The woman frowned and cocked her head. “Do I know you?”
The others in the group quieted, and one of the men said, “Yeah, you do look familiar. Are you new here? I’ve never seen anyone but old Briney behind the bar.”
“Yes, I’m brand new. Just blew into town on these storm clouds,” she said with a wink. The man had sandy brown hair and friendly gray eyes. He smiled. “So you’re the one who brought this weather into town, huh?”
Farrah chuckled. “Yes, it was all me. Definitely not the run of the mill October weather of Alaska.”
“Hey, is that Aanon?” a blond-haired woman asked, pointing out Briney’s front window.
Farrah’s stomach dipped to somewhere under her feet.
Please don’t come in, please don’t come in
. The blonde jogged to the door and called to Aanon, who was busy loading supplies from the general store into the back of his truck.
His face was such a comedic study in disappointment, Farrah almost laughed. He didn’t want to be in here anymore than she’d wanted to spend two hours in the cab of his Chevy. Maybe he wouldn’t come in after all. She swung her attention back to the friendly man, Ben, he said his name was.
“Nah, this weather will thaw out at least once more before winter hits for good,” he said. “It’s too early for the snow to hold straight through. It sure put a stop to preparing for winter, though.”
She leaned comfortably on her elbows and clasped her hands. “Is that why you guys are out in the weather? Work stopped?”
“Yes, ma’am. No one is able to do much when the weather comes in fast like this. We’ll just wait it out and get back to work when it passes.”
“Can I get a cranberry vodka?” the dark haired girl at the end asked.
“Sure thing. What about you?” she asked the blonde who was watching Aanon like a predator.
“Same,” she said.
Two cranberry vodkas, and three beers later, Aanon did, in fact, saunter in through the front door. Drat.
She plastered on a smile as he took a seat by the guys, but it wasn’t necessary. He didn’t notice her among all of the greetings for his friends. They acted like they hadn’t seen him in a while, but she was at a loss at how they could miss him. If he lived here, he was one of a couple hundred. They might as well live in a commune together.
“Hey, can we get another beer for my buddy here?” Ben asked.
“Yep. You sure you don’t want shots? It seems like you guys haven’t seen each other in a while.” Upselling never hurt her tips.
“Ew lady, you’re dangerous. I appreciate that. Yeah, shots for all of us. You can put all this on my ticket, okay?”
Oh, she loved when tickets weren’t split up. Made life so much easier. Ben had earned himself one sincere smile from her before she started to work on filling shot glasses. Aanon sat with his back to the bar, but when she placed the shots in front of Ben to hand out, he turned a startled look on her.
“Have a shot with us,” Ben said to her. “I’ll buy.”
She laughed and opened her mouth to decline, but Aanon spoke for her. “She can’t. What are you doing here?”
The bar went eerily quiet.
“Do you know her?” the blond-haired woman asked.
“Um, I work here,” Farrah answered.
“Since when?” he asked.
“To Hot New Bartender!” Ben said, lifting his miniature glass high.
Aanon growled, downed his whiskey with everyone else, and turned an impatient glare on her.
“Since just now,” she answered. “Briney hired me a few minutes ago.”
“Geez, dude,” Ben said, gripping Aanon’s shoulder playfully. “Tone it down, will you? You’re going to scare Hot New Bartender off.”
“Don’t call her that,” Aanon murmured, never taking his eyes from her.
Okay, this was leading nowhere good, and she needed this job. She shimmied down the counter to check on a couple of patrons nursing scotches on the rocks, changed the television channel for them, and then gave the bar a thorough cleaning with a new rag while the others talked and laughed.
Ben waved her back and ordered another round. They were going to get rowdy all right. “So,” he asked while she was preparing their drinks. “Where are you staying? I haven’t seen you around here before.”
“Nowhere at the moment. In fact, if any of you know of any cheap rentals, I’d appreciate the information. I don’t really know my way around here yet.”
“Have you tried Ava yet?” one of the other guys asked.
Rinsing out a glass, she asked, “Is she in charge of real estate for The Landing?”
“Yep.”
“Then yes, I tried her earlier. All too rich for my blood. I’m a simple girl with simple tastes. Fancy doesn’t suit me.”
“Well, you’re in luck,” Ben said with a slight slur to his words. “Aanon here has been looking for a renter for the broad side of a year.”
The Aanon he spoke of was shaking his head vigorously back and forth trying to shut his friend up, and one glance down the bar told her the blond-haired woman was shooting poisoned arrows at her through narrowed eyes.
“Uh, no that’s okay. I’m sure I’m not the type of renter he’s looking for.” God, could this get any more awkward?
“Good, that’s settled,” Aanon said, snatching a pair of the newly poured shots and passing them down to the girls.
