by Karen Harper
“So you’re here for a while. Well, don’t freeze to death. Now, I know a lot of movers and shakers in the fashion world of Manhattan, and they will love these. There may be an opportunity for you to sell them there, and I’d love to oversee that—no commission necessary, just something new and interesting to do. You see, ever since I had the horror and honor of watching Captain Sully Sullenberger save that planeload of people that went into the Hudson River ten years ago, I was inspired to help, too, though I’d never come up to that kind of a feat.”
“I’m grateful. Actually, I’ve been harassed on my website and had to shut it down for a while. But I’ll see it’s resurrected soon when I find some computer-savvy person here.”
“Here? Around Falls Lake?” Ginger asked so loudly Alex jumped. “Now there’s a challenge. Until Quinn helped to bring in those cell towers, this place was back in the last century, buried like that little village under the lake. As much as I can’t stand the airhead hanger-on who has attached herself to our videographer, Ryker, I have to agree with her that this place is pretty backwoods.”
“I noticed her when I first arrived. She does tend to stand out.”
“And she’d love to drag Ryker out of here, turn him into some sort of great Hollywood filmmaker. I told her, ‘Dream on and move on,’ but she’s stubborn. Now back to your website situation, not to play fairy godmother, but give me your email address, and I’ll have a tech contact you. He’s in Manhattan but that doesn’t matter. You do not need someone screwing up your life online or in real life, and I trust this man.”
“Better take her advice, whatever it is,” Geoff told Alex as he came over to the checkout counter with a carved and painted Merganser duck decoy in his hands. “I do, then Q-Man here takes my advice, right?” he asked Quinn.
“Absolutely, at least concerning business deals and scripts.”
Alex felt he watched her as she punched in the multiple purchases his friends had made. They all said goodbye, and she watched the three of them trek back toward Quinn’s car so he could drive them to the airport. Suddenly, she felt lonely and wished she could go with them. Ginger had been a bit overpowering but very kind. And she wasn’t sure when she’d see Quinn again since his new class of students reported in tomorrow.
Two more of the very men who would be moving from the lodge to the camp tomorrow meandered into the shop.
“So, that was Q-Man himself, right?” the austere-looking man with the crew cut asked. He had a pronounced German accent. “We got a bet on that, and we’d like to buy what he bought.”
She thought about making up a big list of items, but she told them, “Actually, I suggest buying some of his DVDs to take home with you. He brought those over himself yesterday.”
“Do you spray something in here with vinegar to make colors shine?” he asked, looking around.
Alex heard Spenser sneeze. She turned to see him wrinkle his nose as Buffy made another attempt to rake her ear with a back paw. It was then that she, so used to the scents in this small shop, realized how kind Ginger, Geoff and Quinn had been not to mention that the place must reek of vinegar and dogs. And for Ginger to say she’d take on representing the products with her friends. Whether they were from Manhattan, Germany or Falls Lake, this place made people kind, and Alex so appreciated that. Lyle had never seemed so far away.
* * *
On his way back from the airport, Quinn parked his truck at the lodge and trekked back to the gift shop again. Damn, but he was interested in the “More” the sign promised. He didn’t want Alex to bolt, but next week was going to be really busy, and surely it wouldn’t be too forward to ask her to go into town for dinner when he’d only known her a couple of days. And there were a few hours of daylight left.
If that didn’t fly, he’d try to stay at the lodge for dinner, but then he’d probably have cousins and dogs galore hanging on as well as Chip. He liked Chip, wanted a son of his own someday, but he’d need a wife first and what woman except the amazing Mary Spruce would want to live in a log cabin in a tracking and survival camp out in the wilds? He and Sam had kept themselves busy boiling bathwater for Ginger during her short stay. He was surprised Ginger had agreed to stay at the camp instead of insisting on the lodge or a place in town, but she’d given in to Geoff’s desire to “rough it.” No doubt that would be another story she could tell her friends besides seeing the “Miracle on the Hudson.”
