Untouched

Jenessa laughed, abandoning their argument, because after all it was nothing to do with her how Finn got to the old summer house. ‘One or two of them have contemplated it, I’m sure.’

Her eyes were dancing, her pose on the big bed unselfconsciously graceful. Finn took a step toward her, halted and said levelly, ‘Excuse me a minute.’

He went to the phone, punched a great many numbers, eventually said a few phrases in a language unknown to Jenessa, and finally rapped, ‘Jonah? Finn here. What’s up?’

Jenessa smoothed the map flat, fighting back a wave of nostalgia for the woods and waters of her childhood, and heard Finn say, ‘You did? On the second attempt? It fit the flange? Then it was worthwhile doing the trial run... When do you think you’ll pull out? You’ll join them in Venezuela by Thursday? Yeah ... I’m thinking of taking two or three weeks, Jonah. By the sound of it you’re coping just fine without me. If you need anything while I’m away you’ll have to go via Moswell’s helicopter and a place called Caribou Lodge; the ’copter pilot will know where that is. You did a fine job. Get Brian to keep on top of all the finances, won’t you? Okay, all the best.’

He put down the receiver and turned back to Jenessa. ‘What time can we be ready to leave?’

‘I’m not going!’

‘You agreed to guide for me. You can’t go back on that.’

‘You mean you can fire me but I can’t quit?’

Without emphasis Finn said, ‘You wouldn’t want me putting the word round that you broke a contract, would you? Even if it was only a verbal one.’

Jenessa got a lot of her work by word of mouth. In a surge of pure rage she said, ‘Is this the way you act in the business world? No wonder you made it to the top.’

‘I do what it takes. You’re going to guide me to the Hilchey place, Jenessa—I won’t take no for an answer.’ He gave her the faintest of smiles. ‘Anyway, I’ve just agreed to take my first vacation in over five years—you can’t let me down now.’

With utter clarity Jenessa thought, I have a choice here. I can stay home and wallpaper the kitchen. Safe and ordinary and boring, and if Finn blackens my name I’ll survive. Or I can risk going back to the place where I grew up. Seeing it from the perspective of an adult. I’m twice as old as I was when I left... I’m not thirteen any more, raw with pain and filled with fear. Maybe the old magic will have gone. Maybe it’ll be just another place, nothing special.

Maybe it’s time I laid that particular ghost to rest.

‘Why are you so interested in the Hilchey land?’ she demanded. ‘Are you some kind of high-powered lawyer settling the estate? Although you don’t act like any lawyer I ever knew.’

‘Not once in my life have I ever contemplated joining the legal profession,’ Finn said pithily. ‘I only wish I understood why that land’s so important to you—why you won’t tell me what your connection is with it.’

She couldn’t possibly explain it to him. As she shook her head, her green eyes wary, he said, ‘I’ll ask Ryan.’

‘Not if you value living, you won’t.’

‘I’ve stepped into something, haven’t I?’ he said slowly. ‘Something pretty major as far as you’re concerned. Maybe Mac will tell me when we get to the lodge.’

‘Mac will tell you exactly what he thinks you want to hear—he’s a master at that.’

‘And to think,’ Finn remarked, ‘that I almost didn’t come here because I figured I’d be bored.’ In one of the swift shifts of topic that she had almost come to expect of him, he added, ‘Are you afraid to spend two or three weeks alone with me?’

She raised her chin. ‘I’ve never been afraid of a man in my life.’

‘There are some you should be frightened of.’

‘You’re not one of them,’ Jenessa said, and wondered if she was speaking the truth. If her behaviour of the last eighteen hours was anything to go by, perhaps she should be afraid.

‘So what time are we leaving?’ Finn repeated softly.

One last chance to see the land she had roamed as a girl. To choose risk over safety. Biting her lip, she muttered, ‘Ryan will organize the gear but I’ll have to look after the food... I’d say by four. I’ll talk to Mac and tell him we’ll be there in time for supper.’

