That’s Our Baby!
Pamela Browning

www.millsandboon.co.uk

PAMELA BROWNING

is an award-winning author of more than forty romance novels—many of which appeared on numerous bestseller lists. Her books consistently win high ratings from reviewers and readers alike. She makes her home in North Carolina.

For the Friday-morning yoginis,

who could hardly believe it.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

Somewhere over the interior of Alaska

Sam Harbeck would have given anything at the moment to be in sunny Key West bolting down margaritas and kicking back with friends. They’d invited; he’d refused. Which was why, instead of lounging around in swim trunks, he was capping off his first vacation in years by piloting a floatplane into a September snowstorm deep in the Alaskan wilderness.

Some vacation, he thought ruefully. A killer storm roaring out of nowhere, a decrepit plane hell-bent on shaking itself apart, a distasteful errand and, on top of all this, Kerry Anderson. She wasn’t expecting him, and Sam didn’t relish the encounter. Oh, she was gorgeous with that wild tumble of blond hair and those long shapely legs—not to mention thick-lashed gold-and-silver eyes whose unerring gaze knew how to pierce right through a man. But leaving out her spectacular good looks, there was something about Kerry that made Sam uncomfortable. And when she found out what he wanted from her, all hell would break loose.

Sam gripped sinewy fingers around the yoke of the Cessna 185 and forced himself to concentrate on the challenge of setting this baby down safely on Kitty Kill Lake. If he was anywhere near it, that is. To the north, summits of the highest mountain range in North America shored up the sky—had to stay clear of them. Somewhere to the west, a vast frozen river ground toward the sea: Williwaw Glacier. Its icy tongue split the land, its meltwater fed the lake below as well as the Kilkit River. Silverthorne Lodge was at the juncture of lake and river—God’s country.

But he didn’t see the glacier, the lake or the lodge. All he saw was dreary gray clouds concealing the glorious scenery of what Sam considered the United States’ last frontier. With its icy tundra, vast distances, untold natural resources and teeming wildlife, Alaska was big, bold and unlike any other place in the world. Sam liked to think that he was like the land—rugged, brash and untamed. A lot of people would have agreed with him.

No point in trying the radio; too much static. He peered out the Cessna’s window, searching for landmarks. A sudden blast of turbulence knocked the plane into a prolonged pitch and yaw. Cursing, Sam yanked back on the yoke to halt a sharp descent before he rammed in the power. Clouds fell away to reveal the snow-crested tops of trees and a dark slice of water. Ahead lay a curve of the river surmounted by a rocky bluff.

He fought to hold the plane level in the wind and tipped the nose up slightly as a swirl of snow across the windshield blurred his vision. Forget a clean approach; he’d have to make do with these less than ideal conditions. Adrenaline kicked in, the high he always got when faced with a dangerous and demanding task.

As he swooped low over the gray belly of the river looking for a patch free of rocks, he saw a downed tree spreading a tangle of limbs across the riverbank and into the water. He cursed again and tried to avoid the obstruction. Too soon he felt a thud of impact against the right float and strut. Something snapped, and a branch scraped across the top of the plane before the Cessna veered and hit the water with a sickening lurch.

It was a couple of minutes before Sam’s head cleared. The Cessna was upright, at least, but the right wing leaned into a tangle of vegetation. The left float was in place on the water. He climbed out of the cockpit groggily, sidestepped along the length of the float, and jumped across to the rocky bank before easing down on his haunches to assess the problem.

The plane’s right strut was broken, and its float had sheared off and lay on its side amid snow-covered boulders a few feet behind. The plane was skewed at an angle, its left wing canted in the air. Wait until he told his friend Vic Parnell that he’d damaged the plane. Vic admitted to a sentimental fondness for the Cessna, his first and only floatplane.

Sam straightened and brushed the snow from his shoulders before climbing back into the cockpit. He checked the Emergency Locator Transmitter, the ELT; evidently the plane hadn’t impacted hard enough during the landing to trigger the signaling device automatically. The ELT would guide search planes to him if anyone was monitoring. He flipped the switch experimentally. Nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing. Great. Apparently the battery was dead.

Jeez, if he’d known this would be the result of doing Vic a favor, he never would have taken off this morning. Sam kept his own planes in excellent condition, and this particular friend wasn’t ordinarily lax about safety precautions. However, Vic had been sick for over a year and was now recovering from an operation at his daughter’s house in Anchorage. Sam checked the survival gear and discovered that there wasn’t much. A roll of duct tape, a musty sleeping bag, a Mylar survival blanket, some canned food. No flare gun, no matches, no drinkable water.

Sam prided himself on being pretty good at flying by the seat of his pants, so not being able to use the plane’s radio hadn’t hampered him too seriously. As for the ELT’s being out of commission, that was a blow. Now Sam regretted taking off at all today. He certainly hadn’t expected a change in the weather, and snow didn’t usually fall in this part of the Country until mid-October.

Sam pulled a compass from his pocket and studied it. If he was where he thought he was, Chickaback Creek was to his right. According to the direction of the river’s flow and the compass reading, Williwaw Glacier lay to the north. Ditto Silverthorne Lodge…and Kerry Anderson.

There was nothing to do but strike out in that direction on foot. The Cessna, he noted glumly, wasn’t going anywhere. At least not until he repaired that strut and float. Hell, he could probably do it with the aid of chewing gum and a few paper clips, and the thought made him smile. It was what his old buddy Doug Anderson might have said.

He and Doug had prided themselves on being crackerjack fliers, and between them they thought they knew everything there was to know about airplanes. Except, sometimes, how to keep them in the air. Doug had died a year ago in a crash of the commuter plane he was piloting, leaving Kerry a widow and Sam with the possibility of becoming a father. But Sam was about to nix that option.

Sam saw now that ice was already forming along the river’s shoreline; not a good sign. He quickly scribbled a note to leave in the plane in case anyone should happen along and wonder where he was; he listed his destination as Silverthorne Lodge. Then he shouldered his pack and survival gear, checking carefully to make sure that the forms he’d brought for Kerry to sign were safe in their waterproof pouch in the inside pocket of his parka. Yeah, they were there, all right. If everything had gone according to plan, they would have been signed, sealed and delivered to the sperm bank in Seattle within the next forty-eight hours. It could still happen if the river doesn’t freeze, he thought to himself with a dark sense of foreboding.

His hunch told Sam that he’d arrive at Silverthorne Lodge shortly after dark. Despite the way this whole situation was shaping up, he couldn’t help but grin as he thought of Kerry’s reaction when she saw him, of all people. She’d never liked him, had considered him a bad influence. That alone was enough to spur him on across rugged terrain and through the blinding, blowing snow.

At Silverthorne

KERRY ANDERSON lay sprawled on the floor beneath the wildly swinging moose-antler chandelier and tried not to scream her frustration. Her finger, the left ring finger, was broken. She just knew it. Thank goodness she’d left Doug’s wedding ring in the wall safe at her friend’s house in Anchorage. There sure weren’t any jewelers around this neck of the woods to cut it off after her finger swelled.

Talk about stupid! She hadn’t been able to stand looking at the thick furring of dust on those moose antlers for one more minute, and against her better judgment, she’d climbed the first few rungs of a shaky ladder before it had toppled to the floor, taking her along with it. She’d better get an ice pack on her injured finger, and fast.

Kerry sat up and took stock of the rest of her. Fortunately her hand had broken her fall, and aside from a bruised hip, she was okay. But what if she wasn’t okay? Something else could go wrong, and she’d never forgive herself if it did. Experimentally she smoothed her right hand, the uninjured one, over the slight curve of stomach and abdomen. Nothing hurt, nothing cramped, and she drew a deep breath of relief.

She had planned it all so carefully: She’d stayed in Seattle until she could take care of business that had been postponed for too long, then she’d retreated to the lodge. In the three months since she’d been there, she’d accomplished a lot in the refurbishing of the eighteen-room building, but it had taken much longer than she’d expected, mostly because she sometimes got hung up on details. Like dusty moose antlers.

But the moose antlers were, well, picturesque and would lend an air of rustic authenticity to the lodge. That’s what tourists in Alaska paid good money for. And money was what Kerry needed at this point. Otherwise she’d never even contemplate opening her late husband’s ancestral fishing-and-hunting retreat to the public.

She couldn’t help sparing a thought for funny old Captain Crocker. He’d wanted her to leave with him on the last run of the River Rover over Labor Day weekend, and he’d called her a crazy cheechako, which was what Alaskans called someone new to the Country. The word came from the Chinook language, and it meant “tenderfoot.”

Cheechako or no, Kerry had blithely waved him away from the dock anyway. If he were here, she would have grudgingly admitted that he’d been right. She should have left when she had the chance. No one with any sense, particularly a cheechako, would camp on the edge of an Alaskan glacier with winter coming on. Now, feeling the weight of responsibility settling squarely on her narrow shoulders, she wanted to cry. She couldn’t, wouldn’t fail.

As soon as she could perambulate, Kerry dusted herself off and headed back to Silverthorne’s original homestead cabin, where she’d been living ever since she’d arrived. A light snow was sifting out of a milky gray sky, and the temperature had dropped drastically since lunchtime. It was only the middle of September, and it wasn’t supposed to be snowing yet. She’d been prepared for lots of rain, since she knew that it rained overmuch in Alaska. But snow? No.

As if I don’t have enough to worry about without bad weather, she told herself as she tried to ignore the stabs of pain darting up her arm. She was chilled to the bone and wondering if she’d made the worst mistake in her life when she’d told Captain Crocker to go back to Anchorage without her.

FOUR HOURS LATER, the pain in Kerry’s finger was horrendous, but a broken finger wasn’t her worst worry. The storm was.

