Northern Exposure

“I guess you’ll just have to trust me, then.”

He struck her as a man who didn’t trust anyone. He liked to be in control, have things his own way. And that was fine with her, because she was leaving.

“I’ll pay you whatever you want to drive me back to my car. It can’t be far from here.”

“It is. You have to backtrack out of the reserve and drive around that mountain range—” he nodded at the snowcapped peaks framed in the window “—before you hit the highway again.”

“I have traveler’s checks and cash.” She hoped he didn’t want too much. All the money she had left in the world was tucked away in the small wallet in her pants.

“Doesn’t matter. My truck’s in the shop. Tomorrow I’ll get someone to drive you. Tonight you’ll stay here.”

“Not a chance.” She grabbed her knapsack off the couch where she’d dropped it, and tried to get by him. “I’ll walk.” She knew she was being ridiculous, but his bossiness irritated her.

She’d spent her whole adult life being cowed by men who ordered her around. Well, one man. But that was over. She was done with being a “yes” girl.

He grabbed her arm as she passed. “This is your first trip to Alaska, isn’t it?”

“Stop manhandling me.” She pulled out of his grasp. “What if it is?”

“For starters, you have no damned idea how dangerous it is right outside that door.” He nodded at where they’d come in. “Weather, bears, other predators—you wouldn’t know what to do if you got into trouble.”

“What makes you so sure?”

He glanced at her outfit, her boots, then swiped the knapsack out of her hand. “It’s new. All of it. You’re green as a stick.”

Add judgmental to his list of character flaws.

She bristled but let his impression of her stand. It wasn’t worth correcting. She’d be gone in the morning. She took a couple of deep breaths and resigned herself to it. “Where would I sleep?”

Their eyes met, and for a millisecond she knew the same thought that flashed across her mind also flashed across his. Now that was scary. At least she had an excuse. He was drop-dead gorgeous, and it had been a long time since she’d been with anyone.

On the other hand, he was exactly the kind of man she swore she’d never get involved with again. But chemistry was a funny thing. It defied logic, ignored rules.

Joe Peterson was a man who lived by rules. His own. But the room they were standing in told her that he occasionally broke them. His eyes told her, too, as he looked her over candidly in, what she knew in her gut was for him, a rare, unguarded moment.

“The sofa makes into a bed,” he said quietly. “There’re clean towels in the bathroom. I’ll get you something dry to wear.”

After they’d both showered and changed, he fixed them a hot supper of leftover chicken, tinned biscuits and homemade gravy. It was good. She was starved and ate two helpings.

Through the entire meal they didn’t talk, but every once in a while she’d glance up and catch him looking at her. She’d gotten that same look a lot lately from strangers. It was as if he knew her but couldn’t place her. It unnerved her and she looked away.

Later he built a fire, and they settled in front of it with steaming cups of tea. Joe paged through an Alaska Department of Fish and Game bulletin, while she stared at the photo on the mantel of the waiflike woman in the black dress.

Wendy suspected that’s whose clothes she was wearing. The arms of the pink sweatshirt were too long for her, the jeans a joke. She had to roll the denim cuffs up six inches so she wouldn’t trip.

She frowned, suddenly recognizing the backdrop in the photo. “That’s Rockefeller Center,” she said without thinking. “A professional shot, too.” Why hadn’t she noticed that before? “What is she, a model?”

Joe looked up, and his face turned to stone.

Definitely sensitive turf. It was the second time her mention of the woman in the photo had angered him. She opted for a swift exit from the subject. “This place is about as far from New York as you can get.”

“That’s the point,” he said, and went back to his reading.

Joe watched Wendy as she slept, curled on the sofa, a pillow tucked under her head. He wondered if her hair was as soft as it looked. The cut was short and tousled, and suited her delicate features. In the firelight it glinted gold.

From this angle she reminded him a little of Cat. Glancing at the photo on the mantel, he allowed himself a rare moment to remember her, what she was like when they were both young.

Wendy stirred, came awake in a slow, sleepy aura that was sexy as hell. Joe felt a tightening in his gut. Maybe Barb, one of his few friends in the department, was right. He needed to get out more.

“What…time is it?” Wendy propped herself up on one elbow and blinked the sleep from her eyes.

“Late. You fell asleep. I’ll get you some sheets for the sofa bed.”

He padded down the hall toward the back bedroom, which was used mostly for storage of department supplies. He flipped on the overhead light and went directly to the closet.

He’d never had an overnight guest at the station before. He grabbed a set of sheets, a couple of blankets, and was ready to switch the light off when he spied a stack of tabloids he’d meant to burn.

Barb brought him all kinds of reading material on her once-a-week trips to the station. He’d told her to stop buying him these trashy newspapers, but she just kept on. Might as well read something fun once in a while, she’d say.

He grabbed the stack to take them out to the fire, and did a double take.

The edition on top was dated three weeks ago. He stared at the photo on the cover. Two men and a woman. The shot barely disguised the fact that they were naked.

He remembered now. He’d read the tabloid article because he recognized the name of one of the men in the picture. Cat had known him, had talked about him. But it wasn’t the man who concerned him, it was the woman.

That’s why she looked so damned familiar!

Joe committed the tabloid headline to memory before carrying the blankets and sheets back down the hall. He paused in the doorway to the front room. His guest was looking at Cat’s photo again. He glared at her back, the headline playing in his mind like a bad record—

New York Fashion Photographer Willa Walters Overexposed in Deadly Sex/Drug scandal.

Chapter 2

If he was cool to her before, he was downright icy now.

Wendy stepped barefoot onto the wet wood deck and closed the French doors behind her. Joe stood with his back to her, gazing out at a late-night sunset whose colors looked as if they’d jumped off an artist’s palette. She was tempted to go back inside and get her camera.

The rain had stopped and the sky was clearing. Dark clouds still thrashed above them but eased into violet tipped with brilliant orange near the horizon. The snowcapped peaks in the distance looked like pink snow cones from a county fair. Wendy had never seen a more beautiful sky in her life.

Or a more tightly wound man.

Aware of her approach, Joe began to pace back and forth along the length of the deck, his hand skimming the railing. He reminded her of a caged predator. A very irritated caged predator. The question on her mind was Why?

He’d dumped the sheets and blankets on the sofa bed, mumbled a good-night, then had retreated outside to the deck, seemingly to watch the sunset. She knew that wasn’t the reason he was out there. He didn’t know her well enough for her to have made him so angry, but apparently she had. Or something had.

At this point she didn’t care. She had her own problems. She had three weeks to get those caribou photographs to the magazine. Three short weeks.

When the senior editor at Wilderness Unlimited, a sorority sister from college, had agreed to Wendy’s proposal, she’d been ecstatic. It was the first break she’d gotten since the incident, since life, as she’d known it, had blown up in her face. She knew it was the only break she was likely to get, and she was determined not to waste it.