Alaska—the last frontier

The nights are long. The days are cold. And the men are really, really HOT!

Can you think of a better excuse for a trip up North?

Don’t miss the chance to experience some

ALASKAN HEAT,

Jennifer LaBrecque’s new sizzling mini-series:

Northern Exposure (October 2011)

Northern Encounter (November 2011)

Northern Escape (December 2011)

Enjoy the adventure!

About the Author

After a varied career path that included barbecue-joint waitress, corporate number cruncher and bug business maven, JENNIFER LABRECQUE has found her true calling writing contemporary romance. Named 2001 Notable New Author of the Year and 2002 winner of the prestigious Maggie Award for Excellence, she is also a two-time RITA® Award finalist. Jennifer lives in suburban Atlanta.

Dear Reader,

Once in a lifetime, you discover a place that touches something inside of you. Alaska was one of those places for me. At the time I had never seen a place of such wild, unspoiled beauty, or a landscape that varied from barren to the lushness of the Matanuska valley to the magnificence of millennia-old glaciers. And the state is inhabited by some of the most interesting people you’ll ever meet.

Obviously, I fell in love with Alaska.

And when the opportunity came along to create my own Alaskan paradise, I was thrilled. I totally enjoyed bringing Good Riddance—a small town in the Alaskan bush where you can leave behind whatever troubles you—to life! Founded by a transplanted Southern belle, Good Riddance residents are a quirky assortment of folks from all walks of life. It’s the perfect place to fall in love.

So welcome to Good Riddance. I hope you enjoy your stay. And don’t forget to drop by and visit me at www.jenniferlabrecque.com

As always …happy reading,

Jen

Northern Exposure

Jennifer LaBrecque

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To the intrepid men and women who settled the last frontier.

Acknowledgement:

Thanks to Dr Roger L Swingle, Jr. for his patience with all of my questions and his willingness to share his knowledge and love of Alaska with me. Any inaccuracies in the book are all my own.

You’re the best, Rog.

Prologue

SOME DAYS, LADY LUCK was with you and on others, she didn’t ever bother to show up. The way it was looking, she wouldn’t be flying with him today.

Dalton Saunders, former corporate drone CPA, current Alaskan bush pilot, had planned to go fishing with Clint Sisnuket on this fine October day. Instead, he was going to spend his Sunday afternoon making an unscheduled run.

“You need for me to fly to Anchorage?”

Merrilee Danville Weatherspoon, transplanted Southern belle, mayor and founder of Good Riddance, Alaska, and proprietor of Good Riddance Air Strip Center and Bed and Breakfast, nodded. “Sorry, Dalton. The fish are going to have to bite without you today. Juliette was going to make it but she’s got engine problems.”

Juliette covered his days off and picked up the overflow runs, but if she was grounded, there wasn’t much sense arguing. Not unless he wanted to come across like Jeb Taylor and Dwight Simmons, who sat in rocking chairs with the chess table between them. The grizzled old-timers never agreed on anything other than hanging out at the airstrip and dickering.

“Can’t do much about engine problems,” Dalton said. But damn, this was probably going to be one of the last nice days they’d have. It had been unseasonably warm for October today. For that matter, it’d been unseasonably warm period. The loons were still out at the lake and it was the latest they’d ever stayed in the years he’d been here. “What am I picking up?”

“Not what. Who. You’re picking up a doctor who’s filling in the next few weeks for Doc Morrow. Dr. Shanahan.”

Dalton had flown Good Riddance’s doctor, Barry Morrow, into Anchorage Friday evening for the first leg of his vacation. Dalton supposed it was only fitting that now he’d have to pick up Doc Morrow’s replacement. Although it would have saved him a trip if this Dr. Shanahan had been ready to go on Friday.

Snagging a cup of coffee from the carafe on the small carved table next to the desk that housed all of the radio equipment, Dalton nodded. “Guess we’re lucky to find a replacement.”

Merrilee nodded. “Isn’t that the truth?” Her smile crinkled the corners of her eyes. “And here I thought we’d be overwhelmed with doctors wanting to fill in for a few weeks in our fair city.”

Dalton laughed as Merrilee intended. But actually, she was right. Very few visitors came through who weren’t immediately charmed by Good Riddance. The town had been just what he’d been looking for eight years ago when he’d tossed in the towel on the rat race that was his life in Michigan.

Watching his father die, weeks from retirement from a job he despised, had changed Dalton’s life. His dad had put off living until he retired and, ironically, he hadn’t lived to enjoy it. Swearing he wouldn’t make the same mistake, Dalton had unloaded his job, condo and fiancée and pursued what he really wanted—a job as a bush pilot in the Alaskan wilds.

Dalton and his dad had always shared a fascination with their country’s last frontier. For Dalton’s sixteenth birthday, he and his dad had spent four days on an Alaskan fishing trip. How many times since then had he and his dad talked about a “big” return trip to Alaska, once his dad retired, of course? Countless. Alaska had been their shared dream. Even though he and his father had never made that trip together, he’d felt closer to his dad in Good Riddance than he ever had in Michigan.

Good Riddance was a great place to leave a lot of things behind. He mentally shook off thoughts of Laura, his former fiancée. He’d considered himself damn lucky to have tossed in that particular towel—and that type of woman. Ambition, plain and simple, had been the nail in their relationship coffin. Laura’s ambition had led her into bed with Dalton’s boss, who apparently had the measure of ambition Laura found lacking in Dalton. Although it had hurt like a bitch at the time, he figured it’d been his lucky break in the long run.

So, if he occasionally missed a Sunday afternoon fishing trip to haul in some relief doc for Merrilee, well, it still beat the hell out of the life he’d had before.

“Dr. Shanahan, huh?” he said.

“Yep. I’ve made you a sign and everything.” Merrilee handed over a placard for him to hold up at the arrival area.

Finishing the last of his coffee, he traded the now-empty cup for the sign. “Alright then, I guess I’ll go get our new doc.”

He sighed as he headed out. Sure was a nice day. If the trip went fast, maybe he and Clint could still get a little fishing in. Heck, maybe they’d take the new doc with them.

1

AS DR. SKYE SHANAHAN made her way off the plane in Anchorage she wondered again how she’d allowed herself to be railroaded into this Alaskan bush debacle. Guilt, plain and simple. Maternal manipulation, at its finest.

Skye was never quite allowed to forget that she was something of a disappointment to her parents. Sure, she carried the title of doctor but her mother, father and brother were neurosurgeons. And her sister had done the next best thing and married one. Nope, in a family of brilliance, Skye was a lowly general practitioner and still single to boot. Single, with the innate ability to pick the wrong guy. When her last boyfriend had left her with egg on her face, Skye had vowed to take a hiatus. Unfortunately, that left the door wide open for her mother and sister to step up to the matchmaking plate. And they were determined to hit a home run.

Skye had had neurosurgeons, orthopedists, even a podiatrist thrown at her to the point of ridiculousness.

So when Skye’s mother and Barry Morrow’s mother—Barry was the poor soul buried in some backwoods Alaska bush practice—put their heads together in some misguided attempt to get their children together, Skye had given in—on the condition that he’d be the last man they sent her way.