Well, if he ever did take the plunge to get married, he’d get a house in town, real high living in a place with a population of about 420, but it did have two good places to eat. And he wanted to take Alexandra Collister to his favorite.
He saw she was just closing up. She had her little watchdog, Spenser, in one arm, but the lodge dog Buffy—the conehead—was nowhere in sight. She may be nervous and shy, but she seemed so right for this place.
It was nuts, but for the first time in years, even when he buried himself in work, he wanted a wife and family. He’d seen how devastated his mother had been by their family tragedy, how it had taken her years and a new love to climb out of the pit. He wondered if something tragic like that had happened to Alex.
“Quinn!” she called when she saw him. “Did they make their flight? Is everything all right?”
“They have their own plane, so it waits for them. But I was just wondering if it’s too late to ask you to go into town to dinner. There’s a good roadhouse-type place there.” He reached out, wanting to touch her but petting Spenser instead. At least the dog loved him.
“Oh. You mean tonight. I—I told Meg and Suze I’d eat with them and give them a demo of my products. You know, girls’ night.”
He almost wondered if that was an excuse, like “I have to wash my hair.”
“It’s my last night of real freedom for a week,” he said. “Days are busy, too.”
“I—I know. I met several of your current students, two men from Berlin. They talked about the schedule you set for them with lectures, demos, mini field trips and all.”
He put one hand on the door she had just locked, partly blocking her in against it.
“Queen Alexandra, I’m a very direct person, so I’ll just say this. I think we could be good friends, maybe more than that. But you seem skittish or elusive or maybe you just don’t want to spend time with me. How should I read this?”
She heaved a huge sigh and looked away, then back. “Quinn, I came here to escape someone I made a huge, stupid mistake with.”
“I’m not him.”
“I know. You certainly are not. It’s just—I messed up, really endangered myself. I need time to get myself together. I’m not good at handling emotions right now.”
“I understand. And if you don’t want to talk about it, we won’t. I can imagine it’s a lot to come to a very different, faraway place with baggage—you know what I mean. I’ve been running from blaming myself for something terrible for years, but life goes on. My mother eventually remarried, and she’s very happy.”
She looked up at him right in his eyes instead of shifting her gaze away. That hadn’t come out just right, so he hoped she got what he meant. Suzanne had mentioned that Alex hadn’t been married so she couldn’t be running from that. If she wasn’t going to tell him, he’d ask Suzanne or Meg.
“Quinn, thank you so much for asking me, and for being a friend to me and to Suze and Meg. Chip, too—he looks up to you. If—if I could just take a rain check...”
“When you’re ready—if you’re ready—let me know. See you sometime.”
He headed for his car, not going through the lodge but around the side to the parking lot. He didn’t look back. He was hoping she’d come after him or at least call his name to make him turn around.
But she didn’t. So, damn it, he didn’t.
9
“You did what?” Suze asked, pretending to fall back as if she were stunned. “Meg, this crazy woman turned
Quinn down for a date. Oh, sorry, hon,” she added, giving Alex a quick hug, “because I understand with all you’ve just been through—but dinner with Quinn instead of us sounds like a no-brainer!”
Meg was hovering now, too. The sun was down, and the common room mostly deserted since their guests had turned in early to prepare for their 7:00 a.m. start time at the tracking and survival camp. Chip had gone to bed, taking his two dogs, who slept in his room. He was happy to have Buffy out of her torture collar, as he called it. That meant Spenser was their only canine companion up this late, but he was snoozing by the empty hearth where he could still keep an eye on Alex.
“Sure, we understand,” Meg said, flopping into her seat at the dinner table where Suze had laid out a meal for the three of them. Large salads with salmon soup. “It’s just that Suze had a crush on him for years before she started dating that lawyer in town. And Q-Man seems hesitant to form emotional ties other than with Sam and Mary Spruce. He’s been close to Sam for a long time. Sam’s dad was like a second father to Quinn, taught him tracking. What was his name, Suze?”
