Northern Encounter

by Jennifer Labrecque

  “I THINK THAT’S THE BEST meal I ever had,” Tessa said, her eyes sparkling, her smile genuine and altogether sexy, as she and Clint made their way through the restaurant.

  Unfortunately for Clint, she eclipsed every other woman in the room. “Every meal is that way. Gus knows her way around a kitchen.”

  Across the room he spotted Bull with a woman who looked as if she’d taken a wrong turn on her way to a day at the spa—not your typical Good Riddance visitor. Glancing up, Bull caught Clint’s eye. The other man looked grim—well, a little grimmer than usual.

  Clint held the door for Tessa to precede him back into the air strip office. Dinner had been great and it was rather disconcerting how much he’d enjoyed her company. She had fit right in with Skye, Dalton, and Nelson. But he had to admit he was damn curious as to who had flown in with the Barbie over at the bar under these conditions.

  As he and Tessa walked into the airstrip office, they were clearly interrupting a conversation between Merrilee and an older man who looked very strange. Merrilee turned to face them, the smile on her face not quite reaching her eyes. “How was dinner?”

  At his side, Tessa glanced from Merrilee to the stranger, obviously sensing the same level of tension Clint had. “Great.”

  “Good, good. Tessa, Clint, this is Tad Weatherspoon. Tad, Clint Sisnuket and Tessa Bellingham. Clint’s one of our best local guides and Tessa flew in this afternoon from Tucson. She shoots and produces great ambient videos. In fact I’ve been enjoying one of her beach videos. It’s just like being at Orange Beach down in Alabama.”

  Weatherspoon? And Merrilee was talking a lot even for Merrilee. Tad Weatherspoon had shaken Merrilee and that was a pretty damn hard thing to do. He’d known Merrilee to be animated and outgoing but for the most part she was unflappable. Except now.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Tad said with a smile that revealed obviously over-bleached teeth. “I’m the reason Merry moved to Alaska. When she runs, she runs, wouldn’t you say?”

  Merrilee offered a tight smile. “A continent apart has proved to be a good plan.”

  Clint wasn’t even sure what to say to any of this. He opted for, “Well, we’re all glad she wound up here.”

  “Yep, Merry always was bossy as hell so having her own town to run is right up her alley. Say, if you’re a guide maybe you can show me and Jenna, my fiancée, around some this week. You probably saw her next door.” He smirked. “I can’t wait to see what Merry’s done with the place.”

  Merrilee jumped in before Clint could respond.

  “Clint’s booked for the week,” Merrilee said. “And I’m sure you don’t plan to be here very long.”

  Clint had the distinct impression a cat and mouse game was being played between Merrilee and her ex-husband. What wasn’t clear, however, was who was the mouse and who was the cat.

  “We’re flexible,” Tad said, shrugging and flashing his pearly whites once again. “Then I guess you’ll have to line us up with another tour guide…or you can always show us around yourself.”

  Merrilee forced a smile. “That’s not going to work out.”

  “Who knows, we might decide we like Good Riddance so much we don’t want to leave.”

  Clint glanced at Tessa who was watching the by-play with wide eyes. Things had certainly gotten interesting in Good Riddance in the past three hours.

  4

  TESSA ROLLED OVER AGAIN and glanced at the bedside clock. After midnight. She was tired. By all accounts and purposes she should already be asleep. Instead she was wide awake and restless.

  It was as if everyone she’d met tonight was flowing through her brain and she couldn’t stop thinking about them. She traveled frequently and met lots of new people, but she’d never felt as engaged by new acquaintances as she had with the citizens of Good Riddance.

  And at the top of the engaging-people heap was Clint Sisnuket who happened to be in the room next door. At least tonight there was a wall between them. Tomorrow night they’d be sharing a single-room cabin. The mere thought set her pulse racing.

  She hadn’t been prepared for the sheer impact when she met the man. Those dark eyes, the high, flat cheek bones, the beautiful hue of his skin, the glossy darkness of his hair, the rich cadence of his voice all tripped her trigger.

