They passed the health clinic where the ambulance had taken Annabelle, a few closed shops, a bar with beer signs that glowed eerily through the snow, and then came to the Talkeetna Inn, a large cabin with a tiny trailer for a rental office in front.
They checked in, stomped the snow from their boots on the front porch, and entered the cabin. The interior was spacious but had dated décor and furniture, and it was almost as cold as outside. There were three bedrooms on the first floor, plus a large upstairs loft. Sean and the other firefighters volunteered to sleep in the loft, so Peter and Derrick took the bedroom with two twins, leaving the remaining bedrooms for the female scientists.
“Let’s get the heat turned on,” said Tom. “I can see my breath in here.”
“It’s nice and toasty to me,” said Cody, who’d grown up in a remote off-grid cabin in the far northern Alaskan bush.
By the time they were settled and the cabin’s furnace had done its job, Peter’s phone rang. He spoke a few words and then hung up. “Everybody, Annabelle is doing great. It’s just a sprained ankle, and she’s otherwise fine. She’s being discharged now. The doctor says he’ll give her a ride, and she’s requesting we go out for pizza and beer.”
Sean smiled. He liked a woman with a healthy appetite, one who didn’t pick at salads and sip lemon water.
“Mountain High Pizza is the only pizza place open this time of year, but lucky for us, it’s right next door,” Peter said.
Although it was a walk of mere yards, because the snowstorm was in full force they had to layer up to full parkas, gloves, hats, and boots. The wind blasted the group as they stepped off the porch.
Sean drew a deep breath. “Ah, the sweet smell of spring in Alaska.”
Peter, Lottie, and the other firefighters laughed. Derrick did not.
They arrived at the restaurant just as Annabelle was getting out of the doctor’s vehicle. Sean made his way over to assist.
Annabelle kept her weight off her left foot and wrapped her arms around Sean’s neck, just like she had when he was pulling her from the crevasse, and he had that same awareness of her appealing womanly figure.
Sean wrapped an arm around her waist, holding her steady as she hobbled toward the door. Josh grabbed her crutches from the doctor.
“Thank you again!” Annabelle called to the doctor, who gave a friendly wave and drove off.
Annabelle leaned on Sean as they walked, and her nearness ignited a slow heat that churned within him. Once they were inside, that heat rose as he helped her take off her thick purple parka and fleece sweater, leaving her in a tight black wool base layer top.
He tried to hide his appreciative glance upon finally seeing the shape of her body, but her watchful, embarrassed eyes told him she’d seen him looking.
“Ice,” Annabelle said suddenly, and Sean imagined how her nipples would harden if he teased them with an ice cube. “The doctor said I should put ice on my foot.”
“Right,” Sean said, snapping out of his lusty fantasy. “Ice for your foot.”
He helped her over to an open table and lowered her into a chair. He pulled up a second chair and sat down, then lifted her injured foot to his lap. Carefully, he pulled off her already-unlaced boot, and although he was as gentle as he could be, she still winced.
“Sorry,” he said.
She gave him a power-through-it smile in response.
Annabelle was one tough cookie, he thought. Not many women would have handled the day she’d had with such grace.
The others pulled up chairs and pushed tables together for their large group. The pizza parlor was more crowded than Sean would have expected, perhaps because it was one of the few places in Talkeetna that stayed open year-round. The décor was fittingly themed toward mountain climbing, with colorful prayer flags suspended from the ceiling and climbing photos and memorabilia on the walls.
Sean stood, setting Annabelle’s foot down on the chair as he did.
“I’ll go get some ice from the bartender,” he said. “Do you want a drink while I’m up there?”
“I probably shouldn’t drink too much on top of ibuprofen,” she said, “but I think a shot is in order. Something fiery to warm the belly.”
“How about a kamikaze?”
Her blue eyes sparkled. “Why, because I kamikaze’d down the crevasse today?”
Sean burst out laughing. He loved a woman with a quick wit.
Annabelle gave him a strange, doubting look. “Men never laugh at my jokes.”
“Then you’ve been hanging out with the wrong men.”
7
Sean Kelly thinks I’m funny.
Annabelle couldn’t get over it. She’d been the subject of so many eye-rolls and groans in her life when she tried to make jokes that she’d pretty much stopped trying.
Her mother had once gently told her that while her brain worked in quirky ways, quirky didn’t necessarily mean funny. Derrick had been more blunt early on in their sort-of relationship; whenever she attempted humor, he shook his head scornfully. Don’t be weird, he’d say.
But Sean was up there at the bar ordering their kamikazes, and he still had an amused grin on his face.
How about that? She sat up a little straighter, her self-confidence boosted.
Sean brought back a shot for each of them and raised his glass.
“To life,” he said.
“To life,” she repeated, clinking her shot glass against his, noticing the lack of a wedding ring on his left hand, although that didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t married. “To a long life, and one which does not end at the bottom of a crevasse.”
He cracked up again before downing his shot. “Seriously,” he said. “You’re funny.”
Smiling, she sipped her shot, a mix of lime, vodka, and something she couldn’t place. While potent, it was tasty, too, and she swallowed the rest of the shot in one gulp.