“Tracker Jake—died way before we came here. He only passed his skills on to Sam and Quinn, evidently because Josh was too stubborn and refused to master tracking.”
“Josh doesn’t say much, as you may have noticed, Alex. He ekes out a living working here and for Sam and Quinn at the camp, but we heard he’s been making some money in online gaming contests of some sort. Who was it,” she asked Suze, “who told us he’d like to open up a gaming lounge in Anchorage? Sam or Mary?”
“Not my thing,” Suze said with a shrug. “Don’t remember.”
Alex wanted to hear more about Quinn, so she brought the conversation back around to him. “Quinn said something tragic happened in his past, during his childhood.” She was fishing for more information on Quinn’s early tragedy, but she didn’t want to blurt it out if he hadn’t told anyone around here.
“Did he tell you that, too?” Suze asked. “Already? We only found out about his childhood trauma when his mother visited here a couple of years ago. She read about a bear attack in the Yukon while she was here and then told us about her and Quinn’s loss. His father was mauled and killed by a bear—and Quinn found him. You think he would have become a hater and hunter of bears, instead of just a wildlife expert and tracker.”
Alex put her soupspoon back in the bowl. “When he warned me about bears and keeping Spenser out of the woods, he mentioned he’d lost his father and his own dog, a Scottie, to a bear attack, but said it was not in this area. And I certainly got the message it wasn’t a great topic to pursue.”
“His father was a real outdoorsman, I hear,” Meg added. “They were from Lansing, Michigan, but the dad loved Alaska, and they came for several summers before his dad died. I didn’t know about Quinn’s pet dog. No wonder he took to Spenser.”
“But,” Suze said to Meg as if the twins were finishing each other’s thoughts, “the miracle is Quinn took to Alex so fast. Well, I didn’t mean that quite like it came out.”
Alex said, “Did Quinn’s mother say that he at least partly blamed himself for tragedy, because he was hiding from his dad and that drew him in the direction where the bear attacked?”
“Oh, no!” Meg said as tears matted her eyelashes. “We didn’t know that. It’s like—well, Chip has never gotten over his father’s loss, even though he had nothing to do with the plane crash. He’ll say things like, ‘Mom, if it wasn’t my birthday, Dad wouldn’t have tried to fly home a day early in that bad weather.’ ‘Mom, maybe he was thinking about my new bike and wasn’t paying attention to his flying, just for that one second he hit the mountain.’”
The three of them grasped hands in the middle of the table and said nothing for a moment.
“So sorry, sis,” Suze said to Meg, “that so many things bring his loss back.”
Meg nodded, then whispered, “Let’s change the subject. This was supposed to be girls’ night, not a sobfest.”
Alex said, “I’m thankful I’m here. That you took me in and gave me your support and trust.”
They all wiped their eyes, blew noses and went back to eating cold soup. How Alex wished there were four of them here, that she had Allie with her in body and not just in spirit. And would she ever have the moment—the courage—to share with them the huge loss in her life? Not losing Lyle and her life back in Illinois, but losing her own twin sister.
* * *
Late the next afternoon, Alex not only minded the store but cleaned it, washing windows, sweeping the floor, dusting products. Poor Spenser sneezed more than once, and she did, too. The light wind was so fresh outside that she kept the door ajar while her little watchdog yawned and slept in the sun.
Very few customers came in today now that the lodge guests had moved to a bunkhouse down the road for their first day of tracker school. She wondered how the initial greetings and orientation were managed. Did Quinn do all the lecturing and demos or did Sam Spruce help, too? She’d had so little time to meet Sam.
Spenser gave a quick, double bark-bark so she knew someone was coming.
“Hey, hi!” a female voice called to her. Alex stood and turned around from where she’d been wiping off one of the lower storage shelves.
It was the videographer’s girlfriend, she of the frizzy hair and false eyelashes, Alex could see this close up. Spenser looked up, tilted his head, barked twice more in greeting, then when she came in, went back to sleep as if this visitor was not half as interesting as Alex thought she was.
