by Dianne Drake
“What you’re paying for, Doctor, is that I don’t like you. Okay? I really don’t like you. I took your classes and you’re a brilliant instructor. Probably the best in wilderness medicine. But that’s as far as it goes with me. I don’t like you, I don’t want you here, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to work side by side with you now, or in the future.”
“Trust me, I don’t want to be here as much as you don’t want me here, and I’ll be more than happy to get out of here and get back to someplace where sanity prevails. Because this is insane, lady. You’re insane. But I’m stuck here until after the storm passes, and until someone points me in the direction of a tank of gas, I’m going to make the best of it, which includes a little medical duty, whether or not you like it. So get off your high horse and let me help.” He grabbed the canvas bag of medications out of her hand and pulled out half of them. “And don’t get the idea that I’m doing this for you because I’m not.”
“Fine,” she snapped. “Suit yourself. Doctor away, but stay out of my way when you’re doing it.” A gust of frigid wind caught her, blowing her forward, straight into his chest.
“You okay?” he asked, grabbing hold of her, then holding on until she was steady on her feet again. Even through all the bulk, she felt good in his arms. He expected rigid, and something colder than the temperature, but for a second he felt heat…her heat, and his own heat mingling with it. A heat that caught him a little off guard.
She shrugged out of his grip and straightened her parka before he could put any sense to that little jolt he’d felt, then had the audacity to straight-arm him when he took a step forward. Her palm to his chest, she looked at him, frowning, of course, and said, “I’m always okay, Doctor. Always. Now, since you insist on working, you go take the north side of the street, and I’ll take the south.”
“How about we save steps and you take the east end of the street, while I take the west, and maybe we’ll get this done before the snow is up to our knees.”
“You know, I’d rather you were on the beach, too, soaking up the sun, and if I had the means, I’d buy you a ticket right now to send you there.” Without another word, she spun around and headed directly to the west end of the village.
“I said I’d take the west end,” he called after her.
“I know you did,” she called back. “Which is why I will.”
“Sure wish I remembered you,” he muttered as he made his way through the fast-accumulating snow to the far east end of Beaver Dam, which by any measurable standards was only three city blocks away. Because somewhere deep down under all that bad mood and animal fur was someone who had certainly captured his interest, if not, under other circumstances, his fancy.
Alek wasn’t like the women who usually wandered in and out of his life. They were all casual and surface, a nice week or two and he was tired of them. A hell of a bad pattern, he knew. But that’s the way it used to be for him. That, and other addled habits. Now it was all work. There was no reason for anything more at this point in his life. At least, not until he was sure his life was unshakable. And Alek…she was definitely a shakable force.
This Aleksandra Sokolov…well, he didn’t know what to make of her. In that bluster of an attitude that swirled around her like a storm cloud, he saw a pure passion that absolutely enthralled him. And maybe he envied it just a little. Yes, he liked his work, but when he’d returned to it, the passion hadn’t come back, not like it had been before. And now, just a few hours in the wilderness had made him realize what kind of work he longed for. At his stage in the game, though, it was too late to make a course change.
Perhaps that’s what attracted him to Alek. She had the game he wanted. Out here in the middle of a snowstorm, delivering nausea medicine to a pack of people who’d been poisoned by bad beaver stew, she still had a real passion for it. As angry as she was at him, it still shone through, and he wanted some of that for himself. For a second or two he’d even fancied himself working side by side with her. He chuckled. “With her in a better mood,” he said, even as he tried to shake the notion from his head. He stood a better chance of survival with the bears in these parts than he did with Alek.
“But you are an interesting woman, Aleksandra,” he conceded as he trudged up to the first door and knocked. “Very interesting, indeed.” So was there anybody significant in her life? Husband, lover, casual friend? Sparring partner?
With her rather tempestuous attitude, he doubted even a sparring partner would be all that safe. For sure, he was not.
And for some chaotic reason he couldn’t even begin to fathom, he liked that.