  And in return she couldn’t figure him out. He’d been almost hostile when she’d first met him, but then a couple of times over dinner, she could’ve sworn he was as attracted to her as she was to him. And she supposed in the long run none of it mattered because she was simply here to do her job and then move on to the next location.

  Feeling thoroughly out of sorts with herself and the fact that she couldn’t sleep, she pushed aside the quilt and sheet and climbed out of bed. It was chilly outside the covers but she welcomed the cold. She’d worn thick, wool, hiking socks in bed, and now that she was up, her feet felt warm. In an effort to pack light, she hadn’t bothered with pajamas and instead was sleeping in thermal bottoms and top. Wrapping her arms around her middle, she wandered over to the window and looked out.

  Outside the wind howled and snow swirled like white confetti being blown out of a machine. It took her a few seconds to realize that no lights lit the single street running through the town’s center. She rather liked the way it looked with just the rushing snow. Something she couldn’t name shifted inside her.

  Without giving it a second thought, she grabbed one of her cameras and started shooting through the window. It would probably never make it to one of her videos but she wanted it for herself because there was something very moving about the place at this moment.

  Satisfied with what she’d captured on film, she turned the camera off. As she leaned forward, her warm breath fogged the glass. She smiled at her whimsical impulse to trace her initials there the way she used to in the freezer section of the grocery store when she went shopping with her mother. There was definitely something about this room, this place, that evoked childhood memories, memories from the time before she lost her parents.

  Tessa put the camera away and crossed to the door. She cautiously opened it to the landing. Merrilee had given her room to the pilot—Tessa couldn’t remember his name—who’d flown in Merrilee’s ex-husband and his fiancée. Actually, Tessa was pretty sure Merrilee appreciated having an excuse not to sleep under the same roof with Tad Weatherspoon.

  Tessa didn’t blame Merrilee at all. Tad left a lot to be desired with his big mouth, hair plugs and spray-on tan. The couple was in the room at the opposite end of the hall.

  Moving quietly, Tessa eased her bedroom door closed behind her. She made her way down the hall to the communal bathroom guided by a hall nightlight and one in the bathroom, wincing when one of the floorboards creaked loudly beneath her weight.

  She finished her bathroom business and smiled as she washed her hands in the sink that replicated an old-fashioned wash basin. She liked Merrilee’s flannel-and-lace shower curtain. It brought a touch of whimsy and softened all the wood in the room without being overwhelmingly feminine and fussy.

  Tessa was returning to her room when Clint opened his door and stepped out.

  The hall quite suddenly became very tight quarters since he had obviously rolled out of bed and pulled on just a pair of blue jeans and flannel shirt. His jeans were zipped but his shirt hung open, revealing a broad chest well sculpted with muscle. Like men from many native cultures, he had very little body hair, or at least none she could see on his chest.

  Tessa forced herself not to stare in the low lighting but her heart thumped in her chest like a wild thing. She had only thought he was potently sexy before. Now she knew.

  “Excuse me,” she murmured, for lack of anything else to say. Something desperately needed to be said, otherwise she’d probably continue to stare at him like a hungry cat eyeing a tin of sardines. For crying out loud, you’d think she’d never seen a man with his shirt open. She had. Plenty of them, in fact. It was just that none of them had been this man and none of them had look
ed like he did.

  “Trouble sleeping?” he asked in a low tone. The shadowed hallway accentuated the angles and planes of his face, the intensity of his dark eyes.

  “A little.”

  “Merrilee keeps some herbal teas downstairs. I know there’s one for sleep. Give me a minute and I’ll take you downstairs and fix you up with a cup.”

  “Okay. I’ll wait at the top of the stairs.”

  He nodded. “I’ll be right back.”

  Tessa settled on the top step, listening to the quiet settling of the building beneath the snow’s weight and the relentless wind. The toilet flushed and the sink ran. Tessa rose to her feet when he opened the bathroom door. She looked anywhere but at him as he walked toward her.

  “I’ll go first,” he said, brushing past her. She supposed once a guide, always a guide, even if it was only a tea excursion.

