She was past caring what Brock liked. That was new. She hadn’t known that before.
“I’ll be busy all day,” he said without looking up from his Blackberry phone.
“No problem,” she said. “I’ll be gone.”
He glanced at her. Just long enough to see what she was wearing. “You’re not skiing?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I want to go driving.”
This unusual stroke of independence made him actually look at her this time. He narrowed his eyes as if this was the most irritating thing she could possibly have said to him.
“I should’ve had enough sense not to bring you to a resort with no town,” he said in the tone he liked to use with her. The tone that implied You idiot child. “Gotta be spending my money or you don’t know what to do with yourself.”
She ignored that and walked past him to find her parka and bag.
“Hold on ‘til I talk to a couple of people and then I’ll call Jim to fly you down to Jackson Hole. You can shop all day.”
“Jackson is the town,” she said. “Jackson Hole is the valley.”
She slid her arms into the sleeves of the parka.
He actually dropped the phone and stood up.
“What th’ hell is the matter with you? You can’t go running around by yourself in a place you’ve never been. That’s some wild country out there. This is insane. This isn’t like you, Clea.”
It sure as hell isn’t. But maybe I’m changing.
She didn’t have the guts to go quite as far as to say that out loud, but she’d already gotten his attention. He was staring, no, glaring, at her. All she wanted was to be away from him.
“I don’t have time for this,” he snapped. “Have you lost your mind?”
She’d love to blurt out the truth of her feelings right then but even as she thought about it she knew she didn’t have the nerve. He would go ballistic.
And actually, until she had a chance to think, she didn’t know exactly what she did feel or want. So as usual, she took the easy way.
“Look,” she lied, “I saw an ad. I just want to go look at a horse.” Brock relaxed. This was something familiar. This was something he could control.
“Well, why didn’t you say so? When have I ever denied you a horse?” He sat down and began dialing the phone again. “Just remember not to use your whole fifteen K for the down payment or the rest of your nags won’t eat. I’m not putting another red cent in that account until next month.”
Halfway to the elevator, she knew she couldn’t—wouldn’t—tell lies forever to preserve the accustomed parameters of their so-called marriage. It was a bargained deal that she’d let her daddy make for her.
She’d thought she loved Brock, though. Or maybe she’d just told herself that because she wanted to please Daddy.
She was nothing but Brock’s arm ornament and his ticket into some social circles, plus his business alliances with her father. He disdained her really or he wouldn’t use that tone with her.
And why shouldn’t he? She kept her mouth shut and did as she was told and in return he bought her anything she wanted and gave her plenty of money to support her horse habit. To him, she was only as good as her manicure.
Only as good as her last social performance. Like a rodeo cowboy who was only as good as his last ride.
Clea was barely out of sight of the resort when she began to really see. The mountains and the sky, cobalt and white meeting in sharp, clean edges. Gray gravel coming through the dirty scraped snow in front of the car. One tan deer bounding across the road into green trees that were as deep as a vertical dream. Yellow sun so bright it made her smile.
This world so huge and wild it filled her heart.
She smiled to herself. Right now, that day with Brock seemed a hundred years ago. Now here she was in Montana again and she was in the middle of the end. It wouldn’t be the end of the end with Brock until somehow he accepted the fact that Ariel belonged to her. Rightfully. Morally.
But when had Brock ever cared about right and wrong?
She took a deep breath and pushed the past and future from her mind. She let the land and the sky take her again. Then she realized she was getting close to her destination. She should begin to look for the sign where she would turn in on her road. There was one, wasn’t there? According to the realtor, there was.
Holding the wheel with one hand, she fished deep into her new chocolate-brown Gucci bag to find the map the man had faxed to her, then slowed while she looked at it. Yes. The sign would be on her right and it read Firecreek Mountain Road.
After two nights, each with no more than four or five hours of nervous dozing in the living quarters of the trailer—which she could never have done without the alarm system and the gun she’d bought when she took the course in home protec-tion—she’d gone right on through exhaustion and come out the other side. A sharp edge of excitement—and quite a bit of fear also, to be totally honest—had wound her up tight.
This was her new world, the one where she would become another person. She could only pray she was strong enough to do that.
These snow-topped mountains, this endless sky, that narrow road that wound up and up, following Fire Creek to its source, as the man had described it, they all were hers now. And she’d be theirs. She’d belong to them and to the log cabin and barn he’d told her were at the top of the first high ridge.
She would not belong to any people.
She drove more and more slowly, looking for the sign, determined not to miss it because if she passed it she’d be forced to find a good place to turn the trailer around. Just the thought of having to drive even one unnecessary mile was more than she could bear. Ariel needed to get out of the trailer. She’d been exercised at both nights’ roadside rest stops, but that wasn’t nearly enough.
A bed would be wonderful, but later. Right now, a shower and something homemade to eat, even if it was only a scrambled egg and toast.
If the realtor had brought in the food and supplies that she’d ordered.
Come to think of it, she hadn’t even checked on the cost for that service. She shouldn’t have asked for it at all. If she wanted to live for at least a year on the money she had, she had to learn to think differently. From now on she had to do everything for herself, including clean her own house. She had to make every penny count.
And every brain cell. Brock would be beside himself by now and he’d be looking for her. That was a given. She’d slept in the trailer to keep from leaving a trail at horse hotels or horse people’s places, so she had to make that sacrifice count, too. She’d ordered a new cell phone no one knew about. She’d brought hair dye—Sassy Black—to cover Ari’s white markings. Perhaps she should use it before anybody here saw the mare.
There it was. The sign, Firecreek Mountain Road.
And another one, fancier, that read, Wild Horses.
Right. The realtor was all excited about the wild horse sanctuary. He said that sometimes tourists could see bands of them and sometimes they couldn’t, but they could always buy T-shirts and mugs and photographs with photos of wild horses on them and spend the night at the local motels and eat at the cafés in the little town of Pine Lodge.
She only hoped she could get close enough to shoot