Single in Sitka

by Katy Regnery

  “Umm...sure. But also, Whidbey...Coupeville...the house...all of it.”

  There’s something edgy—almost frantic—about her energy, so I answer carefully. “I do. Like I told you before, it’s a beautif—”

  “Because I love it here,” she blurts out, suddenly talking really fast. “I love it. I’ve always loved this island. I love the way I feel here. I love the people and the little towns. Did you know there are four movie theaters here? There are. And the schools in this town? They’re amazing. There’s one elementary school, one middle school, and one high school, so the kids all grow up with each other. And only two violent crimes in the past five years! Can you even believe that? There’s this terrific Dutch store in town, and it has the best chocolate I’ve ever tasted. And I love you, and I love your kids, including Chad, who used to hate me.” She pauses in her monologue and takes a quick breath, staring at me with wide eyes, her breasts rising and lowering quickly because she’s panting. “I love all of you.”

  I stare at her, wondering if she’s finished or just catching her breath. My mind is spinning. She just rattled off a ton of facts about this island, but I’m not sure where she’s going with this.

  “Baby, I love you t—”

  “It’s not a rental,” she says. “This house. I mean, it is. But it’s also mine. I mean, contingent on mutual sales and inspections, of course, but, yeah...” She pauses. “It’s mine.”

  I swear to God, I’m trying to catch up, but I’m having trouble. I’m still processing the extremely random “two violent crimes” and “Dutch store” facts, and now she’s saying something about this rental house being...hers?

  “W-Wait,” I say, leaning forward to take her hands in mine. “What are you saying? What’s going on here?”

  “This house,” she says.

  “This...vacation rental.”

  “I bought it.”

  My body goes slack. “What?”

  “It was a rental. That’s why it’s furnished. But I bought it. Well, actually, I’m in the process of buying it. I signed a contract and put down a down payment. It’s...mine. I live here. I own this house.”

  “Ummm.” I’m looking into her face, hanging on to the last thing she said. “You own this house.”

  “Yes, I just bought it.”

  “But you have an apartment in Seattle.”

  “Not anymore,” she says, grinning at me like she might be a little bit crazy. But I’m way too much in love with her to care if she’s crazy at this point.

  “You live...here.”

  “You wanted a solution,” she says.

  I squint at her while taking a deep breath. “Do you do this to Leigh?”

  “I do. Sometimes.” She laughs and nods. “Someday I’ll tell you all about how the bear story came to be.”

  “So...” It has become necessary to do a recap. I’ll do my best. “You love Whidbey Island.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the crime here is low and the schools are good.”

  “Yes!”

  “There’s, apparently, a terrific Dutch store in town. Plus, you love me and my kids.”

  “So much,” she says, squeezing my hands.

  “So you sold your apartment in Seattle and bought this house...for us.”

  “I didn’t want to totally overwhelm you,” she suddenly blurts out, “but also, Coupeville is the Island County seat, and there are several jobs currently available in the sheriff’s department, so if you’re willing to mov—”

  I release her hands, grab her face, and pull it toward mine. My mouth seizes hers, my tongue slipping between her lips to love hers. This woman. This woman isn’t just my miracle; she’s my answer, my future, and my forever. I pull her onto my lap, cradling her body as I kiss her, as my brain processes the fact that she found a place we could both love, where my children could be happy and safe, and she purchased a home for us. I have no idea what I did to deserve this grace, this bounty, but I will never take her for granted. I will never stop thanking God for her goodness in my life.

  She pulls away from me, cupping my face with her sweet hands and smiling at me, her lips slick not from wine but from me. And I’m helpless to do anything but hold her on my lap and—fuck—try not to break into fucking tears as she tells me why this is a good plan for us.

  “You see, right? This is it, Luke. Close enough to Seattle for me. An island for you. There’s a job waiting for you, and I’ll drive to mine twice a week. And it’s nice. And clean. And safe. And I know this house needs work, but you’re good with your hands. And—and I’m not asking for a ring—”

  “Baby,” I say, mesmerized by the wonderful that is this woman, “if you’ll say yes, I’ll get you a ring tomorrow.”

