Hero in Disguise Read online

  Next week both men would be forced by Wisconsin fishing regulations to remove the wooden shanties and replace them with portable canvas ones that could be dismantled each evening. Sheila was campaigning for Emil and Gus to end the season and not bother with the portable shelters, but she didn’t hold out much hope that either man would listen to her. The annual fishing contest had sapped their good sense. Sheila fingered the whistle in her pocket as she started toward the lake on a path crusty with dead, half-frozen clumps of grass.

  As she walked, she glanced toward Timberlake Lodge’s old boathouse on the north side of the lake. Liza and Cliff Forrester had converted the upper level into an apartment, and lights shone from the windows as dusk settled in. The boathouse had served the couple and their daughter well for the past few years, but Liza had mentioned to Sheila that they wanted to relocate and build a log house. Sheila was glad they hadn’t moved yet. Living in the boathouse, they might hear a cry for help if Gus’s or Emil’s luck ran out. The risk of thin ice would be dangerous for younger men, let alone two guys past seventy.

  Standing on the shore of the frozen lake, Sheila tried to gauge its safety. The weather had stayed unseasonably cold and the lake looked solid, but Sheila didn’t trust it. She wished her father would give up and let Gus win this season’s contest, but her arguments seemed to make no dent in his resolve. She put the whistle to her lips and blew.

  Within thirty seconds her father appeared at the door of his shack, as did Gus. Their casual behavior indicated neither of them had come up with any prizewinners that day. They turned off their Coleman lanterns, climbed on their respective snowmobiles and traced a zigzag path over to Sheila. Emil reached the edge of the lake first, by a nose.

  “Gotcha!” he called to Gus as he stopped next to Sheila and pushed his goggles up over his stocking cap. “Gus and me lost track of the time, as usual,” he said.

  “But you know it’s late when you have to use the lanterns to see.”

  A grin flitted across his weathered face, revealing the missing front tooth in his set of dentures. “To tell the truth, Sheilie, when you’re working at the lodge, we kind of wait for your whistle.”

  “As I suspected.” She surveyed the two men. Thank God for Gus, she thought. Without him her father would really be alone. “What if I forgot to blow the whistle some evening? Would you two fish until midnight?”

  “Could be,” Gus said cheerfully, his round face pink from the cold air and the six-pack he and Emil split every afternoon.

  “I take it nobody’s bringing fish home tonight.”

  “There’s enough fish in our freezer to last a year,” her father said.

  “Same here.” Gus wrapped his muffler tighter around his neck. “Faye would kill me if I brought fish home. I’m just waiting for Jumbo.”

  “You’ll freeze your butinski waiting, too,” Emil said. “That fish is mine.”

  “Ha!” Gus revved his snowmobile engine and started away from the lake. “The day you catch Jumbo is the day I streak nekked through town!” he called over his shoulder.

  “Then you’d better practice running nekked, Gus-Gus!” Emil shouted back. Then he turned back to Sheila and winked. “Don’t that paint a picture? Gus-Gus streaking past Worthington House one fine spring day with the Quilting Circle in session on the front porch?”

  Sheila laughed as she watched the bobbing headlight that indicated Gus’s progress along the trail leading through the woods to the Lemke farm. At age four she’d nicknamed him Gus-Gus, after one of the mice in Walt Disney’s Cinderella, and the nickname had stuck. “That would be a sight, Pa.”

  Emil smiled and replaced his goggles. “Hop on. I’ll give you a ride to the parking lot.”

  “I don’t know if you should. The snow’s getting patchy between here and there.”

  “You are the biggest worrier in the world. Here. Hold my fishing pole.”

  Sheila considered it her job to worry about him, now that her mother was gone. It was the reason she’d moved back to Tyler, although she would never admit that to him. He thought she’d become homesick for small-town life after several years in Chicago.

  Clutching the precious pole, one that Emil’s father had given him, Sheila hitched up her skirt and climbed onto the snowmobile. She wrapped an arm around her dad, which wasn’t hard to do. Emil Lawson always said he had to stand twice in the same place to cast a shadow. His wool coat smelled of Borkum Riff and fish, a combination Sheila would always associate with him.