The cabin was engulfed in a blinding snowstorm complete with a howling wind that shook it to its foundations. Kerry huddled drowsily on the couch nursing her finger with an ice pack, her favorite goose-down pillow cradling her head. She wished she had a first-aid kit, and somewhere upstairs was one of those medical advice books. But right now she didn’t have the energy to climb the narrow ladder to the loft to get it. She was exhausted, and sometimes she felt so queasy. And if only her finger didn’t hurt so much, she’d sleep. She closed her eyes, trying to drift away, making herself think of pleasant things, of happy times…

She awoke with a start. Her finger was swollen to twice its size, and the ice she’d packed around it had melted. No telling how long she had dozed; she glanced out the window and tried to figure out if the storm was letting up. No, it was as fierce as ever.

And then she saw it—a face at the window above the couch. It wavered in the flickering light from the kerosene lamp on the table.

Kerry jumped up with a little shriek, clutching the pillow to her chest. Was she dreaming? She didn’t think so. She must be having hallucinations from the pain. There could be no other explanation for such a frightening visage.

The face was distorted in the wavy glass and encircled by a big furry hood. The eyebrows bristled white with crusted snow. The nose was red from the cold, the jaw dark with stubble, and the mouth a wide gash uttering words that she couldn’t hear for the lashing of wind-driven snow against the windowpane.

As she stared at the apparition, it moved toward the door. She was seized with sudden irrational fear. She was alone here and at the mercy of anyone who came along, and she’d thought she was protected by the surrounding wilderness, by the fact that the closest human beings lived sixty miles away. Yet here was this stranger who was now banging loudly on the door. She hadn’t bolted it when she came in earlier; she had been in pain and thought there was no need.

Whoever it was scrabbling at the latch. In a panic now, Kerry threw her full weight, all one hundred and ten pounds of it, against the door.

Too late she realized that she should have armed herself with the poker from the fireplace. As the door swung open on rusty hinges, the sound of the wind was deafening. A snow-covered figure stumbled into the storm vestibule, the wind gusting hard against its broad back. Knowing that she had to protect herself from this unwelcome intruder, Kerry summoned all her strength and socked it as hard as she possibly could—

With the pillow. Which broke open and scattered feathers everywhere.

A cry of outrage drowned out even the howl of the wind.

“Hey, don’t you know me? I’m Sam, Sam Harbeck!” The figure ripped off its hood, and Kerry’s mouth dropped open in astonishment. She forgot, for the moment, her pain.

“Sam?” she said, her voice rising on an incredulous note. The intruder couldn’t be Sam Harbeck.

But it was. In those crazily disoriented seconds, she couldn’t imagine how Doug’s best friend came to be tapping on her window here in the middle of the wilderness during a blinding snowstorm, but it was Sam, all right. How could she not have recognized his square, stubborn chin, that sharp, straight blade of a nose? Even now, with wet feathers plastered in his hair and all over his face, he couldn’t be mistaken for anyone else.

A flurry of snow billowed into the room and mingled with the floating feathers on a burst of cold that almost knocked Kerry over. She dropped what remained of the pillow and struggled to slam the door, but the wind was too strong. Sam joined her in throwing his full weight against the heavy door, and together they managed to shut out the raging storm.

In the sudden hollow silence, Sam spat feathers out of his mouth, slung his backpack into a corner and peeled off his parka.

“What kind of welcome is this? I hammered on the door and yelled until I almost froze. Or is that what you had in mind?” His piercing blue gaze swept over her, taking in her mussed hair now frosted with feathers, the worn jeans, the red wool hiking socks with a hole in one toe. She stood gaping at him, unable to speak.

“You shouldn’t have dressed up,” he said, stomping clumps of snow off his boots and making a feathery mess on the floor. He threw the parka over a peg beside Kerry’s coat and strode through a few still-fluttering feathers to the kitchen area where he helped himself to a towel from the shelf over the dry sink.

“You forgot to shave,” Kerry snapped back, picking feathers from her hair, her sweater, her jeans. She felt perilously near tears; it was because her finger hurt and her favorite pillow was ruined. Or maybe it was because she’d been foolish enough to think that Sam Harbeck had the capacity to care about anyone but himself.

“I’ve been roughing it, camping out.”

“In snow?” Kerry said, heavy on the sarcasm. She bent to pick up the pillow. Its case was wet, and feathers were still falling out.

“It wasn’t snowing when I started,” Sam said. He wiped his face with the towel and tossed it into a basket under the sink before peering into the cloudy mirror beside the back door and brushing feathers from his hair. In obvious distaste, he poked at a pot of red beans she’d left on the stove after lunch and dropped the spoon before looking her over again from head to toe.

It was a thorough inspection, his gaze lingering on her face before sweeping the rest of her slight frame. It unnerved her, that look. She felt as if she were standing in front of him buck naked. For something to do, she walked over to the wood box and shoved the sadly deflated pillow in between the logs. She didn’t know what else to do with it.

“Whatever brings you to this neck of the woods?” she blurted. She held her injured finger in the palm of her other hand; it was throbbing painfully. Through her pain and astonishment, she had the idea that maybe Sam was checking on her out of a feeling of obligation to Doug. At that thought she felt a kind of absurd gratitude, but it evaporated as soon as Sam opened his mouth.

“Your friend Emma told me you’d written and said you were staying on here after the last boat of the summer came through. I couldn’t believe you could be so dumb. Why are you staying here in the cabin instead of the lodge?”

“It costs too much to run the electrical generator there, and the lodge is too big to heat. Anyway, the cabin is cozy. It suits me.”

“What ever possessed you to hang on at Silverthorne with winter coming on? With winter already here,” he amended, with a meaningful look at the storm flailing outside the windows.

“I had lots of work to do. I was in the middle of painting the dining room because I was running behind schedule when the River Rover made its last run. Captain Crocker is sending his son-in-law Bert to pick me up in his plane in a couple of weeks when he flies to the Indian village on government business.” She narrowed her eyes. “The captain didn’t send you instead, did he?”

Sam’s hair was coal-black and unruly, and now he furrowed a hand through it, which only made it wilder. “Hell, no. If anyone had asked me to fly all the way over here to pick up a cheechako woman who was enough of a nitwit not to head for civilization in the face of an Alaskan winter, I would have refused.” Like Captain Crocker, he’d pronounced it “cheechaker.” “Nope, it was my own fool decision to stop here. You should have left weeks ago. And if Bert’s planning to fly to an Indian village, which one?”

“To Athinopa. Captain Crocker said Bert wouldn’t mind stopping here.”

“He wouldn’t. If he heard about you, that is.”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

“Josiah Crocker habitually tosses his captain’s hat onto his bedpost on the last day of August every year and goes on a six-month drunk, that’s why. I wouldn’t count on Joe to tell anyone anything.”

“How was I to know?” Kerry said, feeling deflated.

Sam evidently took this for a rhetorical question because he picked a few feathers from his shirt and changed the subject. “You’re too thin. Don’t you eat properly?”

“I try,” she said evenly. For the first time she noticed that Sam Harbeck looked like a cross between Harrison Ford and George Clooney, heavy on the Harrison. He seemed to take up too much space in this small room; he filled it up. Kerry tried to inhale, but found that she couldn’t breathe. She grabbed the back of a chair with her uninjured hand and closed her eyes against the bevy of black dots swarming behind her eyelids. Meanwhile her visitor was pacing like a caged animal. An agitated caged animal, who was incongruously wearing the ubiquitous Alaskan bush boots. Feathers fluttered lazily in the air like snowflakes.

“Worse September snowstorm I’ve seen in many years. I was halfway here when it hit. I ditched the plane at the bend in the river where it meets Chickaback Creek. Do you have anything to eat? Anything good?” He cast a disparaging look at the pot of beans.

“I—um, well, I made goulash yesterday out of the last of the beef and was going to heat it for dinner. Anyway, beans are very nutritious. I cooked them with wild onions and chili powder. What plane?”

“It’s an aging Cessna 185 that I agreed to ferry back to Anchorage for a friend. Against my better judgment, by the way. Last week I had one of my pilots drop me off at Vic’s camp, it’s out Tolneeka way, and indulged in a few days of fishing. Where’s the goulash?”

She ignored his question. “What happened to the Cessna?” she asked. She was still trying to figure out what Sam was doing here.

“It was an emergency landing, and the plane’s not flyable. I guess the damage could have been worse considering the conditions. Actually I didn’t land far from here, but I had to walk most of the way against the wind. Is something wrong? You look like hell.” He tucked his hands into his belt loops and scowled at her. His brows were still damp and stood out from his face; a small scar cut through the left one. His mouth turned down at the corners; it was too generous to be considered handsome. Even as she noted these irrelevant details, Kerry couldn’t help thinking that there was something overwhelmingly, reassuringly masculine about him. She told herself that under the circumstances, she should be relieved to see another human being, any human being. Even Sam Harbeck. Even when he was saying uncomplimentary things.

“I thought rule number one was never to leave the plane if you go down.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve never been much for rules. I asked you if something was wrong.”

“I think I broke my finger,” Kerry said with reluctance.

“Let’s see.” It wasn’t a request, it was a command.

Reluctantly Kerry presented her hand, and Sam enveloped it in his larger ones as he studied it. He whistled. “That’s a lovely shade of violent.”

“Violent?”

“Violet. It’s a joke, Kerry.”

“It hurts too much to laugh.”

She could tell he didn’t like the looks of her injury. “What have you been doing for it?” he asked.

“Cold packs. I’ve been hoping it’s only sprained.”

“It looks like more than a sprain, all right. What were you doing, smashing your fingers with a hammer? You have no business trying to renovate that big old lodge by yourself. You should have waited until next year when you could bring in a crew of workmen.”

“There’s no money for workmen, and by next summer I’ll need paying guests. Doug didn’t leave me in great financial shape, you know.” She pulled her hand away from him, but he grabbed her wrist. His fingers were surprisingly gentle.

