Melting His Heart

Never stay in one place too long. These are the words Brock Parker lives by. Roaming the world to save avalanche victims keeps the search-and-rescue patrolman from getting too close to anyone. The resort ski town of Aurora is no different. Until Brock meets Anya Petrova. The Alaska native needs someone to train her dog. Who better than the man who works wonders with his canine rescue team? Haunted by a family tragedy, Brock doesn’t think he’s anyone’s hero. But Anya refuses to believe that. And when she shows her true mettle in the face of breathtaking danger, Brock realizes what he’ll risk for the woman whose love has healed his heart.

Brock grinned and Anya gasped in delight as the dog scooted alongside

her leg and began eating from her hand.

Anya beamed at him. “Thank you.”

“This is your doing. Not mine.” Brock swallowed with great difficulty. “So let me get this straight. When you’re not making the best coffee in Aurora, you’re helping me with the ski patrol, knitting hats for poor people and rescuing frightened dogs?”

She laughed. “It’s only the one.”

He handed her a few more treats. “One what?”

“One hat and one dog.” She shrugged. “I’m kind of new at this…faith and making a difference.”

“It suits you,” he said in a voice almost too quiet for her to hear.

Who was he kidding? This was more than just business.

He hadn’t asked for it, but Anya had crawled under his skin. His reluctance to admit it didn’t change the fact that they were becoming friends.

Close friends.

TERI WILSON

grew up as an only child and could often be found with her head in a book, lost in a world of heroes, heroines and exotic places. As an adult, her love of books has led her to her dream career—writing. Now an award-winning author of inspirational romance, Teri spends as much time as she can seeing exotic places for herself, then coming home and writing about them, of course. When she isn’t traveling or spending quality time with her laptop, she enjoys baking cupcakes, going to movies and hanging out with her family, friends and five dogs. Teri lives in San Antonio, Texas, and loves to hear from readers. She can be contacted via her website at www.teriwilson.net.

Alaskan Hero

Teri Wilson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Though the mountains be shaken

and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love

for you will not be shaken.

—Isaiah 54:10

In loving memory of Robert K. Wilson, Sr.,

my grandpa and a real-life hero.

This book is also dedicated to

the men, women and dogs involved with

search and rescue all over the world.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Beckie Ugolini, for her support, friendship and the idea for Brock’s bear suit.

Also, thanks to Meg Benjamin, my writing friend, RWA roommate and awesome critique partner.

As always, I owe a debt of gratitude to my fantastic agent, Elizabeth Winick. And I’m blessed

with the best editors in the world,

Rachel Burkot and Melissa Endlich.

Thank you to my loving and supportive family.

Thank you to the people of Alaska

and the Iditarod Trail Dog Sled Race for a bottomless well of inspiration: Emil Churchin,

Hugh Neff, Deby Trosper, Kate Swift and

especially Zoya DeNure, for giving me the

“the odds are good, but the goods are odd” line.

And Silvia Furtwaengler for giving me the ride

of my life at Iditarod 2012.

Thank you to Elizabeth Chambers and everyone

at Bird Bakery, for giving me a fun place to write and for the many, many cupcakes.

And last but not least, thank you

Wendy Pohlhammer for creating the pattern

for Brock’s hat and for doing the impossible—teaching me how to knit.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Epilogue

Dear Reader

Questions for Discussion

Excerpt

Chapter One

Anya Petrova shoved her mittened hands in the pockets of her parka as she stood on Brock Parker’s threshold and tried not to react. The man had answered the door dressed in a furry bear costume. It wasn’t every day that she knocked on a stranger’s door and found a grizzly bear, albeit a fake one, on the other side. Even in Alaska.

She pasted on a smile. “Hi, I’m Anya Petrova. I emailed you about my dog. You’re Brock, right?”

He nodded, but made no move to take off the bear head.

Super. Anya had to stop herself from exhaling a frustrated sigh.

She’d expected someone normal, especially considering Brock Parker’s reputation. He was new in town, an avalanche search and rescue expert and alleged dog genius, at least according to what Anya’s friend Clementine had told her. Anya had been trying in vain to reach him for the past two days, but he appeared to be a mystery. He didn’t even have a locally listed phone number, and he’d yet to make an appearance in town. And she’d been looking—hard—because a dog genius is exactly what she needed at the moment.

Fortunately, Clementine had managed to procure Brock’s email address. Anya had fired off a message and was thrilled when he agreed to meet with her. Clementine had predicted he would turn out to be the answer to Anya’s prayers. What she’d failed to predict was that Brock Parker would be dressed head to toe in a grizzly bear costume when he answered his front door.

The odds are good, but the goods are odd.

Some considered it Alaska’s best kept secret.

The rest of the free world seemed all too aware of the fact that men outnumbered women in the Land of the Midnight Sun. So much so that sometimes the statistics Anya Petrova saw on the subject made her shake her head in disbelief, if not snort with laughter. Fifteen to one? Did people in the Lower 48 really believe that?

Anya had lived in Aurora, Alaska, since the day she was born. She even had a dash of Inuit blood in her veins, and she knew as well as every other Alaskan woman that such statistics were exaggerated at best. At worst, they were baloney. In any event, the exact ratio didn’t make a bit of difference. Because the men of Alaska weren’t like other men. The majority of them, anyway. Like anything else, there were exceptions.

A few.

A very few.

The odds are good, but the goods are odd. Or, to put it nicely, Alaskan men could be eccentric. And it wasn’t just the locals. Sometimes the transplants could be even worse. There seemed to be something about Alaska that attracted independent spirits, adventurers...and oddballs. Case in point—the man standing in front of her in a bear costume.

Not that she cared a whit about Aurora’s bachelor population, strange or otherwise. She’d learned a long time ago that men were trouble. In her infancy, actually. Being abandoned by her father at three months of age didn’t exactly set her up for success in the man department. Neither did being unceremoniously dumped on top of the highest mountain in Aurora for the entire town to witness. More than the town’s population, actually, because television cameras had been involved.

As a result, dating wasn’t anywhere on the list of things that mattered most to Anya. Her life was simple. She cared about three things—God, coffee and her dog.

She had a good handle on the coffee situation. As the manager of the Northern Lights Inn coffee bar, she was given free rein to develop all sorts of lattes, mochas and espresso drinks. Whatever struck her fancy, really. She enjoyed it. And she was good at it. Sometimes—particularly on days when all she did was serve up cup after cup of plain black coffee—she wondered if there was something else she should be doing with her life. Something more meaningful. But that was normal, wasn’t it? Did people really ever feel completely fulfilled by their jobs?

The God thing was new, so she really couldn’t say how that was going. But it mattered to her. More than she ever knew it could, so it went on the list.

But the dog was another issue entirely. And that’s where Brock Parker came into the picture, or so Anya hoped. Clementine had been so sure he could help her. She’d used the word genius to describe his proficiency at training.

He sure didn’t look like a genius standing there in his doorway in that bear costume. Then again, what did Anya know about geniuses? Hadn’t she read somewhere that Albert Einstein couldn’t tie his own shoes? Maybe Einstein had a bear suit too.

She glanced down at Brock’s feet poking out from the dark-brown fur. He wore hiking boots, and they were indeed tied.

Was that a good thing? Who knew?

She inhaled a deep breath of frigid winter air and tried again. “I have a very anxious dog, and I was told you might be able to help me. I’m kind of desperate.”

She’d planned to tell him more, but suddenly her eyes burned with the telltale sting of tears. To say she was desperate was an understatement. Things seemed bad enough when she’d first rescued Dolce. The poor thing hid under the bed all the time. Anya barely saw her. Little did she know Dolce’s shyness was the least of her problems.

The tiny dog also howled at the top of her canine lungs. At first, Anya had been able to convince the people at the Northern Lights Inn—who were not only her employer, but also her landlord—to give the dog some time. Surely Dolce would settle down.

She hadn’t. Not yet anyway. And the hotel management had run out of patience. They’d finally given her an ultimatum—give up either the dog or her rent-free cottage.

The choice was hers. She had a mere fourteen days to fix the problem or lose her dog or her home. She’d pinned her last hope on Brock’s purported genius, and from the looks of things, that might have been a mistake.

She sniffed and willed herself not to shed a tear. Desperate or not, crying in front of a man dressed as a bear was simply out of the question.

She heard a sigh. Brock’s furry chest rose and fell. Then—finally—he removed the bear head, exposing his face.

Anya wasn’t altogether sure what she’d expected, but the cool blue eyes, straight perfect nose and high cheekbones that looked as though they’d been chiseled from granite were most definitely not it. The man resembled some kind of dreamy Nordic statue. Anya had to blink to make sure she wasn’t seeing things.

“You say your dog is anxious? How anxious?” He spoke without cracking the slightest smile, which only made him look more like something Michelangelo had carved out of stone.

