Love Among the Elk

"Wendy? You OK?"

"yeah...yeah...hold on...omigod..."

Her fingers dug into my shoulders and she gasped and convulsed again and relaxed with her face buried in my chest. The light dawned suddenly.

"Honey? Did you just..."

She nodded without lifting her head.

"Twice. Oh God, I'm so embarrassed..."

"Why? I think it's great that you got so excited just making out, and I hope that's the first of many, many times you do that with me."

She pulled herself up a little, smiled, and kissed me.

"What did I do to deserve a man like you? I'm kind of leaving you out, though, aren't I?"

She unzipped and unbuttoned my pants quickly and reached inside.

"Wow! I am lucky. Is that because of me?"

Her hand moved exploringly, and it was too much for me.

"Oops! I made a mess, didn't I?"

She pulled her hand out and licked it.

"Tasty one, though!"

Oh Lord. This girl was going to kill me, but at least I'd die happy.

"I usually don't..."

"Hey, no embarrassment allowed, big guy! You've already made me a very happy girl."

She pushed herself up.

"We better get cleaned up and get to bed."

"Sounds good. Yours or mine?"

"Both, I'm afraid. This may sound silly under the circumstances, but you're still the subject of my story."

"Yeah, it does sound silly."

I ran my tongue from her collarbone to her ear, and she tilted her head to help out. I could feel her shudder when I nibbled her ear.

"You sure you want to stop?"

"Stop it! I have rules, remember?"

"Oh, all right."

So we spent the next day driving and hiking around getting pictures of the elk in their new habitat and the way the overpopulated sections were recovering now that the pressure was off. After a stop in town to say goodbye to Lindsay, I drove her to the airport.

"When do I get to see you again?"

"I don't know, but we'll talk. I'll miss you, Jim."

"I'm going to miss you too. Be careful in Alaska."

She kissed me and headed up the jetway. Damn, this was getting harder every time.

Les came into my office about 4:55 one afternoon. I was staring at the clock, trying to will it to move to 5:00 so I could be off work and talking to Wendy.

"Son, go ahead and call that filly. You're no use to me until you do anyhow."

"Is it that obvious?"

"Sharon says you look at that little reporter the way I looked at her when we were courtin'."

"Hell, Les, you still look at Sharon like she's the only woman in the world."

"In my book she is. Twenty-seven years, and I'm more in love with her than the day we got hitched."

He sat down and propped a well worn Tony Lama on the edge of my desk, studying the toe absently.

"Son, you ain't asked for my opinion, but here it is anyhow. Life goes by damn fast, and fellers like you and me don't get a lot of second chances at real happiness. Wendy Erskine is one hell of a fine young lady, and she seems to feel the same way about you that you do about her. She sure did have a lot of questions about you, and of course the ladies talked you up something fierce. You're a good man, whether you want to admit it or not."

He stood up.

"Wise up, son. It's time to stop foolin' around and get a ring on that gal's finger while the iron's hot!"

"Damn it, Les, she lives in Manhattan!"

"Where there's a will there's a way. Figure it out, son."

It didn't take me long after I went to work for him to realize that Les's "old cowboy" routine covered the sharpest mind I had ever met. Hearing that from him gave me a lot to think about. First things first, though.

"So how did your editor like the article?"

"She's making me rewrite it a little bit. She said she sent me out there to do a feature on wildlife conservation, not to develop a crush on an elk-chasing cowboy scientist."

I tried to laugh.

"What did you say?"

"I told her I thought I had done a pretty good job of both."

"Damn it, Wendy, I hate this! I mean, talking to you is the high point of my day, but it doesn't feel like enough anymore, you know?"

"I know, Jim. I miss you like crazy too."

So there it was out on the table. We thought a bit.

"You would never be happy in New York City, would you?"

"What would a wildlife biologist do there? Count squirrels in Central Park? Are you all that thrilled with big city life?"

"Well, it's the center of the publishing world, and my career is here...Look, we've got a lot to think about. Let's call it a night and talk later."

We avoided the subject a while longer. One Saturday night my phone rang.

"Jim?"

"Hi, Wendy, what's up?"

"Not much. My girlfriend dragged me out on a double date with some guys she met at work."

I suppressed a pang of jealousy- I didn't have a formal claim on her, after all.

"And?"

