Follow A Wild Heart (romance,) (20 page)

It was his turn to flush, thinking of Bernice. "Not many, maybe one or two."

She considered that thoughtfully. "I'm behind the times, I guess. This is the first time I've ever in my life asked a man out." And then she found herself wondering with a feeling of intense jealousy about the other women. She knew nothing of his life away from her.

She was so much in love with Logan Baxter, it scared her.

The rest of the day was spent talking, laughing, playing in a way Karena had never experienced with a man she loved. They went down to the lake, and Karena tried to show Logan the finer points of logrolling, but she was wearing a clinging, faded blue swimsuit, and Logan couldn't seem to keep his eyes on his feet.

They tumbled into the water, and Mort did his best to drown them. Later, Mort pressed his big wet nose inquisitively to the screen door of the cabin, moaning pitifully at being locked out.

"Mort, you pervert, go and play in the lake," Logan roared at him in exasperation from the bedroom where he was examining the tan marks Karena's suit had left.

But Mort kept it up until Karena moved reluctantly out of Logan's embrace. "Stay here, I'll be right back. I'll go give him the rest of that loaf of bread and an orange, and maybe he'll go away for a while."

Danny came home in time for supper, proudly carrying three large rainbow trout. They breaded and fried the fish, while Danny related every single moment of his day. When they sat down to supper, he watched every bite of fish they consumed with passionate interest in their reactions.

"You like them, huh? Think they taste okay, Logan? Bet these are the best fish you ever ate, huh, Mom?"

Finally, Danny ran out of energy and fell asleep on the sofa. As Logan carried the ungainly bundle off to bed, Danny's legs and arms dangled out of Logan's grasp, and Karena thought with a pang that it wouldn't be long before the boy was too big for anyone to carry.

She remembered the loggers placing Mort in her arms the night they found him, all slippery head and legs. Mort, also, was now too big to carry.

They walked down to the lake, and when they came back up, Karena made hot chocolate, which neither of them particularly wanted.

What she wanted, she admitted, was to make passionate love again, but neither of them felt right about it with Danny in the other bedroom.

She hated to see Logan leave, and he didn't want to go. For a while they cuddled close together on the sofa, but cuddling was no longer enough. It was frustrating, they agreed ruefully. It was much later when Logan kissed Karena one last time and reluctantly climbed into the Jeep for the long, starry drive back to Itasca.

"See you at ten on Saturday morning, at the school in Bemidji," he confirmed, and she stood and waved until he was out of sight on the dark road.

As he drove, Logan reflected on the past weekend. It seemed as if much longer than two days had passed. He'd fallen even more in love with Karena, and he was overwhelmed at the force of their physical joining. It was so right between them. But as he drove, a niggling sense of unease came over him, as well.

There were other things that troubled him. Of the six weekends he would have with her, two were already gone. How would they see each other when he was once again entrenched in his job in St. Paul? Winter would come, and driving would be next to impossible at times.

There were the complicating factors of Mort, and Otis, and Danny. And what of Karena's passionate commitment to her way of life, her cabin, the isolation Logan had trouble adapting to? Would they be able to work out compromises to all those problems?

No plumbing, no phone, no automatic hot water, no pizza delivery. Could he adapt to that on a long term basis, if necessary?

To hell with it. He turned on the radio, picking up a rock station and adjusting the volume to loud. They'd overcome the problems together, because sooner or later he was going to marry Karena. He'd never been more certain of anything in his life. It was just a matter of time. A matter of adjustment for all of them.

Determinedly he turned his thoughts to his students at Itasca, and the challenge of rousing their interest in the courses he was teaching instead of having them memorize facts in order to win good grades.

Probably he should give up trying to inspire them and simply pray for good weather, he decided morosely. Last week's excursions into the bush had been hard enough in the sunshine.

The next morning, however, it began to drizzle. By noon, it was pouring rain, and by one-thirty, Logan was doggedly plowing through the dripping underbrush with his miserable students behind him, searching for an area Jack Jameson had labeled on a hand drawn map, "Soil pits, one, two and three."

It poured for the remainder of the week, and Logan managed to keep one step ahead of his class only by spending his evenings crouched over a loose leaf binder reviewing Jack's abysmally abbreviated notes and turning over his wool socks in hopes they'd dry before morning, when he had to pull them on again and head back into the infernal bush with his team of students who moaned and complained about the weather.

He overheard enough conversations to know that the students considered him a slave driver and an unfair marker on tests. He refused to give a mark higher than C because he felt these youngsters weren't trying hard enough. He also knew that they were spending most evenings drying out in the Northway and cursing the Itasca field sessions and Professor Baxter with equal vehemence.

By Thursday afternoon, if it hadn't been for the approaching weekend and knowing that Karena was waiting for him, he would have climbed into his Jeep and driven straight back to St. Paul, leaving Jameson's students to forage on their own for the next four weeks in the muddy soil pits.

He had decided he hated teaching and he also hated the woods when it rained.

Friday was the worst day yet. Logan dismissed the soaked and dismal group at two in the afternoon, after handing back their ecology papers full of red marks and low grades, along with a piece of his waterlogged mind.

"I want some real thought next time, some attempt at real learning," he'd lectured them scathingly. "Anyone can memorize and regurgitate facts. I want you to be able to understand those facts, to build on them during the next few years at college."

The students listened, murmuring among themselves. Then, to Logan's amazement, they insisted he come along and warm up with them at the Northway over a beer and expand on his weird ideas about education. Also, several of them were still interested in Mort, and wanted to hear more about him.

