An Alaskan Proposal

by Beth Carpenter

  “It is, isn’t it?”

  “I love you, Leith.” She slipped her arms around his neck and stood on tiptoe to kiss him. “And I always will.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Ten months later

  “MILEPOST TWENTY-EIGHT-POINT-SEVEN. Turn here.” Sabrina pointed at the sign and Leith turned in. As he drove, Sabrina ducked to peer through the windshield. “There it is, girls. Worthington Glacier.”

  Misty leaned forward from the back seat. “How can you tell it’s a glacier? It just looks like snow from here.”

  “When we get closer, you’ll be able to tell,” Leith assured her. He pulled into the parking lot. “You girls up for a short hike?”

  “Yeah!” Misty, Emma and the dogs spilled out of the back seat of the Land Cruiser. “Let’s go!”

  “You need shoes,” Sabrina pointed out to Misty. “Flip-flops don’t work for glaciers.”

  Misty laughed and nudged Emma. “Three days with my big sister and she’s already bossing me around.”

  “I’ll get your shoes for you.” Emma climbed back into the car and scrambled over the seat to dig Misty’s Cheetahs out from under a sleeping bag.

  “Thanks, squirt.” Misty held out her hand for a high five, and Emma slapped it. Misty kicked off her flip-flops and stepped into her sneakers. “There. I’m wearing shoes. Should I wear a sweater, too, and maybe pin mittens to my jacket?”

  Sabrina smirked. “As a matter of fact, yes, you should both wear sweaters because ice is cold. But you can probably skip the mittens.” Misty had been teasing her about acting like a big sister ever since Sabrina picked her up at the airport and asked if she ate dinner on the plane.

  Sabrina and Leith had been planning this visit for two months, since Misty called to announce she’d bought an airline ticket to Anchorage. Yesterday, after picking up Emma, they’d driven from Anchorage through the tunnel to Whittier, and loaded onto the Alaska Ferry. After a six-hour cruise past glaciers, seals and puffins, they’d disembarked in Valdez and camped out just outside of the town. They’d dined on hot dogs, roasted marshmallows for s’mores and made hot chocolate on Sabrina’s new camp stove. Leith had wowed Misty with his guitar skills. And Boomer and Emma found a chipmunk.

  Now they were driving back to Anchorage via the Glenn Highway and stopping to see the sights along the way. Once Misty and Emma had pulled on sweatshirts, they started along the trail toward the glacier with Boomer. Sabrina had managed to teach the terrier a few commands, but unlike Tal, he was prone to sudden fits of deafness when he spotted something interesting, so he had to stay on a leash. Leith and Sabrina followed with Tal heeling at Leith’s side. Leith reached for Sabrina’s hand. “Having fun?”

  “It’s been great. Misty and Emma are, too.”

  “If the level of giggles is anything to go by, they’re having a blast.”

  “Yeah, Misty’s getting a kick out of Emma. You know, this sibling thing is a lot of fun.”

  “Volta might disagree.”

  “Volta likes to tease, but she adores you. So does your niece. Oh, I just realized—someday if Misty has a baby, I’ll get a niece or nephew, too.”

  “And vice versa.”

  “Aunt Misty.” Sabrina grinned.

  As they got closer, they could start to see cracks exposing the deep blue ice through the outer white ice and snow on the surface. Emma and Misty stopped to look around while Leith and Sabrina caught up with them.

  “Wow. The ice is so blue!” Misty said. “Let’s take some pictures.”

  “Uncle Leith, can I borrow your phone for a selfie?” Emma asked.

  “Here you go. There’s an ice cave over that way.” Leith handed her the phone and Misty and Emma ran ahead, with Boomer at their heels, barking as he ran. Tal gave a whimper.

  Leith chuckled. “Fine, go with them.” Tal broke into a gallop to catch up with Boomer and the girls.

  Sabrina stepped closer to a blue fracture in the ice and pulled out her phone to take a photo. “Imagine a down jacket this color. The shell would be something smooth and icy-looking, maybe nylon with a satin finish. Instead of diamonds or boxes, we could use curved lines of quilting, like the way a glacier looks from above.”

  Leith slipped an arm around her waist. “It would look great on you.”

  She smiled at him. “You always say that.”

  “It’s always true. You could call it the glacier jacket. You’d sell a million of them.”

  “You think?”

  “People love your designs. I see the Talkeetna vest all over town. In fact, isn’t that lady over there wearing one?”

  Sabrina looked to where he was pointing. Sure enough, a tourist posing for a photo was dressed in Anne Li jeans, Caribou Pass hiking boots and the dusty plum version of the vest Sabrina had designed. Sabrina’s heart did a happy dance. This never got old.

