Born in a Small Town Read online

  Melanie had never attended an Elk Springs High School football game before, but the draw of seeing Tiffany in action, as well as the debut of the mascot, had been irresistible. When she had mentioned to Kevin that she and Angie were going, he’d promptly said, “Do you want company? Did I tell you I was the quarterback in high school?”

  Angie, predictably, was bored and cold. She was far more interested in the antics of the cheerleaders than the action on the field, which she didn’t understand. “How come he threw the ball away?” she would ask. “Why does the other team have it now? Why doesn’t he get up and keep running?”

  Kevin tried to explain, but Angie didn’t really want to know what a “down” was. She wanted the game to be over so they could go for pizza, which Kevin had promised.

  Medford made the mistake of trying to move the ball on the ground. Fourth down, three yards to go. The crowd stayed breathlessly on their feet, Melanie and Kevin among them. Linemen smashed into each other; bodies piled up. The ball came squirting out and, with a bellow, a stocky Elk Springs linebacker threw himself on it. The game was over.

  Joining the mob filing out of the stadium, Melanie had to stop half a dozen times to talk to people she knew. It gave her great satisfaction every time someone called out her name. She loved that this was the kind of small town where she met friends, acquaintances and customers everywhere she went. Who would want to live constantly among strangers when you could have this sense of community?

  Of course, she had to introduce Kevin over and over. He was relaxed and friendly, seeming not to mind the curiosity in people’s eyes. As they crossed the parking lot, however, and Angie ran ahead to his four-by-four, he murmured, “Don’t you date?”

  “Not often,” Melanie admitted. “Why?”

  “I haven’t been sized up that way since the first time I asked a girl to go steady. And that was in fifth grade.”

  “Nosiness is a human condition.”

  Being able to introduce him had added a delightful fillip to the evening, she had to admit, if only to herself. She could hardly believe she’d been so lucky as to have Kevin interested in her. Of course, she’d dreamed she might meet the right man and remarry someday. But Elk Springs wasn’t loaded with possibilities. Then he’d appeared that day at the park, a newcomer in town. If they fell in love—Melanie didn’t want to admit that she might already be halfway there—if they got so far, he would surely be willing to stay in Elk Springs. Why not? His brother was here, he seemed to be enjoying teaching at the community college, and as he’d said himself, central Oregon was perfect for a lover of the outdoors.

  Some mornings Melanie had to pinch herself to make sure her happiness was real. This was their fifth date. Better yet, he was willing to do real things. For example, he’d not only attended Angie’s soccer game, he’d volunteered to be the assistant coach for the rest of the year.

  “I’m free afternoons,” he’d said that day when the coach asked for volunteers. “Sure, I’ve played the game.” Deftly stealing the ball from one of the girls, he’d started bumping it on his knee.

  “Will you show us how to do that?” Angie had piped up.

  Angie, predictably, thought the sun rose and set with Kevin. That part worried Melanie a little. She had only dated him five times. What if they didn’t fall in love? Was Angie counting too much on Kevin always being around?

  At the pizza parlor—more generic than Mario’s, and also more to the taste of eight-year-old girls—most of the diners had been at the football game. The mood was jovial, the noise level high.

  They grabbed a booth some teenagers had just left. Angie found friends and begged a pile of quarters off Kevin and her mom, after which she disappeared into the video-game room.

  “You shouldn’t have given her so many,” Melanie said. “She won’t give up next time she wants something from you.”

  “But I remember how frustrating it was when your parents only doled out two quarters. They were gone in about thirty seconds, and then all you could do was stand around and watch other kids play.”

  “Sometimes parents have to say no.”

  “Sure they do.” He watched her with a small frown on his face, as if he sensed she was worried about more than the indulgence of a little money.

  “But was this one of them?”

  “No,” she conceded. “I suppose not.”

  His big hand gripped hers with the strength she loved. “She’s a great kid. I like her.”

  But she loves you, Melanie thought. She couldn’t say that, either. Wasn’t even sure she wanted to. What was wrong with her? Ten minutes ago she’d been incredibly, idiotically happy. Now she was brooding about the future.

