Maria had watched as the woman cut loose a verbal barrage. But when she was in his face, he sobered. Without hearing a word she suspected that the woman was reminding him that he had a son, a family, and responsibilities. A trip to the hospital was not what their little family needed. The look in his face, the honest appraisal of what he was being told gave Maria some information.

Reluctantly she had admitted there was some good in this timber-industry mouthpiece. Maybe it wasn’t much, but something. Then she had seen him at the demonstration, where they had argued up close and personal. But as ugly as their verbal sparring became, spurred on by her blood-red anger and his I-fear-nothing determination, she still secretly liked him at the end. It was something she didn’t understand about herself and didn’t want to understand.

Getting involved further with him, even casual conversation, would not be practical, she knew. Practical. According to her father, she wasn’t at all practical, and she was still trying to figure out exactly what that meant.

Living in an Alaskan cabin wasn’t practical, but it was good, it was uncluttered, it was simple

and it enabled her to form visions of herself and her life. She lived free of the noise of civilization. The hardness of the place, the relentless cold, the back-breaking work, the isolation, the energy that she had to expend on preparing a simple meal, all had enabled her to see things that couldn’t be seen on a hillside mansion in southern California. The impractical sometimes bore fruit. She wasn’t sure that she ever wanted to be practical.

For a good part of her life she had been considered attractive. Perhaps before her teens people thought of her as an ungainly and skinny tomboy with braces unless their eye had some discernment. With her breasts and the elongation of her torso and legs she became beautiful. But still it was a beauty that was off the beaten path and depended to some extent on her smile and an inner something that beamed out of her countenance. Some said she was vivacious, others that she was a natural inspiration.

Maria’s mouth was a little large, her lips full, and after the braces her teeth were sensational. If anything was ordinary about her it was her brunette hair and a hairline that was not perfectly

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