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The second floor was one large room except for the bathroom. One large room with a brass bed, an overstuffed chair, a reading lamp and a very old armoire. And nothing else.
Emmy thought that cozy was stretching the truth a bit, but she didn’t say that.
“The bed has a feather mattress,” Aiden informed her as he set her suitcases on the wooden floor that hadn’t seen stain or varnish in several decades. “I hope you aren’t allergic.”
“I’m not,” she said as she poked her head into the bathroom, where she found toilet, sink and a claw-footed bathtub with a very dated showerhead dropping down from directly over the middle of the tub.
Aiden had turned on the space heater by the time she returned from inspecting the bathroom.
“I wouldn’t recommend using the heater all night long. It can get pretty hot if it’s on for hours at a time. And there’s an electric blanket on the bed, under the quilt, so you’ll be warm enough while you sleep. Getting out of bed in the morning is just sort of a shock to the system.”
“I can imagine.”
“Wakes you up, though.”
“Mmm.”
“Come on, let’s go downstairs. I have some sandwiches made up since we didn’t have any in-flight food service.”
He held the door open for her, and Emmy went out into the cold again.
At the bottom of the steps Aiden went ahead of her to the main door. As he did, her gaze dropped inadvertently to the jeans-clad derriere that was visible below his jacket.
Like the rest of him it was something to behold, and Emmy silently chastised herself for looking, snapping her eyes up to a safer view.
But the view wasn’t actually much safer when she took in the expanse of his back and broad, broad shoulders, or the sexy way his hair waved against his thick, strong neck.
“Ladies first,” he said then, and she noticed belatedly that he was waiting for her to go in ahead of him.
Emmy stepped into the cabin, glad for the warmth coming from the old radiator against one wall.
The place seemed about double the size of the attic room but it still wasn’t large. Or luxurious. Living room, dining room and kitchen were all one open space, with a mud room off the kitchen in the rear and a single bedroom and another bath on the other side of a log-framed archway to the left of the living room.
The furnishings were as inelegant as the cabin itself. There was a brown plaid sofa and matching easy chair at a ninety-degree angle to each other, with a wagon wheel coffee table in front of them and a moderately sized television and VCR across from them.
Aiden’s stereo equipment was on an arrangement of stacked cinder blocks against one wall, there was a fairly nice desk taking up another, and a scarred oak kitchen table and four ladder-backed chairs stood in what passed as a dining room only because the table and chairs were near the bar that separated the kitchen from the rest of the cabin.
“I know it’s nothing fancy,” Aiden said in response to Emmy’s glance around. “But Boonesbury provides the cabin and most of the furniture for the local doctor, and I’m usually not here enough for it to matter that it isn’t too aesthetically pleasing.”
“But it is cozy,” she said, mimicking him to tease him a little.
He laughed and she liked the sound of it. Along with the fact that he’d caught the joke.
He hadn’t been kidding about already having sandwiches made. There was a covered plate of them in the refrigerator. He brought that and a bowl of potato salad along with two glasses of water to the kitchen table where they shared the light repast while Aiden filled her in on the quirks of the plumbing system and the party-line inconveniences she would encounter if she used any telephone in Boonesbury.
They’d finished eating and Aiden was on his way back to the fridge with the remaining sandwiches when there was a firm knock on the front door.
By then it was after ten o’clock and a drop-in visitor struck Emmy as strange.
But Aiden took it in stride and said over his shoulder, “Get that, will you?”
She’d already figured out that he was a very laid-back guy and that there weren’t going to be any formalities even for the director of the Bernsdorf Foundation. So, in an attempt to adjust to the casual attitudes, she went to the door and opened it.
There was no one at eye level, but down below, on the porch floor, there was a baby carrier and a duffle bag.
Thinking that this couldn’t possibly be what it looked like, Emmy stepped out into the cold to investigate.
But it was exactly what it looked like.
Amidst a nest of blankets and a hooded snowsuit there was a baby bundled into the car seat. A baby with two great big brown eyes staring up at her from over the pacifier that was keeping it quiet.
