Part One~~Maine

Her dark eyes flickered open. Her pulse was racing; she still felt the same melting sensations that she had just experienced in the dream. So many nights now she had dreamed the same dream of the same handsome man only this dream was different. He had actually touched her!
Placing her hand on the same cheek that he had touched in her dream, she closed her eyes and allowed herself to imagine that her hand was his and going even further, imagined that she was feeling his lips against hers...
Knowing that she must stop these fantasies, Jonell wrenched her eyes open and dropped her hand from her face. Instead of the handsome man, now the center of her attention was the sudden excitement filling her with the remembrance of what lay ahead of her, beginning today.
As she plumped the pillows more comfortably beneath her head and ran her hands along her satin comforter, she gazed toward the window and watched the sun etch its patterns through the lace at her windows, knowing that this would be the last morning in her bedroom for many months, perhaps even as long as a year.
That she would actually travel clear to the wilderness of Montana seemed hard to believe. She had fought hard to convince her father to allow a eighteen year old to travel with the party of butterfly hunters who were searching for rare butterflies.
Slipping out of her four-poster bed, her bare feet sinking into a thick carpet. Her floor length nightgown streamed along behind her. Jonell went to a full-length mirror and gazed intensely at herself. She ran her fingers over her face, studying her smooth brown skin, high cheekbones, and dark eyes. Then she ran her through her waist-length hair that was darker than charcoal.
Eager to get her day on its way, Jonell hurriedly dressed in black shorts and a white tee shirt and black hiking boots.
After she was dressed and her long, black hair was spilling down her back, she went to her desk and began sorting through papers and books, deciding which ones to take that would be the most valuable in her search for rare butterflies.
Choosing one and then another, she soon had more than one bag stuffed with journals and books. Smiling, she grabbed them up into her arms and left her bedroom.