When Love Comes: Diamond Creek, Alaska Series (Book 1) (Diamond Creek, Alaska Novels)

by Croix, J. H.

  She smiled against his finger, which still rested against her lips. He let his hand fall with a quirk of his lips, his dimples winking briefly.

  “You’re right. I’m exhausted. Friday would be great,” she said.

  “How about you come to my place? Jared and Nathan will be in Anchorage on a shopping run, so the house will be quiet.”

  “Sounds good to me. Can I bring Jessie?”

  “Of course! That’s a given. Anytime you come to my place, you don’t have to ask if you can bring Jessie.” He looked toward the moon, which sat low and fat above the horizon, bright against the almost dark sky. “Before I go though…”

  His lips landed softly against hers. As tired as she was, her defenses were down. She sank into the kiss and stepped closer to him. She loved being almost as tall as he was. He brought his hands up to cup her face and moved his body against hers. Her head fell back as he lightly traced his thumb along her cheek and up behind her ear, his hand tangling in her hair. She sighed into his mouth and invited him in with strokes of her tongue. Her body came alive with their kiss. She didn’t want it to end. He ran his tongue along her lower lip and softly nipped. A liquid heat built in her. She wanted more and wanted it now, only to feel him slow down and gently pull back.

  Hannah looked into his eyes, bright green in the almost dark, through the mental haze their kiss had created. Luke looked directly back at her, holding her gaze.

  “Much as I want to keep going, you’re too tired,” he said. He let his hands drop from where they’d held her face and stepped back. “See you Friday.” With that, he turned and quickly walked down the stairs to his truck.

  She watched him drive away, standing in the softly falling dark. Jessie whined, so she let her out. Jessie ran into the yard and began sniffing around. Hannah took in the cooling air and early night sounds. An owl called in the distance. Soft rustles came from Jessie padding about the yard. Hannah allowed herself to just be for a few minutes.

  Another yawn and she realized she could fall asleep where she stood. A whistle to Jessie, and she turned to go inside with Jessie following. She took a few minutes to put empty glasses and plates in the dishwasher and wipe down the counter. The dishwasher was full, so she turned it on and listened for a moment to the hum as it started running. The sound was comforting and reminded her of peaceful nights at home when she was a child. Her mother had usually turned the dishwasher on just before she went to bed. The distant hum was a sound Hannah associated with falling asleep and feeling safe. For a moment, she forgot that she was confused and even angry with her parents. She thought only of the safety and comfort they had created for her during childhood. As that thought sank in, she remembered what she’d learned and felt a twist in her heart. She had to find a way to incorporate what she now knew with what she knew of her parents before. Their actions did not cancel each other out.

  Hannah sighed and walked upstairs. She slipped out of her clothes and tossed them into the hamper in the bathroom. Changing into an old T-shirt and flannel pajama bottoms, she climbed into bed. Still in the dark, she listened to the now-distant hum of the dishwasher. Jessie followed her into the bedroom. She usually settled on the floor beside the bed. Tonight, she sidled up to the bed for a moment and then softly jumped up. Hannah started to tell her to get down, but stopped herself. She needed the comfort tonight. Jessie nestled against her side. Hannah fell asleep, her hand stilling in midstroke on Jessie’s back.

  Chapter 12

  “What the hell are you doing?” called Susie.

  Hannah leaned her head out of the truck. “I’m backing up. What does it look like I’m doing?”

  “Uh…you’re about to hit a tree,” came Susie’s response with a snort.

  Hannah hit the brakes and put the gearshift in neutral. She leaned back out the window and looked at Susie who was grinning.

  “You forgot that there’s a reason you have me back here. You can’t see enough through that truck cap. Not to mention that you’re not so good at backing up slowly. You back up too fast. It’s not a good spot, though. The boat’s tucked a little too close to the trees here.”

  “Which way should I go?” Hannah asked.

  “You need to pull forward a bit. Then turn your wheels sharp to the left before you start backing up again. And try going a little slower. I’ll holler when you need to stop,” Susie said.