Anya swallowed. Her mouth had abruptly gone dry. The snowflakes floating against her cheeks felt colder all of a sudden, and she realized her face had grown quite warm. “Very. I rescued her from a bad situation, and unless she’s attached to a leash, I can’t get her to come out from under my bed. She even eats there and only in the dark.”

It was pathetic. Every night when Anya drifted off to sleep, it was to the sound of poor Dolce crunching on kibble.

“But that’s not the worst of it. She howls. Rather loudly.” Anya’s voice grew wobbly. “I’m about to be kicked out of my cottage.”

“I see.” Brock nodded, and a lock of his disheveled blond hair fell across his forehead.

She’d heard of bedhead, but never bearhead. It, too, appeared to have its charms.

A shiver ran up Anya’s spine—a shiver she attributed to the fact that she was still standing on his front porch and the temperature had dipped well below freezing.

Yeah, right.

“Come with me.” Still clutching the bear head under his arm, he led her inside.

Anya had been in the house once, long before she’d ever heard of Brock. She’d babysat nine-year-old twins who had lived here when she was in high school. Other than Brock’s array of unopened moving boxes, the living room looked pretty much the same—wood floors, dark paneled walls and huge floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the rugged, snow-capped Chugach Mountain range. The view was breathtaking, even to Anya, who’d seen the splendors of Alaska virtually every day of her life.

Brock strode past the window with barely a glance, leading her through the dining room and kitchen and out the back door. The snow crunched beneath their feet as they headed toward a barnlike structure about a dozen yards from the house. The barn was new—at least it hadn’t been part of the landscape when the Davis twins were nine. If there was a walkway, it wasn’t visible beneath the previous night’s snowfall. Flurries were still coming down, swirling and drifting through the branches of the evergreen trees. By the time they reached the barn, the shoulders of Brock’s bear costume were dusted with a fine layer of white.

“This is my training area.” He pushed the door open with a grizzly paw and ushered her inside.

The smell of sawdust and puppies drifted to Anya’s nostrils. A strange combination, but not at all unpleasant. In fact, she found it oddly comforting. “Wow. Nice.”

Calling it a barn wasn’t really fair. The word barn conjured up images of dirty, hay-strewn floors and farming equipment covered in layers of dust. This building had been swept and cleaned to the point of perfection. A series of short, wooden dividers separated the center of the room into four pens. What Anya assumed was leftover lumber had been stacked neatly against the wall. Brock may have been new in town, but clearly he’d been busy.

Above the excess planks of wood were a series of hooks. What looked like a ski patrol jacket hung from one of them. Anya’s gaze lingered on the bright-red parka and moved over the intersecting lines of the bold white cross printed on it until Brock spoke again, stealing her attention.

“Sit there.” He pointed to one of the square, wood-framed pens.

Anya glanced at him, wishing he would offer more of an explanation. She didn’t see a chair anywhere. What was she supposed to do? Sit on the floor? But as she approached the box, a cute, furry head peeked over one of the short walls. Then another equally adorable face popped up beside it.

“Puppies!” Anya clapped her hands.

She swung her leg over the short wall and climbed inside with the dogs, sitting cross-legged in the center of the pen. One of the puppies immediately crawled into her lap, but the other one eyed her from a foot or two away.

They didn’t look like any puppies Anya had ever seen, certainly not the customary sled dogs that populated Alaska. These were a lovely red color, with white markings on their feet and chests.

“What kind of dogs are these?” she asked. “They almost look like little foxes.”

“Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers,” Brock said, as if that mouthful of an answer made a lick of sense to Anya. He reached for a newspaper that was folded and placed neatly on one of the wooden dividers and handed it to her. “I’d like you to read this.”

She glanced at the paper, this morning’s edition of the Yukon Reporter. She scanned the front page for anything dog-related but came up empty. “Um, what exactly am I supposed to be reading?”

He shrugged what appeared to be a rather muscular shoulder, visible even through the bear suit. “It doesn’t matter. Just read it.”

“Okaaay.” She gave him a wary glance, but the look on his face told her nothing. He still wore that same stony expression. Stony, but undeniably handsome.

She unfolded the paper. The headline had something to do with the ski resort. Anya skipped over that particular article. Intentionally. Although the ski mountain loomed over Aurora, Anya had managed to pretty much ignore it since the day she’d had her heart broken atop it. She instead found a story about a moose that had been spotted roaming the streets of downtown after dark.

The moose, a young adult bull according to eyewitnesses, is thought to be the cause of recent...

Brock’s deep voice interrupted her train of thought. “Out loud.”

“Out loud?” Anya raised her brows and looked back down at the newspaper, then at the two puppies with their sweet little fox-like faces, and back at Brock. “You want me to read the newspaper to the dogs?”

“Yep.” He nodded, crossed his big bear arms and waited.

Odd, she decided. Most definitely.

But she couldn’t deny he was odd in a rather intriguing way.

She resumed reading, aloud this time, acutely aware of those glacial blue eyes watching her. Her cheeks grew warm, and she had to concentrate so her tongue wouldn’t trip on the words. Those flawless good looks of his were unnerving. Not that she was attracted to him, because she wasn’t. Of course she wasn’t. He made her nervous, that’s all.

Still, she almost wished he’d cover up his perfect bone structure with that silly bear head.

* * *

Brock watched Anya read to the pups until she’d finished the article about the rogue moose that was vandalizing downtown Aurora. Not that there was much of a downtown, he mused. Certainly not compared to Seattle, where he’d lived for the past year and a half. There wasn’t a Starbucks or a Seattle’s Best anywhere in sight.

“...authorities are asking anyone who sees the moose to contact Wildlife Care and Control.” Anya paused and blinked up at him with the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen.

Brock ignored the zing they sent straight to his chest and nodded. She started on another article, something about a rehabilitated sea otter being released into nearby Kachemak Bay.

Brock shook his head and marveled at the fact that he’d somehow landed in a place where moose and sea otters made the front page of the local paper. To top it off, he was sweltering in the grizzly suit. It was the dead of winter in Alaska, but the barn was heated and he was used to the cold. Brock had spent the better part of his adult life in the snow—if not actively searching for avalanche victims, then training for the inevitable event of a slide.

He left Anya to her reading and went to change. The two pups had settled around her comfortably, even Sherlock, the more cautious of the pair. Brock was pleased. The aim of the whole newspaper exercise was to socialize the young dogs to new people, new voices. The bear suit was a similar tool for socialization training. The dogs would be living in Alaska. They needed to be prepared for the sight of bears when they were out on the mountain training for search and rescue.

Sherlock had warmed to Anya faster than he’d anticipated. It wasn’t often that Brock had a woman around to assist with training. Then again, Anya’s voice had a pleasant, lyrical quality about it. Who wouldn’t warm to the sound of that?

He frowned as he headed back to the house. This was why he’d hesitated when Anya Petrova had shown up on his doorstep asking for help with her dog—unexpected pleasantries, such as the sound of a feminine voice and a pair of eyes the exact color of Rocky Mountain lavender, only complicated things.

Since the disappearance of his brother when Brock was a child, he’d worked hard to keep people at arm’s length. It was a necessary life skill for an eight-year-old boy who’d come to learn that sometimes people vanished. And they never came home.

As an adult, he’d devoted his life to finding the missing so other families could avoid the pain and uncertainty his own had experienced. But that’s where his relationships most often ended. After the find. He’d seen the pain that losing a loved one caused. He’d lived it. And he honestly didn’t think he had it in him to live it again. So he structured his life in a way that ensured he wouldn’t.

But it had been those eyes of hers that convinced him to open the door.

He’d never seen eyes that color—such an intense shade of violet. They brought to mind a vineyard. Or a field of wildflowers. Or a dozen other romantic notions that Brock would rather not think about.

He huffed out an exhale and stalked back toward the barn, clad now in jeans and a Search and Rescue sweatshirt instead of the oppressive bear suit. He was overthinking things. She could help him with the pups he’d promised to train and provide for Aurora’s inaugural Avalanche Search and Rescue Canine Unit, and in the process, he’d teach her how to help her timid dog. It was a win–win situation for both of them. How complicated could it get?

Anya had moved on to the sports page by the time Brock returned to the training area. He milled about, organizing probe poles and checking the batteries in his assortment of beacons as she enlightened the pups on the latest developments in the local curling club.

Curling had made the sports section? Seriously? Brock was still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that it was now an Olympic sport. He stifled a grin.

As things went, having her around wasn’t so bad. He glanced at his Swiss Army watch and decided to let her keep going for another ten minutes. In the meantime, he’d put a bit of his leftover wood to good use.

He reached for a small piece, not too much bigger than his hand, and dug around in the pocket of his jeans for his knife. He leaned against the workbench and crossed his feet at the ankles. Then he went to work shaving off the outer layer of the wood, one smooth strip at a time.

His grandfather had taught him how to whittle when he was a kid. It had been the last thing Brock and his brother had learned to do together. Sometimes, when he was feeling introspective, he wondered if that’s why he went back to the hobby time and again. Mostly, though, he did it without thinking.

