Stranded With Her Rescuer. Nikki Logan
Will...?’
Seriously...what was it about a female voice here? His skin was puckering up as if he’d never heard one before.
‘Thank you. Truly. I really appreciate the sanctuary.’
Sanctuary. That was exactly what this place had been when he’d bought it. Still was.
Though not so much since his past had stepped foot so confidently in it.
WILL SQUATTED IN his navy parka and clipped a final boisterous canine to its long chain in the expansive yard, their happy breathing and his murmured words taking form as puffs of mist in the frigid mid-morning air. It hadn’t taken Kitty long to track him back there—she just had to follow the excited barks and yips.
Where Will went there were always excited yips. And there were always dogs.
She’d woken pretty late after the adventures of the night before and found two pairs of thermal leggings, a vest, new socks, a scarf, gloves and a pair of military patterned snow boots sitting on the chair just inside the guest-room door. With no idea what she’d find outside, she’d put on all the thermals under her Zurich sundress, the socks and boots, and Will’s sweater over the top of the lot. But she’d only had to open the door to the cabin before realising that wasn’t going to be quite enough. A spare coat pilfered from Will’s boot room helped seal all the heat inside.
Kitty tugged the scarf more tightly around her throat and curled her gloved fingers into the ample sleeves of Will’s coat.
Outside the toasty cedar cabin, the air cut into her lungs like glass—even worse than the night before. The temperature had dropped overnight until it was too cold even to sleet, and her throat and lungs burned with her first breaths outside the warm cabin.
Despite the ache, every breath she took seemed to invigorate her. She felt awake and alert and...attuned, though that made no sense. Standing out on Will’s front steps cleared her mind in a way that only yoga had before. Except here, she was getting it without the sweating.
The creak of the bottom step last night was more an icy crack this morning, twitching every ear in the place in her direction, before seven sets of pale eyes turned towards her.
‘No run for them today?’ she called across the open yard.
Will took a while to turn to glance at her. ‘Later, maybe.’
He straightened from his crouch and plunged one hand into the big coat pocket in front of him and rummaged there for a moment. Then he withdrew it, and set about scooping out a generous serving of mixed kibble into each of seven identical bowls recessed into the top of seven identical kennels. As soon as he gave the visual signal, six of the seven dogs leapt nimbly up onto their roof and got stuck into their breakfast.
His left hand found its way back into its pocket and stayed there.
‘How did you sleep?’ he asked without looking at her.
‘Great actually. The darkness out here is very...’
Enveloping. Subsuming. Reassuring.
‘Dark?’
She laughed. ‘It’s very sleep-promoting.’
‘That’s the forest breathing out,’ he replied. ‘And low pollution because we’re so remote. You’ll get used to the extra O2.’
In Nepal, everything had been just a smidge harder because of the reduced oxygen levels in the high-altitude Kathmandu Valley. Did that mean everything would be a bit easier here in the low, flat, sub-arctic forest?
When would ‘easy’ start, then?
‘Shouldn’t that make me sleep less, not more?’
‘You sleepy now?’
Now? With him crouching there, looking all...good morning? Nope, not one bit.
But she wasn’t about to admit that. ‘Thank you for the clothes. Just happen to have them lying around?’
Or was she wearing the clothes of some...special friend?
‘The supply store opened up early on account of the emergency landing. I headed in there at dawn before it got picked clean by your fellow passengers and got you a few basics. I’ll take you in again later if you like, so you can pick out your own gear.’
This kindness from Will...given how they’d left things... She didn’t know quite what to do with it.
‘I don’t really plan on being here long enough to need more.’
The look he gave her then was far too close to the last one he’d ever looked at her with. An amalgam of pity and disappointment.
‘They’re not going to put you back on a faulty plane,’ he warned. ‘They’ll have to send a replacement, or squeeze you onto the regional services we usually get.’
He returned the kibble tub to the ramshackle shed that held all his tools and equipment, but as soon as his hands were free again back they went...into his pockets. Only, this time, he caught the direction of her gaze.
‘Curious?’ he asked, a half-smile on his lips.
Yes... But she was no more entitled to be curious about what was below Will Margrave’s pockets now than she was five years ago.
He reached in and drew out a tiny, dark handful of fuzz.
‘Oh, my gosh!’
‘Starsky’s,’ he murmured. ‘One of three.’
‘How old is it?’ she asked, staring at the tiny pup. Two slits in its squished little face peered around. Beneath, she got a momentary flash of electric-blue eyes.
Sled-dog eyes.
‘Born day before yesterday.’
Two days! ‘Should it be away from its mother this soon?’
‘Won’t be for long,’ he murmured. ‘Helps to forge a bond with the pup from the get-go. Reinforces dominance and trust with the mother.’
Trust. Yes—that he could just take a newborn pup from its mother even for a few minutes... That she would let him...
‘It can’t see or hear yet but it has all its other senses,’ he said, stroking it gently with his work-roughened thumb. It curled towards him in response. ‘And emotional awareness. It will come to know my smell, my voice. The beat of my heart. Knows it’s safe with me from its earliest days.’
He did have that kind of voice. All rumbly and reassuring. And that kind of smell. She took a step back against the urge to take in another lungful like last night.
Will returned the pup to its mother’s kennel and buried it in under her alongside its two littermates—another black one, and one that was white as the snow all around them with subtle grey mottling.
‘So no departing flight this morning, I take it?’ she asked as he straightened.
He turned and faced her. ‘Let me explain something about bear season...’
‘I know, I know... They come for the ice—’
‘Not just them,’ he interrupted. ‘Tourists. Hundreds of them arriving and leaving every day. For eight weeks we’re overrun and then we go back to being the sleepy little outpost we usually are. You should be prepared for this to go on for days. Maybe longer.’
Days? Days of this careful eggshells? Of not talking about Marcella or the quakes? Of not mentioning what happened between them five years ago?
‘I’ll look for somewhere else to stay, then.’
He slashed her that look of his. The one she remembered, the one that used to give her pulse a kick. The aware one. As if he saw right through