Ben frowned. “Well, why not? She’s looking for a place. You’re looking for a renter. Bing bang boom. Thank you, Ben.”
With a very put upon sigh, Aanon rocked his head back until the taut muscles in his neck stretched. “Look,” he said, leveling her with a steady glare. “I have a place fixed up for a ranch hand. Someone who will help me work my place and prepare for the winters here. Someone to watch and feed my animals when I’m away on business during the week. It’s set up as a cattleman’s cabin. It’s not a good place for a pregnant lady with no shot in hell at offering me any help at all.”
Mortification burned up her neck like a brush fire and landed in her cheeks. She hadn’t been the one to ask for an explanation. His buddy Ben had done that, and Aanon had just ousted her secret to the town in the brand new place she worked. Her stomach clenched at the betrayal. Why would he do that?
One look at her face and his dropped, as if he’d just figured out what he’d done.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Ben. “Hot New Bartender, you’re with child?”
Yeck. It sounded weird when he worded it like that.
“How do you know she’s knocked up?” the blond-haired girl asked Aanon. “What’s going on?”
Aanon threw down a ten and walked out of the bar.
“What did you do to him?” the blond-haired girl asked, as if Farrah had forced him to impregnate her or something.
“I didn’t do anything to him. I hitched a ride from him this afternoon. The baby isn’t his.” The need to clarify burned her up with white-hot anger. Why did it feel like every word that was coming from her mouth was a tiny bomb?
With bellies full of libations and mouths full of gossip, the group trickled out the front door after that. Ben was sweet and tipped well, and he handed her his number before he left. “If you can’t find a place to stay tonight, call me,” he said.
She thanked him and waved as he skirted the door after his friends. Crumpling the paper and shoving it into the side pocket of her suitcase, she threw herself into work. If there weren’t people to serve, she restocked shelves and got to know the aisles of fishing tackle in the back. She figured out the inventory list, and when Briney came back to take over, she asked him to show her how to close the register. When all was said and done, she made twenty three dollars in two hours of work. Not too shabby for a mid-afternoon snow shift. Before donning her winter clothes again, she made herself a sandwich and chips in the tiny kitchen off the back and paid Briney for them on the way out.
“See you Thursday if the weather clears up,” he called with a wave.
Stepping out onto the porch with a sense of accomplishment, she inhaled the clean Alaskan breeze. There really was nothing like mountain air. She’d forgotten its smell and allure over the years immersed in city smog.
Dropping her gaze to the blanketing snow, she sighed. The job part was taken care of, but now she needed a place to stay the night.
Her fault
, Aanon thought irritably as he rounded another back road in his Chevy. If she hadn’t shown up at that damned gas station all cute and needy, and then pregnant and even more needy, he’d be sitting in his house next to the wood burning stove reading the sports page of last week’s newspaper. Instead, he was driving around the woods in whiteout conditions because his stupid conscience would never let him sleep.
She played on the weakest parts of him.
Like an idiot, he’d called everywhere to find a room to rent for the night, and none of them had space. And not one of them had admitted Farrah into their care. So now he was headed back into town to make sure she wasn’t frozen on the side of the road somewhere. He was doing it for the baby. That’s all. Not for the woman or her smart mouth or sexy lips. Just the baby.
Visibility was nearly zero as snow pelted his truck. The headlights were only able to illuminate a few feet in front of him, and if he didn’t know this road like the back of his own eyelids, he’d be in serious trouble. Hell, all it took was one wayward moose in the road, and he was toast.
Her fault.
It didn’t take long to find her. An old lantern hung from the tattered shelter they used as a nativity scene during the holidays, and when he turned the truck toward it, Farrah paced inside under the dilapidated roof.
For some reason, her inability to find a warm place for the night pissed him off. She had a kid to think about now. He didn’t know what kind of life she had led wherever she’d come from, but if she was some delinquent, homeless girl with no ambitions in life and no way to take care of a child, she should’ve been more careful with her sex life.
His fury lasted exactly as long as it took to slam his door and roar her name. And then he heard it. The soft sigh of sobbing over the whipping wind. Picking his way carefully over the ice and rocks that surrounded the old shelter, he pulled open the creaking gate and jogged over to where she had slumped into the musty hay. On her knees, she had huddled into herself and wept. The sound wasn’t of a woman who’d gotten herself in a bad spot. It was the sound of heartbreak.
“Hey,” he said softly. The vinyl of his gloves made a zipping sound as he rubbed the back of her thick winter jacket. “Are you okay?”
Her eyes were startled for a moment before recognition lit them like a flame. She leaned into him, and before he could help himself, he’d wrapped his arms around her.
