Solomon's Decision (6 page)

"Sounds good to me," he agreed. He couldn't wait to explore Wounded Bear
Meadow, to see if it was as pristine as it appeared.

* * * *

"I still don't believe there can be a place like this in cattle country," Erik said as
they stuffed the remains of lunch back into her daypack. "In a few minutes, I'm going to
wake up and start living today all over again."

"Jethro's gotten a lot of ribbing about it. This is some of the finest bottomland
pasture on the Z-Bar-Z and he's always kept it fenced off. He always says that what was
good enough for his grandpappy is good enough for him." Madeline zipped the pack and
slid her arms through the straps. "Actually I think it was his great grandfather who first
decided it was too beautiful a place to spoil. Back in the 1870s, if I remember rightly." For
a moment she felt a twinge of regret that there would never be another Zenger to preserve
Wounded Bear Meadow because it was, in Jethro's words, "the prettiest place this side of
heaven."

She stood, waiting for him to finish marking the plastic sleeve of an aerial photo.
"Now you see why I called for help. I just couldn't let it become part of a planned
community, with jogging paths all around the edge and boardwalks out to the beaver
dams."

"That's better than being drained. Twenty years ago, that would have been the first
thing they did, right before they paved the whole place." Erik closed his camera and
advanced the film. "There. Now, what are our chances of getting to that copse of trees out
there? I'd like to look it over."

Madeline looked dubiously at the stand of evergreen trees on a low island
surrounded by the many-branched stream and several beaver ponds. "I'm game, I guess.
When I was up here before, we didn't really explore too much." Instead she and Jesse had
picnicked on the wooded slope overlooking the meadow, then made long, delicious love
under a pine tree.

She half-expected an old, familiar pain to catch at her heart with sharp talons.
Instead all she felt was a gentle melancholy, a sorrow that Jesse's vitality, his deep capacity
for love, was no more a part of her life. She missed him still, but she no longer felt half a
person for his absence.

"The worst thing that can happen is that we'll get marooned on an island and have
to wait for Bill to hoist us out," Erik said, heading out onto the hummocky area between
them and the nearest beaver pond.

She could see the ground give under his feet, and knew he would sink were it not
for the thick mat of roots that lay just under the surface of the wet soil. "No, the worst thing
is that we'll fall into a beaver pond and get captured and stored for next winter," she
countered, willing to join in his joking.

"Even worse than that would be to find a pool of slow mud and gradually sink out
of sight." He turned around to grimace at her. "Ugh! Can you imagine feeling the mud
climbing higher and higher on your body, slick and slimy and completely
remorseless?"

"And pretty soon it reaches your mouth, and you can't say scary things any more."
She caught up with him and gave him a gentle shove, barely causing him to break stride.
"What in the world is slow mud?"

"It's like quicksand, only mud, and very, very slow. Haven't you ever stepped in a
mudhole and started to sink?" He gestured. "Your feet get stuck, and the only way to get
loose is to take off your boots. But there's no place to grab hold of for leverage, so you just
keep sinking. It takes a lot longer, but it's just as deadly as quicksand."

"I don't believe you."

"You should. I'm the wetlands expert. Besides, it happened to me."

"How did you get out?"

"I didn't. I sank out of sight." The twitch of his mouth and the twinkle in his eye
belied his serious tone.

The going got rougher. Little ponds appeared on the surface and the grasses--and
sedges, according to Erik--became more sparse. Several times Madeline felt the mud grab
her boot and try to hold it. Once it released her with a wet, sucking sound.

Erik grinned. "See, I told you."

It was all she could do to keep up with him. His long legs seemed tireless, his feet
never seemed to miss solid roots instead of hungry mud. They crossed the first branch of
the creek by wading a free flowing stretch between beaver dams. The water wasn't quite
deep enough to overtop her boots, but she felt some slop inside, wetting her tucked-in
jeans. Her boots, knee high and easily slipped on and off, were really too large around the
top. She could have bought women's boots, but they were a couple of inches shorter, and
she had wanted all the protection she could get when she helped irrigate two summers ago,
when her cousin Jon was laid up with his smashed foot.