  For once, why couldn’t she just enjoy herself? Fall in love. Get her heart broken. It happened. She and Angie would survive. She’d be crazy not to take the risk. Especially considering how perfect Kevin was for her.

  “I know you do,” she said, giving his hand a squeeze. “She thinks you’re great, too.”

  “You want to go hiking this weekend?” He grinned. “You know all the best places to go, right?”

  Melanie immediately thought of a lake she’d always loved, nestled on the flanks of Juanita Butte. Five miles in, the walk was too long for Angie, so Melanie hadn’t been in a long time. But maybe Angie could spend the day with a friend.

  And maybe, just maybe, this late in the season the trail and the shores of the pristine mountain lake would be nearly deserted. She and Kevin could be truly alone.

  Not that alone! she chided herself instantly.

  Of course, he saw her blush, she knew he did, but she only said briskly, “Deal.”

  His grin was positively wicked. “Alone at last,” he murmured, and she blushed again.

  He’d definitely read her mind.

  “SO…LET’S TALK about logging. How do we balance the need for lumber and jobs with our responsibility for protecting the environment? Should the national forests be logged? Or is the Forest Service doing nothing but selling out the public interest? What about these timber trades? Let’s talk.”

  Kevin leaned comfortably against the windowsill in his classroom. Twenty-five students in this forestry class. Five or six would be truly vocal, another few might chime in with a remark or two. The others he’d have to poke and prod.

  Which he was discovering he was pretty good at. Sometimes he could even fire them up enough to fuel a good argument. They’d been studying logging practices, the new federal formulas for how much timber could be taken, the dismal financial picture for mills and logging communities. Now he wanted to know what they thought, where their convictions lay.

  Tim Naber, who always had something to say, leaned forward in his chair. The kind with a small attached writing surface, it looked too small for his large frame. “The Forest Service panders to loggers. Their first obligation should be to save the public lands for future generations. Hell—I mean, heck—they’re selling timber for practically nothing, anyway! They should at least be getting a fair price. No landowner would sell trees for what our government takes.”

  “You’re right.” Kevin spread his hands and looked around. “What do the rest of you think?”

  “We’re a government by the people for the people.” The kid who spoke up was one who rarely participated. Now his cheeks were flushed with anger. “We restrict logging too severely and we’re hurting people. Whole communities are living on welfare. Are owls more important?”

  “Yeah,” another kid agreed. “And if we sell the timber for as much as private landowners, more loggers will go out of business, and lumber will get so expensive people won’t be able to afford to build houses. Like, is that what we want?”

  The discussion—okay, argument—ranged freely after that, with Kevin occasionally refereeing. By the time he had to say, “Okay, let’s stop here,” he was pleased both with the fiery exchanges and the informed level of the entire discussion.

  He’d made the decision from the beginning to encourage not only
dispassionate analysis but also moral involvement in decision-making. Management of forests was no longer by the numbers. The issues were complex, and what was right or wrong was far from clear. He was getting these kids to think—and to see one another’s viewpoints.

  Teaching was proving more satisfying than he’d expected. Lying in that hospital bed after getting shot at Mount Rainier National Park, Kevin had known it was time for a change. But in truth, he’d grabbed this opportunity more to give himself a chance to reflect than to become a career college professor. Being shut in a classroom day in and day out—the idea had been anathema to him once upon a time.

  He didn’t have to decide yet what to do with the rest of his life—it was only October, he was committed to the college through May—but he was starting to think there were worse ways to make a living.

  Whether or not he wanted to do it in Elk Springs…hell, he didn’t know. He didn’t even know if there was a permanent job here for him.

