“Always,” she said with a self-deprecating smile.
Thwack.
The ax came to rest deep in the belly of the block, and Aanon sauntered over to her. “I’ve got food for you inside. Be right back.”
She thanked him for the butter-filled biscuits and milk and talked between bites as he went back to chopping wood. “Since the snow stopped, I was thinking about going into town and getting a few food necessities from the general store so I don’t have to mooch off of you anymore. Do you need me to pick up anything for the house?”
“I could use some more salt. Used the last of it on a brine when the silver salmon were running and forgot it on my trip to the store yesterday.”
Chop.
“You might want to see about getting Doc Janson to look at you, too, while you’re there.”
Chop.
“Probably should.” She’d been taking prenatal vitamins since she got a positive pregnancy test, and she’d been scared of visiting a doctor in Miles’s neck of the woods, but out here, it was time to learn as much as she could about her options and what her body was going through.
“You can take my truck today, but from here on, you’ll have to take a four-wheeler, snowmobile, or a horse because I’ll be out of town again starting tomorrow.”
At the mental image of her on horseback, she stifled a snort. That wasn’t going to happen in a trillion years. Like they could read her uncharitable thoughts, one of the winter-furred beasts bugled from a corral nearby.
The bigger of the two dogs lay near Aanon, but the puppy was making her way to Farrah on her belly. Little biscuit beggar.
She was cute, with a gray and white coat and one floppy ear. One of her eyes was icy blue while the other was the color of good whiskey. “What kind of dog is she?”
“Guess.”
“Husky?” she asked. She really wasn’t confident in dog breeds, never having owned one herself. Dogs and tiny city apartments didn’t mix well.
“And?”
Okay, so she was at least part husky. Her giant paws surely gave something away but she hadn’t a guess at what. Shrugging, she tossed the pup a chunk of biscuit. “Beats me.”
“Gray wolf.”
Maybe if the puppy wasn’t rolling in the snow and putting on a show for more treats, Farrah would have been more worried. “Where did you get her?”
“Neighbor’s dog got pregnant and had one live pup. Nobody wants a wolf, and he was going to put her down, so I took her. She’ll be a little hellion when she gets older, and I’m sure she’ll make me regret saving her hide later down the road. She’ll probably eat my chickens,” he muttered.
“Oh, you wouldn’t eat poor little defenseless chickens, now would you?” Farrah cooed as the dog scooted under her waiting hand.
Aanon stood and rested his hands on his hips. Breathing heavily, he said, “Luna. Her name is Luna, and she’s all yours while you stay here. Keep her out of trouble, will you?”
“Can she stay in my place with me?”
“If you want to take on potty training a wolf, be my guest.”
Farrah’s gaze drifted down to Luna who was squirming under her scratching fingers with a goofy dog grin and her tongue lolled out to the side. She’d never had a dog before, and a fierce protectiveness washed over her. She’d train Luna to be a good companion and prove Aanon wrong.
“Can I take her into town with me?”
“I don’t care. She isn’t truck trained, though, so you’ll have to tie her in the bed when you go into a store. The other dog over here is named Bruno. He’s mine, but you’ll be feeding them both when I’m gone.” Tugging the keys from his pocket, he asked, “You know how to drive a truck?”
“I learned to drive on a truck,” she said, snatching the tossed keys out of the air.
“Well, now that is a surprise.”
“I’m full of surprises, Mr. Falk.”
“I bet you are,” he murmured as she made kissing noises for Luna to follow her.
The pup jumped clumsily into the front seat and Farrah turned the engine. Okay, now she needed to get it into gear. In New York, she’d taken subways and taxis or just walked where she needed to go. It had been many years since she’d driven anything as big as a truck.
Finding drive, she pulled carefully onto the snow-covered road. She’d paid close attention the night before so she’d know how to get to and from her new home without having to ask Aanon. The more independent she could become, the better. She never wanted to depend on a man like she had on Miles.
Men just let you down, and she’d be damned if she was going to need someone like that ever again.
A sense of relief flooded Aanon when Farrah had decided to run errands in town. He’d work faster without her there, distracting him with her fruit-smelling hair and waiting smile. A deliberate discussion needed to be started about how serious preparing for winter around here was. He had one day to get a million things done before he had to head out of town to finish up a construction job he’d landed. At this point, even one missed day of work at the job site could spell disaster. He needed the money, or everything fell apart.
It wasn’t often that winter snow held so early in October, and if his instincts were right, this part of Alaska would thaw again and give a couple more weeks to prepare for the nine months of snow and ice. Three months of beautiful weather during the summer months left very little time to grow and collect the food he’d need through winter. And that was feeding just him. Now, whether he liked to admit it or not, he would be responsible for making sure Farrah didn’t starve, too. She’d be locked up there at the cattleman’s cabin for months, and so would he when the snow was too deep to plow. The garden had produced well and could probably sustain them both if he could get everything preserved and into the root cellar. Most of the beans, carrots, lettuce, spinach, kale, cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, onions, potatoes, and okra he’d picked the week before, he had stacked in plastic containers filled with sawdust to preserve them beneath the house. He had enough salmon, beef, and halibut to keep himself comfortably fed, but now Farrah was there late in the hunting season, and the last thing he wanted to do was get caught with three more months of snowy winter and no way to bring in protein. That was too dangerous a gamble.