Erik stopped often, taking photographs or just looking around. His comments were
mostly technical ones, more talking to himself than to her, she guessed. Madeline didn't
have much breath left for speech, so she didn't try. It was humbling to find that her daily
walks to and from work--half a mile each way--had inadequately prepared her for this kind
of walking. She strode along briskly in town and here she was traveling at a slow stroll, but
it was work. She had to watch where her feet landed, had to test the uneven and often
yielding surface before setting her weight on each foot. Breathing through her nose was
getting more and more difficult, because her lungs demanded oxygen in large gulps. Erik
made it all look so easy, darn him.

Eventually they reached the copse. It was a lovely place, shady, with
leathery-leaved low shrubs and tall grass under the dark green branches. Madeline sprawled
gratefully on a fallen log while Erik pulled his camera from its protective plastic bag and
changed memory cards. Watching his long, nimble fingers handle the camera as if it were
an extension of themselves, she recalled how practiced they had been another time.

She pushed the thought back, 'way back. She was going to have to work with him
for weeks, perhaps months. If she allowed him to affect her the way he had in Seattle--the
way he had ever since he came to Garnet Falls--she wouldn't be able to do anything
effectively.

That brief, unforgettable episode had been a temporary aberration from her usual
practical, sensible behavior. It had been part and parcel of the insanity she'd sunk into after
Jesse's death. That was all. She'd never do something that...that stupid again.

"...mud on my face?" Erik said, breaking into her thoughts, alerting her to the fact
that she'd been staring at him.

"Oh...oh, no. No, I was just...just thinking about...about something."

She had to stop thinking of what might have been and concentrate on what was.
After one night of insanity--she never would have been so wanton if she hadn't been out of
her mind from stress and exhaustion--she'd come back to Garnet Falls and gone on with
her life. And it had been a good life, filled with family and friends, with love and
satisfaction.

Only the nights were empty.

And now the cause of that emptiness was here, confusing her, making her
remember feelings best left forgotten, needs best left unfulfilled.

Then he was before her, looming, his eyes catching and holding hers.

"Were you remembering, Madeline?" He ran one finger across her cheek, in a
gesture that reduced her to a pool of melted will. "This?"

Before she could do more than gasp, his lips were touching hers softly, teasingly.
"Or this?" he breathed, as he kissed his way all around her mouth. "I've never forgotten
either," he said, taking her earlobe between his teeth, gently tugging.

"No!" She pushed him away and nearly tipped herself backwards with the same
convulsive motion. "No, damn you!" She grabbed her daypack and turned back toward the
path they'd followed into the copse, but his hand caught her upper arm and brought her to a
sudden halt.

"No? I saw the way you were staring at me. Hungry, Madeline. You're as hungry
for me as I am for you."

"I'm not!"

"Liar."

She didn't move as his arms came around her, pulling her back against his chest.
Her buttocks were nestled against his pelvis and she could feel the stirrings of his
awakening desire. Madeline couldn't speak, could hardly breathe.

"Are you lying to yourself, too? Or just to me?"

His hands flattened across her midriff, his thumbs touched the sides of her breasts
lightly, fleetingly. Again the breath caught in her chest. The sleeping hunger in her belly
stretched, yawned. Before it could awake, ravening, demanding fulfillment, she jerked
herself free and spun around.

"Listen to me, Erik Solomon, and listen good! There's not going to be a repeat
performance, do you hear me? Sleeping with you was the dumbest thing I ever did, and I
don't intend to make the same mistake twice."

"Was it a mistake?" He hadn't moved, but was looking at her in the strangest way.
Almost as if his feelings were hurt.

"Oh, yes," she said, knowing she had to conquer this awful hunger for him. She
had to!

"Then let's talk about it," he snarled, pushing her back onto the log and sitting
beside her. "You wouldn't talk to me the other night, and you weren't at work Friday.
Where were you? Hiding?"

