Untamed Melody
Autor:in
Quinn Wilder
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CHAPTER ONE
‘NO,’ ANNIE whispered. She stared at the destruction in disbelief. She closed her eyes against it, and then opened them again. ‘Oh, no,’ she said more loudly.
Ten seconds ago it had seemed like a perfect day, the early morning sunlight dancing across the immaculate surfaces of the kitchen area of Annie’s coffee-shop, the mountain-fresh breeze stirring the lacy curtains at the window.
‘Good morn——Annie?’
Annie turned quickly to greet her helper, and tried to hide her distress with a bright smile. The smile wobbled.
Millicent, gray-haired and angular, crossed the kitchen and looked. Her face had been stern to begin with, but now her thin lips pulled down disapprovingly.
‘Lord, love a duck!’ she said with exasperation. ‘How did that little she-devil get in here?’
Annie felt a swift need to defend the ‘little she-devil’, and the words rose in her throat and then died. What could she say in defense of Kailey after this?
She turned and looked again at the vandalism. Ten pies sat in a row on the counter-top, the crusts golden and crispy, perfectly fluted at the edges. Perfect—except for one thing.
Dead-center of each pie the crust was broken, the small, neat roosters that Annie had carved yesterday obliterated by little hand-prints that were now oozing huckleberry juice.
‘Lord, love a duck,’ Millicent exclaimed again. ‘Look, Annie.’
With some trepidation, Annie looked. Millicent was pointing to the purple hand-prints that marched happily up and down the pristine white of the lower cupboards, forming a path right to the back door.
‘I guess you didn’t lock the door last night,’ Millicent said.
‘Lock the door?’ Annie said incredulously. ‘In the town of Copper?’ Against my own daughter?
Millicent’s stern face softened. Her love for Annie was evident in her face. In fact, there probably wasn’t a soul in all of Copper who didn’t love Annie.
And it was more than Annie’s physical loveliness that attracted people to her, though she’d certainly been blessed abundantly in that area. Annie was tall, and full-figured without being fat. Her features were even and pleasing. If they were a touch on the ordinary side this fact was more than made up for by her astonishing hair.
Annie had hair that went down to the middle of her back, and was black and shiny as coal. It was enormously thick and naturally curly—wild, somehow, untamed and glorious. And to go with that astonishing hair she had mesmerizing eyes. Not quite blue and not quite green, but a peculiar and stunning shade of turquoise.
Annie’s eyes were soft and gentle, true mirrors of her soul.
‘You’re a good woman,’ Millicent said gruffly, clapping her employer on the shoulder. ‘But that child… Where did that child come from?’
This last was muttered under her breath, as though she was doing her best to restrain herself from voicing her disapproval of the child too loudly.
‘In my day,’ Millicent said, her muffled comments drowned out by the tap she’d turned on, ‘it seems to me we handled a child like that differently.’ She turned off the tap. ‘Never mind,’ she said solidly. ‘The pies aren’t a total loss.’ She looked at them dubiously. ‘Maybe we can cover that part with cream.’
‘Millicent,’ Annie said, ‘you know we can’t do that.’
‘Maybe we could put them on the sale table,’ Millicent offered hopefully.
‘The health department would shut us down.’
‘Copper doesn’t have a health department.’
‘I know, but I just wouldn’t feel good about it. You know Kailey. Her idea of washing is to let the neighbor’s dog lick her hands. She could have dug in her wormbed for an hour and caught six garter snakes before she came in here. No, I’ll bring the pies home and stick them in our freezer. Kailey and I can eat them. Do you want a few?’
‘I’ll pass,’ Millicent said hastily.
Annie looked dejectedly at the purple hand-prints that adorned her white cupboards. Short of repainting, she doubted that the stains would ever be fully removed.
‘I think I’ll go replace the huckleberries,’ Annie decided. The town’s kids generally supplied her with huckleberries, at a few dollars a pail, but she needed an excuse to be out of this kitchen and off by herself for a while.
‘Go ahead, dear. I’ll hold down the fort.’
‘Thanks, Millicent. And, Millicent? Let me handle it with Kailey, please?’
