Authors: Addison Fox
“I’m quite sure she was bowled over by your bush pilot prowess.”
His grin grew even broader. “How’d you guess?”
“I was young, horny and misguided once, myself. And if I had known you then, I’d have been all those things over you.”
“Don’t break my heart and tell me you aren’t all those things now.”
As they soared over the peaks of Denali, Grier simply smiled.
Once they were on the ground in Fairbanks, Mick waited for the deliveries to finish up. He had several sights lined up for the day and was itching to get out and show Grier around.
To her credit, she seemed to be enjoying herself in the meantime. She chatted with the locals over coffee, making fast friends with the woman who managed the delivery area. In his trips back and forth to gather up paperwork, he’d overheard coos over baby photos, discussion of the merits of white rice versus brown rice in managing weight loss and the relative value of buying a treadmill.
When he finally collected her an hour later, he didn’t miss the disappointed expression on Dana’s face.
“We’ll be at the Rooster later on for dinner. Bring your family and come join us.”
Dana brightened immediately and Mick knew he’d made the right choice.
Within minutes, they were in the SUV he’d rented, the heater going full blast. “That was nice of you to invite Dana and her family to dinner.”
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said.
“Of course not. She’s lovely.”
“I hear a ‘but’ in there.”
“But—” Grier paused. “It’s not what I expected.”
“What did you expect?” He turned to look at her when they came to a stop at the next light.
“Most men don’t invite families with small children on their dates.”
“Yeah, well, most women have no interest in having a date in the nether-reaches of Alaska. We’ll chalk it up to the two of us making a unique pair.”
She gifted him with a smile that lifted him up and scared him shitless, all at the same time. “I’ll give you that.”
He’d spent half the day thinking about the night before and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t shake the idea that something very significant had changed last night. And it wasn’t just the sex, although that had been singularly spectacular.
It was the fact she’d come to him.
First for his help to take this trip and then to his bed.
The two were intertwined and both said a lot about her increasing trust of him and what they had between them.
This trip was as much about Jonas as it was about the two of them. Mick might not be able to keep her in Alaska, but he’d make damn sure she’d remember it—and him—when she left.
And if the thought of her leaving burned like acid in his gut, he’d just have to keep ignoring it.
Her voice broke into his musings. “I’ve thought a lot about what you said the other day. About Jason.”
His veins ran cold at the man’s name, but he was intrigued all the same. “And?”
“And I think you’re right. I think he would have struggled with my friendship with Sloan after a while. I’d like to think I’d never have let it get to the point where I’d choose him and shut her out, but I’m also not naive enough not to think that it wouldn’t have been hard.”
“Now you won’t have to make that choice.”
“Thank God.”
The light turned and Mick refocused on the road. He’d had several thoughts about Wall Street over the past week and not a single one of them had been favorable. Before he knew it, the question that had pounded with the most insistence spilled forth. “Are you sorry you’re not still with him?”
“No.”
“That’s awfully definitive.”
“I feel awfully definitive.” She let out a small laugh. “No matter how screwed up my life has been the last several months, the one thing I’ve never regretted—not even once—was walking away.”
“That’s a bold statement.”
“Or a very sad statement on the man I thought I was going to spend my life with.”
“Life’s detours are sometimes the most interesting part of the trip.”
Her light laughter filled the car and Mick found himself caught up—in the moment and in her.
“You’re quite the philosopher.”
“Occupational hazard. I spend a lot of time in my head.”
“I never thought about that, but I can see it’s true. Yet another similarity between us.” Grier must have seen the question in his face, because she continued to explain.
“Spending hours with spreadsheets requires a lot of tuning out the world around you. I’m always amazed at the problems I work through in the back of my mind as I’m adding columns of numbers.”
“A sexy number cruncher,” he crooned. “Tell me more.”
“What do you know about if-then statements?”
Kate worked her way through a column of numbers and wanted to scream in frustration.
