“Clicking is not the right word,” Juliet said. Blooming, maybe. She looked at his mouth, and could not even remember when she had so longed for a kiss. “It isn't your imagination,” she said, and swallowed.
Honestly, what was this? This narcotic spell he cast? Would he kiss her? Would she let him?
is the award-winning author of both contemporary and historical romance novels. She lives in the mountains of the Southwest with her two growing sons and many animals in a hundred-year-old house the town blacksmith built. The only hobby she has had since she started writing is tending the ancient garden of irises, lilies and lavender beyond her office window, and she says she can think of no more satisfying way to spend a life than growing children, books and flowers. Ruth Wind also writes women's fiction under the name Barbara Samuel. You can visit her Web site at www.barbarasamuel.com.
can do anything they set their minds to.
opera. It was important, she had decided, to eat the candy in order of color: first brown, because they were so boring, then yellow, because that was close to brown, then green for grass, then red.
Juliet liked structure. Since she'd been asked to take a leave of absence from her Los Angeles firm, there was no real structure to her life at the moment. She made do with what she could getâcandy rituals, reliable television programs, meal times.
But thisâ! A crisis was even better than structure. In a crisis, there were steps to follow, a plan to make, a defined course of action. In this crisis, for example, she knew exactly what to do first. She put the bowl to one side and brushed blue M&M's off her lap.
crying Juliet had heard too often as a volunteer at a community center for immigrant women in L.A.
“He deserves to get shot,” she insisted.
“Don't call me that!” she said, glaring at him.
snow turned into a blizzard. As he slammed the door firmly, he narrowed his eyes and looked up. Burly blue mountains surrounded the town, and clouds had moved halfway down their sides, hiding the entire line of ridges and most of the still-bare ski runs.
They wouldn't be bare long. A few cottony bits of snow were spitting out of the sky, but it would be a few hours until the heart of the storm moved in. By then he and Glory would be tucked into their snug house, a fire roaring in the potbellied stove, soup bubbling on the stove for their supper, a dog snoring on the hearth.
A good life. Good enough. In the old days, he'd imagined a woman for himself in that pictureâa mother for Gloryâbut that had turned out badly. Very badly. As he headed away from town on narrow roads, he remembered to be grateful. Grateful for simple things like his daughter safe in his care, knowing she'd be fed well tonight and sleep in a clean, warm bed.
It hadn't always been that way. He looked in the rearview mirror and saw that she'd fallen asleep. Her cheeks were rosy, her dark eyelashes a half oval. He could never get over the fragility of her closed eyelids, the sweetness of her perfect skin, her tiny fingernails.
Several miles into the mountains, he turned off on an even narrower road, this one dirt, and bumpy. It looped around wooded landscapes alongside a stream, and opened finally into a pristine meadow, with spectacular views of the high, craggy peaks of the San Juan Mountains. Well, there was a view on clear days, anyway. This afternoon, only the blue lower skirts showed beneath blouses of thick clouds.
A collection of low outbuildings spread out to the east of the meadow. In the center was a small, neat house built of pine. Smoke came out of the chimney. Josh smiled to himself as he followed the driveway around to the front of the house. Desi would have the kettle on. Maybe he'd have a cup of coffee before heading home. She'd been going through a rough time.
As he rounded her house, his smile faded. A grim tableau was playing out in front of the little house. Desi, a tall sturdy woman with a glossy black braid, was standing on her back steps, a rifle in her hand. Her expression was grim.
The rifle was pointed at Claude Tsosie, Desi's soon-to-be-ex-husband, who also sported a long black braid. He wore a jean jacket and boots, and silver jewelry on his wrists. Josh shook his head. He'd never really liked Claude, an artist who lived too much on his talent and never spoke the truth if there was a way around it, but he didn't especially want to see him dead.
A third, unexpected player was a fragile-looking blond woman who stood by her car, frightened and obviously unsure of what to do. Her boots were the city sortânot high-heeled, especially, or pointed, but square and polished. Wouldn't be worth a damn in the snow that was coming. She looked over at Josh's truck, entreaty on herâhe saw nowâvery pretty face.
From the glove box, Josh took his badge. He was a tribal policeman and technically had no jurisdiction off the reservation, but Claude wouldn't pay much attention.
He glanced over his shoulder to see that Glory was still sound asleep, and climbed quietly out of the truck.
Juliet stood frozen by her rental car, praying that Desi would not actually kill her husband. At the moment, the decision seemed to rest on Claude, who had by turns been cajoling Desi, then turning toward Juliet.
