Two Cabins, One Lake: An Alaskan Romance

by Shaye Marlow

J.D. finally manned up. “We lost the boat,” he said.

  “You what??!”

  “We lost the boat.”

  “Wait. My boat? You lost my boat? How did you ‘lose’ my boat?!” If they’d sunk it, I swear to God…

  “Well,” Zack said, “Rory had to take a shit. So we pulled to the edge so he could shit in the woods, because he was too much of a ninny to just swing his ass over the side.”

  I put my hand over my eyes, imagining my brothers shitting off the side of my $15,000 boat.

  “Well, Rory was back in there pinching one off, and he yells for us to come look at something. So I climb up onto the shore, leaving J.D. in charge. And Rory’s all excited because he’s squeezed out this turd that’s almost two feet long, longest turd of his life, he says, and he wants me to take his picture with it, and another one for scale, and—”

  “It was huge!” Rory gushed.

  “—and he’s talking about breaking the Guinness World Record, and—” Zack caught me glaring at him, and shut his mouth on the rest of that statement. “Next thing I know, I look over, and J.D.’s standing next to me. I didn’t think too much of it, cuz I figured he would have tied off the boat.”

  “I did tie off the boat,” J.D. muttered.

  “By the time we pried Rory away from his stupid turd and went back to the boat, it was gone.”

  My hands curled into fists. I was going to kill somebody. My brothers had lost my boat, and not just that; they’d lost it because of a turd.

  “All right,” I said. I leaned over and picked up a walking stick I’d propped against the cabin a month or so ago. “Who wants to die first?”

  “Helly, we didn’t mean to,” J.D. started. With a yelp, he jumped out of the way of my first swing.

  The other two brothers scattered across my lawn, looking scared.

  With a war cry, I gave chase.

  “It was an accident!” Rory cried after I got a good crack in against his shin. Yeah, I meant business.

  Zack held up his hands, backing rapidly away from me. If he thought his sad-sack expression was gonna save him, well, he had another thing coming. I advanced, my blood running hot as I backed him up to the edge of the three-foot bank above the beach.

  Desperately, he tried to placate me: “We thought maybe your neighbor would—”

  “Would what?” Gary asked. He stepped up the last of the steps from the beach, a bag of potato chips in his hand. His brows rose slightly as he took in the sight of me with walking stick cocked to swing, and my six foot brother cowering at the edge of the bank. Then he tossed another potato chip into his mouth.

  I whacked Zack. He flinched, and my blow glanced off his arm.

  “Ow!” he cried.

  “Hold still!” I took another swing, but he ducked under it and scrambled away.

  “What’d I miss?” Gary asked.

  “These fuckers,” I spat, “lost my boat.”

  “Lost it? What do you mean, lost it?”

  Rory groaned.

  “That fucker,” I said, pointing my stick at him, “took a shit in the woods, and those fuckers,” I said, indicating the other two, “went to check it out, and nobody thought to tie off the goddamn boat.”

  Gary made a snorting noise that sounded suspiciously like it wanted to be a laugh. He straightened his face when I gave him my death glare. “So… it got swept downstream?” he asked. “The boat, I mean.”

  “That’s where boats usually go, when they’re not under power,” I said, praying for patience.

  “Shouldn’t you go get it? Every minute you’re chasing them around with a stick, it’s probably being swept further and further…”

  I planted my fist on my hip. “And how do you propose I do that?” I asked. “When I no longer have a frickin’ boat?”

  “Well…I have a boat,” Gary pointed out. He fished out another chip. “Or, better yet,” he said, his lips getting that devil’s curve, “I’ve got a helicopter. It’d probably only take a couple minutes to spot a runaway boat from the air.”

  I glared at all three of my stupid brothers, wanting to hit them so bad I could taste it. This was like my neighbor setting my blueberries on fire. Four years, and I’d never caused a wildfire. Four years, and I’d never lost my boat. But them, in one day…

  But for the moment, I needed to bottle my rage, and swallow my pride long enough to accept my neighbor’s help. If that’s what he was truly offering. And if it was without too many strings attached.

