Come Spring (23 page)

He wasn’t a man given to waking up happy. Nor did he react with a shake of his head. Instead, when the freezing water hit him, he roared and leapt to his feet. A tidal wave of water sloshed over the edges of the tub. Annika was paralyzed at the sight, opened her mouth in amazement, shut it when no sound issued forth, and continued to stare with her eyes as big as saucers as any questions she had about male anatomy were answered.

“What in the hell did you do that for?”

She blinked rapidly and tried to blot out the sight of him looking like a well-muscled Poseidon rising from the sea. His hair dripped water down his massive chest and shoulders. It ran in rivulets along his corded thighs. There was no denying his hardened, aroused state or the fact that he did nothing to hide it as he stood with his hands on his hips, demanding an answer.

Annika closed her eyes tight, but stayed her ground. “I wanted to go to bed and I can’t do so as long as the tub is right where I sleep.” She opened her eyes and stared at the sloppy, wet floor at her feet. “Now, thanks to your outburst, it looks as if I’ll have to sleep in mud.”

“Thanks to my outburst?” He reached around her to grab a towel off a chair.

She peeked through her lashes. He was seesawing the towel across his back and down around his waist. She turned around while he was still occupied and walked back to the bed where she noticed that Baby had kicked off her covers. Annika pulled them up as Buck stepped out of the tub. She heard him open the chest at the foot of the bed and pull out more clothes, but she refused to look back at him.

Finally he said, “I’m decent.”

“Ha!”

“Well, I’m dressed anyway.”

She turned around and found him sporting baggy long johns, much the same as the ones that lay in a heap with his dirty clothes on the floor. His moccasins completed the outfit. She almost laughed, but thought better of it and held her mirth as he shook his damp hair like a shaggy dog and then dipped a bucket of water out of the tub and went to throw it outside.

When the tub was finally empty, Buck came back inside and pulled it back into the corner. “You want the bed?” he asked her gruffly.

“What?” Annika turned to stare at him in amazement.

“Do you want to sleep with Baby? I’ll take the floor tonight.”

She wondered what initiated this sudden act of kindness. With a longing glance at the huge, inviting bed, she shook her head. “No, the floor’s fine.”

“There’s a dry spot near the table.”

She picked up the makeshift bedding. He blew out the lamps and banked the fire the way he did every evening.

Annika crawled wearily beneath the thick wolf pelts and pulled them up high beneath her chin. She rubbed the luxurious gray fur against her cheek as she closed her eyes.

Buck smiled to himself in the darkness. He’d give all the money he had saved in the empty succotash can buried under the table to have a photograph of Annika’s face when he shot up out of the water right in front of her. Serves her right, he thought as he stifled a chuckle. The cold water had been a shock, but not enough to diminish the throbbing hardness that had come on him in his sleep.

He rolled over on his side and crooked his arm to use it as a pillow. Now her bed was even closer to his and he could see her quite clearly as she snuggled down in the furs. Her eyes were closed. He could see her slowly fingering the gray wolf fur.

He wondered again if he were the first naked man she had ever seen. Even if he weren’t, he hoped he’d given her something to think about.

A lacy coating of pine needles lay scattered over the snow as the three occupants of the cabin made their way along the bank of the stream during their early morning outing. When the sun came up and the day offered them another brilliant blue, cloudless sky, Buck insisted Annika and Baby don their coats and follow him outside—“to ward off cabin fever.”

As they walked along the swiftly moving stream, Annika paused now and again to take in the still but awesome power expressed through nature. Pines so dark they were almost black massed below the gray-blue of the stone peaks towering above the valley. The Blue Creek, a tributary of a small lake farther up the valley, had remained unfrozen. It rushed along the valley floor, bubbling over rocks and fighting to escape the sandy boundaries of its banks. In some places it pooled into deep eddies, swirled, and then moved on.

The snow had crusted and settled; the tips of sagebrush showed through in a few places, but not enough to give Annika any hope of freedom through the snowbound pass. They walked single file, Buck in the lead earring a heavy beaver trap and wearing a backpack he had fashioned to tote Baby should she become too tired to slog through the snow. For now she insisted she could walk, and because he was in no hurry, Buck let her. The child toddled along between him and Annika, who righted her whenever she slipped.

In her first real venture outside the cabin, Annika decided to forget the circumstances under which she’d arrived and enjoy the surroundings. She glanced down to be sure Baby was progressing without help and then paused long enough to stare across the stream. At first she sensed a movement among the trees, then straining to see, she recognized the shape of a beautiful deer standing amid the aspen grove on the far bank. Afraid that Buck would shoot the stunningly handsome creature, Annika watched in silence as the deer stripped bark off the trees.

She glanced up and found Buck watching the doe and held her breath. She couldn’t stand the thought of him shooting the deer and shattering the peace and serenity of the indescribable morning. She knew full well that if he killed the deer he would not be content until he taught her how to skin it.

Annika quickly tugged off her gloves, put her fingers between her teeth and whistled—loud and shrill—the way Kase had taught her to when they were children.

The deer bounded away.

Buck stood in the middle of the trail, his arms crossed over his chest, shaking his head at her.

“I didn’t want you to kill her.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“How was I to know that?”

“You might have asked,” he said matter-of-factly.

They continued to stare at each other until Baby toddled up to Buck and grabbed him about the knees, laughing. He bent to pick her up, but she started kicking, demanding to be set down again.

