The Northwoods Chronicles (29 page)

“He could change.”

Lexy looked up at the ceiling. “Good god, Mandy.
You know he isn’t going to change. One of these days he’ll kill
you, not just blacken your eye or break your wrist.”

Amanda fingered the wrist that Lexy knew still
bothered her and probably would never again work right. She sighed.
“You’re right. I know you’re right. That’s why I need you,
Lex.”

“You haven’t called him or anything stupid?”

Amanda shook her head. “I called you
instead.”

“Smart girl. So tell me what’s really going
on.”

“It’s these dreams, I think. I can’t stop these
dreams. They’re so erotic, and they make me so horny. And that
makes me lonely.”

Lexy laughed. “Jeez, must be something in the
water here. I’ve been having some pretty wild dreams myself.”

Margie came by with the coffee pot in one hand
and a stack of dirty dishes in the other. She seemed to be unaware
of herself. “Dreams?” she asked Amanda.

Amanda blushed and looked down at her hands.

Margie sat down at the booth and set the coffee
pot and dirty dishes on the table.

“Yuck, Margie.” Lexy said, and pushed somebody’s
half-eaten eggs away from her, but Margie ignored her.

“Tell me about the dreams,” Margie said.

“Are you having them too?” Amanda asked.

Margie nodded. “Sex dreams,” she whispered.
“Sinful.”

“They’re too good to be sinful,” Lexy said, but
only got dirty looks in reply from the two women across from her.
“Hey. You prudes can be mad about them, but I like it. I always
wake up at the crucial moment, but I have my toys that finish the
job.”

“Hush,” Amanda scolded.

Lexy dumped sugar and cream into her coffee and
stirred it.

“Then we can’t be the only ones,” Margie
said.

Lexy looked at Margie’s face and saw a drowning
woman needing a life raft. “I’m sure we’re not the only ones,
Margie,” Lexy said. “Maybe it’s the northern lights. Or the change
in seasons. I don’t know. They’re pretty powerful, I must
admit.”

“Horrible,” Margie said. “Wretched.”

“Well . . . ,” Lexy said.

“Who else, do you think?” Amanda asked.

Lexy looked around the diner. Julia was having
breakfast with Dr. Mitch the gorgeous dentist. The concept of
having breakfast out with a man wasn’t lost on Lexy. So Julia and
Mitch had finally broken the ice and slept together. Julia probably
hadn’t been sleeping at all, not with that good-looking guy to keep
her entertained.

She looked back at Amanda. Maybe Julia’s dreams
had led her to the bed of Dr. Mitch Kardashian. Wouldn’t that just
be like a man to figure out how to give women the hots? “Julia,”
she said.

Margie stood up, leaving the dishes and coffee
pot on the table.

“Hey,” Lexy said.

Margie turned around. Lexy gestured at the mess.
Margie swept it all up, and made for the kitchen double time. She
came right back out and approached Julia. A moment later, the
ladies excused themselves from the good doctor’s company and headed
toward the coat rack.

The two women put their heads together and
whispered, but Lexy saw Julia nod. Confirmed. How very odd.

She brought her coffee cup up to her lips for a
sip, then thought better of it. Four women who all ate at Margie’s
diner, all having the same weird dreams. Maybe it was the
coffee.

“See?” she said to Amanda.

