Cold Ridge

Thirty-Five

Carine rented her apartment to a special education teacher who "loved" her bright colors, which was a good thing, because her landlord hadn't had citrus green and mango and lavender in mind when he'd agreed to let her paint the place. She moved back to her cabin on the edge of the meadow and cleaned it from top to bottom. Satisfied there were no more bats, mice, snakes or any of their droppings, bones and skins, she let herself relax.

It was a cold, bright winter morning, with six inches of fresh snow on the ground. She had her winter hiking books out, new crampons, her serious backpack, her sub-zero sleeping bag, her Nikon with her longest lens-she'd taken a Gus-approved workshop on winter camping, and it was definitely more complicated business than summer camping.

She was good on her own, she thought, filling up a water bottle at her kitchen sink. She didn't need anyone to complete her and never had. But Tyler North was her soul mate. There was no way around it.

He'd gone back to Hurlburt. She wasn't sure exactly what the teamleader of a special tactics team did, but she figured she'd find out-she had tickets to Florida. She'd never been on an air force base. She'd go and see how far she got before someone threw her out or pointed her in Ty's direction. She suspected that the incident in November had reinforced his notion that he was dangerous- that he was bad luck and could die on her and she deserved someone "safer." She wanted to disabuse him of that notion As far as she was concerned, it was just an excuse. He wasn't used to letting anyone in. His mother had been like that-it wasn't just the way he was raised. It was the way he was. Independent, solitary, good on his own.

Well, so was she. She'd redone her Web site and got back to work on her series of guidebooks, beginning with one on the White Mountains. She'd dug out her pictures, started jotting down descriptions of her favorite trails and listing people she needed to contact and places she needed to go.

She could work on the guidebook from Florida if she ended up staying. Air force guys moved around a lot. Ty might not stay in Florida. It didn't matter. Cold Ridge was her home-she belonged there in a way she never would anywhere else. But Ty was definitely her soul mate, and she wanted him to know what that meant to her. She hadn't really known what it meant last February when he'd canceled their wedding. She'd needed this past year to figure it out. In the past weeks, she'd thought of him-she'd thought of herself-on Cold Ridge in November with Gus run over, Eric Carrera near death, Hank Callahan tied up-all of them at the mercy of a determined murderer. What if she'd been killed chasing up the ridge after Eric? What if Ty had been killed rescuing Hank from the burning hut? Anything could have happened. But they'd done what they'd had to do.

She thought she heard a dog barking. A small dog- it was more a little yelp than a proper bark. At least it wasn't Stump. A stray? She didn't have any neighbors, except for Ty, and he wasn't around.

But he was. He knocked on her back door and pushed it open before she could even adjust to his presence. He wasn't wearing a hat or gloves, just a fleece pullover and jeans, his boots, and he gave a mock shiver. "Damn, it's cold out there. I've been in Florida too long." He gave a loud whistle out the back door. "Come on, now, be a good girl."

Carine took in his broad shoulders, his green eyes- everything about him-but couldn't believe she hadn't conjured him up. "Ty-what-"

He winked at her. "Thrown you right off balance, haven't I? Wait just a sec." He patted his thigh several times and whistled again. "Don't make me come and get you."

And next thing, a black-and-brown ball of fur charged into her kitchen and banged against the stove, then bounced up and skidded into the great room on Carine's newly polished wood floors.

A puppy, all of eight weeks old.

"She's excited," Ty said.

"What are you doing with a puppy?"

"She was free. Nobody'd pay money for Stump's offspring. She's his granddaughter. She was born the day Gus got out of the hospital. You can tell she and Stump are related, because she just peed in my truck."

Carine got down low and called the puppy, who came running, lapping her hands, jumping all over her. She laughed. "What's her name?"

"I don't know. I thought you could help me think one up." He stood at her table and fingered her snowshoes, her backpack. "Going somewhere?"

"Winter camping."

"Alone?"

She rose, the puppy flopping on her feet. She had on cross-country ski pants and a winter hiking top she'd picked up at Gus's at full price. "I told you, solitary hiking is one of the hazards of my profession."

His green eyes settled on her. "Does it have to be?"

She shrugged. "I don't need a lot of distractions."

He picked up her crampons and examined them, as if he wasn't sure they met his standards. "I heard you tried to access my trust fund."

"Nate, that big mouth. I thought since he was a U.S. marshal-" She paused, realizing she wasn't the least embarrassed. "I didn't try to 'access'it. I just wanted information. I can't stand watching your house go to ruin. I figured it was my heritage, too, since my family built it and owned it for almost a hundred years-"

"Less than seventy-five. Mine's gaining on you."

"Well, Nate was no help whatsoever. Gus said the trust fund was from your father?"

"He was an old guy on the Mount Chester board of trustees. He was in his seventies when he and my mother had their fling-supposedly he planned to marry her, but he had a heart attack and died first. But he left her a little money."

