Aspen in Moonlight Read online

  When art historian Melissa Warren inherits three of her grandmother’s paintings that have captivated her since childhood, she sets out to discover more about the little known artist and the locations of the mysterious landscapes. Her search takes her to the Colorado Bear Conservancy and the artist’s great-granddaughter, Sula Johansen.

  Sula is reluctant to help Melissa, but their instant chemistry is impossible to ignore. Sula is torn between falling in love and hiding the truth about who and what she really is. Of course, if Melissa paid closer attention to minor details—like the fact that Sula enjoys nibbling berries off the vine, is unusually strong, and consumes way too much honey—Melissa might not be in for the shock of her life.

  Aspen in Moonlight

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  Aspen in Moonlight

  © 2019 By Kelly Wacker. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-63555-471-7

  This Electronic Original Is Published By

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, NY 12185

  First Edition: November 2019

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editor: Shelley Thrasher

  Production Design: Stacia Seaman

  Cover Design by Melody Pond

  By the Author

  Holding Their Place

  Aspen in Moonlight

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to express my gratitude to the many people who have helped make this book a reality.

  A deep thank you to the team at Bold Strokes Books, especially Shelley Thrasher, my keen-eyed editor. She helped to refine and polish the first draft into the book you are now reading. Working with her has been enlightening and a pleasure. Amy Feger, my wife, has supported my creativity and craft with unflagging enthusiasm and without complaint when I needed to sequester myself to write. I am thankful for my beta readers who graciously provided their fresh and varied perspectives. Michelle Lisper asked good questions. Gaby Wolordarski’s mirthful engagement with the story kept me smiling. Officer Angela Velarde kindly answered my questions about police procedures. Conversations with Paul Corrigan improved my writing about fly-fishing for trout. Tawny and Spottie, the finest and most loving feral cats I’ve had the pleasure of knowing, provided feline inspiration. Finally, I am deeply indebted to my dear friend and fellow author Karen F. Williams for countless hours of conversation that improved the story greatly and for continually reminding me of the extraordinary power of wonder.

  I would be remiss in not acknowledging the deep influence of my time spent in the Rockies of Colorado, visits to the site of my great-grandparents’ mountain homestead, and landscape paintings by the nearly unknown painter Newt Thomas, including one my grandmother received from him in the early 1920s that now hangs in my home.

  This is for you.

  Prologue

  The bear ascended through a forest of aspens and conifers, climbing up and over a steep ridge in an easy gait made possible by her long, powerful legs. She ambled over to a wide rock ledge and sat down. The trunks of the pines that survived in this place were bent outward, bowed where the winter’s snow pushed against them. But their roots were strong, and they wrapped around the rocks, clinging to them. Spring snowstorms had continued into summer, and patches of snow still sparkled on the ground here and there.

  The ledge was a good place to watch. The headwaters of the river that ran through the valley below were here, a basin where the snowpack melted slowly, forming streams that meandered through the upper valley and coalesced into a river at the lower end. The water followed the lay of the land, flowing into a canyon where it lost its clarity as it picked up speed, becoming turbid and milky white as it rushed over rocks and boulders, curving and twisting its way downslope to the dry plains beyond the foothills.

  Above, a red-tailed hawk circled, riding a warm rising current, and let out a sharp cry to claim this territory as his. In reality, the place belonged to many creatures. It belonged to the other creatures of the air—to the small songbirds that visited in the warmer months and made long journeys south to escape the harsh winters, to the observant eyes and loud voices of the jays and crows, and to the night owls who trilled and hooted, but flew silently through the trees and across the meadow. It belonged to the mule deer and to the elk that grazed on the grass in the meadow of the valley floor at night and then worked their way into the safer cover of the forest during the day. It belonged to the cicadas that clung to the coarse bark of the pines and sang, filling the resin-scented air with a raspy chorus. It belonged to the raccoons that slept contentedly in their dens and waited for night to fall before emerging to hunt. It belonged to the beavers who feasted on the soft inner wood of the trees they felled, and who engineered lodges for their families in the lake and the creek, altering and slowing the flow of the water through the valley. It belonged to the pine squirrels and the striped chipmunks that rushed from rock to tree, and from tree to rock, looking for good things to eat, all the while watching for predators from both the air and the ground. It belonged to the coyotes who hunted the ground squirrels and the chipmunks, but who also loved to eat sun-ripened blackberries.

  It also belonged to the mountain lion whose presence the bruin detected. The big cat had passed by here within the past few days. The sharp acrid smell of his marking scent still permeated the air. The lion was much like herself, a watcher who preferred not to reveal himself, especially to humans. Humans were complicated, their actions difficult to comprehend. She wasn’t fully convinced that this place belonged to humans, though they thought it did. Most of them failed to see that they were not the only ones to whom the land belonged.

