Klondike Hero. Jillian Hart

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СКАЧАТЬ out her notepad. “Does anything on the menu look good?”

      Maybe she could eat. She ordered a cup of soup and a club sandwich and turned her attention back to the Now Woman magazine article.

      “Think all the good men are taken? Not so in tiny, charming Treasure Creek, Alaska, population 724. The hunky inhabitants are churchgoing, marriage-minded single men in a town with one woman for every five men! Many of them are tour guides for the town’s popular tour company, Alaska’s Treasures.”

      Churchgoing and marriage-minded sounded good. In fact, it sounded heaven-sent. She grabbed the sugar jar and upended it over the steaming cup, stirring it into the black, tarry brew as she kept reading….

      “Alaska’s Treasures is run by the founder’s widow, Amy James. They’re the best tour guides in the state, she says, proudly. And they’re the hottest, ladies. A handsome pediatrician, originally from the big city, moonlights as a tour guide along the famous Klondike Highway, the very route taken by the gold rush stampede of 1898. No worries if you break a nail on the trail, ladies, he’ll be right there to mend it!”

      A glossy photograph of a totally hunky man with brownish hair and blue eyes stared back at her. The caption underneath the picture stated jauntily, “Doctor Alex Havens is single, ladies!”

      Not bad. Karenna took a sip of coffee, let the heat and sweetness roll over her tongue. Rain sluiced down the window, smearing the view of the outside world, making the small diner seem cozy and the agony of the morning fade a notch. If only she could make her despair fade, too.

      A muffled electronic chime rang from inside her purse. She unzipped the compartment and checked her cell. Her sister calling. Karenna squeezed her eyes shut, fighting the humiliation. Her stomach knotted, knowing what Kim would say. All that money, and no wedding. All the time spent, and for nothing. Come back and try to fix things.

      She took a deep breath and let it ring. She wasn’t up to talking about her failures right now. What she needed was hope. She’d spent seven years of her life on a man who ran at the reality of marrying her. She’d wasted seven years loving someone who didn’t truly love her back.

      When she opened her eyes, the article stared up at her. She turned the page and several more hunky men smiled up at her, all proclaimed bachelors, each handsome face looking like Mr. Right. Maybe these Alaska bachelors were the kind of men who knew how to keep promises and make commitments, men of honor and great of heart. Interested, she kept reading.

      “So many of the guides, from the hunky chief of police to the strapping commercial fishermen, are among Alaska’s Most Eligible bachelors. So, ladies, if you’re looking for the adventure vacation of a lifetime that just might last a lifetime, what are you waiting for?”

      Thirty-eight hours, forty-two minutes and a few coffee breaks later…

      Chapter One

      “I’ve got more diapers and formula,” Gage Parker grumbled into the pay phone on the corner of the town’s main street. Treasure Creek, Alaska, sandwiched between rugged snowcapped peaks and pristine forests, was an old gold-rush town currently jam-packed with women, thanks to some magazine article. He couldn’t hear a single word his grandmother said, because a pair of fancy women strolled by the booth, talking and giggling and commenting on how quaint everything was.

      He didn’t like “quaint” and he didn’t like giggling women. Women were everywhere in a town where females were usually scarce. They’d all flown in with their mounds of luggage and driven in with their city cars—not a four-wheel-drive among them. Even in the falling twilight, he could see them. They strolled the sidewalks, took up tables at Lizbet’s Diner and went exploring in the wilderness, which is why he was out at nine forty-five at night when any sensible person would be home. But no, some clueless woman had gotten herself stuck halfway up a cliff this evening and he’d been on the search-and-rescue team that rapelled down to save her.

      “I didn’t know rock climbing would be so hard,” the clueless gal had breathlessly explained, once she was clipped in and safely against his chest. She smiled coyly up at him. “My, don’t you have strong arms.”

      Ugh. The lack of needy women was one of the big draws for moving from Seattle back to Alaska. His grandmother needing help had been the other.

      “Sounds like all kinds of commotion is going on,” Gran chirped, downright chipper on the other end of the line. She would be. Nothing tickled her more than that article telling about how Treasure Creek’s men wanting for wives seriously outnumbered the available women. “Any of those gals catch your fancy, Gage?”

      “Wishful thinking on your part. There would have to be something wrong with a woman to want to get tangled up with the likes of me.” He had proof of that in his ex-wife, who had been one of those women who’d wanted a wedding but not marriage. She’d seen her vows as merely a suggestion on how to behave as a wife. “Anything else you need me to do in town?”

      “I’ll take pity on you, my boy, and I won’t tell you to find a nice girl and bring her on home—at least this time. You already know the baby could use a mama.”

      Oh, she was having a heyday. Gage shook his head, trying to drum up some patience. He didn’t want to hurt the elderly woman’s tender feelings. “My nephew is doing just fine with the two of us. What I need is to find the right nanny, not a wife—just so we’re clear on that.”

      “That won’t stop me from praying the right woman for you comes along.”

      Great. More prayers. Just what he needed. God had better things to do than trying to fix the impossible. The darkness he’d seen in his recent life had only reinforced that. His baby nephew’s mother had died, his brother had been too busy to raise the child and dumped him off just shy of a week ago. Ben James, Gage’s boss and one of his close friends, had died in an on-the-job accident in January, leaving his wife, Amy, a widow, with two young sons and a struggling business. Not to mention his own fight to recover from a bitter divorce. That was plenty enough disillusion to go around.

      Yep, there didn’t seem much reason to believe God was up there looking out for him. Not these days. He shook his head. “Gran, I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that and head home.”

      “You and that surly disposition of yours. You had better shape up. You never know when your future wife will come along and you go and scare her off. Why, you could meet her on the street tonight.”

      “Sure, she could fall from the sky like manna from heaven.” He did his best not too sound too cynical. His grandmother was a firm believer. He didn’t want to mar that for her. He wished he had her strength of faith—a strength she maintained despite all her life’s hardships.

      He ended the call and grumbled because his cell phone had run out of juice. He wove around another pair of women dressed up in what they thought was Alaska garb, who probably had bought their pricey outfits in some fancy boutique in Beverly Hills. Ridiculous. Thoroughly disgruntled, he hopped into his four-wheel-drive. He pulled his black SUV away from the curb and had to wait for someone in a Porsche—what were people thinking?—to squeeze into a space between a tractor and an ancient pickup, before he could motor away from the madness.

      On the outskirts of town, he breathed a pent-up sigh of relief. He hadn’t dealt with traffic congestion since he’d been commuting across Seattle’s Evergreen Bridge twice a day.

      His hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel, a bead of sweat trickled down the back of his neck. By СКАЧАТЬ