“No, I’m annoyed because you’re a know-it-all.”
“For a woman supposedly without a broken heart you have no sense of humor and not a clue how to flirt.”
Ani had thought it was just the reflection off the sand, but the tiniest crinkle at the corners of Lisa’s eyes made it apparent she was being teased. “What if I don’t want to laugh? There’s global warming and the price of gas, you know.”
“Say melanoma in a group of surfers guaranteed to bring the vibe down.”
“I’m not going to win this battle of wits, am I?”
“No. Might as well give up.” Lisa opened the half-buried cooler. “Can I have the apple?”
“Sure, if you buy me an ice cream.”
“Buy your own ice cream!”
“Buy your own apple!”
“You’re incredibly boring.”
Lisa settled in to read Terrafrost. Ani wanted to ask her if she didn’t have plans or something, but she kept her mouth clamped shut.
Some time later, Lisa grunted and said, “Not a bad story. And I got stood up.”
“Whoever she is, she’s a fool.”
Lisa looked up from the magazine, eyelashes fluttering. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Don’t get used to it.” Ani continued giving most of her attention to an article on fly fishing near Bristol Bay. “What’s your last name, anyway?”
“Garretson. Yours is Bycall.”
Ani nodded and Lisa was finally quiet.
Someone like Lisa lounging on a towel tended to attract a lot of foot traffic. Guys and girls alike trolled past them. Half the girls Lisa seemed to know, but she was equally laconic with most of them, though a couple earned the kind of smart-ass teasing she’d dished out to Ani. Ani was blotting out the chitchat with another table of ice temperature data when a newcomer’s coy-kitten tone broke into her concentration.
“Don’t you look cozy?” The new arrival was sleek and tall, and sported a mane of golden bronze hair that had to have emptied a salon of its entire supply of extensions.
“Hello, Tina.” Lisa didn’t move, but her breathing had gone shallow. “Yes, I’m cozy.”
“It’s a shame we don’t see you around much anymore.”
“I’ve made a clean air environment a priority. For my health.”
“Remember Mindy?”
“How could I forget? The image of her skinny legs wrapped around you left me with retinal damage.”
Ani couldn’t see Lisa’s eyes, but she could have sworn that little fire bolts darted out of Tina’s. “Now that we’re living together she’s handcrafting me a board.”
“Something to do after getting canned from the board shop?”
The fire bolt eyes turned to Ani. “Who’s this?”
Ani answered, giving Tina a patently false smile, “Anidyr.”
Tina dismissed her with a blink, and went back to trying to burn a hole in Lisa. “Your dear Ani? I didn’t know you were dating finally, even after all this time.”
Ani had seen Tina’s excellence-in-bitchery type in the student union back home. When the sun rose at eleven a.m. and set four hours later practice with verbal knives passed the time. “We haven’t been dating for very long. It took me forever to convince her I wasn’t another lowlife.”
Tina made a face at both of them. She flicked some sand onto the towel and the reading material. “Taking a vacation to Alaska or something?”
She’s dying to know, Ani thought, which makes her still hung up on Lisa or a control freak stalker. Control freak stalker seemed more likely.
Lisa brushed the sand off the Alaska Today. “Yes, you’ve got it. I am in awe of your deductive abilities.”
“Before we go,” Ani said, “Lisa thought we ought to familiarize ourselves with the deterioration of oxygen isotopes and the rate of glaciation retreat.”
“Ani’s a geologist.” Lisa smiled sweetly. “I’m sure with her help I can work my way up from ablation of the ice cap to the proper use of a surf wax comb.”
Tina tossed her hair, which was no small feat. “Whatever. See you on the curl that is, if you can still get your ass up on a board.” She stalked off, her hair blotting out the setting sun.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Lisa said. “Now I owe you.”
“It was self-defense. She was standing in my reading light.”
The tension in Lisa’s body eased. “I used to think she was a big deal. I was flattered she even noticed me.”
“And then you figured out she was a bitch?”
“No, then I fell for her and we moved in together.”
“And then you figured out she was a bitch?”
