Untouched. Sandra FieldЧитать онлайн книгу.

      CHAPTER ONE

      JENESSA REED swung her four-wheel-drive Toyota into Ryan’s driveway and turned off the ignition. What she needed was a hot shower, a home-cooked meal and ten hours of sleep. In that order. Picking up her haversack from the passenger seat, she climbed out of the van and for a moment surveyed Ryan’s house with rueful affection.

      The architecture, she had long ago decided, could only be labelled Newfoundland Eccentric. The core of the house was square, two-storey and altogether unremarkable, but over the years Ryan had added two porches, a sunroom, a root cellar, a studio where he did folk art that sold like hotcakes to the tourists, and a couple of balconies from which to survey a view that was far from inspiring. Some of these additions had been painted, some not. Two were askew. The overall effect expressed perfectly Ryan’s innate exuberance and his total lack of interest in what his neighbours might think.

      ‘I’m home,’ Jenessa called, heading for the back porch.

      The door opened. ‘About time,’ Ryan grumbled, taking her haversack and urging her indoors. ‘And me with a new job all lined up for you.’

      ‘Oh, no,’ Jenessa groaned, ‘I’ve got to recover from the last one first.’

      He poured two mugs of ink-black tea from the pot that sat all day long on the stove and said unsympathetically, ‘A wild-goose chase makes more sense than tryin’ to sight whales in late August.’

      She had been guiding a small group of German tourists, who under her tutelage had bagged their limit of Atlantic salmon and had then requested to be shown whales. ‘I drove the entire length of the northern peninsula, just about froze to death out on the ocean and was seasick twice.’ Jenessa grinned. ‘But we saw fin whales, humpbacks and porpoises—so my clients were happy.’

      ‘Hope they tipped good.’

      ‘Enough so I don’t need another job right away.’

      ‘You’re to meet some guy by the name of Finn Marston tomorrow night on the late flight. Said he’d explain what he wanted when he got here.’

      ‘How long does he want me for?’ she said in a resigned voice.

      ‘Didn’t say. Forceful kind of guy—didn’t give me much chance to get a word in edgeways. Plus it was a lousy connection—he was callin’ from some place in Indonesia.’

      Anyone who could prevent Ryan from taking his fair share of the conversation had her instant respect. ‘Indonesia...did he speak good English?’ she asked. She had spent ten days in July trying to teach the intricacies of fly-fishing to three admittedly very handsome but unilingual Spaniards.

      ‘Yeah... he’s Canadian, by the sound of him.’

      ‘I wonder why he’s coming?’ Jenessa said. ‘I suppose he wants to catch the last of the fishing season ... I’ll tell you one thing—he’d better not have ocean-going mammals on his list.’

      She levered the lid off the can sitting on the table and helped herself to one of Ryan’s molasses cookies. ‘You made these because you knew I’d be back today, didn’t you?’ she added, smiling across at Ryan. He never hugged her when she came home, but he would make sure she had all her favourite things to eat.

      ‘Gotta put some flesh on your bones,’ Ryan muttered. He was a small man, no taller than her five feet eight, and wiry as a fox, his beard and hair still showing vestiges of their former fiery red, his eyes a snapping brown. He was her one tie to a life that had fallen apart when she was thirteen; Jenessa valued him both for that and for himself. Father-surrogate and true friend—not a bad combination, and one she knew she was fortunate to have.

      Taking another cookie, she said with a caution that in the past had often been justified, ‘You did tell this Finn Marston that I’m a woman, right?’

      Ryan dunked his cookie in his tea. ‘Well, now, not sure I did. Like I said, I didn’t get much chance to talk. This guy’s more used to givin’ orders than listenin’