Authors: Addison Fox
Because it couldn’t be about Roman.
He’d just been here, for God’s sake. There was no way the league would give him enough time off twice during the season. And even when they got the occasional stretch of days off, he never had enough time to get all the way up to Alaska for a visit.
Susan’s voice broke into her thoughts as she danced into the lobby. “You’ll never believe what happened!”
“You sound excited. Did Connor have a good game?”
“It’s even better news.”
She knew the answer before the words even left Susan’s lips.
“Roman’s coming. Twice in one season, do you believe it?”
Susan’s chatter ensured she wasn’t really required to give an answer, so Avery moved on to the next table.
“He’s coming up because one of the big sports channels is doing a special on him and the amazing season he’s having. They want to get a few live shots of him at home, so they’re flying him up here on a private jet.”
Avery didn’t have the heart to stomp on Susan’s happiness, and it certainly wasn’t her place to tell her employer she wished her son would just stay away.
But seriously?
She and Roman got along just fine with an entire
continent between them. And on the occasions when he was home, she managed to find ways to avoid him for the duration. Her alcoholic mother had actually been a blessing in that sense—one of the rare occasions when she was—but that excuse was now gone and she hadn’t yet cooked up a new one.
“Avery, did you hear me? They’re going to film right here. And they want to interview us.”
“You. I’m sure they want to interview you. I’m just the hired help.”
“You’re so much more than that and you know it.”
Avery swallowed at the lump that always rose up in her throat every time Susan pulled the mother routine on her, and she tried for a smile instead. The truth was, Susan Forsyth was the closest thing she’d ever had to warm and nurturing, and she hated to disappoint her.
Even if a small part of her twisted up in grief and pain at the fact that she’d had to turn to someone else to find the warmth her own mother was incapable of giving.
The fact that the source of that warmth was her ex’s mother, well…life was a freaking circus, even on good days.
And since the woman had a blind spot the size of the North Slope when it came her son and her hotel manager, Avery walked a tightrope when it came to the subject of Roman.
The two of them weren’t teenagers any longer—and hadn’t been for a very long time. Whatever bright, shiny happily-ever-after Susan still envisioned for the two of them wasn’t possible any longer.
But no matter how many ways she tried to explain that, Susan would not be convinced.
“What’s going on?” Sloan stood on the other side of the door, her flannel PJs peeking out of the bottom of her padded coat. “I came as fast as I could.”
“Is Walker downstairs?”
“Yeah. I know it’s just a walk across the square, but he insisted.”
“You can tell him to come up.”
“He’s fine”—Sloan waved a hand—“and before you push it, he understands. Just tell me what’s going on.”
“Here.” Grier thrust the first letter she’d read from her mother into Sloan’s hands. “Read it.”
She watched the expressions flit across Sloan’s face—curiosity, frustration and finally, anger—and realized the order matched her own processing of the document’s contents.
“Grier, I’m sorry. I know I overstep all too often when it comes to your mom, but that is beyond cold. Heartless.”
“I know.”
Sloan shrugged out of her coat and threw it onto one of the room’s chairs before hopping on the bed. “Did you read the rest?”
“Yeah. The next one, written about a month later, is clearly in reaction to his writing back to her. In it she tells him she’s marrying my stepfather.”
“What about the others?”
“They’re all before she left Alaska.”
“Oh.”
At Sloan’s probing gaze, Grier nodded. “They’re love letters.”
“Really sexy love letters?”
“Passionate and flowery, yet nothing too specific on the creepy, eww, this-is-my-parents front. But—”
“But what?”
“But it feels like a violation somehow. To think that my aunt read them and now I’m reading them. It feels intrusive.”
“Maybe your aunt didn’t read them.”
Grier shrugged. “True. But it still feels weird that I have. I mean, it sounded like she really loved him. And there was this passion in them. If I didn’t know my mother’s handwriting so well, I’d say they were written by someone else.”
“Maybe she was someone else then. Someone who was in love.”
“So what happened?” Grier picked up the letter where Sloan had laid it on the desk. “What happened between love and passion and a baby and this?”