“I think you better come see this,” she called to Aiden as she glanced all around and found no signs of anyone else.
But about the time Aiden came out onto the porch there was the sound of a vehicle racing away in the distance.
“What’s going on?” Aiden asked.
“Good question. All I know is when I opened the door this was what I found—a duffle bag and a baby in a car seat. And I just heard a car or truck drive off.”
“Oh-oh,” Aiden said. But he didn’t sound as unnerved as Emmy felt.
He went down off the porch, searching both sides of the cabin. But after only a minute or so he rejoined her, shrugging those mountain-man shoulders of his as he did.
“There’s nobody out there anymore. But we’d better get this little guy—or girl—in out of the cold.”
He picked up the carrier and the duffle bag and took them inside.
Emmy followed him all the way to the kitchen table, where he deposited everything, unbundled the baby and lifted it out.
“Hello, there.” He greeted the child in a soothing voice he probably used with his youngest patients.
Then, to Emmy, he said, “Check the bag, see if there’s a note or something that tells us who this is.”
Emmy did as she was told, wondering if her predecessor had ever had a trip quite like this one was already turning out to be.
Along with baby clothes, diapers and food, she did find a note, albeit not much of one. Written on it was only one word: Mickey.
“Mickey, huh? Well, let’s check you out a little, shall we, Mickey?” Aiden said when Emmy let him know what she’d found.
She watched as he took the baby to the sofa and laid it down there to unfasten the snowsuit. Then he removed the pajamas that were underneath it, and then the diaper.
“Looks like Mickey is a boy,” Aiden announced unnecessarily, replacing the diaper in a hurry and with more expertise than Emmy would have had. “Don’t let him roll off the sofa,” he instructed, going for his medical bag where he’d left it on a table near the front door.
Bringing it back with him, he went on to examine the child who was still watching everything with wide eyes and sucking on the pacifier, only protesting when Aiden used the stethoscope to listen to his heart and lungs.
“I’d say Mickey, here, is about seven months old, well fed and taken care of and as healthy as they come,” was the final diagnosis.
“And why was he left on the porch? Or do you often have people drop off their children late at night for a checkup?”
“No, this is a first.”
“You don’t know the child or who he belongs to or where he came from?” Emmy asked with undisguised disbelief.
“I know as much as you do,” Aiden said patiently.
Emmy stared at him, wondering how he could possibly be so calm about this.
Then something clicked in her brain and she began to replay all that had happened since she’d landed in Alaska. The need to take the small plane into the middle of nowhere. To stay in a strange, distractingly attractive man’s cabin away from everything and everyone, in a room without central heat. And now a baby left on the doorstep?
This had to be some kind of practical joke Howard was playing on her.
Or maybe it was a test to see how she handled whatever curves came her way and to find out if she really was better suited to the job than Evelyn had been.
“This is all a setup, right?” she heard herself say. “Howard just wants to see how I deal with the unexpected, if I can keep my eye on the ball and not get overly involved in matters that don’t concern me. I know he thought Evelyn didn’t make it as director because she was so freaked out by the things that happened on these trips. He thought that she took everything too seriously and too personally, that she got too involved in things that didn’t have anything to do with the grants, that she lost sight of what she was in these communities to do, of what was and what wasn’t her business and let the wrong things influence her recommendations. So he decided to put me through trial by fire, didn’t he?”
Aiden settled Mickey on his knee and looked at Emmy as if she’d lost her mind. “The only thing Howard set up was the opportunity for Boonesbury to be considered for the grant.”
“Come on. Making me fly in the same kind of plane Evelyn nearly crashed in? Making me stay here? A baby left on the porch the minute I arrive? Howard arranged it all.”
“I’m sorry, Emmy, but he didn’t. This is just the way things are.”
It was not a good sign that even in the middle of this the sound of him saying her name made her melt a little inside, and she wondered if she was just on some kind of overload. She had been up since four o’clock that morning, after all, and it had hardly been a relaxing day.
