He headed for the kitchen and Anna was left staring at the fire again. She'd had this problem all of her life: men ignoring her wishes, brushing off her ideas and suggestions like cobwebs, always "knowing" what was good for her. Anna sighed and took another sip of the terrible tea. Too bad. It would be nice to meet a man who wasn't so full of himself. She knew they were out there; she just hadn't been able to find any in her neck of the woods.
And maybe that was the problem— the woods. Logging was physical, dangerous, demanding work. It took a keen intelligence to succeed in this industry, as well as the ability to make difficult decisions and live with them. And since bad decisions could result in failure or even death, the men who worked the woods were a cocky, confident bunch. They had to be, in order to survive.
And that little trait spilled over to the rest of their lives. Even in this day and age, women were still the partner who stayed at home, kept the fires burning, and raised the babies. It was okay for wives to have jobs to supplement the family income, but those jobs were always secondary. Women could waitress and keep books and even occasionally drive the trucks that brought the logs to the mills; they could not, however, be in positions of power.
Which was why her job at Loon Cove Lumber was so precarious. Which was also why she was going to have a tough time with her new boss. The man in her kitchen would be watching every move, just waiting for her to give him a reason to fire her.
Oh, yes. Her new tenant was just as autocratic, just as infuriatingly male minded as the rest of them. He was staying the night to oversee her recovery, he'd just appointed himself watchdog of her ghost per Tom Bishop's suggestion, and he was going to butt in where he wasn't wanted— all because he "knew" what she needed for her own good.
"Hey! Get out of here, you furry weasel!" came Ethan's shout from the kitchen.
Anna smiled. Her flying squirrel wanted supper. They were nocturnal creatures and Casper usually came looking for his share of treats after the lights went out, but the storm must have made him impatient, and he was trying to filch whatever meal Ethan was making.
"Segee! There's more wildlife in your home than in a nature preserve. It's a wonder you don't have rabies." He walked into the living room, a tray in his hands and a scowl on his face.
"You don't have little critters on your side of the lake?" she asked, taking a sandwich from the tray he held to her.
"In the woods, not our house."
She separated a piece of her sandwich and shared it with Bear, then took a giant bite for herself. "Casper probably smelled the peanut butter," she said, her mouth full of sandwich. She washed it down with the terrible tea and took another bite.
"Casper would be the little varmint who hasn't grown into his skin yet?"
"He's a flying squirrel," she explained around another mouthful, licking her fingers as she eyed the tray sitting on the table beside him. "You going to share that soup?"
He stopped with his sandwich halfway to his mouth. "You said you weren't hungry."
"I lied."
He shook his head. "That's a bad habit to get into, Segee."
"Whatever works, Knight."
He nodded at her reminder and handed her a bowl of soup. "Did you know Samuel Fox very well?" he asked, tossing another log on the fire before making himself comfortable again. "You said your truck went off the road in the same place his did."
Anna blew on her bowl of soup and decided not to answer his question. "Yes, it was the exact same spot, according to what I was told. They didn't find him for two days. They said there was barely any snow then, so the crash must have been even more violent than mine. I hope he didn't suffer."
"He probably died instantly. He was eighty, wasn't he?"
"Eighty-three… I was told."
He nodded. "Then he would have been too frail to survive the wreck. Did you buy Fox Run from his daughter? Madeline's her name, I think." He suddenly chuckled. "There's no telling what her last name is by now."
"What do you mean by that?"
Ethan's grin widened. "Madeline Fox was on her sixth or seventh husband, last I heard." He looked past Anna's shoulder, his thoughts obviously turned inward. "She had a daughter named Abby. Abby Fox would be about seven or eight years older than you." He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Did you meet her when you signed the papers to purchase Fox Run? She wasn't at Samuel's funeral," He looked off, his eyes distant again. "I was hoping to see her."
How the hell old did he think she was? Anna decided the conversation was straying into dangerous territory. "Everything was done through a lawyer in Quebec. I don't understand it," she quickly added, wanting to change the subject. "Since I've been here, I've been watching that spot where Samuel went off the road, but I've never seen ice there until tonight. If it's a spring, it's not always running."
He shrugged as he chewed, then swallowed his food. "Springs can be fickle."
"Why did your family buy Loon Cove Lumber? My crew told me you Knights own several hundred thousand acres of timberland. Why get into sawing?"
"My dad thought we should diversify." He ate another bite, then picked up his soup. "We could see the outlets for our timber drying up, so rather than send our logs to Canada to be milled, we decided to buy our own mill."
"You'll still have to compete with Canadian lumber."
"With your family?" he asked with a grin.
She didn't smile back. "Yes."
"You could give us an edge with inside information."
"I'm mad at my family, not vindictive."
He nodded concession. "I find it hard to believe they'd let you move here all by yourself."