  “You’d fly me around and help me find my boat?” I asked. Yes, we were now having sex, but a couple days ago, I hadn’t even wanted to talk to him. Fuck buddies didn’t necessarily help each other, did they? Is that what we were? I didn’t know.

  “Well…yeah.”

  A little of my tension left on a sigh. “That would be great,” I said. “Now?”

  Gary nodded, threw the last handful of chips into his mouth, and turned to walk back to his place.

  I pointed at my brothers. “You three, stay here, and do not touch anything. If, when I come back, anything is burned, or shot, or smashed, or otherwise destroyed, you are sleeping outside tonight. Also, if we cannot find my boat, you are sleeping outside until you leave, and I will never invite you back. Got it?”

  They nodded.

  I turned to follow Gary.

  And that’s how I found myself in his helicopter. He opened the door for me, and I clambered awkwardly up. I was completely unfamiliar with the layout of the controls, but I figured I just wouldn’t touch anything, and that wouldn’t be a problem. I violated my own rule on the seatbelt, but nothing exploded.

  He climbed in beside me, handed me my headset, and powered the engine up.

  “Can you hear me?” he asked, his voice tinny through my headphones.

  “Yes,” I said, letting him know my mic was working.

  “Ever been in one of these before?”

  “No. Plenty of small planes, though.”

  He grinned. “You get air sick at all?” he asked.

  I looked over at him suspiciously. He looked way too damn cheerful. Downright peppy. Oh, right. Because it wasn’t his boat that was missing. And I’d had to ask him for help. And he was doing me a favor.

  “No,” I said.

  “Excellent.” With that, we sprang upward. He didn’t lift off gently; he gunned it, and we shot hundreds of feet upward in just a second or two.

  I clutched at the door as it felt like I gained a hundred pounds, and the world fell away. The straight-up motion was eerie, and the expanse of window was different, making me feel like I was hanging unsupported out over the trees. His cabin got really small beneath us, and the wind of his blades chopped the still water along his beach.

  He quit climbing abruptly, and my stomach tried to fly up my throat. I lifted in my seat, tugging against my belt, and I squealed with laughter.

  Gary grinned over at me, his eyes bright in the golden evening light, and I couldn’t help but grin back. I loved to fly, and he was playing with me. My brothers may have lost my boat, but we were going to get it back. It was a gorgeous day, and I was several hundred feet up in the air over a vibrant green landscape. And if I was completely honest with myself, the company wasn’t too terrible, either.

  Gary nudged us over toward the river. A couple-minute trip by winding trail on my four-wheeler became a couple-second dash through the sky. He quickly had us skimming downriver, just a couple tree-lengths above the silty, boiling, glimmering water.

  It was a beautiful evening, and I was finding it impossible to stay mad. I was also finding it hard to take my eyes off the pilot, despite the view.

  His eyes were busy scanning ahead of us, occasionally flickering over the controls. He had a stick in his right hand, and his left was busy on some sort of lever that looked like an emergency brake.

  “So when’d you learn to fly?” I asked. He’d answered questions for my brothers; why not me?

  “A couple years ago,” he said.

  “
After the military?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is it just for fun, or…?”

  “I have my commercial helicopter license,” he said, nodding back at a boat full of waving fishermen. “I’m going to be flying for the heli-skiing outfit upstream this winter.”

  “Hmm.” I still hadn’t figured Gary out, and what he’d just told me didn’t exactly help. He’d said he’d made bricks of money on stocks, but he was planning on flying for work. He had been in the marines, but last I heard, infantry didn’t make enough money to buy a helicopter. And there was something queer about the way he handled a rifle.

  “Is that it?” he asked, nodding to something ahead of us.

  I leaned forward, and saw my Sea Ark washed up on the leading edge of a sandbar. It was more island than sandbar, with a sturdy-looking shore and a swath of trees at least twenty feet deep running down the length of it. On all sides, cold and silty water drifted by.

  My boat was wedged up on shore sideways, with the jet down in the silt, and the anchor still in the boat. And only a hundred feet or so from it lay another boat that looked to be in similar condition.