As his knife moved over the wood in rhythm to the rise and fall of Anya’s voice, Brock lost himself in the tranquility of the moment. The tension in his shoulders eased. He forgot about the meeting with the current ski patrol members he was expected to lead in the morning and the other myriad things he needed to do in order to get the new unit started on the mountain. He even forgot about the other search he’d been concerned about—the one for a tolerable cup of coffee. He was able to let it all go until her voice stopped.

His hands stilled and his knife paused mid-stroke. He looked up and found Anya standing before him, her hands planted firmly on her slender hips.

“I’ve finished.” She narrowed her gaze at him.

The full force of those eyes was a bit much for him to take, so he focused instead on her forehead. “You’ve finished? What do you mean?”

“I mean I’ve read the entire newspaper aloud to your dogs. They’re snoring loud enough to peel the paint off the walls.”

“The entire paper? Are you serious?” Brock glanced at his watch. Somehow, what felt like ten minutes had in actuality been closer to an hour and a half.

“Deadly.” She swept him up and down with her gaze and bit her bottom lip. “What happened to the bear suit?”

He tossed his chunk of wood—now carved into a nice, smooth sphere—onto the workbench. “It was a bit warm, I’m afraid.”

“That’s a shame. Perhaps you can find something lighter. I hear faux elk fur is more ventilated.”

She was baiting him, clearly angling for an explanation as to why he’d been dressed as a bear when she arrived.

Brock wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction. If she’d simply come out and asked, he likely would have. But not now. “My elk suit is at the cleaners.”

She rolled her eyes, but he could see the trace of a smile on her lips. “So when do my training lessons start?”

“They already did.” He nodded toward the paper, still dangling from her fingertips. “That was your first one.”

“And how is reading the newspaper to your puppies all afternoon supposed to get my dog quiet and out from under the bed?” Something close to anger flashed in her amethyst eyes.

Brock chastised himself. What was he doing looking at those eyes again? “That’s for you to figure out.”

“You’re seriously not going to explain it to me?”

“Nope.” He smiled, which only seemed to make her more agitated.

He could have spelled it out for her, could have told her to get down on her dog’s level and spend time there. Loads of time, doing ordinary things, until the dog became comfortable with her there. But he’d always been a believer in doing instead of telling. People typically learned more if they had to think things through.

“I’m almost afraid to ask what lesson number two will involve.” Anya shoved the newspaper at his chest.

He caught it before she spun on her heel and made a beeline for the door.

“Come back at the same time tomorrow and you’ll find out,” he said to her back.

She turned, and a curtain of amber hair spilled over her shoulder. For the first time, Brock noticed a hint of warm mocha in her skin tone. She shot a parting glance at him, and a jolt of attraction hit Brock so hard that he nearly stumbled backward.

And the way that one captivating look settled in his gut told Brock things were going to get quite a bit more complicated than he’d bargained for.

Chapter Two

Darkness had fallen over Aurora by the time Anya left Brock’s house. Of course, this was Alaska, so it had likely gotten dark shortly after 4:30—probably around the time she’d been reading the curling scores to Brock’s sleeping dogs.

Now it was nearly six o’clock, which meant she’d have to head straight to church or she’d be late for knitting group. She’d hoped to have time to run home and let Dolce out first. A familiar wave of panic washed over her when she thought of the mournful howls that were likely emanating from her cottage.

Anya let out a huff of frustration. By now she thought she’d have some inkling as to what to do about the ongoing Dolce problem. But, although an entire afternoon spent at the dog genius’s home had proved interesting, to say the least, she was just as clueless as ever.

Clueless, but still determined to get through to the dog. Giving up wasn’t an option.

The first time Anya had seen Dolce, the poor dog was being kicked in the ribs. She’d watched, horrified, from the window at the coffee shop where she worked at the Northern Lights Inn, convinced what she was seeing wasn’t real...until the little dog let out a yelp.

Then she’d marched right outside and confronted the abuser. He’d been huge, easily a foot taller and nearly twice as broad as Anya. He’d also been more than a little drunk, which was no excuse for mistreating an animal. Anya had wedged herself between dog and man, crossed her arms and told him to behave himself or she’d call the police. She could only attribute the fact that he’d gone still to the frantic prayers she’d been uttering under her breath. Or perhaps, in his drunken haze, he’d seen two or three of her. A whole group of angry females instead of only one. Her heart had just about beat right out of her chest as she stood there, fully expecting the man to unleash his fury on her in place of his dog. In the end, he’d stumbled away, abandoning the pup without a parting glance.

And Anya had suddenly found herself with a dog.

She’d made up her mind right then and there to show the dog what love—and a real home—was all about. Something about seeing her shivering out in the cold, beaten down and all alone in the world, reminded Anya of herself as a baby. She’d never been abused, thank goodness. And she’d had her mother, of course, even after her father had walked out. But her mother had been too caught up in the bitterness of being left to provide much comfort to Anya, even as she grew into a young woman.

Anya knew better than to fantasize about changing the past, but she could change the future. At least for Dolce. She wouldn’t abandon her now, even if things were less than ideal.

But if Dolce didn’t get over her anxiety soon, Anya might not have a choice in the matter. In addition to being only marginally fulfilling, working as a barista also meant she was only marginally solvent. She couldn’t afford to move out of her rent-free cottage.

Her disappointment in the first “training session” with Brock ebbed somewhat as she put on her parking brake and headed inside Aurora Community Church’s Fellowship Hall. Even though she’d been attending church regularly for several months now, the feeling of peace evoked by simply walking through the front door never failed to catch her by surprise. She’d spent many years uncomfortable with even the mention of God. Something about growing up with an absent dad didn’t exactly inspire confidence in a God known to most as God the Father.

When Clementine, an avid churchgoer, had moved to Aurora and she and Anya became fast friends, the invitations to church events came rolling in. Anya managed to decline each one politely yet succinctly. Then Clementine’s husband, Ben, left town for two weeks to mush his dog sledding team in a race out by Fairbanks. Anya’s resistance wavered at the thought of Clementine sitting in a pew alone, so she finally gave in. And that day the pastor had read a verse from the Bible that had stolen the breath from Anya’s lungs.

Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.

Anya had experienced her fair share of leaving. The holy words had hit her square in the chest and burrowed deep inside. They’d danced in her thoughts all week until she found herself back in the pew the following Sunday. And the Sunday after that—the day she’d rescued Dolce. She’d known at once the timing of saving her couldn’t be a coincidence. For the first time, she felt as though she’d been put somewhere for a reason.

And here she was now, headed to church again. On a Monday night, no less.

“Anya, hi.”

“Hey, Anya.”

A chorus of hellos rose up to greet her as she breezed into the fellowship hall, a former gymnasium the church now used for casual events such as youth group meetings and potluck suppers. And knitting, of course. She waved at the half-dozen women gathered around the long, rectangular table situated in the center of the room and found a seat between Clementine and Sue Chase. Like Clementine, Sue was a musher’s wife. The two of them were long-time Christians. Not babies in the faith, as Anya sometimes thought of herself. They were very involved in organizing ways to help the community. In fact, the knitting group had been Sue’s idea.

“Good evening, ladies,” Sue said, and the clickety-clack of knitting needles came to a stop.

Anya pulled her own needles and ball of yarn out of her tote bag as she listened.

“Next week, Gus is taking a couple of volunteer doctors out to the Bush to treat people in some of the more impoverished villages.” Sue absently wound a length of red yarn around her fingers.

Gus was the manager of Aurora’s one and only grocery store. He was also a pilot who made regular runs out to the Bush, the area of Alaska that was off the road network and inaccessible by car.

“I’d love it if we could get together at least two dozen hats to send along. So far we have twenty.” Sue’s gaze flitted around the table. “Do you all think we could get together four more before next week?”

“I’m almost finished with mine.” Clementine held up a nearly complete hat, crafted of pink yarn sprinkled with sequins.

Anya couldn’t help but laugh. It was classic Clementine.

“What’s so funny?” Clementine whispered.

“Nothing.” Anya shrugged. “I hope the underprivileged like sparkle, that’s all.”

Clementine looked down at her hat. “Of course they do. Doesn’t everyone?”

Anya’s hat was a bit simpler, crafted of a fuzzy plum-colored yarn. She was a baby knitter, in addition to being a baby Christian. Finishing her hat by next week would be a challenge, but she really liked the idea of keeping someone warm in a cold Alaskan winter. Since discovering God, Anya was trying to make her life count for something. Something bigger than herself. Saving Dolce was only the start.

She’d need to start knitting at home to get caught up. She bit her lip and went to work wrapping the yarn around her needles.

“Oh.” Clementine’s hands stopped moving. “I almost forgot to ask. Did you make it out to Brock Parker’s house today?”

Anya frowned. “I sure did.” She hadn’t meant to inject an edge to her voice, but there it was.

Clementine’s knitting dropped to her lap. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“That row you just purled is so tight, it’s about to snap in two. Something’s most definitely wrong.”

