Stranded With Her Rescuer. Nikki Logan

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      Will took a while to turn to glance at her. ‘Later, maybe.’

      He straightened from his crouch and plunged one hand into the big coat pocket in front of him and rummaged there for a moment. Then he withdrew it, and set about scooping out a generous serving of mixed kibble into each of seven identical bowls recessed into the top of seven identical kennels. As soon as he gave the visual signal, six of the seven dogs leapt nimbly up onto their roof and got stuck into their breakfast.

      His left hand found its way back into its pocket and stayed there.

      ‘How did you sleep?’ he asked without looking at her.

      ‘Great actually. The darkness out here is very...’

      Enveloping. Subsuming. Reassuring.

      ‘Dark?’

      She laughed. ‘It’s very sleep-promoting.’

      ‘That’s the forest breathing out,’ he replied. ‘And low pollution because we’re so remote. You’ll get used to the extra O2.’

      In Nepal, everything had been just a smidge harder because of the reduced oxygen levels in the high-altitude Kathmandu Valley. Did that mean everything would be a bit easier here in the low, flat, sub-arctic forest?

      When would ‘easy’ start, then?

      ‘Shouldn’t that make me sleep less, not more?’

      ‘You sleepy now?’

      Now? With him crouching there, looking all...good morning? Nope, not one bit.

      But she wasn’t about to admit that. ‘Thank you for the clothes. Just happen to have them lying around?’

      Or was she wearing the clothes of some...special friend?

      ‘The supply store opened up early on account of the emergency landing. I headed in there at dawn before it got picked clean by your fellow passengers and got you a few basics. I’ll take you in again later if you like, so you can pick out your own gear.’

      This kindness from Will...given how they’d left things... She didn’t know quite what to do with it.

      ‘I don’t really plan on being here long enough to need more.’

      The look he gave her then was far too close to the last one he’d ever looked at her with. An amalgam of pity and disappointment.

      ‘They’re not going to put you back on a faulty plane,’ he warned. ‘They’ll have to send a replacement, or squeeze you onto the regional services we usually get.’

      He returned the kibble tub to the ramshackle shed that held all his tools and equipment, but as soon as his hands were free again back they went...into his pockets. Only, this time, he caught the direction of her gaze.

      ‘Curious?’ he asked, a half-smile on his lips.

      Yes... But she was no more entitled to be curious about what was below Will Margrave’s pockets now than she was five years ago.

      He reached in and drew out a tiny, dark handful of fuzz.

      ‘Oh, my gosh!’

      ‘Starsky’s,’ he murmured. ‘One of three.’

      ‘How old is it?’ she asked, staring at the tiny pup. Two slits in its squished little face peered around. Beneath, she got a momentary flash of electric-blue eyes.

      Sled-dog eyes.

      ‘Born day before yesterday.’

      Two days! ‘Should it be away from its mother this soon?’

      ‘Won’t be for long,’ he murmured. ‘Helps to forge a bond with the pup from the get-go. Reinforces dominance and trust with the mother.’

      Trust. Yes—that he could just take a newborn pup from its mother even for a few minutes... That she would let him...

      ‘It can’t see or hear yet but it has all its other senses,’ he said, stroking it gently with his work-roughened thumb. It curled towards him in response. ‘And emotional awareness. It will come to know my smell, my voice. The beat of my heart. Knows it’s safe with me from its earliest days.’

      He did have that kind of voice. All rumbly and reassuring. And that kind of smell. She took a step back against the urge to take in another lungful like last night.

      Will returned the pup to its mother’s kennel and buried it in under her alongside its two littermates—another black one, and one that was white as the snow all around them with subtle grey mottling.

      ‘So no departing flight this morning, I take it?’ she asked as he straightened.

      He turned and faced her. ‘Let me explain something about bear season...’

      ‘I know, I know... They come for the ice—’

      ‘Not just them,’ he interrupted. ‘Tourists. Hundreds of them arriving and leaving every day. For eight weeks we’re overrun and then we go back to being the sleepy little outpost we usually are. You should be prepared for this to go on for days. Maybe longer.’

      Days? Days of this careful eggshells? Of not talking about Marcella or the quakes? Of not mentioning what happened between them five years ago?

      ‘I’ll look for somewhere else to stay, then.’

      He slashed her that look of his. The one she remembered, the one that used to give her pulse a kick. The aware one. As if he saw right through her. And suddenly she regretted the extra layer of thermals. Heat billowed up from nowhere.

      ‘If there was nothing available last night there’ll be nothing today. No one else can leave either.’

      ‘Unless someone got eaten by a bear,’ she joked.

      He didn’t dignify that with a comment. But his glare spoke volumes.

      Kitty scanned the dog yard carved in amongst the thick Boreal forest and the chains tethering each animal to their cosy little doghouse. That would stop the dogs running wild but it would also stop them running for their lives if a bear happened along.

      ‘How often are dogs attacked by bears?’

      The glare redoubled.

      ‘Bears don’t kill dogs,’ he said irritably. ‘Dogs kill dogs.’

      She glanced at his pack, so carefully tethered out of reach of each other. But then she remembered how they’d all piled in together last night quite happily.

      ‘The Boreal wolves are much more likely to attack for territorial reasons. We have a few around here.’

      And wolves were mostly nocturnal.

      Understanding flooded in. ‘That’s why you brought them all into the house last night.’

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