Wife in the Mail

by Marie Ferrarella

  He blamed it on being male. There was nothing else left to buffer him from his actions. There had to be some reason, some explanation, why one minute he was shoving his gloves onto her hands and the next he was holding her. Holding her and on the verge of doing something he knew he would regret all through this long, lonely Alaskan night.

  He did it anyway.

  Pulses throbbing in his temples, he lowered his mouth and kissed her. Maybe to find out what it was like. Maybe just to still his curiosity.

  Maybe because he’d finally lost his mind. A man had no business standing in near-freezing weather, kissing a woman when he had no gloves on.

  This was the last thing she’d expected—and the first thing she’d wanted, Sydney realized with a start as everything that had gone into a deep freeze suddenly thawed within her. There were a thousand reasons why she might kiss someone.

  And only one why she kissed him.

  But right now Sydney wasn’t thinking of reasons or explanations. She wasn’t thinking at all. She wasn’t doing anything except kissing—and feeling. And maybe hanging on for dear life as the bottom dropped out from beneath her feet.

  Shayne’s arms tightened around her as he pulled Sydney closer. He could feel the effect of her kiss throughout his whole body.

  He’d been kicked by a mule once. The animal’s hoof had just grazed his shoulder, but for weeks after, he’d imagined what the full impact might have felt like. He’d never have to wonder anymore. He knew.

  But with a mule, he wouldn’t have gone back for more. He did now. His mouth slanted over hers again and again. Each time, a little more forcefully. Each time, yielding a little piece of himself until it felt as if there was hardly anything left of him. Hardly anything to anchor him to the world.

  The realization that he might plummet over the edge had him pulling up sharply.

  Sydney, feeling more dazed than she had when she’d first woken up this morning, tried to focus on him. “Was that a moment?”

  “What?” Shayne tried to make sense of the words, then remembered what she’d said earlier. “Oh. Maybe.”

  Why did she have to ask questions, questions that spawned questions within his own brain? He didn’t want questions, he wanted answers. Such as the one addressing why he had just done that.

  Backing away from her as if she’d suddenly turned into a live electrical wire, Shayne tried to collect his scattered thoughts. Only scraps came within reach.

  “Are you ready to go home, yet?”

  Sydney didn’t know what she was ready for, only that she might have made one of the biggest blunders of her life. She knew she wasn’t ready for this, wasn’t ready to be with anyone. Wasn’t ready to even be kissed by anyone, really. Except that she had been. And more than that, she’d kissed back.

  Now what?

  He was looking at her, waiting for an answer. She pressed her lips together.

  “Sure.” He took her arm, to lead her to his car. A light dusting of snow began to fall as she looked back at the saloon. “Shouldn’t I say something to someone in there, let them know I’m leaving?” It didn’t seem right just to pick up and go without a word.

  Shayne had no intention of letting her go back inside. If she did, there was no telling how long it would take to get her out again.

  “Don’t worry, they’ll figure it out on their own,” he assured her.

  The snow was coming down harder. There was always a chance the weather would turn ugly, and he wanted to make it home before that happened. He didn’t like the idea of leaving his children alone for the night, even if Asia was there with them. It wasn’t the same as being there with them himself.

  “I’ve got to be up early tomorrow. But you can sleep in.” Unlocking the car doors, he opened hers and then rounded the hood to his side.

  She looked at him over the hood, blinking back snowflakes as they landed on her lashes. “Firing me already?”

  From where he stood, she looked like someone out of an old-fashioned melodrama, flirting with him. He should have been laughing at the thought, not allowing it to curl through his belly like hot cereal on a cold morning. He squelched the desire to taste snowflakes as they melted along her eyelids.

  Instead, he got into the vehicle. “No, I’ve got to fly to Anchorage tomorrow morning to get more codeine pills.” Weather permitting, he added silently. “Joseph got the last of my supply.”