"So they took us to Tavern on the Green, and it turned out to be the same old thing if not worse. This guy is a lawyer at some big Wall Street firm, and he kept talking about how he outsmarted the other side in some lawsuit so that one bank had to pay another bank a bunch of money. How boring is that? I was sitting there in one of the fanciest, most expensive restaurants in New York, dressed to kill, and all I could think about was how much more fun I had counting falling stars on the deck of an old lookout tower in Oregon. I said I had a headache and went home. Now it's 10:00 on a Saturday night in New York City and here I sit in my jammies talking to my favorite elk herder and trying not to think about what all this is trying to tell me."

I couldn't resist.

"You weren't much on pajamas as I recall."

She giggled.

"Oh, you don't know the half of it. Some of my girlfriends say this black lace nightie I have on is too revealing, but I wouldn't mind getting your opinion..."

I groaned.

"I deserved that. Wendy, what it should be telling you is that you belong out here with me."

"You may be right. That's a big change in plans for me, though."

"Who was that German general who said that no plan of battle survives contact with the enemy? A lot of plans don't survive contact with real life. Think about it."

"I will. Talk to you Monday?"

"Sounds good. I love you, Wendy."

I didn't realize what I had said until she gasped and hung up. Thinking about it, though, I meant every word.

She called me a few weeks later so excited she could hardly speak.

"Jim! Jim! Guess what?"

"Slow down a little, sweetheart. What's up?"

"I'm getting a National Journalism Award for my story on the elk!"

"That's great, honey! You deserve it!"

"I'm glad it went over so well. Listen, it's being presented at a formal dinner here in New York in about two weeks, and there's only one man I want for my date. Can you make it?"

"I have so much vacation time stockpiled it's not funny, and Les is going to love this. Nothing could keep me away."

Wendy sure looked different when she met me at LaGuardia. I wondered later if anyone thought the sight of a professional woman in a business suit tossing herself into the arms of a big cowboy was odd, but I told myself that stranger things can be seen there hourly. At the time, I was too busy kissing Wendy for the first time in far too long to worry about anything else. Under the suit she was still the beautiful, talented young reporter I had fallen so hard for. More beautiful than ever, in my opinion.

I was yawning by the time we got to her apartment.

"Listen, Wendy, I'm kind of jet lagged. Would it be OK if I took a shower and a nap and we started playing tourists tomorrow?"

"Sure, no problem. Bathroom's right over there."

I was luxuriating in the hot water with my eyes closed when I felt two warm hands slide around me from behind and turned. Wow. Wendy naked in the shower was about ten times better than my wildest dreams.

"What's this?"

"I seem to recall a certain scientist threatening to ruin me for all other men."

"You remember that?"

"Oh, I recall that whole evening in great detail. I've decided that emotionally you have ruined me for any other man, so you might as well finish the job."

With that her arms tightened around my neck, bringing her lovely pale pink nipples flat against my chest. She giggled as she kissed me.

"Is that a sausage in your pocket or are you glad to see me?"

"I don't have any pockets at the moment and I'm very glad to see you."

"I better check this out."

So she slid down my body. A couple minutes later I cleared my throat.

"Uh, honey?"

Her "Hmmm?" sent a shock through my whole body, given where her mouth was when she said it.

"Not that I'm complaining at all, but I thought I was going to ravage you, not vice versa."

She straightened for a second and kissed me again.

"You're going to get your turn, believe me. You're here for a week, right? I hope you've been eating your Wheaties! Now shut up and let me get back to what I was doing."

Can't argue with that. Eventually she straightened up again.

"You really have been missing me, haven't you?"

"Darling, I had no idea what I was missing. My turn now. I seem to recall threatening to toss you on a bed, but this shower seems to work pretty well too."

"I'm all yours, Jim, and you can take me wherever you want to. I have to tell you that a man who can manhandle me is pretty sexy to a girl as tall as I am, though."

So I carried her into her bedroom, giggling delightedly in my ear the whole way, and tossed her on the bed. Then I started kissing at her toes and worked my way up, pausing just below her neat dark red racing stripe until I felt her whole body convulsing in orgasm. Then I started upward again, trying to kiss each individual faint freckle. By the time I got to her face she was panting again.

"You weren't bluffing, were you?"

"I wouldn't bluff about something this important, sweetheart. How you doing?"

"There's only one thing missing to make this perfect."

She wrapped her long legs around me, grabbed that one thing, and guided it to where she wanted it. Sliding into her felt like coming home after a long, difficult journey. She was incredibly enthusiastic and responsive, each move one of us made spurring on the other until we reached a blinding simultaneous climax.