All day he’d been crunching the numbers and rearranging the meat store in his mind. Now, they’d need 150 pounds of fish and 150 to 200 pounds of red meat to feed both of them. Protein was all important to surviving a frigid Alaskan winter on a homestead. His cattle were used to barter and sell, but if it came down to it, he was going to have to butcher one of them, and that was something he really didn’t want to do.
Brushing mounds of snow from the tractor, he hopped into the seat and turned the engine. It roared to life, and he sped down the road to grab another cord of firewood to split. The beetles had come through and devastated some of the trees a couple of years back, leaving dead, dry wood in their path. Perfect for burning. All he had to do was cut the dead logs down and drag them back home to chop.
Three hours of hauling, chain sawing, and ax swinging later, he had another cord stacked on the front porch. A sharp bark from Bruno announced someone was headed up the road, and Aanon’s heart beat a little faster as he tried to ignore his old truck picking its way through the snow drifts.
“Hey,” Farrah called, like they’d known each other for years.
He took a drag of frigid water from a canteen hanging on the arm of the porch bench and nodded a greeting.
She wore tight, black leggings tucked into fur-lined snow boots, and her parka was fitted and covered her ass completely. She was agile and energetic, but at the end of this next season, she’d be so full of child, she’d hate moving in the cold.
Luna feigned fear of jumping from the cab of the truck, and Farrah pulled the overgrown pup from the bench seat and set her free. With two grocery bags clutched to her chest, Farrah sent him a timid smile and disappeared into her cabin.
He would’ve ran electricity to the place if he’d ever in a hundred years thought he’d be renting to a woman. A pregnant woman, at that. Oh, he’d gotten way in over his head on this one.
He finished stacking the last row of newly chopped wood just as she reemerged with a box of salt and a picture. When she shoved the picture into his hands, he almost dropped it in the snow when he figured out what it was.
Farrah’s lips were set in a grim line. Doctor Janson thinks maybe late March from the baby’s size.”
“You going to keep the baby?”
Her gaze dropped to the tips of his boots. “I picked up some pamphlets on adoption. I haven’t decided yet whether to keep it or give it to a family who could provide a better life for it. Aanon?”
“Yeah?”
“Have you ever seen one of those pictures before?”
His gaze dropped to the little black and white photo in his hands, and his heart ached. “Yes.”
“It’s just…” Her bottom lip trembled, and she pursed it. “I can’t tell where the baby is. And Dr. Janson just kept talking on and on, and the longer he talked, the stranger I felt asking him where my own baby was, so I just took the picture and didn’t ask. And then he drew my blood, and I left.”
“He drew your blood? Does he think there was something wrong?”
“He didn’t say that. Why? Is that what it means?”
“No, it’s probably just routine. I don’t know about that kind of stuff. Look here.” He pointed to the denser space in the sac. “That’s its head, and that’s its tummy. That’s where its little arms are forming. Look right there. That’s its little nose.”
She took the photo slowly from his hands and stared at the picture with such wonder. “Thanks,” she whispered and turned for her cabin.
“Farrah?”
“Yeah?”
“The salt?”
“Oh, yeah.” She handed him the box and trudged back to the cabin, only to reemerge minutes later without the sonogram picture.
Biscuits must have been the way to Luna’s heart because the pup never left Farrah’s side. Wherever she went, the dog went, too. Reminded him of Bruno’s loyalty to himself.
He led her down to the corral and taught her how to load hay and spread it out for the horses. And then did the same for the fourteen head of cattle. He showed her which ones to look out for and how much to feed each day so the hay he cut during the summer would last all winter. He showed her how to feed the chickens and collect the brown eggs they laid.
When she didn’t balk at the chores or about being around large herd animals, he let her ride behind him on the tractor to go pick up another log to drag back to the house. He didn’t offer and she didn’t ask, but without a word between them, she sat behind him and put her gloved hands around his stomach. She asked about the different trees and outlying buildings in different stages of use and disrepair. She asked about animal tracks that crossed the road and chattered to the dogs as they loped beside the tractor. He didn’t have to say much. And while there was beauty in silence, there was also something nice about having someone else appreciate the land he loved so much.
He chopped while she stacked until dinnertime, then she went back to her cabin to eat. He stood on the front porch of the big house. From there, he could see through her curtain-less windows. She talked to herself, or maybe to Luna, and sported a fierce look of concentration as she tried to figure out how to use a wood burning stove to cook on. Maybe he should invite her over to eat in the big kitchen.
No.
He ripped his gaze away from her place. That would only complicate things, and he couldn’t afford the distraction. She was just going to have to learn to make it on her own.
****
Farrah woke to a soft knock on the door before dawn broke the next morning. With frozen toes pushed into fuzzy slippers, she padded to the door and pulled it open just wide enough for Aanon to come in. Stoking the fire, she waited with self-conscious heat in her cheeks as he found his words.