  And Shayne hadn’t charged his father for the medication, Sydney remembered. He was more the good doctor than he wanted to let on. “Can I come with you?”

  “Why?” He glanced at her suspiciously as he turned on the ignition. “I thought flying made you nervous.”

  “That’s why.” Sydney could see he thought she was crazy. “I don’t want to be nervous,” she explained. “I want to be able to conquer every fear.” She refused to be held a prisoner by feelings, any feelings. “If I’m going to stay here, maybe I should learn how to fly a plane.”

  I wouldn’t want to be on that flight, Shayne quipped to himself as he pulled out of the parking lot. “You can’t do that from the passenger side.”

  “No, but I can in the pilot’s seat.” She half turned in her seat, looking at him. Even sitting so close, she couldn’t make out his expression. But she could guess. “You could teach me.”

  Shayne was glad there was nothing on the road ahead of him. The request wasn’t one he’d been prepared for.

  “I could also grow feathers and fly. Neither one is likely to happen in the foreseeable future.”

  Like Mac, Sydney conceded, Shayne was going to require a lot of work. “You don’t make it easy for anyone to get along with you, do you?”

  Shayne saw no reason to take exception to something he knew was true. In this case, he was trying not to be accommodating.

  “Nope.”

  He was going to be a real challenge. But not one, she decided, running the tip of her tongue along her lower lip and tasting him, that she wasn’t up to.

  Turning her face toward him, she smiled serenely.

  Though he couldn’t pinpoint exactly why, Shayne had the uneasy feeling he’d silently been put on notice.

  Chapter Nine

  Shayne guided his plane past the only cloud formation around for miles. It was as white and pristine as the snow below.

  The winds were with him for a change, and he was making good time. Not that he generally liked to hurry his flights. Flying was the only time he got to really relax. There were no demands on him here; no one who needed him immediately. Up here, with nothing but the sky wrapped around him and the earth below, he was able to let his mind occupy a timeless space where there were no problems for him to deal with.

  Except this time, the problem had hitched a ride with him.

  Again.

  He glanced to his right. Sydney was sitting in the seat next to him, just the way she had on the half dozen or so other medical supply runs he’d made since she’d wan gled her first flight with him several weeks ago. He still wasn’t completely sure how she’d managed to talk him into it. Into coming along with him when he valued his privacy more than a miner valued his first panful of gold.

  He’d kissed his privacy goodbye the first time he allowed her to step into his plane.

  Even if she hadn’t said a word, Shayne conceded, she would have filled the cockpit with just her presence. Just by being there, she seemed to disrupt the very air around her. Not to mention him.

  “Disruptive” didn’t begin to describe his train of thought, which derailed every time he came in contact with her.

  But she wasn’t not saying a word. She was saying a hell of a lot of them. No doubt about it, she’d come a long way since the first couple of flights when she’d sat quietly, obviously trying to regulate the pounding of her heart. Now, apparently having come to grips with her fear of flying in the small plane just the way she’d said she would. Sydney used their flight time to attempt to wear him down. She was as determined to get him to teach her how to fly as he
was determined not to.

  If the past few weeks was any indication, it was obvious she believed that if she talked long enough and hard enough, he would eventually give in.

  As if he’d ever let her get her hands on his Cessna.

  Still, it astounded Shayne that the woman just wouldn’t give up, no matter how much he ignored her or turned her-down. “Surrender” just wasn’t in her vocabulary. Neither was quitting.

  Sydney leaned forward to watch a flock of geese vanish into the horizon. It never ceased to astound her how each bird instinctively knew its position within the formation. She was still trying to find hers in the scheme of things. Although, she had a feeling, the move to Hades promised to bring her closer to that place.

  She turned to look at Shayne’s rigid profile. She certainly wasn’t any closer to wearing him down. But that only made her more determined. There was only one other pilot in the area now that Ben wasn’t around. But Jeb Kellogg was kept far too busy to take time to give her lessons. That left Shayne, who was as stubborn as a summer’s day in Hades was long.