She’d been fighting with the insurance companies since her father’s death and another round of bills had come in over the last week. She’d tried diligently to keep a spreadsheet of all the activity, but the sheer volume of statements had made it hard to keep up.
And every time she thought she had a handle on all the expenses, another bill came in to mess up her orderly figures.
She reached for her coffee, calming slightly as the warm brew hit her stomach. At least she was out. She’d been crawling the walls at home and couldn’t get settled, so she’d walked over to the Indigo Café for a hot breakfast and some quiet time in different surroundings.
But even in new surroundings, she couldn’t quite shake her restlessness.
Every time she had a spare moment—and of
late she had quite a few—her thoughts reverted to Jason Shriver.
Their conversation the previous evening at the coffee shop had shaken her up and as she’d lain there in bed, restlessly tossing and turning, she couldn’t rid herself of the disappointment that the guy was an asshole.
She might have blocked Grier at every turn since her sister had arrived in Indigo, but she wasn’t a fool and she didn’t think Grier was one, either. A woman didn’t walk away from the guy she was going to marry unless something pretty awful had happened.
And if she had to guess, that something awful had everything to do with sex.
Which was why she had to stop these foolish thoughts about a man she had no business being interested in.
On a sigh, Kate turned back to her computer screen.
Who’d have thought it would come to this? Too much time on her hands and nothing to do. As her father had gone downhill, she’d taken a leave of absence from teaching. She’d gone from never having a free moment to having so much free time, she was swimming in it.
She’d even gone over to the school and asked to revoke her leave of absence, but they’d hired someone on for the year to fill the vacancy. Although the position was hers when her LOA was finished, she couldn’t go back now.
“You’re never happy.”
Her mother’s words floated through her mind. It had been Laurie Winston’s
favorite accusation to fling at Jonas and as she’d gotten older, Kate had heard her fair share of it as well.
As if reaching for something more were a bad thing.
She’d known her parents didn’t have the world’s most ideal marriage, but her father had assured her in his last years that he had loved her mother.
He just hadn’t known how to love her enough.
She hadn’t quite known what to do with that information, so she’d filed it away and figured she’d take it out someday when she was strong enough to think about it. Or when she’d hit a point in her life at which she could accept that her parents had been flawed humans, just like she was.
In the meantime, she left it to lie there. Not like there was all that much to be done about it.
These bills, on the other hand…
On a sigh, she ran a hand through her hair and reached for the one on top of the stack.
“That looks like about as much fun as a root canal.” She glanced up to see Jason sliding into the booth across from her.
“Good morning.”
“Morning. You have a spreadsheet open and a stack of paper in front of you. Anything I can help you with?”
The urge to close up her laptop and hide the bills was strong, but she resisted, an image of Trina primping and fluffing for every man that passed her by roaring through her mind’s eye.
She was who she was. No use in trying to hide it.
“Thanks for the offer, but I’ve got it.”
His hand snaked out before she could register his intention and he snatched the first bill off the stack. “Hospice?”
Kate snatched it back and laid her hand over the stack. “It’s from my father.”
His eyes narrowed as he stared at her. “Does Grier know about these?”
“She doesn’t need to know about these.”
“Why not? It’s her father, too.”
“She doesn’t need to know about them.” Kate heard the screechy tone of her voice, echoing in her ears, and modulated her tone. “This isn’t her problem.”
“Come on, Kate. Grier would help you if you asked. I know she would.”
“Do you really? Because you haven’t spent a lot of time around Grier the last few months.”
“I know her well enough to know she’d take responsibility for this. Would help you with them.”
Jason turned his cup over as their waitress approached them and Kate kept her mouth clamped firmly shut. She had no interest in spreading this issue around town. Her bills were her business.
And why the hell did she think she could come here and do this, anyway? She should have stayed home. Fuck crawling the walls, at least she’d be away from prying eyes.
“Did your father have insurance?” Jason asked as Debbie headed back toward the kitchen with his order.
