Bj James - Journey's End

“Shadows,” Merrill murmured and looked down at their namesake.

“Wolves,” he mused, “out of nowhere. Wolves where there had been none for so long. Phantom and phenomenon. Naturally the rangers and environmentalists and all the bureaucrats imaginable were called in by the authorities. But some of the smaller stockmen were facing disaster and were far too worried and too antsy to wait for their proposed remedies to work. Taking matters into their own hands, they brought in people of their own.

“Bounty hunters.” His face was wooden, but there was contempt in his tone. “These killers who called themselves professionals hunted and slaughtered at will. Trapping, shooting and butchering, even poisoning anything on four feet that wasn’t a cow or a horse.”

A grim smile tugged at his mustache. “Even goats and sheep, and sometimes farm dogs were at risk when they were at their baiting and trigger-happy worst.

“During most of the furor, I was spared the wolves and the hunters. Then, one day I found one of them in the woods. A magnificent wolf, the biggest female I’d ever seen, and as black as night.” The glass moved, cognac swirled. “She’d been shot. I don’t know when or where, or how far she’d run before she bled out. She had pups and three of the litter were with her. When I blundered onto her body, they ran away, scattering into the woods.

“After I buried her I searched for them.” The ripple of his shoulders, as he brought the glass to his lips, called attention to their power. “No luck.”

“Yet Shadow’s here.” As she said his name again, the great creature made a pleading sound deep in his throat and nudged his nose at her knee. Both her hands were clenched around her glass. Now she eased one away to stroke the wolf, her fingers gliding comfortably now down his muzzle in the familiar caress he sought.

Ty savored the pretty picture they made, how natural it seemed in his home. He realized that, with the easy unclenching of her hands and the caress of the wolf, the fissure in the bastion that defended her heart had become a crack.

Settling deeper into the cushions of the sofa, he propped an ankle on his knee. “There were signs of the pack around for days,” he continued, picking up the thread of his narrative. “I’d never seen such tracks. Monstrous, but light, as if the Indians were right.”

“Ghost Wolves.”

“I lost a colt.” He turned pensive with the telling of it, then shrugged away the loss. “He was the last. As mysteriously as they came, the wolves were gone.”

Taking her empty glass from her, he returned it to the bar. His half smile was rueful. “As I said, long story.”

“Not so long.” Beyond her response to the wolf, Merrill had hardly moved throughout the revelation, as fascinated with his voice, his choice of words, his manner of speaking as with the story. Ghost Wolves, moving like Shadows, phantoms—he had a way with words, a nice touch. “You weave a remarkable story, but it isn’t finished.”

“Not yet.” Ty swung about, by habit gauging the drift of snow accumulating in the corners of windowpanes. He was quiet for the space of a heartbeat, remembering the tiny ball of fur stumbling and tumbling after him on legs too short and feet too large. A pup attached to a boot heel as firmly as the name he’d been given.

Fate? Providence? One creature sensing the need of another? More than coincidence, or only that? Ty would never know.

It didn’t matter.

All that mattered was that the tiny pup that became the great wolf, had come to him. When he turned again, Ty’s lips softened into a fond smile. “Five days later, when the bounty hunters were gone, as if he knew by instinct he was safe, a pup walked out of the woods. He never left.”

“Shadow, choosing you.”

“After a fashion. His fashion.”

“Safe,” she mused. “Yet Valentina says you’re a hunter.”

He hesitated so long she thought he wouldn’t answer. Taking his glass from the table, he drained a final, clinging drop from it. His blue gaze pierced her like a shard of ice. “I was. Once. But not for bounty.” Setting the glass down on the bar with exaggerated care, he said with a calm that sent shivers down a wary spine, “Never for bounty.”

Merrill held his fierce stare. There was darkness in his eyes. More than anger, more than loathing. Had she hit a nerve? Was there more reason for Fini Terre than a man seeking his livelihood in a land as beautiful as paradise?

Valentina called it his Journey’s End.

Journey from where? From what?

“My turn to apologize,” she managed, and was surprised to find she meant it.

“There’s no need to apologize for the truth.”

“You make it sound as if you were more than a casual hunter?”

“I have been. I was. A long time ago.” He moved away from the bar, returning to the hearth. Subject closed.

His broad back brooked no questions as he banked smoldering coals and readied the fire for the night. Rising from the completed task, he turned again to her. The hard edges had eased from his face, the darkness from his eyes. “It’s late.” His gaze flicked to the book she’d laid aside, lingered, then slid away. “I’ll leave you to your reading.”

As silently as he’d come, he left her.

Listening as the tap of his step faded from the stairs, she glanced down at the book. A mystery with a provocative theme that on a glance promised to pass the time that lay heavy on heart and mind. A temporary escape within the reach of her fingertips, but she didn’t pick it up.

Snow fell thinly now, clinging wetly to the window with its soft patter. The fire leapt and weaved in twining columns. Shadow sighed and lay at her feet.