  The bear lowered her head and sniffed the ground where the lion’s scent was strong. She scratched the ground lightly with her long, dark claws, stirring up the scent and, in the process, dislodging a few rocks that tumbled and rolled off the ledge.

  As the rocks fell, she scanned the valley again. Directly below stretched one of her favorite places, a deep pool that appeared to be watched over by two large owl-shaped boulders sitting shoulder to shoulder above the river. She imagined wading into the cold, deep water, grabbing a wriggling, fat trout with her strong jaws, and tearing into it with her teeth. She found the pleasure difficult to resist. She sniffed the air again, this time seeking to detect the scent of a human, the only animal she truly feared. The air was clear. The bear stood and grunted softly as she shook the dust from her thick, shaggy coat. Then she began to carefully descend the side of the mountain to the river below.

  Chapter One

  Lugging a canvas tote bag, Melissa walked across the tree-shaded main quad on her way to her office in Fuller Hall. One of the oldest brick-and-stone buildings on the university campus, its exterior had a stately feel, with limestone columns and a triangular pediment marking the main entrance. It was the last week of the first summer term, and the campus was quiet compared to the regular academic semesters.

  As she approached, she slowed her pace under the canopy of a big burr oak, her favorite tree on campus. The trunk was wide, maybe four feet in diameter, covered with rough,
dark bark. Its lateral branches seemed like twisting arms, some of them stretching out twenty or thirty feet. The leaves, bigger than her hand with fingers outstretched, were a deep, verdant green. Everything about this tree seemed animated and very much alive.

  “Hey, Professor Warren!”

  Melissa startled at the sound of her name coming from above her head. Squinting up at the branches, she tucked a loose strand of her blond hair behind her ear and looked for the source of the voice. One of her students sat on a branch about fifteen feet from the ground, leaning back against the trunk with his legs dangling over either side of the wide resting place. His backpack was balanced between his legs, with an open textbook on top. Melissa raised her hand to shield her eyes from the sun breaking through the branches.

  “Hey, Theo. What are you doing up there?”

  “Studying for my last physics exam.” He pointed to the textbook. “Everyone said it’s supposed to be easier in the summer, but I’m not so sure. I’ve got to pass it if I’m going to graduate in the fall.”

  “It seems like you were just in my freshman class. You’re finishing up already?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Theo spoke politely, revealing his Southern good manners. “But I’m glad I’ll get to have one more class with you before I graduate.”

  “Yeah? Are you registered for my ancient art history class in the fall?” He wasn’t one of her strongest students, but she liked having him in class. Full of curiosity and enthusiasm, he could get classroom discussions going.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well, I look forward to seeing you then. Good luck with your summer classes.”

  “Thanks. I need it!” He beamed at her from his arboreal perch.

  Melissa wagged her finger at him. “And don’t fall out of that tree.”

  “No, ma’am. I’m not planning on it,” he said with a laugh.

  She waved good-bye and continued walking. A student coming toward her looked at her strangely, and she realized it probably seemed as if she’d been talking to the tree. She smiled at him as she passed and continued to Fulton Hall.

  As she walked through the portico and entered the building, she felt relieved to enter air-conditioned space, as the temperatures had been rising steadily. Melissa wiped perspiration from her forehead and tucked an errant strand of hair back behind her ear. She’d gotten a haircut a few days ago, and her hair was a little shorter than she was used to. Cool gray terrazzo floors, plastered walls painted a warm cream, and doors and windows cased in a dark wood trim that gleamed from decades of polishing greeted her. Offices even had transom windows above the doors that, for some reason, Melissa always associated with detectives’ offices in old film noir movies. They were practical in a building constructed before air-conditioning and that had been heated with cast-iron radiators, the high tech of an earlier era that still worked well.

  She walked down the deserted hallway. Students who would normally be seen milling around or sitting on the floor waiting for class, studying, or staring intensely at the screens of their mobile phones in between classes were absent. During the summer the on-campus student body was only a fraction of its regular size. Melissa usually taught an art appreciation course during this term, but this summer she was forgoing the extra class to use the time to prepare her tenure application. Although it wasn’t due until the fall, by completing it now she could finally take a break and work on a personal project that she’d kept on hold.

  Melissa entered her office and hoisted her tote bag to her desk. After she removed the four large white binders containing nearly a thousand pages that documented her academic teaching and research career for the past six years, she lined them up on her desk for inspection. Seated at her desk she went through each binder, comparing its contents to the checklist. It was tedious but necessary. Everything seemed in order, all as complete as they could be. She just had to turn it in to her department chair in the fall. Her stomach growled, and she realized she was hungry. She looked out the window—the sun was low in the sky and dropping below the tallest trees in the quad. As she glanced at the antique regulator clock on the wall across from her desk, she was surprised to see that it was nearly six.