Millicent sniffed. ‘A wooden spoon on the behind is what that Kailey needs—not that it’s my place to say so.’ Annie parked her fourteen-year-old Volvo on a pull-out on the nearly vertical mountain road that twisted its way into Copper. Far below her, in the valley, she could see the steep-pitched roofs of the houses in the small town. The panoramic view chased away the last of the small, dark clouds that had invaded her perfect day.
What were a few pies, after all?
She crossed the road and scrambled up a rock bluff, her pail in her hand. Then she was in the forest. It was cool and green and quiet. It smelled of the earth and evergreens. The huckleberry bushes were low to the ground, their branches weighed down with juicy, dark purple drops of fruit.
She began to fill her bucket, and the melody came to her lips spontaneously, as it almost always did when she was in the woods alone. She liked to sing, and it also let the bears know that she was here. She opened her mouth and the sound began to pour out, sweet and clear, oddly wild.
It was a song without words, an outpouring of soul, and she sang softly as she worked.
Her bucket was nearly full when a movement startled her, and she looked up. A whitetail doe stood tautly on the edge of the berry-patch, its ears flicking.
She smiled, straightened slowly, and continued to sing. She was not sure why, but occasionally her song would draw the timid deer close to her.
The doe started suddenly, swiveled its head toward the road, and then bounded away, impossibly graceful.
A moment later she heard what had startled the deer. It was the throaty roar of a big engine. She waited for it to pass, hoping she could lure the deer back into the clearing. Instead she was startled when the sound of the engine stopped abruptly, and a car door slammed.
It occurred to her that she hadn’t locked her own car door. Who ever locked anything in Copper? Some unsavory type in a souped-up Mustang was probably even now helping himself to the new stereo in her car.
She moved on soft feet to the edge of the rock bluff and peered down at the pull-out on the road far below her.
There was no souped-up Mustang. The stopped car was low-slung—black, sleek and beautiful. It was not the kind of car that usually found its way to Copper.
A man was standing very still, his back to her, and not the least interested in her vehicle…or its new stereo. She could go back to picking berries now, but for some reason she did not.
He was looking out across the valley, much as she had been earlier. His back, beneath a black leather flight jacket, looked relaxed, as if he found peace in that view, just as she had an hour or so earlier.
The wind lifted his hair and it fanned out behind him, longer than was stylish, faintly wild.
Without warning, it happened. Her heart was beating faster, and her breath was coming in strangled gasps.
It was him. He had come back.
He would take one look at Kailey and know that he had left more here than heartbreak.
She fought the rash panic rising in her throat. She forced herself to calm down. She sank to her heels and made herself look at the leather-clad back objectively.
What had made her think it was him? The hair, of course, thick and sun-streaked brown, with faint highlights of red glowing in it. Daniel had always had long hair—too wild—and he’d said he always would.
Her heart quieted, and she struggled for objectivity. No, not Daniel at all, though the posture was reminiscent of him. The man’s straight back was relaxed, but a certain male arrogance, a confidence, was relayed by his posture. But on a closer look the unknown traveller’s shoulders were incredibly wide. Daniel’s build had been more boyish.
She was relieved, and yet still she watched, some small kernel of doubt remaining. She hoped he would turn around, so that she could be further reassured by a glimpse at his face. That he was not Daniel.
She was getting better, she realized, congratulating herself. It had been several months since she had had this response. Sometimes it came when she briefly glimpsed a profile, sometimes when she saw a certain set to shoulders moving away from her in the summer crowds on the Nelson sidewalks. Sometimes when she caught a faint scent of a certain brand of aftershave. The thought, ‘There’s Daniel,’ would blast through her brain, and she would feel momentarily paralyzed with shock.
Images of Daniel would skitter through her mind—his long, wild hair tangled, catching red highlights under the sun, his impossibly black eyes looking at her, smoldering with passion, his teeth flashing as his laughter danced like light through the forest.
Of course it was never Daniel, but the intensity of the response always left her shaken.
It had been six years. It was about time that response was dying in her.