  Hannah did as Susie instructed and came to a clean stop at Susie’s call. She walked to the back of the truck and stood beside Susie. Looking down, she saw that Susie had guided her to a perfect lineup with the trailer hitch. Without needing to speak, she and Susie reached together and carefully lifted the trailer hitch onto the hitch ball on the truck. They let go slowly as it settled into place. Hannah quickly hooked up the wiring while Susie finished getting the hitch locked in place. Hannah looked down at her boots, which were covered in mud. She pulled the hood on her raincoat up further as rain fell steadily. Susie was also wearing boots, paired with a skirt and blouse and a bright blue raincoat. She’d come straight from work at the office to help Hannah move her parents’ old boat from the storage yard where it had been sitting idle for the past two years. Hannah planned to take it up to the house to clean it and make sure everything was working.

  At the moment, she was ready for a shower. It had been raining for most of the day. She had wanted to put this off, but the storage yard fee would be charged for another month if she didn’t move the boat today. True to the good friend she was, Susie gamely came along to help despite the rain and mud. Hannah had picked her up from her office before driving out to the storage yard. Susie’s car was in the shop for a few days, so she was hitching rides. Once they climbed into Hannah’s truck, the windows fogged quickly due to the cool mist. Hannah started the truck and turned on the heat.

  “I forgot that in Alaska it makes sense to use heat smack in the middle of summer if it’s cool and rainy. Damn, I’m soaked,” Hannah said as she wiped damp tendrils of hair off her forehead and swiped a hand around the back of her neck to push the damp hair away.

  Susie wrestled with her brown curls, which were wild to begin with and went crazy in damp weather. She finally grabbed a baseball cap sitting on Hannah’s dashboard and ruthlessly stuffed her curls underneath.

  “There!” she commented with relish. “Someday I’ll learn to love my curls, but most days they just annoy me. What now? Are you going straight home? Just take me with you. Don’t even bother taking me to my house. If you don’t mind, I’ll stay in the guest room.”

  Hannah shrugged. “Fine by me. Is there a reason you don’t want to go home, though? I don’t mind taking you.”

  “With the boat on the back, it’ll kind of be a pain to go out of your way. Plus, I haven’t been home all day and never made it to the store for groceries this week. This way, I’ll bum off you for the night. Not to mention that I’m still greedy about time with you. This gives me another excuse,” Susie said.

  “You don’t need excuses. Stop by anytime. I mean it.”

  “Even when Cammi and I barge in on dinner with Luke?” came Susie’s sly reply.

  “Yes, even then.”

  “So what’s up there? I’m just being my nosy self.”

  “Nothing you don’t already know,” Hannah responded as she reached behind her seat for a towel to wipe the fog off the windshield. After wiping quickly across the windshield and driver’s side window, she handed the towel to Susie who wiped off the passenger window and tucked it in the back again.

  Hannah put the truck in gear, pulling forward slowly to make sure she could sense how the trailer felt. With a brief pause as the truck pulled against the weight of the boat, the truck rolled forward, the trailer smoothly following.

  “I’m with you there. Back to Luke…That’s it? That’s not enough to satisfy me,” Susie said.

  “Yeah, that’s it. What do you expect? I’ve only known the guy fo
r a few weeks and just got back to town. I know you want grand romance because you usually do, but give me some time here. Not to mention that I just found out the other day that my parents kept a major secret from me and I have a sister somewhere out there.”

  Susie leaned her head against the seat. “Okay, I’ll give you some time. I had a feeling about you and Luke before this whole thing with your parents came out, so I’m impatient. I think you deserve something good. But…I get it. It’s only been a few weeks. And damn your parents. I still haven’t completely wrapped my head around that. I was thinking that I could do some digging for you if you want me to,” she said.

  Hannah thought that over for a moment. “You know, my initial thought is to tell you not to. But I need to start somewhere, and you’re not afraid to be pushy. Where could we start?” She turned carefully to drive up the hill toward home. She geared down as the truck slowed moving uphill with the weight of the trailer. She glanced over at Susie, who looked thoughtful.

  “I’d start with the Internet. My mom has memberships on some of those genealogy websites. She started doing this whole family tree thing a while back. She’ll let me use them if I want. But, more important than that…” Susie paused and glanced over at Hannah, “you need to decide if you want to call your extended family too. Stands to reason they may know something, but maybe not.”