Ugh, she was right. The row was way too snug. Anya unraveled it. “Nothing’s wrong. Brock Parker is a crazy man, that’s all.”

“Crazy?” Clementine tilted her head. “Are you sure? He’s kind of a big deal, you know.”

“A big deal? How?” Unless she meant big as in tall and rather strapping—ahem—Anya wasn’t sure what she was talking about.

“He’s pretty famous. He goes all over the world setting up special canine rescue teams for areas prone to avalanches. And Ben says he’s found dozens of people who got caught in slides. You should Google him.”

Anya raised her brows. “Does Google mention that he enjoys dressing as a bear?”

“What?”

“You heard me. He was wearing a grizzly bear suit when I got there.”

“That does sound odd.” Clementine paused. “But did he say he’d help you with Dolce?”

“Yes. I had my first lesson today.” Anya used air quotes to emphasize the word lesson.

“Oh, great!” Clementine beamed. “What was it like?”

“He had me read the entire newspaper aloud to his two puppies.”

“The whole front page?” The smile on Clementine’s face dimmed, replaced with a look of confusion.

Join the club, Anya thought. “Every section, not just the front page. The whole paper. I almost lost my voice.”

“Hmm. What was he doing while you read the paper?”

“He was whittling. Whittling.” Anya shook her head. The entire episode sounded completely unbelievable, even to her own ears. And she’d actually been there. “Who does that?”

Beside her, Clementine’s shoulders shook with laughter. “I hear that guy from Nome who always drives around with a reindeer in the bed of his pickup truck likes to carve things out of sheep horns.”

“My point exactly,” Anya huffed.

It wasn’t the whittling. It wasn’t the mysterious, unexplained reading-to-the-dogs assignment. It wasn’t even the bear suit. It was all of it put together.

Brock Parker was one unusual package.

So why did her heart seem to kick into overdrive at the mere thought of him?

Clementine narrowed her gaze at her, as if trying to see inside her head. “What does he look like?”

Anya’s fingers slipped, and she dropped a stitch in the hat she was knitting.

Oops.

“Um,” she started, as her face flushed with warmth.

“I see.” Sue laughed. “He looks that good, huh?”

Anya hadn’t even realized Sue had been paying attention to their conversation. She wanted to crawl under the table and hide. Clearly that wasn’t an option, seeing as Sue and Clementine were watching her with great interest. Her fingers fumbled once more, and she dropped another stitch. Darn it. She’d never finish the hat at this rate.

She decided to go ahead and fess up. They’d find out eventually.

“He’s blond, blue-eyed and Nordic looking.” She cleared her throat. “Not that it matters.”

“Nordic looking?” Clementine lifted an inquisitive brow.

“You know, like a Viking or something.” Anya ignored the flush still simmering in her cheeks and focused intently on her knitting. “Like I said, it doesn’t make a bit of difference.”

“Of course it doesn’t,” Sue said, tongue firmly planted in cheek.

Anya looked up from her tangle of yarn and sighed. “Seriously, you two. Other than what he can do for my dog, I have no interest in Brock Parker.”

In fact, things would probably be easier if he wasn’t so flawlessly handsome. Because in the end—no matter what they looked like—all men did the same thing. At least the ones Anya had known. They left.

“Seriously,” she repeated for emphasis. “You both know I don’t date.”

Clementine’s fingers stilled, and her yarn stopped moving. “Wait. We do?”

“Of course you do,” Anya said.

Clementine hadn’t yet moved to Aurora when Anya was dumped on national television, but Anya was certain she’d mentioned it to her during the course of their friendship.

“No, I don’t.” Clementine shook her head. “You don’t date? What on Earth does that mean?”

Okay, so maybe she hadn’t mentioned it. Although it was a pivotal moment in her life to be sure, it wasn’t exactly the sort of thing she revisited often. Or ever, really.

Anya sighed. “I had a rather ugly breakup a few years ago, that’s all.”

“How ugly?” Clementine frowned and glanced back and forth between Anya and Sue.

“It was televised,” Sue chimed in, much to Anya’s relief. She’d rather not be forced to tell the entire dreadful tale herself.

Clementine furrowed her brow. “How does a breakup end up on television?”

“I was dating my high school sweetheart, who was a champion skier. A downhill racer.”

“Speed Lawson,” Sue said.

“Speed?” Clementine snorted. “What kind of a name is Speed?”

“The kind for men who beat a hasty trail out of town when the opportunity arises.” Anya’s gaze bore into her knitting. Maybe if she concentrated on the in-and-out of her needles and the twisting of the yarn around her fingers, she could get through this with a modicum of dignity still intact.

“Is that what happened? He just up and left?” Clementine rested a hand on top of Anya’s.

“We’d been dating two years when the Olympic Trials came to Aurora. The night before his event, Speed told me he loved me and wanted us to build a life together.”

Anya still felt ridiculous when she thought about it—the night she’d poured her heart into that boy in a way only a girl who’d never known the love of a father could. And he’d thrown it away. For all the world to see.

“What happened?” Clementine cast a worried glance at Sue.

“He made the team as an alternate,” Sue said. “It was big news around here.”

“The biggest.” Anya nodded. “ESPN interviewed him afterward, right there on the mountain. They asked him about skiing, living in Alaska, the ordinary questions...then they wanted to know if he had a girlfriend or any plans for the future.”

“And what did he say?” Clementine lowered her voice to a near whisper.

Anya appreciated the gesture, but it didn’t matter. Everyone sitting at the table knew the story. Was there a soul in Aurora who didn’t? “He said, and I quote, ‘There’s no one special.’”

“Oh, Anya. He was young. Don’t you think they may have caught him off guard?” Clementine’s word echoed every desperate thought that had entered Anya’s head in the aftermath of the interview.

She’d stood right there, hurt and humiliated, with the rest of Speed’s hometown crowd and listened to him deny her very existence. She’d pretended that the tears streaming down her cheeks were a product of the cold Alaskan wind rather than the pain of her heart breaking. But she hadn’t fooled anyone, least of all herself.

Worse than that, in the instant he’d uttered those words—no one special—something inside her had turned hard and bitter. Just like her mother.

It was that dark thing she felt brewing inside that frightened her the most. So she’d done the only thing she knew to keep it at bay. She stayed as far away from men as she could.

“I never heard from him again,” Anya said tersely. She left out the part about the local media questioning her about Speed’s comments and the Yukon Reporter article that had called her Speed’s “broken-hearted hometown honey.” Clementine knew enough now to get the picture. “And that’s why I don’t date. Anyone. Most especially a hotshot like Brock Parker.”

“Well, I for one hope you give the lessons with Brock another chance.” Sue gave her shoulder a pat before rising and heading to help one of the knitters who seemed to be having trouble casting off.

“Me too.” Clementine nodded. “I’m sure he can help Dolce. There has to be a method to his madness.”

A method to his madness.

Anya turned the phrase over in her mind. He was mad all right. She just hoped there was a method involved. That’s what really mattered, not his looks.

The fact that those chiseled features of his made her stomach flip was an inconvenience she’d have to grow accustomed to.

That’s all.

* * *

Brock was forced to trudge through what he estimated to be two and a half feet of snow to get to his truck. He’d shoveled the sidewalk from his front door to the driveway late the night before, but by morning it was once again indistinguishable. Nothing but snow stretched out before him—an unspoiled blanket of white glittering in the morning sunshine.

Welcome to Alaska, he thought as he cranked the truck engine to life.

There was a time when Brock would have found it beautiful, before snow had become an enemy to be conquered. Sometimes he had to struggle to remember how it had felt back then—building a snowman on the first day of winter, snowball fights that left his fingers prickly and numb, sledding down the hill behind his elementary school, shouting out to his brother to be careful of the trees. His memories of childhood snow days were so tangled up with his memories of Drew that it was hard to separate them. Then Drew had disappeared. Taken right from his bedroom window, according to the police. The snow had kept on falling and, inch by inch, swallowed up any evidence that could lead to Drew’s whereabouts.

They’d never found Drew, never found who’d taken him. Unable to concentrate his rage and confusion onto an actual person, Brock had instead focused it all on the snow. He supposed in a way, he still did.

He maneuvered his truck through what passed for downtown in Aurora. Nestled between a lake—frozen completely over at the moment, of course—and the foot of the Chugach Mountain range, the hub of the small town appeared to be the Northern Lights Inn. Judging from the staggering number of cars in the parking lot, it was Aurora’s hotspot. This struck Brock as odd, considering the ski area boasted its own chalet-type quarters, complete with gingerbread trim and old-world, fairytale charm. He narrowed his gaze at the ordinary-looking hotel, wondering what the draw could possibly be, and turned onto the road leading to the tiny log cabin that served as the Ski Patrol headquarters.

The three full-time members of the Aurora Ski Patrol Unit were already waiting for him when he arrived. They sat around a sturdy wood table that was loaded down with bagels and coffee, grinning at him as if he were the answer to all the town’s prayers. Which he probably was.