  Once downstairs he flipped on a lamp and proceeded to set water to boil on a hotplate. He’d buttoned his shirt but she’d already seen what was underneath and couldn’t shake that image. She tried desperately not to stare at the man and instead busied herself checking out the framed pictures on the wall. She hugged herself and absent-mindedly rubbed her hands up and down her arms to ward off the cold.

  “If you’re chilly, take a seat in the rocker next to the stove,” he said. “Merrilee never lets the fire die all the way out. It’s too difficult to get going again and it gets pretty cold in here.”

  She abandoned the photos and sat in the padded rocker closest to the pot-bellied stove. For the first time since they’d come downstairs, she noticed Kobuk curled into a tight ball behind the other rocker, next to the back of the heat source. “It does feel good. The heat, that is.”

  Tessa hadn’t planned on running into him in the hallway and she was terribly aware of the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. The combination of cold and bare-chested man had her nipples standing at rigid attention. She’d keep her bra on at night for the rest of the trip. She brought her feet up to the rocker’s seat and hugged her knees, once again glad she’d packed heavy-duty socks. He was bare-footed. “Aren’t you cold?”

  He was putting two tea bags in mugs when he glanced over at her, a hint of a smile playing about his lips. “No. It’ll be much colder in the cabin where we’re staying tomorrow night, and don’t forget I have thick native blood.”

  “So, you’re immune to the cold?”

  “Certainly not immune but I’m used to it. This is a little different from Tucson, huh?”

  There was something intimate about being the only two awake and up in the middle of the night, preparing tea, and inanely discussing the weather. “Just a bit,” she said, offering a smile. “Snow is a pretty rare commodity for us there.”

  “Have you always lived in Tucson?” he asked, pouring the hot water into mugs. He sounded genuinely interested.

  “I was actually born in Kentucky but I moved when I was eight.”

  “Your dad got a job transfer?”

  “My parents were killed in a car crash and I went to live with my great-aunt and great-uncle in Tucson.”

  She’d found over the course of the years that the best approach was simply to state what had happened and then change the subject. “What about you? Have you always lived in Good Riddance?”

  He walked over, handing her a mug with a steeping tea bag and settled in the rocking chair on the other side of the stove. She was grateful for the space between them, glad he hadn’t sat in the chair immediately next to hers. “I spent a couple of years in Montreal as a kid and hated it. And I lived in Fair banks when I went to college. I didn’t hate it there but I was definitely ready to get back to Good Riddance.

  You either love it or hate it here. Good Riddance isn’t a place that evokes ambivalence.”

  “What was it that you hated about Montreal?” She cradled the mug in her hands, enjoying the warmth. “Was it the city versus wilderness thing?”

  “That was a factor, but the thing I really hated was the prejudice.” There was intent behind his straight forward gaze.

  He crossed his legs at his ankles and she rather inanely noted the nice shape of his bare feet.

  “That would be unpleasant. I’m guessing that isn’t a factor here in Good Riddance.” She blew on and cautiously sipped the tea. It was hot, but not too hot.

  “People here pretty much accept everyone else for who and what they are.” His hand engulfed his mug. She noticed he had broad and masculine hands and fingers. They looked powerful, strong, and capable. A shiver slid through her at the thought of him skimming his hands up her arms and cupping her shoulders, pulling her close to him. And those were dangerous thoughts to be entertaining over a cup of tea in the middle of the night.

  She strove for a light note. “It sounds like Utopia.”

  He shrugged, a sensual movement on him. “Utopia to some. God-forsaken to others. We’re fairly isolated and the winters are long, cold and dark. The nearest shopping mall is a plane trip away. There’s no fast food and night life is pretty limited.”

  She sensed he was repeating what had been said to him more than once. Tessa would bet a dollar to a donut somewhere along the line a woman had hurt him and it had been over Good Riddance.

  “You say that as if it’s a bad thing,” she said on a teasing note.

  He shot her a skeptical look. “You don’t think so?”