  Hannah thought that over as she turned onto her road. The rain had turned into a soft drizzle, but fog had settled in, and the visibility was poor. “I’ll have to think about who to call in my mother’s family. She has more family than my dad. He was an only child. Mom had two brothers and a sister.”

  She pulled into her drive and came to a stop. “I’ll back this in tomorrow if the weather’s better. For now, let’s just get inside,” she said, turning off the engine.

  They hopped out of the truck and dashed for the door. Jessie came barreling out. Hannah waved Susie to the guest bedroom and bath while she went and took a shower in the master bathroom. After a quick shower, she found a pair of sweats for Susie and tossed them into the guest room. She headed for the kitchen and let Jessie back in. Susie found Hannah rummaging through the pantry and refrigerator for something for dinner. Susie took charge and started spaghetti, putting Hannah to work making salad. While they were waiting for the sauce to heat, Hannah turned on the television and started a fire in the woodstove. After eating and some prompting from Susie, Hannah headed for her mother’s desk and tried to find contact numbers for family.

  Susie said, “Here’s the thing; it’s not going to be easy, so I say let’s just go for it. I know you—you’ll end up putting it off. You’ve had enough to deal with for the past few years; you don’t need this hanging over you. No matter what, it’ll be on your mind, so you might as well do something about it.”

  Hannah sighed. “I know. It’s hard not to think about. I’d like to put it off, but it will be just as difficult later as it will be now.”

  Susie sat cross-legged on the floor in the room upstairs where Hannah’s mother’s desk was. Jessie sat beside her while Susie absentmindedly petted her. The heat from the fire in the woodstove filtered upstairs, dispelling the damp, cool air. Hannah was seated in the desk chair, sorting through the desk. It didn’t take long for her to find her mother’s address book. She tossed it to Susie. “There you go.”

  Susie caught the address book with one hand and began flipping through it. Hannah continued, “Most of my mom’s family is under Cotter. That was her maiden name. Now we just have to figure out if I should be the one to call. Seems too much to ask you to do it. Not to mention that they don’t know you.”

  Susie looked up from the address book. “Oh, I’ll call. Who cares if they don’t know me? But, and here’s the part you won’t like, you need to be with me. I can break the ice, but they’ll want to hear from you. It’s only logical. When’s the last time you talked to any of them?”

  “Last time I saw them face-to-face was at the memorial service they had in North Carolina for my parents. After coming to the one here, I was pretty much out of my mind and couldn’t think straight. I don’t remember much about it honestly. It’s weird. There are chunks of time like that in the first few months after they died. Everything is just fuzzy.” Hannah shook her head. “Anyway…back to when I talked to my relatives. We talked on the phone at holidays and such. My parents didn’t stay that close with relatives after we moved here. I never thought about it much before, but now I wonder if it had something to do with the whole situation with my sister. Hard to say because it was years after that we moved away.”

  Susie shrugged. “There’s a ton of stuff you’ll never know. I know that sucks, but it’s reality, even when you don’t find out something big like you have. Everyone has secrets,” she said.

  Hannah slowly twirled in the desk chair and felt a pang in her chest. “I know everyone has their secrets, but this one’s a doozy for me.”

  “It is. I didn’t mean to make it seem like it wasn’t a big deal. I wish I could make sense of it for you,” Susie said.

  Hannah looked back at Susie as she spun around to face her. “Let’s take a break on this for tonight. I promise I won’t put it off for too much longer, but I need a little time.” She stood up and headed back downstairs.

  Susie and Jessie followed her back to the living room. Susie seemed to sense she wasn’t up for much more heavy talking. They settled in on the couch and channel surfed, ending up on HGTV for most of the time. Jessie dozed between them.