Brock had never felt comfortable being the object of adoration. And no matter how many finds, no matter how large the number of people he’d saved, he still didn’t.

“Good morning,” he said and shifted from one booted foot to the other.

“Mr. Parker.” The man in the center rose. “I’m Cole Weston, senior member of the ski patrol. We’re delighted to have you. Welcome to Aurora.”

Brock nodded. He recognized Cole’s voice from their numerous telephone conversations. “Call me Brock. Please.”

“Of course.” Cole smiled and introduced him to the men on either side of him—Luke and Jackson, respectively. “Have a seat, please.”

Brock poured himself a cup of coffee and eyed it suspiciously before lowering himself into one of the chairs.

“So how do you like the snow?” Cole, unaware he’d asked a very loaded question, grinned and bobbed his head in the direction of the window where flurries swirled against the pane.

Brock blinked. How was he supposed to come up with an answer to that? He chose not to and took a sip of his coffee instead.

Not bad, he mused. Not bad at all.

Hands down, it was the best cup of coffee he’d had since leaving Seattle.

“So Brock, have you given much thought to what we discussed about making your position here in Aurora permanent?” Cole pushed the plate of bagels toward him.

Brock had to give him credit. Cole had certainly cut to the chase faster than most of the ski resorts where he’d done consultant work. Of those resorts, one hundred percent had offered him permanent positions at one time or another. They typically waited until they’d seen his work firsthand, though. Or at least until he’d finished his first cup of coffee.

“I have to be honest, Cole. Permanent relocation is not something I’m considering at this time.”

He swallowed, hoping his answer—which had been fine-tuned through years of practice—didn’t constitute a lie. Relocation implied that somewhere out there he had a permanent residence, which he most definitely didn’t. Brock didn’t do permanent.

“The offer still stands.” Cole’s gaze flitted briefly to Jackson and Luke, who both nodded their agreement. “We’re short-staffed here, and as you know, the mountains surrounding Aurora are made up of miles of avalanche terrain. We could really use your help. Permanently.”

There was that word again. Brock shrugged out of his parka. The small room was beginning to feel rather warm. “Don’t worry. I’ve brought with me two fine pups—Sherlock and Aspen—who are coming along nicely with their search and rescue training. They’ll both be staying here long term after I’ve gone. I’ll make sure everything is up and running before I leave. You have my promise on that.”

“Very well then.” Cole nodded grimly. He looked somewhat resigned, but not as much as Brock would have liked. Something told him he hadn’t heard the last of the offer.

Luke crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “How long do you estimate it will take to establish an avalanche rescue unit here before you go?”

“It depends. The dogs need a few months to become acclimated to the mountain, and the four of us will need to meet for training exercises daily. All in all, I’d guess you’ll be good to go in three or four months. Perhaps sooner.”

“Then it looks like we have three or four months to change your mind about staying.” Jackson reached for a bagel. “Once you’ve had a chance to familiarize yourself with the town, you might find that you like it here. Alaska is rather, ah, unique.”

“Yea, we’ve got our annual Reindeer Run coming up. That’s always a good time.” Luke grinned.

Don’t hold your breath.

Brock took another bite of his bagel to stop himself from saying it out loud. Aurora, Alaska, no matter how quaint or picturesque, surely couldn’t have more to offer than Banff, Canada, Mont-Tremblant, France, or Cortina, Italy—all places he’d lived in the past two years. And even if he did find something special here, it would probably make him all the more determined to leave.

Unbidden, the memory of Anya Petrova’s eyes flashed in Brock’s mind. That deep, welcoming violet filled him with a sudden rush of warmth.

He frowned and wondered what that was all about.

Chapter Three

Anya ran her dishcloth in circles over the coffee bar as she peered at the screen of the computer she typically used for ringing up customers. Not so typically, the monitor was now fixed on an image of Brock Parker. Minus the bear suit and standing on a mountaintop overlooking the Swiss Alps, he looked every inch the hero that countless websites professed him to be.

She took in his broad shoulders, apparently strong enough to dig through several feet of hard-packed avalanche snow, if the internet was to be trusted, and tried not to gape. When Brock wasn’t whittling or reading aloud to his dogs, he was apparently traveling the world and saving people’s lives. Anya was having trouble reconciling this information with the man she’d met the night before. He’d rarely even looked her in the eyes. She’d noticed that he seemed to prefer focusing on her forehead, hardly a habit that bespoke of bravery.

“You missed a spot,” a voice called from somewhere beside her.

She tore her gaze from the computer and aimed it at the counter, shiny as a mirror after all her absent-minded polishing. Perfect...except hers wasn’t the only face she saw looking back at her in the reflection. Brock’s heroic image was right there across from hers.

He sent her an upside down wink.

Anya’s head flew up, and nearly as quickly, her fingers flew across the computer keyboard. She banged on the keys, willing a different website to flash on the screen. She didn’t care which one, so long as it wasn’t devoted to Brock.

Why, oh why did I take Clementine’s advice and Google Brock?

“Were you just Googling me?”

Anya glanced over at him. His lips were curved into a rare smile, making him even more pleasant to look at. Her knees grew wobbly, which she found more than a little irritating. “No.”

“No?” He tilted his head.

“No,” she said, a little too emphatically.

“Are you sure? Because that guy looked familiar.”

She waved toward the screen, which had somehow landed on the Northern Light Inn’s homepage. Thank You, Jesus.

“You mean him?” She pointed at the website’s picture of a stuffed grizzly bear, one of the many examples of Alaska’s finest taxidermy that graced the hotel lobby. “I guess I do see the resemblance.”

“Good save.” He smiled again and glanced at the actual bear, frozen in a threatening pose on its hind legs and looming beside the coffee bar. “But I know what I saw.”

She chose to ignore this comment. Because really, what choice did she have? “What brings you here this afternoon, Brock?”

He paused, taking in the coffee bar with its smooth burled wood counter, the refurbished brushed-nickel Gaggia espresso machine—Anya’s pride and joy—and, last but not least, the stuffed bison head that watched over everything from its place overhead. Anya had taken to calling him Spiderman because of the copious amount of cobwebs she was often forced to untangle from his shaggy coat.

Brock’s gaze snagged on Spiderman for a beat, then returned to its usual place of concentration—Anya’s forehead. “I just came from a meeting up on the mountain where I had a fantastic cup of coffee. Cole Weston told me it came from here.”

Anya breathed a sigh of relief, pleased the topic of conversation had moved away from her Google search and onto a more mundane topic. Coffee. “Alaska Klondike Roast. Yep, he came by earlier and picked up a box. It’s a local favorite.”

“You brewed it?” He narrowed his gaze at her.

“Yes. Why do you look so surprised?”

“No reason.” He looked longingly at the grinder, which just so happened to be filled with Alaska Klondike beans. “It was just really good coffee. The best I’ve had in a while.”

Anya’s cheeks grew warm. Pathetic. People came in here all the time complimenting her coffee and she didn’t get all starry-eyed. It was coffee, not rocket science. Why should it be any different with Brock? Just because he was a hero and had that perfect face...

Ugh. Get a clue. He’s just another man. Picture him in that crazy bear suit.

“Would you like a cup?” she asked.

“That would be great.”

She poured him a to-go cup, hoping he would get the hint and leave. He took a sip but seemed in no hurry to go.

Super.

Anya went to work washing the tiny collection of coffee cups that had accumulated in the sink behind the counter. She was contemplating washing them again, just to have something nonmale and nonheroic to focus on, when Brock spoke up.

“Is that a flyer for the Reindeer Run?” He pointed to the stack of brochures at the end of the coffee bar.

“Yes. Why?” She bit back a smirk. “Are you thinking of participating?”

He shrugged. “I doubt it. Some of the guys at the ski patrol were talking about it this morning, so the name caught my eye.”

“You should do it. Actually, now that I think about it, the Reindeer Run is right up your alley.”

He gave her a questioning glance. “Why do you say that?”

“People get really into it. They dress up, wear nutty hats.” Anya scrunched her brow in faux concentration. “Call me crazy, but I get the impression that’s your sort of thing.”

Brock leveled his gaze at her over his cup of coffee—actually looked her right in the eye this time. There was a subtle smile in his eyes, even if it didn’t make an appearance on his mouth.

Upon being fully appraised by those glacial blue eyes at last, Anya’s first instinct was to look away. She scrubbed at an invisible spot on the counter.

She could feel him watching her. It was unsettling. Unsettling in a weak-in-the-knees sort of manner that Anya was in no way accustomed to dealing with. Even Speed had never made her feel this way—all nervous and fluttery.

After what felt like an eternity, Brock stood. “I’ll see you later this evening for your training lesson. Thank you for the coffee.”

“Yes, of course.” She took the bills he slid across the counter.

“Keep the change.”

“Thank you.” She folded the money and put it in the pocket of her apron. “Very much.”

