her.

Beautiful, beautiful woman.

Sweet liar.

She had been kissed many times, yet she had never shared a kiss like that, gentle and consuming, a need and an acceptance that seeped into her soul. She knew she should be much more wary of Jay. He was the wrong man for her, and she was the wrong woman for him.

Yet it had never felt so very right.

Fine. So be an adult about it. You want him. He wants you. We're both single. Go for it. Enjoy him. Be enjoyed. Savor it as long as it lasts.

Then go back to your real life.

A slow kind of heat filled her at the thought of an adult, no-strings and no-regrets affair with Jay. She watched him from the shadow of her hat brim, admiring his easy male grace as he rode. Sun glanced off the width of his shoulders and flowed down his back in a long caress.

Beautiful, beautiful man. I can't have you for long, but I can have some memories to warm up the cold San Francisco fog.

Lost in her thoughts, Sara didn't realize that the horses had crested the final ridge until Jezebel stopped and snorted out a long breath. Beside her, Jay had the field glasses out and was scanning the land below. Even without binoculars, she could see the general layout of Fish Camp.

The small lake was a ragged circle ringed with tall, shaggy evergreens, rocks, and pockets of grass. What she could see of the house and cabins, which were tucked away in the trees, was little more than a patch here and there of weathered wood. The barn appeared to be maybe a quarter the size of the home barn.

No wonder Jay spent all the time he could here,
Sara thought.
Gorgeous, barely touched by people, with a lake to play in and a lot of land to roam and imagine all the things boys love to imagine.

Fish Camp had the air of a Shangri-la where the worries of the outside world couldn't penetrate.

Yet Jay didn't seem like a man looking down at paradise. He was intent, concentrated as he scanned the land below, like the golden eagle looking for its dinner.

“Is everything all right?” she asked quietly.

He swept Fish Camp again with his binoculars, looking slowly, thoroughly. “No smoke, no boat, nothing moving but the wind.” He lingered for several long breaths, searching the knee-high grass that grew in small openings between the lake and the house.

She looked and saw nothing out of the ordinary. The forest turned sunlight into green needles and shadows. Wind moved tree branches and grass. Solar collectors on the main house's roof flashed in the sun.

Rustic but not backward,
she thought, eyeing the panels.

“Are we late?” she asked. “Maybe they're out looking for us.”

“We could have been here hours earlier,” he admitted, remembering the lazy ride. “But if they were worried, they would have used the radio.”

What Jay didn't say was that he hadn't been up to Fish Camp much since he had become a freshly minted civilian. There hadn't been any time for casual visits. There had been too much work to be done at the ranch, where so much necessary upkeep had just been let go. And JD's illness had eaten away at everything, free time most of all.

Jay looked hard at the lake, searching for the telltale wake of a motorboat. Then he searched for someone walking on the tree-sheltered path to the boathouse, or the equally sheltered paths between cabins and the small barn.

Nothing.

“They could be fishing at First Pond,” he said. “Granddad made a stone dam on the stream coming out of the lake and stocked the pond with native trout. I learned to fish there as a kid.”

The memory of coming up here with JD and young Barton rippled through Jay. It had been so long ago, but the memories were fresh and sweet.

JD teaching Barton how to fish, to do something for himself. I used to give him my favorite lures. God, how Barton grinned when he caught a fish bigger than mine. And I grinned right along with him.

Good times.

Knowing that those times were gone and would never return was a heaviness Jay carried because he didn't know how to put it down. He kept thinking that he could have done something better, something that would have helped his little brother make different decisions as an adult.

You did all you could,
Jay told himself.

It wasn't enough, was it?

And that was something that couldn't be changed, like his mother's slow death, or the first time he saw one of his soldiers die trying to breathe through a bullet wound in his chest.

“Hey, you okay?” Sara asked. “You look . . .”
Lost.

But she wasn't going to say that aloud.

He lifted his hat and resettled it with a jerk. “Just remembering some things. Wondering where the road changed under my feet.”

His eyes were bleak beneath the shadow of the hat brim. Though his mouth was in sunlight, it was equally forbidding. He lifted the gelding's reins and followed the small herd down the back way into Fish Camp. The tension in his body increased with every step closer they came.

Where in hell are the Solvangs?

The trail came in at the rear of Fish Camp, where there was a fenced pasture, corral, and small barn. The pasture was empty, because the caretakers had traded in their horses for ATVs.

Maybe they're off on a long ride.

Then they damn well should have taken the radio. They know the rules. And they would have to be hell and gone for me not to hear their ATVs.

“We're putting the herd in here,” he said, gesturing toward the pasture.

Sara didn't say a word. The tension pouring off Jay had scuttled any thoughts of Shangri-la.

The dogs herded the cattle into the pasture. The water trough was full and there was plenty of grass to keep the cattle entertained. Jay took a battered tin bucket off its hook on the fence, filled it with water from the trough, and set it against a fence post for the dogs. Then he gave
them the signal to guard the cattle. After a final look at the pasture, he shut the gate.

