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“No.”
He nodded. “I read about you in the September issue of Air Force magazine. Great article, though I thought it was traitorous that they’d profile a Navy flier. It mentioned the difficulties of juggling motherhood and a career. Since it didn’t include ‘husband’ in the mix, I figured there wasn’t one.”
“You guessed correctly.”
“But you have a kid?”
“A son. His name is Hayden. It’s an old family name.”
“What does Hayden think about his mother being a Navy pilot?”
“Hayden’s relaxed about everything. He’s a pretty cool kid.”
“I guess pretty cool women just naturally have pretty cool kids.”
He thought that might get a smile but she just looked out the window, heaved a small sigh and said, “I was lucky.”
“Somebody else sure was, too.” The words bounced awkwardly around the cab and he cursed himself for uttering them, but it was true. Somebody was. Some Navy guy, probably. Dare he ask? Ah, what the hell. “What does Hayden think about his father?”
“I told him his father died in a plane crash.”
Tragic for them both, but that explained why she wasn’t married. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, hoping his words sounded more sincere than he felt. “So, how long do you have?”
“Pardon?”
Okay, maybe the silence was better than talking. She was glaring at him as if he’d just insulted her. “How long are you here for? A week? Two?”
She faced front again and said, “I don’t have that long. Two weeks, max.”
“Where are you staying?”
“The Moosewood Road House.”
“Nice place. They have a decent restaurant.”
“Yes.”
This conversation was going nowhere fast. He was no closer to finding out why she was here than he had been thirty miles ago, and she hadn’t yet bothered to explain why she’d never said goodbye to him after the night they’d shared. He was beginning to wish she hadn’t interrupted his Monday, except that, damn it all, she was just as provocative as she’d been the first time he’d set eyes on her. His hormones were already at attention as he envisioned a passionate night or two tangled up in the sheets with her. So what if she hadn’t said goodbye? Maybe this time he’d be the one who flew off without a word.
Fair was fair, after all. Two could play that kind of game.
KATE REALIZED by the time they reached the tiny town of Talkeetna that she was in way over her head. While Mitch was in the aviation building at the small airport picking up his part, she sat in the truck, wondering if her erratic heartbeat had anything to do with the fevers that came and went or with the man she’d just spent the last hour with. What should she do? He was totally in the dark as to her real reasons for being here. He seemed glad to see her but he didn’t know, nor could she figure out how to tell him, that she’d never read the letter he’d sent.
Court-martial? That didn’t sound good. He obviously didn’t make much money, and his prospects for the future didn’t appear much better. He wasn’t married and had no kids, just a dog named Thor and a boss named Wally who obviously owned the charter service.
How should she proceed?
He stepped out of the hangar door and she was struck again by his sheer masculinity. It didn’t matter that he was dressed in faded Levi’s and an equally faded flannel shirt. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t shaved that morning or that his hair needed to be trimmed. He was handsome in a rugged, athletic way that matched the land he’d chosen to make his home in. Maybe he’d never be rich, maybe he’d never drive a late-model truck or fly a plane that didn’t always need fixing, but she had the feeling that somehow he’d get by. He was the kind of guy that would walk away from a hard landing with that same macho swagger and arrogant grin. Nothing would ever beat him down.
He wrenched open the truck door, tossed an object wrapped in a clean rag onto the bench seat between them and hauled himself in behind the wheel. “So, what’s your preference? There’s a deli a little ways from here or a roadhouse that serves great burgers. Your choice.”
“I’m not really that hungry.”
He fired up the engine and eased the truck into gear. “Then let’s grab a sandwich at the deli. It’s not as fancy and it’s quicker.”
He was as nervous as she was, she realized as he drove to the deli; only, when she got nervous, she got quiet, whereas Mitch couldn’t seem to shut up. The deli was rustic and charming with big baskets of bright flowers that hung from the porch eaves. He talked about fishing while they waited for their order to be delivered to the little picnic table on the porch, and in between bites of his sandwich he told her about salmon runs and grizzly bears that prowled the riverbank by his cabin and one instance when he’d barricaded himself inside while a bear chewed his favorite fly rod to splinters. And then came a long pause in the conversation and she glanced up and realized those disarming eyes were studying her intently.