Daniel was never coming back.
Thank God.
She stood up, deliberately turning away from the stranger who still stood in quiet repose, studying the landscape. She faded back into the woods. She went deeper into them, unaware of the grief that made her eyes suddenly more blue than green.
She didn’t hear the car restart, but after a while she succeeded in pushing it from her mind.
The melody came again. More softly this time. And infinitely more sad.
He stood for a long time, breathing deeply of the air. What was it about air in the mountains? There was a purity to it, a crisp after-bite, that gave it a substance it didn’t have anywhere else.
And, Lord knew, he’d been a lot of other places. He’d called it freedom, but he’d never been free of Copper. And he’d never been free anywhere else, he realized as he looked down at the tin roofs, silver and red, sparkling under a late August sun. From here the town looked like part of an intricate train model, nestled peacefully in a gap between the verdant green vegetation of the Selkirk Mountains that rolled on and on until they became more ragged-edged, silver and grey.
Was Annie still here?
Was one of those roofs hers?
Suddenly it seemed that he was in the company of ghosts, two half-wild kids who had roamed free through these mountains, laughing…loving. For one short summer.
He frowned. No, Annie would be gone. She had come into his life like summer lightning, and had ignited just as many wildfires. Fires went out. People moved on. Annie’s mother had moved sixteen times in thirteen years, Annie had told him once. She wouldn’t still be here, though she’d be twenty-four now, old enough not to be dragged around the country by her gypsy mother, any more.
If by some quirk of fate Annie was still here, she was probably long-since wed. Girls who stayed in these mountain villages married early.
He realized, suddenly and not happily, that he was afraid Annie might still be here.
The hackles on the back of his neck suddenly rose. On the breeze did he hear the faintest of melodies? Haunting? Clear? Extraordinarily beautiful?
He strained his ears and heard nothing, except the whisper of the breeze in the trees.
Almost savagely he turned from the view and got back in his car. He opened the engine right up and drove as if ghosts chased him all the way into Copper.
He slowed at the edge of the town, regarding it with rough affection.
Copper’s main street, an entire block of it, had been allotted the only flat area in the town. The residential area was scattered on the steep hills on either side of that one level stretch. A one-room school, long-since closed, and a playing field, surprisingly well-tended, were at the very entrance of the town, sharing the level stretch with the businesses.
It had changed, he thought as he drove slowly down the gravel main street. A lot.
The Copper of his boyhood had been a ramshackle little town, the victim of a world in love with plastic. The small copper-mine above the town had been shut down in the fifties, and as he grew up Copper had been falling further and further into apathy.
The town had been speckled with abandoned houses, and those that remained inhabited were usually falling steadily into disrepair.
But now the town had a cheerful look. The boardwalk in front of the businesses had been repaired and painted white. Flower-baskets hung jauntily from the corners of colorful awnings. He could see the houses above the main street that made neat and tidy breaks in the wilderness that couldn’t quite be tamed.
Slowly he drove by the businesses. Some of them he remembered, though he was astounded by the restorative face-lifts they’d been given. The General Store. Phil’s Barber-Shop. Copper Meats. There was a gift-shop in a store front that had been boarded up since his earliest memory. And a tiny art gallery where Miller’s Junk Shop had hidden behind row upon row of discarded hubcaps. A new dentist’s office and…Annie’s.
He stopped the car so abruptly that he nearly stalled it.
It was a false-fronted building, the whitewash fresh and clean, ‘Annie’s’ written in red, in those bold, old-fashioned letters that usually said ‘Saloon’. Crimson geraniums bloomed in window-boxes beneath the two open windows on either side of the door. Lacy halfcurtains danced gracefully in a slight breeze. The outer door was held open with an overflowing barrel of flowers.
A sandwich-board on the boardwalk proclaimed today’s special to be fresh huckleberry pie, served with whipped cream.
He silenced the big engine of his car with a flick of his wrist, telling himself that he’d never been able to resist huckleberries.
He got out of the car, automatically went to lock it, remembered that this was Copper, and dropped the keys into his pocket.