She had been, but he didn't need to know that. "I was out at the ranch. My cousin's
ranch, the Double J." She'd pointed it out to him on the way up here. "And why should I
talk to you? We slept together eight years ago. You went your way and I went mine. That's
all there was to it." She shrugged, aware that her voice trembled and hoping he'd interpret
the quaver as anger, not regret.

"And now we're back together again," he said, his voice soft and full of promise.
Taking her hand, he turned it palm up and traced across it with one finger. His light touch
sent arrows of heat up her arm and through her whole body. "Can you tell me, honestly,
that you don't feel anything for me?"

She snatched her hand free, clenching her fist around the memory of his touch.
"No," she admitted. "No, I can't." Closing her eyes, she called up the decision she'd
agonized over this past weekend. "But we're not going to do anything about it. Not unless
you can tell me we'll be together longer than a few weeks."

He stared out across the meadow, and she heard her answer in his silence.

Damn her!

Erik pivoted on a heel and aimed the camera out across the meadow. He'd already
gotten all the photos he needed, but at least the viewfinder gave him somewhere to look.
His fingers were tight on the camera, as he wanted them to be on her lovely white
throat.

No, he wanted them on her body, seeking out its secrets.

He
knew
she wanted him. He'd seen the desire lurking in her eyes at the
courthouse, when he'd caught her watching as he explained the National Wetlands Trust to
the commissioners. He'd felt her hunger for him that evening, as they spoke of trivialities
on the way to her house. And he'd read it in her face a few minutes ago.

Just as he wanted her. He still felt the same inexplicable pull he'd felt the first time
he'd seen her. The strong sense of inevitability he remembered from that other time was
even stronger now. As if their lives were fated to be tangled together.

And it scared him. He didn't dare allow himself to get involved with her again, no
matter how his body lusted mindlessly for her.

Madeline Pierson belonged here, in Idaho, where her roots were deeply dug in.
Eric Solomon belonged...
nowhere.

A dark shape swooped across his peripheral vision, not quite so much seen as
sensed. He turned to look and saw wide wings just disappearing into an untidy mass of
sticks atop a dead tree. Letting the camera swing from its strap, he raised his
binoculars.

A nest? Patiently he waited, until finally he was rewarded by motion. A head. No,
two. Three? He couldn't be sure. But it was a nest, and there were young in it.

"Madeline," he called, softly, even though he knew a human voice wouldn't
disturb the birds at this distance. "Look."

There was no answer. Erik lowered the binocs and turned around. She was
nowhere in sight. He shrugged, and returned to watching the nest. After a long interval of
bobbing heads and indefinable motions barely visible over the irregular rim of the nest, the
parent bird flew.

"Osprey," he identified, not surprised. The large raptor, once called a fish hawk
because of its hunting and feeding habits, was a common habitant of wetlands, although it
was not nearly so often seen as it had been a century ago.

A second adult bird landed on the nest, before the first was out of sight. It held
something in its talons, possibly a fish. Again he saw the bobbing heads. Dinnertime for
the kids.

Reluctantly he lowered the binoculars. He could stand here all day and watch the
osprey, but he had work to do. He pulled his field notebook from his hip pocket and made
notes of the approximate location of the nest and the fact that it seemed to contain three
healthy chicks. The first thing he'd do, once NWT assumed title to Wounded Bear
Meadow, was have large-scale aerial photos flown. Then he'd put his summer interns to
work mapping all nests and perches, as well as the beaver dams and game trails. Satisfied
he'd seen all there was to see from here, he returned his camera and binoculars to his
knapsack.

"Madeline." This time he called loudly, hoping she hadn't wandered off. She was
little more familiar with the meadow than he was, and he didn't want to have to search for
her. He still wanted to see if he could cross the main stem of the creek. It had looked like
there was some higher ground over there, near the nest tree.

"I'm here," she said, coming from behind a screen of elderberry bushes. "I had
to...ah, I went...."

He grinned. "No problem. Are you ready to go?"

"Anytime." Her voice was still tinged with frost. Well, hell! She'd been living in
another dimension if she really expected him to hang around Garnet Falls, Idaho, any
longer than he had to.