And that was precisely why she’d given up a sunny Caribbean vacation to squander two weeks in this God-forsaken place. She was a city girl, born and raised in Atlanta. She didn’t do bush or outback or all of that other stuff—except now she apparently did.

Granted she’d been feeling an underlying restlessness for the last year or so. It was as if she’d been so caught up in med school and residency and then joining a practice that she hadn’t thought any further. Once those things had been accomplished, she was almost disappointed. But that was ridiculous. How could she be discontent with her life? Maybe because you’re bored, an insidious little voice whispered in her head.

But if she was bored, Alaska certainly wasn’t the answer.

She tamped back a momentary panic at the thought of spending two weeks in Good Riddance, practicing what amounted to frontier medicine. What if she couldn’t hack it? Then she squared her shoulders. She’d manage. Shanahans didn’t fail—that simply wasn’t an option.

She quickly found and stepped into the women’s rest-room. It had been a long flight. Although she knew it was quirky, she couldn’t use the plane facilities. The claustrophobic nature of being in such a small, tight space and the incredibly irrational fear she carried from being on a plane the very first time as a six-year-old—when she’d thought that she’d be sucked out into the atmosphere when she’d flushed—made using the onboard facilities impossible.

She’d taken care of her business, washed her hands, tucked a stray hair back into her chignon and was touching up her lipstick when someone tapped her on the shoulder. Startled, she turned. A short woman of obvious native heritage stood next to Skye, a friendly smile on her face.

“Yes?”

“This is for you,” the woman said, pressing something into Skye’s hand.

“What …?” Instinctively she dropped the object and it clattered to the bathroom counter. It was a rock with the word “Yes” printed on it.

“It is yours now,” the stranger said.

Why would Skye want a rock? The stranger continued, “I saw you and sensed your unrest. That’s when I knew the rock belonged to you. Everything you need to know can be found in that rock. It is your answer rock.”

Skye was a woman of science, of fact. But there was a part of her she seldom visited that embraced the fanciful notion of a flat stone carrying universal answers. She didn’t particularly believe it but she liked the idea. And it was that fanciful part of her that led her to pick up the rock and curl her fingers around the smooth surface. “Thank you.”

The woman turned to walk away and glanced back over her shoulder. “Welcome home.”

Skye opened her mouth to tell the stranger that she wasn’t from Alaska but the woman had already left. She dropped the stone into her purse along with her lipstick and hoisted her purse onto her shoulder. Even though it had been a strange encounter, there had been something strangely calming about it.

Exiting the washroom, she glanced around but the woman was nowhere to be seen. Funny. She’d known, somehow, that she wouldn’t be.

Putting the strange encounter behind her, she focused on finding her ride to Good Riddance. She exited the area that was gated off for security purposes and scanned the people obviously awaiting arrivals. It took about two seconds to spot the broad-shouldered, dark-haired man holding a placard with her last name on it.

She had the craziest reaction as her eyes met his across the crowded room. It was cliché, tired and slightly insane but her breath caught and held in her throat as his gaze tangled with hers. Her legs were slightly unsteady as she crossed the remaining few feet. No, no and no. She was face-to-face with her worst nightmare. At an intellectual level, everything about him screamed Mr. Wrong. However, at a visceral, cellular level, everything inside her had flipped to “On.” She shook her head. She hadn’t flown across the damn country looking for some quiet space to regroup only to find herself face-to-face with the one kind of man she shouldn’t want—an Alaskan sky cowboy.

“Hi, I’m Shanahan,” she said.

Looking at possibly the sexiest man she’d ever laid eyes on, her heart lodged somewhere in her throat. She was tingling in all the wrong places …or right places, if she wasn’t standing in the middle of Anchorage, Alaska’s airport. Apparently she had a weakness for a rugged flannel-shirted man in need of a shave with dark hair curling past his collar. But no. She was so not going to make this mistake.

“You’re the relief doc?” He sounded as startled as she felt. But now, she felt even more nonplussed because he sounded as yummy as he looked. And what the hell was wrong with her? Hadn’t she vowed, promised herself no men who were all wrong for her? So, she could stand around like some goof or she could nip this right in the bud.

Besides, that Doc business irritated her to no end. And irritation was so much healthier for her in the long run than this surge of unwanted attraction that had roiled through her. “Doctor—” she stressed the entire word “—Skye Shanahan.” She held out her hand. “Pleased to meet you …”

“Dalton Saunders,” he said. His handshake was dry, firm, no-nonsense. A flummoxing jolt traveled through her. It wasn’t static electricity, but was more like a shock to her entire central nervous system. She practically snatched her hand back.

“Nice to meet you, Dr. Shanahan.” Dark, spiky lashes fringed his topaz eyes. “I’ll be your pilot for the last leg of your trip to Good Riddance. I’ll also be the one to take you out into the bush if there’s an emergency.”

There was no reason why the thought of being in a small plane with this man should make her heart pound, but it did. Not acceptable. He made her uncomfortable. She didn’t want to spend the next two weeks with him acting as her chauffeur in the sky—although she’d been told it was unlikely she’d be making emergency bush visits. However, she supposed anything was possible.

“I thought bush pilots were older,” she said, feeling stupid the moment the words left her mouth. And she didn’t like feeling stupid.

He looked momentarily taken aback. Like a shift in the wind, his manner went from laid-back to stiff. “I assure you I’m very capable.” For one second, just a fraction of time in space, there was a look, a gleam in his smoky golden eyes that literally had her toes curling inside her wedge heels. “I have an excellent record, Doc.”

She was suddenly extremely warm underneath her silk and angora turtleneck and soft wool pantsuit. She actually felt slightly feverish. It certainly wouldn’t do to get sick at this point in time. “I was simply expecting someone older,” she said.

“So was I.”

She looked every day of her twenty-nine years in her estimation but that still didn’t look old enough to most patients. That was the reason she’d taken to wearing clear-lens black-rimmed glasses. In the end, her skills won patients over, but she’d learned long ago that the glasses, professional dress and a polished demeanor went a long way toward setting the stage and meeting expectations. She gave him her best quelling look. “I’m extremely competent.”

Undaunted, and her look usually daunted the best of them, he grinned at her. “Backatcha …Doc.”

She rubbed her index finger along her temple. That grin was lethal to a woman’s resolve. “Sorry about that. I should know better. I’ve been fighting that particular battle since residency. It’s tough to be taken seriously when you’re a woman.”

“I noticed, Dr. Shanahan,” he said. And while there wasn’t anything offensive in his words, there was a note of awareness in his voice that sent a whoosh of color up into her face. Very primal. Very elemental. Him, man. Her, woman.

“I apologize. I’m sure you’re very competent,” she said, falling back on her professionalism in an attempt to quell what felt like an intimate moment between two strangers.

He nodded, a faintly wicked glimmer in his eyes. “Of course I am. Otherwise I wouldn’t be standing here.”

Skye laughed. She got the implication—incompetent bush pilots were either grounded or six feet under.

An answering smile lit his eyes and for a moment she forgot to breathe. “So, is that your bag, Doc?” He nodded toward her carry-on. “We can head out.”