Slowly, his heart in his throat, which was an unusually strong reaction to huckleberries even for him, he went up the three shallow steps to the boardwalk, crossed it, and opened the squeaky screen-door to Annie’s.
A bell rang, but there was no immediate response. Annie’s seemed empty.
He sat down at one of the tables, his heart still beating too swiftly, and feeling as if it were in his throat instead of in his chest. Would she have changed? Aged?
Please don’t be her.
His gaze went around the room. It had to be her. The room had Annie written all over it. Fresh flowers in pretty hand-thrown pots were on every table. The tables and chairs were unmatched, a wonderful hodge-podge of old wood. Antiques, most of them, but not refinished in any way. It smelled so good in here. Like flowers and wood and baking and coffee.
An angular old woman came out of the back, and looked at him sternly.
He felt his heart plummet to the bottom of his toes. Relief, he told himself firmly. What would he and Annie have to say to each other after all these years, anyway?
‘What can I get you?’
‘Coffee, please. And some of that huckleberry pie. It’s been years since I had huckleberry pie.’
‘It might be a few more years, if you’re just passing through. Our huckleberry pie met with a small disaster this morning. Sorry, I forgot to change the sign. I can get you a menu, or I can recommend the huckleberry cake.’
‘Sure, that would be fine. The cake.’
That ramrod-straight back was turned to him. He didn’t know the woman. Once he had known everybody in Copper. Was she Annie? It was a common enough name, after all.
Coffee, rich, dark and aromatic, was snapped in front of him a few moments later.
‘The cake takes a bit to heat. We don’t like microwaves.’
From the way she was looking at him, he suspected that black leather was also disapproved of.
‘Here’s something to look at while you wait.’
She tossed a paper down in front of him and left him on his own. He looked over the paper with interest. It was a giant ad for the town of Copper, done in an old-fashioned newspaper format. It was well-executed enough that he looked for an indication of who had produced it, and found that it had been published by the Copper Chamber of Commerce.
‘What Chamber of Commerce?’ he muttered to himself. In Copper?
The door creaked open behind him. It didn’t open wide enough for the bell to ring, and he turned to see a small girl in faded denim overalls and a none-too-clean yellow shirt marching confidently across the floor. He guessed her to be four, or perhaps five. He wouldn’t even have known she was a girl except for the mane of ebony curls that looped her cherubic face.
Without hesitation she came to his table, pulled out the other chair, and plunked herself down on it. She smoothed out a rather wrinkled piece of paper, fished a crayon out of her overalls and, without glancing at him, her pink tongue stuck out between pearly-white teeth, she began to labor over the paper.
‘Hello,’ he ventured.
‘Not allowed to talk to strangers,’ she told him, glancing up at him with censure. Her eyes were as black as her hair, sparkling with pure devilment. She returned to her work. He looked at her with consternation, shrugged, and looked back at his paper.
‘What does flatulent mean?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ He was buying time, taken aback, not only by the unusual question but by her easy and correct pronunciation of the word.
‘What does flatulent mean?’ she asked him impatiently.
‘I thought you weren’t allowed to talk to strangers,’ he hedged.
‘You don’t seem that strange.’
‘Thank you,’ he said drily.
‘So, what does it mean?’
He could see that she was not going to be put off In a flash of inspiration he told her that he thought she should ask her mother or her father.
‘I don’t have a father,’ she informed him matter-of-factly. ‘Would it be a good name for a cat?’
‘No.’
‘Oh. What’s your name?’ she asked, as if she might entertain that as a substitute name for her cat.
‘Daniel. And yours?’
She didn’t look up from her labored efforts, nor did she answer immediately. ‘Simone,’ she finally said.
‘Well, Simone, I’m——’
The door burst open, the bells tinkling madly. ‘You little devil——’
Simone slid down from her chair. ‘I think I have to go now.’ She tucked her crayon safely inside her bib pocket. ‘This is for you,’ she said gravely, folding the wrinkled paper carefully and handing it to him.
‘Thank you,’ he said, just as gravely.
A harried-looking young woman had taken a good strong hold on Simone’s hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said distractedly to him.
