"The Rancourts have as much right to be here as I do," Carine said.
"You could use the peace and quiet. I'll see you sometime. Take care of yourself."
"You, too. Thanks."
He shut her door, and Ty started back down the mountain way too fast. He almost two-wheeled it on a curve and slowed down, aware of Carine getting quieter and paler beside him. "You're not going to be sick, are you?"
"I'm fine."
"Good, because I just cleaned my truck."
She lifted her eyes to him, but it was obviously an effort to pull herself out of her thoughts. "You did not. It's filthy."
"It's not filthy. I got out all the wrappers and crud-"
"Look at the dashboard. Dust, grime. And you didn't vacuum."
"Vacuum? Babe, if I vacuumed, I might suck out something this thing needs to keep running. There's a certain balance of nature at work here. It's my New Hampshire truck. My truck on base is spotless."
She let a small smile escape. "Isn't there some general who can call and send you somewhere?"
He grinned. "Am I getting under your skin?"
"Underfoot," she said, "not under my skin. Maybe I miss Boston."
"The cockroaches or the kitty litter in the front hall?"
"There are no roaches in my building."
"I saw one the size of an alligator."
"Watch it, North. Once I've mastered the PAST, I'm going to become a marksman. Try my hand at tactical maneuvers."
"Soon the generals'll be calling you."
She shook her head. "You didn't hear me say I was planning to take up parachuting, did you? That's an unnatural act, jumping out of a perfectly good aircraft." She settled back in her seat, watching the passing scenery-rocks, evergreens, birches. No wild turkeys. Wherever they went on late November afternoons, presumably they were there. "At least I don't mind helicopters. Antonia hates them."
"And here she is married to a helicopter pilot."
"Life can be funny that way, can't it? She still says she's never going to be the doctor in the helicopter with the patient, not if she can help it. She'll be the doctor waiting at the hospital for the patient."
"Have you been on a helicopter?"
"A number of times, on various photography assignments." She sighed, adding dryly, "But I guess that wasn't in the 'real world.'"
"You don't have anything to prove," Ty said, slowing down for a series of ruts and potholes, "you or your sister."
She glanced over at him. "Neither do you."
Seventeen
In the village of Cold Ridge, November was a time between seasons. The leaf-peepers had gone, and the winter sports crowd hadn't yet arrived, leaving the shops and restaurants more or less to the locals for a few short weeks. When Ty parked his beat-up truck in front of Gus's outfitting shop, Carine jumped out first, although by now she knew she wouldn't go far without him. He was definitely in Musketeer mode, her own personal d'Artagnan shadowing her wherever she went-because she'd found a dead man, because his friend had asked him to.
But it didn't seem fair. He was on leave after months leading his pararescue team in combat and training missions that were the subject of speculation and rumor around town but seldom got fleshed out with specifics. Special operations, unconventional warfare. It was all something that happened far away, removed from their northern New England village.
Except Tyler North was one of their own-even if, Carine thought, he didn't see himself that way, but as the outsider, the boy with the weird mother.
Regardless, he should be hiking and fishing, sitting by the fire with a book, puttering in his rambling house, not traipsing around after her.
But they'd had that discussion on the way into town. "Relax, babe," he'd said. "I haven't fared too badly hanging out with you."
Meaning the sex and the kisses.
That'd teach her to open her damn mouth.
The alternative to having him on her tail-running around on her own-had its appeal, but Carine thought if she could just make the leap to Tyler North as a Musketeer, she wouldn't feel so hemmed in. But it wasn't just his presence, it was that every time she looked at him, a part of her remembered that he was the man she'd loved so much last winter and almost married.
She eyed him as he joined her on the sidewalk and wondered what they'd think of each other if they were meeting for the first time now. He was thirty-seven, she was thirty-three. They weren't kids. She tried to look at him objectively, pretend she hadn't known him forever-hadn't gone to bed with him just yesterday. She took note of his superfit physique, his military-cropped tawny hair, his green eyes and bad-road face. The jeans, the battered brown leather jacket.
She'd be attracted to him, no doubt about it.
Just as well she knew better, experience ever the hard teacher.
He seemed to guess what she was thinking and grinned at her. "Just think. Manny could have asked Gus to keep you out of trouble instead of me."
"Do you see now why I've always hated you?"
"If I'd known what you meant by 'hate,' I could have started sleeping with you when you were sixteen."
"Gus would have killed you."
"Hang on. He might yet."
It was in the fifties in the valley, warm by Gus's standards. He had the wooden front door of his store propped open with a statue of a river otter, the afternoon breeze blowing in through the screen door. Carine went in first, the old, oiled floorboards soft under her feet. Her uncle had started the business, now one of the most respected outfitters in the valley, when she was in the second grade, and he called it Gus & Smitty's. There was no Smitty and never had been, but he insisted that just Gus's was too prosaic. It was located in a former Main Street hardware store. Customers liked the old-fashioned atmosphere, but they came for the state-of-the-art equipment and unparalleled services.
Carine wove through the racks of winter hiking and camping gear to the back wall, where Gus, in a wool shirt and heavyweight chinos, had a map of the Pemigewasset Wilderness opened on the scarred oak counter. They'd hiked in the Pemigewasset countless times. It was a sprawling federally designated wilderness area resurrected from shortsighted logging-and-burning operations that had nearly destroyed it between the mid-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth century. Now it was protected by an act of Congress, and human activity there was strictly regulated.
"Planning a hike?" Carine asked.
He peeled off his bifocals and looked up from his map. "Nah. Just dreaming."
Stump wagged his tail but didn't stir from his bed at Gus's feet.
Ty whistled at a price tag on an expensive ski jacket.
"Only the best," Gus said.
"At that price it should come with its own search-and-rescue team." Ty emerged from the racks, joining them at the counter. "Just add water."
"You come in here to make fun of the merchandise?"
"No, sir. We're here to invite ourselves to dinner."
Gus folded up his map and tucked it back in a drawer. He sold a wide selection of maps, guidebooks, how-to books and outdoor magazines. "I'm cooking a chicken in the clay pot. You two can go over to the house and put it in the oven if you want. I'll close up here in a bit."
"I never can remember what to do with a clay pot," Carine said. "What part you soak in cold water, for how long, if you're supposed to preheat the oven-"
"Instruction book's right in the pot. How'd it go at the Rancourts?"
Ty leaned over a glass cabinet of sunglasses, sports watches and jackknives. " Sterling was frosty, Jodie was hangdog and Gary Turner drooled over Carine."
She groaned. "Gus, that's not how it went."
"It's the short version." North pointed to a pair of Oakleys. "Let me see those."
Gus shook his head. "I'm not wasting my time. You've never paid more than twenty dollars for sunglasses in your life."