Elizabeth August - Marrying O'malley

He had sent no word of his arrival ahead. Surprise was always an advantage, and where Katherine was concerned, a man would be a fool not to use any advantage in his favor. Last night he’d stayed in Phoenix, intending to make his presence first known when he walked into Bradford Dillion’s law office at nine this morning. But a mixture of emotions had refused to allow him to rest. He’d risen before dawn, and now, as the first rays of light were barely peeking over the horizon, he sought out his father’s grave.

The O’Malley plot, the burial site of four generations of his father’s family, loomed ahead of him, enclosed by a low iron fence. Standing in front of one of the graves was a woman. Her thick black hair was plaited into a single braid that hung nearly to her waist, and she was clothed in faded jeans, a blue blouse and sneakers.

Changing direction slightly, he used a nearby tree to mask his approach until he could get a look at her face. Pretty, of Mexican descent, he noted. His gaze narrowed as recognition dawned. She’d matured, lost that girlish, impish look, but he knew without a doubt that the woman was Sarita Lopez. So what was she doing at his family plot? The last he recalled, she had no connection to anyone in his family. While he watched, she bowed her head and clasped her hands together, presumably saying a prayer.

Leaving the shadow of the tree, he continued to the plot, stepping over the low fence instead of entering through the break left for visitors.

Sarita straightened abruptly as a flash of boot caught her eye. No one ever came to the cemetery this early. Silently she cursed under her breath. The last thing in the world she wanted was for anyone to find out she paid visits to the O’Malley plot.

Frantically trying to think of some plausible excuse, she met the intruder’s gaze. At first her mind refused to comprehend what she saw. The facial features of the tall, muscular man standing in front of her were harsher than she remembered, but there was no mistaking his identity. The color drained from her face. As her knees threatened to buckle, two strong hands closed around her upper arms.

“I never thought of you as the fainting type,” Wolf said.

“I thought you were dead!” she exclaimed. For one brief moment she considered the possibility that her imagination was working overtime. But her imagination wasn’t that good. Through the fabric of her shirt she could feel the calluses on his palms and the heat radiating from his hands was as hot as the flame of a log.

Startled by this statement, Wolf looked at the gravestone in front of where she’d placed the flower. It bore his name. According to the inscription, he’d been dead for six years. A bitter taste filled his mouth as the anger he’d thought he’d conquered returned. Seeing her color returning, he released her. “Did my father even send out a search party?”

The cold, icy glint in his eyes and the hard, authoritative set of his jaw were all as she remembered. Still, Sarita was finding it difficult to believe he was really there. “The wreckage of the plane you were in was found on a mountainside. It took the Canadian authorities two weeks to get a rescue team to the site. They found the remains of two bodies. From what I gather there wasn’t much left to identify. The plane had burned on impact. Since you and the pilot were the only scheduled people onboard, it was assumed the bodies belonged to the two of you.”

“A backwoodsman, a friend of the pilot, showed up at the last minute and we agreed to give him a lift back to his place. It was on our way. Apparently the pilot must not have taken the time to add the man’s name to his passenger list, and no one else must have noticed the man coming onboard.”

“Apparently,” Sarita replied. “But how did you get out of the plane? The authorities said it was a terrible impact.”

“My seat belt must have been defective. It opened. I was thrown forward, my head hit something hard, and the world went black. I figure I went through the front windshield. Anyway, when I regained consciousness, I was in a snowbank about thirty feet from the charred wreckage in pretty bad shape but alive.” The bitterness in his voice deepened. “Guess nobody was all that interested in questioning the identity of the bodies. My being dead was as good a resolution to the conflicts between me and my father as any.”

Everyone in town knew Wolf had left because of the bitter feelings between him and his dad. It was possible he wouldn’t care, but she thought he deserved to know that his death had affected his father strongly. “I’m sure he didn’t feel that way. I take the shortcut through the cemetery almost daily and say a prayer over my parents’ and my grandmother’s graves on my way into town. Many mornings I saw him here. On your birthday he’d bring a special token...a feather or stone. The pain I saw on his face convinced me he regretted that things were never set right between the two of you.”

Knowing his father had felt some remorse caused a momentary chink in Wolf’s armor of cynicism, but flashes of memory quickly mended the dent. “His regrets came a little too late.”

She was still finding this turn of events hard to comprehend. “How did you survive? Where have you been? Why didn’t you come back?” She blurted out the questions in quick succession.

“An old woodsman found me and nursed me to back to health. For the first time since my mother’s death I found peace there with him in the wilderness. And since no one had come looking for me, I figured no one would miss me, so I stayed.” His gaze returned to her, and the question that had entered his mind when he first saw her repeated itself. “I am curious as to why you’re here. We were never on good terms.”

She’d asked herself that same thing many times and had not been able to come up with an answer. There was no reason his death should have affected her as deeply as it had. Her pride refused to let him guess that she’d missed him, so she shrugged to indicate her actions were of little consequence. “With your father gone, I figured someone should remember you.” Not wanting to give him a chance to question her further, she strode away.

Wolf watched her leave. She was right about there possibly being no one left to mourn him. Katherine, his stepmother, had taught him to distrust and had turned him bitter toward the world. By the time he’d left to inspect his father’s interests in Alaska, he’d alienated a great many people.

In his mind’s eye he saw Joe Johnson, the old woodsman who had found him. “Anger muddles the mind and dulls the senses,” Joe had cautioned him many times. “You become the prey instead of the hunter.”

Wolf turned back to his father’s gravestone. He had not been entirely honest with Sarita. Grudgingly he admitted to himself that at least part of the reason he’d stayed in the wilderness with Joe was because he was hiding out, escaping the constant battles with his stepmother. “I will not be bested a second time by that she-devil you married,” he vowed, his emotions once again under stern control.

When the prickling on the back of her neck ceased, Sarita glanced over her shoulder to see Wolf again staring at his father’s stone. A smile began to curl one corner of her mouth. She wanted to issue a shriek of delight. He was alive! It was as if a rush of fresh, sweet air was swirling around her, giving the day a sense of energy and renewal.

In the next instant the smile had turned to a self-directed scowl. It didn’t make any sense that his being alive should mean that much to her. They were the same age and had both grown up in this town. And from the beginning she and Wolf O’Malley had been at odds with each other. A flush of embarrassment reddened her neck and traveled upward. He was probably thinking she was a desperately lonely woman to waste her time stopping by the grave of a man who had not even been a friend.