“Not so fast. Where does it hurt most?” His voice had lost its challenge and its banter now. Also he had ignored the reference to her finances, which Kerry thought was probably just as well. She didn’t want Sam Harbeck to pity her for her financial difficulties; everyone knew that he had built the small bush-flying service that he’d inherited from his father into Harbeck Air, Alaska’s biggest charter airline. Sam was worth millions of dollars. His remarkable success only underscored her late husband’s recklessness with money.

“I think my finger’s broken in the end segment. That’s where it hurts most. Hey, careful! Your hands are cold.”

“I’ll spare you the usual comeback.” His eyes now were surprisingly mischievous, a pale sparkling blue.

“‘Cold hands, warm heart?’ It’s not necessarily true.”

Sam ordinarily seemed to enjoy sparring with her, but now he was all business. “What’s true is that we’d better do something about this finger. Usually doctors don’t treat fractures in the end segment of the finger unless they involve the joint. Think the joint’s fractured?”

Against her better judgment, Kerry tried to wiggle her swollen finger. “It hurts so much that it’s hard to tell. I may have just jammed it. My hand took a blow when I broke my fall.”

“You’re lucky it’s your left hand.”

Kerry shook her head. “Not so lucky. I’m left-handed.”

“Well, what I’m going to do is tape your ring finger to the middle one. It won’t hurt so much if it’s immobilized.”

“Wouldn’t a splint be better?

“There are pros and cons. A splint decreases pain, but may increase joint stiffness after it’s healed. If we leave your finger as it is, the pain may last longer and chances are you’ll end up with a stiff joint anyway. Taping it to the adjoining finger is a good compromise.”

“How do you know so much about this?” she asked, watching him as he dug a first-aid kit out of his pack and withdrew a thick roll of gauze.

“I had a broken finger once from a sled accident. The doctor explained the alternative treatments to me.”

His touch was sure and gentle as he bound her ring and middle fingers together with gauze, and he stood so close that his face was only inches from hers. She inhaled the welcome warm male scent of him, a combination of leather, wood smoke, musk and something indefinably exciting. He smelled of the outdoors, of melted snow and a raw wind and, too, of the river.

What he was doing to her finger was painful, and she forced herself not to flinch. Instead she would trust, and that wasn’t easy. She had come to depend on no one but herself long before Doug died. Even as she was thinking how nice it might be to be comforted and cosseted, to have someone to take care of her, Sam’s eyes met hers.

She instantly felt a jolt. Not just a mental one, but a physical one, too, as if a current of electricity pulsed from one to the other. Where it originated, in her or in him, Kerry couldn’t have said, nor did she know if it was conducted from his hand to hers or over the brilliantly charged space between them. It unnerved her and made her want to yank her fingers away, and yet she couldn’t move. Couldn’t stop looking at him, into him, wondering if he too felt something. Felt—what? They had never much liked each other.

This reality check gave her the strength to look away. It was too intimate, that blistering brief moment of eye contact and this electrifying physical closeness. While she was contemplating her own embarrassment, Sam dropped the adhesive tape into her free hand.

“Here, hold this,” he said abruptly. He ripped a piece off the roll and wound it around her fingers. If he noticed anything amiss, he gave no sign.

“What medicine are you taking for the pain?” he asked.

“None,” she replied, striving to keep her tone even. “I didn’t bring any, and there weren’t any medical supplies here.” Did she sound normal? No. But maybe she sounded normal enough to fool him.

“I’ll see if I have something.” Sam rummaged in the first-aid kit and produced a small white envelope. “It’s not much, but it’ll have to do.” Sam shook out two acetaminophen. “Take them,” he said. “You’ll be more comfortable after it kicks in.”

Without comment, Kerry picked up the glass of water she’d set on the table next to the couch and swallowed the pills. She definitely did not feel like herself. The day had been a strain, and she’d been working hard for weeks with no respite. And here was Sam, and she didn’t know why he was here, and her finger hurt worse than anything she could imagine.

“Didn’t you hear what I said?” Sam was wrinkling his forehead at her. He really had such a noble forehead, so wide. And the way that one curly lock of hair fell across it was charming.

Charming? Sam Harbeck was anything but charming. I may have broken my finger, but falling off a ladder hasn’t made me lose my mind, she thought just as Sam grasped her around the shoulders. She struggled to push him away, but he said, “You look a little woozy. Here, let’s ease you down on the couch,” all the while holding her so close that she actually felt the muscles ripple across his chest.

“Now sit down and put your feet up,” he said close to her ear.

“I’m all right, leave me alone,” she replied weakly.

He snorted. “I’m not going to have you dropping in your tracks, at least not until I clean the water and feathers off the floor.”

“I’m all right,” she repeated, but he knelt beside her and studied her while his face kaleidoscoped into several Sams, all of them wearing the same expression of concern.

“I’m going to pull this blanket up over you, and you can lie back and watch me work.” Sam settled the striped wool blanket across her as Kerry allowed herself to sink back on the couch cushions.

“How do you feel?” he asked. Absently he reached over and plucked a feather from her hair; he sat looking at it thoughtfully.

“Lousy,” she mumbled. She wondered if Sam was aware of how endearing he was when he was being kind.

“Great. We should have that finger x rayed, you know. But the nearest x-ray machine is in Anchorage, over three hundred miles away.” He tucked the feather in his pocket.

“Believe me, the same thought has occurred to me. Go away, Sam. Let me suffer in peace.” This dramatic utterance brought a derisive hoot from Sam.

He stood up. “As long as you can talk, I know you’re fine,” he said dryly.

How could she have found his behavior endearing only moments ago? He was making fun of her. “Go on,” she said, pushing at his knee. His jeans were wet from being out in the snow.

After one last exasperated glance at her over his shoulder, Sam went to the supply closet and dug around amid the welter of old brooms, battered skis and bent buckets until he produced a mop.

“Too bad there’s no electricity in the cabin. A vacuum cleaner would come in handy for these feathers.”

“D’you know how to use that?” Kerry said thickly as he began to wield the mop.

Sam paused and indulged in an amused chuckle. “My first job at my Dad’s airport was janitor,” he said.

“Oh,” she said, but she couldn’t help recalling the time she and Doug had flown into that very airport and visited Sam in his plush office, where he was ensconced behind an enormous mahogany desk while he fielded telephone calls from all over the world. Afterward they’d glided in Sam’s Mercedes sedan to his elegant house in exclusive Turn Again by the Sea. The house was an architectural marvel overlooking an arm of Cook Inlet, where his houseman served them a gourmet’s dinner of grilled Alaskan King salmon and wild rice sauted with roasted pine nuts.

It was hard to reconcile that image of Sam with the slightly rakish and unshaven man who was so vigorously mopping the wide planks of the cabin floor and stirring up drying feathers. She watched him through half-closed eyes as he worked, admiring in spite of herself the swift power of his movements and his attention to the task. When he had finished mopping and stowed the mop in the closet, he said, “That’s about the best I can do, so now I’m going to shuck these wet clothes. Close your eyes.”

One thing about Sam Harbeck—he certainly knew how to get a girl’s attention. Kerry roused herself to object, pushing herself to a half-sitting position and regarding Sam with what she hoped would pass for outrage.

“You could step out to the shed to change,” she pointed out. “Or go up in the loft.” Those were the only two possibilities for privacy. The cabin consisted of only one twelve by eighteen-foot room with a loft built above the kitchen section.

“I’m not going anywhere. The shed is too cold and the loft ceiling is only five feet high and slanted, which would require that I change clothes in a crouch.”

“What’s wrong with changing clothes in a crouch?” Kerry said for the sake of getting an argument going.

“Since I’m over six feet tall, I’d end up with a crick in my neck or worse. It’s your choice. You can watch me as I expose my shivering male body to your eyes—or not. I’ll leave it up to you.” Sam was maddeningly arrogant, but that was nothing new.

The worst thing was that Kerry couldn’t think of anything at all to say in response. She caught only a glimpse of that devil-may-care grin of Sam’s as he turned and reached into his pack to withdraw neatly folded jeans. As if to underscore his own outrageousness, he tossed a pair of black male briefs to the floor where they lay in all their skimpy glory.

“I don’t want to see anything shivering or naked,” Kerry blurted with all the conviction she could muster at the moment, and Sam laughed when he saw where she was looking.

“I thought so. Don’t worry, I’ll sound the all clear when I’m decent.” He was already unbuttoning his shirt.

Kerry closed her eyes, tight. She heard the clomp of Sam’s boots as they fell to the floor followed by the whisper of sodden jeans against flesh and the dull muffled thud as they fell. Telltale sounds reported that Sam was pawing through his pack; he tossed some things onto the floor, humming to himself.

“I could have sworn I stuck a wool flannel shirt in here,” Sam mused. More digging. More humming. At last Kerry couldn’t stand it anymore and opened her eyes to a slit so that she could peer from beneath her eyelashes for a peek.

He stood in the middle of the cabin facing her, light from the kerosene lamp playing over his well-muscled body. She’d never considered Sam Harbeck good-looking; he was too rawboned and rugged for her taste. But it was all she could do not to gasp at the magnificence of his commanding physique.

His shoulders were broader than she’d remembered. Not that she ever had reason to think about them, but if she had, she’d have assumed that they’d be average. They weren’t. And their width emphasized a tapering torso thickly furred with springy black hair all the way down past his navel to a taut, rock-hard abdomen. And below that…

She closed her eyes again, and fast. Generally speaking, she wasn’t the least bit interested in men’s anatomies, and certainly not in Sam Harbeck’s. Yet the image of that stray lock of black hair falling over his forehead, the lamplight shading the hollows and curves of his utterly masculine body, seemed burned upon the inside of her eyelids. The shape of him, the details of him, wouldn’t go away.

Sam’s fresh clothes weren’t the only thing that was dry; her mouth might run a close second. She swallowed hard, but didn’t dare peek. Her memory of the way he’d looked was bad enough.