He must be kidding. She always packed a carry-on bag with her toiletries and two changes of clothing and undergarments. That way if her suitcases got lost in transit, she wasn’t stranded without anything. There was much to be said for not being caught unawares. But she was here for two weeks. Her carry-on bag would cover her for two days.

Apparently, however, he wasn’t being funny. Mr. Saunders was already turning to go.

“No, this isn’t everything. We’ll need to pick them up at baggage claim.”

“Them?” His dark eyebrows lowered.

“I never quite mastered the art of packing light.” Not to mention she was about to be in the back country. It wasn’t as if she could just run down the street to one of twenty stores to pick up whatever she needed out here in the cold, God-forsaken Alaskan wilderness. “You might want to grab a luggage cart.”

“YOU KNOW MY PLANE HAS a weight limit,” Dalton said as he stacked yet another matching bag, all in a green and blue paisley pattern, for crying out loud, on the cart. She’d brought a ton of stuff with her. You’d think she was checking into the Ritz Carlton instead of the Good Riddance Bed and Breakfast.

From the moment he saw her crossing the terminal, in her trim pantsuit, elegant hairstyle, and now the matching designer luggage, he knew she was the ambitious sort.

Was that a blush creeping its way up beneath her freckle-kissed porcelain skin? Nah. Probably just a flash of temper that went with that gorgeous red hair of hers. At least he suspected it would be gorgeous if it was tumbling down around her shoulders rather than pinned into an elegant twist at the nape of her neck.

His fingers itched to reach over and pluck a few pins and watch it fall and see just what color her eyes turned then. And that was just plain dumb-ass considering she was exactly the type of woman he needed to avoid.

She had the most incredibly amazing blue eyes. The name Skye didn’t fit her—nah, she was Dr. Shanahan up one side and down the other—but it fit her eyes to a “T.” They were the color of the sky Dalton flew through, which was a distinctly different shade than you saw when you were on the ground looking up. Yep, her eyes were the open sky at fair-weather flying altitude. Fringed by reddish-gold lashes that led him to believe her hair color was real and not out of a bottle. Of course there was one sure way to know and of its own volition his mind quickly sketched an image of her naked—red hair down around her shoulders, pale freckled skin with a thatch of fiery red curls at the apex of her thighs.

And damn it to hell, he had absolutely no business standing here daydreaming about the good doctor without clothes. Alaskan men had a reputation for being woman-desperate, but he was far from that. He hooked up occasionally with Janice, a cute diner waitress in Juneau, and outside of that, rounding up a date now and then wasn’t difficult. No, he wasn’t desperate and furthermore he wasn’t stupid. Even if he liked the idea of seeing her naked, that was the end of it. God save him from any more involvements, physical or otherwise, with ambitious women.

“That’s all of it.” Her no-nonsense tone snapped him out of his introspection.

“Good thing. If you’d tossed in the kitchen sink I’d have to circle back to pick you up later.”

“Or maybe I’d have to read the manual on how to fly your plane.”

He laughed at her not-so-subtle message that he was dispensable. “You’d be out of luck there, Doc. My plane doesn’t come with a manual.”

“How fortuitous then that I left the kitchen sink behind at the last moment.”

Dalton was about a hundred percent certain Dr. Skye Shanahan wasn’t thrilled to be here. He spent a lot of time hauling strangers from one destination point to another and he’d learned to read body language. Hers screamed that she was here under protest. “I’d say it’s a very good thing.” He glanced at the mountain of luggage and pushed the cart in the direction of his plane on the tarmac outside. “How long are you staying again?”

She bristled. “I didn’t want to leave something I might need.”

He skirted a group of guys who had obviously flown in on a hunting trip. They looked like hunters and the rifle cases were a dead giveaway. He’d take that assignment over transporting Dr. Holier Than Thou any day. But he was getting paid and that’s what mattered. And while she might be a pain in the ass, she was undisputably easier on the eyes than the hunters.

“I didn’t bring this much with me when I moved here,” he said, pretending to stagger under the weight of the bags.

“Then I guess you win the light packer award.”

He nodded. “I keep it on my mantel.”

“Good place for an award.”

“Missed diagnosis, Doc.” Her full lips tightened every time he called her Doc. “I keep my suitcase on the mantel.” It was actually a lightweight backpack but why let the truth stand in the way of a good story? Tall tales abounded in the Alaskan wilderness.

That seemed to catch her off-guard. “You keep your suitcase on your mantel? How …bohemian.”

“Yeah. It keeps me grounded—it reminds me that everything I really need can fit in there.”

She looked at him as if he’d belched in public and then cast a faintly mournful eye at the luggage cart. “I hope I’ve remembered everything I’m going to need.”

He held the exit door for her and then damn near lost one of her suitcases wrestling the cart over the threshold. “Doc, I bet when you leave, you won’t have used even half of what you brought with you.”

She shivered and tugged her wool jacket together over her sweater, whether from chill or apprehension he had no clue. Maybe a combination of both. She tilted her chin up at a stubborn angle. “But I’ll have it if I need it.”

“Yes, ma’am, that you definitely will.” He opened the door of the plane and started stowing her mountain of luggage. “Here we are.”

She stepped back and eyed his baby, aghast. “That’s a plane?”

There were some lines you didn’t cross. You could insult a man’s intelligence, his mother, his sister, the size of his private equipment, but you never, ever insulted a bush pilot’s plane. “Wings. Propeller. She’s not just a plane, she’s a damn fine plane.” He patted Belinda’s riveted metal side.

She narrowed her bewitching eyes at him. “Are you expecting me to get on that plane?”

At this point, it’d be easier if he took her luggage and let her hitch-hike her prissy ass to Good Riddance. But that wasn’t part of his contract. “That’s the general idea.”

“But it’s so …little.”

He was damn proud he managed to not roll his eyes at her. “You were expecting a 747?”

“There weren’t any details. I was just told I’d have a connecting flight out of Anchorage.” She shrugged and he almost felt sorry for her. She seemed so surprised. It occurred to him that she might be one of those really smart people who was long on brains but got the short end of the common-sense stick.

“You didn’t find it strange that the pilot was going to be waiting for you?”

Again, despite her haughtiness, there was a vulnerability about her that surprised him. “Sometimes doctors get preferential treatment. It’s not as if I expect it or demand it, but it just happens sometimes. So I really hadn’t thought too much about it. I was more concerned with the lack of information available about Good Riddance on the Internet.”

He might’ve been living the simpler life for almost a decade but he still recognized all the trappings of money and privilege. The matching designer luggage. A fine-worsted wool suit. Real gold earrings. Dr. Skye Shanahan had packed and dressed this way for her foray into the Alaskan wilderness? He reconsidered his previous opinion about preferring to take the hunting party in the terminal instead of her. Watching the good doctor get her comeuppance might prove to be fine entertainment for the next few weeks.

He bit back a smirk and offered his hand to help her aboard.

“Haven’t you heard, Doc? We’re Alaska’s best-kept secret.”

2

“YOU CAN OPEN YOUR EYES now.” Mr. Saunders’s voice came through the headset he’d given her to put on before they’d started taxiing down the runway in the tin-can he was passing off as a reputable mode of travel.