  “Gus is scared,” Emil said. “He knows I’m gonna catch that big walleye. I’ve seen that fish cruisin’ past the hole twice now.”

  “I hope you catch him soon, Pa. This weather can’t hold much longer.”

  “Tomorrow. I’ll catch him tomorrow. Wait and see. This is my year. And I’m going to order that winter special Marge has at the diner, with meat loaf, mashed potatoes and gravy, that fancy Jell-O thing and a huge piece of pie for dessert. Ha! And Gus-Gus will have to pay for it. Then he’ll have to drive past my house every day and see the flag flying from my porch, just like I’ve had to put up with him having it all this time. Boy, that’ll be sweet.”

  Sheila treasured the spirit her father showed when he was embroiled in this contest with Gus. Here on the lake he was the father she remembered, but when he got back home, she knew from experience he would deflate like a pricked balloon. She’d wondered if they should sell the farm with all its poignant memories, but that might be worse, especially because Gus Lemke would no longer be a neighbor if she and her father moved into town.

  At least living next to Gus, Emil had focused on winning back the fishing flag, a tattered and faded piece of blue-and-gold canvas that had been in contention for as long as Sheila could remember. Aside from winning that darned flag and the celebration meal at Marge’s Diner, Emil didn’t seem to have much to live for anymore. He even refused to get his dentures fixed, claiming that he wouldn’t need them that much longer. Friends had told Sheila that the first year after a spouse died was critical, so she was watching her father carefully. She was counting on Gus having more sense than Emil, and calling an end to the contest before the ice gave way beneath them.

  * * *

  ALTHOUGH MARCH 20 was more than two weeks away, spring seemed to arrive the following morning. But as Sheila drove under sunny skies to Timberlake Lodge, the radio weather report predicted snow by afternoon.

  “No way,” Sheila said, glancing out through the car windshield at the cloudless sky. A crocus had poked up in the front yard that morning, a royal purple daub against a patch of dingy snow. Winter was over and this had to be the last day her father and Gus spent ice fishing. She would put her foot down tonight.

  As she pulled into the lodge parking lot she was glad to see Abby’s old van already there. Dressed in jeans and a sweater, Abby leaned against the fender. The prospect of being with Douglas again had interrupted Sheila’s night with a series of X-rated dreams that woke her several times with their potency. When she dragged herself out of bed in the morning she’d decided she didn’t need the extra stress of a man in her life right now, especially with all the complicated baggage of their past history together. If Douglas showed interest in Abby, so much the better. Yesterday’s commotion surrounding Douglas Wagner in buckskins had temporarily distracted Sheila from her goal—to make sure her father survived the first year without his wife.

  She’d dressed for work in a forest-green jersey with a slim skirt and long sleeves. The sun beamed down with such warmth that she left her coat unbuttoned as she walked over to Abby’s van.

  “From your expression, anyone would think you were heading for a hanging in the public square,” Abby said. “This is supposed to be in the spirit of fun, remember?”

  “I fold,” Sheila said, shoving her hands into her coat pockets. “If you want Douglas Wagner, he’s all yours.”

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; Abby pushed away from the fender. “Don’t you dare tell me you’re not even going down there. I’m brave, but not that brave.”

  “I’ll walk down with you. Somebody has to introduce you, after all, and I said I’d be there. But I don’t expect to stay long.”

  Abby shook her head. “This business of him being a teacher really has you going, doesn’t it?”

  “I guess it does. Come on. Let’s get it over with.” As Sheila started across the parking lot, a thin film of ice covering the asphalt crackled under her boots. Squinting, she realized she’d left her sunglasses in the car, but she didn’t want to go back for them.

  Abby hurried to catch up. “Did something happen in high school I don’t know about?”

  “Well, he thought I copied Beverly Sadler’s citizenship essay for the college scholarship contest, if you call that something.”