And then she caught the nasty look Derrick was giving Sean.
“What about the rest of us?” Derrick said. “We’ve all had a long day, not just Annabelle.”
Sean raised his eyebrows at Derrick. “Would you like me to buy you a drink?”
Lottie snorted a laugh, and Annabelle had to grin, too, at the expression on Derrick’s face. Never before in her life had she looked forward to breaking up with a man, but this time, she could hardly wait.
“I see the waitress coming over,” Peter said in a conciliatory tone. “I’m sure she can take the rest of our orders, and the first round is on me. In fact, the whole meal’s on me.”
The table ordered food and drink, including cheese bread, lasagna bites, three large pizzas, and pitchers of beer. Annabelle hadn’t eaten anything all day besides a protein bar that morning, and she was famished.
Sean pulled his chair closer to her. “So what were you doing on the mountain?” he asked.
“Um, well, science-y stuff.” She felt suddenly self-conscious and geeky again. “I doubt you’d be interested.”
Sean’s expression seemed to cool a bit. “Try me.”
“People’s eyes usually glaze over, but . . . okay, so every fall and spring we take ice cores and measure the movement of the beacons we placed the season before, and we measure the ice thickness and things like that,” she said.
As she’d been speaking, the waitress brought over the beer pitchers. Sean, whose eyes had not glazed over as she spoke about her research, poured her a glass and one for himself, then waited until she’d enjoyed a first sip before asking, “And what’s our famous glacier doing?”
“Well, it’s losing mass. The ice that melts in the summer is more than can be replenished during the winter.”
Sean took a long drink from his beer and then asked, “By how much? I mean, it’s not retreating at the rate of Mendenhall Glacier, is it?” Annabelle blinked in surprise, and he continued. “People always assume I’m just a dumb jock, but I’m interested in just about everything.”
“I never thought you were a dumb jock,” Annabelle sai
d before she could catch herself.
Sean’s expression turned puzzled. “What do you mean, never?”
Shit, she thought. Shit, shit, shit.
She had no intention of telling Sean she’d sat next to him for four years, pining away for him, because while he seemed to be showing an interest in her at the moment, Annabelle was certain his interest would wane if he realized she was the dorky science girl from high school.
“I mean, I never would think that,” she said. “I’m sure your job requires a ton of technical knowledge.”
“It does,” Sean said. “Technical and science-y and medical—and I have dyslexia, so it was definitely a struggle to get through paramedic school, but I did it and passed my licensing exam on the first try. I learn far better doing or watching than just book learning, so I’d always watch videos along with my reading when I had to study things like pulmonology or cardiology.”
“Wow,” she said. “I’m impressed.”
Annabelle had never known he was dyslexic. In high school down in Anchorage, he’d been so easy-going and never seemed to get stressed about school, unlike her, who was practically destroyed if she missed a question on a test. She’d peeked at his test scores at every opportunity, and they’d been mostly B’s and C’s. She’d never thought him dumb, just a casual student. His athletic skill, though, had been anything but casual.
Even now, just looking at him made her stomach do butterfly swoops. She felt like that awkward teenager all over again.
“Tell me more about your work,” he said.
It was all the permission Annabelle needed to geek out about her research. She explained how she was building a model of glacier movement based on how the ice interacted with the rock beneath it, and how it would improve the understanding of the growth and retreat of high mountain glaciers worldwide. Miracle of miracles, Sean never once looked bored, and he asked questions that proved he’d been listening intently.
When the waitress brought their food, the smell of the warm, cheesy deliciousness made Annabelle’s mouth water. She wasted no time grabbing a piece of cheese bread dipped in marinara sauce. Sean chose a lasagna bite—which was large enough to be more like three bites—and ate it in one.
“I’m heading back to the cabin,” Derrick announced, standing up.
“Not hungry?” Peter asked.
“You all can waste time socializing, but I want to get a head start on the data from today.”
He took a last swig of beer, grabbed a slice of pizza and wrapped it in a napkin, and left without so much as a goodbye or a thank you. Even as Annabelle wondered what she’d ever seen in him, she couldn’t help but feel hurt by Derrick’s obvious lack of concern for her welfare.
“Sorry about him,” Peter said to the firefighters. “Some of our final year PhD students start to crack under the stress.”
A few minutes later, Lottie came over and squatted next to Annabelle, speaking so only she could hear. “Derrick’s an ass. I’m just going to say it. I don’t know if it’s because he can’t stand for you to get any attention, or if he feels bad for making you take the lead on the glacier, or what—but he’s being a little pouting baby right now, and I really want to slug the guy.”
“You?” Annabelle laughed, although she was uncomfortable with Lottie’s observation. “I kind of love the thought of you going all angry-lesbian on him.”
Lottie grinned but didn’t let the conversation devolve into something less than serious. “I’m going to say it again—you can do better.”
“I know I can,” Annabelle assured her. “I’m going to end things once we’re back in Golden Falls.”
“Good,” Lottie said. “Because I don’t trust him.”
“Since when?” Annabelle said, rattled. “And what don’t you trust about him? I highly doubt he’s cheating on me.”