"They couldn't exactly lock me in my room."
"I would have, if you were my sister. Hell, you must have just barely graduated from high school."
Anna choked on her soup.
"Are you even through school?"
Anna set down her bowl on the hearth, fighting the blush creeping into her cheeks. "I'm old enough to know what I'm doing, Mr. Knight, and I have worked in mill and logging yards since I was fifteen. There isn't a piece of machinery I can't run or a problem I can't solve when it comes to sawing. For the last five years I've worked in one of my family's mills in Quebec and earned the respect of every man there the hard way— by being reliable in a crisis."
"Then what are you doing here?"
"Marching to the beat of my own drum," she said. "My father's so set in his ways, there's no future for me at Segee Logging and Lumber. My brothers will inherit the business."
Ethan snorted and leaned back in his chair. "I'm sure you won't be left sitting on a sidewalk with a tin cup in your hand."
"Oh, I'll be taken care of for the rest of my life. My family will buy me vehicles, a house, even a husband if I decide I want one. But they won't let me make decisions, run my own mill, or help move our operation into the twenty-first century."
His eyes widened. "You don't expect to put this place back into operation, do you?"
"Why not?"
"It's a rotting pile of buildings."
"With enough land to give me plenty of leverage."
His eyebrows drew together. "Leverage for what?"
"There's nearly a mile of shore frontage on Frost Lake. I could build a campground or sporting camps, or use it as collateral to buy more timberland."
"That's ridiculous."
"And then there's my family's leverage," she continued, ignoring his remark. "They love me, they just don't know what to do with me. I could use Fox Run to buy myself a place in Segee Logging and Lumber."
He shook his head. "You can't buy family acceptance, Anna. It doesn't work that way."
"Says the man whose own family banished him to Loon Cove Lumber."
He stood up with a scowl. "I volunteered," he muttered, gathering up the dishes. "Grady's too old, Paul's too busy chasing women, and Alex couldn't very well uproot his family."
Anna handed him her bowl. "But you don't want to be a millwright, do you?"
"I'd rather be working in the woods. I have no desire to shuffle papers and fight loggers over the price of timber."
"There's a lot more to it than that."
He stopped in the kitchen doorway and looked back. "Yeah. There's dealing with a female foreman who dresses like Paul Bunyan and looks like she should be worrying about what to wear to her senior prom."
* * *
Well, he'd won their little battle this evening and was comfortably snuggled in Anna's frilly bed. Too bad she wasn't in it with him. But twenty, or even twenty-two, was a world away from thirty years old, which made the lady off limits in his book— even if she did have more self-confidence than was healthy for a woman. Actually, Ethan admired Anna's determination to make her own way in the world instead of letting her family make it for her. She had plenty of grit all right, nicely packaged in an utterly feminine body.
Ethan stared up at the ceiling of the old house. He would likely have a riot on his hands at work if he let Anna go. Besides, he was sort of curious as to how she did it; how she could get thirty grown men to respect her enough to let her boss them around. She claimed she knew her job, but Ethan would bet there was more to it than that. It was a rare woman who understood the male mind enough to tame it, work with it, and get it to listen to reason.
It was probably her upbringing. Her entire life must have been a study of male thinking, how to manipulate and ultimately emulate men. Anna Segee intrigued him; she challenged his mind, stirred his blood, and made him feel alive. And he couldn't remember the last time a woman had made his heart race the way his had been racing all day.
It had been way too long since he'd been attracted to a woman, since he'd even gotten close enough to flirt. Ethan knew the love his brother Alex and sister-in-law, Sarah, shared was rare. That Alex had returned from the dead to find himself married to a beautiful, guileless woman was a fluke. The odds that another such woman would suddenly show up in this neck of the woods had to be one in a billion.
He would love to get Anna Segee in his bed and capture some of that passion she kept hidden under all those layers of men's clothes. Seeing her sexy-as-hell underwear had been quite an insight— and more than Anna had been comfortable with, judging by the snit she'd thrown when she had realized she'd lost the battle over their sleeping arrangements.
When he'd started up the stairs with suitcase in hand, she'd thrown a book at him with amazing accuracy. Then she had tried to get that poor pathetic dog to take a bite out of his hide. Bear had whined and tried to follow, but he couldn't even make it up the first step. So Ethan had left Anna fuming downstairs with her woodland creatures and wheezing dog, his "good night" answered by a very unladylike curse.
He couldn't wait for the fun to really begin.
* * *
Anna lay on the couch, her hand resting on Bear's head on the floor beside her, and looked up at the curtain rod full of sleeping chickadees. The low fire in the hearth cast dancing shadows over the entire room and made her feel as if the old house was laughing at her.