"She was a wonderful woman, Ty. You're not her, you won't ever be her-but she was something. Gus is digging in his attic and cellar for any old artwork of hers, now that it's worth something."

"How's he been on crutches?"

"Miserable. He's drawing up plans for redesigning his kitchen."

"Uh-oh."

"I only know it involves chickens. It has something to do with the egg lady."

"Back to Nate," Ty said. "He proved trustworthy?"

"He proved close-mouthed and stubborn. couldn't even get him to check and see how much money you have."

"Less now. You heard Manny's back in?"

She nodded, trying to follow his ping-ponging changes in subject. "He's a PJ instructor at Kirtland. I told him I passed the PAST, except I did it over a whole day instead of three hours seeing how I am over thirty. I think he should overlook that 'guy only' thing and let me in, don't you?"

"He's at the end of the pipeline. You'd have a shitload to get through before you got to him, and there'd probably not be much time to take pictures of birds."

She resisted a smile. "Okay, so what's he got to do with your dwindling trust fund?"

"I invested in a bookstore with Val. She's something else-she'll probably double my money in a year, never mind independent bookstores falling on hard times. Eric's handling the Tolkein section. The dry western air agrees with him, but he loves New Mexico."

"No more Mount Chester?"

"He went through a hell of an ordeal. He needs to be with his family."

"Val would have made a good assistant for Hawk, but I never saw her and Manny in Washington."

Ty scooped up the puppy and held her in his arms, letting her lick his face. "They're happy. It's good to see. Manny says it's just his luck to end up with a couple of bookworms."

"Ty-you're a big softie at heart, aren't you?"

He smiled. "What have I been saying?" He set the puppy back on the floor, and she charged around the small house. "I told Eric I was getting a puppy. He says we should name her Strider."

"Strider's a male character-"

"It's got a nice ring to it, though, doesn't it? Here, let me see if it works." He whistled again, snapping his fingers and calling "Strider!"

She came running, ears back, tongue wagging.

"You could have called her anything like that and it'd work," Carine said.

He ignored her. "Hey, Strider, good girl."

The puppy licked his hand and charged off into Carine's studio.

Ty surveyed her stack of camping food on the counter. "Well, we could scramble up something here and sit by the fire and pet our puppy, or we could have freeze-dried stroganoff on the ridge, after we've set up our tent in below-zero temperatures and hurricane-forcewinds-"

"Not hurricane-force winds. The wind's relatively calm today."

"I like how you say 'relatively.'"

Carine hesitated, hearing the fire crackle in her woodstove, remembering how quiet it had been in her cabin just a few minutes ago. "I have tickets to Florida for when I get back from camping."

"Thought you'd sneak onto base, did you? I wondered how long you'd last without seeing me."

"I can do my job from anywhere. You can't. I mean, there are no air force bases in Cold Ridge." She breathed out. "Not that I'm getting ahead of myself. But I have options. I'm not sure I saw that a year ago."

"We both have options. The military's been my life since I was eighteen, but I'm not going to be doing this job forever. I can become a weekend warrior and go into the reserves, keep my hand in that way and figure out something to do around here. I still have to make a living. The trust fund's helped me hang on to the house, but it's not like I'm a Rockefeller or something. I want to train our puppy. Raise our kids. The rest we can figure out together. Carine-" His eyes were serious now. "I was wrong in February. Scared, stupid. Crazy.

"I knew you had a tough year ahead of you. You didn't want to put yourself through worrying about me-put me through worrying about you.

"I'm used to doing things on my own. But I love you, Carine. I always have."

She could barely speak. "I know."

He brushed a hand over her hair and touched a finger to the side of her mouth. "Let me try again." His voice was low, sincere. "Let me get it right. I want to marry you more than anything else in the world."

"I said yes once."

"I understand. You trusted me with your heart once-"

"No, no!" She shook her head, smiling. "You don't understand. What I'm saying is that my yes is still good. I just-wait a minute, okay?"

She ran into the great room and pulled out the ash bucket she kept beside the woodstove, digging down with her hands until she found her ring. She held it up, blowing off the soot and ashes. "I let Stump tear up my wedding dress and bury it in the backyard, but the ring-I guess I couldn't get rid of it."

"No, but you could bury it in the ashes. What if you'd accidentally used those ashes for compost?"

"Accidentally? That was the plan, but I didn't get to do a garden this summer. Look. It'll clean up nicely." She got to her feet and handed him the sooty ring. "Do you want to put it on my finger?"

"You've got soot all over you. There's a black spot on the end of your nose."

She knew he didn't give a damn about the soot. "I love you," she said. "I've always loved you."

He smiled. "I knew that's what you meant when you'd say you hated me."

"It wasn't, but that's another story."

He slipped the ring on her finger, and kissed her softly, soot and all, their puppy pulling at his boot laces. "It's good to be home."