Julia turned and smiled tentatively at them,
then went back to her seat. Margie nodded at Lexy, and a chill ran
through her bones.

~~~

Wolver was chopping wood when Pamela pulled up.
He was bare chested and wore raggedy jeans. The black T-shirt she
bought him last Christmas hung from a nearby tree branch. He smiled
at her as she parked, then finished splitting the piece of pine and
threw it on top of the sizeable pile he’d been making.

“Shouldda called,” he said. “I’d have
dressed.”

“You look dressed,” she said as she walked over
and put her hands on his pecs. He was gorgeous, no question.

He kissed her cheek, and wrapped his big,
wood-chopping, steamy arms around her. He made her feel small. “I’d
have shaved,” he whispered.

“You don’t have a phone,” she said, “or I’d have
made a reservation.”

He smelled her hair, and ran his hands around
her back. Then he pulled back, and she watched his eyes as they
searched her eyes, her face, her clothes. Wolver’s place was where
Pamela came to feel appreciated. He put his hands inside her
jacket, pulled her to him and locked his lips onto hers in a
wonderful welcome-home.

“C’mon in,” he said, taking her hand and pulling
her toward the front door. “I’ll put the coffee on.”

She giggled like a little girl. She couldn’t
help it.

Pamela and Wolver had made magic the first time
they met when he was working for the Department of Natural
Resources and she was teaching an environmental politics class at
the local community college. She took the students on a field trip
to a lake up in the northwoods, and Wolver—his name had been Daniel
Wickam then—had drawn the short straw and had to escort them around
and answer all their questions.

The minute they laid eyes on each other, the
students disappeared and they spent all their time maneuvering to
get alone. Finally, he slipped her his phone number, and that
started a love affair that kept them each satisfied in their own
way.

Wolver found that cabin on a piece of property
in the middle of nowhere, and Pamela inherited a fortune, and
despite the lifestyle changes, they had found a way to get together
usually at least once or twice a month. Occasionally their
separations were longer, when things got busy, but the
unconventional relationship suited them.

And the sex was fantastic. Pamela had never
known someone like him. He delighted in every inch of her. He
pinched, probed, licked, sucked, kissed and named each body part,
with a playful, worshipful ease. She fell for him, all the way.

This time, it was hard for her to keep from
telling him that there was a new body part for him to name. Not
yet. Soon. And when it was over, she felt soft and sweet and
feminine and loved. As always.

She snuggled down into his side, smelling the
warmth of the cabin and its little woodstove, smelling the warmth
of Wolver and his bed and she was as contented as a woman could
ever be.

“You can’t stay the night,” he said, and that
broke the spell. He always wanted her to spend the night. He
usually tried to get her to move in and never leave.

“Why?”

“There’s something in the woods,” he said, idly
toying with her hair. “I can’t get a fix on it, and probably won’t
unless we have a first snow and I can see tracks. But it’s out
there, and I don’t know what it is.”

“You don’t know what it is? What could it be?”
She turned and looked at him, but his eyes were fixed firmly on the
ceiling. “Is it a person?”

“It’s big. I hear it snuffling.”

“Bear,” she said.

He shook his head. “Like no bear I’ve ever seen.
Or heard. Or smelled.”

Pamela had to believe him. Wolver was smarter
about independent, survival living than anybody. “Are we in
danger?”

“I don’t think I am. But I don’t know about you.
If this thing is staking out territory, you’re an invader.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“That’s why I need you to leave before
dark.”

“Are you hunting it?”

“Not yet. I’m hoping it will move on. I brought
all my traps in. I don’t want—I don’t want it in my traps.”

She whined a little sound deep in her throat to
let him know how disappointed she was. He turned toward her and
gave her a big hug. “I know, sweetie. Me, too. I’d just feel better
if I got a fix on this thing.”

“Okay.” She looked out the window and saw long
shadows. “That’s soon,” she said. “I never even got the stuff out
of my car.”

“Come up again next week. Between now and then,
I’ll try to get a handle on it, so you can stay over and we can
make juicy-juice all night long.”

“Mmmm,” she said. “That’s what I want to
hear.”

“I love you, baby,” he said, kissed her
forehead, and then leaped out of bed.

Her moment to tell him about Wolver, Jr., had
come and gone. She’d come back to tell him next week.

~~~

When Regina Porter woke from her nap on the
sofa, she woke with her hands in her crotch. Head still full of the
thrumming, syrupy pounding of her dream, she leaped up and smoothed
her dress over her legs. Pearce was at the church, preparing for
Sunday. He didn’t know about her dreams. There was no need for him
to know. She’d spent the morning making cookies and bundt cakes—all
the ladies of the church were contributing baked goods, and Margie
was selling them in her diner, so the church could buy new choir
robes. Regina loved to bake, but it became exhausting work.

Especially since she hadn’t been sleeping
well.