And as she watched him walk away, she told herself that the bittersweet tug of disappointment she felt had nothing to do with the fact that he’d gone.

“Who was that? I haven’t seen him around town before.” The voice of Zoey Hathaway, the coffee bar’s afternoon barista, dragged Anya away from her thoughts.

Anya blinked at Zoey. She hadn’t even noticed her arrival.

“Zoey.” She smiled. “Hi. Is it time for your shift already?”

“I’m a little early. This morning was really cloudy, and you know what that means.” Zoey pulled a face.

When Zoey wasn’t behind the coffee bar at the Northern Lights Inn, she could usually be found flying high above the hotel. She was an aspiring pilot. Unfortunately, the turbulent Alaskan weather made it difficult for her to accumulate the necessary flying hours to get her license.

“Your lesson was postponed again?” Anya asked.

“Yep. I suppose it’s just as well, though. I needed to get some work done for the committee I’m heading up at church.” Zoey sighed and cast a glance toward the revolving doors where Brock had just disappeared. “Who was that again?”

“Brock Parker.” Just your average hero. Anya swallowed. “He’s new in town.”

“Oh, I see.” Zoey nodded, her gaze lingering on the doorway.

“You’re heading up a committee at church?” Anya asked, eager to change the subject to something other than Brock.

“Yes. We have that big service project coming up—the one to help out widows in the area. I’m head of the committee. I was kind of hoping you might want to be involved?” Zoey slipped an apron over her head and wrapped its ties around her waist.

“The service project. Of course.” Anya remembered hearing something about it at knitting group. “Sure, I can help out. I’ve actually been meaning to talk to someone about that. Is it too late to add a name to the list?”

“Absolutely not. We can use all the help we can get.”

“Oh no, this wouldn’t be a helper. I was wondering about adding a name to the list of women who need help.” Anya’s stomach churned at the prospect, but she ignored it.

“It’s not too late for that either. We still have a few weeks to plan everything.” Zoey pulled a small notepad from the back pocket of her jeans. “Okay, I just need the name to add to the list.”

Anya swallowed. Could she really do this? “Her name is Kirima Kunayak. She’s my mother.”

* * *

“What about purple? You should knit something purple. It would look so pretty with your eyes.” Sue held a skein of amethyst yarn up to Anya’s cheek and nodded her approval. “Gorgeous. Clementine, come here and take a look.”

Clementine crossed the center aisle of the yarn store, balancing three balls of wool in each hand. It would take Anya a year to do something with that much yarn. Either Clementine had been practicing her knitting more frequently than Anya had, or she was about to take up juggling.

“Yes. Definitely.” Clementine inspected the purple skein. “And look—it’s chunky. You could probably make a scarf out of this in no time.”

“No, thank you.” Chunky or not, there would be no purple scarf in Anya’s future. The last thing she wanted to do was draw attention to her eyes.

With obvious reluctance, Sue put the yarn back in its cubby on the wall of the cozy yarn store. “It’s awfully pretty. Are you sure?”

“As sure as I am that decaf is a crime against humanity.” Decaf. She shuddered. Really, why bother?

Clementine lifted a brow at Sue. “She’s sure.”

“I gathered.” Sue laughed.

“What are you going to make now that your hat for knitting group is finished? You can’t stop knitting altogether or you might forget how.” Clementine examined her six balls of yarn. All were various shades of pink, yet she was staring at them as if the choice mystified her.

“I’m not sure yet. What about you?” Anya bit back a smile. “I thought you were going to make something for Ben.”

“I am.” Clementine nodded.

“Then maybe you should steer clear of pink.” Anya plucked the six balls of yarn from Clementine’s hands and tossed them back where they belonged. She’d extract a thank you out of Clementine’s husband at a later date.

“Point taken.” Clementine tore her gaze from the wall of pink cubbies and sighed.

“This is nice. And look—it’s on sale.” Sue fished a bright ball of lime green out of the bargain bin, which was actually a white wicker basket that perfectly showcased the cheery hodgepodge of colors buried inside.

“Now that I like.” Anya held out her hand and caught the ball of yarn as Sue tossed it to her.

“Better than decaf?” Clementine asked, her lips quirking into a wry smile.

“Much.”

“There’s only one ball of it, though. And it’s awfully small. You might not be able to finish whatever you decide to start,” Sue said.

“I’m sure I can come up with something.” Anya clutched the lime-green yarn in her hand and picked a few more balls from the bargain bin—strawberry red, turquoise and tangerine.

Clementine looked on with what appeared to be mounting horror. “I hope you’re not planning on using all of those together. That would make one ugly hat.”

“Maybe.” Anya shrugged. “You never know.”

“Wow. Just...wow.”

“Anya, is everything okay?” Sue wrapped an arm around Anya’s shoulders. “You seem quiet. And Clementine’s right—all those yarns would make an awfully odd-looking hat. Should we be worried about you?”

Anya couldn’t help but laugh at the crazy assortment of colors in her arms. “I suppose I might be a little distracted. I added my mom’s name to the list for the church service project today.”

“That was thoughtful,” Clementine said.

“I’m glad you think so.” Anya blew out a breath. “But I doubt my mother will see it that way.”

Sue cocked her head. “No?”

“No. Most definitely not.” Anya almost wished she could turn back time to this morning. Then she wouldn’t be obsessing over adding her mother’s name to this list.

And maybe you wouldn’t get caught Googling Brock.

There he was again. Brock. Invading her thoughts. He was proving to be quite the irritation, even when he wasn’t around.

“I should probably get going. There are two puppies at Brock Parker’s house that are probably waiting for me to read them the paper. Or War & Peace maybe.” Anya rolled her eyes.

Clementine led the way as their trio headed toward the register. “I don’t understand. Isn’t the whole point to help people? What could your mother have against someone helping her?”

“She’ll find something. Trust me.” Anya lined up her balls of yarn on the counter, catching the lime-green ball just as it was about to roll off the edge.

“If you’re really worried about it, I could talk to the committee. We could get her name taken off the list and it would be no problem,” Sue said.

She had a point. Zoey was heading up the committee. Anya could just ask her to remove her mother’s name from the list, and she wouldn’t have a thing to worry about. Other than the pesky matter of the six inches of ice that had accumulated on her mother’s roof.

“No. Believe me, she could use the help.” Anya shook her head. “Convincing my mother just how much she needs it is the tricky part.”

Both the Dolce problem and what to do with the random assortment of yarn she’d just purchased paled in comparison.

Chapter Four

“Aspen and Sherlock are all caught up on the local happenings. Now what?” Anya handed the newspaper to Brock. Thankfully, he’d asked her to keep an eye on the clock this go-round. Just as she suspected, thirty minutes was enough time to cover most everything that went on in Aurora.

It was also apparently enough time for Brock to turn yesterday’s smooth sphere of wood into something vaguely resembling a dog.

“Oh, wow.” She plucked the tiny figure off the workbench, where it sat amid a small pile of wood shavings. “This is really great. Where did you learn how to do this?”

“My grandfather taught me years ago. It kind of stuck with me.” He frowned slightly as he watched her handle the little wooden dog, as if he himself was surprised at what he’d accomplished while she read to the pups.

Anya was surprised herself—surprised he’d actually answered her question. He was a man of few words, after all. She’d finally broken down and asked him about the puppies’ names this time, too, because he’d never mentioned them during her first “lesson.”

What didn’t surprise her, however, was the pair of antlers protruding from the sides of Brock’s baseball cap. They were soft and squishy, crafted of brown felt and ridiculously oversized. The get-up wasn’t quite as elaborate as his bear suit, but it made a statement nonetheless.

She ducked as he turned his head. “Watch it. You almost poked my eye out with one of your antlers just now.”

“Sorry,” he said to her forehead.

Anya tried not to think about the fact that he looked so ridiculous in the hat that he bordered on adorable. “So what next?”

“I’d like you to feed them.” He nodded toward a large plastic bin situated neatly beneath the workbench. “The kibble is in there. They get about two handfuls each.”

She reached down and lifted the lid of the bin. “Where are their bowls?”

He shook his antlered head. “No bowls.”

“What do you mean no bowls?” Anya frowned at the tiny pieces of kibble. “You want me to feed them by hand?”

“Piece by piece,” Brock called over his shoulder as he left the training room to do who knows what in the house. Perhaps he was going to tackle those untouched moving boxes that still littered his living room. “See? You’re learning already.”

Perhaps.

Anya was pretty sure she was on her way to figuring out the method to his madness, as Clementine had put it. After she’d gotten home from church the night before, she’d sat down right next to Dolce’s hiding spot. If Brock wasn’t going to tell her what she should do, she’d just have to emulate what she did at training class.

She hadn’t had it in her to read the paper again, so she’d worked on the hat she was knitting instead. After a quarter of an hour, Dolce’s anxious whimpering had quieted down. By the time Anya had knitted the final row—nearly two hours after she’d gotten home—she was rewarded with the sight of Dolce’s little black nose poking out from beneath the edge of the duvet. It was a first. Most would consider it a small victory at best, but Anya had been delighted.