Juliet, once very good in a crisis, wrapped her arms around her ribs and tried desperately to remember how her old self would have handled this scene. She couldn't remember. Sometimes lately, it seemed there was a sinkhole in the center of her life, and all sorts of things were falling into it. Memories. Jobs. Maybe her fiancÃ©.
How to handle a crisis.
In a moment, the door opened and a man climbed down and closed his door with odd gentleness.
he wore a sheepskin jacket and jeans and had long, capable-looking hands.
But it was his face that captured her. Eyes as large and dark as a deer's, with a generous mouth to balance cheekbones as severe as a cliff. Not beautiful. Not even handsome, particularly.
Especially now, as he advanced toward Desi and Claude. It was as if an aura came with him, a force field. Juliet wishedâsuddenly and fiercelyâthat she had learned that trick.
“I just want to get my stuff,” Claude responded.
From somewhere to the east came a howl, long and chilling, and then another and anotherâDesi's wolves, crying out from their sanctuary, as if they knew what was transpiring. The wolves were her special project, rescued from every imaginable situation, and the sound of their howls was chilling and primitive.
bread, tumbling out of the sky. They stuck to the three dark heads to make lacy caps, and with that odd sense of disconnect that had plagued her so much lately, Juliet lost interest in her sister and the scene, and held out a hand to catch a snowflake. They touched her palm and melted white to silver. Pristine. Unspoiled.
“It's not just your land!” Claude protested, taking a step forward.
Desi calmly took another bullet out of her pocket and began to reload.
talk to me again,” Desi said.
And, finally, Claude pulled away, his truck roaring down the dirt road. Not even gravel this far out, Juliet had discovered to her dismay. By midwinter, it would be practically impassable.
Josh kept on with his task.
At last Desi seemed to realize Juliet was there, and gave her sister a wan smile. “Hi, baby,” she said.
The man put his hand on Juliet's shoulder, and she startled violently, breaking away from her sister's hug, and backing away in a most inelegant way. Her left eye started that weird twitching thing it kept doing lately.
worn a few seasons. He smelled of leather and morning, an oddly compelling combination, and she wanted to lean closer, take that scent more deeply into her lungs. She swayed, dizzy from travel or danger or him.
She nodded, lifted a shoulder. “I really am okay.” Fear wasn't the problem these days, except the weird twitch and that exaggerated startle reflex. It was more this sense of not being able to really connect to anything that was driving her crazy.
But he'd already gone inside, nudging Desi along. Juliet stood on the porch and looked at the big truck, disappearing now under a thin covering of snow. It looked fake, as if someone sprinkled it out of some big box overhead, clumps falling out every so often to land with a puffy splash on the hood. She tugged her sleeves down over her hands and went to stand by the truck.
As if marauders might be coming to fling open the door and steal the little girl away.
Now that the drama had died down, the air was utterly, completely still. It almost held a sense of tension, as if the air were waiting for something. A gunshot? A cry?
thing? Laughter. Happiness. A bluebird.
She snorted to herself. Yeah, right. A little bluebird of happiness right here in the falling snow.
He grinned. His eyes crinkled gorgeously at the corners, sending a fan of sun lines into his dark cheeks. “Mad Calf,” he repeated, enunciating carefully.
In the kitchen, Juliet put the kettle on the tiny, two-burner stove and turned on the fire beneath it, bemused by the bright blue flame that burst to life with a little pop. She had an electric stove at home. Gas seemed old-fashioned, though her friend the chef swore it was the only possible heating element for a serious cook.
cooked anything more complicated than a cup of tea, Juliet would be very surprised.
With the water on to boil, Juliet looked around to see what had changed since her last visit. The cabin was small, only two rooms; the kitchen/living area, and the sleeping area, with a bed and a futon and desk, plus the postage-stamp-sized bathroom. There was a very small generator for electricity, and the stove ran on propane. Two potbellied stoves, one in each room, provided heat.
Primitive, but not as primitive as it had been. At least there was a toilet and a tub nowâthings that had been missing the first couple of times Juliet had come to visit. Desi and Claude had built the cabin themselves, a little at a time, and the planâat least until the marriage had started falling apartâhad been to add a room every year.
Juliet found visiting fun for a week or two, but it got old to have to be so careful with everything she used so casually in the city, things a person took for granted. Water, electricity, heat. Desi didn't take long hot baths, as Juliet did in her old Hollywood condo, or leave the water running when she brushed her teeth, or play the television for company. Desi didn't actually own a televisionâshe said they used too much power, and without a dish, there wasn't much reception anyway.
Shadowstorm by Kemp, Paul S.