Untouched

‘You’re pushin’ twenty-six and I don’t see no signs of you gettin’ yourself hitched.’

She felt a pang of mingled hurt and dismay. ‘Don’t you want me living here any more, Ryan?’ Her eyes widened. ‘Are you and Grace planning to get married?’

‘Course not! She’d have me paintin’ the balcony and mowin’ the grass; she likes things all shipshape, does Grace. And I’m not about to change my ways.’ His brow wrinkled in one of the formidable frowns that signified deep thought. ‘In the last five years you’ve met more men than a stag has cows. So how come you haven’t married any of ’em?’

She said flippantly, ‘None of them asked me.’

‘You don’t even date ’em!’

‘They’re my clients, Ryan; there’s such a thing as professional ethics.’

Ryan’s opinion of professional ethics was both brief and perilously close to obscene. Jenessa added suspiciously, ‘Are you sure you don’t want Grace to move in here?’

He opened the oven door. ‘As sure as I am that if you don’t hustle my roast’ll be ruined.’

Jenessa left the room, trailing upstairs to her bedroom, whose balcony overlooked a clump of wind-scoured spruce trees. Ryan had never before implied that he even noticed her single state, let alone that he thought she should end it. Maybe—she blinked at herself in the mirror—he wanted to dandle her own baby on his lap. It was the nearest he would get to being a grandfather, after all.

Ryan? Interested in babies? She had to be joking.

Oddly unsettled, she gathered up some clean clothes and headed for the shower. But three hours later, when she was sitting in Ruth and Stevie’s kitchen with baby Stephen regarding her unwinkingly from solemn, navy blue eyes, Ryan’s remark was still on her mind.

‘You look very thoughtful,’ Ruth commented.

Ruth’s husband Stevie was a wilderness guide, like Jenessa, and Jenessa had met Ruth through him. The two women had liked each other right away, and if Jenessa had a confidante it was the tall, black-haired Ruth, whose practicality was leavened with a lively dash of romanticism. Jenessa tickled Stephen under the chin, trying to get him to reveal the new tooth, and blurted, ‘Ryan thinks it’s time I got married and had a baby myself.’

‘That’s natural enough, I suppose. You are nearly twenty-six.’

‘I’m not in my coffin yet,’ Jenessa retorted. ‘Anyway, I’m not like you. I really have no desire to get married—I never have had.’

‘You spent a week with Luis, Sanchos and Miguel and didn’t even fantasize about weddings?’ Ruth had invited the three Spanish fishermen to a lobster boil in her backyard, including Jenessa in the invitation as a matter of course. Now as she folded a towel with a decisive snap she went on, ‘They were awfully sweet, Jenessa, you’ve got to admit that.’

‘I liked them. But I didn’t want to marry them.’ Jenessa managed a smile. ‘Individually or collectively.’

‘You didn’t lust after them—any of them—even the tiniest bit?’

Jenessa shook her head. ‘Nope.’

‘You could be so pretty if you just paid a bit of attention to yourself,’ Ruth mourned.

‘When you’re guiding a fisherman through a bog, mascara isn’t a top priority.’

‘You’re not in a bog now,’ Ruth snorted, giving Jenessa’s jeans and T-shirt a disparaging look. ‘Your clothes are clean, I’ll give you that. But they’re not what you’d call sexy. And I’d be willing to bet you cut your hair yourself last time.’

‘With my Swiss army knife,’ Jenessa admitted. ‘I have another client flying in tomorrow, so I won’t have time to get it cut before then, either. Anyway, Ruth, when you’re stuck in a lodge miles from anywhere with a bunch of men, which I am a fair bit of the time, it doesn’t seem appropriate or sensible to go around flaunting your sexuality. A sure way to get in trouble, thank you very much.’

‘I don’t think you know how to flaunt your sexuality,’ Ruth replied vigorously. ‘I just wish you’d go to St John’s one of these days and spend the day in a beauty salon. You wouldn’t even have to go to St John’s—Marylou, next door, has just come back from a seminar there, so she knows how to do all kinds of neat new haircuts. Your hair is such a gorgeous colour ... you know that cherrywood paddle of yours, how it shines when the sun hits it? That’s what your hair’s like—and you’re the only person I know with green eyes.’ Ruth paused, her head to one side. ‘Maybe you just haven’t met the right man.’

Jenessa didn’t think it was that simple. Touched by Ruth’s description, she said hesitantly, ‘I know I don’t fit ... I never have, really. All those women’s magazines with their advice on make-up and lovers and clothes—I can’t relate to them at all. If you want the truth, they scare me to death. I suppose it’s got something to do with never knowing my mother and growing up with my dad at Spruce Pond—no other women there. No other people, come to that.’

‘I’m not meaning to be critical,’ Ruth said hastily. ‘I like you just as you are.’

‘That’s good,’ Jenessa said with an impish grin. ‘Because I’m likely to stay this way. I’m not at all unhappy as I am, Ruth. I don’t know how to flirt, that’s true, and I’m not out plaguing some man to marry me—but I really like my life the way it is. I love my job... how could I ever give that up? Marriage and babies kind of crimp your style.’

‘They’re worth it,’ Ruth said placidly. ‘Stephen, my duckie, smile at Jenessa.’

Stephen gave a huge yawn, exposing one tiny pearlwhite tooth, and let his head plop against Jenessa’s shirt. She held him close, liking his baby-powder smell and his warm weight, yet knowing that in a few minutes she could hand him back to his mother without the slightest twinge of regret. She didn’t have any impulsion to have a baby of her own. Or to attract the man whom one required in order to produce the baby. But it was one thing to acknowledge to herself that she didn’t fit the normal societal expectations of what a woman should be like, and quite another to have both Ryan and Ruth, in one day, suggesting that she should change her ways.

She was fine as she was. Besides, the man wasn’t born for whom she would give up her job.

So why should she change?

Jenessa spent the next day washing and ironing the clothes in her backpack and helping Ryan varnish a pine bench for a customer from Massachusetts. She could have used the time to go to Marylou’s and get her hair cut, but some unacknowledged streak of stubbornness kept her from doing so.

That evening she presented herself at the airport just as the propellor-driven plane was coasting toward the terminal. The same stubbornness had caused her to dress in stone-washed jeans and a forest-green shirt with a businesslike leather belt around her waist. She knew most of the small crowd of people waiting at the gate; she was chatting to Ruth’s mother and father, who were meeting their youngest son, when the first passenger pushed open the door. While she’d been waiting, Jenessa had conjured up a mental image of the forceful Mr Marston: he’d be short—short men, in her experience, were often aggressive—greying, and would light up a very expensive cigar as soon as he entered the terminal.

She had often played this game; her record of success was interestingly high.

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.’