Northern Exposure

by Debra Lee Brown

  Slowly he let go her arm, his gaze still pinned to hers. She thought, for the hundredth time in the past six days, how great his eyes were. Green flecked with gold.

  After removing the tripod from the pack, she handed it to him. “Help me, will you?” She turned her back to him so he could see the two loops she’d sewn on her knapsack to hold the tripod. A minute later she felt the familiar weight of it against her back.

  “Like that?” he said.

  She shot him a small smile. “Just like that. Thanks.” She moved in front of him, ready to go, and waited while he readjusted the blue pack. “Better?”

  Their gazes locked, and she read an uncomfortable resistance in his eyes, as if they’d crossed into territory foreign to him.

  “Yeah,” he said, at last. “Better.”

  Ten miles, two changes of socks and an inch of slushy snow later, they reached the next cabin.

  Almost.

  “How the heck do we get to it?” In the fading light, Wendy squinted against the sleet at the tiny DF&G cabin perched on a slab of basalt on the other side of what Joe had come to consider his own little private nightmare.

  “This happens every time there’s a storm and the river jumps its bank.”

  They both stared at what amounted to a new tributary, a frothing, boiling ten feet of water that separated them from what promised to be a warm, dry place to eat and to catch a good night’s sleep—if they could get to it.

  “Is it deep?” Wendy eyed the water speculatively.

  “No, just fast and full of debris. Rocks, downed tree limbs, all kinds of stuff beneath the surface you can’t see. There’s no real chance of drowning, but in a heartbeat you could slip and bust a leg if you’re not careful.”

  “What about you?” She gave him a once-over that he caught himself enjoying. “You’re not exactly Tinkerbell-light on your feet carrying that pack.”

  He wasn’t, and they were both exhausted. He did a slow three-sixty, on the lookout for their mystery man. There’d been no sign of him all day, but Joe knew he was there, watching them. He also knew if the guy had wanted them dead, they’d already be dead. Any idiot with a firearm and the wherewithal to kill, could have accomplished it with a minimum of trouble.

  But that wasn’t it. The guy wanted Wendy, alive, but not bad enough to off him to get to her. He was smart and patient as hell, but so was Joe, and he didn’t intend to let Wendy out of his sight until he had the bastard checked in to a nice cold cell in the State Troopers’ holding tank back in town.

  “Okay,” he said, dragging his attention back to the problem at hand. “This is what we’re going to do…”

  But Wendy wasn’t listening. While he’d been thinking about their escort, she’d evidently hatched a plan of her own to cross the water. No way was it going to work.

  “This is the narrowest part, right here.” She pointed to a place he wouldn’t cross even if he wasn’t wearing a pack that weighed close to sixty pounds.

  “Uh-uh,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s too deep there, too many rocks.”

  “That’s the point. Some of them are huge, and look pretty stable. If we go slow, and—”

  “No freaking way.” He shot her a look that said he was going to have to kill her this time if she didn’t listen to him.

  “Look.” She pointed to the closest rock, submerged only an inch or so below the water’s surface. “That one right there. And there’s the next one.” Her gaze traveled in a snaking pattern from rock to rock. He watched her as she planned each step in her mind.

  “There’s got to be a better spot.”

  “No, I’ve already looked. This is it.”

  “We’ll go together, then.”

  She frowned at him. “How?”

  “I’ll wade through the water, and help you from rock to rock.”

  “Don’t be silly. You’ll get soaked. Besides, with that pack on, you’re more likely to fall helping me cross than crossing yourself.” She stepped to the edge.

  “No. I’ll leave the pack here and come back for it later.” He secured a hand around her upper arm, remembering the incident at the bridge where she’d defied him.

  He didn’t like the idea of leaving her alone on the other side of the water, unprotected, while he retrieved the pack. On the other hand, he had a gun, he was a damned good shot, and was prepared to demonstrate that fact if he had to.