“What?” she said, shifting under his scrutiny.
“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”
“What do you mean?”
“Something wrong with your sandwich?”
“I told you I wasn’t hungry.”
“You said you wanted to talk, but this is a mighty one-sided conversation.”
She averted her eyes, heart thumping painfully. “I’m enjoying listening to you describe your life here.” She gave him a faint smile. “Your place sounds nice, except for the bears. Maybe you’d give me a tour while I’m here. I love log cabins.”
His eyes narrowed and he sat back in his chair. “Sure. Just say when.”
Kate had spent her childhood dreaming about what she was going to be when she grew up. Once she’d grown up, she’d spent every moment striving to make that dream come true, and every step of the way there had been men standing in her path, blocking her, trying to trip her up and hoping she’d fail and make a fool of herself.
Getting pregnant had been the worst setback of her career. Getting pregnant had validated all those chauvinistic remarks and those sexist attitudes. For four months she’d had to give up flying. Four whole months she’d been grounded because she’d done just what they’d expected her to do. She’d gone out and gotten herself pregnant, just like a woman.
This man had been a major player in tripping her up and almost causing her to fail, yet now she was sitting in this deli listening to him talk and his words were making her feel all warm and fuzzy inside and she caught herself thinking, Wow, for the past four years, I could have had a man in my life that I actually liked to talk to, listen to and, yes, make love with. There was no denying the magnetism that had made him so impossible to resist the first time they met. It was still there. She could still feel it. Just one touch and she’d succumb again, one touch and he’d destroy all her defenses and start another fire, one neither of them could put out. Would that be such a bad thing at this stage of her life?
What was the matter with her? She must be sicker than she thought to be having such crazy ideas. She didn’t need a man. She’d never needed one. She was happy being single. In fact, she preferred it. Nobody had to worry about Captain K. C. Jones. She could take care of herself. Always had and always would.
Always?
Ha! Funny how facing you own mortality cast a harsh light on everything and illuminated truths that had been so easily hidden beneath alternating layers of bravado and pride. Funny how it humbled…
“I have a confession to make,” she said. “I never read the letter you sent. I threw it off the edge of the flight deck, unopened, and I’m sorry.”
MITCH DIDN’T KNOW quite how to take this. All he knew was that it stung. He’d spent countless hours agonizing over each and every word, just to have her fling it off the edge of the flight deck, unopened? The letter he’d written to K. C. Jones four and a half years ago, give or take a few months, was the only one he’d ever penned to a woman. It encompassed weeks of laborious beginnings that went nowhere and awkward revisions that only made the content more stilted. He’d finally mailed it off in a kind of fatalistic coup de grâce.
“That explains why you never answered it,” he said. “But why are you sorry about it now?”
“Because I think maybe I should have read it. I was so angry then. So mad at you and at myself. I know it doesn’t make much sense and I’m sorry about that, too.”
Mitch didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. Why would she have been angry at him? Were all women born irrational?
Probably.
Even if she didn’t give a damn about him, she should have read his letter and had the decency to put him out of his misery with a proper “Dear John” response, instead of leaving him wondering why she’d snuck away as she had. And now here she was, sitting across from him at his favorite deli, having told him she wanted to talk. But about what? Obviously not the fact that she’d missed him.
After watching her shred her paper napkin into smaller and smaller pieces, he finally reached out his hand to pull the remnants away. “Okay,” he said, balling them up and dropping them into the center of the table. “If you’re not so mad anymore, then I guess the two of us have some catching up to do.”
She nodded, and a faint flush colored her cheeks. “Maybe you could take me back to your place and give me the tour. We could talk there.”
“You bet.” He paused in the act of rising out of his chair. “Did I mention my cabin had no indoor plumbing or electricity?”
“That seems appropriate for a cabin.”
“And you’re sure you want to talk there?”
She nodded again.