“I couldn’t find a single room open.” She hiccupped. “It kept getting later and later and I was begging anyone who would listen, but they just didn’t have room, and I didn’t know what else to do. I have money. I’m not a bad person, Aanon. I have money to pay but nobody had room for me.”
Her plea for his opinion tore at him, and he swallowed hard so his voice wouldn’t crack when he spoke. “You can’t stay out here. Come on.”
He hefted her plum-colored suitcase and led the way to the truck. When she was tucked inside, shivering, he stripped off his jacket and spread it over her legs before blasting the heat.
“I’ll pay you for the night, Aanon.”
The way she said his name pulled something open inside of him that he’d shut up a long time ago.
“I brought money with me from New York. I just never thought I’d have such trouble finding a place.”
“What’s that in your hand?” The paper she clutched ruffled in front of the heater.
“Ben’s number. He said to call him if I couldn’t find a room. I was working up the nerve to go find a payphone.”
Ben. He was a great guy, so why did his number in Farrah’s gloved hand make him want to set the damned thing on fire?
Rubbing a hand over the stubble of his jaw, he growled, “Look, here’s how it’s going to be. This place I have fixed up to rent… It was meant to be a cattleman’s cabin, like I told you. I’m gone most of the week on business out of town, but I have a small homestead to run, and the animals and plants need to be taken care of. I’ve been paying my neighbor’s kid to take care of it during the week for me, but I really need someone there twenty four hours a day. It isn’t a glamorous life, Farrah. It’s dirty, and you’ll get splinters and blisters, and your muscles will be sore, and you’ll be expected to do stuff you haven’t done before. If you can’t help me work, I’ll have to charge you the standard rental price for a place that size so I can afford to continue paying my neighbor to help. I’m in a tight spot for cash.” He glanced over at her to make sure she really got what he was saying. “You weren’t what I expected in a renter, but if you can help around the place, you just have to come up with a couple hundred dollars a month to stay there.”
“I’ll work,” she whispered through chattering teeth.
“I don’t expect you to do anything too hard because I know it isn’t safe for you in your current situation. I just need help where you can give it. I’m stretched too thin.” Swallowing his pride tasted bitter. “I need help.”
“Me, too,” she admitted with a blue-tinged smile. “I’ll do what I can. You won’t have to worry about your place when you go out of town.”
“One last thing. This baby’s father. Am I going to have to worry about him coming around and stirring up trouble? If I do, that’s fine, but I want a heads up.”
“No. He doesn’t know I’m pregnant.”
Leaning forward and squinting through the blizzard, he said, “Well that doesn’t seem entirely fair to him.”
“Don’t judge. He doesn’t deserve you championing him.”
“Fine. It’s none of my business, anyway. Just help me around the place and get your rent to me on time, and that’s all I care about.”
He didn’t like the words that came from his mouth, but they were necessary. Their relationship had to be a working one. A business relationship. He needed her help to get him through the winter, and now, she needed his help for the same reason. But that’s where it stopped. He had a complicated enough relationship to juggle, and another woman in the mix just wouldn’t work out well for anyone involved.
****
Farrah couldn’t get a feel for Aanon’s place when it was covered in three feet of snow. Alder and spruce dotted the land, and in front of a cozy looking cabin stood metal machinery she hadn’t a guess at. If she’d been more liked in high school, she’d have known exactly what Aanon’s home looked like, even with the snow blanket. All of the best parties had been held here, well out of the reach of the local sheriff and his deputy. Likely, every classmate but her had been up here at some point or another during their school days. Farrah used to imagine what it would be like up here, tucked away in the wilderness, drinking with her classmates and without a care in the world.
And now she would be living here.
Of all the places on earth, never would she have thought to call Aanon’s home her own.
Handing back his jacket, she stretched her frozen toes to the ends of her snow boots and pushed open the passenger door. He didn’t give her a tour of the big house. Instead, he led her around back through a snow bank and opened the door to a small house that looked suspiciously like one of the metal storage containers that carried goods on giant ocean cargo ships.
“We’re slaves to wood burning stoves this far out,” Aanon said as he lit three old fashioned oil lanterns and hung two on pegs.
In the lamplight, she could see the place was actually quite well put together. A small kitchen sat to the right and delved directly into the living area, which boasted one futon and a small bookshelf. A pair of deer antlers hung from a simple mount on the back wall, and the bathroom was small but functional. The bedroom held a cot with a thin mattress and thick sleeping blankets. A single pillow sat atop the piles, and a small chest of drawers stood stoically against the wall by the bed.