Feeling as if he'd been released from prison on a weekend pass, he piled as many students as he could into the Jeep. It probably was grounds for dismissal, to go drinking with your students, but Logan couldn't have cared less. They'd been through a lot together in the past five days.

The week had been long and wet for Karena, as well. Sometimes, the woods were closed to logging when it rained heavily, but this week they stayed open. So each morning, she donned her oilskins, and by ten o'clock she was soaked anyway because they were too confining and hot to wear, so she ended up taking them off. The roads were slippery, the drivers short-tempered, and even the birds seemed to have deserted the area.

Even Abigail was less cheerful than usual.

"Last week, Max asked me for my phone number, so I gave it to him and my heart hammered all weekend," she confided to Karena at lunchtime. "He called me Sunday, and you know what he wanted?"

Karena shook her head.

"He wanted my advice on this woman he's dating. Did I think she'd be interested in going to a power saw exhibition?"

"What did you tell him?"

"What do you think? I told him of course she would, any woman in her right mind would love to go anywhere with Max." She scooped up cottage cheese with apple mixed in. "Then I went out and ate a whole pizza by myself."

"Maybe you said the right thing," Karena said thoughtfully. "I suspect the type of women Max dates aren't all that fascinated with power saws."

"Yeah, that crossed my mind, all right," Abigail admitted smugly.

Otis came by Monday evening, and after sending Danny outside on an errand, he started right in.

"That professor, here all weekend, haven't you any respect for yourself, daughter? What example is that for Danny?"

"Logan will be around again next weekend, Pop," Karena said firmly. "We're going into Bemidji."

"People are talking."

"Ole Svenson's wife, probably. Like Mom used to say, if they're talking about me, they're leaving someone else alone."

"Ole Svenson came to see me last night," Otis then announced portentously.

Ole Svenson hadn't wasted any time. Karena felt vaguely amused at her neighbor's tactics, until Otis added, "Said that moose calf was in his yard, and he figured he was going to have to take a gun to him eventually if it kept on happening."

Karena was aghast. "He didn't really say that, did he, Pop?"

Otis nodded. "Sure did. Can't say I blame him much, either. Something's got to be done with that nuisance before he gets much bigger, you know that, girl. He's a wild animal, not a house pet."

Karena heard a noise in the doorway and turned around. Danny stood there, his face flushed with anger, fists knotted at his sides.

"That mean old guy had better not touch Mort," he said angrily, glaring at Otis. "You better not either, Grampa."

"Danny," Karena began consolingly, "I don't think—"

"None of you better hurt him, you hear me, Grampa?" Danny's voice rose to a near shout.

Otis replied threateningly, "Don't you talk to me in that tone of voice, boy."

But Danny wasn't backing down. "I hear you all the time talking to Mom about Mort, about sending him away or something. But I'm not allowed to say anything, even though he's mine, and I won't let you hurt him."

Danny thrust his jaw out belligerently and stood his ground as Otis got heavily to his feet, towering threateningly over the youngster. Karena shook her head warningly at her son and moved to stand beside him. Danny suddenly wrenched away from Karena's grip, and was gone out the door before the adults could move.

"In my day," the old man began in an enraged tone, "no boy would be allowed to talk to his grandfather like that." He sank back down in the arinchair he'd been sitting in. "He's got no respect. You're too soft on that boy, letting him have his way always. Well, I wash my hands of the whole thing. Don't come to me when him and his animal get you in trouble."

In a quiet, deadly voice, Karena said, "If you go on this way, being judgmental and miserable all the time, nobody's going to come to you, Pop, certainly not me or Danny. You'll end up a lonely old man. What's the matter with you? All you do is lecture and disapprove and complain. I've met someone I care for, and instead of being happy for me, you do your best to drive him away. I'm not a child, I'm nearly thirty years old, and Danny is growing up fast. You're driving us away from you. Can't you let us lead our own lives, and be happy with us?"

In typical fashion, Otis clamped his jaw shut, got up, collected his jacket and left the house without another word.

Danny came in long after dark, his expression mutinous and closed when Karena tried to talk to him about what had occurred.

"I think most of what your Grampa said tonight was just threats, Danny," she tried to explain. "But you and I should talk about what we're going to do eventually about Mort. You know we can't keep him once he's full grown, and he's starting to make trouble for us."

"Why talk about it?" Her son's voice was desolate, and Karena felt torn apart when he added angrily, "You'll just do what Grampa wants, like always." Then he went to his room and shut the door firmly.

Karena did the evening chores automatically, her mind going over and over the earlier scene. Danny was overreacting, she knew that. It was ridiculous to say that her father made all her decisions for her. But there was some truth in Danny's accusation. She had gone along with Otis's way of doing things before Logan came along, mostly because it seemed easier to do so than confront him. Lately, however, she'd been meeting him head on, but always making sure Danny wasn't around when she did it. And because she'd
been protecting her son from the arguments with his grandpa, he now thought she was a wimp. Did a parent ever win?

She walked despondently down to the lake. It was crazy to miss someone as intensely as she missed Logan tonight. She longed for him, needing a friend to talk with, a lover to hold and comfort her, a partner to help her with the difficult task of dealing with a crotchety old man like her father, of raising a boy who soon would become a young man.

Her son was growing up far too quickly for her to adjust. There'd been a break in his voice tonight that she hadn't heard before, a hint of hormones beginning to turn his child's body into a man's. In another year, he'd be a teenager.

Her life was changing all around her, and it was happening much too soon. She gazed up at the overcast, dark sky entreatingly. You up there, she wanted to beg. Slow it all down, give me time to think about it, to get used to all this change.

A sudden, fierce wind came rushing through the trees, making the pines sigh and bend and crack, blowing the lake water into waves that splashed against the shore.