  She cocks her head to the side and smiles at me. Her voice is an emotional whisper when she says, “You ask, and I’ll say yes.”

  Mental note: buy a ring and ask Amanda to marry me as soon as possible.

  I lean forward until my forehead touches hers, and then I close my eyes and breathe. The salty air of the bay. A campfire nearby. The fir trees that border this house, that will soon be my home. And Amanda. My woman. My future wife. My life.

  “Yes,” I say. “Yes, to everything. To the island and the house and most of all, baby...to you.”

  As I kiss her, I gather her more firmly in my arms, then stand up, walking back into the dark bedroom and placing her gently on the bed. In a moment, my underwear is off, and her nightgown is on the floor. We are naked with each other. In every sense, we are bare. Because there are no major, immediate, unanswered concerns. There is only lightness—the buoyancy that comes from knowing that your life is about to make a significant step forward into tomorrow, and you can’t wait for tomorrow to come.

  I kiss her forehead and her cheeks, her lips and her throat. I make love to her with a reverence reserved for sacred unions that God has blessed and ordained. I feel the rightness of knowing I will bind my life to hers someday soon and the wholeness that comes from finally finding your place in the universe.

  My place is here, I think, holding her in my arms as she falls asleep beside me. My life is with you.

  Epilogue

  Six months later

  Amanda

  “Happy Valentine’s Day!”

  Luke wakes me up with a kiss, his arm flung over my bare hip and his warm feet tangled with mine in our bed. It’s cold outside, but in here, under warm blankets and a down comforter, I’m toasty.

  “Happy Valentine’s Day,” I mumble, snuggling closer to him. “Why are you up so early? It’s Saturday.”

  “It’s our first Valentine’s Day together. I wanted some time with you before the kids wake up.”

  I open my eyes and smile drowsily at my husband. “Why? What did you have in mind?”

  “Well, Mrs. Kingston,” says Luke, “I was thinking that I would make Valentine’s Day pancakes for all of us, but first, I wanted to give you your present.” He reaches under the bed, then places a white box with a red bow on the pillow between us. “Thank you for making my dreams come true. I love you.”

  “I love you too,” I say, propping myself up on one elbow.

  I untie the ribbon, then open the box to find a silver charm bracelet. Flanked by two silver bear charms is a row of four birthstones, and instantly there are tears in my eyes because I know their meaning at first sight.

  “The opal is for Chad,” he says, taking the bracelet from the box. I present my wrist to him, loving his thoughtfulness. “The garnet is for Gilly. The aquamarine is for Meg. And the emerald is for...”

  “The baby,” I say, admiring my new bracelet as I flatten my other hand over my swollen belly.

  “Since he’s due on May fourteenth, I figured I was safe getting you a May birthstone. Whether he’s two weeks late or two weeks early, it’ll still be May. Besides, if memory serves, emeralds are your favorite.”

  “You’re my favorite,” I say, reaching for his cheeks to pull his lips down to mine.
/>   There is a knock on our bedroom door, and just as Luke and I pull on the pajamas we keep stowed under our pillows, our kids race into the room and jump on the bed, demanding morning snuggles and an itinerary for the day.

  Luke sends the girls downstairs to set the table and Chad to heat up the stove, then pulls me back into his arms.

  “Still glad you married me?” he jokes.

  “Every second of every day,” I answer.

  He grins at me, kissing my forehead before sliding out of bed. “Come join us for breakfast?”

  “I’ll be there in a minute,” I say, watching him go and maybe marveling a little bit that a man who, not so long ago, was single in Sitka...is now mine.

  THE END

  (Excerpt from NOME-O SEEKS JULIET, An Odds Are Good standalone romance by Katy Regnery. All rights reserved.)

  Chapter 1

  Juliet

  NOME-O SEEKS JULIET

  *MUST LIKE DOGS*

  Musher.

  Fit. Single. 34.

  Never been married. No kids.