But still she didn’t give up the notion that Howard had planned what had happened since she’d landed in Alaska to test her. And she knew that even if he had, his cohort here wasn’t likely to confess from the get-go.
“Okay, fine. This is just the way things are,” Emmy repeated with a note of facetiousness. “So what does that mean? That while I’m here and you’re giving me the tour of Boonesbury’s medical needs we’re going to deal with an abandoned baby, too?”
“Well, it looks like I am. I don’t have a choice. Somebody left this baby here, and they must have had a reason. For now I need to find out who that person is and what the reason was and decide what to do about it. But I won’t let it—or Mickey—stand in the way of what you’re here to do. Boonesbury really could benefit from that grant money.”
“And you’re just going to take it in stride,” Emmy said, still finding it difficult to believe anyone could be so cool about it all.
Aiden Tarlington shrugged his shoulders again. “This is Alaska. Things in Fairbanks, Anchorage, Juneau—the cities—are pretty much what you’d find in the lower forty-eight. But out here there’s a mix of stubborn independence and neighbor helping neighbor. I know these people and I know this baby being here could mean just about anything. But, like I said, I’ll make sure it doesn’t interfere with what you’re here to do, or impact on you in any way.”
And if this was all some kind of test Howard had set up, she decided on the spot that she was going to pass it. That she wasn’t going to get upset by this turn of events and call the head of the board of trustees to whine about it the way Evelyn would have. That she wasn’t going to take it upon herself to care for that baby even if she was itching to hold him and comfort him and let him know he was with people who would be kind to him. That she wasn’t going to let herself be distracted the way Evelyn would have been. Or let herself be swayed in Boonesbury’s favor because she was already having her heartstrings tugged.
She was there to assess medical needs of the entire area and community and that was all. Period. Finito. That was the total sum and substance of what she was concerning herself with. She knew that Howard had very nearly not given her the job because Evelyn had left him with so many doubts that a woman could do it. Doubts that a woman could weather the hardships of these trips and remain objective in the face of the things she might see. And Emmy was going to prove him wrong.
So, with all of that in mind, Emmy tried to ignore Mickey by raising her chin and her gaze high enough not to see him and said, “I’m sure everything will work out. But if you don’t mind, I’ve had a really long day and I think I’ll leave you to do whatever you need to with Mickey to get him settled in for the night.”
“Sure. You must be beat. There won’t be any rush to get out of here tomorrow, so you can sleep in as long as you want and we’ll just go into town whenever you’re ready.”
“Great.”
Aiden stood to walk her to the door, taking Mickey along with him. “If you need anything just stomp on the floor a couple of times and I’ll come running.”
“Okay. Good luck with this,” Emmy added, nodding at Mickey.
“Thanks,” Aiden said with a small chuckle, as if he could use some luck.
Or a benefactor who hadn’t enlisted him to test the new director, Emmy thought. Although she was impressed by how good he was at the charade. Obviously, Howard had chosen well in his coconspirator.
Emmy opened the front door and flinched at the blast of cold air that came in. “Better keep Mickey out of the draft,” she advised. “I’ll close this behind me.”
Aiden nodded, staying a few feet back.
“Good night,” Emmy said.
“Sleep well.”
She pushed open the screen door, then stepped out onto the porch and turned to pull the wooden door shut.
But as she did she couldn’t help taking one last look at Aiden Tarlington, standing there holding that baby, and she was struck by what an appealing sight it was to see the big, muscular man cradling the infant in his arms.
But she wasn’t going to let any of it get to her, she reminded herself firmly.
Not the adorable, abandoned baby.
Not the wilderness.
Not the rustic room without heat.
Not the idea of needing to fly back to civilization in the tiny plane when this was over.
And not the drop-dead-gorgeous, sexy doctor she was sort of living with.
Evelyn, Emmy knew, would never have been able to keep her mind on the job with all these distractions.
But Emmy was determined that she would.
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