“No, then I did her laundry for thirteen months, eleven days.”
“And then you figured out she was a bitch?”
“No, then I walked in on her and that skinny, empty-headed surfboard waxer.”
“And then you figured out she was a bitch?”
“Yes.”
“Only took me thirty seconds.”
If Lisa had been wearing glasses, she’d have been giving Ani a stern look over the top of them. “Your point?”
“Battle of wits…tie score.”
“Fine.” Lisa heaved a long-suffering sigh. “You know how they say that sometimes a person is meant to be a better friend than a lover? She wasn’t even a good friend.”
“Or a good lover?”
“I didn’t say that. Why do you think I stayed for so long?” She dusted off her hands with an aura of dispelling evil spirits. “Can I watch the fireworks with you?”
“Sure. As long as it’s not a date.”
“Can’t be.” Lisa opened the magazine in her lap. “I don’t date anyone I like.”
Ani laughed and reached into the messenger bag. “You’ve read that one. Have a local tabloid. The police blotter is always fascinating reading. Close encounters between cars and moose, that sort of thing.”
Lisa flipped open the first few pages. “I’m riveted. Hey, professors in Alaska are pretty darned hot. Did you ever study under this one?”
Ani glanced at the photograph Lisa was tapping and said, “No.”
After a raised-eyebrow look, Lisa refocused on the page. “Okay. If you say so.”
“I do.” Not the way you mean it, Ani thought.
“Okay. I believe you.”
Ani went back to her data, but she saw none of it.
Monica Tyndell was as beautiful as ever. So was Eve. And they looked very happy, arms around each other’s waists.
“You don’t do fireworks in Alaska?” Lisa stretched and shifted on the towel, the newspaper still in her lap, even though the sunlight had faded thirty minutes ago.
It was all Ani could do not to snatch it up. “We do them, they’re just not all that successful. Things happen to the properties of chemicals when they’re catapulted into sub-freezing air layers.”
“That makes sense. Same thing happens to women who hit on you, too.”
“That’s right, I’m frigid. Sub-freezing.”
“Like hell you are first one!” Lisa’s squeal was all-child at the first big burst of golden sparks.
To Ani’s relief, the fireworks were enough to distract Lisa from another dissection of Ani’s love life. The sliver of crescent moon was almost set, and within moments the night sky was brilliant with cascades of colors under the sparkle of white stars.
For a while neither of them said more than “Wow” and “Good one!” The rapidity of the launches increased.
“Green’s my favorite,” Lisa shouted over the sustained barrage of explosions. “Like ocean in the sky. I think this is the finale.” The fountain of emerald ribbons was replaced with starbursts of burning pink.
Ani’s agreement was drowned out by the sustained popping of mortars. A resounding, beach-shaking boom was followed by a brilliant white wash of sparklers dripping from sky to ocean.
Ani closed her eyes, sensing the resonance of the explosion from t
he sand underneath her. Her skin could feel the heavy blanket her father had used as a shock and sound wave buffer. She could hear his voice, plain as day.
“See, Ani? Did you feel the difference? Dynamite sounds different from Tovex.”
“I could tell, Dad.” She’d watched her breath form in the air under the blanket. “It made a deeper sound does it penetrate deeper, too?”
“Take a look.” Her father had flung back the blanket, leaving Ani to blink in the dazzling summer sunlight. “What do you think?”
Ani trained her binoculars on the glacier wall more than two football fields away. A large fissure had been opened. The shadows and intermittent presence of blue ice said it ran deep, much deeper than the fissure the earlier blast with Tovex had opened. “I see it. How come they want you to give up using dynamite?”
“Water-gel compounds are more stable, especially at these temperatures. Tovex can be much more subtle, and sometimes that’s good. Several small charges can be more predictable in results.”
Ani glanced at her father, meeting the gaze from the same snapping black eyes that stared back at her from mirrors. “You’d prefer to stick with dynamite.”
He nodded. “Yes, but if I want to keep working, I need to be open to different ways. Let’s get the last blast done, Ani-my-dear.”
