Alaskan Sweethearts. Janet Tronstad

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      He’d finally made the promise to his mother just as a pickup had come screeching to a halt a few feet from them. His grandfather had been there then, lifting him up in a hug. The old man had set him down and raced to the burning car. Hunter had tried to stop his tears, but he hadn’t been able to. The ambulance and Sheriff Wall, their red lights all flashing, had come soon after that. They’d put the fire out, but Hunter had never seen either of his parents alive again.

      Hunter hadn’t told anyone about the promise he’d made....

      But maybe his grandfather had suspected, because he grunted and said, “I mean a proper family. Not just people you think you have to take care of.”

      Hunter shook his head. “I don’t mind.”

      “I know you don’t,” his grandfather said gently. “That’s not the point.”

      “This woman will likely sue us,” Hunter said before the other man could say anything else. A man didn’t always choose his family, but he still had an obligation toward them. The cat had come back to sit at his feet like a sentinel. Loyalty was bred into those cats, too.

      The older man looked taken back. “You mean, Scarlett? She can’t sue us. I didn’t promise her you’d marry her or anything. I’m not that daft.”

      “No, but you did promise her some land.”

      “Well, she wasn’t going to come down here from Alaska for the pleasure of meeting us, now was she?” his grandfather said, unrepentant and still more cheerful than he ought to be in Hunter’s opinion.

      Just then he heard the door of the café open and he turned around. The woman stood there, silhouetted, the sun shining behind her and—Hunter gulped—a small red-haired boy’s hand in hers.

      “She’s got a son,” he whispered as he turned to his grandfather. “She’s already married.”

      That would teach the old man a thing or two about meddling, Hunter thought in relief.

      “Divorced,” his grandfather said as he gallantly rose and gestured for the woman and boy to join them. “Desperate and broke, too. You should have no trouble.”

      Hunter was speechless. He would have nothing but trouble. He could tell that much already.

      * * *

      As Scarlett stood inside the doorway, she could see that the sun-faded curtains didn’t quite reach across the windows in this place. Out of the corner of her eyes, she noticed long, thin strips of light shining through the gaps and falling across the full length of the nicely polished black-and-white tiled floor. Steel stools with red upholstered tops were lined against a small counter. A dozen tables, a few of them in use, were scattered around. She saw the cat from earlier stretched out under the table where the Jacobsons sat.

      She tightened her grip on the handle of her leather briefcase. Her grandmother had given her the power of attorney to sign Colin’s papers. The document and a letter for the man were inside.

      Hunter stood from the table where he had been sitting with his grandfather as she examined him. Square jaw, muscular, belligerent. Unfortunately she’d had her fill of men like him. She’d been married to one and learned the hard way that they strutted around giving orders as though they were kings of the world, never giving a moment’s thought to anyone but themselves.

      She wondered what Hunter’s real reasons were for trying to stop her. She’d been under the impression the Jacobsons were rich enough to part with that small piece of land easily. He must be greedy—the kind of man who wouldn’t give a beggar a crust of stale bread even if he had a dozen loaves himself.

      Before taking a step farther, Scarlett glanced down and put a hand on the shoulder of her five-year-old son, Joey. She felt a tremble in his slight body. It sent an answering shudder through her. Her son used to sparkle with mischief. But he had lost all his confidence lately. He’d insisted on bringing his old beat-up brown teddy bear along with him on this trip. His father had given it to him when he was a baby. She’d packed the bear away last summer and Joey had seemed fine without it. But then he had regressed. Now he carried it everywhere with him. Joey was the reason she was anxious to move out of Nome. She’d do battle with a thousand kings to see him happy again.

      “There’s a chair beside the restroom,” she told her son. He’d used the side of the road earlier so she knew he didn’t have to go. “Can you sit there quietly for a minute by yourself?”

      He thought a minute and nodded.

      Joey was timid in new situations now, but a small business like this café did not likely have a separate area to wait inside the restroom. He’d be fine sitting there for a bit. Especially when he had his teddy bear in his hands.

      “Come with me, then,” she said and they began to walk across the café.

      She hadn’t planned to bring Joey with her for this trip. But last week she’d gotten an anonymous letter telling her that someone was going to kidnap him if she didn’t find the forty thousand dollars her ex-husband, Victor, had stolen from his drug supplier and return it. She couldn’t tell if the letter was a warning or a threat, from a friend or a foe. She didn’t doubt that Victor could have made off with some money. He’d led a double life in the years they’d been married, selling drugs when she’d thought he’d been working on a fishing boat, and she believed he would steal from anyone who was handy. But she didn’t know about any money and certainly not where it was. The police had come to search their house looking for drug money before Victor had left. They hadn’t found anything then and they had searched Victor again before he’d flown out of Nome.

      Scarlett arrived at the door to the restroom and settled Joey on the chair. Then she leaned down and adjusted her son’s shirt before kissing the top of his head. He was precious to her. She patted the stuffed bear a little awkwardly. She noticed there was a torn seam along the back of the bear, a safety pin keeping it all together. Her grandmother must have put it there, but Scarlett decided to mend the bear when they got back to Nome. It was important to her son.

      “Wait here for me,” she told Joey as she straightened. “I won’t be long.”

      She wasn’t sure she’d leave her son outside if they were back in Nome.

      She’d taken the letter to the police and they’d tried contacting Victor at the Florida phone number he’d left for her, but it had been disconnected. The police in Florida cruised by his address and said the place looked deserted. She had no contact information for Victor’s new wife. The officer finally said the letter was likely a prank after she admitted some older boys in town had started to knock on the door of their house when Scarlett was at work and taunt Joey, telling him he needed to come outside and face them. They’d even joked about him and his teddy bear, so Scarlett knew they had seen her son outside playing. Joey’s grandmother was always in the house with the boy, though, and when she appeared in the doorway, the boys would scatter. Still, Joey was clearly anxious about them.

      They weren’t in Nome, though, Scarlett told herself as she turned the knob and opened the door to the restroom. They were perfectly safe here in Dry Creek.

      She wasn’t inside the restroom for long, but when she opened the door to come out she glanced down at where Joey was supposed to be and realized that he was not there.

      Scarlett gasped and frantically stepped out into the main part СКАЧАТЬ