She’d worked too damn hard to get through medical school and residency to die now. If they crashed, she just hoped she had time to throttle him with her bare hands before they bit the dust.

But right now, she had a bigger problem. If she regurgitated her lunch, and it had been a distinct possibility hurtling down the runway in this rust bucket—which was why she’d squeezed her eyes shut and imagined herself in the E.R. attending a messy gunshot wound, just to ground and stabilize herself—if she threw up, she’d have to kill him from abject humiliation alone.

From his smug tone, Mr. Saunders clearly had no idea how close he was skirting death, one way or another. Still, if she went ahead and killed him she’d no longer be plagued by this attraction to him, she thought darkly. That was one way to handle it.

“Relax, Doc. I haven’t lost a passenger …yet.”

She opened her eyes and blinked at the fast-fading outlay of Anchorage and the splendor of the mountains. “Very amusing, Mr. Saunders. A competent pilot and a comic.”

“I throw the comedy in for free.” He pointed to the snow-capped slope. “That’s Mt. Hood.”

She resented him anew. It was just wrong that while barely holding on to her lunch, she was hit with an incredible awareness of Dalton Saunders. It was as if he filled all the space around her with this broad shoulders, his scent, and simply his presence. She didn’t like it or her reaction to him worth a damn.

He was just the type of man who’d get her into all types of trouble. She’d come to Good Riddance to do a job, to get her mother off her case, to try to live up to those impossibly high Shanahan expectations that had been shoved down her throat since birth. What wasn’t on the agenda was getting into trouble. So the best thing to do was ignore the man in the seat next to her.

“Very nice. I rented a National Geographic video. We’re too far west to fly past the Wrangell St. Elias Mountain Range, right?”

He shot her a quick glance and she read a mixture of admiration and surprise in his look. “Right.”

“I did as much homework as I could, Mr. Saunders. However, I have next to nothing in the way of information on Good Riddance. Can you fill me in?”

“It was founded by Merrilee Danville Weatherspoon twenty-plus years ago. In that time, the population has exploded to about seven hundred and fifty, give or take a few.”

Oh God, it was even worse than she’d imagined. There were more than seven hundred and fifty employees in the medical high-rise that housed her office back home. “I’m afraid to ask, but what kind of amenities are we talking about?”

“Pretty much everything. That’s the way it is out here. If we don’t have it, then you don’t need it. You cut through a lot of crap and clutter that way.”

She really disliked people who presumed to know how everyone should live. “One man’s clutter may well be another man’s necessity.” She ran through a quick mental checklist of everything she’d packed. Thank goodness she’d brought it all with her.

He shrugged those impossibly broad shoulders which seemed equally impossibly close in the confines of the winged go-cart he was guiding through the sky. “We have a bar/restaurant right next to Merrilee’s place. It makes it easier when the snow’s on the ground outside.”

“That’s it? Two buildings together?” What had she gotten herself into?

“Of course not.” His grin held an edge of teasing but also an edge of satisfaction at her dismayed reaction. “There’s a hunting and fishing outfitter. And a Laundromat. It’s right next to the taxidermy/barber shop/beauty salon/mortuary.”

Instinctively, she touched her hair. She suspected the taxidermist barber didn’t charge an arm and a leg, no pun intended, the way some of Atlanta’s finest salons did. “The barber shop and beauty salon are part of the taxidermy? And all this is shared with the mortuary?”

“Yeah. You can wind up waiting a week or more for a hair cut during high hunting season.”

“Oh. Dear. God.” She narrowed her eyes at his profile. There was no mistaking the amused tilt of his well-shaped mouth. Relief flooded her. He was teasing. “Okay. Fine. I get it. A little joke at the expense of the relief doctor.”

Another shrug and he nodded to his left. “That’s the Sitnusak River. Some of the finest salmon and halibut fishing in the world. Have you ever had fresh halibut, Doc?”

“Not fresh, but of course, I’ve had halibut.”

“You’re here just on the tail end of the season, but you’ll have to try it at Gus’s.”

She didn’t expect much from anything, fresh or otherwise, prepared at a place in the middle of nowhere by a man named Gus. Nonetheless she aimed for what she hoped wasn’t a thoroughly pained smile. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“You’ve got to work on the sincerity, Doc.”

She ignored his comment. “So, Mr. Saunders, how long have you lived in Good Riddance?”

“I’m working on nine years, Doc. It was the best move I ever made.”

She was seriously flummoxed. Of all the places in the world, why would someone choose to move to the middle of nowhere? It was like taking a giant step backward. “But how’d you wind up in Good Riddance?”

“I liked the town philosophy so I stayed.”

Technically, he hadn’t answered her question, but she wasn’t going to push it.

“And that philosophy is …?”

“Good Riddance is where you leave behind whatever troubles you.”

She spoke without thinking. “It sounds like a cult.”

His laughter in the headset startled her, nearly sending her jumping out of her skin. “No cult here. Just the offer of a fresh start.”

Fresh start. That had an ominous ring. Who went somewhere so remote for a fresh start except for people who didn’t want to be found? Or those wanting to adopt a hermit lifestyle. But Mr. Saunders didn’t strike her as hermit-like. While her parents were both insanely practical, pragmatic individuals, Skye had inherited her grandmother Shanahan’s active imagination and it was now in overdrive.

“Fresh start?” she echoed.

“Yeah, you know sometimes you just want to put the past and the mistakes you made behind you. Haven’t you ever felt the urge to reinvent yourself, Dr. Shanahan? To go to a place where no one knows you, a place where you can become whomever and whatever you want to be, without any expectations?”

For a few illicit seconds she indulged in the notion of simply being. She’d always been Skye Shanahan, daughter of the brilliant and esteemed Drs. Edward and Margaret Shanahan and sister of the equally brilliant Patrick Shanahan. Expectation had been her intimate acquaintance since birth. She felt as if Dalton Saunders had peered into her very soul, had connected with her in a way no one had before. And that simply wouldn’t do. She did not want to connect with him, didn’t want to feel this emotional intimacy. She rejected the notion they could share similar experiences and came up with her own interpretation of his past, one far, far removed from hers.

“Were you in prison?”

He paused for a moment as if deciding just how much to answer and she wasn’t sure she’d get an answer at all. She’d read that Alaska appealed to a whole different kind of person. And there was something of an outlaw element, at least that was her impression from articles she’d read on-line. She found herself holding her breath for his response.

“Yep. I definitely served my time and Good Riddance was exactly what I needed when I got out.” He shook his head, as if trying to forget. “If we were flying farther north, you’d see an ancient caribou migration route. That’s what you see in Alaska.”

“Interesting.” She was more interested, however, in what he’d done time for but the obvious subject change told her he’d said all he was going to. A shiver ran down her spine. Still, she reassured herself his crime couldn’t have been too bad. He was fairly young, she’d estimate early to mid-thirties based on the crinkle lines at the corners of his eyes. If he’d done something truly heinous, he’d still be sitting in the slammer. Wouldn’t he?

The plane suddenly lurched and she thought her stomach contents might find their way into her lap. “Are we going down?” she yelled, clutching the strap to her right. “I need a parachute.”

