Northern Exposure

A cleansing breath of cool air laced with wet spruce cleared her head. Supper, and the nap, had bolstered her strength. She was still a bit jet-lagged from the long flight west. That, and the fact that there were about sixteen hours of daylight at this latitude this time of year, played havoc with her internal clock.

“Warden,” she said as she moved toward him across the wet deck, thinking it best to keep their communications formal.

He stopped pacing, his back to her, but didn’t respond.

Unfolding a map she’d retrieved from her knapsack, she said, “There’s something I want to ask you.”

He didn’t even acknowledge her with a look when she joined him at the railing. “That buck today, the woodland caribou…”

“Bull,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Caribou males are called bulls in Alaska, not bucks. I thought you would have known that, being a wildlife photographer.”

“I, uh…” He had a way of flustering her with his offhand comments. She was determined not to let him back her down. “The point is…I need to find him again.”

“Why?”

“I told you. For the magazine. My assignment.”

He turned to look at her, crossing his arms over his chest and hiking a hip onto the railing, as if settling in for a friendly chat. His eyes, however, were anything but friendly. “Wilderness Unlimited. So you said.”

She moved closer, spun the map around and spread it across the railing so he could see it. “I left my car here.” She pointed to a spot on the highway, then traced her finger along the route she’d taken into the reserve. “I first saw the bull here, where you—”

“How much experience do you have?”

“What?” She looked up at him.

“With wildlife photography. What other animals have you photographed?”

Besides the menagerie of pets she’d had growing up and her college’s mascot, a Clydesdale, the answer was none. Well, except for some small animals she’d seen earlier today. But she wasn’t about to tell him that. His smug expression and arched brow told her he couldn’t wait to point out her shortcomings.

Blake had been like that. Always making sure she knew she wasn’t good enough, wasn’t experienced enough. At every opportunity, hammering it home that she was nothing without him.

Well, here’s a news flash: Blake was wrong.

It had taken her a long time to see it. Weeks of getting over the shock of what had happened in New York, lying in the dark on the twin bed in her old room in her parents’ house, thinking about her life—what she wanted, what she was, what she could be.

Her new life started now. And she wasn’t going to let any man, particularly one who didn’t even know her, tell her she wasn’t capable of handling it.

“Moose,” she said. The lie came easy. “Deer, wolves, humpback whales, penguins. You name it, I’ve photographed it.”

“Really?” He perked right up, seeming to believe her. She felt good all of a sudden. Better than she had all evening. “Where’d you shoot the penguins? Antarctica?”

She supposed she shouldn’t make up anything that seemed too farfetched. If you’re going to lie, stick as close to the truth as possible. She’d read that once in a detective novel.

“No,” she said. “Right here in Alaska. In the, uh, arctic.”

“No kidding?” Joe smiled, his eyes glittering appreciatively in the last of the light. It was the first smile she’d seen from him, and a little shiver raced through her. Things were back on track.

“Anyway, about that bull…” She pushed the map toward him again.

“You must be pretty famous, then.”

“Who, me? No, not at all. I’m just another photographer.” She pointed to the spot on the map where they’d last seen the bull, but Joe Peterson wasn’t looking at the map. He was looking at her.

“I’ll have to disagree with you, Wendy.” He said her name as if it were a foreign word. “It would take one hell of a photographer, wildlife or otherwise, to shoot pictures of penguins in Alaska.”

Why was he so antagonistic? What did he care if she had or hadn’t photographed—

“Because, Wendy—” there it was again “—there aren’t any penguins in Alaska.”

“There…aren’t?”

“They’re a southern hemisphere species. Any wildlife photographer would know that.” He pushed away from the deck and started back inside.

She followed him. “All right, I lied. So what? I still need to get those photos for the magazine, and to do that I’ll need to find that buck or bull or whatever it is again, or another one like it.”

He marched into the kitchen and started washing their supper dishes as if she wasn’t even there, banging plates around, sloshing water out of the sink.

She muscled in beside him and spread the map out on the dish drainer. “You’re right. I don’t know anything about penguins, okay? But I do know that there are only a handful of woodland caribou in Alaska. They’re rare, elusive, completely unlike the native species that roams the tundra. No one has ever photographed them before.”

“There’s a reason for that,” he said, and plopped the dish he was working on back in the water. “It’s dangerous. The males are rogues. They’re skittish as hell and thrive in cliff settings just like the one you nearly got us both killed on.”

She couldn’t think about that. “I need those pictures. 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.