  “Your boots will never dry by tomorrow. We can each cross on our own.” He started to argue, but she cut him off. “Can’t you trust me, Joe, just once, to take care of myself?”

  It wasn’t her words but the way she looked at him—almost as if she felt sorry for him, as if he was the one who was difficult, who was the problem in the equation—that finally broke his resolve.

  Maybe he was the problem.

  “Okay,” he said, wiping the sleet from his eyes and looking at her hard. “But be careful, damn it.”

  “I intend to.” She shot him a smile, and he thought again about how pretty she was, her cheeks rosy from cold, how her blue eyes didn’t so much reflect light as were lit from within. “Wish me luck,” she said, and leaped.

  Joe’s gut clenched. A heartbeat later she landed on the first rock, struggling for balance, her arms outstretched like a tightrope walker.

  “I did it! See, it was easy.”

  “Yeah, you were great,” he said, recovering his composure. “Just don’t quit your day job.”

  She glanced back at him. “This is my day job, remember? I’m a wildlife photographer.”

  “Right. I forgot.”

  She smirked, then turned her attention back to the water rushing all around her, lapping up against the sides of her newly waterproofed boots.

  As she made her way across the tributary, leaping from rock to rock, he thought about the things he’d read about her in the tabloid article recounting the drug overdose death of that male model.

  None of it added up.

  Hosting lavish sex parties, procuring illegal drugs, covering up evidence, lying to the police. The sordid picture the reporter had painted of Willa Walters was nothing even remotely like the woman who now held his attention.

  He wondered how much of it was true, whether any of it was true. And if it wasn’t, why the hell she hadn’t said something. When he’d alluded to some of the things printed about her, she hadn’t bothered to defend herself, not with specifics.

  The question was Why?

  He knew she was keeping something from him, but he also knew he couldn’t force the truth from her. Watching her traverse the water, his stomach twisting in knots for fear she’d slip or take a wrong step, he realized he didn’t want to force her. What he wanted was for her to trust him. And maybe, in order for that to happen, he needed to trust her, too.

  “Made it!” she shouted when she reached the opposite side. The smile she tossed him did him in. “Now you!”

  He redistributed the weight of the pack high on his hips, cinching the padded belt tight, and stepped from the muddy trail onto the first rock. As he crossed, faster and more recklessly than he should have, drawn by the magnetism of her smile, he asked himself whether he could forgive her if all the things he’d read about her in the article turned out to be true. He was thinking that it mattered, as if it were possible for there to be something between them.

  When he reached the other side, he nearly lost his footing in the mud. She placed her hands on his chest to steady him. “We did it!”

  The sleet had turned to snow, and her smile faded as he moved closer and, with his thumb, brushed a flake from her lower lip.

  “Yeah,” he said, and kissed her.

  She’d known he was going to do it, she’d seen it in his eyes before it happened. It was the single most exciting kiss of her life.

  Joe’s rough hands cupped her face. She melted into him, closed her eyes and kissed him back. The sound of rushing water, the solid feel of his chest beneath her hands, for a moment all of it seemed surreal. Then a slow, honey
ed heat suffused her body as she felt the gentle dart of his tongue inside her mouth.

  “Joe,” she breathed against his lips.

  He deepened the kiss, and she responded, ignoring the tiny alarms going off in her head. When his hands moved to her waist, pulling her closer, pressing her into him, she couldn’t ignore them anymore.

  “I…I can’t do this.” She broke the kiss, backed away, raising her hands in a defensive gesture meant to stop him.

  It did.

  “Wendy.”

  She shook her head, not looking at him. “Let’s just get inside.” Turning, she trudged up the short rise to the cabin and waited for him to get his keys out to unlock the door.

  Once they were in, she buzzed about the cabin in a frenzied automatic pilot, lighting the lantern, building a fire in the stove, shucking wet outerwear, assembling items for dinner. Anything so she wouldn’t have to look at him or think about what had just happened.

