Wildfire

Wildfire

Sandra Field

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

HE WAS in love.

Smiling to himself, Simon Greywood rested his paddle across the gunwales, the canoe sliding silently through the mirror-smooth water. It was early enough in the morning that mist, cool and intangible, was still rising from the lake, wreathing the reeds and granite boulders that edged the shore in phantasmagorical folds. Although birds were singing in the forest, some of them so sweetly that they made his throat ache, their cries merely scratched the surface of a silence so absolute as to be a force in itself.

The silence of wilderness, he thought. A wilderness as different from the city he had left only two weeks ago as could be imagined. In London, no matter what the hour of day or night, there was always the underlying snarl of traffic, the sense of people pressing in on all sides...whereas here, on a lake deep in the Nova Scotian forest, there was not another human being in sight. He loved it here. Felt almost as though in some strange way he had come home.

From the corner of his eye he caught movement. A wet brown head was swimming purposefully towards him, churning a V-shaped wake in the water. Wondering if it could be a beaver, for Jim had told him there was a dam in the stillwater near the head of the lake, Simon sat motionless. Within fifteen feet of the canoe the animal suddenly veered away from him, slapped its tail on the lake with a crack like a gunshot, and in a flurry of spray dived beneath the water.

The tail had been broad and flat, highly effective as a warning signal. So it was a beaver. Chuckling softly, Simon picked up his paddle again and stroked through the channel between the two lakes, carefully avoiding a couple of rocks that lay just below the surface. The water level was down, Jim had told him, because it had been such a hot, dry summer.

He had not paddled as far as this second lake before. What had Jim called it? Maynard’s Lake? Not a name that in any way expressed the serene beauty of the still, dark water that reflected in perfect symmetry the rocks and trees surrounding the lake and the small white clouds that hung above it.

Following the shore, he worked on the Indian stroke that Jim had been teaching him, a stroke that enabled him to stay on course without ever lifting the paddle out of the water and thus to move as silently as was possible. Best way to come across wildlife, Jim had assured him, describing how he had once got within forty feet of a moose by using that particular stroke.

The shoreline meandered down the lake in a series of coves, each lush with ferns and the pink blooms of bog laurel. The mist was slowly dissipating as the sun gained warmth. All the tensions that had driven Simon for as many years as he could remember seemed to be seeping away under the morning’s spell; he felt utterly at peace in a way that was new to him. And he had Jim to thank for it. Jim, his brother, from whom he had been separated for nearly twenty-five years...

A series of loud splashes came from the next cove, shattering the quiet and his own reflective mood; it was as though some large animal had entered the water and was wading through it. A moose? A bear? In spite of himself, Simon felt a shiver of atavistic fear ripple along his nerves. He might feel as though he was at home here. But in terms of actual experience of the wilderness he was a raw beginner. He’d do well to remember that.

He edged nearer the granite boulders that hid him from view of the next cove. There was a gap between the rocks, too narrow for his canoe, but wide enough that he should be able to see what was causing the disturbance without himself being seen. Sculling gently, he came parallel with the gap, and as he did so the splashing ceased with dramatic suddenness.

He had not dreamed it, though. The surface of the water in the cove was stirred into ripples and tiny wavelets, on which the lily pads placidly bobbed. But of the perpetrator of the ripples there was no sign.

Moose, he was almost sure, did not dive. Did bears? He had no idea. Holding himself ready to do a swift backup stroke if the situation called for it, Simon waited to see what creature would emerge from the lake. Another beaver? A loon?

A head broke the surface, swimming away from him. Long hair streamed from the skull back into the water as, in a smooth, sinuous curve of naked flesh, the woman dived beneath the lake again. Tiny air bubbles rose to the top, and the ripples spread slowly outwards.

Simon took a deep breath, wondering if he was indeed dreaming. He had been under the impression that Jim’s cabin was the last little outpost of civilisation on this chain of lakes; certainly his brother had not mentioned that anyone else lived further out then he. So who was this woman, who had appeared and disappeared like some spirit of the lake?

