Unnatural. Joey tested the word. “Being what you are,” she said at last, “is natural. Part of the pattern.”
His eyes brightened at her understanding. “We live within the pattern, as much as we can.” All at once the green-gold of his gaze darkened to dull verdigris. “It gets harder every year. When I was old enough to use the money my father had set aside for me, I bought up as much land as possible, as many acres as money could buy. To protect the wilderness, my people, and the true wolves who held this land before we did.”
Joey closed her eyes, too many thoughts and emotions crowding together behind them. There was silence for a long moment, and then Luke’s weight settled on the sofa beside her, and his arms drew her in. His presence and his warmth stilled her brain’s mad whirling, and she opened her eyes to the silver beam of the moon trailing a bright path from the near window, drawing them close in gossamer bonds of light.
The bond between them grew stronger as winter threw up almost impenetrable walls that locked the cabin in a world out of time, the snowbound woods became the bars of a sweet cage Joey had no desire to escape.
She heard the eerie whine of the winds lament at night when she lay beside Luke after their lovemaking, unafraid because it could not reach her, kept at bay by the sturdy cabin walls and the steady cadence of his heartbeat under her cheek. She thought at times she almost understood the gale’s language, it hovered just beyond her grasp, like the vague memories and faded images that haunted the edges of sleep. It was only when the wind cried and snow slapped against the windows, deep into the night, that she reached within herself to find the stillness and wonder why it seemed to hide uneasy secrets.
But the days always came too brightly to permit the presence of shadows.
There were still countless new things to be learned from Luke, and about him—and for him to learn of her. And there were surprises, the bathtub had been only the first of many gifts he brought her through the long season of cold.
The second surprise came at a time of the year that Joey had almost forgotten, so little had she noticed the passing of the days and nights. One morning she woke to the sharp, resiny scent of the forest, and when she got out of bed to trace it—and Luke—she found him flat on his back in a corner of the main room, muttering softly to himself as he worked at the base of a small and very fat fir.
“No peeking,” he commanded, spitting out needles. “Go back to bed and stay there until I come get you.”
The implication of the tree, and the overwhelming emotions it evoked, gave Joey little inclination to argue. She sat up in the bed and pulled the blankets up over her knees, listening to the tattoo of a hammer, Luke’s almost inaudible footfalls, and her own rapid heartbeat. She had nearly forgotten. There were teasing, haunting images again of Christmases long ago with her parents, trees that towered above her head, dazzling with light and promise. The past.
It was a blur, almost lost, almost without meaning. But the tree had shaken her unquestioning contentment, revealed things that had been hidden, and she felt her eyes filling in response to emotions that hung suspended within her, bereft of the anchor of concrete memory.
When Luke came for her, the tears were gone, and the images had faded again. She was left with little time to brood. He stood back to watch her as she took it in the chubby little tree hung with strings of berries and with his animals—dozens of them, small delicate wooden figurines strung over the branches—simple but profound beyond words. She flung herself at him so hard that they almost went down together amid the fallen needles, and it was some time before she had any desire to speak. She hadn’t meant to cry again, but the tears came back in spite of her sternest efforts. Luke held her tightly until the last of them had dried.