“Good enough.” He took her uneaten sandwich, wrapped it in several napkins and stuffed it in his jacket pocket in the hopes she’d eat it later. If she didn’t, Thor would. In the center of the table he left a pile of bills, enough to cover the tab and a good-sized tip, and then he escorted Kate back out to his truck and wondered if maybe, just maybe, his day hadn’t just taken a big-time turn for the better.
CHEMOTHERAPY, as defined by her doctors, was the use of drugs or chemicals, often in combinations, to kill or damage cancer cells in the body. These drugs targeted not just cancer cells, but all cells that divided quickly, including those responsible for hair growth. They had been administered intravenously via a small plastic needle inserted in her forearm, delivering a mixed bag of anticancer agents into her bloodstream, a potent cocktail of life and death, of nausea and pain, of hair loss and fatigue and above all else, hope.
For Kate, those weeks spent in the hospital undergoing intensive chemotherapy had been hell. She’d kept Hayden’s picture pinned to the wall by her bed, a bright icon to gaze upon in her darkest hours, and she’d requested several pieces of exercise equipment be scrubbed, sanitized and delivered to her room so she could keep fit while undergoing the most difficult physical and mental challenge of her life. She was still biking four miles each morning when her hair started to fall out, first by the strand, then by the handful. All her long, dark hair disappeared while she pedaled, and she prayed that, in the end, her love of life and for her son would triumph and prevail.
Rosa would bring Hayden to the hospital, and the medical staff would dress them both in sterile gowns and allow them into her room. The first time was hard. Hayden didn’t understand why she couldn’t come home. The second time was even harder. He cried when it was time for him to leave. The third time, her hair was coming out and as she tried to explain it to him he took a handful of it in his little fist and pressed it to the side of his face. “I take it for you, Mumma,” he said. “Now can you come home?”
Kate clung to his precious existence and drew sustenance and strength from it. What else was there to hold on to in a life that measured everything by the yardstick of military might? She had become a weak, pale woman with no hair, retching into a toilet bowl while a nurse said soothingly from behind, “It’s all right.” What was all right about it? She was young and she didn’t see the sense or reason in her illness. She didn’t smoke or drink or do drugs. She ate a healthy diet. She jogged five miles each and every morning, rain or shine. She didn’t understand how or why she’d gotten this sick and she never would, so how could she expect her son to understand when she told him she couldn’t come home?
Yet somehow, Hayden did come to understand. During that first month of her treatment he came to accept her stay in the hospital and her struggle with leukemia with an optimism and resiliency that both humbled and inspired her, and made her more determined than ever to win the fight. She had to be there for him. She had to survive this for Hayden.
After her second month-long chemotherapy session at the cancer research hospital in Seattle, she’d been scheduled for two months of “rest and recovery,” during which time her doctors were hoping a blood match would be found, allowing them to schedule a bone marrow transplant. Her leukemia was an aggressive type, and she’d been told the odds of finding a match were worse than the average of one in fifty thousand because of the native blood on her mother’s side of the family, but the doctors seemed confident that a donor would appear. It had been her mother’s suggestion to spend those two months building up her strength at the family home in Montana, far from the large population centers Ruth was sure would compromise her daughter’s weakened immune system. Her arguments were convincing, especially since Kate had just resigned her Navy commission…or tried to.
Why not go home? Her parents were there, and it would be good for both her and Hayden to be in the old ranch house in the foothills of the Rockies surrounded by millions of acres of wilderness.
Instead, she was here in Alaska, a land whose rugged beauty proved more than equal to that of Montana, sitting in the cab of a rusty old truck next to a man she didn’t know anything about beyond the memories of one passionate night. A man who’d been an officer when she’d met him but was no longer in the military. A man who flew a broken-down plane and barely earned enough to survive on. A man she had to get to know as fast as possible in order to be able to decide if he’d be a fit parent for Hayden because he could end up being the only parent Hayden had.
So, how to begin?
Kate folded her hands in her lap and composed her thoughts while she studied the dramatic scenery as the truck headed north. “Tell me about the court-martial,” she said, reasoning that she might as well get the worst part over with.