  He’d only looked at her stonily when she’d offered to pay him for lessons. At the moment, he couldn’t be cajoled or bought, but she intended to keep on trying one way or another until he agreed.

  “I’m sure I’d be good at it if you just give me a chance.”

  Shayne should have known better than to think the lull in the conversation meant she’d given up. He kept his eyes straight ahead, even though he had to admit that she presented the more pleasing view.

  “It’s not like driving a car.” How many ways and times had he said that already? She just couldn’t seem to get it through her thick head. “You miscalculate here and there’s no walking away from your mistake. It’s a long first step down, Sydney.”

  The warning left her unfazed, just as all the other blatant warnings had. She was too positive a person to entertain the negative side of a situation for more than a moment.

  “I won’t be taking it.” She stared at him, willing Shayne to look at her. “I’ll have an excellent teacher who’ll prepare me for any contingency.”

  He laughed to himself, shaking his head. Served him right for letting her come along with him. He’d known that this would be the topic of conversation. Why had he agreed?

  The answer occurred to him but he left it unexplored. It was better that way.

  “Flattery isn’t going to get you anywhere,” he told her.

  There was a pause before Sydney asked, “Then what will?”

  It was an innocent enough question. Still, it seemed to almost pour along his skin, rousing a response that was formed completely against his will.

  He kept the thought to himself. Thoughts like that could only lead to trouble for everyone, especially him. Once hinted at, there’d be no going back, and for now he didn’t want to rock the boat. Against all his expectations, Sydney was working out surprisingly well at the clinic, not to mention the fact that she’d taken it upon herself to supplement whatever lessons Mrs. Kellogg taught the children. Even Mac seemed to look forward to doing homework at night. She certainly wasn’t the liability he’d first thought she would be.

  Not that, he amended quickly, her remaining involved at the clinic or with his children was by any means anything he was counting on permanently. But for now, it was going well.

  If at times the sound of her voice as she read to Sara stirred him and led his mind onto paths best left untraveled, well, that was something he could deal with without letting anyone else know about it.

  Least of all, the source of those fantasies.

  He heard her draw a long breath. The woman was refueling. He knew he was in for another barrage of words. Sydney talked when he answered; she talked when he didn’t. There didn’t seem to be a way out for him, but he didn’t want to continue going around and around about the lessons today.

  In an effort to change the subject, Shayne pointed to a small dot on the pristine landscape that three snowstorms, one following on the heels of another, had recently created. He hadn’t realized that they were this far south.

  “That’s Miss Faye’s cabin down there, if you’re interested.” He knew that she would be. Sydney seemed to be interested in absolutely everything, no matter how trivial, and this, after all, had belonged to someone in her family. Or so she’d said.

  Sydney immediately tried to see where he was pointing. She craned her neck for a better view. It was a single, lonely brown spot on the white terrain. One of the walls looked as if it was crumbling.

  “That’s where she lived?”

  Shayne nodded. “For forty years, they say.” He could only attest to the last eighteen of them.

  The little cabin immediately captured her interest. She’d been meaning to ask if Aunt Faye’s house was still standing, but so much else had been happening while she’d been trying to carve out a life here, she’d forgotten all about it.

  “Is anyone living there now?” Sydney saw no signs of life in the area, but she’d learned that didn’t mean anything up here. Still, it didn’t appear as if there were any prints leading to or from the cabin. And if someone was living there, wouldn’t they have fixed the wall?

  In a moment, the cabin was far behind them.

  “No, it’s been deserted since she died.” No one had been interested in appropriating the cabin. It was off the beaten path, even for out here.

  It had looked so tiny, so fragile, from this vantage point. A little, Shayne thought, like the photographs of Aunt Faye herself.

  Sidney turned from the window. “Will you take me to see it?”