“Mission accomplished,” Sam said after what seemed like an eternity. “I’m ready to stand inspection.”

She didn’t look. She didn’t want to encounter those keen blue eyes, sharp as daggers. She didn’t want him to discover in her own eyes what she was afraid he’d detect. She’d never liked Sam, and she wouldn’t give him anything he could use against her.

“I’m really very tired,” she said, which was true.

“You might as well go ahead and relax. I’m going to pitch a couple more logs into the stove and nab some chow.”

“Mmm,” Kerry replied, hoping she sounded sleepy. She needed time to figure out Sam’s motive for being here, and yet she could hardly think. Not only was she still in pain, but she knew now that she shouldn’t have looked at him undressed. Doug had been dead for over a year, and she tried not to dwell on how much she missed the sexual aspect of marriage. Seeing Sam had made her think about it again, and life was hard enough without lingering on thoughts about all she didn’t have.

Sam, by this time, had discovered the pot of goulash and was stirring it on the stove. He seemed at home in a kitchen and found dishes, flatware and mugs without having to ask where they were. Of course he’d be comfortable here, she thought. Sam and Doug had come here many times together, usually for their ridiculous once-a-year, no-women-allowed male bonding experience.

Kerry had never figured out why, the whole time they’d been married, Doug had felt that he had to leave her behind while he disappeared into the wilderness every year to squander a whole week’s precious vacation. She’d always thought it was so he could grow a beard and refuse to take a bath for seven days but, even so, she still didn’t understand how beard stubble and the lack of bathing promoted male friendship.

She opened her eyes and saw that the pot on the stove was steaming alarmingly. “Careful, or you’ll burn that goulash,” she warned.

“Nah,” Sam said, not seeming to notice her waspish tone. He slid the pot from the burner and ladled the hot meat and noodles onto two plates.

“I didn’t say I want any,” she told him.

“Doesn’t matter. You’ve got to eat. If you don’t feel like sitting at the table, I’ll bring this over to the couch, and you can eat there.”

“With one hand mostly out of commission? No thanks. I’ll join you at the table—if you’ll remember that I’m a lefty and ignore my clumsy attempts to eat with my right hand. And don’t expect brilliant conversation. It’s been a long day.”

“I don’t expect conversation at all. Come to think of it, last time I sat down to dinner with you, you got up, flounced into the bedroom and slammed the door. It pretty much ended small talk.” He shot her a look out of the corners of his eyes.

She didn’t like that look, but countering it was far from her first priority. She stood up, gingerly shifted from one foot to the other to see if her knees worked, and when they did, she wobbled over to sit at the table. In the process she tried to make up her mind if Sam’s last accusation merited a response. Finally she said as coolly as she could, “The incident you’re referring to happened four years ago, and you had come to visit Doug and me in Seattle. And you took the money I’d been saving for a bang-up anniversary celebration weekend and wouldn’t give it back.”

Sam leaned over the table, his eyes dancing. “I won that money fair and square from you and Doug in a poker game after both of you insisted that you could beat me. A bet,” he said pointedly, “is a bet.” He went back to the stove and brought her a plate of goulash.

“A bet may be a bet, but because of it Doug and I had to stay home for our wedding anniversary, when I’d been counting on a lovely weekend in the Napa Valley complete with a room at a picturesque inn overlooking the vineyards, complementary wine and a heart-shaped Jacuzzi. Some friend you were, Sam.”

“You were the one who turned down the chance to play strip poker.” He yanked out his chair and sat, regarding her with uplifted brows.

This made her indignant. “We were joking about it, sure, but neither Doug nor I would have—”

“That’s why we played for money instead. I hate sore losers.” Sam shrugged and dug into the goulash. “Say, this is good.”

If there was one thing she couldn’t stand, it was Sam’s cockiness. He thought he was God’s gift to women. No, to the whole world. She forgot to concentrate on eating, and noodles slipped from her fork. Then she lost her grip and the fork fell to the floor with a clatter. Sam raised his eyebrows and went on eating.

She pushed away from the table and stood up. “I don’t think I’m hungry,” she said.

He stared at her blankly. “What is this, some kind of grandstanding for attention? I’ll pick up the fork. Also the noodles. So sit back down.” He got up and cleaned up the mess.

“Grandstanding? Is that what you think I’m like?”

“You don’t need to get all upset,” Sam said in a reasoning tone. “Come on, sit down, you’re making me uncomfortable looking down my throat while I eat. There’s nowhere to go anyway.” He sat down again.

In the past, Doug had acted as a buffer between Sam and Kerry. Suddenly Kerry missed Doug so much that tears welled in her eyes. She wanted nothing so much as to scramble up the ladder to the loft and curl up on the narrow cot there, preferably in the fetal position. But Sam would probably call such an exit grandstanding. She sat.

“There’s nowhere to go, all right. That’s nothing I didn’t already know,” she said heavily. Tears blurred her vision, and she blinked them away, but not before Sam skewered her with a keen but not unsympathetic look.

“Why don’t you go stay with your parents in La Jolla?”

“They offered to send me a ticket, but I had work to do here.”

He started to scoff at that, but she interrupted. She’d already lowered her guard. She saw no point in lying and, moreover, she thought Sam might as well know how things stood. “My lease on the Seattle house expired, and coming to Silverthorne gave me a place to stay over the summer. I’d already had the idea of opening the lodge to the public. I’m counting on this place to provide me with an income next year and I’m going to need every penny of it.”

After a long silence Sam cleared his throat and said slowly, “I advised Doug not to invest in that avocado farm near San Diego. He wouldn’t listen.”

Kerry managed a shrug. “Both of us trusted friends who painted a too-bright picture of how well it would pay off. By the time we pulled out of the venture, our money was gone.”

“I thought you’d managed to save some before he died.”

“We had other expenses,” Kerry said, thinking of the pricey fertility workup that she and Doug had undergone when she didn’t get pregnant on schedule as they had hoped and planned. All their remaining funds after the avocado-farm disaster had gone to pay the clinic.

She drew a deep breath. “Anyway, Doug and I thought we’d have time to rebuild a nest egg, but then he died. I paid off our debts with most of the insurance money, and there’s not much left over. Silverthorne Lodge is one of the few assets I have left. Either I make it pay or I sell it.”

“Opening it to tourists is another gamble,” Sam pointed out.

Kerry’s chin shot up. “I’ll make it work. I will!”

Sam grinned. “I’m not saying you won’t. But you can’t stay here now. It’s too late in the year to be up here in the wilderness.”

“I still have to strip the wax from the floors in the dining room, I wanted to put the finishing touches on the upstairs bedrooms so there won’t be anything to do but make the beds when I come back in June, and—”

“You’re leaving when I do. I thought I made it clear that you can’t count on Bert. How much work can you get done with a broken finger anyway?”

“A lot,” Kerry said hotly. As she spoke her finger began to throb again. “Anyway, I thought you said the Cessna’s not flyable.”

“I can fix it.”

“If you think I’m flying out of here in a plane that’s missing a strut and a float, you’ve got another think coming.”

“Is that so?” Sam leveled his fork at her. “Well, let me tell you this. I don’t want to be responsible for what happens to you if Bert doesn’t show up.”

“You could talk to him when you get to Anchorage, remind him to stop for me.”

“And what if the weather is so bad he can’t make it for weeks? Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not any such thing!” Kerry shoved back from the table and winced when her finger hit the edge. She gripped her smarting finger and glared at him. “Why repair the plane at all? Someone’s got to come looking for you, don’t they? When you don’t show up back in Anchorage on time?”

Sam stood abruptly and stalked to the window. He stared out at the blackness beyond the pane; it rattled with the force of heavy gusts. Windblown snowdrifts furled around the tree trunks outside, and the view of the river was obscured by eddying snow.

“I didn’t file a flight plan, Kerry. Nobody knows that I left Vic’s camp and came here.”

Kerry froze. “And you think I do dumb things? Listen, Sam, everyone knows you’re supposed to file flight plans. Including you.” She paused as their situation sank in. “You’re telling me that no one is going to be looking for you. They’ll think you’re still at the camp.”

“For a while, at least. And the Cessna’s ELT isn’t working. Its battery is dead.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them. “Aren’t ELTs supposed to be checked every so often to make sure they’re in operating condition?”

“Every two years. Vic keeps the plane at his camp and evidently hasn’t paid much attention to safety since he’s been going round and round with this illness of his. I didn’t know that when I agreed to fly the plane to Anchorage for him.”

“How about the radio?”

“It’s not much use with the mountains blocking transmission. I’ll try it again tomorrow.”

Kerry didn’t think Sam sounded too hopeful. “Well,” she said lamely, “maybe the radio’s signal will at least reach Athinopa. They could relay the message to the rescue people.”

Sam was silent. “Another thing we don’t know is what this weather will do,” he said after a time, his words carefully measured. “If the river freezes, no float plane will be able to get in or out of here until after the ice breaks up in the summer. The same thing goes for a boat.”

“The only way in and out of this place in the winter is by dogsled or helicopter, and those possibilities are closed to us until Search-and-Rescue gets on the case, right?”

“Right. As soon as the weather clears, I’ll start repairing the plane. It’s our best hope.”

“How much do you have to do to it?”

“I told you. Repair the strut, attach the float.”

“That sounds like more than you can do with two-inch duct tape.”

“Doug kept a good set of tools in the shed.”

“They’re still there, but repairing a strut and attaching a float sounds like a serious job.”

Sam turned back toward her, his gaze level. She thought she detected a glint of worry behind his eyes.

“The thing I’m most concerned about is the weather. There are ice crystals already forming along the riverbank. If the river freezes solid before we get airborne, we’re stuck here. Maybe for a long time.”

Kerry felt a sharp stab of foreboding. “How long does it usually take for the river to freeze?”

His short laugh was entirely without humor. He gestured with a curt nod at the blustery scene on the other side of the window, and his expression was grim.