  As Gary lowered us to land on the island, I studied the strange boat. A feeling of recognition niggled at me, and as we got down alongside it, I finally figured it out. “Hey…isn’t that those thugs’ boat?”

  Gary shrugged. “I didn’t really look at their boat.”

  I grinned. “Too busy dodging their fists?”

  “Something like that.”

  He set us softly down onto the sand and cut the engine. I hopped out and jogged over to the boats. I confirmed mine wasn’t going anywhere—and that my fishing gear looked to be all still there—and then walked the hundred feet over to inspect the other boat.

  Nobody intentionally parked their boat with the propeller in the sand like this one’s was. And no one would leave a boat just lying low on the beach without an anchor out or a rope tied. If the water went up a few inches, it would be swept right on downstream.

  “Weird, how it looks like it just washed up here, same as mine.” It looked abandoned.

  “Maybe one of them had a really long turd,” Gary suggested.

  “Maybe.” Unlikely. If it even was their boat. My memory of that night was a bit hazy. It’d been dark, and I’d been drunk.

  I stood next to it for a few moments, trying to figure out what to do. I didn’t know where they were—heck, I didn’t want to see them again anyway—so I couldn’t exactly deliver it to them. Maybe the thugs actually had just left it here planning to come back. They hadn’t looked like they were from around here, so maybe they didn’t know how to tie up a boat or treat a prop. There was a rental company logo on the side, so maybe they’d just left the prop down like that because they didn’t respect equipment they didn’t own.

  There was a phone number for the rental company on the sticker. I mulled it over a bit, and finally figured I’d secure the boat so that it didn’t drift all the way out to the Cook Inlet. Then I’d just swing by here in a week or two, and if the boat was still here, I’d call that number and let them know they needed to come retrieve their rental. Mind made up, I threw out the anchor.

  Then I crossed back over to my own boat, which was slightly less beached. Gary had excavated my jet and tilted the engine up to keep it out of the way. It took us both horsing on the frame to shove the boat back into the water. It finally floated free of the sucking mud, and I hopped up on the bow, intending to move to the back, tilt the engine down, and get started on my way.

  “Helly,” Gary said. I wasn’t sure if I’d heard him say my name since that first time we met, when he’d implied that I had an anger problem. Oh wait, no, he’d also yelled it when I’d locked myself in his cabin and taken his saw blade. He’d had a tone, both those times.

  And he had a tone now, but it was entirely different. His voice wrapped around my name in a way that sent shivers along my spine.

  I turned, still on my haunches on the bow, and found him very close. He was gripping the heavy aluminum rim of the boat, keeping me from floating away. His eyes and mouth were about level with, and less than a foot from mine.

  “Yeah?” I asked.

  “I enjoyed flying with you,” he said.

  I nodded. “Ditto.”

  He smiled slowly. “I wasn’t aware people said that anymore.”

  “What, ‘ditto’? I do a lot of things that are probably out of style. My jeans came from a thrift store. My music is—”

  “Ancient,” he said.

  “Classic,” I corrected. “My vibrator’s state-of-the-art though.”

  He laughed softly. “I did notice that. Works real good, too.”

  “It works better when you’re holding it,” I admitted.

  The corners of his eyes crinkled. “Oh yeah?” He lifted a hand and touched my cheek. His fingers were still cool from being pressed against the cold metal, and the gentle brush of them made my breath catch. His green eyes were full of light, like the sun through a wine bottle.

  And they were getting bigger, I realized. Because he was sucking me in. He hadn’t moved; just summoned me with those magical eyes.

  I put a hand on his shoulder as I leaned closer, feeling the warm, firm muscle under the thin cotton of his shirt. His hand slid up past my jaw, his fingers threading into my hair as he cupped my head.

  I met his lips halfway. I couldn’t seem to help myself. It was like he had a field of gravity, and when I got within a certain range, I had no choice but to be drawn in.

  This entry was a little less meteoric than most. My lips brushed softly over his.

  A kiss with Gary was more than just taste or texture, so much more; it was his smell, the warmth radiating from his skin, the tickle of his breath against my cheek. It was sheer closeness, an intimacy I’d never really experienced before. The muscles of his shoulder tightened under my hand as he took some of my weight, and I realized it was also a statement of trust.