  Habit had him starting to beg off, but then he shrugged. It might be interesting, at that, to see the old place again. He hadn’t been within those four walls for almost fifteen years. He supposed a side trip might fit into his schedule somehow. Lately, he had a little more time on his hands than normal. That was Sydney’s doing. She’d swiftly absorbed every aspect of running the clinic—except for the actual doctoring.

  Not that she hadn’t tried to do even that, a time or two. Just minor things, like chest colds and cuts, which she felt she was qualified to handle. The woman, given half a chance, was into everything.

  Not for the first time, he thought that she would have been just what his brother needed to settle him into the stream of things.

  His shrug was noncommittal. “When I get a chance.”

  She saw a chance to needle him a little and push her cause, “Of course, if I knew how to fly, I wouldn’t have to bother you.”

  That made him laugh, really laugh. “Knowing you were up in the air with my plane would bother me a whole lot more than taking you would.”

  She rolled the sentence over in her mind. Amusement rose in her eyes as she asked, “Should I be flattered or insulted?”

  That restlessness he was having such trouble shaking permanently was back, nibbling away at him. He knew it came with her presence. Which made his reasons for taking her with him a complete mystery.

  “What you should be, is quiet,” Shayne told her, though his tone lacked conviction. “But I don’t suppose there’s much chance of that happening, is there?”

  Sydney merely smiled.

  The door groaned in protest as it was opened and Sara shrank back, grasping Sydney’s hand. Eyen with mittens in the way, holding on to Sydney comforted her. Her father and brother had come with them, but it was Sydney on whom she relied to chase away her uncertainties. Sydney who understood why she was afraid in the first place.

  “It’s just a cabin, sugar,” Sydney whispered, sensing her unease. “A tired, sad little cabin.”

  Sidney looked around. There was dirt, debris, and what looked to be broken furniture scattered within the cabin. Half the stairs leading to a loft were missing and the wind whistled through the gaping opening where part of the wall had collapsed.

  It was hard picturing her great-aunt living here. Her letters had been so articulate, so alive. The day-to-day existence Aunt Faye had known was now
all but buried beneath layers of cobwebbed dust. Sydney hadn’t thought of spiders being this far north. She moved around slowly, trying to recreate a time in her mind when all this had been new. Trying to see it as it had been for Aunt Faye.

  Sydney paused to right an overturned chair, only to have it fall again because one of the legs had rotted clear through. When it collapsed, Sara stifled a scream.

  “Baby,” Mac jeered, then cast a sidelong glance at his father, waiting for the reprimand.

  “I am not,” Sara denied, though she was clinging to Sydney when she said it.

  “No, of course you’re not,” Sydney said softly. “It’s natural to be a little spooked in a place like this.”

  “Spooks?” It was Mac’s turn to look around with wide, uncertain eyes.

  “Poor choice of words,” Sydney apologized.

  “And you used to come here to learn stuff?” Sara asked in hushed disbelief, turning toward Shayne.

  Shayne was standing in front of the dormant fireplace, remembering. This was where he’d sat, looking into the dancing flames while Miss Faye read to them, or told them about some distant land that might as well have been on the far side of the moon for all the difference it had made to him at the time.

  But he’d loved listening to her voice, to the cadence in it.

  The cabin had seemed so much larger then, Shayne thought. He was almost sorry that he’d come. Memories belonged in the past, untouched.

  He turned from the fireplace. “Every day until I was old enough to go to school in Shelbyville.”

  Shayne glanced toward Mac, who was picking at something in the corner with a stick. Sydney’d been the one to suggest that bringing Mac and Sara along would make for a good family outing. He hadn’t been convinced of the wisdom of it, but Sara had been eager. Mac, who had wanted no part of it, had ridden, silent and surly, in the back of the plane. He wasn’t so surly now.

  Shayne crossed to him. “What’d you find?”

  Mac picked up a faded, torn photograph of a woman standing in front of the cabin. He held it up for his father’s inspection. “Just this.”