The lamp he set on a small table. With a sweep of his hand, he said, “The bedroom and bathroom are over there. There isn’t a fridge but the big house has a root cellar that I’ll show you when the snow clears up. There’s a deep freeze up at the big house, too, that I’m stocking for winter. If you need meat, let me know, and I’ll get you what you want. Baths are a little old fashioned, but again, I hadn’t set this up for a woman. The tub is by the stove. You’ll have to heat your water for it.” He stood with his hands on his hips, surveying the tiny candlelit castle. “You know how to light a fire?”
“I used to. I’m sure it’ll come back to me.”
“Let me show you the right way to do it so you don’t burn this place to the ground.”
Outside, on a small side porch, cords of different-sized wood had been chopped and neatly stacked. He grabbed small and big logs and hauled them to the stove that stood against the kitchen wall. After a newspaper was shredded and arranged in the bottom of the ash pile, he shoved the smaller pieces of wood in first and lit a match against the old newsprint. When the fire was large enough, he added the bigger logs. “You’ll have to get up and stoke the fire during the night if you don’t want to wake up frozen to your cot.”
“Okay, I will.” She couldn’t breathe, and she had the distinct feeling it was Aanon’s overwhelming ability to fill small spaces with his strength of personality and character that made the walls seem to close in.
“Right. Well, goodnight.” Hesitating, his eyebrows drew down beneath his cable knit winter hat before he spun and shut the door behind him.
Farrah drew a gust of air into her lungs and steadied her breathing. She turned and pressed against the window. It didn’t have blinds or curtains, and she could barely make out Aanon’s back as he moved toward the big house. When he disappeared into the blizzard, she eased her suitcase onto the bed, grateful to not have to heft it around anymore, and unpacked it slowly. There wasn’t much, and it didn’t take long, but there was a sense of accomplishment when everything was in its place. This was her new home, and no matter what, she was going to have to make it work.
The house was small and the wood burning stove heated it up quickly. After she’d hauled in enough wood to last the night and set it by the front door where it would stay dry, she locked up and heated water on the stove. She’d been traveling for a while and a bath in her own place sounded heavenly. Modesty would’ve hindered her if she could actually see the big house through the exposed windows, but there was no way Aanon could see into her place from his blizzard-encompassed log home. It took a long time, and the giant pot was heavy when filled, but as soon as there was enough to bathe in, she sunk deep into the old claw foot tub and washed her hair with the fancy shampoos and conditioners from her old life.
Before bed, she stoked the fire and doused the lamps on the wall. Satisfied the house wouldn’t burn to the ground with her in it, she made her way into the bedroom and left the door open so the heat could reach her. After pulling the only picture she’d brought from New York from the side zipper of her bag, she held the lantern over the smiling faces of her and Miles at a Christmas party a couple of years back. It had been her favorite picture of them, and why she’d brought it, she couldn’t explain. She stared at her own flickering naïve grin and wondered for the thousandth time,
why
?
****
The whine of the battery-operated alarm clock next to her bed rang out at eight o’clock the next morning. She’d set it early to make herself of use if Aanon needed it, but one listen to her surroundings told her she’d miscalculated. The rhythmic
chop chop
of metal ax on wood echoed through the homestead.
She plaited her hair in a thick braid and pinned it in a tight bun at the base of her neck before sliding into her layers. Then she brushed her teeth and washed her face with frigid mountain water from the tap. If she wasn’t awake before, she was definitely awake now. After a quick glance at the slight slope of her stomach in the mirror, she checked the door of the stove and pulled her snow boots on.
Aanon had his back to her and split logs like he’d done a million times before. Maybe he had. After one was cut into halves or fourths, he put another log immediately onto the old stump he used as a chopping block. He’d removed his jacket, and the gray thermal shirt clung to him as his powerful body moved in a graceful arch. Lithe and strong, his motion was fluid, and the crack of power caressed her skin with every swing.
Two dogs stood loyally by him, one a full grown husky and one a smaller mixed breed of some sort. The smaller one lay on her back with a small brick of wood hanging out of her mouth. Upon closer inspection, she was actually a large puppy.
Well, she said she’d pay Aanon, and he’d made it clear what he wanted was help around the place, so she would start repaying the debt now.
Clearing her throat, she held out two hundred dollars in twenties, and he stopped mid-swing and stared at her with a frown.
“First month’s rent. If I slack too much around here, tell me if you need more, okay?”
He took the money and shoved it into his pocket. She stooped and gathered an armload of chopped firewood and hauled it to the front porch of the big house where he already had a sizeable stockpile. After her third trip, the chopping picked up again, and she tried her best to ignore his alluring presence.
She worked until her arms shook and her stomach growled. Briney’s sandwich had worn off long ago, and the little life inside of her complained at its mistreatment.
Sitting heavily onto a carved bench on the front porch, she took a break. Aanon frowned at her from his vantage point over the chopping block and swiped a bare forearm over his forehead. “You hungry?”