“Depends. I’d say there’s a good possibility that within a day or so we’ll be able to stroll all the way to Anchorage right down the middle of the river, wouldn’t you?”

CHAPTER TWO

Sam hated the way Kerry’s face fell when he said that. She looked like a kid who’d just had her candy yanked away by a big, bad playground bully.

“Couldn’t you put skis on the plane? Take off from the river ice?”

“I don’t have skis for this plane. That was another of Vic’s oversights.”

“So what happens if we have to stay here?” She remained unruffled, but he sensed an underlying tension, as if she were hanging onto what he might say as a lifeline out of this situation. One part of him, the Sam he wanted to be, longed to touch her shoulder and tell her that everything was going to be all right. The other part of him, the Sam he was, knew that he didn’t dare touch her. And so he found a way to put space between them.

“Well now,” he said, moving away so that he could no longer see the silvery motes in her golden eyes, “I’d say we’d get to know each other a whole lot better than we do.” It was a statement meant to raise the barriers between them. And it worked.

“That,” she replied in a tone heavily infused with irony, “does not reassure me.”

She didn’t laugh, but he wished she had. He’d begun to sense that Kerry was different from the way she’d been in the past—more sober, more serious. Maybe it was because of her widowhood, maybe because of financial problems, maybe because of the pain from her broken finger. As for himself, he was worried about the plane and the river, more worried than he cared to let her know, but any thoughts he might have entertained about bringing a sense of lightheartedness to this situation evaporated. Kerry stood staring bleakly out the window, pale and tight-lipped.

“I assume you’ve got some food around here, enough to last for a while,” he said. He strode to the cabinets ranging along one wall and started hurling doors open.

“A bit of powdered milk. Packets of hot chocolate mix. Freeze-dried chicken stew. A few cans of soup. Canned chili and some other stuff. Is there more food somewhere? In the cache below the trapdoor in the kitchen maybe?”

Mutely she shook her head.

He walked back to where she stood, balancing his hands on his hips and staring down at her. “That’s barely enough for one person for two more weeks. If Bert didn’t show up on time, exactly what did you plan to eat?”

“I expected him to be here on schedule,” she said with admirable dignity. She lifted her chin and treated him to that flint-eyed gaze. “Anyway,” she said, “I thought I could fish. I’ve fished in the river and the creek and the lake before.”

He could barely contain his scorn. “With a broken finger?”

“My finger wasn’t broken to begin with.”

“What would you do if I hadn’t come along? If Bert were never told you’re waiting here for him? Of all the tomfool things to do, woman, this takes the cake. And sitting here with a broken finger to boot.”

She caught her lower lip between her teeth and glared at him for a moment. “We’ve been through all this before, Sam. I already know you think I’m an idiot, thank you very much, but actually I don’t think you’re much smarter than I am.”

“If I hadn’t come along—”

“If you hadn’t come along, I’d be in deep trouble, okay? Does it make you feel better to hear me admit it?”

“Damn straight,” he said. But he felt no satisfaction when she whirled and marched to the back door.

With one last furious look back at him, she flung a thick woolen shawl around her shoulders and slammed out into the night. Sam recalled that the storage shed that served as an outhouse was partly protected by a breezeway. It wouldn’t be pleasant going out there in weather like this, but she’d be all right.

At least that’s what he thought in the beginning. He started cleaning up the dinner dishes, scraping scraps into a bin, sluicing water over the plates from a pitcher that he filled from a wooden barrel beside the back door, all the while listening for sounds of trouble outside. The kitchen window overlooked the breezeway, and he looked out to see if anything was amiss, but the night was pitch dark and thick with windblown snow. He could barely make out the outline of the shed at the end of the breezeway, but where was Kerry? He worked with one ear cocked to the keening of the wind. By the time all the dishes were put away on their designated shelf, he was feeling edgy. She shouldn’t have gone out by herself. How long could anyone spend in an outhouse, anyway?

Too long, he stewed as he unpacked his things and stashed them in the closet beside hers. It wasn’t a big closet, and he didn’t think she’d like him taking up much space, so he crammed his few shirts and extra pair of jeans into the far corner.

A flutter of cream-colored lace snagged his wristwatch, and he paused to disentangle it. The lace edged the sleeve of a silky scoop-necked gown. It was lined in flannel and buttoned up the front, not quite granny-style but almost. Granny or not, he had a vision of Kerry wearing it. She’d look ethereal and graceful, the lace trailing along those dainty hands, the scooped neck revealing a bit of cleavage. No, a lot of cleavage. Kerry was well endowed. He’d never really noticed that about her before.

The back door catapulted open, and Kerry rode in on a wedge of snowflakes. Guiltily he dropped the sleeve of her nightgown and hoped she wouldn’t notice.

“Whew! I don’t think the weather’s anywhere near letting up!” she said, seemingly in better humor than when she’d left. She doffed the shawl and draped it over a chair near the stove to dry.

“You shouldn’t have gone out in the storm.”

She spared him a hard look. “A human body has certain needs. It was necessary.”

He realized that if he hadn’t been there, if she hadn’t needed privacy, she would have taken care of those needs inside. He knew for a fact that there was an ancient chamber pot stored under the eaves upstairs.

“If it’s still storming next time you go to the shed, let me know. I’ll go with you and wait outside. You shouldn’t go out alone.”

“I’ve been going to the shed alone for the past three months and have never had a problem. I think I can still manage it for the next couple of days.” She took in the neat kitchen. “Thanks for cleaning up,” she murmured grudgingly.

“No thanks are necessary,” he said. She’d tucked the light sweater she wore into her jeans, and her breasts strained against the fuzzy fabric. The color was a luscious cherry red, and he found himself studying the curves of her breasts in expectance of seeing the outline of a nipple. He thought he detected a puckering of the fabric, and his unbidden thought was of Kerry’s nipples erect from the cold, shifting tantalizingly against the soft knit.

The thought made him swallow hard past the lump in his throat, and he clamped his lips tight against the wave of desire that swept over him. Which only reminded him that yes, he did have lips, and that so did she, and that they were exactly the same shade of red as her sweater, and that it would be oh so easy to kiss her and let his lips follow the sweet line of her neck all the way down to the swelling of her breast.

This was going much too far. “I’d better check the shed and see what tools we have,” he said, his tone intentionally brusque. He grabbed his parka and pushed past her toward the door.

As he braved the icy barrage that greeted him in the breezeway, he found himself wishing again that he’d accepted his friends’ invitation and hightailed it for Key West last week. He could sure use a margarita right about now.

WHEN SAM WALKED BACK in the cabin ten minutes later lugging a two-by-four and Doug’s old toolbox, he startled Kerry so much that she spilled hot chocolate all over the countertop in the kitchen.

Sam dropped the lumber and the toolbox and grabbed a roll of paper towels. “You didn’t burn yourself, did you?”

“No,” she said, tearing off a wad of towels and blotting at the dark-brown liquid inching across the counter and dripping down the front of the cabinets. “I can’t do anything right lately. Not even make hot chocolate from a mix,” she said.

He spared her a glance. “Maybe you’d better leave cooking chores to me until you can manage with your finger a little better.”

“I feel like such a doofus,” she said unhappily.

He ignored this. “There are spatters on your sweater,” he pointed out.

She looked down at the brown blotches spread across her midsection. “I’ll go change,” she said, reaching behind her with both hands and fumbling awkwardly with several tiny buttons at the neck. She muttered impatiently and turned her back toward him. “Would you mind?” she said.

She lifted her hair out of the way, exposing the pale skin at the nape of her neck, and, acting as if he did this all the time, Sam reached up and unbuttoned the buttons one by one. His fingers grazed her soft flesh, and he thought he felt a shudder run through her. Or maybe she was only shivering. The cabin was well-chinked, but all this going in and out of doors had lowered the air temperature in the cabin considerably.

Well, it was time to change the focus here. He was getting much too rattled over this. Over her.

“Do you mind if I build a fire in the fireplace?” he said.

She didn’t speak, only shook her head, fluttering into motion the loose tendrils wisping around her neck. Sam found himself wanting to push her hands away so that the weight of her hair would swing across her shoulders, brushing against his hands, tangling in his fingers. It shone in the dim lamplight, a marvelous wealth of hair. Her ear peeped through the edges of it, and he wanted nothing so much in that moment as to nibble on the lobe and keep going until he came across something more substantial and equally delectable.

As soon as he finished with the buttons, she said, “Thanks,” her voice murmuring so softly that he could hardly hear her.

“Be careful climbing the ladder,” he said, deliberately trying not to stare at her breasts.

“I guess I do seem accident-prone,” she replied with a rueful laugh, but he noticed she didn’t look at him as she took off lickety-split for the ladder.

The boards above his head creaked as Kerry moved around the loft, and Sam imagined her there, lifting the lid of the big old trunk nestled close to the eaves, tugging the sweater over her head to reveal a lacy bra. But maybe Kerry didn’t go in for lacy underwear. Maybe she wore plain white cotton. Or maybe she didn’t wear any.

When Kerry came back down again she had donned a somewhat less provocative plaid flannel shirt of Doug’s, and Sam was sitting on the raised stone hearth and building a fire in the fireplace.

“Is the finger feeling any better?” he asked, keeping his tone neutral.

“I’m not sure. Maybe I’m getting used to it,” she said.

She walked to the sink and dipped water from the barrel into a large chipped enamel dishpan. He watched her as she dumped detergent into the water and began to swish the red sweater around in the suds.

“I would have done that if you’d asked me,” he said, fanning the growing flames.

Her expression was skeptical. “It never occurred to me to suggest it,” she said. She poked at the sweater; he jabbed at the fire. When he’d revved the flames to his satisfaction, he noticed that Kerry was having a hard time rinsing and wringing as she tried to spare her bum finger.

“Here,” he said, rising to his feet. “If you absolutely must do that, I’d better help.”