  What he did know was that he should have told Melanie Parker some of this. He hadn’t said, “My teaching position is temporary.” He hadn’t admitted that he felt like an eighteen-year-old kid again, on the brink of a world full of possibilities but unsure which one to grab. No, not again—when he was eighteen, he’d known what he wanted to do with his life. He’d still be doing the same thing if he could have held on to the ideal: protecting the wilderness he loved, teaching others to do the same. But his disillusionment and frustration had been growing for years, coming to a head the day he’d ordered some drunken idiots to pack up the party they’d been holding in a fragile meadow, only to have one of them pull out a gun and shoot him.

  He could still remember vividly the moment he fell, face smacking into a patch of late snow, the scent of rich earth and avalanche lilies in his nostrils. He’d heard the ensuing excited discussion, the thud of feet as they fled. He’d be dead if a mountain guide hadn’t heard the gunshot and come to investigate.

  Kevin didn’t want to be cop. He didn’t want to share his wilderness with drunks or with lazy folks who didn’t bother to get out of their RVs or even with nice families who came to see nature’s wonders but didn’t respect them.

  It was time to get into another line of business.

  Okay, fine. But he should have admitted to some of his uncertainty about the future to Melanie. He’d been kissing her, when they had the chance, like a man who meant it. Not like one who was going to walk away as soon as he figured out his route.

  She was adding to his confusion, because he was starting to think he didn’t want to leave her behind. He was making himself go slowly, be sure. It would be easy to get caught up in this new life, think he was ready to make it permanent and then wake up one morning and realize a small town and a wedding ring and a stepdaughter were hemming him in unbearably.

  But dammit, he liked the kid, and he liked her mother even more. Melanie insisted she wasn’t ever leaving Elk Springs, but then, she’d been speaking as a single mother, not as a wife.

  Whoa! he thought, locking the classroom door behind him. Let’s not get hasty here. Wife—that was a strong word.

  Too strong.

  But he did enjoy thinking about her: the tiny dimple beside her mouth, her low throaty chuckle, the tenderness in her eyes when she talked about her daughter. His body tightened when he just pictured her leggy walk, the swing of hips, the graceful line of her neck and the heavy silk of that hair. He wanted her fiercely, and would have had her by now if she’d been anything but what she was: a woman who was made for marriage and motherhood, not hot sex that was…well, not meaningless—he hoped he’d never had such a thing—but not a symbol of commitment, either.

  Walking across the campus to his office, appreciating the bright fallen leaves and the crisp autumn air, he figured life was good. Unsettled, maybe, but how many men his age could see so many possibilities waiting to be grabbed?

  Maybe the experience was wasted on teenagers.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “YOU’RE BEAUTIFUL,” Kevin said, staring.

  Pleasure spread in a warm tide all the way to Melanie’s fingers and toes as he looked his fill. It was only the dress, she tried to tell herself. But the glow in his eyes made her suspect he was imagining her with the dress off, not admiring the heavy folds of velvet or the fit of the stiff bodice.

  Well, maybe the fit of the bodice.

  More warmth eddied. She couldn’t blame the long-sleeved gown for making her feel overheated.

  “Thank you, kind sir.” Melanie dipped in a curtsy. “You make a handsome pirate.”

  He did look rather dashing in snug black pants and knee-high boots, a red scarf knotted on his head and a white shirt open at the throat with billowing sleeves cuffed at the wrist. He had refused the ubiquitous black eye patch.

  “I want to be able to see you,” he’d said simply.

  Someone had wanted to rent the green velvet Elizabethan gown. The someone was a good customer, a doctor’s wife whose daughter had just announced her engagement. Melanie should have been trying to please her.

  But she’d heard herself saying, “I’m sorry, I’m afraid that one…” Is already reserved, she’d been about to say, but what if the doctor’s wife appeared at the same Halloween party Kevin was taking Melanie to? She’d swallowed and admitted, “I’m holding on to that dress for myself. The man I’m dating especially admired it.” She waited for annoyance to spread across Linda Colvin’s face.

  Instead, her client had smiled with delight. “Really? You’re dating? It must be serious.” She’d moved a heap of garments from a chair and plopped down. “Tell all.”

  Melanie wasn’t about to tell all to anyone, but she did admit that she was dating Scott McNeil’s brother.

