Two Captains, One Chair: An Alaskan Romantic Comedy

by Marlow, Shaye

  Blaze had been raised by the epitome of an Independent Woman—her mother, who had made her millions in real estate, had insisted on keeping separate finances despite her father’s greater wealth—and after earning her way through her Business degree, Blaze was not going to allow a bunch of scruffy, rugged, largely-unemployed men to treat her like a second-class citizen because she had a couple of A-cups and internal plumbing. Groceries retrieved, Blaze gingerly started towards the shore, picking her way across the wet aluminum float. Out in the woods, she heard the sound of an engine and looked up.

  A stout-looking man was driving a blue 4-wheeler down a winding dirt track, pulling a flatbed trailer behind him. It rattled and bounced as it jumped over roots and stones, making a ruckus as it worked its way down the hill to her. Blaze watched it approach as Lance worked his way around to the other float and began opening the back compartment of the airplane to access her luggage.

  When he came fully into view, the man driving the 4-wheeler looked nothing like what Blaze had envisioned over the phone. Instead of the hairy, dirty, graying, plaid-covered Bushrat she had been expecting after exchanging instructions with his gruff voice over the phone, he was clean-shaven, with jet-black hair, relatively tidy, and wearing tight blue jeans and green flannel shirt. A well-worn Carhartt jacket was slung over his shoulders, zipper open, exposing a broad chest beneath. And he looked young, which was completely at odds with how long she’d heard he’d been skulking around this part of the Yentna.

  Hell, from the way some people told it, he’d been living in the same damned cabin since the Gold Rush, so Blaze had hired him fully expecting a wrinkled old fart who had to grab his reading glasses to figure out which nut went on which bolt.

  But to her shock, even from this distance, Blaze could see that Jack Thornton was built like a Greek god. Pecs that strained against his shirt. Shoulders that made divots in his jacket. Legs that looked like they could crush the 4-wheeler like a used soda can. When Jack slowed the vehicle and the deepest green eyes that Blaze had ever seen met hers, however, Blaze felt her heart give an extra thud. Then she watched his muscular ass stretch against the jeans as he dismounted…

  …and her elephantine foot slipped out from under her, and she went crashing backwards into the frigid waters of Lake Ebony.

  Cold and humiliation washed over her like a wet blanket from God, putting out her idle fantasies as quickly as if she’d been dunked in liquid nitrogen. Blaze sputtered to the surface, gasping, blinking up at the horrified face of the pilot, who was kneeling on a float, offering a hand to help her, and then her very first employee, who was smirking.

  …smirking?

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