“I wrote down a list of stuff for you to do as a reminder. Billy, the neighbor’s boy, will be coming by sometime today to make sure you know how to do everything and to get you into a routine.”
Good gracious, he looked so good in the morning. His blond eyebrows had knitted into a little line of worry, and he rubbed the cleanly shaven planes of his jaw as if it helped him to think. More than once, his gaze drank in her red flannel pajamas, and she wished there was such a thing as sexy warm sleepwear. The giant pretzel had been invented so really, the science should be there.
“Don’t forget to feed the dogs,” he said, as if he were stalling.
“I swear I won’t,” she said with a patient smile. “You don’t have to worry about your place. I’ll take care of it. Go, work, don’t worry about things here and just focus on doing what you need to do. This place will still be standing when you get back.” If only she felt as confident as she sounded.
“Okay,” he said with a nervous laugh. “I’m going. I’ll be back Saturday. Here is the key to the big house if you need anything, and my cell phone number is at the bottom of the to-do list if you need me for anything.”
“Do you need a goodbye hug, Aanon?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Fine, I’m going.”
“That a boy. We’ll see you in a few days. If you need to get a hold of me, leave a message at Briney's. I’ll be working there the next three nights.”
“Right,” he said, backing down the shoveled walkway to his truck. “Bye.”
She stood outside in the freezing cold with the dogs whining by her side, and just before the old Chevy disappeared through the trees, she waved. Even surrounded by the dogs, the place seemed a little lonelier there in the dark.
****
Billy showed up at ten that morning. He came riding up on a four-wheeler while Farrah spread hay out in the cattle pen. An easy-talking teenager with a gap between his teeth and a splash of freckles across his nose, he kept the conversation going and was patient when she had questions. Billy had an efficient way to do every chore, and he took the time to teach her the tricks. The sun rose high in the sky, warming and melting the snow until shoots of late summer grass peeked through the layers of white.
“We’ll harvest the rest of the vegetables in the greenhouse and get them stored, and then we don’t really have to worry about them anymore other than to preserve them,” Billy said.
“And when should we preserve them?”
“Oh, you probably should’ve already started. It takes some time, and you want to do it before any of the easy spoiling fruit and vegetables start to rot.”
“Do you know how to preserve well enough to show me how to do it?”
“Oh no, ma’am. But I could ask my mom if she could come over with me tomorrow if you want. If she isn’t too busy, I’m sure she’d love to teach you. She’s a maniac about jarring everything.”
“Only if she isn’t too overrun with her own work. I’d be really thankful for any help. I don’t think Aanon is going to have time to do it anytime soon.”
“Yeah, he works too much. I never see the guy take a break for anything,” he said, holding the flap to the simple greenhouse open for her.
Inside, it was warmer and smelled of vegetation and fertile soil. “How long has he been running this place?” she asked.
“Oh, not long. His pa up and died a few months ago all of the sudden. Gave no warning at all, and Aanon was working his out-of-town jobs and got thrown into trying to keep this place up, too.”
Her stomach sank. “That’s awful. I had no idea he was mourning his dad. Did you know Mr. Falk?”
“Yes ma’am. Everyone knew him. He was a real salt-of-the-earth kind of man. Real honest. Real good to his neighbors. He helped my dad out of a jam many a time. His passing was felt by the entire community, that’s for sure. Aanon has been trying to get someone to rent your place for a long time so his pa could have someone to help him out on the homestead while he was working out of town.” Billy tossed her a wicker basket and showed her how to pluck the remaining carrots from the ground and brush them off. “He just passed away before Aanon could find anyone.”
Most of the vegetables had already been harvested. All that remained were the ones that hadn’t been quite ready when Aanon had come through the first time. The root cellar could be reached from either inside the big house or a locked door on the outside. With three plastic bins full of vegetables, Billy showed her where everything was stored and how it worked. Under ground, the old-fashioned cellar kept a near constant temperature that kept the fruit and vegetables from spoiling.
After a few instructions, tips on potty training puppies, and a quick lesson on the finer points of riding a four-wheeler, Billy waved and zoomed down the road back toward his family’s homestead.
With only an hour before her shift at Briney’s started, she changed into a pair of jeans and a black sweater and bundled in her warmest layers before gassing up the smallest of Aanon’s four-wheelers and zipping off for town. She’d had to tie the dogs so they wouldn’t follow her, but they’d forgive her if she fed them some of her meal scraps when she arrived home tonight.
The trip was scenic and peaceful. The spruce and alder trees stretched up into the sky and tufts of snow fell from their branches as it melted in the waning sunlight. The road was easy to follow now with the carved divots the truck wheels had made into the snow.
When she was in New York, she’d forgotten how beautiful this place was. She’d taken the scenery for granted when she lived here as a child because it was all she’d ever known. And in her haste to escape, she’d given up open range and pine forests, snowcapped mountains and stunning wildlife to live in a cramped apartment. She didn’t regret it—the experience had made her who she was today and had shaped a new appreciation for this wild land. Why hadn’t Aanon left like he’d sworn up and down to do in high school? Maybe he had, and then decided to come back like she had. Or maybe he’d just never had the chance to leave.