Bj James - Journey's End

“Just what I need!” Gripping the steering wheel as if it were her lifeline with the world she’d left behind, she shivered in distaste. “A winter in exile, fending off mister wonderful, while his wild beast chews off my leg.” Fingertips tapping in a fast paced rhythm that matched her mounting dismay, she exhaled wearily, dispatching a tangle of gold streaked bangs from her eyes.

Instinct and trust in Simon McKinzie warned that she was judging wrongly and unfairly. That there was, no doubt, far more to the character of this man than a craggy and arresting face. Perhaps more than she would want.

Her bleak gaze strayed from man and beast to the land, the essence of wilderness. Depression and the first stirring of angry frustration could not blind her to its far-reaching magnificence. Within the bounds of a single glance lay a panorama of natural beauty. A vast sanctuary hewn by chaos and cataclysm and the simple wearing of the ages. Rugged, diverse, a land pristine and undisturbed. Inhabited by none but wild creatures and stalwart men, as those who waited in uncanny stillness.

Beneath the weight of twin blue gazes, she felt a sudden urge to run, and continue to run. Until those piercing eyes could not touch her, and would never see into the darkness of her soul.

But no. She would not run, would not even walk away. She’d given her word, the last remaining measure of her integrity. In a moment of mental turmoil she had succumbed first to Valentina’s gentle persuasion, then to Simon’s kind, but implacable coercion, agreeing to this sojourn into the wilderness.

She’d promised to stay...and she would.

“For the winter.” A time that seemed to stretch as endlessly before her as the sea of mountains surrounding her. “Only that.”

Catching up a small duffel bag she jerked open the door and climbed from the rented Land Rover. Standing stiffly on cramped legs, with her shoulders back and her head up, she tried not to stare at the land, the wolf, and the man. “Tynan O’Hara, I presume.”

“Yes, ma’am, presumption right on target,” Ty drawled and took a step forward to take her bag. When she refused with an impatient jerk, he smiled and hooked his thumbs in the back pockets of his jeans. Concealing his surprise that the dazzling creature who stood before him bore so little resemblance to the stevedore he expected, he continued in his own imperturbable manner. “Unless you’d taken a wrong turn nearly forty miles back, it would be hard to presume anything else.”

“Forty miles!” She stared at him then. “Forty?” In spite of her best efforts, her temper flared. “Do you mean to tell me we’re that far from civilization? Just the two of us?”

“I doubt you would call the next ranch civilization exactly.” Ty fought back a grin. It was hard not to grin when one was eternally afflicted with attention deficit when it came to anger. And especially when faced with a woman who was, maybe, a fraction more than half his size, twice as angry, and looked as if she’d stepped off the pages of a fairy tale. “But it is that far by public roads, give or take eight or ten miles and a shortcut or two.”

“Give or take? Eight or ten?” She shook her head, and curls of many hues of gold tumbled around her shoulders. “In the guise of a strong suggestion, Simon ordered me to Montana for some R and R, and peace and seclusion. He didn’t say it would be in the middle of nowhere.”

“The middle of paradise.”

Merrill was too caught up in her own tumult to notice his correction. “Valentina and Simon said I would be lodging with Valentina’s brother. But I didn’t expect he would be, ahh...you would be so...” With a fretful frown, she shrugged, a small lift of elegant shoulders. “Let’s just say, I expected you would be older. Maybe not an old coot, but still not quite so...” Biting back the word virile, she settled for half truths, “...so young!” Seizing on the word, she belabored the obvious. “I didn’t expect you to be so young.”

Ty chuckled, and then his laugh spilled out like rich, dark brandy flowing over her. The sound was heady and soothing, and if she’d been in a receptive mood, comforting. “Laugh if you will, Mr. O’Hara. But, frankly, I don’t imagine that you’re any happier about having me here than I am about being here.”

“Winter boarders are rare.” And allowing himself to enjoy this first meeting with a beguiling woman was scarcely the same as enduring a winter of confinement with her.

“How rare?” Merrill persisted, refusing to settle for his noncommittal response. “On a scale of seldom to never, for example.”

“Never.” Ty was nothing if not honest, and if togetherness was their destiny, he would begin as he intended to be.

Through narrowed eyes, she took his measure, noting the strength in the lean hard body, the calm of his pleasingly rugged face. He had the sophisticated presence of one who had lived hard and fully, and well. And yet, in his prime, he’d chosen solitude. Magnificent solitude, but solitude nevertheless, with only the wolf as his companion. She wondered why.

Curious and intrigued, as she hadn’t been for months, she searched the glittering depths of his gaze, seeking, but never fending, the true man beneath the easy charm. At the edge of their space, the wolf lurked, watchful and still, as if waiting to pounce or play. One gorgeous creature as much an enigma as the other.

“Am I to assume, then, that it’s usually just you, the wolf, the mountains?” Her voice was stilted and stiff, as if rusted from disuse. “And, of course, a hundred feet of snow.”

“Three quarters and a half.”

The laconic answer blindsided her, leaving her confounded. “Three quarters and a half? By that do you mean three quarters and a half of a mountain, three quarters and a half of a hundred feet of snow, or...”

“Neither.” A silent signal brought the wolf to his side. “This is Shadow, he’s only three quarters and a half wolf, and just so you’ll know, the snow rarely exceeds six feet,” he drawled. “In all else, you assume correctly.”

“She snookered you, didn’t she?”

It was Ty’s turn to be blindsided. “Snookered? She?”

Suddenly and for no apparent reason, for the first time in longer than she could remember, Merrill was enjoying herself. “Wrapped you around her little finger, broad shoulders, stubborn chin and all, I’d bet.”

“You think that’s possible?”

In this case, Merrill hadn’t a doubt. “If it were the right woman. Yes,” she nodded thoughtfully. “Most definitely possible.”

“And who would you suggest that woman is?”

“Your sister, my colleague and friend. Valentina Courtenay, nee O’Hara.”

Ty didn’t bother with denials that would seem foolish in the face of events. Shrugging the broad shoulders she’d described, he conceded, “I’ve never learned to say no to her, and now I’ve come to the conclusion I never will.”

“Let me guess. She let you believe I was a man when she asked that you share your winter refuge.”

“Until the last minute.”

Merrill laughed, the haunted look faded from her gaze for an instant. “If it’s any consolation, I think she only wanted what she considered best for me.”

“Peace, respite, isolation.”

The remnants of laughter lingered, stealing worry and years from her face. “Good guess.”

Ty smiled in response. The tiny quirk of his lips that in summer set the hearts of both big and little girls lurching. “Not much of a stretch, when they are the commodities this part of the country possesses in abundance.”

Merrill found her gaze drawn again to the majesty befitting the name he’d given it. Fini Terre, a description as much as a definition for a ranch lying on the far northern boundaries of his country. A tribute to its namesake, a plantation as far south, where the O’Haras had spent a happy summer long ago.