Now, as Aspen’s soft muzzle tickled the palm of Anya’s hand in search of more food, she wondered how on Earth she could manage to hand-feed Dolce. She’d probably have to stick her hand under the bed. And turn the lights off. It sounded complicated. But do-able. Definitely do-able.

Brock strolled back in just as the dogs finished the last of their kibble. “How’s it going over there?”

“All finished.” Anya rose and climbed out of the pen. “For the record, I know what you’re doing.”

This seemed to get his attention. He angled his head toward her, antlers and all, and looked her square in the eyes. Anya had to remind herself to breathe. It was ridiculous. Men in silly hats shouldn’t be able to make women breathless.

“And what is that?” he asked.

“You’re Mr. Miyagi-ing me.” She wiggled her nose and realized she smelled like dog food.

“Mr. Who?”

“Mr. Miyagi,” she repeated. “You know—wax on, wax off.”

She waved her hands in the universal wax-on, wax-off gesture. At least, she thought it was universal. The look on Brock’s face told her otherwise.

He crossed his arms. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Wax on, wax off.” She circled her hands in the air again. “From The Karate Kid movie.”

He narrowed his gaze at her. “The one from the eighties, or the one with Will Smith’s kid?”

“The one from the eighties, of course.” She rolled her eyes. “Please. You don’t remake perfection.”

He laughed. Anya was fairly certain she’d never heard him laugh before. Surely she would have remembered the way the deep, rumbling sound of it seemed to tickle her insides.

She straightened. “You know the story of the Karate Kid, right? The old man uses household chores to teach his young protégé karate skills and valuable life lessons.”

“Am I to assume that I’m the old man in this scenario?”

“Of course.” Anya nodded as if the answer was obvious. As if Brock resembled an old man in any way, which he most definitely did not.

He took a step closer to her. “And you’re the young, cute protégé, I take it?”

She’d never said cute. She was sure of it. “Y-yes.”

“And what about the bear costume? And the hat?” He gestured toward his head. “How do they come into the picture?”

“Um...” Anya opened her mouth and promptly closed it. She was still stuck on the matter of Brock’s choice of attire.

“They’re socialization tools.”

“Socialization tools,” Anya repeated.

He gestured toward Sherlock and Aspen. “Search and rescue dogs see all sorts of things on the mountain. They need to be unflappable, prepared for anything.”

Like men dressed as bears? Right. “Yeah, I doubt that.”

Brock lifted a brow. Clearly the genius wasn’t accustomed to being questioned. “Excuse me? You doubt that?”

“I don’t think it has anything to do with the dogs. I think you just enjoy dressing this way.” She was only half-joking.

Brock’s lips curved into a self-deprecating smirk. “Is that so?”

“Oh, yes.” She nodded and considered how absolutely perfect he would look in a Viking hat. Perhaps she could find one somewhere.

“I’m curious.” His eyes danced with amusement. “How did you figure all this out? Did you learn it on Google earlier?”

Was he ever going to let that go?

“I did not Google you.” Anya planted her hands on her hips. Jesus, forgive me for lying.

“We both know you did.” The corner of his mouth lifted into a knowing grin.

The ground didn’t open her up and swallow her whole as she wished it would, so she cleared her throat and made an attempt at sounding business-like. “So Mr. Miyagi, does this conclude our lesson? Should I come back at the same time tomorrow?”

He paused and appeared to think it over. “I don’t think so. No.”

“No?” she asked, hating the note of distress in her voice.

“No,” he said again. “For our next lesson I’d like to go on a field trip.”

“A field trip?” Why was she repeating everything he said?

“Yes.” He nodded. “If you’re up for it.”

“Where?” Knowing Brock, it could be anywhere. She wanted to be at least somewhat prepared for whatever he had in store.

Brock leaned against the workbench and crossed his feet at the ankles. “How would Mr. Miyagi answer that question?”

Anya narrowed her gaze. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

He smirked, clearly satisfied with himself. “Nope.”

Impossible. The man was impossible.

* * *

Brock stomped his feet to loosen the snow from his boots as he stepped inside the ski patrol headquarters the next morning. The snow had finally stopped falling, at least for the time being. But it still clung to the ground—and everything else in Alaska, it seemed—as it would until the summer sun came and finally melted it all away. According to his research, Aurora was under snowfall nine months out of the year.

That meant nine months of danger of a slide. Slopes with an underlayer of old snow made things even worse. Aurora had snow in abundance. Weak snow. New snow. All kinds of snow.

“Good morning. Who’s your friend?” Cole’s eyebrows rose as he looked up from the book he was reading and took in the sight of Brock.

Brock loosened his arms from his backpack and let it slide gently to the floor. Aspen’s copper-colored head poked out from the top. He let out a little woof, indicating he was more than ready to be let loose.

“Morning. This is Aspen. He’s one of the pups in training I told you about.” Brock unzipped the backpack, and Aspen wiggled his way out.

“Why are you carrying him around like that? He looks more than capable of tromping through the snow.” Cole whistled for the dog and gave him a good scratch behind the ears. Aspen yelped with glee.

The two of them were bonding already. Good. “Sometimes the dogs need to be carried on the mountain—when loading onto a ski lift or riding a snow machine, for instance. I get in practice for those skills when I can.”

“I see.” Cole nodded and closed the book he’d been reading. Small. Black leather. Brock recognized it at once as a Bible. “He’s a good size for that, I suppose.”

“That’s one of the reasons I use this breed—the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever. They’re trainable and sturdy, yet compact enough to make convenient search dogs.” Brock hung his backpack on a hook by the door to the cabin and sank into a chair at the table opposite Cole.

“How long have you had him?”

“Since he was eight weeks old. His littermate too—Sherlock. He’s not quite ready to start training up here.” But he would be soon, if the way he was responding to Anya was any indication. “I have a breeder in Washington who I work with to select pups that look like good candidates for search and rescue dogs.”

“That must be hard.” With Aspen flopped belly-up at his feet, Cole poured Brock a cup of coffee from the box in the center of the table and slid it toward him.

As soon as he took the first sip, Brock knew it was from Anya’s coffee bar. It was far too good to come from anywhere else. He was beginning to understand why the Northern Lights Inn was such a draw. “What’s hard?”

Cole shrugged and nudged Aspen with his foot. “Training the dogs as pups and then leaving them behind.”

“I suppose.” Brock frowned. He’d never thought of it as leaving the dogs behind. Sure, it was hard sometimes. He spent almost every waking hour with the pups. Forming attachments was unavoidable. But it was his job, what he did best—train the search dogs and put them to work in the places where they were most needed.

“Well, don’t you worry. We’ll take great care of this little fella.” Cole bent and rubbed Aspen’s belly, sending the pup into throes of delight. “And the other one too.”

“Sherlock,” Brock said absently, still slightly thrown by the notion of leaving the dogs behind. He hoped the Tollers didn’t think of it that way. “The other one’s name is Sherlock.”

He took another sip of his coffee. Maybe a healthy dose of caffeine would clear his head. The last thing he needed was to go soft. It wasn’t as if he were abandoning the dogs. He was putting them to work. They were helping people. He was helping people.

Cole rose from his chair and shrugged into his parka. “Oh, by the way, I signed you up for the Reindeer Run.”

The sudden change of subject threw Brock for a moment. Reindeer Run? Then he remembered Anya’s cute little smirk. You should do it. Actually now that I think about it, the Reindeer Run is right up your alley.

“You signed me up?” he asked, still trying the shake the image of that wry smile. Of those eyes...

“Yep. The ski patrol enters the race every year as a team. It’ll be fun.” Cole zipped up his jacket as he reached for the door. “I’m headed out to gas up the snow machine. We’ll meet back here in an hour or so for training, right?”

“Right.” Brock nodded.

Aspen sat up and swiveled his head back and forth between the two of them as if asking whether or not he should follow Cole.

“You’re with me, Aspen,” Brock said.

For now anyway.

The dog scuttled over to him and rested his chin on Brock’s knee. Cole shut the door behind him, and Brock sighed.

He laid his hand on Aspen’s head. “You get it, right? This is your home now.”

Aspen swiped Brock’s hand with his tongue.

“Good boy.” Brock ran the pad of his thumb over the dog’s head in lazy circles.

Of course the dog understood. And if he didn’t, he would. He was a dog, after all. He’d bond with whoever spent time with him and fed him every day. By this time next year, Brock would be a distant memory to both Aspen and Sherlock. It was straightforward with animals. At least that’s what Brock always told himself, making it all the more easy for him to walk away.

With people, however, things were rarely so simple. Which was precisely why Brock didn’t let himself get close—to anyone. It was also why he didn’t like the sound of the Reindeer Run.