  “Stop it,” he said, and grabbed her arm.

  She froze in place, water dripping from her hair onto the floor in a steady beat that made her all too aware of how long she stood there, not looking at him, saying nothing.

  “Wendy, I didn’t mean to—”

  “It was a mistake.” Tentatively she met his gaze. “We can’t do this, Joe. I can’t do it.”

  “Why not?” His eyes softened rather than sharpened, which surprised her, along with the gentleness of his voice. For the first time Warden Peterson, control freak, wasn’t demanding an answer. Joe Peterson, the man who’d just rocked her world, was simply asking.

  She sat down on one of the bunks that were standard equipment in the string of DF&G cabins they were destined to share for the next week, and thought about how to answer.

  In the end she found she couldn’t.

  “I have too many things on my mind now. There’s a lot at stake for me. Can you understand that?” It was a cop-out, but she wasn’t ready to bare her soul to him.

  Looking at him sitting across from her, pushing wet hair from his face in a gesture she knew stemmed from frustration, Wendy had to fight to keep her mouth shut, to keep from crossing the four-foot space separating them and collapsing into his arms.

  She wanted to do it, more than anything.

  “You mean your assignment. The caribou photos.”

  “Yes.” Suddenly chilled, she eased out of her boots and swung her tired legs onto the bunk, pulling her sleeping bag around her. “I don’t actually work for the magazine. Not yet, anyway.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “You know?” She looked at him. “How?”

  He shrugged. “I talked to your friend, that editor.”

  “Crystal? When?” She sat up. “Where?”

  “At the station, about ten minutes after you left with Barb.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Not much. Just that you’d cut a deal with the owner or somebody—”

  “The editorial director.”

  “Yeah, that’s the guy. That he’d give you a permanent job at the magazine if you delivered the photos.”

  Wendy felt her lips thinning over her teeth. She was going to have a long, one-sided talk with Crystal when she got back to New York. “What else did she tell you?”

  “Nothing. That was it.”

  She wondered if he was lying. Oh, hell, what did it matter what he did or didn’t know? What did it matter what he thought about her? She rolled over, away from his searching eyes, and covered herself with the down bag.

  He didn’t say any more, and neither did she. She listened to him move around the cabin, checking the fire, pulling gear out of the pack, and a few minutes later smelled something good.

  “Freeze-dried chili mac,” he said. “Want some?”

  “No, you go ahead.”

  “Come on, eat something. You did ten miles today, hard ones. You need to eat.”

  In her head, she counted off the miles they’d hiked over the past five days, and knew they were close to the place on the map Joe had said the woodland caribou would be. She prayed to God he was right.

  “Okay,” she said, and threw off the down bag. If she was going to get her photos and hike out of here in one piece, she needed to eat something. “Maybe our friend gave up,” she said, as she joined him at a small table flanking the wood-burning stove.

  “He’s here.” Joe shoveled a forkful of chili mac into his mouth. “Somewhere close.”

  She shivered, thinking about it.

  “Cold?” He tossed her his fleece pullover, the one he’d just taken off. “Go ahead. I don’t need it.”

  She put it on and immediately felt better. It was still warm from his body. It smelled like him, and she thought again of his mind-blowing kiss. His gaze caught hers for a split second, and she knew he was thinking about it, too.

  They ate in silence after that, and she tried to unwind, let her thoughts go, her fears, draw in the heat from the fire and strength from their supper, which turned out to be pretty darned good. She was hungry, after all.

  They stayed up another two hours or so, looking at maps, reading some books on natural history and a couple of trail guides that had been left in the cabin. The whole time he never tried to touch her again or talk about what had happened between them, and she was grateful for it.

  Only later, when they were both in bed on opposite sides of the tiny cabin, listening to the fire crackle and spit, watching its golden reflection dance on the walls, did she allow herself to think again about Joe Peterson’s kiss and what it meant.