“Can I press the button?” Her father had laughed and handed her the controls as they crawled back under the protective blanket.
Lisa smacked Ani on the arm, jarring her out of her reverie. “This is the best one I’ve seen down here.”
“Me too,” she said automatically.
There wasn’t bone-freezing ice under her and the concussions from another barrage of fireworks wasn’t followed by the endless rumble of a glacial ice crystals breaking and falling into packed ice below. In spite of the heat still rising from the sand, Ani’s arms were covered in goosebumps.
It wasn’t that late when Lisa disappeared on foot toward her own bungalow, not far from the beach. Ani packed up her belongings, found her scooter and headed for home, telling herself not to speed. Once in her door she made her way to the table, dumped out the contents of her messenger bag and opened up the Fairbanks Gazette.
Right there. Monica and Eve, with Monica’s arm casually around Eve’s waist. Eve had let her hair grow a little longer, but it was much the same curly and light. She was almost the same height as Monica. Her ear had nestled perfectly just below Ani’s shoulder when they’d hugged and Eve had been given to secretly smooching Ani’s neck during otherwise casual looking embraces. She devoured the photograph with her eyes, then finally made herself read the caption. Braced for it, the words still took her breath away.
University of Fairbanks Professor Monica Tyndell and local chef Eve Cambra celebrate their partnership outside of the new Dragonfly restaurant in North Pole.
Eve had always wanted a restaurant of her own. “I’d open it in North Pole,” she’d said, her voice drowsy as she nestled against Ani’s shoulder. “A short commute and lots of military folk.”
Ani had laughed and pulled the covers around them. “I can hear the ad now. Box lunch at Eve’s, across from Dyke Range, oops we mean Fort Wainwright.”
Eve giggled softly in her ear. “Crude. Funny, but crude.”
“I was raised in the society of men. Dad, buncha guys who liked to climb around on glaciers and sometimes blow up parts.”
One knowing fingertip drifted along Ani’s arm, sending tingles all the way to Ani’s toes. “I’m glad to show you what you were missing out on.”
Ani spread Eve’s lustrous golden hair on the pillow, loving the way the midnight sun turned it bronze. “I always knew I was missing out on women.” She brushed her lips against Eve’s. “But life didn’t get good until I realized what I was really missing was you.”
“Sweet,” Eve had murmured. “Show me.”
Ani had shown her, shown her every way she could think of. Loved her, wanted her, lived for smiles from her. Watched the play of red and green aurora over Eve’s face as they danced on a glacier at three o’clock in the morning.
Now Eve was with Monica. Monica was an amazing woman, a gifted and talented one, the type of woman that someone like Eve deserved.
She made herself memorize the photograph of the two of them. They looked good together. She played back in her head Lisa’s offhand remark: You broke her heart and took off so you didn’t have to watch her suffer.
Maybe that was exactly what she’d done. She didn’t want to see Eve suffer, and the disappointment in Monica’s eyes had cut her ego to ribbons. Now they were better off. At least they’d moved on.
She could do the same, now that she knew. She could leave them be, finally, and move on herself. It was a relief. Crawling into bed, she told herself that she had warm, sensuous Key West nights all to herself, no more regrets. It had all worked out for the best.
Covers pulled up around her ears, arms wrapped tight around a pillow—none of it helped. Cold to her core, she was still shivering when she finally fell asleep.
Chapter 2
Eve Cambra didn’t want to wake up, but her brain was already telling her she had to. Tonk, nudging her hand with his wet nose, was telling her the same thing.
“Stop it, dog.” She swallowed several times to ease her dry throat, then opened one eye. The alarm clock had gone off, and Tonk was regarding her with concern. “I’m awake. You don’t have to breathe on me.”
For an answer Tonk gave her fingers one last nuzzle, then subsided with a sighing moan to his cushion. For a Newfoundland, nine was well past middle age, but he still did his job, which was looking out for her. She leaned out of the bed to tickle Tonk’s ears and was rewarded with a pleased sigh.