“Yes, he had excellent insurance. The pipeline took care of their own.”
“So they’ll pay these?”
“Almost all of them. It’s just a matter of sorting them out and every time I think I’ve gotten through the last of them, more show up. Cancer’s a vicious bitch and she’s the gift that keeps on giving.”
Kate hated the tears that tightened her throat, so she reached for her water glass and tried to swallow around them.
“I’m sorry.”
The tears hardened into a knot in her stomach and before she could stop them, words were spilling forth. “Funny. Everyone loves to use that word. That they’re sorry. Sorry for what? You didn’t do anything.”
His warm brown eyes widened in surprise and Kate knew she should pull back—knew this man didn’t deserve to be the recipient of…
this
—but she didn’t know how to stop it.
Didn’t know how to hold back the grief now that she had an outlet.
“Kate—”
“Everyone’s sorry. Everyone feels bad. But no one really wants to hear about all this.” She slapped the stack of bills under her hand. “And then they all look at me like I’m the bitch of the universe because I’ve pushed back on Grier’s claims.”
If he missed the connection between a misguided offer of sympathy and what it had to do with her attitude toward her sister, he didn’t show it. “I’m sure no one looks at you like that.”
A harsh, brittle laugh wheezed through her lips. “You haven’t been here long enough. Ask around.”
Before he could answer, she barreled right on
through. “Grier waltzes in and tries to collect her inheritance. She was never here. Hell, I didn’t even know I had a sister until the damn will got read. How fair is that?”
“It’s not.”
“So I’m supposed to sit back and act like it’s okay?”
Jason sat there in silence and Kate wondered why he hadn’t run from the diner with his hair on fire.
After a few long, tense moments, he reached forward and laid a hand over hers. Immediately, warmth flowed over her and ran up her arm, and the taut knot of rage that had gripped her with tight claws loosened a bit.
Abstractedly, she allowed her gaze to run over his fingers. Long, with neatly sculpted nails at the end, they were surprisingly strong as they lay over hers.
“You asked me something last night.”
She lifted her gaze to his as the fire and the fury passed completely, leaving as quickly as they came. “What was that?”
“You asked me if I was a stand-up guy.”
She nodded, their conversation at the Jitters still vivid in her mind.
“I wasn’t a stand-up guy. I’ve always thought I was, but I’m starting to wonder if that’s a lie I’ve told myself. Regardless”—he waved his other hand—“I wasn’t a stand-up guy to Grier. I made an incredibly poor choice and I hurt her. And she didn’t deserve it.”
His grip tightened. “And you don’t deserve what’s happened to you. You didn’t deserve to lose your father. And you deserved to know you had a sister, especially
since your father had more than enough time to tell you about her if these bills are any indication. So yeah. You have a right to be mad and angry and so pissed off you can’t see straight.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly as she continued to stare at their joined hands. “You’re the first person who’s agreed with me.”
He lifted her hand and turned it over so that their palms pressed together. “You’re welcome. Of course, that doesn’t mean you still don’t need to do the right thing.”
She met his gaze and saw the compassion in those rich, mocha depths. In that instant, she started to wonder if maybe Jason Shriver was truly sorry for what he’d done.
And if maybe he deserved a second chance.
“C
an I peek, please?” Grier felt the SUV come to a stop, but she still had her hands over her eyes.
“Keep ’em covered or it won’t have the same impact.” Mick’s voice rolled over her and Grier noticed how he sounded even sexier than usual with her eyes closed.
How was that even possible?
“We’re stopped. Why can’t I look?”
“God, woman, you are impatient.” He let out a long-suffering sigh before tapping her shoulder. “Okay. You can look now.”
Her eyes widened on the sight before her as she looked through the front window of the SUV. “No way.”
“Yep.”
“Reindeer?” A giggle floated past her lips as she stared at the huge animals walking around behind a high fence. “Those are really reindeer?”
“They are.”