She didn’t move when he approached, just stood there ineptly stirring the sweater around in a few inches of water. Her bottom lip was held firmly between her teeth, and he thought that she looked as if she were going to cry.

He couldn’t stand it. Kerry was supposed to be all bite and fizz, not soft and squishy and the kind of woman who would cry, for Pete’s sake. Her present state was so different from her usual persona that he felt at a loss to deal with her.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He’d deal with her the same way he always had when he felt threatened by her. He had to get her back up, had to rile her.

“Look at your bandage,” he said. “You’ve gotten it all wet.”

“Yeah, but I know where I can get another one.” She moved sideways, and he took over.

“If you’re lucky. Say, was it absolutely necessary to do this tonight?” he said.

“It’s a new sweater. I’ve only worn it a few times.” While he wrung it out, Kerry produced a clean towel and silently accepted the dripping bundle from him, rolling it awkwardly into the terry cloth.

Impatient with her, with her failure to lash out at him, Sam said, “Give it to me.” He blotted at the sweater, then unrolled the towel. “Dry enough?”

“Sure. Here, you can spread it on this paper on the table.” He did, and edging past him in the narrow space, she moved in to shape the sweater into its proper form.

“All right, looks like I’d better rebind those fingers, only don’t think you can get away with this too many times,” Sam said when she had finished.

“So what else is there to do besides this?” Kerry affected a bored tone of voice and presented her fingers as he unrolled lengths of gauze.

“I don’t know. Play tiddledywinks. Engage in intelligent conversation. Reminisce.” He bent close. Her hair smelled fragrant and outdoorsy, redolent of balsam and pine. He wondered what she used to wash it up here at the cabin. Rainwater perhaps.

“Reminisce,” Kerry echoed, clearly taken aback. “Just what would you and I reminisce about?”

“Old times. Good times.”

“If we’d had any, that is. Ouch, you’re winding that too tightly.”

He released some of the pressure. “Reminisce—that’s what Doug and I used to do here at the cabin. We’d fry us a panful of salmon, kick back and examine our experiences in the clear light of reason.”

“You did?” Kerry sounded surprised.

“We sure did.”

“Did you ever talk about Sybilla?”

Sam cocked his head at her and tried not to laugh. “Nope. Never.”

“Well, I sure had to witness a lot of rib-poking and eye-rolling every time her name was mentioned.”

“Doug liked to rag you about her.” Sam remained noncommittal because of all things, Sybilla was one thing he didn’t want to talk about. His lips would remain sealed about that little caper.

Kerry watched him work, silent for a time. “If there’s one thing I hope to find out before the last trump sounds, it’s about Sybilla,” she said, seeming much too hopeful.

Sam finished the job quickly and more sloppily than he would have liked, mostly because he couldn’t keep his mind on what he was doing. “I’m not telling you about Sybilla,” he said firmly. “No way.”

Kerry looked sulky, annoyed. “Why not? It was a long time ago.”

“When Doug and I were stationed in Germany with the Air Force, to be exact. Too long ago to remotely interest anyone.”

“Me,” Kerry said stubbornly. “It interests me.”

“What interests me is that you’d better not get those fingers wet again tonight. Doctor’s orders.” It also interested him that when Kerry became petulant, her lips curved into the most mesmerizing pout. An eminently kissable pout. And right now the strain of pretending that he wasn’t becoming attracted to her was beginning to make him slightly crazy.

While he was making himself think about this, Kerry held her hand up and waggled her fingers experimentally, then winced with the effort.

“Time for another pill,” he said, falsely jolly. He handed her one, and she swallowed it.

“Want me to give the hot chocolate another try?” he asked.

“Might as well. If you’re not up to talking about Sybilla.”

“I already told you I’m not.” Wishing she’d shut up about Sybilla, Sam pulled out packets of hot-chocolate mix and filled the old coffeepot with water to heat on the stove; he ignored Kerry, who sat down and pulled her legs up so that she was sitting cross-legged on the old green pullout couch that had been in the cabin ever since he could remember. She stared into the growing flames and looked pensive.

“That hot chocolate’s going to taste pretty good,” she said as he poured it into two mugs and carried one back to her. She scooted over to make room for him, a movement that in anyone else Sam might have considered a sign of companionship. In this case, however, there was nowhere else to sit unless you could count a saggy old hassock and a hard backless wooden bench on the other side of the room. So sitting beside her really meant nothing. He tried to remind himself of that.

Beside him, Kerry blew on her hot chocolate to cool it; he drank his immediately. The fire crackled and spit, a whirl of sparks flitting up the stone chimney like so many manic fireflies.

“What are you going to do with that lumber you brought in?” she asked.

He had laid the two-by-four along one wall, one end of it resting on the colorful rag rug covering part of the floor. “That’s what I’ll need to fix the plane.”

She lowered her cup. “No way,” she said.

He laughed at the way she looked when she said it. She had a funny way of quirking her upper lip in disbelief; it was a trait that had once annoyed him.

“It’ll work. Here, let me show you,” he said. He reached over to the upended varnished keg that served as an end table and picked up the pencil and paper that were there. A dog-eared magazine served as a lapboard.

As Kerry leaned close, warming her hands around the hot mug, her injured finger and the one that supported it stuck out at an odd angle. Her knee brushed his accidentally. She jumped away like a scared rabbit, which was how he knew that she’d felt something, too. He wondered if what she felt remotely resembled the sudden shock of awareness that had whipped through him fast as lightning.

Sam wasn’t accustomed to such bodily phenomena in his daily life. He knew he was attractive to women and had even become smug about it, taking what they offered and refusing to give much of himself in return. But he’d certainly never, even at his most receptive, felt anything that remotely resembled a lightning strike.

And maybe he hadn’t really felt one now.

He made himself bend over the paper, deliberately keeping his distance. “This is the plane,” he said, sketching it roughly, “and this is the float and strut that are still there. Here’s the shorn-off strut. I can cut the lumber to the right size with a saw I found in the shed and bolt it onto the shaft. After that I’ll figure out a way to affix the float, and we’ll be out of here.”

“It sounds too simple,” she said. Her eyelashes cast long shadows on her cheeks.

“It isn’t hard. Of course, I’ll have to assess damage to the float and the rest of the plane.”

“And the river had better not freeze,” Kerry said. She had bundled her hair into a ribbon on the side of her head that faced away from him, exposing the curvy line of her jaw. She had ridiculously high cheekbones, the kind any model would die for. He had the urge to reach over and cup her cheek in his palm, to caress her smooth skin. It would feel like flower petals. Hibiscus blossoms, like they grew in Key West.

Get a grip, Harbeck, Sam told himself. He couldn’t imagine why Kerry was so attractive to him. True, he’d recently broken up with Marcia, his girlfriend for the past six months, so maybe he was feeling the excitement of being free. Usually the women found him, however. He didn’t have to go looking for them.

And he hadn’t been looking for Kerry.

Well, he might as well face it: He’d sought her out because he wanted her to sign those forms. And that was supposed to be the end of any association between them. So why was he thinking he might call her when they both got back to Anchorage?

He wouldn’t. She wouldn’t want to hear from him. Not after he revealed the secret that he and Doug had kept from her.

Agitated, he stood up and went to his parka, removing a United States Geological Service map from the inside pocket. His fingers brushed the waterproof pouch containing the papers he’d brought for Kerry to sign, and he hesitated. He had the reckless thought that maybe it would be better to get the whole thing over with now. Maybe she’d sign without making any problem tonight before he managed to rub her the wrong way again. Before—anything. Suddenly he realized what might happen here in this cabin while they were together. The thought brought a buzzing to his ears and dryness to his mouth.

He hadn’t heard her getting up from the couch.

“What are you doing?” she said, close behind him. She was peering over his shoulder.

“Getting out my charts. I thought you’d like to see how we stand,” he told her, turning the coat so she couldn’t see the pouch in the pocket. He felt her close behind him, so close that her breath was warm upon his cheek. He glanced around and saw that her lips were slightly parted, her eyes wide and curious. In the dim lamplight her pupils were large and luminous, and in that moment Sam thought he could have drowned in their depths.

By now his heart was pounding, and he told himself it was out of fear of discovery. He didn’t want her to catch him with those papers. But why? Hadn’t he come here for the express purpose of getting Kerry’s signature on the dotted line? Why didn’t he slap the papers down on the table and whip out his pen?

Why indeed? He knew the reason, and now it ate at him, stirred up his gut, filled him full of regrets.

Sam had serious misgivings about surprising Kerry with those papers after being around her and seeing how vulnerable she was, and how valiant. He didn’t think he could bear to witness the cold fury he knew his revelation would bring.

And her fury would only be part of it. It was sure to be followed by hurt and disappointment when she digested the fact that he, Sam Harbeck, had shamefully conspired with her late husband to betray her.

CHAPTER THREE

Shaken by the realization that he cared, truly cared, what Kerry Anderson thought of him, Sam needed a few moments to gather his thoughts and pull himself together. He brushed past Kerry and busied himself by tugging the hassock over to the couch and spreading the map open on it. Kerry followed, perching beside him on the couch and leaning forward, her shoulders hunched, her hair tumbling forward in a froth of golden curls.

“All right, Harbeck, I’m looking. You want to explain?” Her eyebrows lifted slightly as she spoke. They were like softly curved birds’ wings, those brows, lending thoughtful expression to a face that was already almost too perfect.

Sam cleared his throat. He wished he’d never come here. He wished he’d never agreed to the crazy scheme that he and Doug had cooked up in this very cabin. And at the moment he wished with all his heart that he’d never met Kerry.

But he had, and he might as well act as if nothing was wrong.

He drew a deep steadying breath. “Here’s Williwaw Glacier,” he told her, tracing its ribboning track on the chart with a blunt forefinger, “and here’s the bend in the Kilkit where I left the plane. This cabin is a couple of miles away from there. It won’t take long to walk to the plane if the weather’s good.”