She wanted to ask questions, but held her tongue. If he knew any answers, he would have told her.

They headed for the small corral, which was close to the barn. The horses must have caught Jay's mood, because they minced and snorted and shied all the way to the weathered rails. He opened the gate for Jezebel to pass through, then closed it behind Amble.

“Loosen the cinch and take off the bridle,” Jay said, working quickly over his horse. “The water trough is full. Feed can wait until I see what's going on.”

It used to be good up here,
he thought.
No matter how rocky things were with Liza, how bad things were with the family, up here was always a sanctuary.

It didn't feel like a sanctuary anymore. He hesitated over the rifle, then left it in the saddle sheath. The Glock should be enough.

After Sara saw to her horse, she leaned against the corral fence and absorbed the silence. The sky between clouds and what she could see of the lake were a blue so brilliant it made her ache.

Jay walked toward her, then stopped.

“What?” she asked, turning.

He held a hand up, a signal for silence and stillness.

A single glance told her that the stranger was back in Jay's skin.

She couldn't see Fish Camp's calm and quiet anymore. Instead, she saw the motion in the wind-blown trees and occasional small patches of grass, and the cougar that had been desperate enough to try for calves and to hell with the people and the dogs on guard.

But there isn't a cougar lying in wait between the cabins and the main house.

Is there?

Get a grip. There's nothing but my overactive imagination out there.

She followed Jay as he walked around the back of the barn toward the main house, which was farther away, closer to the lake than either of the secondary cabins. As soon as the caretaker cabin was in sight, he reached behind his back for the Glock. He pulled out the pistol and held it down along his side. His left hand went from relaxed to a flat, open palm that silently told Sara to stay back.

She hesitated, then moved slowly backward, watching the cabin as she did. In the dappled shade of the surrounding trees, it looked like the back door was ajar. Or might be. It was hard to tell. At this distance it could have been her imagination.

“When I say go, we're going to move quickly and quietly into the trees on the far side of the larger cabin,” Jay said. His words were barely audible, carrying no farther than her ears. “Go.”

She was stunned that someone as big as he was could move so silently, so fast. She felt clumsy and noisy in his wake. It seemed like forever before she was under the trees on the other side of the caretakers' cabin.

With a signal for Sara to stay put, Jay carefully approached the side of the cabin.

I'm going to feel like a fool when nothing is wrong,
he told himself.

Better a live fool.

He ignored the niggling voice of civilization and went with the paranoid, pragmatic side of his mind. He didn't know exactly what had put his hackles up. He only knew that every survival instinct he had was screaming that something was very wrong.

He held up his left hand, balled in a fist, and hoped that Sara knew enough about hand signals—or plain common sense—to stop forward movement.

“Wait here,” he said, the words barely audible. “I'm going to check the cabin. I won't be long.”

She started to say something, but he was already moving. If she hadn't been looking right at him, she wouldn't have associated the faint rustle of sound with a human being.

Like that cougar. Fast. Invisible until he went for the kill.

Jay slipped around the corner, still holding the Glock along his right leg. He didn't look back to see if she stayed in the relative safety of the trees. All his attention was focused on the cabin itself.

Slowly Sara worked her way through the trees until she could reach out and feel the planks of the caretakers' cabin, rough beneath her fingers. She shivered with the cold.

Nerves,
she told herself.
It's not that cold.

Or maybe it was simply that the wind off the lake was especially cutting. Her fingers ached.

Gradually she realized that she was gripping the wood so hard her hand was almost numb. Very carefully she eased the pressure on her fingers. Drawing slow, deep breaths, she waited for whatever happened next.

Jay stopped at the back of the house and listened. He heard nothing but his own heartbeat, even and steady. His body had been trained for stillness even when his mind screamed that he move and move fast. Up close, he could see what had set off his instincts. The door was ajar, leaking heat from the woodstove in the kitchen.

Not that there was a lot of heat. Barely different from the outside, in fact.

Inge will have a fit. She'll put up with a lot from her man, but messing with her kitchen isn't tolerated.

Jay stepped along the outside of the two stairs at the back door. They creaked, but no more than the cabin itself under the heavy caress of the wind. When the wind swirled, the door moved, showing him more of Inge's kitchen. The old wood floor gleamed with polish in the low light.

He nudged the door fully open and waited with his back to the outside wall.

If anyone was in the house, he or she didn't come to close the door. And Jay knew from experience that the draft from the open kitchen door could be felt in every room of the cabin.

He ghosted through the small mudroom and across the floor. A pot of pasta waited on the stove. The noodles had swollen to grotesque proportions. The stove beneath the pot was barely warm. An iron skillet full of crumbled, browned hamburger had congealed next to the pot. Whatever fire had been in the stove once was cooling ashes now.

Woodstove could have been running for hours, depending on how much fuel Inge put in and what position the damper was in. No way for me to know. Just another thing that is wrong, like the abandoned food and the door left open for the wind.