  “I haven’t really spent a whole lot of time thinking about it,” she said, pausing to seriously consider what it would be like to live without malls and fast food and instant shopping gratification. She thought aloud. “You know, growing up in Tucson and living there now, it’s just what I’m used to, but I really don’t think I’d miss it.”

  “Sometimes reality is a different animal to deal with when you start living it.”

  Even though he sounded neutral, Tessa couldn’t shake the sense that Clint had some private ax he was grinding. She was curious and altogether more convinced that it had something to do with a woman in his past. She was equally sure he wasn’t about to discuss anything that personal, which was a shame because he intrigued her more than any man she’d met before. Outside of his physical attractiveness, which was pretty potent, she was drawn to him on another level whether she wanted to be or not. And as it stood, that didn’t strike her as a particularly good thing.

  She shrugged a response to his reality comment. “True enough.” She wasn’t up for debating the topic. And it wasn’t as if it had anything to do with her anyway. She was here for the next five days and then she was off on her merry way.

  BULL ROLLED OVER AND wrapped his arm around Merrilee, pulling her tight against him in his king-sized bed. She snuggled against him, resting her arm on his. Bull’s beard teased against her neck with a comforting familiarity. Sadie, Bull’s rat terrier, lay curled against Merrilee’s feet at the foot of the bed.

  Outside his snug cabin on the outskirts of town, the wind howled in fury and Merrilee couldn’t help but think it portended things to come.

  It was here. The moment of reckoning she’d known was inevitable—the question that had loomed unspoken between them all evening, even after they’d gained the privacy of his place. Actually, this had been certain to happen eventually from the day she arrived.

  But now they were in bed and sleep wouldn’t come to either of them until the air was cleared.

  She should pipe up but she simply couldn’t. Like a coward, she lay wrapped in his quiet strength, drawing from it, and waited on Bull to ask.

  Bull broke the silence. “Why’s he here, Merrilee?”

  She didn’t ask who “he” was. There was no need. Damn him to hell but Tad Weatherspoon was clearly in bed with them now. “We didn’t get that far today, Bull.” She absently stroked her finger against the back of his forearm, tracing the sinewy muscle there.

  He stilled her with a hand to her finger. “Did you know he was coming?”

  “I had a feeling—”

  He cut her off. “And you didn�
��t think you might want to mention it to me? Hey, Bull, by the way, I suspect my ex is going to show up out of the blue after twenty-five years.”

  She wanted to shrink inside herself at Bull’s displeasure but she didn’t. This was going to get much worse before it got better and she’d learned long ago that shrinking inside herself didn’t do a damn bit of good. “I didn’t know for sure. I got a letter from him almost a month ago. He didn’t say he was coming, he just said it had been a long time and there were things we needed to discuss.”

  Bull shifted until he was on his side and she was on her back. She missed his arm around her. Even though the bedroom was dark, she could feel him gazing at her. “You’ve been divorced twenty-five years. What things do you need to discuss after all this time?”

  There was no easy lead-in, no easy approach, but she still tried. “Bull…sometimes…things get away from a person.” Despite the dark, she looked away from his face to the wall. “They go unsaid and after a while it’s as if it’s too late to say it.”

  He cupped her jaw in his hand, gently bringing her face back in his direction. “Merrilee, you know I love you, woman. Now tell me what it is that got away from you. Tell me what that asshole ex-husband of yours has flown all the way up here to discuss with you.”

  Merrilee drew a deep breath. Somewhere inside she’d known that sooner or later this reckoning would come. There were just some things you couldn’t run from.

  “I believe Tad came up here because he’s finally ready to give me a divorce. He’s not my ex-husband. He’s my husband.”

  5

  “FANTASTIC,” TESSA breathed, her video rolling, the following afternoon as Dalton Saunders banked the plane to the right, showcasing the rugged mountains beneath them. Sunlight reflected off of the snow-cloaked range.

  Earlier this morning it had been difficult to believe it was 8:00 a.m. when it was still dark outside, except for the light cast by the pale orb hanging in the sky.