Stranded With Her Rescuer. Nikki Logan

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СКАЧАТЬ ‘you’re welcome’. Because she probably wasn’t—again. No ‘it’s lovely to see you again, Kit’, because it almost certainly wasn’t.

      Had she really expected open arms after the last conversation they’d ever had?

      * * *

      Will sagged against the door the moment his unexpected guest closed it quietly behind her. How far did you have to go to outrun the past? Clearly, the top of the world still wasn’t far enough.

      Five years...

      Five long years and that time had compressed into nothing the moment Kitty Callaghan had stepped through his front door. The moment he’d answered his phone. His heart hadn’t stopped hammering since then. Maybe he should have just let it ring, but he’d recognised the number and he knew that the airport wouldn’t have called him at this time of night without very good reason.

      It had never occurred to him that the reason would be her.

      ‘Shove up, Dexter,’ he murmured nudging the big brown male blocking access to his favourite chair. The dog grumbled but shifted, only to whomp down with exaggerated drama a few feet away, and Will sank down into his pre-loved rocker.

      Old man’s chair, the woman who’d sold it to him had joked.

      Yup. And if he had his way he’d still be rocking gently in it by a roasting fire when he’d been in the north long enough to earn that title.

      Just him and his dogs... As it was supposed to be.

      Last time he’d seen Kitty, she’d been hurriedly tossing her belongings into the back of a dodgy Nepalese taxi and scrambling in after them. Couldn’t get off their hillside fast enough. Marcella had wept as her favourite new distraction had departed only ten days into her month-long stay, but he’d kept a careful distance—his heart beating, then, at least as hard as it was now—relieved to see the last of her, certain that Kitty’s departure was going to make things with Marcella right again.

      He’d worked on their relationship for three more years and it had never been right again.

      Which made having Kitty here an extra problem. A man didn’t move halfway around the world to escape his past only to invite it right back into his front room. Especially not given how they’d left things.

      But... Polar bears.

      ‘It’s bigger than it looks back there,’ a soft voice suddenly said behind him.

      He lurched upright in his chair.

      For so long the only voices other than his in this place had been canine. But, somehow, the walls of his cabin absorbed the soft, feminine tones. As if her words were cedar oil and his timber walls were parched.

      He struggled for something resembling conversation.

      ‘Plenty of prefabs in town, but I wanted something a little more personal.’

      ‘And private,’ she remarked, glancing out of the window. ‘It’s very isolated.’

      Yep, it was. Just how he liked it.

      ‘A mile’s a long way in the Boreal. But I have neighbours up the creek and Churchill’s only ten minutes away if you know the roads.’

      Twenty-five if you didn’t.

      Did he imagine it, or did her eyes get a shade more anxious at the seclusion? Maybe she, too, was remembering the electricity they’d whipped up between them back in Nepal.

      He didn’t whip up much of anything these days. No matter who was asking.

      It just wasn’t worth the risk.

      ‘So... I think I’ll head to bed,’ she said and, again, it somehow had the same tone as the crackling fire behind him. ‘In case they get the plane back in the air early.’

      That wasn’t going to happen. Churchill was set up for small aircraft—twenty-to-thirty-seaters coming and going across the vast Canadian North like winged buses—and its apron was barely big enough to turn a colossal jet around, let alone get it airborne without a support team. Someone was going to have to fly engineers and safety inspectors up here to help prep the plane for its return flight. And no way were they going to pack a wounded jet full of passengers. Not after they’d taken such risks to get everyone down safely.

      But it was two in the morning and Kitty was almost grey with fatigue, so he wasn’t about to put that thought in her head.

      Time enough for her to find out tomorrow.

      ‘I’ll be up at dawn,’ he said, instead. ‘I’ll check on the status for you and wake you in plenty of time.’

      ‘Okay, see you in the morning.’

      He turned back to the fire.

      ‘And, Will...?’

      Seriously...what was it about a female voice here? His skin was puckering up as if he’d never heard one before.

      ‘Thank you. Truly. I really appreciate the sanctuary.’

      Sanctuary. That was exactly what this place had been when he’d bought it. Still was.

      Though not so much since his past had stepped foot so confidently in it.

       CHAPTER TWO

      WILL SQUATTED IN his navy parka and clipped a final boisterous canine to its long chain in the expansive yard, their happy breathing and his murmured words taking form as puffs of mist in the frigid mid-morning air. It hadn’t taken Kitty long to track him back there—she just had to follow the excited barks and yips.

      Where Will went there were always excited yips. And there were always dogs.

      She’d woken pretty late after the adventures of the night before and found two pairs of thermal leggings, a vest, new socks, a scarf, gloves and a pair of military patterned snow boots sitting on the chair just inside the guest-room door. With no idea what she’d find outside, she’d put on all the thermals under her Zurich sundress, the socks and boots, and Will’s sweater over the top of the lot. But she’d only had to open the door to the cabin before realising that wasn’t going to be quite enough. A spare coat pilfered from Will’s boot room helped seal all the heat inside.

      Kitty tugged the scarf more tightly around her throat and curled her gloved fingers into the ample sleeves of Will’s coat.

      Outside the toasty cedar cabin, the air cut into her lungs like glass—even worse than the night before. The temperature had dropped overnight until it was too cold even to sleet, and her throat and lungs burned with her first breaths outside the warm cabin.

      Despite the ache, every breath she took seemed to invigorate her. She felt awake and alert and...attuned, though that made no sense. Standing out on Will’s front steps cleared her mind in a way that only yoga had before. Except here, she was getting it without the sweating.

      The creak of the bottom step last night was more an icy crack this morning, СКАЧАТЬ