As if in answer to his question, she burst up out of the water again, her profile to him this time, the sun glinting on her wet cheeks and white teeth, for she was smiling in sheer pleasure. The force of her stroke brought, momentarily, the gleam of her shoulders and the smooth swell of her breasts into sight, inexpressibly beautiful. Then, in a flash of bare thighs, she knifed below the water.

His nails digging into the polished shaft of his paddle, Simon waited for her to reappear. When she did, she was facing him. But the rising sun was full in her face, and he was sure he was invisible to her.

He knew two things with an immediacy that knocked him off balance.

First, of course, he knew he did not want to disturb her in her play; for play it was, as innocent and joyful as that of a young otter. To frighten her, or alert her to his presence, was the last thing he wanted.

He could not tell what colour her eyes were, nor her hair, clinging as it was to her head. Nor, even with his artist’s trained eye, could he discern details of her face: she was too far away, and the sun shone too brightly on her features. What he received was an impression of both motion and emotion, of vivid life intensely embodied. She was a creature of the moment, this woman. Most certainly she was no lake spirit. That was too ethereal a designation by far. She was a woman of flesh and blood who was, he would be willing to bet, as much in love with life as he himself was in love with the wilderness.

As she rolled over on to her back with easy grace and began splashing away from him, her breasts hidden in the spray and then exposed to the sun, their pink tips shining wetly, he admitted to himself what the second thing was. He desired her. Instantly and unequivocally, as he had not desired a woman for a long time. If he were to obey his instincts he would drive the canoe around the rocks, scoop her up and then make love to her with a passion he’d thought he had lost.

Sure, Simon, a voice jeered in his ear. Canoes aren’t designed for lovemaking. Both of you would end up in the lake. Anyway, a woman as vital as that one might want to choose her partner herself. Assuming she hasn’t already got one. Get real, as Jim would say.

The woman rolled over on to her stomach, her spine a long, entrancing curve. But her mood had changed from play to work. For nearly fifteen minutes she swam back and forth parallel to the shore with a businesslike crawl, all her movements supple and strong. Then, diving again, she headed towards the shore.

Simon had sat as still as a statue for the entire fifteen minutes. He now brought the canoe round so as not to lose sight of her. Part of him was ashamed that he should watch her like any peeping Tom; particularly when in such a setting she could not possibly be expecting anyone within miles of her. Intuitively he was sure she would not have played so artlessly in the water had she suspected human eyes were on her. But he could not help himself. Formidable as his will-power could be, and he knew just how formidable better than any other human being, it was not strong enough to make him drag his eyes away from her.

His mouth dry, he watched her get to her feet, the water waist-deep, waves caressing her hips. Her hair reached halfway down her back. Tossing her head, she flicked it back, before wading to the small sand beach at the furthest point of the cove.

She moved beautifully, with an unselfconscious grace that brought a lump to his throat. When she reached the sand, she stooped to pick up a bright red towel that was lying there. But instead of walking towards the trees she turned briefly to face the lake, the towel hanging from one hand like an ancient banner of war. Throwing back her head, she gave a delicious peal of laughter, in which was all her joy in the freshness of morning and the pleasure of her solitary swim.

The sound struck Simon to the heart, for in it was a quality that he had ground to dust in his own soul during the last ten years. He felt involuntary tears prick at the back of his eyes, and furiously willed them back. The woman had wrapped the towel around her body and was loping up the sand towards a venerable pine tree that overhung the beach. For the first time he saw, tucked among the tree-trunks, a weathered cabin with a wide veranda and a stone chimney. Even as he watched, she disappeared among the trees in a flutter of scarlet. A few moments later he heard a screen door bang shut.

Simon let out his breath in a long sigh. His emotions were in chaos, a chaos he had no wish to analyse. He needed to get out of here. He needed to go back to Jim’s cabin, to the world that was sane and normal and known. As he picked up his paddle, he briefly looked down into the water to check for rocks, and saw in its mirror his own face. It looked no different from the way it usually did; somehow he would have expected the last few minutes to have marked it in some way.