“You’ll have to ask her.”
“She refuses to talk about it.”
Sloan pointed to the pile on the bed. “It looks like you finally have the proof you need to make her talk. Up to now, you’ve given her the benefit of the doubt of her privacy. But this? You’re entitled to know why your mother refused to let Jonas see you.”
Of all the things Mick had expected after a restless, sleepless night, none of them involved Grier
Thompson standing over his table at six o’clock the following morning in the middle of the Indigo Café.
“I need to go to Barrow.”
“Well, good morning to you, too.”
She impatiently dragged off her padded coat and threw it across the bench seat that made up her side of the booth. Before dropping into her seat, she leaned forward and pressed a hard kiss to his mouth. “Please.”
“You don’t play fair.” He reached for his coffee, his hungry gaze devouring her small form as she slid into the booth, his lips buzzing from that kiss.
“I’m not trying to play fair. I need to go to Barrow.”
“Why do you want to go to the North Slope?”
“Would you accept sightseeing as an answer?”
He shot her a dark gaze as he sipped his coffee. After swallowing it down, he added, “No.”
“I need to go see a man who knew my father.”
Mick sat up straighter in his seat, the caffeine and the reality of what she wanted to do waking him up. “Grier. Where did this come from?”
“My aunt. My father’s sister.”
“What does Maeve Price have to do with a trip up to the North Slope?”
As Grier began to tell him about a package and old letters and Maeve’s move behind Kate’s back, Mick could only hold up his cup to gesture to their waitress for more coffee.
And fifteen minutes later as their waitress set down matched stacks of pancakes before each of them, Mick still couldn’t quite process it all.
“But you have all you need. The letters definitively prove you’re Jonas’s daughter and that he wanted you as part of his life. Kate has no claim otherwise and there’s nothing further she can use to waylay the processing of the will. Give them to Walker. He can have them before the court today and you’ll be on your way. The injunction will be lifted. You and Kate can split the contents of the will and you’re off to the races.”
And off to New York
. The morose thought hit him as he spread the butter across the top of his breakfast, pulling him up short.
She’d gotten what she’d come here for and she’d be leaving.
“But I want to meet this Brett. Talk to him about my father. He knew him, Mick. Really knew him.”
“We all knew him, Grier. Just ask any of us.”
“None of you knew him when he knew my mother. Brett Crane does.”
He saw the need in her eyes—would have been blind to have missed it. “Do you have any idea what it’s like up there in January?”
“No sunlight.”
“Pretty much.”
“And it’s inside the Arctic Circle, so it’ll be even colder than Indigo, if that’s even possible. Can you fly there?”
Mick tamped down on the indignity that reared up at her question. “Yes, I can fly there.”
“Have you flown there?”
He grinned at that. “Darlin’. There’s nowhere in Alaska I haven’t flown.”
“Don’t get cocky,” she muttered as she dug into her pancakes like a lumberjack.
Damn, but she made him smile. And got his insides so fucking twisted, he didn’t know if he was coming or going.
Of course he’d take her up to Barrow. He’d be damned if he’d let anyone else do it and the determination in her eye wasn’t to be taken lightly.
“How do you eat like that?”
She looked up from the forkful of fluffy pancake, drenched in syrup. “Why does everyone ask me that?”
“Maybe because you’ve got an ass that makes the angels weep and the rest of you is even finer than that.”
“Um, thank you?”
Despite the sass, he didn’t miss the lopsided grin she fought to hide as she took her bite.
Mick reached across the table and snatched a piece of her bacon.
On a huff, she added, “I do work out.”
“How often?”
“Every day. I just don’t make a big deal out of it. I hate those people who run around talking about how healthy they are.”
“The wheat germ people.”
She snapped her fingers. “That’s a good name for them. What’s the point of working out if you can’t eat stuff like this?”
“I couldn’t agree more.” He snatched one more piece of bacon and settled back. “So, when do you want to leave?”
G
rier flipped through the fourth-quarter folder she’d created for Chooch and Hooch and sighed. How much dog food did these people buy? As she thought about their brood of huskies, she had to acknowledge they required quite a lot. Add in vet bills and you had one very expensive hobby.
