Free Her Ideal Man by Ruth Wind

Anna and Tyler stood and the mountainside where the rock lay was steep and unbreachable, and Anna thanked the saints for the stillness of the air, for the wolf seemed unaware of them as he looked out over the valley serenely, a wild creature in his wild world.
    Tears sprung to Anna’s eyes, and she simply drank the sight in, knowing the rarity of it. As long as she lived, she would likely never see such a thing again.
    In an awed, low voice, Tyler said, “There aren’t supposed to be any wolves in these mountains.”
    â€œAnd yet,” she said softly, “there he is.”
    â€œGod, he’s beautiful. I can barely breathe.”
    Anna nodded, squeezing her fingers on his arm where she yet held on to him.
    A sound in the woods behind the wolf alerted him, and in a flash he disappeared into the trees, whether in pursuit of prey or to avoid being prey, they would never know.
    Tyler turned to look down at her, and his eyes were the same colors as the wolf and the sky, grays all mingled together, a color as rare as the wolf itself. And this once, they were unguarded, and shining with rare happiness.
    Her heart gave a hard squeeze, and she knew with certainty that she could easily fall all the way in love with him, that her crush could slide from something superficial, based on a fantasy, to something as deep as the valley, if she wasn’t careful.
    But she was not cautious by nature, and there was a fierce joy in her that she had shared with him such a rare and beautiful thing, that for once she had glimpsed true joy in his eyes. “Wow,” she said, and grinned. “When you welcome a person to Colorado, you don’t mess around, do you?”
    Fine lines, made by wind and weather and bright mountain sunlight, fanned over his cheekbones as he grinned. “Well, I do what I can.” With a perplexed expression, he glanced back to the place where the wolf had lain. “I really didn’t think there were any wolves here anymore. It might be a mix or something.”
    â€œDon’t analyze it,” Anna said. “You’ll ruin it.”
    His smile was rueful. “Good advice.” He swung the pack from his shoulder. “Let’s eat something and head back down. I don’t want to get stuck up here if it starts to get windy.”
    â€œShould I get some branches to sit on?”
    Amazingly, Tyler actually chuckled as he pulled a small plastic tarp from the pack. “No, I was teasing. This is a hell of a lot easier.”
    They ate the sandwiches and drank coffee. Without the wind, it was not terribly cold, and the view nourished something inside Anna, something that had yearned for exactly this for as long as she could remember. “You know,” she said quietly, her gaze on the blue mountains, “I used to lie in my room, and outside there were sounds like cars and sirens and people talking as they walked by. Even in the quiet, it was never really quiet, you know?”
    He nodded.
    â€œSo I’d lie on my bed and remember the way the mountains smelled, that kind of spicy smell, and I’d think about sitting on a mountain, with all the Colorado sky above me, and all the colors, and most of all, the quiet.” She lifted a shoulder with a smile. “And here I am. It’s like a miracle.”
    â€œI have to be honest,” Tyler said. “I’m one of those natives who hates outsiders coming in. When I was about fourteen, we used to be pretty obnoxious to tourists. Rude, actually.” He paused to sip from the thermos. “And it really irritated me that my father built houses for them.”
    â€œIs that why you don’t work for your brother?”
    â€œI do some work for Lance. But that isn’t why I didn’t work for my father.”
    â€œWhat’s the difference?”
    â€œLance just loves building things. When he was a kid, he built things out of straws, and rocks, and toothpicks—whatever he could get