Northern Exposure. Debra Brown Lee

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СКАЧАТЬ It’s important. I’m not asking you to help me, I’m simply asking you to show me on this map where I might find more caribou, bulls especially.”

      He snorted and went back to his dishwashing. She noticed how strong his hands were, how tanned they looked against the white plastic plates. For a millisecond she recalled them on her body that afternoon. In a blood-heating thought that had nothing to do with photography, she wondered what the contrast would be like of his bronze hands against her bare white skin.

      “It doesn’t matter,” he said, and grabbed a towel. “That bull we saw today, along with any others in the area, will have bolted to the other side of the reserve. You can’t drive there. You’d have to go on foot.” He gave her a once-over, his eyes lingering for a second on her mouth. “A woman like you would never make it.”

      She knew it was Joe Peterson, game warden, standing before her, saying the words, but it was Blake Barrett’s voice she heard in her head.

      “Oh, really?” She stormed out of the kitchen, slapped the map on the coffee table—which, earlier, she’d moved out of the way—and proceeded to make up the sofa bed with the sheets he’d delivered.

      Joe leaned in the door frame and watched her. The longer he looked at her, the angrier she got. What was it about men that they assumed—assumed without even knowing her—that she wasn’t up to the task at hand, no matter what that task happened to be?

      From something as simple as carting out the garbage to something as complex as managing a runway shoot, or as challenging as finding a couple of caribou in the mountains—guys like Blake Barrett, and now Joe Peterson, thought she was helpless.

      Well, hide and watch, boys.

      She snapped the crisp white sheet over the foam mattress.

      Hide and watch.

      Joe thrashed around in bed until the top sheet was twisted around his legs like a rope. He ripped it from his body and tossed it aside, then punched up the pillows, ramming his head into them like a Dall sheep in full rut.

      It was no good.

      He’d been lying there for the past hour and a half, wide awake. The bright-green numbers on the digital clock by the bed read just past two in the morning. After their conversation on the deck, which had turned into an argument in the kitchen, he’d left his overnight guest to fend for herself and had retreated to the bedroom to sleep.

      Only sleep hadn’t come. He’d reread the tabloid article he’d found in the back bedroom, paying particular attention to the reporter’s assessment of Willa Walters—the woman who was sleeping on his sofa bed. He knew these kinds of newspapers twisted the facts to suit their story and sensationalized every tidbit. All the same, he couldn’t get the sordid details out of his mind. He couldn’t shrug it off and let it go.

      The other thing he couldn’t let go of was the idea that the two of them weren’t alone out here. He’d definitely seen a man in the woods that afternoon. On the hike back to the station earlier that evening, he could have sworn that someone was following them. It could be a poacher, as he’d first suspected, or maybe a lost tourist. Hell, for all he knew it could be a tabloid reporter following the Walters story all the way to Alaska, though he didn’t think it very likely.

      He rolled onto his stomach into a sprawl, working to get comfortable, forcing all thoughts of mystery men and lying photographers from his mind. He willed himself to sleep. A few minutes later, relaxed at last, he was almost there, hovering on the edge.

      Then he heard it, the faint creak of board outside on the deck.

      A second later he was up, pulling on jeans and a shirt in the dark, scrambling for his boots, taking care to be as quiet as possible. He realized his heart was beating fast, much faster than normal, but it wasn’t because he feared what was out there.

      He’d run into all kinds of things in the night out here—hikers, department personnel on reconnaissance, even wildlife photographers. Most of the time it was animals: a disoriented grizzly, groggy from hibernation, ambling onto the deck, raccoons digging in his trash bin, the odd moose or mountain lion. None of them were dangerous if you respected their space.

      No, the reason for his accelerated heart rate wasn’t that he feared for his own safety. He did, however, fear for the safety of the woman sleeping in his front room. More accurately, he feared she’d wake up and do something stupid that would land her in trouble.

      That creaking board wasn’t a figment of his imagination.

      Joe stepped lightly down the darkened hallway, peering into the bathroom and kitchen, and out the kitchen windows before slipping silently into the front room.

      His house guest was asleep, the covers pulled over her head. Everything was quiet except for the nighttime sounds of crickets and a light wind breezing through the trees. Joe moved to the window and looked out.

      He stood, frozen in place, for a full minute, his gaze sweeping the deck, the steps leading up to it, and the forest beyond. A sliver of moon poked through the clouds, casting an eerie light on the trees, painting every surface ghostly gray.

      Light exploded from the room’s overhead fixture.

      Joe whirled toward the switch.

      “What’s up?” Wendy leaned sleepily against the wall flanking him, squinting against the light, her hand still on the switch.

      In a lightning-fast move, he flicked it off, grabbed her around the waist and backed them away from the window.

      “Hey, what the—”

      “Quiet!” Setting her on her feet, he looked at her hard, his eyes readjusting to the dark, and made a sign for her to be still.

      “What’s wrong?” she whispered.

      He didn’t answer. Pushing her back into the shadow of the door frame, he moved to the corner of the room by the fireplace and plucked his rifle from where it stood upright next to a jumble of snowshoes and skis.

      He knew it was loaded, but checked it anyway, then listened hard for a moment to the ordinary sounds of the night. Wendy stood stock-still in the door frame, listening, too, moonlight bathing her face in a soft pearl wash. Her hair shone silver and swished lightly against her neck as she turned toward him.

      It suddenly struck him how beautiful she was, standing there in nothing more than the old T-shirt he’d loaned her to sleep in. His T-shirt. It looked entirely different on her than it did on him.

      Of course it did, doofus.

      The fire in the hearth had died, and the room was cold. Her nipples stood out against the fabric of the thin shirt. She pushed off suddenly, from bare foot to bare foot, as if the floor were icy. His gaze was drawn to her small feet, upward along lithe, toned legs to the hem of the T-shirt. For a long moment he thought about what was under that T-shirt.

      “Is something out there?” She looked pointedly at the rifle in his hands.

      “I don’t know.” He moved up beside her, then in front of her, and, when the moon disappeared behind a cloud, strode quickly across the room to the front door.

      Wendy followed.

      He turned, ready to tell her СКАЧАТЬ