He drove a few moments more in silence, then blew out a breath and glanced sideways. “You really didn’t read that letter?” She shook her head and he focused on the road. “I was brought up on charges of conduct unbecoming an officer, dereliction of duty and being absent without leave.”
“What did you do?”
“I spent a night off base with the hottest Navy pilot in the fleet.”
Kate stiffened with shock. She kept her eyes forward while waiting for her heart rate to steady. She had been the reason for his being brought up on court-martial charges? “You can’t be serious.”
“Remember Skidder?”
“The mechanic in phase dock?”
“When I didn’t return that night he told my CO, who was convinced I was having an affair with his wife. That’s all it took. He called me into his office two days after the blizzard blew itself out, threw the charges at me and said, ‘Major McCray, you have just made a dire mistake and I’m going to make sure you pay for it in spades.’”
“How is it that I never heard anything about this through the liaison officer? Wouldn’t Skidder have mentioned my involvement?”
“Oh, he tried. Skidder would do anything to weasel his way up the ladder.” He flashed her a brash grin. “But in the end, all the prosecutor could prove was that I got stuck off base in a blizzard after delivering you to the officers’ quarters.”
“But you didn’t deliver me there until the next morning.”
“They couldn’t prove that, either. The blizzard’s whiteout conditions and the power outage helped out there.”
“What about the owner of the saloon?”
“He testified that he locked the Mad Dog up when the power went out and went home.”
“You mean, he lied under oath?”
“When the military plays hard-ass with civilians, civilians don’t always play by their rules.”
“Were you having an affair with your CO’s wife?”
“Of course not. She was twenty years older than me. The whole trial was a fiasco and it made my CO look like an idiot, which didn’t improve our relationship much.”
Kate shot him a skeptical look, then shook her head and faced front again. “I didn’t know you were going through all that.”
“Would you have been less mad at me if you’d known?”
She stifled a wry laugh. “No, at the time probably not. I probably would’ve been glad you were paying for it. Sorry.”
He nodded, as if that was explanation enough for him. “I hope you like dogs,” he said as he turned down Pike’s Creek Road.
“I do. Why?”
“Thor’s been banned from the airstrip because he chases planes, so I’ll have to drop him at the cabin before bringing the part to Wally’s.” When they got to her rental car, he stopped just long enough to replace the repaired flat tire, then continued on. Where the road forked, he headed left and nodded to the right and said, “That way leads to the airstrip.” A few miles later, after passing two somewhat ramshackle dwellings, one of which looked long abandoned, the road ended at his cabin.
Kate had prepared herself for a plywood-and-tar-paper shack with blue tarps strung everywhere and rusted fifty-five-gallon drums lying about. She was surprised by the attractive complex of log buildings. There were several sturdy outbuildings in addition to the charming cabin, including an authentic log food cache raised high on four posts. The hand-hewn main cabin had dovetailed notches, a real stone chimney and a porch that practically hung out over the creek. The clearing itself was large, and a garden space was surrounded by a rustic staked fence fashioned from alder and willow poles, but it looked as though nothing had been planted inside for several seasons. There was a wonderful view of the rugged snowcapped mountain range, including the mighty Denali, who was still showing her face to the world.
“Is that a dogsled on the porch roof?”
“Yup. A dog musher used to live here. One day his wife decided she’d had enough of living the backwoods life with a bunch of sled dogs and a guy who was always out on the trail, so she left him, and after a few years he lost heart and got rid of all his dogs except Thor, who slipped out of his collar and ran off.” He wrenched open the truck door, jumped down and walked around to open her door. “He sold me the place for a song because I happened to ask him about it on the right day and then he followed his wife back to Florida. Thor reappeared a week later and decided to stay. It worked out well for me because it was so cheap and it’s only seven miles from the airstrip. Plus I got a sled dog thrown in for free. Nice, huh?”
“Yes,” she admitted. It wasn’t at all what she’d expected.
“Will you be okay here for a little while, or do you want to help me put a fuel filter in the plane?”
“I’ll be fine.” Again surprised by his manners, she took his hand and let him assist her out of the truck. He’d done the same thing back at the deli.