“Easy, Doc. We’re fine. That was just a little patch of turbulence. I’m sure you’ve hit stuff like this flying in the big boys before but it feels a whole lot more personal in a smaller plane.”

His smug amusement scraped along her nerve endings. She was far from proud of the way she’d behaved, yelling in panic, but her training didn’t encompass crashing in a Cracker Jack toy plane in the middle of Remoteville, her only companion a man who’d done hard time. And that was only if they didn’t die.

“How much longer until we’re there?” It felt as if they’d been flying forever.

“Maybe a quarter of an hour.”

“Oh.”

“There’s a problem?”

“Well, I don’t see anything around yet.”

“Nope.”

Her head was beginning to throb. Maybe it was an altitude thing. She scrambled in her bag, found the travel ibuprofen and swallowed two without benefit of a drink.

“Headache?” he asked.

She glanced across the space separating them. He boasted an attractive profile—rugged jaw and a nice nose with a faint hump in the middle that led her to believe it’d been broken at some point in time. The errant thought danced through her head that he’d produce lovely children. Dear God, where had that thought come from? His potential offspring had absolutely nothing to do with her. “Yes,” she said, confirming her headache, then deliberately looking away from his too-handsome profile.

Outside her window, wilderness sprawled before her. Some people might find this enthralling, exciting, but she preferred her back-to-nature experiences to be those of sitting in her cozy den watching National Geographic specials. This was not her cup of tea—Starbucks, venti, black, sweet Tazo with light ice—that was her cup of tea.

The plane suddenly banked sharply to her right. Saunders’s voice was in her ear. “Look to your right and you’ll see something very few people are privileged to see in person. That’s a grizzly salmon fishing.”

Unfortunately, her stomach banked right along with the plane. She could clamp a spewing artery. She could reattach a missing digit. She could clean a gangrenous wound, but this, she couldn’t handle this. She caught a glimpse of a huge, brown thing but all she could think was, quite inanely, that if Saunders looked to his right, he was about to see something very few people were privileged to see in person, as well.

Without further ado, Dr. Skye Shanahan promptly tossed her cookies. Or to be pathologically correct, her lunch of tuna on whole wheat.

HE’D SEEN WORSE. Much worse. He’d seen grown, macho men lose it in a small plane. He’d seen Elmer Driscoll get knee-crawling drunk and lose it behind Gus’s place last week. But he’d never seen anyone more frustrated with having lost it.

“You okay?” he asked as she stepped out of the copse of trees wearing a pair of black slacks and a coppery brown sweater that seemed to pick up the highlights in her red hair, her toothbrush and mouthwash clutched in one hand, her soiled suit and sweater in the other.

He’d radioed in an emergency landing and promptly set the plane down. There was no way in hell he was showing up at Good Riddance with a puke-covered passenger. His reputation as a pilot would suffer, and her reputation as a physician who should be made of stronger stuff, would suffer even worse. And she’d never forgive him for the humiliation, which was neither here nor there, except who knew if he might turn up sick or injured in the ensuing weeks and her Hippocratic oath might take a back seat to the memory of arriving in town covered in barf.

While she’d changed clothes and cleaned up behind the cover of fir trees and a small stream adjacent to the meadow he’d landed in, he’d taken care of the plane.

“Do you think you could manage not to roll the plane anymore? Have you ever heard of a straight and level course, Saunders?”

He silently thanked the powers that be for her haughtiness. It simply reinforced for him that, no matter how damn attractive he found her, she wasn’t the woman for him. “You could’ve told me you were feeling sick. Better yet, have you ever heard of Dramamine, Shanahan?”

“I wasn’t aware I had a problem with motion sickness …until now.”

A piece of the fir tree sticking out of her hair offset her haughty embarrassment. By rights, he should’ve let her greet the inhabitants of Good Riddance sprouting an evergreen. However, he simply couldn’t. He reached over to pluck it from her hair. “Hold on a moment.”

It turned out the piece of tree wasn’t caught up in her hair but in the clip. Her hair tumbled down in a red cascade, settling below her shoulders. She gasped and he simply stood there, transfixed, at a loss for words.

All thoughts of haughtiness and wrong choices flew out of his head. She was, quite simply, stunning, standing in a meadow ringed by trees, with the glinting sun picking out radiant strands of gold in her red hair, her eyes taking on the hue and depth of magnificent glacier ice that had spent millenniums forming.

For one millisecond or it could’ve been a lifetime, Dalton was lost. Lost in those eyes and that hair and …well, lost in her. For one crazy moment in time he wanted to bridge the short physical distance separating them. He wanted to kiss her gorgeous mouth, bury his hands in the living fire of her hair, peel away the layers of her clothes and connect all her freckles with a trail of kisses. Then he wanted to make slow, sweet love to this prickly pear of a woman who, although she was standing less than a foot from him, was nonetheless worlds apart from him. He wanted to lay her down in the grass of an untainted meadow, with only the sun and sky and the occasional soaring bird of prey as witness to their union.

In short, he wanted Dr. Skye Shanahan like he’d never wanted anything.

Her eyes widened and for a moment he thought he saw an answering need. And then she slammed the proverbial door.

“What are you doing, Saunders?”

He realized he was holding on to the twig, which still had her clip attached. He held it up the way hunters displayed trophy kills. “This was in your hair. I didn’t think you wanted to show up with an evergreen branch sticking out of your head.”

“No, I didn’t. But it would’ve been nice if you hadn’t destroyed my hairdo in the meantime.”

Yet again, he wanted to kiss her, but this time for yanking him back to reality with her shrewish tongue. “Do you hear that, Shanahan?”

She narrowed her eyes and cocked her head to one side, a flash of panic shadowing her features. “What? I don’t hear anything. Is it a bear?”

“No. I thought I heard a faint and distant thank-you, one without any recriminations behind it. I guess it was just wishful thinking on my part.”

“Have you considered that had you not been hot-dogging, I wouldn’t have gotten sick? And if I hadn’t gotten sick, I wouldn’t have needed to hike into the wilderness and clean up in an ice-cold river? And I wouldn’t have had to worry about getting branches in my hair?”

This was rich. “So, the fact that a doctor can’t diagnose and properly treat her own motion sickness or at least acknowledge it and give her pilot a heads up is my fault?”

“You could use some sensitivity training, Saunders. And I’ve never, ever had an issue with motion sickness before.”

So far, in the course of less than an hour, she’d managed to paint him a felon, an incompetent pilot and insult the hell out of his plane. He’d had enough. “Any chance you’re knocked up, Doc? Wait. No man could get past that barbed tongue of yours to get the job done.” He foolishly, dangerously thought that under different circumstances he’d be at the front of the line to give it a try. But then again, Dalton had never been able to resist a challenge.

A blush definitely stained her face. “Saunders, do you think you could pretend to be a professional and get me to Good Riddance without further mishap?”

“Doc, it’s my raison d’être. By the way, I learned that phrase in prison.” She’d been so quick to decide he must have a checkered past. He wasn’t too damned sure Dr. Stick Up Her Ass would understand the concept of a metaphorical prison, so he’d let her roll with what she wanted to think. He’d been imprisoned in the corporate culture, the rat race, but he didn’t think she’d get that. Although he’d bet Belinda, his trusty plane, that Shanahan was doing the same time he’d been doing.

