Northern Exposure

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 to go back, but it was too late. She was right there with him, her face lighting up in anticipation, as she waited for him to open the door. No fear. Not even a hint of it. Just wide-eyed curiosity. It genuinely surprised him. She was a New York fashion photographer for God’s sake. He knew native Alaskans, women born and bred to the life here, who would have been fearful, at least cautious, in the same situation.

But not Ms. Wendy, Willa, whatever-her-name-was Walters. Caution was not a part of her makeup. That had been apparent yesterday on the cliff face.

“Are you going out there?”

“Yeah. Stay here, and lock the door after I leave.”

She placed a warm hand on his arm as he turned the lock, and the shock of it sent an odd shiver through him. “Be careful,” she said.

The whole idea of her saying that to him made him smile. It was a slow smile that rolled over his features. He felt it inside, too. It was the damnedest thing, her telling him to be careful.

Their gazes met, and for a few seconds he allowed himself to look at her. It had been a long time since he’d slept with a woman, even longer since he’d had one in his life on a regular basis. He missed it more than he’d let on to himself. He missed it a lot, he realized, his gaze slipping to her mouth, her breasts, those tiny bare feet.

He told himself he wasn’t attracted to her, just her body, her looks. She was a woman, and he was a man in need of a good—

She removed her hand from his arm.

The sordid facts of the incident involving her in New York, described in raunchy detail in the tabloid article, crash landed in his mind. It was all too close to home, and made him remember things he’d tried for the past year to forget.

“Go back to bed,” he said stiffly. Redoubling his grip on the rifle, he eased the front door open and stepped into the night.

Wendy came awake with a start, sitting bolt upright on the sofa bed’s lumpy foam mattress. Bad dream, she realized, and forced herself to draw a calming breath. Nightmare, really—the same one she had over and over about her and Blake and what had happened that night in a Manhattan loft.

Swiveling out of bed, she banished the memory from her mind and wondered if Joe was still outside. The luminous dial of her watch read 3:00 a.m., about an hour from the time he’d left the cabin. She’d waited up for him awhile, curled on the sofa bed, but had fallen asleep. Walking to the window, she looked out. It would be dawn soon. The cloud cover had dissipated, revealing a cobalt blanket of sky peppered with stars.

When she turned toward the hall, pausing in the doorway, she glanced at the stack of skis and snowshoes in the corner of the room by the fireplace and noticed Joe’s rifle wasn’t there. Maybe he was still outside. Maybe he’d found something.

Yesterday, from the moment she’d discovered the caribou and had started tracking it, she could have sworn she wasn’t alone. Someone, not Joe, had been out there with her. She knew it wasn’t Joe because he’d shown her on the map yesterday afternoon the route he’d taken from the station. He’d only intercepted her by chance. She’d covered territory he hadn’t even been in that day, and she’d had company.

The thought of it gave her the creeps.

Shaking it off, she padded down the hallway toward the bathroom and noticed that the door to the bedroom was open. On impulse she moved toward it.

Joe Peterson was a strange animal. He reminded her a little of the rogue bull whose photo she’d been so desperate to shoot yesterday on the rock. He lived out here alone, miles from anywhere and anyone, in a world where he was master. At least, he thought he was. That made everyone else a mere minion, a position with which Wendy was overly familiar and was determined never to assume again.

She’d spent years working with all kinds of people. Except for her bad judgment where Blake was concerned, she considered herself a pretty good judge of character. Something told her there was a good reason for Joe Peterson’s less than friendly behavior toward her. By the end of the evening his cool indifference had turned to outright irritation, and it bothered her that she couldn’t fathom a reason.

Intuition told her he was a man in pain. That alone should have set off a loud warning bell in her thick head. Men in pain were a problem for her. The problem was she couldn’t not help them. Her natural instinct was to nurture, be a helpmate. That’s what had gotten her into trouble with Blake. Over the years being a helpmate had turned into being a doormat.

Never again.

At the door of Joe’s bedroom she stopped, remembering the fleeting moment before he’d gone outside, rifle in hand, recalling the way he’d looked at her mouth, her body, and had made her heartbeat quicken. There was no doubt she was attracted to him, and he to her. She hadn’t bothered fighting it because in the morning someone would take her back to her car and she’d never see him again.

The thought of that wasn’t as soothing as it should have been.