  “Uh-oh. Did you?”

  “Not exactly.” Sheila noted that the path would soon turn to mud if the sun kept shining like this. Maybe she should have cinders spread. “It was a complicated situation and I just let him think what he wanted to.”

  “Beverly got that scholarship, didn’t she?”

  “Yes.” Sheila had known it was her friend’s only chance to go to college after Beverly’s alcoholic father had squandered all her tuition money on booze. But Sheila hadn’t realized her own father’s dairy business was in trouble and there would be no money for her college education, either.

  “I’ll bet Mr. Wagner’s forgotten all about that essay contest,” Abby said. “So if that’s what’s tied you up in knots, I’d advise you to put it out of your mind.”

  Easier said than done, Sheila thought, for someone who prized honesty as much as she did. “I guess you’re right.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “The other problem is that I should tell him I’m sorry about his wife, but you know what? I can’t remember much about her, not her name or even what she looked like.”

  “They weren’t married yet when we were seniors, and I don’t think he brought her to any school functions, so you’d have no reason to remember.”

  “I guess.” The scents of bacon and coffee mingled with the aroma of burning cedar wafting up from the encampment. Sheila had been too nervous to eat breakfast, but now the food smelled really good.

  “It was a bummer that he lived in Sugar Creek back then. We could never harass him. It was too far to go, so we couldn’t TP his house, or put a stink bomb in his mailbox, or anything. Not that you ever did those things.”

  Sheila laughed. “With your new image I keep forgetting what a little troublemaker you were, Abby.”

  “Yeah. If anybody has a bad rep with this guy, it’s me. I came close to flunking his class, despite the cookie bribes. He was so untouchable we used to call him Eliot Ness.”

  “That’s exactly the point.” Sheila watched as a regiment of soldiers in blue coats and white breeches marched into a clearing to the left of the camp and began to drill. “Of all my teachers, he was the one I admired the most. I can’t throw a switch in my brain and start thinking of him as a date. It’s too big a leap.” Yet in her dreams the night before Douglas had been much more than a date. The memory made her flush with embarrassment.

  “Okay,” Abby said. “You’ve convinced me that you’re too hung up on your past relationship with him for your hormones to function properly. Let’s go find this paragon and I’ll take a shot at him. I’m guessing he might be over there.” Abby pointed to a group down by the lake. “That’s the bunch wearing beads and feathers.”

  Sheila had figured out the same thing after visually searching the area without finding a tall, dark-haired man in fringed buckskin. As she and Abby drew closer, she heard the solid thunk of metal biting into wood, and a cheer went up from the group.

  “What’s happening?” Sheila asked a woman wearing a beaded dress.

  “Some of the men are practicing the hatchet throw for the contest this afternoon,” she said, moving aside. “If you squeeze right through here you can see.”

  Sheila stepped around the woman and her breath caught in her throat.

  Poised not five yards away stood a magnificent Indian brave, his face in profile, two feathers woven through his jet-black hair. The noble sweep of his brow and the flare of his nostrils made her heart stumble. Then she noticed that the laces down the front of his buckskin shirt were undone, revealing a mat of black chest hair. She swallowed.

  Gazing straight ahead, he flexed his powerful shoulders. She’d seen the play of those muscles in her dream, had run her hands over them in wonder. A flash of elemental desire took her by surprise, leaving her trembling in its wake. Bewildered by raw emotions she’d never acknowledged in herself, she put a hand over her racing heart and prayed that no one would notice her response. Yesterday’s ogling with Abby had been nothing more than a silly game, but this... She had no experience of such a primitive reaction to a man.

  He leaned down and pulled out a hatchet embedded in a tree stump in front of him. As he grasped the implement, Sheila stared at his hand as if she’d never seen it before. And indeed she hadn’t seen it like this—through a filter of lust that made her clench her jaw to keep from whimpering. She mentally traced the faint blue veins on the back of his hand and stroked the length of his tapered fingers. She craved the touch of those fingers, feeling as if her skin would wither without it.

