Red Wolf's Return. Mary Forbes J.

leaves, a chickadee’s trill, Canada geese grousing their route southward—and everywhere the fundamental scent of mountain, water and earth assembling for winter.

      And Ethan.

      Ethan in work boots, ragged denim cutoffs and a white T-shirt, waiting motionless, a somber expression on his face.

      “Ethan,” she said, stepping onto the pier.

      “Meggie.”

      For the moment she’d let the name stand. The year Doug had sent her the divorce papers she’d become Meg, a name with maturity. Only her family still called her Meggie, though her sister-in-law called her Meg. In the past two years, she and Rachel had become sisters; Ash’s wife understood Meg’s requirement for emotional strength and distance from the woman she had been once.

      But Ethan lived in the past, saw her as the girl she’d been in another life. His sketch told of his memories. Memories she’d buried aeons before.

      “I need to take some photographs of the spot where you found the eagle,” she said. “Do you have time to come along?”

      He studied her. “You know where it is.”

      She did; the boulder glared like a thumbprint in his diagram, and from the dock where she stood, she could see a section of beige rock across the water. “I’d like you to walk me through the scene, explain what you witnessed, a sort of reenactment.” Her gaze settled on him. “I’ll also need a written statement, Ethan.”

      For the first time, the edges of his mouth lifted and amusement sparked in his eyes. “Can’t use the visual in court, huh?”

      She felt a grin threaten in response. “Not when the judge knows you’re well-read.” He had been in high school.

      He stared across the lake. “Will you catch the guy?”

      The guy. Though he’d alluded to Beau in her office, his words indicated he didn’t consider her son the culprit. Relief slipped down her spine. “I’ll do my best.”

      Unhooking his tool belt, he stepped past her. “We can take my truck around to Ted’s Landing, then walk in from there.” Turning, he eyed her uniform shoes. “Got hiking boots with you?”

      “I do.” She’d learned early in her career to keep a change of clothes in her vehicle.

      “Good. You’ll need them.”

      About to say, “I grew up around here, remember?” she clamped her mouth shut. Within the tranquil ambiance, the comment seemed crass, and besides, he was heading for the shed carrying his tools, intent on her request.

      Starting for her car, Meg glanced again at the house. How had she not noticed the broad cedar deck off his kitchen door? Deep planters and a trellis swaddled in leafy vines enclosed the platform, rendering it cozy and secluded. A pair of wooden Adirondack chairs painted green looked out toward the water, mountain and low hills.

      What she wouldn’t give to sit in one of those chairs on an evening and just let the world…vanish.

      She needed a vacation. Far away. On some bleachedsand beach. With drinks in tall, dewy glasses.

      Meg frowned. Yeah, right. Like she had time to sit dawdling away time at some commercialized resort.

      With a last look at Ethan’s Eden, she returned to her PC, changed her footwear, then retrieved camera and notebook from her duty bag. Move it or lose it, Meg.

      She ignored the double entendre at the sight of Ethan heading for his truck. Was she prepared to reestablish their friendship, or would she let him go…again?

      

      He drove with the window down, left arm on the sill, shifting the gear shift effortlessly on curves and hills. She watched his booted feet work the clutch and gas.

      A small waterfall streamed through her abdomen at the sight of his bare brown calves and knees, forearms and biceps. She imagined their strength, the texture of compact muscle, how his skin—the color of dark-roast coffee with cream—would contrast against the paleness of her own.

      Snapping around, she viewed the tiny lake skimming through the trees beyond the side window. What was she doing, thinking of skin and muscle and color—of Ethan Red Wolf—this way? She had trained herself never to think of men sexually, not for seven years, not since Doug Sutcliffe and before him…

      Ethan.

      Young and stupid, that’s what you were back then, believing you had what it took to entice a man. Believing that, no matter what, a man would see you as a woman.

      Laughable, was what it was. Laughable because here she was in what much of the world still deemed a man’s job, toting a gun, wearing a mask of authority. Hiding.

      Losing a breast to cancer tended to make a woman a tad more self-conscious. Especially when the man she’d married—the doctor she’d married—saw her as an altered person postsurgery.

      And she would bet her badge, if Ethan knew, he wouldn’t draw pictures of her with silk locks and youth on her side. He would not remember moments from an era long dead.

      And he damn well wouldn’t be glancing across the cab of his pickup with those eyes that embraced the secrets of the earth, and set her pulse off-kilter.

      Well, to hell with him. To hell with them all. She’d gotten this far, hadn’t she? Did her best to raise her son, create a secure and loving home for him, whether or not he appreciated those aspects in his hormonal, independence-seeking stage. Hadn’t she?

      Damn it. She just needed to stop smelling the man beside her, needed to quit inhaling the scent the sunwarmed breeze brought through the window: that musk of hard work cleaving to skin.

      You’re sniffing like a dog, Meg.

      God, she needed a life.

      Eight minutes later they arrived at Ted’s Landing, a dilapidated pier so called because it had once anchored the float plane of Ted Barns—until Ted sold the plane and relocated to Kentucky.

      Ethan brought the truck to a stop, dug out two iced water bottles from the glove box. After handing her one, he shoved open the door and climbed down. “We walk from here.”

      “I know,” Meg retorted, uncapping her bottle and following him around the hood.

      Did he think she couldn’t recall the rugged topography around Blue Lake? And that Ted’s Landing and a couple of other isolated flat acres were the only areas upon which people had built cottages and cabins? Before Ted’s Landing existed, this very spot had been hers and Ethan’s place to park, their spot to begin hiking two miles through dense bush to their boulder.

      She stared across the miniature body of water that was more lagoon than lake. On its opposite shore, a bounty of autumn robes sheathed the rugged hills. Softening her voice, she asked, “Do you come this way often?”

      He lifted a shoulder. “I circle the lake four or five times a week with my camera and sketchpad.”

      Almost twenty miles on foot over some of the roughest geography within the county. But then, he’d always been a man at home in the outdoors, capturing beauty others missed. In her home office, Meg had hung this year’s calendar, printed with his photographs. September offered her favorite, a ladybug on a single blade of blueeyed grass sprouting amidst a cluster of river stones.

      Evidently done with talking, Ethan cut through the tumbling rock and willows edging the lake, and Meg, focusing on his back, hurried into the woods after him. Twenty minutes later, hoping the sweat under her arms lay invisible on her gray short-sleeved shirt, she followed him into blue-sky sunshine once more.

      The first thing she detected was how much the place had retained its identity over the past decades, and the countless details he’d sketched in the interview room. The elephant-sized boulder still nudged the shoreline, though cattails now led the way into the water. Behind the big stone, the cliff caught the late-morning sunshine, while willows and