Sandra Field - Untouched

Ten people got off the flight from Halifax. The short ones were women, the sole man with grey hair was Tommy MacPherson from Norris Arm, and the only one smoking was Ruth’s youngest brother, a fact that would annoy Ruth considerably: Ruth was a reformed smoker and dead set against cigarettes.

A tall man with a thatch of untidy dark brown hair had halted just inside the doorway, surveying the small crowd with visible impatience. He was wearing a blue wool shirt, a well-worn pair of jeans and leather hiking boots; a haversack was slung over one broad shoulder. The only thing she had got right, Jenessa thought ruefully, was the aggression.

Quickly she walked over to him. ‘Mr Marston?’ she said with a pleasant smile.

He did not smile back. ‘I’m Finn Marston, yes.’ His voice was deep, gravelly with tiredness.

‘I’m Jenessa Reed,’ she said. ‘The guide you hired.’

His lashes flickered. ‘I’m not in the mood for jokes.’

‘Neither am I,’ she said crisply, wishing that just for once she could be taken at face value rather than having to justify her existence to her male clients. ‘I’m the person Ryan recommended to you.’

‘You’ve got that wrong. Ryan said nothing about a woman—because if he had I wouldn’t have hired you.’

‘Well, you did hire me,’ she said with another pleasant smile, although this one took more effort. ‘And I’m very good at my job. Ryan booked a room for you in the best motel in town; I’ll take you there now, if you like. Or do you have other luggage?’

He looked her up and down with an insolence that could only be deliberate, from her jagged crop of toffeecolored hair to the shiny toes of her leather loafers. ‘If I hired you, I can unhire you,’ he said. ‘I’ll get a cab to the motel—what name does it go by?’

His hair was as badly in need of cutting as her own, she thought inconsequentially; his eyes were a very dark blue, reminding her in colour, if not in expression, of Stephen’s. The stubble of beard on his chin was also dark, and there were dark shadows under his eyes. He looked, she thought with a faint stirring of compassion, truly exhausted: it was a long way from Indonesia. ‘A cab won’t be necessary; I’ll take you. Luggage?’

‘Miss Reed, I don’t think you heard me—you’ve just been fired.’

‘Mr Marston,’ she replied with rather overdone patience, ‘this is at least the fiftieth time I’ve played this little scene. Canadians, Americans, Swedes, Spaniards ... hunters, fishermen, photographers ... they all think I should be a man or they think it’s extremely funny that I’m a woman. But I can give you references from every one of them as to my competence. I do agree with you that Ryan should have told you I’m a woman. I disagree that that should make any difference to you whatsoever.’ She smiled at him again. ‘The luggage carousel’s just started up; we shouldn’t have long to wait. That’s one advantage of these short hops—the stops are brief. Have you flown far today?’

His mouth tightened. ‘Too far to get any enjoyment out of playing verbal games. The name of the motel, Miss Reed.’

She jammed her hands in the pockets of her jeans. ‘Are you Canadian, Mr Marston?’ As he nodded, she went on, ‘Then you surely must be aware that in this country you can’t fire someone because of his or her sex.’

‘So sue me. There’s my bag, and I’m sure the cabbie will know the name of the best motel in town—in a place this size there can’t be that many to choose from. Goodbye, Miss Reed.’

She said clearly, ‘I wish you luck finding a replacement. Ryan tried four other outfitters because he knew I was just coming off a job, and no go with any of them.’ With a tinge of malice she added, ‘To further enlighten you as to the law, as a non-resident you can’t go further into the woods than eight hundred meters from the highway without a guide. Good luck, Mr Marston.’

Her cheeks were pink with temper and her shirt made her irises look very green. Something flared to life in his somber blue eyes and just as quickly was smothered. ‘Thank you for your help,’ he said sardonically. Turning away from her, he heaved a battered duffle bag off the carousel and strode toward the exit. She watched as he climbed in the back seat of a taxi and drove off; he did not look back.

From behind her Ruth’s mother said, ‘My, what a handsome man ... I do love those big, rough-hewn men, don’t you, dearie? Client of yours, Jenessa?’

Ruth’s mother Alice, for all her many good points, was the most avid gossip in town, and her question was a blatant appeal for information. ‘Ex-client,’ Jenessa said, trying hard to sound as though it didn’t matter in the least that she had been unceremoniously fired in full view of several friends and acquaintances. ‘He’s done me a favor, actually—I could do with a few days off.’ She smiled at Ruth’s brother. ‘How are you, Dougie? Job going well?’

Ten minutes later she stalked into Ryan’s kitchen. Her temper, far from subsiding on the drive home, seemed to have gathered momentum. Handsome, she fumed inwardly, throwing the keys to her van on the table. Rough-hewn. Huh! Rude, chauvinistic and ignorant would be a more accurate description of Mr Finn Marston.

Ryan was sitting at the table painting a duck decoy. Matters weren’t improved when he said, after scanning her features, ‘Well, well... looks like this Marston fella woke you up a bit—haven’t seen so much colour in your cheeks since you were a kid with sunburn. What’s up, Jenny?’

‘Ryan,’ she said, ‘don’t you ever again neglect to warn a client that he’s getting a female guide. A woman. One of the so-called weaker sex. Do you hear me?’

As she yanked a chair back and sat down, kicking off her loafers, Ryan daubed jade-green on the teal’s wing feathers. ‘Wanted a man, did he?’

‘However did you guess? Did he wait to see my references? Was he interested enough to ask if I knew the area he wants to go? Can a caribou outrun a black bear?’

‘Never knew one that could,’ Ryan said, his mouth twitching. ‘It don’t sound like the two of you hit it off.’

‘I hope he ends up with the worst guide in the entire province. Someone like Larry, who’ll drop him off in the woods and then go and get drunk. I hope the mosquitoes carry him away. I hope he gets treed by a moose. I hope he falls in a bog in his nice leather hiking boots.’

‘So what did he look like?’

She mimicked Ruth’s mother, batting her lashes and simpering, ‘Tall, dark and handsome. Rough-hewn. That duck decoy’s handsomer than he was.’

Ryan gave the decoy a complacent appraisal. ‘He sure got under your skin.’

Ryan, she realized belatedly, was thoroughly enjoying her show of temper; she was normally a very tolerant woman, a trait that stood her in good stead in the woods. The last thing she needed was Ryan speculating why one man had disrupted her composure, especially in view of yesterday’s conversation. ‘I needed a few days off anyway,’ she said, trying to modulate her voice. ‘We could finish papering the kitchen.’

One wall had been papered in the spring, before fishing season started. ‘Good idea... in the meantime, seein’ as how you’re unemployed, you could make me a coffee. And don’t skimp on the sugar.’

‘No coffee unless you promise you’ll tell everyone who phones for a guide that my name is Jenessa and that I’m not a man!’

‘Guess I’ll git my own coffee,’ Ryan drawled.

Raising her brows—for when had she ever been able to make Ryan do something he didn’t want to do?—Jenessa got up and reached for the coffee in the cupboard.

CHAPTER TWO

AT NINE-THIRTY the next morning Jenessa was standing on the second from the top rung of a step-ladder in the kitchen. The radio was blaring a lachrymose ballad about a cowpoke who had lost his one true love. It was a warm day; her brief blue shorts and ribbed vest top in an eye-catching shade of yellow had been chosen with coolness in mind rather than modesty. Draped in wet folds of wallpaper, she was seriously questioning her sanity. She hated wallpapering. Always had. She might be exceedingly neat-fingered when it came to starting a fire from birchbark and shreds of wood in the middle of a downpour in the forest, but when it came to straight edges, plumb lines and recurring patterns she was a dud.