She strode toward the plane, her back ramrod straight. But her hair and eyes had told him a different story. She had passion.

“Just get me there, Saunders. I thought I’d never hear myself say it, but I’m ready to be in Good Riddance.”

3

“YOU MUST BE THE NEW relief doc,” said a sixtyish woman with blond hair who stepped forward to greet Skye. Every eye in the room had trained on Skye the moment she’d walked through the door of Good Riddance Air Field/Restaurant/Bed and Breakfast. “I’m Merrilee Danville Weatherspoon, founder and mayor.”

Ms. Weatherspoon had a melodic, distinctly Southern voice which somehow fit with the fact that the woman’s flannel shirt had lace trim around the collar and down the front and lace-trimmed flannel curtains hung at the windows of the log building. Skye liked her immediately.

“Dr. Skye Shanahan. Nice to meet you.”

“On behalf of the town, I’d like to welcome you to Good Riddance, Alaska, where you get to leave behind whatever troubles you.”

Two older men sporting caps and beards sat in rocking chairs across the room next to a pot-bellied stove, a chess table between them. On the multicolored, braided rug at their feet, a couple of thickly furred huskies lay curled in tight balls. Both dogs looked at her and then closed their eyes again. In one corner, a TV played a soap opera that no one was watching.

A very attractive man, obviously of native heritage given his skin-tone, short dark hair and flat-broad cheekbones, sat propped on the edge of the desk that held neat stacks of paperwork and two-way radio equipment, a schedule clasped in his hands. He stepped forward and offered a brief handshake. “Clint Sisnuket. Pleased to meet you.”

She returned the greeting. Disconcertingly, his touch didn’t send a little shiver down her spine the way Saunders’s had …did …whatever.

Everyone offered up a hello. But it was the where you get to leave behind whatever troubles you that stuck with Skye. That was rich in irony as what troubled Skye specifically was being in Good Riddance in the first place. However, even she possessed enough common sense and social skills, although she’d sometimes been accused of lacking both, not to say so. “I’m pleased to be here.”

See, she could tell a white lie as well as the next person. And it wasn’t too much of a stretch to admit that she was glad to be back on terra firma—and doubly glad to be out of Dalton Saunders’s company.

Speaking of the devil …Saunders strolled in at that moment. “Afternoon, Merrilee. Where do you want the Doc’s bags? She’s got one or two.”

He could save his sarcasm for someone else. She wasn’t amused. Well, perhaps she might be amused if he was someone else. But he got her back up.

“Just put them in the back of your pickup, Dalton. We’ve had a little complication, resulting in a change of plan.”

“Complication?” Saunders said.

“Change of plan?” Skye had a bad feeling.

“The roof caved in on the guest rooms upstairs.” Merrilee shook her head. “It’s just as well Scat Murphy left town when he did or I’d have kicked him out anyway for substandard work.” One could only surmise that Scat—and why would anyone trust someone whose name, given or otherwise, was equated with excrement—had done some roofing or sheetrocking. “Bull—” another name right up there with Scat, she thought “—is doing a patch job now but it’s going to take nearly a week to get it done right.” The mayor patted Skye on the shoulder. “Don’t you worry, though. We’re going to put you up in Irene Marbut’s cabin out at Shadow Lake.”

At least she had a nice normal name. “Ms. Marbut won’t mind a stranger barging in?”

“Well, dear, Irene died a few months ago so I think she’ll be fine with it. Gus went out a few hours ago with Luellen Sisnuket, Clint’s cousin,” she said, nodding to the dark-haired man at the desk’s edge, “and got the place ready for you. Well, as ready as they could in such a short time. It was the darnedest thing. I was about to go upstairs this morning to put fresh linens on your bed.” She leaned forward in a confiding manner. “Bull says it’s procrastination but I always wait until the morning of a new arrival to change the sheets so they’re as fresh as possible.” She straightened. “Anyhow, I was on my way upstairs when I heard a huge bang. If I’d been two minutes earlier, I’d have been in a world of hurt.”

“Then I’m glad you waited.” She didn’t know what else to say. Now she was staying in a dead woman’s cabin “out on” a lake. Skye didn’t miss that nuance. Good Riddance was already off the beaten path in every sense of the word. She couldn’t imagine what would qualify as “out” for these people. And though she was familiar with the dead, she didn’t, as a matter of course, sleep in their beds. It was a little creepy.

Merrilee offered another shoulder pat. “Yes, ma’am. All’s well that ends well. We’ve got you fixed right up, honey. Dalton here can give you a ride in to work every morning and drop you off in the evenings, seeing as how you’re going to be his neighbor. He took good care of Ms. Irene until she passed and he’ll take good care of you while you’re here. Isn’t that right, Dalton?”

“Dalton?” she echoed, her voice sounding weak even to her own ears. “Neighbor?” This situation was going from bad to worse. “What about other people in the area?” she asked, a sick feeling, dread rather than nausea, gathering in the pit of her empty stomach.

“There’s nobody else, dear. You’ll have all the privacy you want. Out at Shadow Lake, you can get away from the hustle and bustle of Good Riddance.”

How much hustle and bustle could there be in a town that didn’t appear to even have a traffic light? She stifled rising hysteria. It was bad enough to be sent to this God-forsaken town, but now she was about to be stuck in a dead woman’s cabin on the edge of some lake, solely dependent on an ex-convict. Somebody just take a gun and shoot her. Wait, in this area, someone might be all too willing. “It sounds lovely,” she said, her voice faint.

“You can really indulge your inner pioneer spirit,” Merrilee said with a wide smile.

“My inner pioneer spirit?” Skye repeated and mustered a weak smile. She didn’t possess a single ounce of pioneer spirit. Nope. None. “Um …there is running water, isn’t there?”

“No worries, Doc,” Saunders said with what might appear to be a friendly smile to the rest of the room but which she knew to be an evil smirk. “It’s not that far to carry the bucket to the lake. And I’ll show you how to rub the flint together to start a fire. Just think of all that Girl Scout training you can put to use.”

“A bucket to the lake? Flint?” She surreptitiously pinched herself just to make sure she hadn’t fallen into a nightmare even worse than the recurring one she often had, where she showed up at a medical conference naked.

“Hush, Dalton.” Merrilee waved a hand at the bush pilot. “You’re scaring her to death. Don’t pay him any attention, honey. He’s just joshing you. Irene put in running water at the same time Dalton did. And the electricity might be iffy sometimes, but we all use matches instead of flint. I’ll send you out with a pack just in case.”

Skye said nothing because she wasn’t so sure she could muster anything outside of a wail.

But it didn’t really matter because Ms. Merrilee Danville Weatherspoon filled what was almost a conversational gap.

“Are you hungry, honey?”

As if on cue, Skye’s empty stomach growled. “I could eat.”

“Dalton, I’m taking Dr. Skye—you don’t mind if I call you that, do you, honey? With those lovely eyes you look like a Dr. Skye instead of a stuffy Dr. Shanahan—” How could she tell this transplanted steel magnolia no? “—over to Gus’s for a bite of dinner before y’all head out. That was the plan before the roof caved in upstairs anyway. Can you give us about an hour?”