CHAPTER FOUR
DEAR God, she was tired. Exhausted. Frozen. And, above all, frustrated! What was all that about, anyway? Falling into his arms and coming so close to enjoying it? “You’re smarter than that,” she said, as she tossed her Cossack cap on a wooden peg, then dropped her parka on the floor, too tired to bend over and pick it up. Not only was she smarter than that, she knew better, too. Those had been Michael Morse’s arms she’d felt wrapped around her for a moment after all. And she knew what he was about. Yet even though he’d only meant to steady her, a little spark of electricity had nipped straight through her. One little touch and she was going mushy in the head over it.
Even through her parka and red plaid flannels, there had been that jolt. “Fatigue,” she reasoned, looking back out to the street to see if she could catch sight of him. She couldn’t. Fatigue—and frustration. Because she didn’t want to work with Michael. But she was already planning ways to avoid him if that became the case—different work hours for a start, more time in the field for another. She chuckled. A line drawn down the clinic hallway—her side, his side. Pity him if he stepped one toe over it! Pity him if he even came close to it.
Michael Morse at Dimitri’s clinic. She still couldn’t get used to the idea. They did need three doctors at the clinic. Need was up, and, as vibrant and energetic as Dimitri was right now, there was the future to think about, and at his age he did deserve a slower pace. Inevitably, it would happen, and he knew it. Which was why he’d recruited a third doctor. So as much as she wanted to be difficult about Michael, she wasn’t going to be. Sure, she’d make a strong suggestion to find someone else, maybe even bribe Dimitri with a good buzhenina to get rid of Michael, but in the end she would abide by his decision. It was his clinic, his choice. Also, Michael wouldn’t stay long. There was nothing to keep him here, and once the fascination of the wilds was over, he’d toddle on back to civilization.
She was sure of that!
Sighing, Alek peeled off the double pair of thermal socks she wore inside her boots and wiggled her chilly toes to make sure none of them had frozen solid and fallen off. Then she moved in a little closer to the fire and held out her hands, rubbing them together to absorb some of the warmth. Four hours of trudging up and down the street in the snow, handing out medicine and explaining its use, and now she was ready to hibernate for a while. “Hibernate alone,” she said, glancing over to his corner of the room.
She really wanted to keep Michael Morse totally out of her mind, if only for the rest of the evening, but the harder she tried the more adamantly he stayed right there, taunting her. That warm smile of his, those twinkling eyes…Okay, so she would concede that he was gorgeous. He was! What of it? She’d known that from the first time she’d seen him in Seattle, when he’d strutted his way across the stage in the lecture hall like he had been the prince entering a grand ballroom.
By reputation, he should have been much older, possibly wizened, surely bent. Long, white, bookish beard, naturally. “It would have made things easier,” she said with a sigh. However, had it been a concert hall and Dr. Michael Morse a rock star, the women there would have been throwing panties and room keys at him.
They, including her, unfortunately. She hadn’t been impervious. Like it or not, she’d tried for his attention as much as the rest of them had—only not quite so obviously. But she’d known more about wilderness med
icine than the others since she’d lived the life he’d been teaching. Consequently, she’d always had her hand in the air. And the need hadn’t been to show off her knowledge.
“So you’re a stunner, but that has nothing to do with offsetting that fact that you’re also a jerk.” A jerk who’d come so close to distracting her. Thank heavens common sense had prevailed then, as it would now. And in the future. Because grooming herself to take over Dimitri’s entire medical practice was her priority. As was Dimitri.
Dear Dimitri. He and Olga had raised her from the age of seven after her own father had been killed on an ice cutter, leaving her abandoned, since her mother had gone to find better opportunities in a warmer climate and had never come back. As a foster child of the Romonovs, her life had been good. Dimitri had loved her, Olga had tolerated her. And she’d enjoyed working with Dimitri almost from the first moment she’d gone to live with them—sweeping his clinic floors, answering his office phone, filing his medical charts and restocking his medical supplies. So many things to make her feel important and loved—something she hadn’t felt even with her parents…a father who had rarely been home, a mother who had rarely been happy.