“Hello. Sorry, I didn’t hear you coming,” she told the woman. “I’m just setting up the shop, making it my own since I arrived. I have some beauty products you might like—not that you need them, but I make them myself, so they’re unique.”
“Worth a lookie-look,” she said with a world-weary sigh as she sauntered in. “I am absolutely bored with the gift shops in this little berg of a town.”
She was not wearing her belted leather jacket this time but a hot-pink hoodie with the hood thrown back and the tightest jeans Alex had ever seen, especially around here where it seemed people went for comfort first. On Ginger a similar outfit had seemed natural, but this one—and the woman in it—looked even more out of place. With all that white-blond, curly hair, maybe she couldn’t have pulled the hood up, anyway.
“Welcome. I’m Alex,” she told her.
“Val Chambers, a California girl through and through. Oh, that’s a cute watchdog. I thought he was fake at first, you know, like a chi-chi doorstop—and some of those bark when you enter.”
She sighed again, ignored Spenser, who was sleeping, then frowned as she picked up various products and squinted to read the names and labels. Despite her large breasts, she was petite.
“I’m here because of a man—aren’t we all?” she said with a sigh. “Actually, my goal in life is to get the heck out of this Mayberry RFD place—with my man. Why are you here?”
Alex blinked at that. Yes, she was here because of a man, but not the way this woman meant, and no way was she going to confide in her. Spenser had been right to try to ignore her. He seemed to have a sixth sense about whom to trust.
“The women who own and run this lodge are relatives,” Alex said, “and I was glad to escape my hometown for a while.”
“Apparently, the winters around this place are deadly boring, so hope you’re planning on being here short term. Might as well be encased in ice, I hear. Mary Spruce says it’s lovely, affording time to rest and to spend with people, but I don’t pay much attention to her. It’s pretty obvious she wishes I’d disappear. Quinn, too—probably the whole lot of them. They’re being really selfish keeping an extremely talented man back, not to mention the salaries are pitiful around here, as I’m sure you know...” With a shake of her curly head she went back to surveying Alex’s products.
At least Ms. Val Chambers bought several lip balms and a skin cr
eam, though she shook her head and sighed at most of the merchandise as if it were way beneath her. Not a great way to make friends, Alex thought, so if this camera guy, Ryker, liked her, he must have a one-track mind for what she offered. No, that wasn’t fair, she scolded herself as the woman finally left. Alex leaned in the doorway to see her walk around the lodge without going in. In a few minutes she drove away in what looked to be a luxury car, so out of place around here.
Sitting on the tall wooden stool behind the counter in the sudden quiet, Alex started to nod off. At least that woman was right that it was another world here. So far from home...but where was home now? Strangely, she was starting to feel at home here...
She was running away to come here, running far across the country. Lyle was after her, reaching for her, shouting, “You are mine or the end! A plane will crash into the mountain, or a bear will eat you. I will find you! You cannot hide! The end!”
She heard someone give a little scream. Her head bobbed and jerked her awake. Oh, just a bad dream. So far she’d been successfully avoiding those.
She glanced over at Spenser, but the spot where he’d been sleeping held only sun on the cedar board floor. She got up and came around the counter to see if he was eating from his bowl she’d hidden in the corner. His leash was there, nicely curled up as she had left it. If he needed to go outside to use a tree or wanted to take a walk, the clever little guy had always brought it to her, as if to say, Let’s get going!
As her heart began to pound, she shook herself fully awake. “Spenser? Where are you?”
Surely he wouldn’t have gone outside on his own. She went to the door, which stood barely ajar, and opened it wide to glance outside.
“Spenser? Here, boy. Here, Spenser!”
She stepped outside. Maybe he’d gone outside, back to the lodge to find Chip. He loved Chip, even the other two dogs, and that made her think how he’d enjoy belonging to a family.