  She realized that she did care what he thought of her. She didn’t want him to go on believing she was the kind of person the tabloids said she was. She wanted him to know that, despite her chosen profession, she’d never led the kind of wild lifestyle he thought was responsible for his sister’s tragic death.

  She wanted him to know, but still she was afraid that in the knowing another barrier between them would fall. And right now, given her vulnerable state, she needed all the barriers she could muster.

  But in the end she told him.

  “It wasn’t me in the loft that night,” she said calmly. “It was Blake.”

  Chapter 9

  “Tell me everything.” Joe handed Wendy a mug of hot tea and sat across from her at the table. He’d stoked the fire, and its shimmering light caught in her hair, bathing her face in its soft radiance.

  “It’s…complicated,” she said.

  “Start from the beginning.” He didn’t want to press her, but he also couldn’t just let things alone. Not anymore. He was invested in the outcome. Some guy was after her, and he needed to know who and why.

  “I was asleep.”

  “Where? In the loft?”

  “No. Of course not! At home. The phone rang in the middle of the night. It was Blake.”

  “So you weren’t even there?” Damned tabloids. He should have known not to believe any of what had been written about her.

  “I went there, to the loft. After he called.”

  Joe’s throat hitched. “Go on.”

  Wendy took a deep breath. “Blake was in a panic on the phone. He said Billy—that was the model—had had a heart attack. Billy Ehrenberg was Mr. Popularity. Everybody liked him, though he led a pretty wild life. Too wild, if you know what I mean.”

  He remembered some of Cat’s so-called friends in New York. “Yeah, I get the picture.”

  “Anyway, Blake wanted me over there, fast. He was crying on the phone. I’d never seen him fall apart like this. He was always so stoic, so in control.” She shrugged. “What could I do? I went.”

  “Did he call 911?”

  “No. I did after I got there. Blake was a wreck, shaking, wailing. He’d completely lost it.”

  “So the guy was dead when you got there.”

  “No. He was alive, but unconscious. He was…they’d been…” She met his gaze and held it. “I guess they were lovers. I had no idea.”

  Joe felt the tension in his shoulders ease.
She wasn’t involved. She hadn’t even been there. He told himself it shouldn’t matter whether she was or wasn’t, because there was never going to be anything between them, anyway.

  “Why did the papers say you were the one with Billy if it was really Blake?”

  She looked away, into the fire, and he knew her well enough after six days to know she was embarrassed. “Because that’s what I told the paramedics when they got there.”

  “What?” He couldn’t believe it. “Why would you do that?”

  Her cheeks blazed, and it wasn’t from the heat of the fire. She looked at him. “Because I was stupid. Because Blake begged me to say I was the one with Billy and not him.” She lifted her shoulders. “He’s married, two kids.”

  “And his wife didn’t know about his…extra-marital activities.”

  “No. She’s a really nice woman. I’ve always liked her, and kind of feel sorry for her.” He started to ask another question, but she cut him off. “There’s more to it than that, though.”

  “Go on.”

  “Blake is hugely successful, but recently he made a lot of investments. I think they went bad, and now he’s struggling financially. He went on and on about it that night. How his wife couldn’t know he was there, how he had to protect his marriage.”

  But not because he cared about her or his two kids, Joe guessed. The more he heard about this guy, the more he hated him. “The wife. She has money, right?”

  “Exactly. Old money, from an inheritance. Years ago she funded Blake’s start in the business.”

  “And if she found out about his shenanigans, she’d divorce him, cut him off.”

  “Yes. But at the time, I didn’t put two and two together. I really thought he cared about her. I thought he was trying to protect her and the kids.”

  “Yeah. He sounds like a great guy.”

  Wendy looked away. “I made a mistake, okay. Plus, Blake said I owed it to him. That he was the one who taught me the business, gave me a job, kept me working when other photographers were being laid off. I owed him.”

  “You believe that?”

  “I did at the time. Not anymore.”