“You look like you’ve gotten through most of that,” Chooch interrupted from the doorway of the conference room.
Grier glanced up and nodded, but she didn’t say anything as she finished tallying up her last stack. She’d dragged an adding machine in earlier from the hotel’s office and the monumental task of sorting Chooch and Hooch’s receipts had gone a lot faster.
The satisfying hum of the adding machine clicked as she finished tallying up the receipts, the gentle whirl of printed paper falling out the back. She missed this, Grier acknowledged to herself as the last of the paper spooled off the machine. More than she had realized.
“You look like you’ve gotten through nearly all of them.”
“These pet receipts were the last of it. I’ll get
them input later and once you’ve got your bank statements, we’ll be ready to get you and Hooch filed.”
“Damn, but you were quick.”
“I enjoy it and I’m going out of town for a few days.”
Chooch grabbed a seat, the lure of being in the know clearly catching her fancy. “Where are you going? Or more to the point, who are you going with?”
“Mick’s taking me up to Fairbanks for a few days.”
Although she hated to lie, she and Mick had agreed that the fewer people who knew what they were doing, the better. She’d done her level best to keep her situation with her inheritance from her father private and she’d be damned if she’d start blabbing all over town any new details.
Besides, they technically
were
going to Fairbanks. Mick had several runs he could make as part of the trip, so they’d spend tomorrow night there, refueling the plane and staying overnight before heading to Barrow the next day.
“Sounds like a romantic getaway to me.”
“I’m doing some sightseeing.”
“And what glorious sights they are,” Chooch said on a reverent whisper.
“Chooch!” Grier threw a wadded-up receipt at the woman. “What is it with this entire town? Everyone wants Mick and me to have sex.”
“Lots of it, too. The women of this town are living vicariously through you, my dear. Please don’t take away our enjoyment.”
Grier snorted at that. “Oh come on. Surely the man’s had girlfriends before. I can’t be the first woman he’s
ever dated.” As she said the words—and put a definition on them—a heavy flutter hit her stomach.
Dating? Girlfriends? Was she really willing to go there?
She wasn’t so resistant to think they didn’t have a personal relationship, but definitions like those were serious.
“That man’s more private than you are. Other than how gaga he is over you, none of us has ever seen him all that fussed up about a woman.”
“Surely he’s dated.”
“Of course. There have been rumors aplenty—even a sighting or two over the years—but Mick O’Shaughnessy has steered clear of the women of this town since the ninth grade when he dated Jenny Stewart.” Chooch sniffed. “It’d be insulting if he weren’t so damn lovable.”
Grier struggled with the description of Mick’s love life versus the virile, vibrant man she’d come to know. Clearly he was discreetly enjoying his time outside the prying eyes of Indigo.
“Now”—with a fingernail Grier tapped one of the many folders she’d sorted the receipts into—“these are all in order and ready to file away. I want you to take these home and keep them in a safe place in case I need to see them again before we file your return. And you really should keep them anyway in the event of an audit.”
“Do you want a puppy?”
Grier stopped in her tracks where she’d organized the file folders together into a neat pile. “I’m sorry?”
“Well, you talked about the dog receipts. And we’re
about to have a new litter. And Mick’s got his sights set on you. A puppy’s the next step.”
A puppy was
so
not the next step, but Grier wasn’t sure she could get those words out past the stranglehold of panic that had seized her.
“Um, I’m sorry, but I’m going to need to pass on the puppy.” As Chooch’s face fell, she quickly rushed on. “I’m sure it’ll be a beautiful litter, but a puppy’s not going to do very well in a Manhattan apartment.”
Chooch’s eyes narrowed and Grier wished she could bite back the words. “You’re going back?”
“Well, yes. I haven’t moved to Indigo permanently.”
“But what about Mick?”
“That’s for him and me to decide.”
The older woman stood and Grier didn’t have to wonder where the sudden frost came from. Chooch gathered up her folders and marched for the door. As she crossed over the threshold, she hollered back over her shoulder, “Enjoy the trip.”