“No problem, Merrilee. It’ll take at least that long to move all of her luggage from the plane to the truck.”

Merrilee swatted at Saunders. Too bad she missed—someone needed to smack the smug look right off his ruggedly handsome face. Did everyone in Good Riddance know about his record? Probably no one cared. That’s what these outposts of civilization were like, populated by misfits and miscreants.

She realized suddenly that she was starving, having lost her lunch earlier. Dinner at Gus’s would probably prove to be worse than a fast-food drive-thru but it would be food. And food would be good right now.

She could only pray that Saunders drove a truck better than he piloted a plane. And she absolutely refused to think about the fact that she was going to spend the next week living close to a man she found altogether too attractive for her own good.

DALTON HEAVED THE LAST of the suitcases into the bed of the pickup truck and headed toward Gus’s. Bull Swenson fell into step beside him. “You brought the new Doc in today, eh? She’s a looker. I saw her from upstairs.”

Dalton was altogether too aware of just what a looker the new doc was.

“She’s an acid-tongued shrew.” He knew whatever he said to Bull would stay with Bull, except for bits and pieces that might trickle through to Merrilee. Merrilee had a way of pulling information out of people and since she and Bull had been an item longer than Dalton had been around, chances were Merrilee would soon know how he felt about the good doctor. But Dalton didn’t care.

Shanahan was what she was—an acid-tongued shrew in a tempting package of red hair, blue eyes and a nicely rounded figure. However, he knew only a crazy man would wade into the frigid waters of Shanahan Bay, although he’d been sorely tempted to do just that earlier today. There’d be something seriously wrong with a man who actually sought out her company.

Bull rumbled, which was his version of a chuckle. “She reminds me of Merrilee when I first met her, fresh out of the lower forty-eight and full of piss and vinegar.”

“Merrilee full of piss and vinegar?” Merrilee was strong. Any woman who elected to live in the Alaskan bush had to be made of stern stuff. “She’s determined and she’s got an iron backbone but …”

“Yep. I’d say that sums up Dr. Skye.”

Dalton preferred to think of her as Shanahan but then again he could only imagine that the Dr. Skye tag would annoy her almost as much as being called Doc. Still, Dalton hadn’t been referring to her.

“No. I meant Merrilee has an iron backbone.”

“That she does. But Dr. Skye does, too.”

“How would you know that about the Doc already?”

Bull slanted him a look from beneath his bushy grey eyebrows. “At my age, there aren’t many things that can surprise me when it comes to people.”

The Doc wasn’t as tough as Bull thought. Alaska was going to chew Skye Shanahan up and spit her out. “She tossed it on the trip in. I had to land at Bear Claw point to let her clean up.”

Bull laughed, but it wasn’t an unkind laugh at Doc’s expense. Actually, Dalton got the distinct impression the joke was on him. Bull clapped a meaty hand across Dalton’s back. After eight years Dalton was prepared—the first time it had sent him flying. “Son, a backbone of steel doesn’t necessarily extend to the belly. Did I ever tell you about the time I signed on for a fishing season with Cap’n Louis Montrique?”

Dalton shook his head. Bull got a faraway look in his eye. “It was in ‘72 and I’d come up from Laredo, Texas. Alaska was something then. A man could find breathing room. I’d heard you could make good money in a short period of time working one of the fishing boats. I lost thirty pounds—puked every pound off. I’ve never been so sick in my life, but I’d been hired to do a job so I learned fast to haul in a net while feeding the fishes. They don’t hire extra hands so there’s no one to pick up any slack. Every man’s got to carry his own load. But my point is, I’m as tough as they come, but motion sickness, it doesn’t take any prisoners. Don’t go judging Doc Skye too harshly.”

Bull was one of the toughest men Dalton knew. It wasn’t something Bull discussed, but it was common knowledge to everyone in Good Riddance that the man had spent two years at the Hanoi Hilton, courtesy of the Vietcong, back during the Vietnam War. It didn’t take much to figure those memories were one of things Bull wanted to bid Good Riddance to when he settled here. The Doc had obviously won Bull over at “hello” which was saying something. Bull was known for being an excellent judge of character.

“Okay,” Dalton said. “We’ll see.”

They climbed the two wooden stairs lit by a blinking neon sign declaring the locale to be Augustina’s—commonly known near and far as Gus’s.

Gus hailed them the moment they walked in the door. “Evening, gentlemen. They’re waiting for you over there in the corner,” she said, nodding toward the right. “The crowd just died down. Y’all want the regular?”

“Sure thing,” Dalton said.

Bull nodded. “Much obliged.”

They crossed the scarred wooden floor to the booth where Merrilee and the Doc sat across from one another. The rest of Gus’s looked the way it usually did, crowded but with everyone doing their own thing. Two pool tables in the back had games going on. In the far corner, Brody and Tyrrell Initkit had challenged one another to a dart game. Food and drinks were being served and Frank Sinatra was crooning a tune over the radio. That’s what happened when everyone knew everyone else. Even though the radio station was two hundred fifty miles west of Good Riddance, Gus had requested “dinner music” from six until nine every evening and so dinner music they had.

Bull slid into the booth next to Merrilee, leaving Dalton to fill the slot next to the Doc. His knee brushed hers and instant heat tracked through him. Next time he’d be sure to sit across from her. Keeping some distance between himself and Skye Shanahan struck him as a good idea. He drew a deep breath and found himself inhaling her scent. Make that a damn good idea.

FINALLY THE CROWD OF people that had surrounded them—God, she’d never remember all of the names, it was worse than a medical conference—had dispersed when Dalton and a man who could have doubled for Grizzly Adams waltzed in.

Welcome to the land where nothing was as it seemed. Instead of the grizzled old man Skye had been expecting, Gus had turned out to be a woman in her mid-to-late twenties, whose dark hair was threaded dramatically with a shock of white in the front.

The establishment itself was crowded but immaculately clean. Booths hugged the “front” and right walls. Tables with chairs filled the center. A long bar, complete with a highly polished brass foot rail, provided a focal point. To the left of the open kitchen, a small stage stood between two pool tables and a dart board area. The entry from Merrilee’s was over by the stage. Merrilee had explained that Thursday karaoke was big around here. Skye shuddered at the very thought.

Her head was spinning and she could’ve gotten by quite nicely without Saunders’s aggravating, albeit disturbingly attractive, presence next to her in the booth. However, there was nothing she could do about it, short of being rude. And if he was going to be her nearest neighbor, that didn’t seem the smartest plan.

Merrilee introduced the latest mountain man. “Dr. Skye, this is Bull Swenson. Bull, Dr. Skye. She’s filling in for Dr. Morrow while he’s on vacation.”

She offered her hand across the table. “Pleased to meet you …” She hesitated, finding it difficult to actually refer to him as Bull, “Mr. Swenson.”

While his hand swallowed hers, it was a gentle touch. “Pleased to have you here, Doc. And please, call me Bull.”

“Bull,” she murmured.

Gus arrived with two draft beers which she promptly served to Saunders and Bull.