Snuggled up against me in the afterglow, I could feel her smile against my chest between the aftershocks.

"That really was perfect, wasn't it?"

"I think so, but we can try to improve on it later."

"I'm looking forward to it. You still interested in sharing that lookout tower of yours?"

I looked at her, startled. I hadn't pushed the idea of her moving to Oregon, fearing that if I forced her to choose between me and her career I would lose out either way.

"Hell, yes, but what about your career?"

"This award changes everything. It makes me a star, not just another new journalist trying to prove herself. That means I can negotiate my assignments and working conditions. I'm already getting more freelance assignment offers than I can keep up with. If you're willing to get me a good Internet connection and drive me to the airport once in a while, we can probably make this work. I'd rather watch golden eagles than crackheads out my office window any day."

An overwhelming feeling of warmth and happiness was spreading through me.

"Damn, honey, this is turning into the best day of my life."

"We got a lot of days left to go, cowboy, and you ain't seen nothing yet!"

I felt funny wearing a tuxedo for the award dinner. 'Socks on a rooster,' I could hear Les saying. Wendy said I looked sexy, though, and proved it in a way that left no doubts in my mind. Of course Wendy was heart-stoppingly beautiful in her formal gown. All the people who were there to congratulate her seemed fascinated to find her on the arm of the big cowboy biologist who had starred in the story. Nice friendly folks, though, and they all thought the world of her. Toward the end of the speeches they asked me to say a few words. I talked about the value of preserving wild spaces and wild animals, and tossed in a plug for preserving the program's funding.

"I can't add to what's already been said about what a great job Wendy did with this thing, since you all know good journalism better than I do. I just thank my lucky stars that the assignment landed on her desk. Lucky for the elk, and especially lucky for me that I got to know this incredible lady. I'm only one step short of being the luckiest man in the world."

I turned to her, took a deep breath, and pulled a small light blue box out of my pocket.

"Wendy, they tell me they haven't engraved your trophy yet. How about we make it say "Wendy MacNeil?'"

She stared at me in incomprehension for a second, her lips moving over the unfamiliar words. Then she screamed "YES!" and jumped into my arms, and the room erupted in cheers.

We had the wedding at a small white clapboard church in her hometown in Vermont. Les and Sharon brought Lindsay out to be a bridesmaid, and Wendy's adult girlfriends alternated between spoiling her and treating her like one of the girls. She thought she was in heaven. A good part of the honeymoon we spent driving across the country in a truck and horse trailer, hauling all her stuff to set up housekeeping with me. Sounds like a chore, but we had a great time. Les and Sharon threw one heck of a welcome home party down at the grange hall once we got there. Les got up toward the end.

"OK, folks, listen up! I told Jim that Wendy was one in a million and he'd better grab her while the grabbin's good, and I'm sure glad he listened to me for once!"

The room cheered ironically.

"Settle down, folks! Now, we called this a 'welcome home' party because as far as all of us who know her are concerned, Wendy's one of us and this is her home. We sure hope she'll be here a long time! And just to help her settle in we got her this."

He reached under the table and pulled out a box marked "Resistol". Wendy got up and kissed the old cowboy on the cheek, causing him to blush for the first time I had ever seen. Then she pulled out her new cowboy hat and put it on, winking at Sharon.

"Sorry, Mom, I couldn't resist. Look, folks, I know Jim's been bragging about some award I got back in New York for the story that first brought me out here. None of it makes me prouder, though, than being welcomed as one of you. I just hope I can make you proud, too!"

Ben's voice from the back of the hall, made louder by a few shots of Jack Daniels:

"Sweetheart, you already did!"

And for once the room cheered instead of booing him.

When we got home that night I went out on the deck and laid in the hammock to get some fresh air and make sure the stars were where I had left them. Wendy followed me a few minutes later, wearing her big sweatshirt. I pulled her into the hammock for a long kiss, discovering in the process that she had nothing on under the shirt. She propped herself on an elbow and ran a finger down my chest.

"You know, Jim, I spent a lot of lonely nights back in New York fantasizing about you and me in this hammock."

"Well, I intend to make all your dreams come true. Might be a little tricky to do in a hammock, though."

"I thought you had learned your lesson, big guy. Where there's a will there's a way!"

And sure enough, we found a couple.