“We can start early in the morning,” Kerry said, glancing over at him. Her eyes reflected the warm glow from the fireplace, and he distractedly noticed a pulse throbbing in the hollow of her neck. The collar of her shirt parted to reveal a dusky shadow—cleavage, and he was achingly aware that the shirt she was wearing molded itself to her curves.

He made himself look back at the map. “There’s no need for you to go with me,” he said. “I can handle the repairs myself.”

Kerry regarded him steadily. “I want to help. If it hadn’t been for me, you wouldn’t be in this situation.”

At that false pronouncement, guilt settled over Sam like a cold, wet blanket. Of course he hadn’t come here to check on her; the papers he wanted her to sign had been paramount in his mind. He knew he ought to steer her in another direction.

“So,” she went on, oblivious to his jumbled thoughts as she got up and headed for the kitchen, “since you’re here, the least I can do is get us both another cup of hot chocolate.” She moved closer and poured more hot chocolate from the kettle into his cup.

She went on talking over her shoulder as she returned the kettle to the kitchen. “After we get up in the morning, we’ll hike to the plane, and you’ll get started on the repairs. I’ll be your helper and your gofer.”

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Repairing the Cessna isn’t going to be a picnic, you know.”

“I believe you.” She settled herself on the small backless bench across the room and regarded him over the rim of her mug. “Two people can work faster than one. You know, Sam, I’m counting on you to get us out of here.”

Sam knew she was. That was the worst of it. He finished off his hot chocolate and tried to think past the knowledge that he was a cad and a jerk. Or was he? His intentions had been good at the start of everything. It wasn’t his fault the plan had gone awry.

Kerry, who couldn’t possibly be aware of what he was thinking, offered a tentative smile. “I’d better get to bed if we’re starting out early.”

It was a handy escape and he took it. “I’m going to turn in, too. It’s been a long day. Are the sheets for the couch still in that chest?” He indicated a dresser that had been shoved against the far wall.

Kerry shook her head. She went to the old wardrobe beside the ladder to the loft and opened the drawer in the bottom of it. “I had to move the sheets to make room for some of my clothes.” She tossed him two sheets, a top and a bottom one, and a heavy wool blanket. “There are pillows behind the couch,” she told him. She caught herself up short and cast a glance at her old pillow, still stuffed into the wood box.

“I guess I’ll need one of those pillows myself,” she said sheepishly.

“I’ll get it,” he said, but she reached the couch at the same time he did. He didn’t mean to, but he bumped into her.

Kerry let out a sharp cry, and Sam realized that he must have hit her finger.

“It’s all right,” she said, but her voice quavered.

His heart went out to her. It must be hard to be Kerry Anderson right now. She’d lost her husband, faced up to financial problems and set out in a bold new direction—all in the past year. He didn’t want to add any more problems to the ones she already had. Life for her must be difficult enough. And if he waited until they got out of here to unload those papers on her, the ride wouldn’t be as bumpy, and he wasn’t only thinking of their mode of travel.

“Good night, Sam,” Kerry said softly.

He was unable to take his eyes off the sway of her body as she climbed the narrow ladder. She turned to look at him over the low loft railing. “I’ll set the alarm for sunrise. That’ll give us all the daylight hours to work on the plane,” she said. Then she disappeared into the darkness beyond.

Sam pulled out the folding bed, made it up with the sheets and settled into it. Was he doing the right thing by not confronting Kerry with those papers right now? And what if he did and the resultant resentment made it impossible for them to cooperate well enough to ensure their mutual survival? In his anguish, he wished with all his heart that this was one of those black-and-white situations in which proper conduct was clear. There was nothing clear about any of this, least of all his conscience.

As he punched his pillow into submission, he heard Kerry rustling about upstairs and wondered if she was getting undressed. With one finger out of commission, sleeping in her clothes would be easier for her than trying to take everything off and shimmying into pajamas or a nightgown.

On the other hand, maybe she slept in the nude.

AFTER SHE WAS SNUG in her solitary bed, Kerry lay close under the rafters of the loft listening to Sam sleep. It hadn’t taken him long to drop off. He made noises while he slept, although it wasn’t snoring exactly. More like “snoofling,” which was something less than a snore but more than a deep breath. There probably wasn’t any such a word in the dictionary, but there should be.

I wonder if he ever snores, she thought sleepily. Doug used to snore, and even though other wives complained about their husbands’ snoring, Kerry had always found it reassuring to know that he was right there beside her. Maybe that came from his being absent so often, on one of his frequent overnight flights somewhere.

She couldn’t help thinking about Doug. Tonight Sam had brought out feelings that Kerry hadn’t known she could have anymore. She’d felt protected by Sam, and cared for, which was silly considering the fact that they didn’t like each other much.

But still… She’d been startled to discover a confusing and totally out-of-line sexual attraction working between them, and she couldn’t imagine where that came from. She was pregnant and hadn’t known she was capable of sexual feelings. Was this normal? Was it commonplace? With no man in her life at present, she’d expected her sexuality to have settled into a dormant stage, and the possibility of feeling desirable to any member of the male sex had seemed remote.

She wished now that she could discuss this with Emma, her friend in Anchorage, or her sister Charlene, but Charlene was single and wouldn’t know anything about having babies anyway. Charlene did, however, understand male-female relationships. Charlene could have a field day with what was going on between her and Sam, and certainly Charlene would know if what Sam was exhibiting was sincere interest in her as a human being, concern over his best friend’s widow’s welfare or something else entirely.

And if it was something else entirely, then why was it happening?

That was the last thought to escape Kerry’s consciousness before she fell soundly asleep.

WHEN SHE WOKE UP before the alarm the next morning, dragging open eyelids that felt stone-heavy with sleep, she felt sore all over. Her hip hurt where she’d bruised it the day before, and her shoulder was stiff. Her finger felt okay until she tried to move it, and then she realized all over again that she’d really and truly broken it.

Bedsprings creaked in the cabin below, and she thought, “Who’s that?” And then she remembered: Sam. Memories of the night before flooded her consciousness.

Sam. Sam Harbeck was here.

Her finger ached. Sam had really bumped it hard last night while they were trying to get the pillows from behind the couch. And he’d looked so contrite after it happened. For a moment she’d thought he might offer to kiss it and make it well.

Ha! No chance of that. He still didn’t like her, and she didn’t like him. The best they could hope for was a period of cooperation after which they would each go their separate ways.

“Yo! Kerry!”

She sprang bolt upright in bed. She hadn’t realized that Sam was already awake.

“I’m up,” she called into the hollow predawn darkness. “I’ll be down in a minute.” She reached for the saltines she kept nearby as an antidote to morning sickness.

“No rush, I’ve been awake for a while, waiting for the alarm to go off. I think I’ll light a lantern. It’s mighty dark down here.”

She heard him striking a match, which was followed by the flare of the lamp wick. She squinted at the clock and saw that it still had a half hour to go before the alarm. As she punched the alarm button down, she swung her feet over the side of the bed. The floor was cold, and as she groped around in the dark with her feet for her slippers, she heard the back door slam. No surprise; Sam was heading for the shed.

Downstairs, she gingerly started assembling the ingredients for breakfast, treating her sore finger with respect all the while. Sam had removed the slop bucket from below the sink, which she appreciated because she didn’t like walking into the woods to empty it. Also, he must have stoked the cook stove earlier, because the coals were hot. A cursory check through the window at the spruce wood neatly stacked in the breezeway showed enough to last another two weeks, or at least it would have lasted that long before the weather turned unseasonably cold.

Surely the river wouldn’t freeze in September—or would it? As the wife of a pilot and as a former flight attendant, she knew enough about bizarre weather patterns to be wary. While she folded blueberries into the flapjack batter, she wondered what was taking Sam so long. If he’d only gone to the shed, he should be back by this time. She wished he’d hurry. She wanted to use the shed herself. Pressure on her bladder from the growing baby made frequent trips to the facilities absolutely necessary.

She tossed strips of bacon in a skillet and wrinkled her nose at the greasy odor, which was unfortunately making her stomach feel unsteady. Still no Sam; where was he? Her stomach was churning. She kept swallowing, willing the nausea to stop, and finally she munched on a couple more saltines.

After she’d laid the cooked bacon to drain on a bed of folded paper towels, she didn’t think she could stand the bacon odor any longer so she wrapped herself in her shawl and ventured out into the breezeway. The morning felt cold and crisp, and the sun reflected off billowing drifts of snow deposited by the storm of the night before. When she knocked at the door of the shed, Sam didn’t answer. Then she saw his footprints leading off through the new snow toward the river. So she was free to use the shed, which she did with much relief.

Back in the cabin, she walked through to the front door and opened it to let fresh air blow some of the bacon odor out. A stand of birches stood between her and the river, and she saw a startled deer dart back into the forested slope at the foot of the mountain. She often saw wildlife at Silverthorne; it was one of the many things she loved about the place. But this morning, the only wildlife she wanted to see was Sam Harbeck. He had been gone too long, to her way of thinking.

SAM HAD LEFT to give Kerry privacy. And to give himself a chance to think things over. That pouch containing the incriminating papers was burning a hole in his pocket.

A rocky moraine, left long ago as Williwaw Glacier retreated, covered the bank of the river. The water, opaque with glacial till, was cold, but still moving freely. So maybe there was hope that the river wouldn’t freeze after all, despite the shelf of ice that now lined the bank. Yet he knew all too well that freeze-up could occur very quickly. First small wrinkles of scum ice would appear on the water’s surface, then more wrinkles, then the wrinkles would join and become hard. He’d seen it happen in a matter of hours.

He made himself stop thinking about it and stood for a moment, bowled over as always by the grandeur of the towering mountaintops and the craggy ice wall of the glacier. The glacier’s passage had crushed centuries’-old trees against the rocks and boulders along the glacier’s banks, pulverizing them as it ground relentlessly forward, and he marveled at how much the ice had moved since his last visit. Well, so had they all—Doug was gone, Kerry was a widow, and at the moment he was missing his friend very much.

