LITMIR.BIZ

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      Ryan and she had had this discussion before. ‘And lots of them wouldn’t hire you then; you know that as well as I do, Jenny. I keeps my mouth shut, they get the best guide this side of Gander airport—and we’re all happy.’

      Jenessa rolled her eyes. ‘You’re the best guide this side of anywhere—maybe you should go to the airport to meet the forceful Mr Marston.’

      ‘I taught you everythin’ I know and I’m too old to go crashin’ around in the woods.’ He leered at her. ‘More interestin’ things to do round home.’

      Not all his interests lay in the areas of folk art and home improvements. Another of them was the widowed Mrs McCarthy, whose lemon meringue pie could have graced any restaurant in Toronto. ‘How’s Grace?’ Jenessa said on cue.

      ‘She’s fine,’ he answered airily. ‘Want some more tea?’

      Ryan’s tea, taken in any quantity, would corrode a moose hide. ‘I’m going to clean up,’ Jenessa said. ‘Any messages for me?’

      ‘Ruth called. She wants you to go over and see the baby after supper. It’s got a tooth, she said. Can’t see what’s so special about that; we all got teeth.’

      ‘It’s their first baby, Ryan; of course they think he’s special.’

      ‘Not so special I see you makin’ any moves to get one.’

      Surprised, Jenessa stopped midway across the kitchen. ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘You’re pushin’ twenty-six and I don’t see no signs of you gettin’ yourself hitched.’

      She felt a pang of mingled hurt and dismay. ‘Don’t you want me living here any more, Ryan?’ Her eyes widened. ‘Are you and Grace planning to get married?’

      ‘Course not! She’d have me paintin’ the balcony and mowin’ the grass; she likes things all shipshape, does Grace. And I’m not about to change my ways.’ His brow wrinkled in one of the formidable frowns that signified deep thought. ‘In the last five years you’ve met more men than a stag has cows. So how come you haven’t married any of ’em?’

      She said flippantly, ‘None of them asked me.’

      ‘You don’t even date ’em!’

      ‘They’re my clients, Ryan; there’s such a thing as professional ethics.’

      Ryan’s opinion of professional ethics was both brief and perilously close to obscene. Jenessa added suspiciously, ‘Are you sure you don’t want Grace to move in here?’

      He opened the oven door. ‘As sure as I am that if you don’t hustle my roast’ll be ruined.’

      Jenessa left the room, trailing upstairs to her bedroom, whose balcony overlooked a clump of wind-scoured spruce trees. Ryan had never before implied that he even noticed her single state, let alone that he thought she should end it. Maybe—she blinked at herself in the mirror—he wanted to dandle her own baby on his lap. It was the nearest he would get to being a grandfather, after all.

      Ryan? Interested in babies? She had to be joking.

      Oddly unsettled, she gathered up some clean clothes and headed for the shower. But three hours later, when she was sitting in Ruth and Stevie’s kitchen with baby Stephen regarding her unwinkingly from solemn, navy blue eyes, Ryan’s remark was still on her mind.

      ‘You look very thoughtful,’ Ruth commented.

      Ruth’s husband Stevie was a wilderness guide, like Jenessa, and Jenessa had met Ruth through him. The two women had liked each other right away, and if Jenessa had a confidante it was the tall, black-haired Ruth, whose practicality was leavened with a lively dash of romanticism. Jenessa tickled Stephen under the chin, trying to get him to reveal the new tooth, and blurted, ‘Ryan thinks it’s time I got married and had a baby myself.’

      ‘That’s natural enough, I suppose. You are nearly twenty-six.’

      ‘I’m not in my coffin yet,’ Jenessa retorted. ‘Anyway, I’m not like you. I really have no desire to get married—I never have had.’

      ‘You spent a week with Luis, Sanchos and Miguel and didn’t even fantasize about weddings?’ Ruth had invited the three Spanish fishermen to a lobster boil in her backyard, including Jenessa in the invitation as a matter of course. Now as she folded a towel with a decisive snap she went on, ‘They were awfully sweet, Jenessa, you’ve got to admit that.’

      ‘I liked them. But I didn’t want to marry them.’ Jenessa managed a smile. ‘Individually or collectively.’

      ‘You didn’t lust after them—any of them—even the tiniest bit?’

      Jenessa shook her head. ‘Nope.’

      ‘You could be so pretty if you just paid a bit of attention to yourself,’ Ruth mourned.

      ‘When you’re guiding a fisherman through a bog, mascara isn’t a top priority.’

      ‘You’re not in a bog now,’ Ruth snorted, giving Jenessa’s jeans and T-shirt a disparaging look. ‘Your clothes are clean, I’ll give you that. But they’re not what you’d call sexy. And I’d be willing to bet you cut your hair yourself last time.’

      ‘With my Swiss army knife,’ Jenessa admitted. ‘I have another client flying in tomorrow, so I won’t have time to get it cut before then, either. Anyway, Ruth, when you’re stuck in a lodge miles from anywhere with a bunch of men, which I am a fair bit of the time, it doesn’t seem appropriate or sensible to go around flaunting your sexuality. A sure way to get in trouble, thank you very much.’

      ‘I don’t think you know how to flaunt your sexuality,’ Ruth replied vigorously. ‘I just wish you’d go to St John’s one of these days and spend the day in a beauty salon. You wouldn’t even have to go to St John’s—Marylou, next door, has just come back from a seminar there, so she knows how to do all kinds of neat new haircuts. Your hair is such a gorgeous colour ... you know that cherrywood paddle of yours, how it shines when the sun hits it? That’s what your hair’s like—and you’re the only person I know with green eyes.’ Ruth paused, her head to one side. ‘Maybe you just haven’t met the right man.’

      Jenessa didn’t think it was that simple. Touched by Ruth’s description, she said hesitantly, ‘I know I don’t fit ... I never have, really. All those women’s magazines with their advice on make-up and lovers and clothes—I can’t relate to them at all. If you want the truth, they scare me to death. I suppose it’s got something to do with never knowing my mother and growing up with my dad at Spruce Pond—no other women there. No other people, come to that.’

      ‘I’m not meaning to be critical,’ Ruth said hastily. ‘I like you just as you are.’

      ‘That’s good,’ Jenessa said with an impish grin. ‘Because I’m likely to stay this way. I’m not at all unhappy as I am, Ruth. I don’t know how to flirt, that’s true, and I’m not out plaguing some man to marry me—but I really like my life the way it is. I love my job... how could I ever give that up? Marriage and babies kind of crimp your style.’

      ‘They’re worth it,’ Ruth said placidly. ‘Stephen, my duckie, smile at Jenessa.’

      Stephen gave a huge yawn, exposing one tiny pearlwhite tooth, and let his head plop against Jenessa’s shirt. She held him close, liking his baby-powder smell and his warm weight, yet knowing that in a few minutes she could hand him back to his mother without the slightest twinge of regret. She didn’t have any impulsion to have a baby of her own. Or to attract the man whom one required in order to produce the baby. But it was one thing to acknowledge to herself that she didn’t fit the normal societal expectations of what a woman should be like, and quite another to have both Ryan and Ruth, in one day, suggesting that she should change her ways.

      She was fine as she was. Besides, the man wasn’t born for whom she would give up her job.

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