Black Hills

a hot summer morning. Twelve years ago this summer for that first miserable goodbye, she reminded herself. And really, if she was honest, that had been the end. Twelve years was long enough, plenty long enough, to get over it.
    She saw her father coming from the barn to greet them, and pushed all thoughts of Cooper Sullivan away.
     
     
     
    SHE WAS HUGGED, kissed, plied with hot chocolate and cookies, slobbered on by the pair of hounds her parents had named Lois and Clark. Out the kitchen window the familiar view spread. The fields, the hills, the pines, the bright wink of the stream. Jenna insisted on washing the clothes stuffed in the duffel.
    “I’d like to. Makes me feel like Mommy for the day.”
    “Far be it from me to deprive you, Mommy.”
    “I’m not a fussy woman,” Jenna observed as she took the load Lil gave her. “But I don’t know how you can get by with so little for so long.”
    “Planning, and the willingness to wear dirty socks when choices are limited. That’s actually still clean,” Lil began when her mother pulled another shirt out of the duffel. Jenna only lifted her eyebrows. “Okay, not so much clean as not filthy.”
    “I’ll bring you a sweater, some jeans. That’ll hold you until these are clean and dry. Take your bath, drink your wine. Relax.”
    She sank into the tub her mother had drawn. It was, Lil thought with a long, nearly orgasmic groan, nice to have someone fuss over her a little. Working in the field usually meant living rough, and in some cases close to primitive. She didn’t mind it. But she sure as hell didn’t mind having her mom draw her the Jenna Chance special bubble bath, and knowing she could indulge in it until the water went cold.
    Now that she was alone, now that there was plenty of time, she let Coop back into her head.
    He’d come back when his grandparents needed him—she had to give him credit for that. The fact was, no one could question his love or loyalty in that direction.
    How could she hate the man, one who had, apparently, changed his life to see that his grandparents’ home and their business were protected?
    Besides, she had nothing to hate him for.
    Just because he’d broken her heart, then squeezed the still dripping juices of it onto the ground so they had clung to his boot heels when he’d walked away from her—really, was that a reason to hate anyone?
    She sank in a little more, sipped her wine.
    But he hadn’t lied, she had to give him that one, too.
    He’d come back. Not at Thanksgiving, but at Christmas. Only for two days, but he’d come. And when he hadn’t been able to come that summer, she’d accepted an offer to work in a refuge in California. She’d learned a lot over those weeks, and she and Coop had kept in touch as much as possible.
    But things had already started to change. Hadn’t she felt it even then? she asked herself. Hadn’t some part of her known?
    He hadn’t been able to come out the next Christmas, and she’d cut her own winter break short for a field study.
    When they’d met at a halfway-between point the following spring, it had been the end. He’d changed, she could see it. He’d been harder, tougher—and yes, colder. Still, she couldn’t claim he’d been cruel. Just clear.
    She had her life west, he had his east. Time to toss it in and admit they’d never make it work.
    Your friendship matters to me. You matter. But, Lil, we’ve got to get on with what we are. We’ve got to accept who we are.
    No, he hadn’t been cruel, but he’d shattered her. All she’d had left was pride. The cold pride that had allowed her to say he was right, and to look him in the eye when she’d said it.
    “Thank God I did,” she muttered. Otherwise his coming back would be both mortification and misery.
    The best way to deal with it, to get everything off on the right foot, was to face it head-on. As soon as she could manage it, she’d go over to see Sam and Lucy, and Coop. Hell, she’d buy him a beer and play catch-up there, too.
    She wasn’t a teenager with a fluttering heart and raging hormones anymore. As of the previous summer she was Dr. Lillian Chance, thank you very much. She was cofounder of the Chance Wildlife Refuge right here in her own corner of the world.
    She’d traveled to, studied and worked in other corners of the world. She’d had a long-term, monogamous, serious relationship with a man. A couple of others not so long-term, not so serious, but she’d basically lived with