She wasn't even queen of her own castle. Ethan Knight was sleeping in her bed upstairs, surrounded by all her frilly, feminine things. He probably wasn't even able to sleep, he was laughing so hard.
She'd let him get too close tonight. She never should have talked about her family problems, and she sure as hell shouldn't have passed out and let him undress her. Now he would be seeing her as a woman, not his foreman, and it would take a miracle to gain back the ground her underwear had lost her.
She needed a plan. Something simple, something that wouldn't be obvious to the arrogant jackass. Anna racked her brain for nearly an hour, but nothing came to mind other than pretending everything was business as usual.
Anna guessed she'd be laid up for at least two days, and not going to work tomorrow was a definite risk. The crew was crackerjack; they could practically manage themselves. Would Ethan think he didn't need her, since he was more than capable of running a crew himself?
Keith knew the mill as well as she did. Would the two men form a team? Would she still have her job in three days? Anna reached behind her on the table, picked up her cell phone, and dialed Keith's number.
"Keith, this is Anna. I'm calling to tell you that I won't be in for a few days. Can you handle things at the mill?"
"Sure, boss lady. What's wrong? Did you get into an argument with our new owner already?"
"No. I had an accident with my truck coming home, so I'm laid up for a few days."
"Are you all right?"
"Yeah, just shaken up a bit. Nothing's broken."
"What happened?"
"I skidded off the road and crashed my truck."
There was a long silence. "Jesus, Anna. You sure you're okay?"
"I'm fine, Keith. Ethan Knight was right behind me, and he pulled me out."
"Thank God."
"Ah, about Mr. Knight. I won't be there to orient him."
A chuckle came over the line. "And you're worried he'll decide he doesn't need you if he survives this week without you, is that it?"
Anna frowned at the fire. "Something like that."
"Don't worry, boss. I'll take care of it. Ethan will be praying for your return by the end of the week."
"No foolishness. I don't want you getting in trouble," she warned.
"Ah, hell, Anna. What would work be without a little fun now and then? I'll just misplace a few lumber orders and have Jeremy lose the keys to the loader. Things like that."
The fact that Keith was willing to help her warmed Anna's heart. She smiled into the phone. "Thanks, friend. I owe you one."
"Remember that if I ever step in front of your loader."
"I will."
"Well, good night then," he said. "And don't worry. You just take it easy and get better."
"Oh, one more thing, Keith. Can you put out the word that I'm looking for another truck? Something within my budget."
"Totaled it, huh?"
"Down to the floorboards."
"Hell, if not for Ethan, you could have been killed. You're lucky you've got a new tenant."
Anna looked in the direction of the stairs. "That remains to be seen. Good night, Keith."
She hung up the phone and snuggled herself into the blankets with a sigh. There. That little problem was taken care of. She'd have to give Keith a couple of personal days off as thanks.
Satisfied with her efforts, knowing she might have lost tonight's battle but not the war, Anna drifted off to sleep— and dreamed of a knight in shining armor finding her shivering in Frost Lake as three boys taunted her, the ensuing fight so violent that she'd been able to slip away without being seen.
Chapter Six
It took Anna two days to get off the couch and get Ethan Knight out of her bed. The man was adamant— he wasn't leaving until he got running water, and he wasn't giving up her comfortable bed because the couch was shorter than he was.
He had come home from work the last two nights, eaten supper with her, then gone out to battle the frozen water lines leading to his cabin. But nothing he tried worked. Around nine last night, he'd finally rigged a large tank in the loft of his cabin, pumped it full of water using a long hose from her house, and let gravity feed the water into his sink and bathroom. If he conserved, he'd only have to fill the tank every few days.
That was fine with Anna; anything to get him out of her house. The man complained about the weather, about the primitive living conditions, and about her woodland friends. He did not, however, complain about work at Loon Cove.
And it was precisely that work, Anna guessed, that was making him grumpy. She knew from personal experience that loggers were used to plenty of space and didn't like operating equipment within the confines of a busy mill yard.
Keith might be overdoing it in the problem department. Ethan had mentioned over supper on the second night that their number one saw was down. He'd paused as if waiting for her to comment, but Anna had merely shrugged her shoulders and continued eating
. She wasn't about to ruin Keith's efforts by revealing that their number one saw was fickle sometimes and probably only needed a good rap with a tire iron in just the right place.
Now it was Thursday, day three of her recuperation. Ethan had moved his suitcase to his cabin, and Anna was finally, blessedly, alone. She was getting around without groaning anymore, and enjoying her minivacation by ice fishing. It wasn't difficult. She had a power auger to drill the holes, and she and Bear spent most of their time soaking up the healing rays of the weak winter sun. Bear had a thick blanket to nap on, and Anna sat in a lawn chair. Her box kite was tied to a stick she'd wedged into an ice hole.
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