“I’ll give you the official tour when I get back, and we can talk then. Thor will keep the bears away. Help yourself to anything and everything and don’t mind the mess—I wasn’t expecting company. There’s a satellite phone in the kitchen, if you need to use it. Here, take your sandwich.” He fished her napkin-wrapped lunch of his jacket pocket and handed it to her. “Don’t just look at it, eat it.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” she said, stepping back and giving him a mock salute.
Kate watched him drive back down the rutted gravel road and wondered when he’d realize the dog was still riding in the back. Thor obviously preferred Mitch’s company, which was okay with her. She’d just have to deal with any bears that came along. Meanwhile, she’d prowl around the cabin and investigate the domestic side of Mitchell McCray.
CHAPTER THREE
MITCH WAS SURPRISED to see Wally’s Harley parked outside the warming shack. He must’ve had a fight with Campy, but it couldn’t have been a bad one because Campy’s old Subaru was parked right next to the shiny bike. Wally came out when he heard the truck and the first thing he said was “Where the hell you been all day?” as if he’d been working his ass off since before sunup.
“In Talkeetna, picking up the part for your plane, which, by the way, didn’t want to start this morning. Good to see you, too, boss. Didn’t expect to, being as it’s a Monday.”
“Polar Express called to thank us for the referral of the German climbers. Said they made a great tip off that one. I came over to see what was wrong.”
“Plane’s broke, as usual. That’s what was wrong.”
Wally was fiftysomething, bald, overweight and often-times contentious, but he could work wonders with the Stationair and was a passable pilot for a guy who was mostly self-taught. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with Babe. She started right up for me. Hand over the fuel filter.”
“How’d you know that was the part I went to get?”
“I’m psychic. Thought I told you to leave that damn dog at home.”
Mitch looked over his shoulder. Sure enough, Thor was standing with his front paws on the diamond-plate toolbox wearing that sly wolfish grin. “Thor, I thought I told you to stay the hell home!” Thor’s ears flattened back and he wagged his tail in response. Mitch looked back at Wally. “The bad news is, we lost a job this morning because of that clogged filter. The good news is, Raider called last night and said he’s seriously considering my latest offer for the Porter.”
“We can’t afford that plane. Thought we already had this discussion.” Wally was fishing in his pockets for a half-smoked cigar, which he stuck in his mouth and lit.
“Where’s Campy?”
“Inside.”
“Campy! Get out here, woman. I need you to bear witness. Wally’s changing his story on me again.”
The door to the airfield’s warming hut opened a crack and a thin face framed by bleached blond hair stuck out, cigarette dangling from pouty red lips. She looked to be in the same kind of mood as Wally. “Go to hell, Mitch, and take that bastard with you,” she snarled around the cigarette and slammed the door again.
“I told Raider I could have the money by next week,” Mitch said, as he followed Wally toward the plane. “If we called Yance, he’d front us the money, and if I had it in hand I know Raider’d except my offer. We could sell the Stationair and pay back some of that loan right away.”
“We ain’t selling Babe and we ain’t buying a Pilatus/Fairchild Porter. It’s a good plane, I’m not arguing with you on that score, but Raider wants too much for it. Thinks its a goddamn Concorde jet. Besides, Yance’ll tack a high interest on that loan if he’d even give it to us. He’s a friggin’ shark. Bottom line, we can’t afford it.”
“The price is fair and the plane’s in great shape. Dependable. Flying a plane like that will boost our business a hundredfold. You know it’s true and you know we need it, and I think Yance’ll back us, so just bite the bullet and get it over with.” Mitch jammed his hands in his jeans pockets, ducked his head and rounded his shoulders, hesitating. “Forget the plane for a minute and tell me what you think about this. This woman I knew over four years ago, Navy pilot, suddenly shows up out of the blue, and she…”
Wally stopped abruptly, turned and took the cigar out of his mouth. “K. C. Jones?”
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
“It’s not rocket science. It was my saloon you wooed her in back at Eielson, and you showed us the article about her in Air Force magazine. She’s here, in Alaska?”