Naps in mid-afternoon always left her feeling thick-headed, especially when the sun was up. In July, midsummer, the sun was always up. She made herself take a shower, loathing the shock to her system, but she wouldn’t get a chance later. She had to stay up late tonight and work her last catering commitment for a Fourth of July wedding, booked six months ago. She was a restaurateur now, and a successful one. It had said so in the paper.
Tonk followed her from the bright whites and greens of her bedroom to the big kitchen where more sunshine streamed in, illuminating every nick in the pine floors and counters. Now that she had the restaurant, she would no longer need the large appliances and workhorse pots and pans, and having the wood surfaces sanded and refinished was high on her list of things to do once the Dragonfly provided a little more excess income.
After brewing a more than decent cup of tea, she set about washing and chopping spinach and buttering phyllo for spanakopita triangles. Two assistants would arrive in the next hour to do the last of the assembly. At the reception hall they’d do the final touches, like searing tuna and toasting hors d’oeuvres.
Earpiece firmly in place, she cued up a call to the restaurant. “Hey Neeka how is everyone doing?”
“Boss, we’re fine. Did you get a nap?”
“Yes, I got a nap. Now I’m cooking.”
“Did you need something?”
Eve could picture Neeka leaning over the big stove, looking peeved at the interruption. “Just reassurance.”
“Consider yourself reassured. There weren’t enough apples for the whole dinner service, so I changed the special to cobbler with ice cream, and we’ll serve eighteen slices out of a pan instead of twelve.”
“Oh. Do we have enough ice cream?”
“I checked. Yes.”
Eve hated not making decisions like that, but she was trying to learn good management. Neeka had made the right move. “That sounds fine, then. Thank you for adapting.”
Neeka seemed mollified that Eve hadn’t called up to criticize her abilities. “John Russ rang about the rhubarb. Thinks it’ll come in middle of next week.”
“Fantastic. What did he say about his summer squash?”
Neeka filled Eve in on what appeared to have been a long, chatty exchange with an owner of one of
the series of greenhouse farms located in the fifteen miles that separated North Pole from Fairbanks. The growers’ close and cooperative nurturing of their resources kept the area supplied year-round with produce, eggs and goats’ milk. After finishing the chat with Neeka, Eve unwrapped a chub of fresh goat cheese from Delaney Farms. She inhaled the sharp tang and tasted a sliver. Dandy. She happily divided it up for hors d’oeuvres, salad dressing and an artisan cheese and fruit plate.
She paused in her prep work long enough to write down a reminder to check back with the woman who had been trying to launch a chocolate wholesale business. Middle of winter, when it was averaging twenty-below, Eve was hoping the Dragonfly was on everyone’s mind for the most incredible hot chocolate they’d ever had, along with a slice of rich winter stollen. Tourists were the profits in a restaurant like hers, but she wouldn’t make her overhead if locals didn’t drop in all year round.
She kneaded, squeezed, chopped and sliced while she did sums in her head. Tourists wanted variety and local flavors. Locals wanted value and something they couldn’t make themselves. Her first winter was vital to her survival. Menus drifted through her head as she spooned fillings into flatbread boats, slivered roasted peppers onto canapés, and gutted avocados. Slowly the trays filled, and she was really glad to hear the putter of Bennie’s Jeep in the driveway.
Tonk clanked to the side door and let out a deep bark of hello. Bennie was welcome any time, in Tonk’s opinion.
Bennie spared a greeting for Eve, then went to his knees. “Hey there, boy, who’s a lover, who’s a lover... that’s right, get it out of the way now before I have to wash my hands and face. Okay, okay, that’s enough slobber.” He got back to his feet, and shucked his shoes near Tonk’s bed. “I’d steal that dog from you if I could afford to feed him.”
Eve watched Tonk plop down in his bed and stretch out so his head was on Bennie’s sneakers. Right on cue, noises of Newfie euphoria were audible. “Tonk would love it, as long as he got to sniff your shoes.”
“That would be sort of embarrassing in front of a date,” Bennie admitted. He was no taller than Eve’s five-seven, but outweighed her by at least thirty pounds. “I can’t find a guy who’ll do that for me.”
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