“Tonight’s on the house, Dr. Skye. We’ve got caribou scaloppini or a moose ragout. Or I can whip you up an omelet if you’d prefer.”

“The scaloppini is to die for,” Bull said, seemingly serious.

Wild game scaloppini and ragout? Maybe these were some kind of Alaskan frozen dinners. “Scaloppini would be lovely,” she said.

“You know I love your scaloppini. That’s what I want,” Saunders said, slanting a charming smile Gus’s way. That smile qualified as disarming, dangerous …even downright lethal. For a second she wondered if there might be something between the bush pilot and the bar owner. But no, there didn’t seem to be any particular sparks flying there. And it was sheer stupidity that a feeling of relief chased close on that realization.

“I think I’ve got a taste for moose tonight, so I’ll take the ragout,” Bull said, picking up his beer and taking a swallow.

“Merrilee?”

“Would you mind terribly if I order that mushroom omelet with brie and gorgonzola?”

“Of course not. Chanterelles or shitake mush rooms?”

“Both?”

Gus shook her head. “It’s a bastardization, but because it’s you, I’ll do it.”

Gus bustled off and Skye looked to Merrilee for clarification.

“Gus is my niece.” Skye would never have guessed. She wasn’t seeing the family resemblance, but then sometimes that’s just the way it was.

“Gus trained in Paris,” Bull added.

Surely he didn’t mean trained? “Trained?”

“You know, got her degree from the L’Ecole Gastronomique,” Saunders explained, as if she were simple-minded. Skye appreciated good food but she’d never heard of the L’Ecole Gastronomique. Still, she’d rather lose a limb than confess that to the smug Saunders, so she nodded as if she was intimately acquainted with the cooking school.

“She trained in Paris and then came to Good Riddance?” Skye asked. This place was full of some truly odd people.

Merrilee and Bull exchanged a subtle glance which Skye almost missed. “She worked in Manhattan for a while before she came here.”

“She was working in Manhattan when Miriam sent her here.”

Bull chuckled, at least that’s what she thought it was, and shook his head. “She fell in love with the town her Aunt Merrilee had founded and decided to stay.”

Skye sipped at her wine. She wasn’t big on alcohol, but right now she really needed a drink. “How did that happen? I mean, it’s not every day that a woman wanders into the middle of nowhere and founds a town.” Or maybe it was out here.

“I’d been married for twelve years when I finally figured out it was a whopper of a mistake. Since I couldn’t kill him—well, I could’ve but I didn’t want to wind up in the slammer—I decided to pack my belongings and move as far away as I could and still retain my U.S. citizenship. Everybody thought I’d lost my mind. So I took our R.V. and started driving. I knew I’d know when I found where I belonged.

“One thing led to another. I took a wrong turn off the highway and stopped to spend the night here and I just knew. I knew I’d found the place for me. Word gets out in these parts when a single woman arrives and before long, other people started showing up. So there you have it. My ex told everyone I had a mid-life crisis but I was just finding where I belonged and it wasn’t with him.”

Skye nodded, but she was sure she hadn’t heard the whole story. It was just a gut instinct but a strong one, nonetheless. Gus arrived bearing plates as artfully arranged as any Skye had seen in the best restaurants. It smelled heavenly. After one bite, she knew it tasted even better than it smelled.

A rough-hewn timber building, a clientele wearing blue-jeans and work boots and a five-star quality meal.

Welcome to Good Riddance, Alaska.

4

SAUNDERS FOLDED HIS NAPKIN and placed it on the table next to his plate. “We’d better be heading out,” he said. “I’ve got an early flight in the morning which means Doc—” she wanted to throttle him every time he called her that “—has to be up early too. What time does Nelson get in?”

Merrilee dabbed at her mouth with the edge of her white linen cloth. “What time does he need to be there?”

“Six-thirty.”

“I’ll give him a call,” Merrilee said with a brief nod.

Even though this was about her, Skye was fairly clueless. And she didn’t do clueless. “Nelson?”

“Your assistant, dear.” Merrilee reached across the table and patted her hand.

“Ah. I see.” Actually, she didn’t see anything. It was as if she’d stepped through the rabbit hole. Nothing was as it seemed. She’d just had one of the finest meals she’d ever indulged in and now it was time to find out what else was in store for her.

She’d been dreading going to the cabin that was to be her home for the next two weeks. But heck, considering the meal she’d just enjoyed, it might turn out to be a first-rate accommodation—fluffy down pillows, five-hundred-thread-count sheets, a down mattress topper so thick you sank into the bed and never wanted to crawl out ….

“Are you okay?” Saunders interrupted her reverie.

“What?”

“It sounded like you moaned.” Was that a strained look on his face?

“I most certainly did not.”

He slid out of the booth and stood. “Let’s go. It’ll take half the night to get your suitcases in.”

Skye was ready. She’d been desperately aware of Saunders’s heat, the breadth of his shoulders and the proximity of his body throughout dinner. She grabbed her jacket and scooted across the wood seat while Bull and Merrilee watched in amusement. “I’d like to thank Gus, if you don’t mind.”

He shrugged into his jacket. “Make it quick, Shanahan.”

Wow, she’d like to smack him. Which was a much better idea than kissing him …Unfortunately, that crazy thought had gone through her head a couple of times over dinner. Instead, she said good-night to the other couple, then stopped by the kitchen, which was open to the rest of the room except for the separating counter. Gus stood at the stove stirring a sauce in a small pan.

“Thank you. That was wonderful.”

“You’re welcome. I saw you looking at Merrilee’s omelet. Want me to send one over to the office tomorrow morning for breakfast? I doubt you’ll have time to whip up much for yourself.”

Time or not, Skye wasn’t much for whipping anything up—she was something of a dud in the kitchen. She ate mainly take-out at home, she’d never had anything that compared to the meal she’d had tonight. “That would be wonderful.”

“I’d suggest chanterelles.”

Ah, the chanterelle versus shitake situation. Skye didn’t volunteer that she wasn’t a mushroom purist and wouldn’t know the difference. Instead she simply beamed at Gus and said, “Chanterelles would be lovely.”

“Sourdough or challah toast? I’m not making the cinnamon rolls until day after tomorrow. I’ll put one of those aside for you. There’s always a run on them.”

Oh. My. God. She might stay for the food alone. Perish that wild, errant thought. No food was that good. However, she was partial to the egg-based bread. “Challah, please.”

“Nelson makes a decent cup of coffee so you’ll be fine on that front.” Without missing a beat, Gus poured the sauce over the contents of the plate.

“Thank you.”

“Nice to have you here, Dr. Skye.”

“Er, um, nice to be here, Gus.” She realized she had no clue what Gus’s last name was. Not that she supposed it really mattered. Convention and ceremony seemed out of place here.

Saunders was waiting by the door, engaged in conversation with Merrilee. Her heart sort of did a trippy kind of thing, which once again, made no sense. He was no taller than any other man in the establishment. In fact there were quite a few who were taller and brawnier. He was dressed the same as most of the other men—blue jeans, flannel shirt and boots. But something made him stand out, stand apart, and sent her heart into arrhythmia. Or maybe she was just suffering a mild case of indigestion. She immediately mentally apologized to Gus.

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