  Tonight she hadn’t invited Kevin over until after she’d accompanied Angie and three friends trick-or-treating in their neighborhood. That was another thing Melanie liked about Elk Springs—the fact that children could still safely accept candy from people they didn’t know. It just seemed as if nobody in town was really a stranger. She could stop a woman on the street and in the course of chatting discover that she had a child in Angie’s class at school or had been a bridesmaid in a wedding for which Melanie had made the gowns. Melanie knew at least by reputation many of the neighbors, even if she hadn’t personally met them. At the wonderful Queen Anne house two blocks down, for example, lived Jack Murray, the county sheriff, who had recently married a woman who also hired Tiffany Schaefer to baby-sit. Circles of overlapping acquaintances—the very thing that made Elk Springs home.

  “I’ve never met your brother,” she said on the way out to the car.

  “Scott is a good guy.” Kevin opened the car door for her and bowed gallantly. “His wife is a cop. Did I say that? Half the people who’ll be here tonight are probably cops, too.”

  Melanie adjusted her skirts and latched her seat belt, thinking what an anachronism she was, a sixteenth-century woman in a twenty-first-century vehicle.

  When the costumed Kevin had joined her, somehow also looking appropriate behind the wheel of the manly vehicle, she asked, “What do a bunch of police officers talk about when they get together socially?”

  “Nervous?”

  “Maybe a little,” she admitted.

  “Don’t be. They get grisly once in a while, but half the time you find the women talking recipes and children and the men sports or politics. Scott’s adopted daughter must be close to Angie’s age, plus, he has a toddler.”

  The driveway leading to Scott McNeil’s modern cedar-sided home up the mountain highway was lined with paper lanterns in ghostly white with bats flitting as the candles flickered. A dozen or more jack-o’-lanterns crowded the front steps, and eerie music spilled out.

  Melanie found her worries about fitting in squelched immediately. Scott looked enough like Kevin to be his twin; both men were broad-shouldered, athletic, tanned and auburn-haired. They slapped each other on the back in the affectionate way of men, and Kevin introduced Melani
e to Scott’s wife, Meg, and her sisters, Abby and Renee. All three were blond, elegant, attractive women with ready smiles and vintage gowns. Abby was a flapper, Renee a Gibson girl and Meg a Second World War woman of means.

  “Ooh!” Abby exclaimed when she set eyes on Melanie. “I thought I looked good until I saw you. Wow. What a dress.”

  “Thank you.” Melanie explained what she did for a living and discovered—of course—that the three sisters had heard of her. Renee, in fact, was good friends with Linda Colvin, the doctor’s wife.

  “We went to high school together, believe it or not,” she said. “In fact, Linda’s here somewhere…” She glanced over her shoulder toward the living room.

  Melanie gave silent thanks that she hadn’t lied about why she couldn’t rent the Elizabethan gown. Honesty was indeed the best policy, she thought.

  Further conversation revealed that Meg and Scott’s adopted daughter, Emily, was in Angie’s class. After that, conversation was a breeze.

  In fact, Melanie ended up having a wonderful time. She liked everyone she met. The finger food was divine, the dancing, which spilled out onto a huge back deck, despite the chilly night, was fun, and Kevin was flatteringly attentive. It was with regret that Melanie realized the party was breaking up.

  She’d been listening to Kevin tell stories about his days in the Park Service: about smoke-jumping, dangerous mountain rescues and nights spent tucked on precipitous ledges. All were entertaining, some funny, some suspenseful.

  At the last minute one of the men who’d been listening said something that bothered Melanie enough she knew she’d have to think about it later.

  “Don’t tell me you’re going to be happy shut in a classroom nine months of the year!” he said, shaking his head. “Sounds like the life.”

  Kevin laughed and demurred, but with some anxiety Melanie studied his face and would have sworn she saw regret there.

  Surely only a reminiscent kind, she told herself quickly, a momentary sadness for times gone by. He wouldn’t have quit his job as a park ranger and moved to Elk Springs if he wasn’t ready to settle down. Would he?