  Melissa had inherited the round-faced clock encased in a dark oak case from her grandmother. Invented in the late eighteenth-century, when the first factories were being built and people needed to pay more attention to the time, regulator clocks were simple. They lacked amenities such as phases of the moon or days of the month but were very precise, so they were often used in schools and train depots.

  It complemented the architecture so well, Melissa had wanted to hang it in her office. It wouldn’t even keep time when she received it, so she’d sent it to an antique-clock restorer in Alabama, someone that Beth, her colleague in the department and friend, had recommended. She had warned Melissa that he was rather eccentric, and if she talked to him on the phone she should be prepared for a long, interesting conversation. Melissa had come to learn that, in this part of the country, someone described as “a little” eccentric was actually a lot eccentric. The people of the Deep South had a well-deserved reputation for intolerance and resistance to progressive change, but when you dealt with them at the micro-level, in small towns and rural communities, they were surprisingly tolerant as long as you observed the basic rules of politeness. She had never talked to the horologist on the phone, and eccentric or not, he had returned the clock polished, gleaming, and once again keeping time accurately.

  “Ticktock, it’s time to stop,” Melissa said to herself. She placed her hand on top of the first binder, a gesture that felt like a benediction. With tenure, she would have job security. Without it, she’d have to start all over again somewhere else. She didn’t want to think about that possibility, as the academic job market was grim and only getting bleaker.

  Before leaving the office, she checked her email one last time. She had several new messages, most of which she would ignore until later. But one caught her eye—a reservation reminder from the Buckhorn Creek Ranch, the guest ranch in Colorado where she would be staying soon. She opened it and smiled at the photo at the top of the message, a panorama of a blooming meadow, pine trees, and snow-covered mountains in the distance.

  She’d found herself daydreaming more and more about exploring Buckhorn and sitting on the porch of a cozy rustic cabin in the cool mountain air while drinking coffee, thinking, reading, and maybe even writing. Smiling, she logged out of email, put the computer to sleep, and left the office.

  When she reached her silver Subaru Forester, she tossed her bag and the empty tote onto the passenger seat. Her stomach grumbled again as she started the car. Feeling in a celebratory mood, she decided to pick up something on the way home.

  The Depot, a popular restaurant and bakery housed in the old train depot, was one of her favorite places in town. Its main building held the kitchen, a bar, and dining room, while the covered waiting platform provided space for dining al fresco. The train had long ceased to run through town, replaced by a walking trail where the tracks used to be—part of a regional rails-to-trails project.

  It was still early for the dinner crowd, so the restaurant wasn’t busy. The hostess greeted her, and Melissa gestured to the bar, saying she planned to order something to go. Quite a few people were gathered there, taking advantage of happy hour. She glanced around but didn’t see anyone she knew. She took a seat at the bar and waited for the bartender, a young woman with short, spiky, blond hair, who stood at the other end filling pint glasses with ale. She nodded at Melissa and smiled.

  “Be with you in just a minute.”

  “No hurry.”

  Melissa grabbed one of the menus. She thought she knew what she wanted, and a quick scan of the menu confirmed her choice.

  “How are you today?” The bartender, speaking in a cheerful tone, set a coaster down in front of Melissa.

  “Great, actually.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” she said. Melissa found her rather attra
ctive, especially when she smiled and two dimples suddenly appeared on either side of the corners of her mouth.

  “What can I get you?”

  “I’d like a cheeseburger with sweet-potato fries to go.” Melissa glanced back at the menu. “And an Italian soda while I wait.”

  “You got it.”

  The bartender entered the order into the register and then grabbed a tall glass, put a scoop of ice in it, and glanced at Melissa.

  “What flavor?”

  “Almond, please.”

  “Cream?”

  “Of course.”

  The woman nodded and smiled as she stirred the syrup into the seltzer and then floated a little cream on top. She set the glass on the coaster and winked at Melissa.

  “Your order will be out in about ten minutes.”

  Melissa thanked her and observed while she talked with a group of people clustered at the far end of the bar. She checked her thoughts. Too young. Melissa took a sip of her soda and spun the other way on her barstool, beginning to daydream again about her upcoming journey to Colorado. It would take her two long days of driving to get to her parents’ house and then a few hours more to the mountain town of Buckhorn. She really liked her job and had become accustomed to where she lived, but she still longed for the big sky and the clear dry air of her western home state.

  “Here’s your order.”

  The bartender placed a paper sack on the bar, and Melissa handed her a debit card. When she returned with the receipt, Melissa signed it, put a cash tip on top, and pushed it back toward the edge of the bar.