“Not cheating, no,” Lottie said. “But something’s not right with him lately. He’s been acting shady in the lab.”
“Shady how?”
Lottie shrugged. “I don’t know. He walks around looking stressed out and kind of squirrelly. Is he having problems with his research or something?”
“Not that he’s mentioned to me,” Annabelle said. “And I’d think he would since we share the same topic and I could have helped him brainstorm or pivot if he needed to.”
“Anyway.” Lottie patted her knee and stood to help herself to some cheese bread. “I just thought I’d mention it. It’s more of a bad-vibes thing than anything.”
“I’m glad you did.”
Annabelle sipped her beer, trying and failing to recall anything different in Derrick’s recent demeanor or behavior. Then again, she expected so little of him that she doubted she would have noticed something amiss.
Shortly after, Peter addressed the group. “Gentlemen, thank you again. Your effort today was tremendous.”
“We were just doing our job, Peter,” Tom said.
“Still.” Peter put his hand on Annabelle’s shoulder and cleared his throat. “Life in the lab would be far less sunny without our Annabelle in it. She had a close call today, and in less skilled hands, who knows what might have happened?”
They raised toasts—to the rescuers, to Annabelle, and to the roads clearing up so they could get back to Golden Falls the next day, although Annabelle wouldn’t have minded staying another day if it meant she could spend more time with Sean.
“And to Lottie, my trivia night buddy,” Annabelle said as a final toast. “Your trivia questions helped the time pass until these heroes arrived, even though I got all the sports ones wrong as usual.”
“To Lottie!” they all toasted.
Annabelle settled back happily in her chair and listened to the firefighters talk and joke with each other. There were Josh Barnes, Tom Steele, Cody Bradford, and, of course, Sean Kelly. They were four uncannily handsome men, fit and in peak physical form. She thought she recognized Cody from his being interviewed after another rescue the previous fall, when a troop of Boy Scouts had gone missing in the wilderness.
She couldn’t help but notice that Sean, who’d lost his spot next to her when he went up to the bar and Josh unknowingly took it, looked at her from time to time and made a point of catching her eyes and smiling.
He probably does this with all the women, she thought. It’s quite a superpower to be able to make them go weak in the knees.
It seemed unfair that he still had the power to make her go tingly all over. Weren’t the popular kids in high school supposed to end up unattractive, in loser jobs, by their thirties? She could have made herself feel better by imagining that Sean, the boy who unknowingly broke her heart every day, had a beer gut and thinning hair and smoker’s teeth and worked as a cashier at some gas station in some nowhere town.
Instead, he was better looking than he’d ever been in high school, showing up in helicopters to rescue people off mountains, flashing that brilliant smile under a head of thick, wavy brown hair.
Annabelle, on the other hand, felt that in the twelve years since high school, she hadn’t turned into a swan by any stretch of the imagination. Her red hair was still crazy, and her chest was still disproportionately large for her petite frame. She no longer had braces or glasses, but she was still self-conscious about her smile after being called metal-mouth for all those years, and she still sometimes pressed the bridge of her nose as if to position the Coke-bottle eyeglasses she’d worn for so long.
Her ankle throbbed, remembering how ungainly she used to be, and she shifted uncomfortably.
“How’s the ankle? They didn’t keep you overnight at the clinic, at least,” Josh said, noticing her movement.
“Just a sprain, thank goodness, but it hurts. I know how lucky I am, considering what happened. Anything worse and I’m sure I’d be in the clinic all night instead of here, enjoying pizza and beer.”
“I would have stayed with you,” Sean said, and Annabelle felt herself redden.
“Dude,” Josh said. “You made the lady blush.”
“No, it’s just that I was laid up in the hospital for a while when I ruined my leg for hockey, and I remember how desolate the hospital felt, especially at night when all the lights were low.”
She remembered how much Sean had been into hockey in high school—the star player, MVP every year. In Alaska, that was a big deal, the equivalent of the football quarterback. She’d often gone to his hockey games in high school, hiding up in the farthest corner of the bleachers, watching his relentless, slicing expertise on the ice.
“When did you get hurt?” she asked.
Sean nudged Josh to get him to move and then slid into his chair once he did.
“Freshman year in college,” he said, softer now that they were next to each other. “I was about to go pro.”
“Really?” Her heart was racing from him being so near. “That’s amazing. And awful.”
He shrugged. “It led me here, so I can’t complain.”
“Here?” She couldn’t help but tease. “To this exact moment?”
“Sure,” he said. “It’s a good moment, isn’t it?”
Their eyes locked intimately, and the world of the cozy, crowded restaurant beyond them faded into the background. To Annabelle, it felt for a moment like it was just the two of them alone, as intimate as it had been a few hours earlier in the crevasse.
“It’s a good moment,” she agreed, tears welling in her eyes.
She felt so alive, and it was more than having just been rescued.
Life was simply better when Sean was around.
8
“Good morning,” Sean said the next morning when Annabelle limped into the kitchen looking all sexy with her still-tousled hair thrown into a loose bun on top of her head, highlighting her long, delicate neck. “How’s the ankle?”
Forget Me Not (Golden Falls Fire Book 4) Page 5