She’d developed a passion for all things medical because of Dimitri. Passion, direction and, ultimately, the support to get her where she wanted to be, which was at Dimitri’s side in the clinic as his partner. He’d been such a dear when she’d been young, always telling her about how the two of them would cure people together. He’d said they would fly away to a remote village together to perform a surgery or deliver a baby. All of this had been so much security for a lost little girl who’d desperately needed love and a place to belong. Olga, however, had been staunch and impersonal. She hadn’t been a warm woman and she’d had no affinity for children, especially one like Alek who’d just appeared in her home one day, clinging to Dimitri’s hand and holding on to her bag full of clothes, hoping for a new home and family. Olga had been fair to Alek. Not kind and loving, like Dimitri. But fair. And for a young child who hadn’t understood why her mother hadn’t returned for her, or why her father had died, Dimitri, not Olga, had become her safety. Curling up on Dimitri’s lap at night while he’d read her bedtime stories, and tugging on his beard as her own secret signal to him that she wanted to give him a kiss…she had felt safe with him, and never so alone as being alone in Alaska could feel.
But she loved Alaska, too. In a way, it held its own safety for her. The snow in the winter and the beautiful green wild-lands in the warmer months…it was such an exciting diversity, and she adored the splendid isolation of it all. This was the only place she wanted to be, the only place she ever would be—her heart and home. “But I wouldn’t mind if the snow was a little warmer,” she said, chuckling, as she leaned forward to rub her chilly feet. A nice man to rub her chilly feet would be good, too. But that wasn’t in her future. Not if she stayed here, which she would. At her age she was already too old to start something new, anyway. Too old and set in her ways, which Dimitri complained of all the time. But then, this part of Alaska wasn’t exactly teaming with eligibles, so she could be as set as she wanted since it didn’t matter. “Most of the time it doesn’t….”
Shutting her eyes to enjoy the heat coming from the stove, images of a warm, sandy tropical beach popped into Alek’s head. She’d never seen a real canvas cabana chair, but on this little imaginary stretch of white sand she was lounging in one, sipping something luscious and fruity. And…Great, just great! Michael was there, right next to her on the beach, stretched out in a canvas cabana chair, too, also sipping something luscious and fruity. And he looked so much better in his little black swimming trunks than he did in his big, bulky parka. Much better. Naturally, she looked ridiculous, being the only one on that beach wearing a parka. She could almost hear Dimitri clucking his tongue, and see him shaking his head over her little fantasy. “Too old for your young years, Alek,” he always said. “Too serious, too fussy, too set in your ways.” Right now he would also add, “And you can’t even do justice to a good daydream.”
Which was true, because even though it was her fantasy and she should be able to control it any way she liked, she simply could not take that damned parka off, as hard as she tried.
“So you’re right, Dimitri. I can’t even put on a good fantasy.” She walked across the room once her feet were sufficiently warmed, and dropped down onto the bed. “No big deal, though. Fantasies never accomplish anything, anyway.” Except, perhaps, build a dream. But she didn’t allow dreams.
Settling in finally, trying to fight off the dreams and fantasies she was afraid might endeavor to creep back in, Alek concentrated on the night sounds from outside—the barking of a far-off dog team, the whistling of the wind coming down through the chimney, the rattling of the doors and shutters trying to keep the winter out, the monotonous throbbing of the generator providing electricity for the cabin.
All busy sounds—sounds of the life that bustled around Beaver Dam. But no sounds of Michael, and as much as she didn’t like him, and didn’t want him hanging about, she was beginning to get worried. “City boy meets a cold Alaskan night.” There were any number of images that could play through that scene—Michael lying on the side of the road, or getting lost, maybe confronting a pack of wolves, or, best of all, trying frantically to pull his boots back on as he came face-to-face with an angry husband…That one did bring a bit of a smile to her face because if that husband chased him out of town she would not have to deal with him. Win-win situation. “Whatever it is, you don’t stand a chance, city boy,” she muttered, trying hard to fight off the urge to get up and go look for him now that she was all cozy and warm. Of course, somebody did have to save him—from the elements, from himself….
