“But you’re not sorry,” she said.

“You know I’m not sorry. I’m grateful.”

“I think if I stayed a little longer…”

“What? You’d get through to me? Transform me into some other kind of guy? Pluck me out of my run-down cabin and make a civilized man out of me?”

She shook her head. “Nothing like that ever occurred to me. You’re more civilized than most of the men I know. But lately I’ve been thinking if I stayed longer you’d laugh more. You’d sing to people instead of just to wildlife. You’d probably ask that librarian out for drinks.”

“Yeah,” he laughed. “After I found a way to convince her I’m not an idiot savant.”

“If I came back here to see you, would you lock me out and make me sleep in my car?”

He laughed and shook his head. “No.” But he thought, she might come back once, maybe even twice. Then it would stop, because he and this place wouldn’t change much. And he didn’t deserve her; she should have so much more than some beat-up old marine with issues who’d stuck himself in the woods.

“Since you won’t come back with me, I’m staying till Christmas Eve. I won’t leave at the crack of dawn, but I’ll get home in time for dinner. It’s just a few hours away.”

“Erin isn’t going to like that,” he said. “She’s ready for you right now.”

“She’ll have to wait. I’m doing the best I can. I don’t want to leave you. Ever.”

Instead of talking about it anymore, he asked her, “Is it too soon to make love again?”

“No,” she said, smiling.

He pulled her against him. It was better this way, he thought, that he not add the words I love you to the mix. This was hard enough on her. Instead, he kissed her as well as he could, his hands running over her body in a way that promised more loving.

In the morning when she woke, he had gone. He left a note. “Sweetheart. Selling wood, plowing some roads. I won’t be too long. Ian.”

“Sweetheart,” she whispered to herself. She folded it in half and quarters and found a safe place in her wallet to preserve it. Forever.

Fourteen

I an unloaded his entire supply of firewood in short order and took delivery orders for three more half cords, which would take him another day to load, deliver and unload, giving people their cozy fires for Christmas. And his supply of cut and cure wood was running low, which was the plan. He’d cut and split and cured all spring, summer and fall and then, with luck, sell off his wood in a matter of weeks.

He was in Virgin River before noon. He parked by the bar, but he didn’t go in. Instead he walked up to that huge tree, taking a closer look at some of the unit badges. He looked around; he was alone. Then he pulled a few things out of his pocket. He’d fixed them up with short wires so they’d hook onto the branches. His unit badge—the same as Bobby’s. A Purple Heart and a Bronze Star—medals awarded for the highest bravery and valor. He fixed them onto the tree. It took him just a few moments.

“I’ll see those get back to you,” a voice said.

He whirled around and found himself facing Mel Sheridan. Her coat was pulled tight against the cold and occasional snow flurries, her hands plunged in her pockets. “I won’t be here at Christmas—we’re going to Jack’s family. But I can tell Paige—Preacher’s wife—to make sure when she rescues some of the badges that she holds on to your medals. It wouldn’t do to lose them. They’re important.”

“I’m not worried about what happens to them. I don’t have much use for them now.”

She laughed a little. “I’ve heard that before.”

“Oh?”

“My husband, for one. You guys, you’re peculiar in that way. You train to do the things that bring awards, then won’t display them. Jack—he was going to get rid of his until his father confiscated them to keep them safe. Jack said it wasn’t the medals, it was the men. So—if you can remember the men with the medals, good enough. I’ll see you get them back.”

“Thanks,” he said weakly. “I think they’re better off here.”

“For now,” Mel said. “I guess Marcie will have to head home, but in case you’re around Christmas Eve…”

“I heard,” he said. “A town thing. I don’t know…”

“Well, the town’s kind of easy—no RSVP required. If you get the itch.” She shrugged and smiled.

“That’s nice,” he said. “I have to go. There’s an old guy, neighbor of mine, who doesn’t have a plow…”

“Good of you to look out for him, Ian.”

“I don’t really, I just—”

He stopped abruptly at the sight of Jack, Preacher and Mike coming out of the bar in a big hurry, jacketed up, carrying rifles and duffel bags.

“Jack?” Mel asked.

He continued toward his extended cab truck. “Travis Goesel wandered off yesterday. Didn’t make it home. Family’s been looking all over their farm and grazing land.” He threw a duffel in his truck bed. “David’s with Brie.”

“Wandered off?” Mel asked. “Travis wandered off?”

“He was tracking a cat. Mountain lion killed his dog, so he grabbed his rifle and he went after it. Kid’s a good tracker and excellent shot. And too smart to be out all night in this snow.”

“Where’s the Goesel farm?” Ian asked before he could stop himself.

“You know the Pauper’s Pond area?”

“Sort of. The river that runs past my place feeds a couple creeks and a pond out there. I’m east of their property a few miles. That cat’s been around my place.”

“What makes you think it’s the same cat?” Jack asked.

“Aggressive one—he didn’t run off like they usually do.”

“That a fact? You must know that area. Any chance you could lend a hand?”

Ian wanted nothing so much as to get back to the girl. Especially if that cat was out there with blood lust.