She was staring down at the map and missed the triumph that raced across Finn’s face. He made another phone call, arranging for the helicopter to take them to the lodge. Then he sat down on the bed again. ‘So, Jenessa Reed,’ he said, ‘we’re on. We’re spending the next two weeks together.’

The choice, she had known all along, hadn’t only been a matter of the land. Her mouth dry, she said, ‘As employer and employee.’

‘We’re already more than that, and you know it.’

Certainly she had never been so outspoken to any of her other clients. ‘That’s all we are,’ she said stubbornly.

With unexpected violence Finn said, ‘I don’t have a clue what’s going on here! But I’ll tell you one thing—you’re totally unlike any other woman I’ve ever been with. Nor, for some reason, can I believe that I only met you last night.’

Inwardly terrified, outwardly composed, Jenessa quipped, ‘You feel as if we’ve been arguing forever?’

Some of the tension eased in his face. ‘You’re certainly the most contentious woman I’ve ever met.’

‘But you said yourself the sample was small,’ she answered gently, and stood up. ‘I’d better go; I’ve got a lot to do. I’ll be back here at quarter to four.’

Finn stood up too, his body moving with a lazy grace. Very deliberately he held out his hand. ‘I’m glad we’re going to be together,’ he said.

She could not, without adding bad manners to contentiousness, refuse to shake hands with him. Reluctantly she stretched out her own. His grip was firm, his palm warm against hers. She looked down, in one glance seeing the lean length of his fingers with their well-kept nails and the dusting of dark hair on the back of his hand, where the bones and sinews moved under the tanned skin. His wristwatch with its new leather strap looked expensive. His forearm was tanned as well, corded with muscle. Then the faint tang of his aftershave drifted to her nostrils, and underlying it she caught something far more elemental and more powerful: the scent of the man himself.

She glanced up, her nerves as alert as if she had just sighted a fresh bear track on the trail, her senses acutely aware of the sound of his breathing and the warmth of his body across the space that separated them. She had touched a man before, of course she had. But never had she felt such an instinctive vigilance, so total and instant an involvement; with a lurch of her heart she found herself comparing it with the strange bond that united the hunter and the hunted. Pulling her hand free, her green eyes bewildered, she muttered, ‘Two weeks could be a very long time.’

‘It’ll be as long as we need,’ Finn said cryptically. ‘I’ll see you later.’

She hurried outdoors into the sunshine, wondering what she had gotten herself into. She had told the truth when she’d said she’d never been afraid of a man; even Mac had never really frightened her.

But Finn Marston was different. Dauntingly different.

He wouldn’t take no for an answer. And he thought she was beautiful.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE next few hours were hectically busy for Jenessa. She drove straight home and told Ryan about the proposed trip to the property that George Hilchey had owned. As Ryan raised bushy white brows, she warned, ‘I don’t want to talk about it and I swear if you so much as breathe a word to Finn about my connection with that land I’ll move out and I’ll never come back.’

This was indeed a dire threat. Ryan solemnly ran a dirty finger across his throat and said, ‘You want me to load up the two backpacks?’

‘That’d be a great help. Water tablets, flashlights, tents, tarp... you know what we need, Ryan. The food’s going to take a bit of organizing; I’ll head out to the grocery store after I call Mac.’

She got through on the radio-phone to Caribou Lodge on the first try. ‘Mac? Jenessa Reed here. I’ll be arriving at the lodge around five-thirty today with a man called Finn Marston; can you put him up for a couple of nights?’

There was a fractional pause. ‘So he hired you, did he? I didn’t have a guide free.’

She knew Mac well; beneath the innocuous words he was angry. ‘As you’ve already spoken to him, then you know what he wants,’ she said calmly. ‘We’ll be canoeing to the old Hilchey place, but I’ll want to be around the lodge for two or three days first; he’s never been in a canoe before. Any problem with that?’

‘He can have a room in the lodge. You can go in the guides’ cabin.’

‘We can rent a canoe?’

‘A seventeen-foot wood and canvas.’