His hair was thick and unruly, blacker than the surface of the lake, while his eyes, in startling contrast, were as blue as a summer sky. His will-power, which had driven him for so many years, was matched by the hard line of his jaw and the uncompromising jut of his nose, features that gave his face character rather than conventional good looks. That he was attractive to women he had long known and never really understood. His eye for detail failed him when it came to his own countenance: he was blind to the hint of sensuality in his mouth, to all the shadings of emotion that his eyes could express, to the thickness of his dark lashes which contrasted so intriguingly with the strength in his cheekbones.

He might not understand why women gravitated to him. He did know that there had never been a woman he had chosen to pursue who had not gone willingly to his bed. Willingly and soon. This he had come to take for granted. What it had meant was that he had slept with very few women in the last number of years, because what was easy and available was not always what was desired.

Scowling down at his face, Simon plunged the paddle into the water so that the reflection disappeared in a swirl of ripples. He brought the canoe around with a couple of strong sweeps, then began stroking back down the lake as though all the demons of the underworld were after him, digging his blade into the water so hard that his wake was marked by miniature black whirlpools.

He had been in danger of being sucked into such a whirlpool, he thought savagely, navigating the channel into the next lake with less than his usual caution. So he had seen a naked woman swimming in a lake. So what? He had seen naked women before. Seen them, painted them, made love to some of them. There was no reason for him suddenly to be feeling as though he was the only man in a world newly created, and she the one woman fashioned for his delight. No reason for him to feel as though all the warmth of the sun had fallen into his lap, like a gift of the gods. No reason at all. He was thirty-five years old, experienced and wise in the ways of the world. He was not sixteen.

As though mocking him, his inner eye presented him with a graphic image of the woman’s sensuous play in the water, of her pleasure-drenched smile and her water-streaked breasts. It was an image that made nonsense of reason in a way that both infuriated and frightened him. Apart from anything else, he had no idea who she was. Perhaps she was a visitor who would be gone from here by the weekend. Perhaps she was happily married. Perhaps he would never see her again. And even if he did, would he recognise her?

Only if she’s naked, the little voice sneered in his ear.

Go away, he growled. This is ridiculous! It makes no difference whether she’s from Vancouver with a husband and ten children or from Halifax with a live-in boyfriend. He, Simon, had not come to Canada to get involved with a woman. He had come to get acquainted with his brother; and to break away from a city that had been stifling him. This unknown woman was nothing to him. Nothing!

Driven by his own thoughts, and despite the headwind that had sprung up, Simon made it back to Jim’s cabin in record time. Physical action, as always, had made him feel better. Grinning ruefully to himself as he felt the twinges in his shoulder muscles, he tied the canoe to the dock. Then he strode up the path to the deck, took the steps in two quick leaps, and pulled open the screen door. It slammed shut behind him with a sound that struck into his memory: just so had another door on another cabin slammed shut half an hour ago.

Determined not to allow that aberrant turmoil of emotion to seize him again, equally determined not to ask a single question about the woman who lived in the cabin on Maynard’s Lake, he said, ‘Mmm...smells good.’

Jim was frying bacon in a cast-iron pan on the gas stove; his cabin, for all its rustic air, had all the modern conveniences. Turning over a rasher with a fork, he said casually, ‘You must have gone quite a way...see anything interesting?’

Jim was all that Simon was not, and in a group of people they would never have been taken for brothers. Ten years younger, four inches shorter, tow-haired where Simon had black hair, Jim had a sunny smile and an open nature, as far from the man of secrets that was his elder brother as a man could be. Jim was like a tabby cat stretched out in a patch of sunlight on the floor, purring in contentment; whereas Simon was like a wildcat, wary, deep-hidden in the shadows of the forest.

‘I went as far as Maynard’s Lake,’ Simon replied. ‘Shall I put some toast on?’

‘Sure...how’s your J-stroke doing?’

Simon grinned. ‘I’ll have you know that I can actually canoe in a straight line, brother dear.’ He cut four slices of the thick molasses bread that was sold at the nearest bakery. ‘I might marry the woman who makes this bread,’ he added.