“The kid’s sixteen,” Jack went on. “He’s big and strong. But I agree with his father—this isn’t good. I don’t know what’s worse, the mountain lion getting him or the cold.”

“Okay,” Ian said. “If the boy’s smart, he’s not walking uphill toward my place. I can start at the base of the mountain and work west. You can start in the west and work east. Will that help? A kid that age could walk miles.”

“His father, brothers and some neighbors are all over that farm—we can work the outside acreage.” Jack pulled his duffel out of the truck bed. “Preach and Mike can go together on the west side of Goesel’s farm, I’ll go with you on the east.”

“I don’t have hardly any heat in that truck,” Ian said.

“Yeah, but you got a plow. I love the plow. That could come in real handy. I’m gonna get one of those to mount on my truck. I have myself a long road into our new house.”

Ian looked at Mel. “I left Marcie early this morning when I went to deliver firewood. She won’t know why I’m not back. If she tried to get to town in that car of hers…”

“When David lies down for his nap, I’ll run out there and tell her what’s going on. Would that help?”

“Tell her she’s going to want to stay in. She doesn’t like that. She doesn’t like making do and not traveling to the outdoor facilities. You’d better tell her about that mountain lion, that he’s around and he’s not getting any more shy.”

“I’ll do that. You just be real careful out there. Jack!” she yelled. “You be careful!”

Jack grinned at Mel. “I’ll be back real soon, Melinda. Travis has presents under the tree—we have to get him home. You just keep that little bun in the oven warm. Come on, Buchanan. Let’s do it.”

The men left town in two trucks—Ian took Jack and Preacher took Mike. They headed out the same highway, and then at a fork that led to the farm, Mike and Preacher took their truck off to the left while Ian and Jack kept going past the farm. “How much land you have sitting under that cabin?” Jack asked Ian.

“Six hundred and sixty acres,” Ian said. Jack whistled. “It’s all mountain and trees in a restricted-logging area. So it’s a lot of nothing.”

“Nothing but quiet and pretty.”

“There’s a stream,” Ian said. “Good fishing. Good hunting. And I harvest the trees for firewood, a little here and there. I think the old man, Raleigh, homesteaded.”

“How’d you know him?” Jack asked.

Ian laughed. “I was wandering around the mountains, camping, hunting rabbit, on a fool’s mission, when winter hit the mountains real sudden. Raleigh was older than God already and couldn’t hardly chop his own wood, so he gave me a roof for some help on the land.”

“Good deal for you!”

“Yeah, the joke was on me. He got real sick and what he needed was a nurse in addition to everything else.”

Jack grinned at him. “You must’ a stuck it out if you’re in the cabin.”

Ian shrugged. “I never saw that coming—he wrote some kind of will that old Doc had to witness. If he hadn’t done that, I might’ve figured out what to do with myself by now.”

“Nothing wrong with having more than one choice, man. We should probably park along the road up here pretty soon and go back on foot.”

“There’s a road that’ll take us almost straight back around the hill another couple of miles—it’ll get us farther in there. Tell me about this boy? Why would he do this?”

Jack turned and looked at him. “Ever have a dog?”

“Yeah,” Ian said. “Velvet—a black Lab.” Velvet had been his best friend when he was a kid. The old girl made it till she was fourteen, till her back was so slumped and her hips so painful, it hurt him to look at her. But he couldn’t let go; seemed like he had a long history of that. He was seventeen to her fourteen when he heard his father’s early morning curse while he was getting ready for school and he knew—Velvet had had an accident in the night. She was tired and weary; she couldn’t always remember to do the right thing. “That dog has to be put down,” Ian heard his father say.

Afraid he might come home from school one day to find her gone, he cut school and went alone to the vet and held her while she drifted off, painless. He couldn’t stand the thought she might go alone; he wouldn’t put it past his father to take her, drop her off, leave her to die by herself. God, her face was more peaceful and rested in death than it had been for the last year of her life. Seeing that, it should have made him feel glad for her, relieved—she wasn’t going to last much longer anyway.

He couldn’t let Velvet go alone. He had needed the time to say goodbye, and he didn’t want to come home and find her gone. He needed to be with her—like Marcie had needed to be with Bobby. He swallowed hard.

But his memory drifted back to Velvet, remembering the whole loss, how it tore him up. He’d gone off to private places where he could cry like a girl, unable to let his parents or friends see he had that amount of emotion.

“That mountain lion’s been bothering their property—stalking,” Jack said. “The dogs have been running it off, keeping it away from the goats and hens.”

“How old was the kid’s dog?” Ian asked.

“I don’t know, exactly. Six or eight—a border collie, a herder named Whip. They had a half-dozen farm dogs, mostly herders, outdoor animals, but Travis raised that one himself. He picked her out of a litter and for a while she was a 4-H project. Goesel said he couldn’t keep the damn dog out of the kid’s bed. You know farmers and their dogs—they don’t get overly sentimental as a rule. I don’t know how the cat managed to get to the dog—they usually aren’t looking for that kind of a fight.”