Rogue's Revenge - By Gail MacMillan Page 0,7

Breckenridge flashed across her mind. Damn. She flicked it away like an unacceptable TV channel. Fixing her gaze on the road ahead, she remained silent.

A half hour later when they turned into the lane that led to the Lodge, a gasp escaped her lips. Although it had been years since Allison had visited her grandfather’s wilderness retreat, the joy and sense of expectation she’d always experienced on returning resurfaced in a flash.

Over two miles long, the private road was a tunnel hewn out of the branches of an ancient forest of birch, pine, spruce, cedar, and maple. Jack Adams had believed in destroying as little of the natural environment as possible. When he’d established the Lodge, over forty years earlier, he’d uprooted as few trees as possible in making a road to the river. The rest he’d left to grow into a living canopy.

In the mist, diamond-like droplets decorated the needles and awakening leaves that formed this living tunnel. Every tree and shrub glistened in soft green expectation of a new beginning. The air held the fresh rain scent only a place far from pollution can offer.

It’s like entering an enchanted forest. I remember thinking you could find every living shade of green here.

When a doe and her spotted fawn appeared in front of them, their beauty made her breath catch in her throat. The doe’s alert body was a reddish amber, she and her spotted, wide-eyed baby the epitome of pristine innocence.

Heath eased to a stop and turned off the motor.

“They’re gorgeous!” Allison breathed.

“Just a bit of what your grandfather was trying to protect.”

She glanced over at him and saw the taut planes of his face relax and soften as he leaned forward to watch the pair, his arms crossed on top of the steering wheel.

“I read a book entitled Green Mansions when I was a child,” she breathed. “Although it was set in Venezuela, it told the story of an unspoiled wilderness a lot like this.”

“And of a wild bird girl named Rima, who lived there in harmony with nature.”

“You’ve read it?” Her eyes widened.

“I’m not illiterate.” He leaned back in the seat to turn the key in the ignition, the hardness returning to his face.

The doe and her fawn, startled by the sound, snapped alert and bounded into the greenery.

“I never said—” she tried to protest, but he cut her short as he shifted into drive.

“Look, I’m not any happier about this arrangement than you are.” He pressed the accelerator hard and swung the Jeep around a mud-slick curve with a ferocity that made Allison clutch her seat. “Once the will is read, I will gladly see you onto the next flight to Toronto. But for now, let’s declare a truce. I don’t have the time or energy to keep sparring with you.” He slowed the Jeep and shot her a sideways glance, one eyebrow raised.

He was right. Keeping up a verbal battle neither of them appeared destined to win was pointless. Allison eased her fingernails out of the cracked upholstery, met his look, and nodded. “Truce.”

When the Jeep jolted into the Lodge grounds, her breath caught in her throat. Again, she’d forgotten how wonderful it was.

Surrounded by manicured lawns luminously green in the fog, the rambling single-story log structure with its full-length front veranda faced the North Passage River. Behind it were two other log structures—the caretaker’s small cottage, where she suspected Heath now lived, and a large barnlike building that served as a storage shed and housed the generator that provided power for the Lodge.

The estate’s only other structure, the boathouse where her grandfather had died, was farther down river, hidden in the trees. The remembrance of the place sent a shiver coursing up her spine. Get over it. Just get over it. To quell her memories, she returned her attention to the Lodge.

A wide fieldstone chimney rose from the ground to beyond the peak of the roof on the end facing the driveway. A wave of nostalgia engulfed her. The last night she’d spent with her grandfather in the Lodge had been before a blazing fire on the hearth that chimney vented. They had listened to rain bucketing down on the roof, and he’d told her stories about the birds and plants and animals that were at home in his bit of wilderness. He’d explained he named the area the Chance because it offered people a chance to enjoy all that was good and beautiful in the wilderness, and, as her mother had said,