Actually, she’d half expected to find him all curled up in her bed when she’d got back, since his half of the town was far less than hers in its count of sick people. Surprisingly, she was a bit disappointed. Not disappointed that he wasn’t in her bed, but that he wasn’t back. She really hadn’t intended to have a pleasant evening with him, a nice chat at the fireside, some lively professional debate, but she’d intended to have him someplace safe where she didn’t have to worry over him. And now, as she tossed and turned in bed, she was steadily growing more concerned that maybe he really had gotten lost. “You turn the wilderness doctor loose in the wilderness and he manages to get himself disoriented. And now I’ve got to go out and find him.” She dropped her feet over the side of the bed, wrestling with the idea of giving him one more hour. But common sense prevailed. “If he injures himself, I’ll have to take care of him. If he gets lost, I’ll have to wait around until the rescue party finds him.”
Two unacceptable inconveniences, both of which forced her to her feet to begin the hunt.
By the time Alek was completely outfitted for the weather, the drift at the front of the house had piled up another half foot, so she grabbed the snow shovel that sat behind the door and started to shovel her way outside. “Not worth it,” she muttered as she dug through the first patch, which came halfway up to her knees. “You’re not worth it, not worth me getting cold, not worth me losing sleep,” she hissed into the frigid air. “And you’d better be dead, or close to it, or, so help me, I’m going to—”
“Need some help with that?” Michael called out from somewhere in the shadows beyond the front walk.
“Where have you been?” Alek snapped, straightening up and looking around until she found him. Bundled in his parka with snow most of the way up his boots, he was trudging through the snow, clutching a package in his arms.
“Having supper with Aklanuk Mountain, then afterward another supper with Simel Malemute. Friendly people. Quite hospitable, and I couldn’t turn them down when they offered.”
“Supper? You were out having supper all over the village while I was stuck here worrying about—” She snapped off the rest of her words before they were out, silently scolding herself for almost saying something that would have been, undoubtedl
y, interpreted by him as genuine concern. Which it was not!
Stepping out of his way as he passed by her and went inside, she followed, and gave the door a good slam shut.
He turned to face her. “You were worrying about me? Is that what you were going to say? Somehow I would have never expected that from you.”
“Good thing, then, because I wasn’t worrying about you. I was worrying about the patients I trusted to you. Worrying if you’d seen them as you’d said you would do.”
Smiling, Michael held out a brown paper bag to her, then jiggled it when she refused to take the several necessary steps toward him to remove it from his hand. Instead, she huddled at the door, frowning. “Alahseey Malemute sent you a little gift. She said she was sorry you couldn’t come to eat with us but she wanted you to have a piece of custard pie.”
Alek eyed the bag longingly for a second, then looked away. “I was working, Michael. Did you happen to do any of that yourself while you were out socializing?” Alahseey made the best pies. Amazing pies. Any flavor. Prize-worthy and so scrumptious that Alek’s mouth was watering thinking about the custard, since all she’d managed for supper had been some instant noodle soup she’d found in the cupboard. Yes, she’d had invitations, too, but she hadn’t taken the time to stop and eat because she’d had work to finish. Besides, she wasn’t as good at socializing as he was. Michael was a natural at it—she’d seen that in his classroom. He’d had a real aptitude for hobnobbing, while she’d been awkward. Rejection issues, according to Dimitri. Which was probably true, as her mother had rejected her. Whatever the reason, she rarely accepted the friendly invitations because it was easier not to. And now she wasn’t about to take the pie from him as it was only his way of trying to placate her, to disarm her like he did everybody else. She wasn’t about to be placated. Or disarmed!
