Page 21 of Shame the Devil

When Harlan gotto the table with the drinks, Dyma jumped up and said, “I should go talk to my mom. Owen says I was a jerk.”

“I didn’t say that,” Owen said. “I said it came out wrong.” His tone was mild, the way he talked when he was running his football camp for kids, not the way he’d talk to a rookie. Which was good, if it meant he was treating her like a kid. Eighteen might be legal, but it sure as hell wasn’t twenty-one. A guy could get confused, because she sure was cute, but Harlan had three little sisters.Eighteen wasn’t twenty-one.

Harlan said, “I’ll tell her. Hey, Owen, want to see if they’ve got a table for us in there? Ten minutes?”

“You bet,” Owen said.

Jennifer was half off her stool when he headed back to the bar, looking over at the table, at her daughter, but when he slid in beside her and said, “Hiccups gone?” She sat down again.

“Yes,” she said. “I can’t believe the classiness of me. I told you about the bruise on my butt. I got the hiccups.”

“Yeah,” he said, “but you also talked to that kid. I realize, looking back, what you did there. De-escalation. Did you think I was going to deck his dad? I wanted to, I’m not lying. What a gold-plated tool. But you were right. No point.”

“And Iwasfifteen when I got pregnant with Dyma.” She looked him straight in the eye. “And sixteen when I had her.”

“You say that like I should have an opinion about it,” he said. “Looks to me like you’ve done a pretty good job raising her.”

“Really?” She set an elbow on the bar and shoved a hand into her curls. The corkscrews looked shiny and soft. He’d bet they felt that way, too. “I hope so. She can be a challenge. I had help, though. My grandpa. My mom, though she’s gone now. They were great.”

“But not her dad.” He didn’t know why he was pursuing it. Because he wanted to know, he guessed.

She went stiff. He said, “You don’t have to answer that. What am I doing? I’m supposed to be a whole lot smoother than this.”

“Oh?” she asked, rallying with what he could tell was an effort. “I was right, then, about the ‘Trust me’ thing?”

“Aw, hell,” he said. “Probably.” And she laughed, which was better.

“Tell me about the wolf encounter instead,” he suggested. “I guess I’m interested in that partly because of this thing I read. Coffee-table book in the room, about all the Indian tribes who lived here, or who passed through, because it was a destination for about six of them. Made me think, when I was out there today. How it feels here … it’s full of shadows, isn’t it? All those people, all gone now. Now it’s like Sea World, everybody coming to look at the attractions and leaving again with their pictures. But it wasn’t like that before.”

“Tell me.” She had a faraway look in her eyes now. He wanted to keep that look there.

“You first,” he said.

“Oh. Well, it was just what Dyma said. We were about halfway up this trail, and we came around a corner and saw two wolves, right across the river, feeding on an elk carcass. Which wasn’t nearly as far away as you’d think. More like across the room, and disturbing an animal with a kill … that isn’t good. I don’t really know how to ski, and I had to get out of those … those tracks they have on ski trails and grab Dyma, and I …” She clutched her glass tighter. “It was pretty scary. One of the wolves was big and brown. It was huge. But the other one … It was white, and it seemed … in charge, somehow. It turned and looked at us. It looked atme.It started to cross the river toward us, and I was so scared. I told Dyma to back up, to get going, but I couldn’t do it myself. Bad skier, like I told you, and anyway … it was like I was frozen. It didn’t cross the river, though. It just stood there andlookedat me. And I think … I don’t know how I could tell. But I think its eyes were blue.”

She shivered, a long, rolling shudder. He was getting fear. He was. But he was getting something else, too.

Fascination. The kind of pull when you knew it was dangerous, you knew it was wrong, and you wanted it anyway.

That kind of fascination didn’t necessarily end well. But how could you resist that ride?

He said, “So what did you do?”

“Once they went back to the elk, Ididturn around. I told Dyma to ski fast, and I skied as fast as I could myself, even though I knew it wasn’t anything like as fast as a wolf can run. I told myself I’d fight if they came after me. That I’d hold them off as long as I could. At least it would distract them. That’s all I could think to do.” She tried to smile. “And I tried not to fall down.”

His chest hurt, and somehow, he was taking her hand. It turned in his, and he looked into those golden eyes, at all the honesty and all the emotion there. Like he could see into the heart that had held only had one thought: to hold those wolves off so her daughter could escape. He said, “It really did feel like you could have died.”

“It did, even though I don’t think wolves attack people. I mean, I’ve read that they don’t. But it felt … intense. Why did itlookat me for so long, if it wasn’t thinking about attacking me?”

He frowned. “Wait. How long is that trail?”

“Uh … the guy at the ski shop said four miles one way? Four and a half? Something like that. But we didn’t get all the way up it.”

“Jennifer. It was nearly starting to get dark when we met you. And it had started to snow.”

“Oh.” She got still again. “You’re right. Well, that was … really stupid. The guy at the shop said we’d have plenty of time to get up there and back. He made it sound quick. I guess it depends how fast you ski.”

He was still holding her hand. She didn’t make a move to pull it away, so he kept hold of it. He said, “Maybe what you felt wasn’t the real danger at all. Maybe the wolf did you a favor, getting you to turn back.”