  Judging from sales figures, the vests were almost as popular in the rest of the country as they were in Anchorage. The whole line was selling well, too. Sabrina’s contract would be up in two months, but she no longer feared it wouldn’t be renewed. In fact, Kate had hinted at the possibility of a bonus.

  “I think every woman at the Orson’s team-builder last month was wearing your vest,” Leith said.

  Sabrina smiled. “Walter ordered them for all the women employees.”

  “Your group looked pretty impressive in the shelter-building competition. You’ve come a long way since last year’s team-builder.”

  She gave him a playful nudge in the ribs. “Are you referring to the infamous exploding-bean incident?”

  “Not me.” He gave her waist a squeeze. “I’ve come a long way in the last year, too, since you came into my life.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah. Come with me. There’s something I want to show you.” Leith led her in the direction the girls had gone. The sun was shining, but a gentle breeze swept across the ice and chilled the air around them. Sabrina was glad to have Leith’s warm arm around her.

  They climbed over some loose rocks until they came to the ice cave. Fractured walls of azure ice, two stories tall, had melted into strange curves and shapes. A steady stream of melting water flowed away from the glacier.

  Sabrina tilted back her head to take it all in. “I love this. It’s like being inside of a diamond.”

  “Speaking of diamonds.” Leith pulled something from his pocket and knelt on one knee.

  Sabrina gasped and brought her hand to her mouth. “What’s this?”

  Leith opened the box. “Sabrina, I knew I’d always love you. What I didn’t realize is that every day we spent together that love would grow and grow. I want to make it official. Will you marry me?”

  The ring was beautiful, a sparkling diamond solitaire in a classic setting. “Leith, it’s gorgeous. I don’t know what to say.”

  He grinned. “‘Yes’ would be good before my knee freezes to the ice.”

  “Yes!” She grabbed his hands and pulled him up. “Yes, yes, yes!” She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him thoroughly. Giggles alerted her to the presence of Misty and Emma, who were busy snapping photos.

  Sabrina looked over at them without taking her arms from Leith’s neck. “Were you two in on this?”

  Misty just smiled, but Emma spilled the beans. “Uncle Leith showed us the ring this morning, but I promised not to say anything, so you’d be surprised.”

  “Good job, Emma. It was a wonderful surprise.”

  “Why don’t you try it on?” Leith slid the ring onto her finger. “Ah. Perfect fit.”

  Sabrina held out her hand, admiring the sparkle on her finger. It contrasted nicely with the pearlized pink of her nails.

  “Can I be in your wedding?” Emma asked.

  “Absolutely. Both of you. Come here. We need a group hug.”

  They hurried ove
r. After the hugs, Misty grabbed her hand and examined the ring. “It looks good on you. Your guy has excellent taste.”

  Emma’s eyes sparkled with excitement. “Mommy says when you’re married, you’ll be my aunt.”

  “That’s right. Won’t that be fun?”

  “Your uncle will be my brother-in-law,” Misty told Emma.

  “And we’ll be family forever and always, right, Uncle Leith?” Emma asked.

  “Yes, we will.” Those blue eyes, the same vivid color as the ice of the glacier, met Sabrina’s and held. “Forever and always.”

  * * *

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  High Country Christmas

  by Cynthia Thomason

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE NUMBERS WERE beginning to blur. Ava checked the clock on the wall and was shocked to see the hands indicating one o’clock in the morning. She’d been at this for three hours.

  The job would have been much easier if she’d had access to the computers of her deceased father’s paper mill company. But the current owner, her uncle Rudy, had denied her request. So Ava spent long hours trying to decipher the financial status of the business by slogging through ledgers the now-retired bookkeeper had painstakingly entered with a number two pencil. And all Ava had determined so far was that something wasn’t right. The numbers weren’t adding up, literally and figuratively.

  Elsie Vandergarten had been a crackerjack bookkeeper in the days when accountants were called by that job-specific name. Ava’s father, Raymond Cahill, had trusted her with accounting for every dollar the company took in. A software technician had begun transcribing the figures into the company’s computer more than five years ago to satisfy Raymond’s techie brother, Rudy. A newly hired comptroller had replaced Elsie when she retired over a year ago when Raymond died.

  And now, struggling to find out why her mother’s share of the profits had dwindled, Ava had taken it upon herself to examine the company books. Her brothers, Carter and Jace, trusted Ava because she’d always been known as the smartest of the three siblings. The boys figured she would unearth the truth about the creative bookkeeping, and she didn’t want to disappoint them, or herself.

  Ava leaned back in her desk chair, appreciating the comforting creak the chair’s gears made. For three hours her office at the Sawtooth Children’s Home had been reassuringly quiet. Nearly everyone else who lived on the sprawling campus was in bed or preparing for Monday’s classes. Ava dropped her glasses onto the desk blotter, closed the ledger and stuck it in a large bottom-tier drawer of her classic mahogany desk. She rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands.