  Chapter 13

  Luke ducked his head and stepped into the galley of the boat. Samuel, the cook, was busy at the sink, his back to Luke. The galley area was steamy and warm, a respite from the chilly rain outside on deck. They’d had good weather for the first few days and two days of rain since then. Luke stepped over to the dining area, which had two booths in addition to an area where crew members could hang wet gear while they dried off, ate, and warmed up. There were hooks on the wall and a drain in the floor. After hanging up his wet rain gear and toweling off, he slid into a booth and poured a cup of coffee from the full coffee pot tucked against the wall. About this time, Samuel finally noticed he was there.

  “Hey there, didn’t hear you come in. How’s it going out there?” Samuel called out while he stirred a pot on the stove.

  Luke took a welcome sip of coffee before answering. “Good enough. Rain’s making it chilly. If we keep on schedule, should make it back to harbor week after next.”

  Samuel nodded. “Are you in for now?”

  “Yeah. Going to check over some gear and wait. What’s for dinner? Better yet, when will it be ready?”

  “Dude, you’re always hungry,” Samuel said. He gestured to the stove. “Beef stew and some leftovers. On top of that, a mac and cheese casserole in about fifteen minutes.” He grabbed a loaf of bread and came over to where Luke was seated. “Fresh bread. Nibble on that while you wait.”

  Luke tore off a piece and sighed as he bit into the bread. Samuel’s bread alone was enough reason to schedule their fishing trips for when he could come along. He chased the bread with another swallow of coffee. He’d been working straight through since early this morning and was tired and cold. The coffee, along with the steamy warmth of the galley, was thawing him enough that he felt human again. Hannah passed through his mind. He thought back to the last night he’d seen her. She’d come over to his place for dinner, which unsettled him. Their house was definitely a bachelor pad. Since they’d lived there, he and his brothers occasionally had women over, but they were more likely to spend most of their time elsewhere.

  Luke had managed a few more kisses that night, but found himself holding back from going any further. Lord knows, kissing her was hot enough to scald him. And that was the problem. He enjoyed women and liked feeling in control. With Hannah, his control was slipping, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t consider himself scarred by his naiveté with Cristina, but inf
ormed. He’d learned it was much wiser to look for a good time and keep it light. That was comfortable for him, while the strength of the chemistry with Hannah was disconcerting. He found his thrills with pushing his limits outdoors and preferred to keep it that way. He also sensed something was off with her, but he didn’t know her well enough to know, just a gut feeling that worried him. The flare of protectiveness toward her grated at his sense of control.

  The cabin door slammed, and Nathan tossed the hood on his raincoat back and shook his head. Droplets of water flew in an arc. Nathan waved to Samuel and nodded at Luke before heading over to hang up his coat and kick off his boots. He slid into the booth on the opposite side and sank down with a sigh, quickly pouring a cup of coffee.

  “Damn. Didn’t sleep too well last night, and the rain makes me more tired. I’m getting clumsy in this cold. Could use a little more sun,” Nathan said, reaching for the bread.

  “Feeling about the same, although some hot coffee and Samuel’s bread helps. What’s Jared up to?” Luke asked.

  Nathan shook his head. “Hell if I know. Last I checked, he was staring at maps and spreadsheets. Hard to get him to take a break.”

  Nathan tore another piece of bread off. “Damn, this is good.” He turned toward Samuel. “What kind of bread is this, Samuel?”

  “Nothing fancy. Just an oatmeal bread. Figured you guys would like it,” Samuel said.

  “That we do. Hope there’s more because I could eat what’s left of this loaf,” Nathan responded.

  Luke sipped his coffee and watched the exchange. Nathan loved to tease and started in with Samuel. While they were bantering, most of the crew wandered in. Raincoats were hung, boots piled up, and conversation flowed. Luke loved this part of fishing as much as the time outdoors on the water. Most everyone who fished for a living loved to be on the ocean and basked in the experience of living tied to its rhythms, even if only for a few weeks. They worked hard during the days, sometimes brutally hard, and evenings were filled with camaraderie and good conversation. Luke loved being tired to his bones in the elemental way he was when he worked outdoors on the water. He felt completely in his skin, which relaxed him in a way not much else could. Within minutes, Samuel had the mac and cheese casserole ready, along with the beef stew. The guys gobbled it up. Luke sat back full, and persuaded Jared to play a game of Scrabble after he finally joined them.