Merrill thought only of the man who had given her sanctuary from the demons that plagued her. She thought and she wondered. The spirited curiosity lying dulled and dormant for weeks and months began to kindle.

Ty stopped short in the kitchen doorway, discovering Merrill Santiago was as lovely at dawn as any other hour.

When he’d first heard her stirring, a sixth sense that never rested drawing him from a light sleep, he’d been alarmed. Was she ill? Hurt? Had she decided she must leave?

That brought him lurching from his bed, reaching for clothing thrown over a chair the night before. His hands had been clumsy with zippers and buttons in his urgency. A rare circumstance for Tynan O’Hara. Sucking in a long, harsh breath, he’d forced himself to slow down, to calm down. To listen and think, attuning again to the instinct that had awakened him. Instincts that had always served him well.

The sounds he heard were politely guarded, not furtive. Little more than a rustle, a tiny disturbance of the air that would have gone unnoticed except at an hour when the house was a well of unbroken calm. The fragrance of brewing coffee had drifted to the gallery and with another long breath he had smiled. One who was hurt, or ill, or absconding wouldn’t take the time to make coffee.

He’d given her a half hour before coming down from his lair. Letting her immerse herself in the solitude of the morning, the glory of first light on virgin snow. It was a time he found most peaceful. A time that brought peace to him. When he’d gone to her at last, he’d moved quietly down the stairs, hoping without shame for this moment.

Leaning a shoulder against the smooth planed arch of the door, he let himself be charmed by the glory of a golden woman captured in the golden reflections of sunrise. Yes, she was truly lovely and, for a rare moment, at peace.

Merrill sat before the kitchen windows marveling at the utter beauty of the beginning day. Her face, in profile, was dreamy, even serene. Coffee steamed from a cup on the table. Shadow sat by her side, a flick of his ears the only acknowledgment of Ty.

Dawn was brighter for the snow. The red-gold hues of the sky glinting over it painted the world in a fiery rainbow of color. The chill of night lingered, lightly frosting the windows. But with the advent of the sun the temperatures would rise, and the day promised to be pleasing. Later there might be snow so deep he would have to dig through it to clear a path from the house to the barns and storage buildings. But for now, for today, this small part of Montana was a fairyland dusted with glittering, sun spangled white.

Merrill couldn’t have chosen better for the next step of her return to the world. Nor, in his judgment, a better world.

“Good morning.” He kept his voice quiet. As quiet as his step as he joined her by the window.

“Mr. O’Hara.” Surprise showed only in her eyes as she tilted her head toward him. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“No problem.” Dragging a chair from the table, he spun it around and sat across it as if it were a saddle. Folding his arms over the back, he grinned at her. “It’s an easy thing to lose oneself in a Montana morning. Though there is a problem.”

“I’m sorry,” Merrill rushed in. “I saw the coffee was ready and I didn’t think you’d mind.” She started to rise. “I can make a fresh pot, if you like.”

“No, Miss Santiago.” He stopped her with a hand on her forearm. “I don’t mind and I don’t need a fresh pot.” He grinned again. “You can’t corrupt my kitchen or my coffee any more than you can Shadow. You’re welcome to anything, anytime. So sit.”

“I could pour you a cup, at least.” She sat on the edge of her chair, waiting to jump up the minute he released her.

“Sit. Stay,” he said firmly as he swung out of his seat. “I can do that as well. I wouldn’t know how to behave with someone serving me.”

Merrill waited until he returned to the table before she spoke her concern. “You said there was a problem.”

“There is.” His sobering gaze met hers over the rim of his cup. He drank deeply, savoring the first cup of the day. The best cup of the day. Setting it aside, he refolded his hands over the chair. “A most serious problem.”

“If you’ve changed your mind... If you’d like for me to leave...” Her hands curled tensely on the table. “I know I haven’t been a model guest. It can’t have been comfortable for you to have a strange woman intruding on your solitude.” A week ago she would have been eager to go. Now she realized to her own amazement that she wanted to stay. For a while longer.

“Hey.” Stroking a finger along the line of her jaw, Ty turned her face to his. A frisson of emotion he didn’t stop to identify fluttered in his chest as he saw her disappointment. “I haven’t changed my mind. I haven’t been uncomfortable. And I don’t want you to leave.”

“But I’ve been...”

“You’ve been fine. Healing as you came here to do, in your own way. In your own time, Miss Santiago. Miss Santiago.” With the repetition of the name he sighed heavily and moved his hand down her throat and away. “That’s the problem.”

She looked at him blankly, not understanding. But he had her complete attention.

“The formality,” he explained gently. “This mister and miss stuff is going be a waste of effort and breath if we’re to be housemates for the winter.”

“You want me to call you Tynan?”

“If you like. Tynan is fine, but Ty would be better. It’s what my family and friends call me, and I’d like to think that considering the time we’ll be together, we’ll be friends.”

“A nickname,” Merrill said thoughtfully. “I’ve never had a nickname.”

“You’re joking.” The smile that had begun to curl again beneath his mustache faded when he read his mistake in her expression. “You aren’t joking.”