  Potentially cute. Sometimes cranky.

  I’m looking for a woman to race with me.

  Training available.

  “Potentially cute. Sometimes cranky,” I read aloud, rolling my eyes at Silvia. “What does that even mean?”

  “I don’t know, but who cares?” she says in her always-too-loud voice. “It’s your name, Juliet! It’s like he addressed to you.”

  “Um. No. He addressed it to desperate women everywhere.”

  “You’re so cynical.”

  I glance at the ad again. “It’s a play on words, Sil. He’s from Nome, so he’s calling himself “Nome-o” like Romeo from the Shakespe—”

  “I know it’s a play on words, Jules, I’m not stupid. But it’s your name and he’s exactly what you need. You have to answer this! Aren’t you intrigued?”

  He is definitely not what I need, and my roommate is officially bonkers.

  “No. Not really,” I say, pushing the magazine off my desk and onto hers to make room for my laptop.

  Silvia DiLeo, my classmate at the University of Minnesota, has been subscribing to The Odds Are Good for years. She has this bizarre dream that after we graduate from veterinary school, she’ll meet a hot Alaskan via personal ad, open a veterinary practice in the frigid north and live happily ever after.

  Now, I’m not one to shit on someone else’s dream, but the only part of that dream we have in common, is the graduating-from-veterinary-school bit...at which point I will return home to Montana and join my dad’s veterinary practice, and she can try her luck at hunting down at hot Alaskan.

  “Juliet!” says Silvia, tapping on the ad. “It says ‘Training available.’”

  “Yes, Sil, I can read.”

  “Your name.” She holds up a finger. “He’s a musher.” Finger number two joins the first. “And training is available,” she says, pushing all three fingers in my face. She nods her head with conviction. “It’s a sign.”

  “It’s not a sign. It’s a personal ad.”

  “Are you being purposely obtuse?”

  “Are you being purposely annoying?”

  “Juliet!” she says, exasperated with me. “Don’t you still want the fellowship?”

  “Thanks for pouring salt in the wound,” I say, giving her a look. “As you know, that ship has sailed.”

  Or will sail, I think, as soon as I send an e-mail to the Doc Staunton Fellowship Board, informing them that my plans for their grant have fallen through and I am no longer able to accept the money.

  “Only because the musher who was going to mentor you backed out of the arrangement. It’s not too late to find someone else...and voila! Here he is!”

  “Sil,” I say, trying to be patient with my well-meaning friend. “This guy is looking for a woman to date, not a vet student to mentor.”

  “So...date him, and I bet you learn everything you need to know.”

  “I don’t want to date him,” I say between clenched teeth. Take a breath. Be nice. “I wanted to shadow a professional musher for three months and then write a dissertation on the relationship between sled dogs and their owners, and how that relationship informs victory or defeat in competition.”

  “Right!” says Silvia, banging her desktop with gusto and continuing in a singsong voice. “♫ And if you answer this ad ♫ you can still do that.”

  I’m done talking about this. It’s absurd.

  “No.”

  “Want me to write to him for you?”

  I blink at her audacity. “Absolutely not!”

  “You’re impossible,” she says, swiping the magazine off her desk and jamming it into her backpack.

  No. You’re impossible, I think.

  I’m not naïve enough to believe that this conversation is over, but I’m relieved that it’s over for now. And just in time too.

  Professor Steinbuck enters the lecture hall from a side door, placing a folder on the podium centered in the front of the room and opening it to review his notes on today’s lesson: The Genetics of Canine Hip Dysplasia.

  He’s casually hot in jeans and a t-shirt, and I stare at him for an extra second, hoping that his gaze will rise to find mine. Alas, he concentrates solely on the information before him. That’s okay. We have a date—er, um, appointment—after class, which means I’ll have Glenn’s full attention later. Yum.

  While Silvia chats with the student on her left, I think about my recently dashed hopes for a kickass fellowship, and the fact that I do need to formally withdraw from participation by this Friday. It really sucks. Working with sled dogs has been my dream for as long I can remember, and I was thrilled when my proposal won the grant. It hurts to have to turn down the money now.