  Taking a deep breath, he reared back to throw, and Sheila’s mouth went dry at the coiled strength in his lithe body. His breath came out in a rush as he hurled the hatchet toward a target pinned to a dead tree about thirty yards away. The hatchet wheeled end over end and landed with a heavy thud, penetrating deep to shred the target’s center. Sheila felt as if something deep within her had been struck, as well.

  “Way to go, Black Hawk!” someone next to Sheila called out. “Best throw of the morning!”

  He turned toward the speaker, a grin of triumph on his face, and looked directly into Sheila’s eyes. She had no time to mask her passion with a more civilized expression. The moment stretched between them as the shock of recognition gave way to an answering flame licking from the depths of his eyes. Warmth surged through her. Propriety told her to look away, but desire fed on his heated gaze, and desire was in command.

  He started toward her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “YOU CAME,” Douglas said, gazing down at Sheila.

  “Hell of a throw, Douglas!” said the man standing next to her as he clapped Douglas on the shoulder, jostling Sheila in the process.

  “Thanks, John.” Douglas’s attention flicked to the man briefly before returning to Sheila.

  Shaken out of her daze, she scrambled for composure. She’d had a plan, but couldn’t remember it. Abby. She’d planned to introduce him to Abby and retire from the field. “I brought along a friend,” she said. Her breath hitched as if she’d been running. She turned to discover Abby watching her with a knowing smile on her face. “Do you remember Abby Triblett from my graduating class?”

  He shot a puzzled look in Abby’s direction. “Yes, but—”

  Abby stuck out her hand. “Picture me with blond hair and an extra thirty pounds, and you might see the resemblance, Mr. Wagner.”

  Douglas studied her as he shook her hand. “It’s good to see you again, Abby. I confess I wouldn’t have recognized you.”

  “That makes us even. I didn’t recognize you when you walked into the lodge yesterday afternoon, either.”

  “Now I remember where I’ve seen you recently. You were behind the registration desk when I left.”

  “That was me.” Abby gave him a broad smile. “And in that buckskin, with your hair longer, I would never have guessed you were my history teacher. You look a lot like an Indian, except for those green eyes.”

  Sheila found herself resenting Abby’s glib inter
change with Douglas, but was too caught up in her churning emotions to think of anything clever to say herself.

  “There is some Sauk blood in my family tree,” Douglas said. “But in order to be completely authentic, I should have shaved my head and my chest.” His glance was teasing. “That’s what Black Hawk really looked like.”

  Abby combed her hair back from her forehead with her fingers. Sheila had never thought of it as a provocative gesture, until now. And Abby’s gaze as she looked up at Douglas was filled with invitation. “You’re probably one of those men who’d look good shaved.”

  “He wore earrings, too.”

  “So did pirates,” Abby said. “Earrings can be very sexy on a man.”

  “Call me traditional, but I prefer seeing them on women.” Douglas seemed oblivious to Abby’s flirtation as he abruptly turned his attention to Sheila. “Ready for a tour of the encampment?”

  She found her voice. “Sure.”

  “I have to put the hatchet away, and then I’ll show you and Abby around. Be right back.” He headed off toward the dead tree where he’d recently embedded the hatchet blade.

  When he was out of earshot, Abby leaned close to Sheila. “I’m outta here. Give my regrets to our good-looking tour guide.”

  Sheila gave her a startled glance. “You’re leaving? Why?”

  “I gave it the old college try, but as the song goes, he only has eyes for you.” Abby’s smile was gentle. “I’d just be spoiling the party.”

  Panic-stricken at the thought of interacting with Douglas by herself, Sheila grabbed Abby’s arm as her friend turned to leave. “That’s silly. Stay and see the encampment with me.”

  Abby shook her head. “I’m no more interested in history than I was in high school. I’d be bored silly. I came this morning on the off chance that our man in buckskin wasn’t specifically interested in you. It’s pretty obvious that he is, so I’m heading home. I have a stack of laundry a mile high, anyway.” She gave Sheila a nudge. “Now go and have fun.”