“Me walk!” she shouted.

“Be my guest,” he said, turning away from both of them.

They walked a few minutes more before Buck knelt in the snow and began pulling on a length of chain attached to a trap submerged in the creek. With mounting unease, Annika watched as he pulled, hand over hand, until the end of the trap was visible. She already envisioned a dead animal brutally smashed between the jaws of the iron trap and let out a pent-up sigh of relief when the thing came up empty.

“This area’s about played out,” Buck said over his shoulder as he carefully opened the jaws of the trap and set the trigger again. He tied a thong to one of the links of the long chain and then tied a stick to the other end of the thong, explaining, “With this bobber, when I put the trap back in the water, I’ll be able to find it even if a beaver might happen to drag it along the streambed.”

Annika couldn’t help but picture a beaver helplessly trying to escape the trap by dragging it downstream. “How long can they breathe underwater?”

“About ten minutes. They have oversized lungs. There’s been sign of beaver along the banks near here, so I thought I’d give this area a try; but I don’t hope for much, they’re nearly gone around here.”

“Ankah?” Baby distracted her for a moment as she pulled at her hem and then toppled backward into the snow. Annika continued to watch Buck as she righted the child and dusted the snow off her heavy coat.

“Is it worth it?” She watched him wade into the icy water, his feet and calves protected by the moccasins waterproofed with beargrease. He gently lowered the trap.

“Beaver fur is some of the best you can buy. The coat is waterproofed with a natural oil and it mats until it’s like felt. I can get more for beaver than ‘most anything else, but as I said, it’s been played out around here.”

He waded out and they walked on a few more feet. Suddenly he paused on the path and wordlessly pointed to a spot just to the left of the trail.

A small field mouse had stopped long enough to stare at them. Annika couldn’t help but laugh as it gathered its courage and then scuttled away over the snow. She met Buck’s eyes across the space that separated them and continued to smile. It seemed incongruous that the big man would stop to point out such a small creature to her, but then there was really nothing about him that had not surprised her over the past few days. He appeared to be as wild and hardened a man as any she might have imagined, and yet he had proved gentle and loving to the child left in his care.

When she’d first laid eyes on him she’d thought him frightening, a hulk of a creature clothed in garments pieced together from his environment. But more often now whenever she looked at Buck she found him handsome, almost stunning, with his clear blue eyes and bountiful mane of sunlit hair.

And when he smiled, well, when he smiled she thought him almost beautiful.

He was the first to break the spell as they gazed at each other across the snow. Continuing along the bank, Buck straightened his shoulders and picked up his pace, almost as if he wanted to widen the space between them.

Annika tried to find the field mouse again, but the little creature had disappeared. She gazed up at the mountaintops and wondered at their grandeur. The Rockies were like nothing she had ever seen, nor did she think she did them justice when she described them in her journal.

When she heard a low splash that seemed out of place against the reverberating rush of the stream, Annika turned to see what had caused it. Expecting to see a hapless beaver thrashing in a trap, she was too shocked to call out when she realized the small, silent form she saw bobbing away along on the current was Baby. She allowed her instincts to take over and plunged into the stream after the child. The place where they had halted along the bank was a good three feet deeper than the spot where Buck had waded in to set the trap. When she hit the icy water, the shock drove the breath from her lungs. Annika tried to stand up, but found the forceful current swiftly pushing her along downstream. She could still see Baby’s buckskin jacket bobbing ahead of her as she thrashed at the water, damning all the heavy layers of clothing that slowed her down.

The child had not made a sound when she slipped into the water and now Buck, too far ahead to hear them struggling against the current, walked on unaware of the drama unfolding a few feet behind him. As she quickly grew numb from the frigid water, Annika began to panic. What if she couldn’t reach Baby in time? She fought her way downstream until she was able to stand, then waded on, aided by the force of the tumbling water.

As soon as she gained her footing, she paused long enough to scream Buck’s name. Her terror ripped the cry from her throat, but she could not afford to turn around and lose sight of the child just to see if he had heard. She screamed for him again and plunged on.

The child’s coat dipped out of sight just as Annika had almost closed the space between them. They had reached a deep pool where the water swirled and carried the child down beneath the surface. Without thinking of the danger to herself, Annika dove, keeping her eyes open and her hands outstretched as she felt for the child.

Water swirled before her eyes; bubbles and reeds, mossy rocks along the bank flashed by. She stayed down until her lungs were about to burst and just as she needed to surface, something slammed into the side of her head. Instinctively her hands closed around the soft, pliable object. She forced her numb fingers to tighten their hold as she pulled the bundle close and surfaced.

Buck shouted and ran back along the bank, haying already passed by in his search for them. Annika found her footing and struggled toward the sandy shoreline. As Buck slid down the side of the bank and splashed into the water toward her, she crumpled to her knees and lifted Baby aloft.

He grabbed the lifeless form of the child and climbed up the bank. Annika shoved her fist against her trembling lips, unable to bear the sight of Baby’s small body lying limp across Buck’s arms or her little feet, still shod in the precious leather shoes she had insisted on wearing, dangling ominously.

Somehow Annika managed to stand and began to drag herself up the bank, finally gained a toehold in the snow. She heard Buck imploring the child to wake up, to breathe. Panting, trying to gulp air into her own lungs, Annika made it to the top of the bank and then dropped down beside him.

She gasped out, “Is she breathing?”

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