  Growing up as the daughter of a vet in Missoula, Montana, we spent a week up at Seeley Lake every February, volunteering for the Race to the Sky, Montana’s biggest sled dog race and an Iditarod qualifier.

  My older brother and I would help out the vet crew, mostly, but also assist the mushers in getting their dogs lined up at the starting line and, as we got older, run check-point locations along the race and act as vet technicians when needed.

  I know a lot about sled dog racing from the veterinary side, actually. The whole point of this fellowship was to learn everything I could about the relationships between dog and musher, so I could round out my understanding. And the best way to truly comprehend that relationship, I figured, was to live with a musher and his or her dogs for a period of time. To immerse myself in their world.

  My father’s friend and veteran musher, Steig Larsson, had agreed to let me spend three months on his ranch, helping at his kennels, and watching him prepare for the 2020 winter racing season. I wrote up my proposal for the Doc Staunton Fellowship in the spring, was notified in early-September that I’d won the grant and planned to spend most of this semester in Montana.

  Except...Steig called three days ago to back out of our agreement. A surprise stroke over the summer meant that his health wasn’t up to racing this year, and his doctor had insisted he take a year off. I quickly reached out to the few other mushers I knew who were actually located in Montana, but unfortunately, none were comfortable being “under the microscope” from October to January. Not to mention, none were close enough to Missoula for me to live at home and commute to their kennel, which means I would have had to room and board with them, a much bigger imposition.

  So, now, even though I have the fellowship grant, and my time away from school’s been approved, I no longer have a working project.

  It’s possible that today’s meeting with Glenn might lead to an amended proposal idea, but I don’t want to get my hopes up. Besides, with the way my feelings for Glenn have been growing since the semester started three weeks ago, maybe staying in Minnesota this fall wouldn’t be so bad.

  Just as I think this, Glenn looks up at me, his blue eyes lazy as they slide across my face. I shift in my seat as my body responds to his hot look.

>   Nope, staying in Minnesota might not be so bad, after all.

  ***

  Knock, knock.

  As my knuckles rap on the heavy wooden door, I glance at the brass plaque on the wall: Professor Glenn Steinbuck, DVM, PhD. One day my name will have the same letters following it, identifying me as a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine too, and it makes me smile just imagining it: Dr. Juliet Sanderson, DVM.

  I can hear him inside the office, speaking on the phone, I assume, and knock again.

  Knock, knock.

  The door opens, but my smile fades instantly as a gorgeous, young, female student lingers in the doorway. She leans against the doorframe in her too-tight sweater, her long, dark hair mussed and sexy.

  “Thanks, Professor,” she says. “For everything.”

  “You got it, Candace,” he says, using the pad of his thumb to swipe at his bottom lip. He clears his throat and grins at her. “I think you’ll have a great future in animal husbandry.”

  “Me too,” she hums, her voice low and silky. “Breeding’s my favorite.”

  Glenn chuckles, then notices me standing behind her. “Juliet! You’re here. You’re early!”

  “Am I? We said three, right?”

  Glenn looks at his watch. “And three it is...I guess I sorta lost track of time.”

  “Bye, Professor,” says Candace, smirking at me as she steps out of his office and heads down the hallway.

  “B-Bye, Candace,” says Glenn, raising his palm in farewell and straining his neck to watch her go.

  “Ah-hem.”

  Glenn’s eyes shoot back to me. “Juliet! Yes. Come in. Come in.”

  I smell it the second I enter the room and pull the door closed behind me: Sex. That odd, intense combination of someone else’s semen, vaginal lubrication and sweat. Glenn’s office windows take full advantage of the late-afternoon sun, so it’s hot in here, and every oxygen molecule holds on tightly to the pungent scent.

  I’m standing in the middle of a warm, smelly sex cave.

  Huh.

  It’s not that I thought Glenn and I were exclusive, but...

  Okay. I guess I thought Glenn and I were exclusive.

  Clearly, I am an idiot.