He wasn’t here to put down roots, so he saw no point in getting involved in community events. And a team event? It sounded even more problematic. The guys on the ski patrol didn’t need to start thinking of him as part of their team. But Cole had already signed him up, so he didn’t really have a choice in the matter.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. What could be the harm in running five kilometers—or whatever the Reindeer Run involved—with the guys? It couldn’t be any more dangerous than spending every evening with Anya.

Anya.

Something moved in Brock’s chest at the thought of her. Something warm, intangible and most definitely not invited.

Convinced he was imagining things, he scolded himself. The thing with Anya was nothing. He was helping her out, that’s all. And, likewise, she was helping him with the pups. Wax on, wax off, just like she’d said. He wasn’t doing anything wrong.

His throat suddenly grew tight, and his gaze was drawn to Cole’s Bible sitting in the center of the table.

In Brock’s experience, it wasn’t unusual to find a Bible in a ski patrol headquarters. When the business at hand involved saving people’s lives, faith in a higher power never hurt. And Brock had always been a believer himself. It had just been a while since he’d picked up the good book. A long while.

He reached for the Bible. The sheer weight of it felt comforting in his hands. The edges of the supple, leather cover were tattered and worn from what looked like years of use. Brock’s own Bible looked a fair bit newer and was packed up in one of the boxes back at the house. At least he thought it was. The boxes followed him from one place to the next, but sometimes he didn’t even bother to unpack them. What was the point?

He flipped the book open and was relieved when his fingers automatically found the page and verse he was searching for—Luke 19:10.

For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.

It was the verse he’d based his life on.

Brock certainly didn’t have a savior complex. He knew all too well he was a man, full of more than his share of flaws. He’d never felt comfortable with the label hero no matter how many times it was applied to him.

But he’d always considered what he did to be a calling—finding those who’d been swallowed up by the snow, and teaching others to do the same. His parents, particularly his mother, worried over him and his obsession, as they called it. Was it an obsession? Maybe. Brock had devoted his life to it, to the exclusion of everything else.

And everyone else.

It demanded everything from him, and he was freely willing to give it. The thought of sharing his life with someone, of loving someone, only filled him with dread. Without warning, people vanished. Even loved ones. He knew that only too well.

But that was okay because without his calling, the disappearance of his brother would have been for nothing. And that would have been unacceptable. At least he’d made something meaningful out of all that pain.

For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.

He was doing God’s work. No one would be hurt by it. Not him, not Anya and certainly not the dogs.

At least that’s what he told himself as he closed the Bible and pushed it away, out of arm’s reach.

Chapter Five

“Hi Mom, it’s me.” Anya followed the whirring sound of her mother’s sewing machine through the darkened living room of her childhood home, down the hall and to the sewing room.

The sewing room, formerly Anya’s bedroom, was where her mother could most often be found, bent over the Singer, stitching together brightly colored suedes, velvets and sometimes even furs. Today, like most other days, an array of traditional Inuit anoraks and parkas hung across the length of the curtain rod. Some were complete, ready to be shipped off to the native arts cooperative gallery in Anchorage, where her mother’s work was sold. Others still needed finishing touches here and there. But they were all beautiful, even in their various stages of completion. Beautiful and one of a kind.

“Hello, sweetheart.” Her mother glanced up from the machine but kept feeding fabric toward the needle. “Give me just a minute. I’m almost finished with this sleeve.”

“Sure.” Anya sat on the foot of the bed—the same twin mattress she’d slept on from first through twelfth grade—and watched.

As always, her gaze was drawn toward her mother’s hair, twisted into a thick braid that ran down the middle of her back. When she was a girl, Anya had wanted nothing more than to look like her mother. Or any of the other women in her family, really. They all had warm mocha skin, dark, mysterious eyes and long hair as black and shiny as raven’s wings. Anya’s mother may have only been part Inuit, but she looked every inch a native Alaskan, as did her aunts and cousins.

Anya’s appearance couldn’t have been more different. With her gangly limbs, ivory complexion and ribbon of chestnut hair, which glowed almost amber in the sunshine, she resembled a tourist from the Lower 48 more than any of the native Alaskan children in her classes at school. But it was her eyes that really set her apart.

Who had violet eyes?

No one Anya had ever seen, other than the strange-looking girl she saw in the mirror every day. As if her name wasn’t awful enough: Anya Petrova. A fleeting glance at her mother was sufficient to tell anyone who wondered about such things that the Russian name was solely her father’s doing.

Like most girls, all she’d wanted was to fit in, to be like everyone else. But she wasn’t like everyone else, not even her own mother. The differences between them were written all over Anya’s face.

“What brings you by, Anya?” The sewing machine slowed to a stop. Anya’s mother took her foot off the pedal and swiveled to face the bed.

Anya shrugged. “I just wanted to stop by and visit for a minute. I can’t stay long, though.”

She didn’t get into the reason why—Brock’s field trip. Because it was a nonevent as far as she was concerned. Not worth mentioning.

Then why is just the thought of it making me nervous enough to break into a sweat?

She shrugged out of her parka. “It’s warm in here.”

“Is it?” Her mother frowned and glanced at the window, completely obscured by the parkas hanging from the rod. “It’s snowing again, right?”

“Yes, it’s really coming down. I brought you a coffee.” Anya thrust a cup toward her. “An Almond Joy latte. Today’s special.”

She took the cup and gave the tiny hole in its plastic lid a wary sniff. “You know I can’t sleep when I drink this stuff.”

“It’s decaf, Mom.”

“Okay.” She took a dainty sip. “Mmm. This is really good.”

Anya smiled a relieved smile. She hadn’t actually stopped by for a simple visit. The flavored coffee was the buffer—bribe had a rather ugly ring to it—she hoped would help her mother accept the news she had to share.

She took a deep breath and prepared herself to spit it out, to just say it. Time was ticking, and Brock would be at her cottage in less than an hour. “A group of people at my church is getting together for a local outreach project in a couple weeks.”

“Oh?” Her mother’s mouth turned down in a slight frown.

Not a good sign. Anya plowed on anyway. “I signed us up.”

“What does that mean? You’ve signed us up to do chores for people? With your church?” Her mother couldn’t have looked more horrified.

If Anya had once been uncomfortable with the notion of God, her mother’s resistance could only be described as Alaskan-sized in its scope. After Anya had first heard those words—never will I leave you—she recounted them earnestly to her mother, struggling to explain how it had felt like God Himself had dropped down from the rafters of the sanctuary and whispered them in her ear. Her newfound faith had been a source of mystery to her mother. She was still reeling from the desertion of her husband, even after twenty-six years. The idea of a faithful God was too foreign for her to comprehend.

Anya sat up a little straighter, wishing they weren’t having this conversation in her childhood room. Sitting on the narrow twin bed made her feel like a five year old instead of a grown woman. “No. I put our names on the list of people who need help with certain projects. I was thinking mainly of the roof. There’s a good four inches of ice up there, Mom. All that weight can’t be good for the house.”

“My house. Not the house. You haven’t lived here in six years. So when you say you put our names on the list, you really mean my name, don’t you?”

“Sort of,” Anya said under her breath. “If you want to get technical about it.”

Although if things didn’t change with Dolce soon, she might be living in this small room once again. Moving back home wasn’t exactly an ideal scenario, but where else could she go?

Anya wasn’t about to admit that the outreach project was designed mainly to help the widows of Aurora. A technicality, in her opinion. Her mother might as well have been a widow. Actually, though Anya hated to admit it, she could already be a widow.

She hadn’t considered the idea before, even when she’d written her mother’s name and address on the list. But there was no guarantee her father was still alive, wherever he was. Anya blinked and waited for a wave of grief to wash over her at the prospect. The wave never came. Instead she felt a familiar, icy numbness in her chest.

“I don’t need any help from your church, Anya. I can take care of my own roof.” Her mother turned back toward the sewing machine, her wrist flicking angrily while she wound the bobbin.

“Mom, let them come help. They want to do this.”

“Then what? What happens after they deice my roof? They’ll expect me to show up at church, that’s what.”

“No, they won’t.” And even if they did, would that really be so bad? “It’s not like that, Mom. No one will expect anything of you in return. They’re just nice people who want to help.”

Her back may have been turned, but Anya could sense her mother’s skeptical eye roll, could feel the bitterness behind it.

Anya rested a hand on her shoulder. “I want to help. Please let me take care of this for you.”

Her mother stiffened, saying nothing, and the sewing machine purred to life once again.

Anya would have preferred a spoken agreement, but she figured this was as close as she was going to get. Before her mother had a change of heart, Anya gave her shoulder a final pat, then slipped from her old bedroom and back out into the snow.

* * *

“Where are we going again?” Anya asked as she climbed onto the passenger seat of Brock’s truck.

“Nice try.” He cast her a quick glance as she got settled. Then he closed the passenger door and jogged through the snow to the driver’s side, pausing on the way to check on Sherlock and Aspen situated in their crates in the back.

“We’re going on a field trip,” he said again as he settled himself beside her and cranked the ignition to life.

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