‘You can’t,’ Jim said amiably. ‘She’s married to the local police chief who also happens to be the county’s champion arm wrestler. Pass me the eggs, would you?’

As Simon took the carton of farm eggs out of the refrigerator and handed them to his brother, he said awkwardly, ‘You’re a good teacher, Jim. Two weeks ago I’d never even been in a canoe. You’ve spent a lot of time with me—thanks.’

Jim shot him a keen glance. But all he said was, ‘You’re welcome. Can’t have you going back to England never having experienced something as quintessentially Canadian as canoeing.’

‘I even saw a beaver this morning. Plus several hundred maple trees.’

‘Then you’re practically a native,’ Jim laughed. Cracking a couple of eggs into the pan, he added, ‘As I recall, the best canoe lesson we had was the one on rescue techniques—that was the morning you turned into a human being.’

After a tiny hesitation Simon said evenly, ‘You believe in direct speech, don’t you?’

‘I say it like it is, yeah...life’s too short for anything else. The first three or four days you were here I figured it was going to be one hell of a long summer.’

Simon remembered the lesson on rescue all too well. It had involved him standing upright in one canoe pulling Jim’s swamped canoe up over the gunwales, and later hauling his brother out of the water, too. Jim had been pretending to be panic-stricken; it had been an interesting few minutes. Certainly it had been the day when the first of the barriers between the two men had fallen to the ground; Jim’s memory was entirely accurate. ‘Do you still feel that way? About the long summer, I mean.’

‘No. Although, like an iceberg, nine-tenths of you stays beneath the surface.’

‘That’s the way I live,’ Simon said, exasperated.

Expertly Jim flipped the eggs over. ‘That the reason it took you the best part of six weeks to answer my letter?’

Simon very carefully buttered the toast, taking his time. He said finally, ‘When I first got here, I mentioned that things hadn’t been going well for me lately. I’m in a rut as far as my painting’s concerned, London feels like a prison—dammit, I don’t even want to talk about it!’

He paused, knowing he had been guilty of understatement. For the last six months he had quite literally found himself unable to paint. In the north light of his studio he had spent hours standing in front of a blank canvas, paralysed by its whiteness, its emptiness, its mute quality of waiting. Since the age of sixteen he had lived to paint. To find himself cut off from his life’s blood had terrified him. And the more terrified he had become, the less able he had been even to hold a brush, let alone use it.

He took a ragged breath, knowing he had to pick up the thread of his story. ‘When your letter came in April, it took me totally by surprise. I’d tried to trace you once, years ago, but the records had been destroyed in a fire, and that was that. There was nothing more I could do. So when I heard from you it was like a voice from the past. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to look at that past. Not in the shape I was in. So I didn’t answer your letter right away, no.’ He added irritably, ‘Those eggs are going to be as hard as rocks.’

Jim drained the fat from the eggs and put them on the plates along with some bacon. ‘When you didn’t answer, I thought you didn’t want anything to do with me.’

‘That’s not true—’

‘After all, who needs a stray brother four thousand miles away?’

‘I never felt that way, Jim,’ Simon said forcefully. ‘I came, didn’t I? I’m here.’ He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Look, I know I’m not the easiest man in the world to get along with. I spend a lot of time alone—I have to. But I’m glad we’ve met again. Glad we’re getting to know each other. Just give me time, that’s all.’

‘We’ve got all summer. If you want to stay that long.’

Simon put the toast on the table along with a pot of strawberry jam that had also come from the bakery. This was a moment of decision for both him and his brother, he knew, nor did he minimise the importance of that decision. It was not an opportune time for an image of a woman playing naked in a mist-wreathed lake to flicker into his brain. Shoving it back, he said quietly, ‘I’d like to stay, yes. You can always kick me out if you get sick of me.’

‘I’ll do that,’ Jim promised, a smile splitting his pleasant, suntanned face. ‘Let’s eat.’

The eggs were not overdone, and there were huge whole strawberries in the jam. Refilling the coffee-mugs, Simon said, ‘I’ll get fat if I stay all summer.’