She went to the kitchen and washed her hands,
then lost herself in wonderment of the feelings that these dreams
had brought out in her. Obnoxiously enough, she didn’t think of
Pearce when she woke, she thought of Doc. She’d like to have Doc,
big, sweet, open-faced, calm, kind Doc put his hands on her and
tease her passions until she flew away like she was doing in these
dreams.

He didn’t feature in her dreams, though. She
couldn’t quite visualize who or what it was that ignited her
imagination so. There was an impression of big, of round, of kind
of humpy, but there were no facial features. It wasn’t like her
adolescent dreams of movie stars, or Pearce, when he’d been
courting. She felt too old, too proper, too clergy-wife to be
having lusts like this, and it stole her appetite and made her feel
guilty in front of her husband.

No, if Pearce—god forbid—should die, Regina
would have no reason to move away from White Pines Junction. She’d
make a home for herself here, and as soon as she bought a little
cottage for herself with Pearce’s life insurance, she’d march right
on over to the tackle shop and gift that precious Doc with one of
her best lemon poppyseed bundt cakes.

But in real life, Pearce was expecting his call
to a new parish any day, and he sometimes came home early just to
check the mail. Pity. He’d just got used to this community. Regina
was growing to love this place. She didn’t want to leave it.

She didn’t want to move away from Doc.

Regina blinked him away from her mind, dried her
hands on a fresh dishcloth and felt the top of the two bundts she’d
taken out of the oven just before her nap. They were cool and ready
for a dusting of powdered sugar.

~~~

By the time another week had rolled around,
Pamela found herself full of anxiety. She felt as though the father
of her unborn child, Wolver, the love of her life, was in danger,
and she was powerless to do anything about it. Pamela liked having
a little control over the things in her life. Her body, for
instance, her finances, her destiny. That thought gave her a little
chuckle as she rounded the three-mile mark on her run. Her
reproductive system had taken over her body, world conditions had
taken over her finances, and her destiny was up to the whims of the
gods. She had no power, not really, and she was kidding herself if
she thought she did.

Still, she’d like it better if Wolver had a
phone.

When she got home from her run, she was
surprised to see his Jeep in her driveway. He came into town
occasionally, but she usually knew when to expect him. And he never
stayed long. He only lived two hours north, but when he gave up
town life, he really gave it up. He must be out of something
important.

She pulled into the driveway behind him, got out
and went into the house. He was at her kitchen table with a small
glass of bourbon in front of him.

“Hey,” she said. She eyed the bourbon.

“Hey.” He smelled rangy and looked like it had
been a while since he’d slept. His eyes were red-rimmed and
bloodshot. This was not like Wolver.

“You all right?”

“Better now,” he said, and drank down the
bourbon. “I needed that.”

“You need a bath,” she said. “Get out of those
clothes and I’ll wash them.”

He nodded, and started unbuttoning his shirt.
Pamela knew that when he was ready, he’d say what he came to say.
He stood up and shucked his clothes, right there in the kitchen,
and walked naked into the bathroom. She scooped them up from the
floor, and put them in the washing machine. She’d wait until they’d
both showered before turning it on.

But her insides jangled. He hadn’t hugged her or
kissed her. He hadn’t seemed particularly happy to see her.
Something was troubling him. Something big, and in Pamela’s
pregnant female mind, it could only be a problem between them.

“Whatever it is,” she whispered to herself,
“I’ll survive it.” She put her hand on her tummy. “We’ll survive
it.” She sat on her bed and waited for him to finish in the
bathroom. Generally, she’d rip off her clothes and join him for a
good giggly, sudsy mutual scrub, but not this time. He needed his
space, and she had a feeling she was going to need hers.

He came out of the bathroom with a towel around
his waist, and climbed immediately into her bed.

Maybe he’s sick, she thought, as she wrangled
her way out of her spandex. She took a fast shower, powdered,
perfumed, blew her hair dry, but by the time she got back to the
bedroom, Wolver was snoring.

She slipped in next to him, waking him slowly
with gentle caresses.

“Mmm,” he said. “Feels good.”

“Tell me,” she said.

He turned onto his back, put his arms behind his
head and stared at the ceiling. “I just needed to come to town. I
needed to get out of there.”

This wasn’t like Wolver. Pamela just kept
rubbing his scalp with the tips of her fingers.