Journey's End. Bj James

they brought in people of their own.

      “Bounty hunters.” His face was wooden, but there was contempt in his tone. “These killers who called themselves professionals hunted and slaughtered at will. Trapping, shooting and butchering, even poisoning anything on four feet that wasn’t a cow or a horse.”

      A grim smile tugged at his mustache. “Even goats and sheep, and sometimes farm dogs were at risk when they were at their baiting and trigger-happy worst.

      “During most of the furor, I was spared the wolves and the hunters. Then, one day I found one of them in the woods. A magnificent wolf, the biggest female I’d ever seen, and as black as night.” The glass moved, cognac swirled. “She’d been shot. I don’t know when or where, or how far she’d run before she bled out. She had pups and three of the litter were with her. When I blundered onto her body, they ran away, scattering into the woods.

      “After I buried her I searched for them.” The ripple of his shoulders, as he brought the glass to his lips, called attention to their power. “No luck.”

      “Yet Shadow’s here.” As she said his name again, the great creature made a pleading sound deep in his throat and nudged his nose at her knee. Both her hands were clenched around her glass. Now she eased one away to stroke the wolf, her fingers gliding comfortably now down his muzzle in the familiar caress he sought.

      Ty savored the pretty picture they made, how natural it seemed in his home. He realized that, with the easy unclenching of her hands and the caress of the wolf, the fissure in the bastion that defended her heart had become a crack.

      Settling deeper into the cushions of the sofa, he propped an ankle on his knee. “There were signs of the pack around for days,” he continued, picking up the thread of his narrative. “I’d never seen such tracks. Monstrous, but light, as if the Indians were right.”

      “Ghost Wolves.”

      “I lost a colt.” He turned pensive with the telling of it, then shrugged away the loss. “He was the last. As mysteriously as they came, the wolves were gone.”

      Taking her empty glass from her, he returned it to the bar. His half smile was rueful. “As I said, long story.”

      “Not so long.” Beyond her response to the wolf, Merrill had hardly moved throughout the revelation, as fascinated with his voice, his choice of words, his manner of speaking as with the story. Ghost Wolves, moving like Shadows, phantoms—he had a way with words, a nice touch. “You weave a remarkable story, but it isn’t finished.”

      “Not yet.” Ty swung about, by habit gauging the drift of snow accumulating in the corners of windowpanes. He was quiet for the space of a heartbeat, remembering the tiny ball of fur stumbling and tumbling after him on legs too short and feet too large. A pup attached to a boot heel as firmly as the name he’d been given.

      Fate? Providence? One creature sensing the need of another? More than coincidence, or only that? Ty would never know.

      It didn’t matter.

      All that mattered was that the tiny pup that became the great wolf, had come to him. When he turned again, Ty’s lips softened into a fond smile. “Five days later, when the bounty hunters were gone, as if he knew by instinct he was safe, a pup walked out of the woods. He never left.”

      “Shadow, choosing you.”

      “After a fashion. His fashion.”

      “Safe,” she mused. “Yet Valentina says you’re a hunter.”

      He hesitated so long she thought he wouldn’t answer. Taking his glass from the table, he drained a final, clinging drop from it. His blue gaze pierced her like a shard of ice. “I was. Once. But not for bounty.” Setting the glass down on the bar with exaggerated care, he said with a calm that sent shivers down a wary spine, “Never for bounty.”

      Merrill held his fierce stare. There was darkness in his eyes. More than anger, more than loathing. Had she hit a nerve? Was there more reason for Fini Terre than a man seeking his livelihood in a land as beautiful as paradise?

      Valentina called it his Journey’s End.

      Journey from where? From what?

      “My turn to apologize,” she managed, and was surprised to find she meant it.

      “There’s no need to apologize for the truth.”

      “You make it sound as if you were more than a casual hunter?”

      “I have been. I was. A long time ago.” He moved away from the bar, returning to the hearth. Subject closed.

      His broad back brooked no questions as he banked smoldering coals and readied the fire for the night. Rising from the completed task, he turned again to her. The hard edges had eased from his face, the darkness from his eyes. “It’s late.” His gaze flicked to the book she’d laid aside, lingered, then slid away. “I’ll leave you to your reading.”

      As silently as he’d come, he left her.

      Listening as the tap of his step faded from the stairs, she glanced down at the book. A mystery with a provocative theme that on a glance promised to pass the time that lay heavy on heart and mind. A temporary escape within the reach of her fingertips, but she didn’t pick it up.

      Snow fell thinly now, clinging wetly to the window with its soft patter. The fire leapt and weaved in twining columns. Shadow sighed and lay at her feet.

      Merrill thought only of the man who had given her sanctuary from the demons that plagued her. She thought and she wondered. The spirited curiosity lying dulled and dormant for weeks and months began to kindle.

      

      Ty stopped short in the kitchen doorway, discovering Merrill Santiago was as lovely at dawn as any other hour.

      When he’d first heard her stirring, a sixth sense that never rested drawing him from a light sleep, he’d been alarmed. Was she ill? Hurt? Had she decided she must leave?

      That brought him lurching from his bed, reaching for clothing thrown over a chair the night before. His hands had been clumsy with zippers and buttons in his urgency. A rare circumstance for Tynan O’Hara. Sucking in a long, harsh breath, he’d forced himself to slow down, to calm down. To listen and think, attuning again to the instinct that had awakened him. Instincts that had always served him well.

      The sounds he heard were politely guarded, not furtive. Little more than a rustle, a tiny disturbance of the air that would have gone unnoticed except at an hour when the house was a well of unbroken calm. The fragrance of brewing coffee had drifted to the gallery and with another long breath he had smiled. One who was hurt, or ill, or absconding wouldn’t take the time to make coffee.

      He’d given her a half hour before coming down from his lair. Letting her immerse herself in the solitude of the morning, the glory of first light on virgin snow. It was a time he found most peaceful. A time that brought peace to him. When he’d gone to her at last, he’d moved quietly down the stairs, hoping without shame for this moment.

      Leaning a shoulder against the smooth planed arch of the door, he let himself be charmed by the glory of a golden woman captured in the golden reflections of sunrise. Yes, she was truly lovely and, for a rare moment, at peace.

      Merrill sat before the kitchen windows marveling at the utter beauty of the beginning day. Her face, in profile, was dreamy, even serene. Coffee steamed from a cup on the table. Shadow sat by her side, a flick of his ears the only acknowledgment of Ty.

      Dawn was brighter for the snow. The red-gold hues of the sky glinting over it painted the world in a fiery rainbow of color. The chill of night lingered, lightly frosting the windows. But with the advent of the sun the temperatures would rise, and the day promised to be pleasing. Later there might be snow so deep he would have to dig through it to clear a path from the house to the barns and storage buildings. But for now, for today, this small part of Montana was a fairyland dusted with glittering, sun spangled white.

      Merrill