The mother was very young, and very obviously pregnant again. ‘How could you do that to me?’ she asked the little girl. ‘I’ve been worried sick…’ Her voice faded, and the door tinkled again as they left.
Curiously, Daniel opened his piece of paper. It had four letters on it, each done in a different color. They were three inches high and quite wobbly.
POOP.
The older woman re-emerged with his cake. She shot a black look at the small figure being led past the front window.
‘Disaster,’ she muttered with a shake of her head.
He didn’t know if she was still referring to the pies this morning or not. Surely one didn’t look at a beautiful five-year-old child and proclaim her a disaster? He looked at his ‘gift’ from Simone. Then again…
‘Are you Annie?’ he asked.
‘Lord, love a duck, no.’
A back door slammed. ‘Millicent!’
‘That’ll be Annie, now.’
She came through the door that led from kitchen to the table area, a bucket in one hand, dressed casually in a white short-sleeved blouse and a wide pink cotton skirt, cinched tight at the waist with a white belt.
She was every bit as beautiful as he remembered, her hair, long and shiny, dancing in wild disarray around her face, her eyes the exact color of Copper Hot Springs, hidden up there above the ridge. She had a faint golden tan and her cheeks had a high, healthy color in them, glowing. She wore no lipstick, and yet her lips, wide and sensual, drew his eye. They were shining, as if she had just licked them.
He found himself scraping back his chair and standing.
‘Annie,’ he said softly.
She stared at him, and the color leached from her cheeks. In her eyes he could have sworn he saw fear.
The bucket dropped from her hands, and huckleberries went everywhere.
It was probably a good thing. If she hadn’t dropped the berries, what would have stopped him from crossing the space between them, putting his hands around her waist, lifting her in the air and swinging her around, the way he’d always done when he said hello to Annie?
Six years of pain should be enough to stop a man, he told himself, regarding her more warily. He didn’t like it that she still wielded some crazy power over him after all this time.
But she was different, after all. There was no warm welcome in her face, only a wariness that matched his own.
She was more womanly than she used to be, he noticed reluctantly. She used to remind him of a young filly—all energy and long legs. Now her figure had matured, fuller breasts and hips giving her that hourglass look. But his reaction to her was precisely the same—a knifesharp feeling of desire clutched at his stomach.
It shocked him.
All these years between them, as difficult and messy to navigate as the huckleberries scattered across the floor.
‘Daniel,’ she finally said, regaining her composure. He had been mistaken about the fear. It had just been surprise. ‘Are you just passing through?’
It was the second time this morning that assumption had been made. He could tell by Annie’s voice that she was hoping beyond hope that he was not staying here in Copper for more time than it would take for him to drink his cup of coffee and eat his huckleberry cake.
Why? What had he ever done to Annie? Except love her? And been scorned for his trouble, he remembered, with a sudden surge of an anger he had thought was long-ago dealt with.
‘I was left some property here,’ he offered coolly. ‘For some unknown reason the town wants to buy it from me.’
‘You own that old house on Elk Bugle Road?’ she asked with surprise.
‘It was my uncle’s.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
He had the feeling that, had she known, the town might not have made him an offer on his property. Why? And when had Annie started running the town?
‘The town wants to buy it because we’ve been fixing up an old house every year for a few years now. We sell raffle tickets on them. It’s been a good way to bring people back to Copper.’
It was a good idea. He might have appreciated it more if he hadn’t been so aware of the faint strain in her voice, as if she was striving to keep it businesslike and friendly at the same time.
He didn’t like it that Annie had to struggle to be friendly with him.
‘As we stated in the letter to your lawyer, we’ll offer you market value for it. Of course, market value in Copper isn’t much.’
All the way here he’d thought about selling that old place. He’d thought about what a relief it would be to break his last tie with Copper. His childhood home had burned down. Once his uncle’s place was gone there was nothing left to tie him to this place. Nothing.
So the next words out of his mouth completely astonished him. ‘I’ve decided not to sell.’
For some reason Annie’s startled intake of breath filled him with a grim satisfaction.