  I flicked my tongue out to wet his bottom lip. His breath caught, and my lips curved against his. I tilted my head, deepening the kiss. His fingers tightened in my hair, and he made this little growling noise as his tongue met mine. Now it was my breath that stuttered, my body that responded with a slow burn.

  I was in the middle of a silty, freezing river, perched on the bow of a boat, and I wanted nothing more than to drag Gary down onto it with me. Where he was concerned, I just couldn’t seem to get enough.

  Next thing I knew, my breasts were flattened against his chest, my arms wrapped around his neck. The kiss was spinning out of control, his tongue thrusting hotly against mine. His hand skimmed down to squeeze my butt, and I groaned as he pulled me flush against the hard length of his erection. The metal of the boat pressed into my knees, but I didn’t care.

  I didn’t even hear the boat engine until it was almost on top of us. I tore my mouth away and opened my bleary eyes to glimpse Brett as he shot by only a few feet away. He had been glaring, so I was sure he’d seen everything.

  Only seconds after he passed, Brett’s wake hit my boat, rocking it. I clutched Gary’s shoulders for balance. With me hanging off him, he was stuck in place when the first foot-high wave soaked his feet and legs. He grimaced at the cold water, but he just stood, and steadied me.

  “Wasn’t that the guy you punched at the barbecue?” he asked, looking after Brett’s boat.

  I nodded. “Brett. Ex-boyfriend,” I explained.

  “Who’s bitter about the ‘ex’ part.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “You gonna tell me what happened?”

  I shrugged. “I have bad taste in men.”

  “Ouch.”

  “I wasn’t talking about you,” I protested. But between his cold, wet feet, and me inadvertently dissing him, the mood had been broken. I sighed. “Thank you for helping me find my boat.”

  “You’re welcome.” He didn’t seem to be in any big hurry to let go of me, though. He leaned forward suddenly and licked my l
ip, the action jump-starting my flagging arousal. Then he stepped back, leaving me panting on my knees. “I’ll make sure you make it back safe,” he said.

  “Okay.” Normally I would have argued, pointing out that driving this boat around was what I did for a living, and I even had a license for that shit, but… If you want something from Helly, kiss her stupid first.

  Chapte

  r Sixteen

  I was awoken the next morning by a commotion. Naturally, I thought it was Gary.

  Until I realized those sounds weren’t sawing, or hammering. Mocha was barking, and there were thumps and bangs coming from outside.

  I shot groggily to a sitting position. Crap, had I not let her in last night? A particularly loud thump, followed by a bout of frantic barking, actually made the building shudder. What the hell?

  I climbed to my feet and yanked on the shirt and pants I’d been wearing yesterday. From downstairs, I heard one of my brothers moan. They’d been drunk last night when I’d gotten back with my boat. I looked over the railing, and confirmed that all three were still sprawled out, dead asleep.

  Outside, my dog yelped.

  “Motherfuck,” I said. I scrambled down the ladder and flung myself out the door. I got down my steps, turned to the right, and came to a sudden halt.

  There was a brown bear next to my chest freezer. The bear’s butt was in the air as it swiped at something under my cabin. Beside the bear, my freezer was askew, the lid’s edge dented upward and torn.

  The bear was pawing at my dog, I realized, as I saw a flash of grey under the cabin, and Mocha began to bark again. I didn’t even think—if I’d been thinking, I would have brought my shotgun out with me in the first place—I just reacted. I picked up a length of 2X4 from the shed project, and I threw it at the bear. It thumped against its butt and clattered to the ground.

  “Get away from her, you ass!” I yelled. “Git!” Funny me, I know. When I’m personally threatened by a bear, I clam up, but threaten my dog, and: I picked up another board, and heaved it at the brute.

  The bear finally noticed something was batting at it. It turned around.

  And, looking into its beady eyes, I realized something: This was the same damn bear that’d menaced me on the trail a couple weeks ago. The one that had been advancing on me. The one that wasn’t afraid of people.