Jim shot a derisive glance at his brother’s lean length in the chair. ‘Sure. Anyway, if this dry weather keeps up, there’s a way you can lose weight. If you want to.’

‘What’s that?’ Simon said lazily. ‘Canoe races between here and the bakery.’

‘Fire-fighting.’

About to laugh, Simon saw that Jim was not joking. ‘Where’s the fire?’ he said semi-facetiously.

‘The woods are like tinder right now. We had less snow than normal last winter, and almost no rain all spring. A cigarette dropped in the bracken, a lightning strike—that’s all it would take. I’m on the volunteer fire department here, and we help out the whole county. They’re running a course next week on ground fire-fighting. Want to take it?’

The part of Simon that had felt for months like a lion trapped in a cage said instantly, ‘Yes.’

‘Great. I’ll sign you up.’

‘So you spend your winters teaching junior high school and your summers fighting fires?’ Simon said quizzically. ‘That’s quite a combination.’

‘Fighting fires is a breeze after some of the kids I’ve got. Anyway, I love the woods. If I can save even an acre from burning, that’s worth a lot to me.’

Every window in Jim’s cabin opened into the trees: the drooping boughs of hemlock, the brilliant green of beech, the thin-slivered needles of pine. To think of all these myriad shades of green engulfed in flame and reduced to charred blackness hurt something deep inside Simon. He said with utter conviction, ‘I already love this place.’

‘I was afraid you’d hate it here,’ Jim confessed. ‘I wondered if we should have stayed in my apartment in Halifax all summer—it’s a city, after all, even if it is pretty small beer compared with London.’

‘I came here to get away from cities.’

‘But you haven’t painted anything since you got here.’

Simon’s face closed. Fighting to keep any emotion from his voice, he said, ‘No.’

‘Well, I sure bumped into the glacier there,’ Jim said cheerfully and unrepentantly. ‘I’ve got to go into town this morning and pick up a few supplies...want to come?’

Town was the little village of Somerville, population seven hundred and fifty. ‘Not really. I’ll clean up the dishes, and then I’ll read for a while.’

‘Once I get back, we should go for a swim—it’s going to be another scorcher of a day.’ Jim reached for the shopping list that was taped to the door of the refrigerator.

Would he ever be able to swim again without thinking of a woman’s nude body playing in the water? To his horror Simon heard himself say, ‘I’d thought there wasn’t another cabin further out than this one. But I saw a place on Maynard’s Lake in one of the coves.’

‘Oh, that’s Shea’s cabin.’

‘Shay?’ Simon repeated, puzzled.

‘Spelled S.H.E.A. but pronounced “shay”. She’s a good friend of mine. You’ll meet her sooner or later.’

‘What do you mean by good friend?’ Simon said carefully. Of all the scenarios he had pictured, that the unknown woman might be involved with his brother had not been one of them.

‘Just what I say. When I was fourteen and she was eighteen, I was madly in love with her...after all, who wasn’t? But by the time I’d got my teaching degrees I’d met Sally, and Shea kind of dropped into the background in any romantic sense.’ His voice a touch overly casual, he added, ‘You’d probably like her.’

‘Matchmaking?’ Simon asked, a little too sharply for his own liking.

Jim gave a snort of laughter. ‘You don’t know Shea! She’s not into being matchmade. If there is such a word.’

Simon did a quick calculation. ‘So at twenty-nine she’s still unattached.’

‘Yeah. Just like you at thirty-five.’

‘Anyone ever tell you that you can be decidedly aggravating, James Hanrahan?’

‘Sally does. Frequently.’ Restlessly Jim got up from his chair. ‘I’ll be glad when she gets home. It seems like an age since I’ve seen her.’

Sally, like Jim, was a teacher; they had met in university and had taught together in an isolated outpost on Baffin Island. But Sally had stayed on there when Jim had got his present job in Halifax, and was only now transferring to a school just outside the city. She was presently visiting her parents in Montreal, and then her sisters in New Brunswick, and would not arrive in Nova Scotia for another month. Jim, plainly, was finding the delay hard to take. ‘Do you want to marry her?’ Simon asked bluntly.