  “Whatever you’re doing, Uncle Rudy, you are covering your tracks very well,” she said aloud. “But nobody’s perfect and I’ll find it.”

  Time for bed, she thought to herself.

  She stood from her desk and headed for the office exit. In moments she would be in her personal living quarters, a small but cheerful one-bedroom apartment carved out of unused space for the home’s chief administrator until she could find a nice house of her own. Having only been in this new job since September, Ava hadn’t yet had time for real estate shopping. But after living independently for so long in Charlotte, she was determined not to move back into her old room at the family farm. She stopped in front of a decorative mirror in the office to check the damages of her three-hour vigil.

  “Oh no, not another one,” she said, lifting her hand to grasp the spiky, coarse white hair that stood out from the others in her dark wispy bangs. “That’s the third one this month.”

  Ava didn’t consider herself vain, but really—three gray hairs in a month! She was only thirty-six years old, in good health and completely satisfied with her decision to leave the corporate world of finance in Charlotte. Returning to her mountain home of Holly River to manage the children’s facility, which had become a North Carolina treasure, had been the right decision for many reasons. Ava brought her professional business training to keep the school on a steady keel, and she enjoyed her association with the children and staff.

  She yanked the offending hair from the others and raked her fingers through the bangs which reached just to her eyebrows. Another quick look convinced her that all the other hairs were a comforting deep chestnut color. She turned off the office light and proceeded into the lobby and the doorway that led to her apartment.

  A sudden chilly draft caused Ava to stop. “Where is that coming from,” she said softly, knowing all the windows and doors of the administrative office, as well as all residences, were secured at night. The other door leading from the lobby, the one to the kitchen, was open. Unusual, but still that didn’t explain a cold late-November wind sweeping through the interior of the building. Nothing should be open, and the security system should have detected anything out of the ordinary.

  Ava listened carefully. Hearing no sound, she grabbed an oak walking stick from the umbrella stand by the door and ventured slowly into the hallway. Just a few short steps and she would be at the kitchen, the element of surprise on her side. A soft light guided her way. Nice, but there shouldn’t be a light in the kitchen at this hour.

  She gripped the walking stick, flexing her hand with each step. All the resident children lived with their “cottage parents” in smaller structures around the campus, so no one would be inclined to visit the main kitchen in the administration building, where Ava lived. All residents could go to their own, smaller kitchen if they needed a late-night snack. The administration kitchen was only used for staff lunches and group meetings.

  Ava walked through the kitchen doorway and stopped. The light she’d seen came from the open refrigerator door. A small, slight figure was crouched on the floor in front of the open door. He—or she—Ava couldn’t tell since the person was wearing a hoodie, was rifling through food items in the crisper drawer.

  Determining that she had probably four inches on the intruder and at least twenty pounds, Ava smacked the walking stick against the door frame and spoke loudly and forcefully. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  The intruder squawked in a decidedly female way, and fell back on her fanny. Jerking her head around so half he
r face was visible under the hood, she said, “Good grief, you scared the crap out of me!”

  Ava took a moment to process the offending remark before saying, “That’s hardly the point. Who are you and what are you doing in here?”

  The girl stood, yanked up her jacket zipper. “Nothing. I was just leaving. You can have your precious food all to yourself.”

  Using the walking stick, Ava blocked the girl’s exit from the kitchen to the backyard. She made a quick appraisal. The girl was thin but appeared healthy. Her skin glowed pink from being out in the elements on a chilly night.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Ava said. “If you’re hungry, I’ll fix you something to eat, but first I’m getting an explanation.”

  The girl seemed to weigh her options, and quickly decided that decent food was a fair trade for providing a reason for her breaking and entering, even if that reason were a lie. “Okay, I’ll eat.”

  “Sit down,” Ava said, pointing to one of the chairs surrounding the kitchen worktable. Ava took three eggs and some bacon from the fridge, placed a skillet on the stove and began preparing a meal. She kept one eye on the late-night guest while she cooked.

  “What’s your name?” she asked the girl.

  At first the intruder shrugged, but finally she said, “Taylor Grande.”

  Ava smiled to herself. “Is it a coincidence that your name is made up of two of today’s hottest female pop singers?”

  “Yeah. My mother had a crystal ball when I was born. She knew I would be famous and wanted to give me a head start.”

  Remembering the draft when a chill penetrated Ava’s bones, she went to the window and yanked down the glass. With a quick twist, she secured the window’s lock. “I assume this is how you got in.”

  “Yep.”

  “Wasn’t the window locked?”

  “No. Is it supposed to be?”

  “Of course it is. Plus, we have a dependable security system on every opening on every building on the campus. I should have heard an alarm. Our security chief should have registered the entry in his office.”