“Halloo! Sam!” The sound of his name startled him out of his reverie.

He saw her through the trees, a small figure wearing bright colors.

Kerry.

What was going on between him and this woman? Her voice put him in mind of things he’d rather not contemplate. Or that he would like to contemplate. He was contemplating them even now, and why? His hormones had surged into overdrive from the first minute she’d hauled off and brained him with her pillow.

He felt a grin spreading over his face as he thought about how funny she’d looked, all spooked, but feisty. Kerry got her back up much too easily, but he had to admit she was an interesting woman. Most women weren’t, at least not to him. And his response to Kerry was totally unexpected. Unnecessary. And unforgivable. He had no business getting the hots for his best buddy’s wife.

Widow, he reminded himself, for all the good it did.

“Sam?”

“I’m on my way,” he said, turning around and plowing back up the bank toward the cabin.

Kerry waited outside for him, fully dressed in jeans and a lumberjack’s red plaid jacket, her hair in two braids tied with incongruous blue satin ribbons. She looked…different. Not like the Kerry who had been Doug’s disapproving wife, not like the wounded Kerry he’d found here yesterday.

“I made breakfast,” she said without preamble.

“Good,” he said, stepping past her into the cabin, forgetting to knock the snow off his boots. Too late he remembered, but by that time she was sweeping past him and asking if he’d like scrambled eggs along with the flapjacks and bacon reposing on a large platter near the stove.

“Not fresh eggs,” she hastened to add. “They’re powdered. I’ve learned to do a pretty good job with them, though.”

“Eggs would be good,” he said. “We need to bolster ourselves for a long walk and a lot of hard work.”

She didn’t say anything, but busied herself at the stove. He saw that she’d already brought in the slop bucket that he’d emptied earlier. It impressed him that she was so efficient, and he admired the way she moved around the kitchen, graceful but focused on her task. When the eggs were ready, she carried them over to the table, where he sat drinking coffee from a big cracked blue mug that had always been his when he stayed here.

“You make good coffee,” he said.

“Doug taught me how.”

“No way. Yours is much better. Doug’s coffee always tasted like runoff from a moose wallow.”

She looked like she wanted to smile. Instead she set the platter of eggs down.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” he asked sharply.

“I—well, I ate something earlier,” she said. She shoveled flapjacks from the platter to his plate—six of them.

He looked at the large stack of flapjacks in front of him. “Blueberry flapjacks,” he said, pleased. “My favorite.”

“It was a good summer for blueberries. The patch behind the lodge was full of them.”

She busied herself at the stove while he got down to the business of eating. “You should have eggs,” he said conversationally as he wolfed them down. He’d certainly eaten worse powdered eggs, and this surprised him. Kerry had never seemed like the kind of woman who would enjoy roughing it, much less know how to navigate her way around a kitchen.

“More bacon?” He looked up to see a strange and unfathomable expression cross Kerry’s face even as she held the bacon toward him.

“Thanks, this is a great breakfast,” he said as she all but dropped the platter on the table. Her face had a peculiar color to it, a greenish tinge.

“Are you—” he began, knowing in that moment that something was wrong. But he’d hardly uttered the words when she blurted, “Excuse me,” and darted quick as all get-out out the back door. She didn’t shut it after her, either. He heard the shed door slam and got up to push the back door shut, thinking in his annoyance that only a fool cheechako would fail to shut a door in this kind of cold without regard to how much cabin heat she was wasting.

The sounds coming from the shed were unmistakable. Kerry was upchucking with great fervor.

The realization totally unnerved Sam, and he stepped outside into the cold air. He didn’t know whether to make his presence outside the shed known or if he should speak to Kerry or what exactly his behavior should be. She might prefer to be private about this. He was sure that she’d be embarrassed to know he was listening, but she sounded really sick.

He settled on clearing his throat, although he doubted she could hear him.

But Kerry, mortified, did hear him, and that didn’t make this any easier. Morning sickness was the one thing about having a baby that she hated, burdened as she’d been with the symptom almost since the first week of her pregnancy. Now Sam Harbeck, the last person to whom she wanted to show any weakness, was shifting from one foot to the other only a door away while she reversed a breakfast of five saltines and a flapjack.

Unsteadily, she groped in her pocket for a tissue and wished for a giant swig of mouthwash. Sam, of course, was still cooling his heels in the breezeway.

When she was ready, she opened the door and tried for nonchalance, as if vomiting were no big deal. Truth was, she was embarrassed beyond talk. If forced to explain, she’d pray for instant annihilation from whatever source: an asteroid, being kidnapped by elves…

“Are you okay?” Sam asked. Anxious lines radiated out from his eyes, and a furrow of concern bisected his forehead.

“I—um, well, it’s just a slight upset,” she said. If she looked the way she usually looked after one of these episodes, her face was milk-white. Snow-white. Snow seemed like an inspired idea at the moment, so she reached down and grabbed a handful, which she then used to wipe her face. Sam stared at her, his mouth hanging open.

“You aren’t coming down with some kind of virus or something, are you?” he asked sharply.

“No, I don’t think so. Maybe I ate too much goulash last night.” It had been heavily seasoned, and he might buy this explanation.

“I ate goulash, too, and my stomach is fine,” he said, sounding perplexed.

“Then I probably shouldn’t have taken a pain pill on an empty stomach,” she said. She sidestepped past him, and he followed her into the house. The heavy odor of bacon dredged up an urge to throw up again, but there was nothing left in her stomach. For which, Kerry reminded herself with the steely resolve that had brought her this far, she might as well be thankful.

“Maybe you’d better take it easy,” he said. “Stick around the cabin while I take a look at the plane.”

“Don’t be silly. The two of us are more likely to get the plane airworthy than one of us, even if the one of us is you. And didn’t you tell me that time is of the essence? That we need to get out of here before the river freezes? I’m going with you, Sam. No argument.”

Sam knew better than to buck Kerry when she’d put her mind to something.

“Well then, you’d better put on a warm jacket and a good pair of boots. And I’ll clean up the kitchen. How’s your finger?”

“Sore.”

“Let me see.”

She held her hand toward him, and he inspected it carefully. “There’s not as much swelling as I expected. Come over here and I’ll change the binding.”

Kerry followed obediently. She remained quiet while he administered gauze and adhesive tape.

“There,” he said as he finished. “How does that feel?”

“Fine,” Kerry said, wiggling her fingers experimentally. He noticed that she winced, but she didn’t complain.

“Good. We’ll apply snow packs during the day, and that should help bring down the swelling even more.”

Kerry dug in the closet and pulled out a quilted down coat, bright red. When she put it on, she looked like a kid with those pigtails. It would be good if he could think of her as a kid, Sam thought. That would keep him from noticing the sensual lines of her lips.

“I threw a light lunch together,” she said. “Hot chocolate in a thermos. A can of macaroni and cheese. Also, dried fruit—apples and peaches.”

While she was talking, Sam arranged Doug’s tools in his pack. Kerry handed him the bag containing their lunch, and he stashed it on top. Then he slipped his arms through the straps of the pack and hoisted it onto his back. Kerry helped him adjust it.

When they left the cabin, he was surprised when Kerry locked the door and hid the key under a rock.

“Way up here in the wilderness, it’s usual for people to leave their cabins unlocked in case somebody in an emergency situation happens along and needs food and shelter. If the place is locked, it’s considered all right to break in. So who do you think you’re keeping out?” he said. He couldn’t help laughing at her.

She flushed, but took the jibe in stride. “It’s a habit, I guess. Old habits die hard, you know.”

He did know. The reason he wanted to keep needling her was that annoying Kerry had been his habit in the old days. And yet somehow it seemed inappropriate now.

The cabin was situated on a knoll overlooking a small bowl of a lake that had been named Kitty Kill Lake by Klondikers during the Alaska gold rush. The lake fed the Kilkit River, which emptied into the Gulf of Alaska. In the distance, the icy summits of the highest mountain range in North America glittered in the sun. Above, the sky was azure and unmarred by clouds. The path to the river was narrow and steep, but not long, and Kerry followed Sam to the trail that skirted its edge.

They found themselves wading through drifts of ankle-deep snow across a landscape blanketed in pristine white. The wide terminus of Williwaw Glacier rose a good five hundred feet over the lake, a huge frozen wall glimmering pale turquoise-blue in the sunshine. As they walked they heard a shudder and a groan from the direction of the glacier, and they whipped their heads around as a small jagged iceberg leaned forward and tumbled off its perpendicular face, sending up a frothy splash from the lake below. Kerry stopped to watch for a moment. Sam watched, too. He didn’t speak and neither did she, but he didn’t have to hear her say the words to know that she was spellbound by the beauty of their surroundings.

Without a word, they resumed walking. The snow made their journey hard going, and more than once Sam looked back at Kerry to see if she was having trouble keeping up. She had apparently decided to make her way a bit easier by placing her feet squarely in the hollows of his footsteps, concentrating with great determination on what she was doing. To make it easier for her, he shortened his stride.

By this time, the tip of Kerry’s nose had pinkened from the cold, and her braids with their blue ribbons bobbed against her shoulders with each step. Braids, he thought in amusement.

The next time he looked back, he saw that the tips of her ears were red. “You’d better pull the hood of the coat up,” he said gruffly.

“What difference could it possibly make to you whether I wear a hood or not?”

“I don’t want to have to thaw you out if you get frostbite.”

“Oh, I’m all kinds of fun, aren’t I, Harbeck?”

For some reason it irritated him for her to call him by his last name. “My name’s Sam,” he said.

“Mine’s Kerry. You never call me anything.”

He stopped and looked back. She had missed one of his footprints and was floundering toward a snowbank. She looked plain tuckered out.

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