Love at First Light (Lost Harbor, Alaska Book 6)

by Jennifer Bernard

  This time the crystal moved the other direction. “That’s a ‘yes.’ I guess you win.”

  He laughed at the sheer absurdity. “You made it move that way so I’d warm up to your crystal.”

  “Then if you don’t accept what it says, let’s take my route.”

  “Just because your crystal agrees with me doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

  She addressed the crystal again. “Should Ethan open his mind a little?”

  The crystal moved in the “yes” direction.

  He shifted closer to her and addressed the crystal himself. His leg brushed against hers, but he didn’t move it. “Should Jessica use her own damn common sense to figure out the best route?”

  The crystal shivered, then swung up and down—“yes.”

  Jessica looked at him strangely. “The crystal only answers to me, you know.”

  “It seemed to answer me just fine. Right answer, too. Thank you, crystal.”

  Her eyebrows drew together, her expression perplexed. Her skin looked so soft in this light. He noticed a spray of freckles across her nose. A curl of hair loose from her baseball cap. How had they gotten so close together? It would be weird if he changed position now, so he didn’t.

  “You’re right, it did answer you. That doesn’t usually happen. Ask it something else,” she demanded.

  “This is silly.”

  “Please. Something we both agree on. Let’s see what it says.”

  “It doesn’t say any—oh fine.” He spoke to the sparkling crystal again. It was pretty, if nothing else. “Should we go to sleep early tonight?” That was already the plan they’d agreed to.

  But the crystal swung the other direction—“no.”

  They exchanged a glance. “Maybe we should reconsider,” Jessica said. “Or maybe it’s confused because you’re the one asking.”

  “Or it might be just a rock.”

  “Ask it something else. Something completely out of the blue. Something that we haven’t discussed at all.”

  “Okay.” He cast around for the strangest thing he could think of. Nothing came to mind.

  “Something completely random right off the top of your head!” she urged.

  Various possibilities flitted through his brain. He stared at the crystal, feeling almost hypnotized.

  “Come on! Whatever you’re thinking, right now,” said Jessica. “Just say it!”

  Words blurted from him before he could stop them. “Should we kiss?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jessica felt her face flame. She’d just been thinking about what it would be like to kiss Ethan. He just looked so…yummy sitting on the log next to her, firelight playing across his face. Sure, he was laughing at her crystal—usually a black mark against a guy—but her crystal seemed to like him.

  And now it was swinging strongly in the “yes” direction to his question about kissing. She quickly dropped it into its bag and yanked the drawstring closed. “That’s enough of that.”

  But Ethan wasn’t so quick to dismiss it this time. “You really need to respect your crystal more,” he teased.

  “Of course I respect my crystal. That doesn’t mean I do everything it says. It might just be picking up on—“ She broke off abruptly.

  “Hmm, picking up on what? The fact that you want to kiss me?” His hazel eyes danced with amusement, but they held more than laughter. There was heat there too, and behind that, seriousness.

  “You’re the one who asked the question. Maybe you’re the one who wants to kiss.”

  The space between them flared with awareness. Her throat went tight. She swallowed hard. He lowered his head toward her, a slow journey that gave her plenty of time to move away, or object.

  She did neither.

  “Maybe I do,” he said in a gruff voice. Maybe the same tightening thing was happening to his throat as to hers.

  As he came closer, his clean scent enveloped her. Her eyelids fluttered, always a sure sign that she desired someone. Her lips parted on their own as her eyes dropped to his mouth. His firm lips curved in a slight smile. Light stubble darkened his jaw. There was a groove to the left of his mouth but not the right.

  And then he was too close to examine and she lifted her eyes just as his mouth claimed hers.

  They stepped into the kiss as if they were jumping into a summer lake together. His lips were warm and steady, brushing fire against her sensitive flesh. Tingles flickered across her nerve endings and she opened her mouth for more. His hand moved to the back of her head to bring her closer.

  Oh yes. More of that.

  She made a sound deep in her throat and turned fully toward him. He deepened the kiss, finding the tender inner skin of her mouth and setting it aflame. One of his hands still held her head, and the other came around her back. Her body relaxed in his hold as if turning liquid under his touch. Heat expanded from her lower belly all the way to her fingertips. She wanted to meld her body with his, climb into his lap and claw his jacket out of the way.

  A fly bumped against her cheek and she waved it away. Even so, it broke the moment. Ethan relaxed his hold and gently drew his mouth away from hers.

  She blinked at him in shock. She and Ethan had kissed. Not just a casual kiss either. A real kiss. One that reached right into her heart and planted a seed. She didn’t want it to stop. She wanted to keep kissing him all night. She wanted to lose herself in his warmth and strength.

  Disoriented, she touched her lips, which felt plumper than normal. Swollen and sexy.

  “Jessica.”

  “Yes.” She swung her head to meet his serious gaze.

  “That was quite a kiss.”

  “I noticed.”

  “I’d like to do that again sometime. Like, soon.”

  Heat rolled across her face. Was this actually happening? Was her attraction to Ethan being brought into the light and turned into something real? They were so different, her and Ethan. She was head-in-the-clouds. He was boots-on-the-ground.

  And yet…that kiss.

  She ran her tongue across her lips, still tasting him.

  “But we should probably talk first,” he continued in a sober tone.

  Right. Words. Not sensations. Not feelings. Not images. Verbal communication. “About your breakup?”

  “No, it’s more than that.” He swiped the back of his hand across his forehead, where a mosquito had landed. “There’s a thing I need to say to anyone I get involved with.”

  Her stomach tightened. Whatever this “thing” was, she knew already that she wasn’t going to like it. The tone of his voice told her that. “It was just a kiss. We really don’t have to overthink it.”

  He cracked his neck to relieve some tension. Wow, he really did look uncomfortable. “You’re right. We can leave it at that if you want.”

  She scrubbed her hands down her thighs. That wasn’t what she wanted at all. She’d rather kiss him again and again, then maybe get naked and kiss some more. “Go ahead, say your thing. Even if we don’t go any further, I’d like to know what it is.”

  “Okay.” He cleared his throat. “I made a mistake getting engaged to Charley.”

  That was the thing? She’d sensed all along that there was something off with his engagement. “Because you broke up?”

  “No. Because I never intended to get engaged to anyone. I don’t intend to have children. I don’t believe that I have a future.”

  Puzzled, she waved away another insect. “No future? At all? I don’t understand.”

  He shifted on the log and stretched out his leg. And then it clicked.

  “Because of your cancer. But didn’t you say it’s gone now?”

  “Yes, I hope it’s gone for good. I believe it is. I’m down to yearly biopsies now. But I’ll always have a chance of recurrence. I’ll always have some pain. I may develop other problems. I don’t know if I can have children. It’s too much to ask of someone.”

  She picked up a willow branch and poked at an ember that had escaped the campfire.
She didn’t have an easy response to his confession, but her heart ached for him.

  They sat in silence for a moment, both of them watching the flicker and glow of the fire.

  When he spoke again, his tone was lighter. “Besides, more things than cancer have tried to kill me. I’ve nearly died a few times in my life. I told you about the most recent.”

  “The one that left you with a better sense of smell?”

  “Yes. It also caused me to make a mistake and propose to Charley. That was something I swore I’d never do. And obviously, it didn’t end well.”

  A bird flapped overhead, something with long wings that passed too fast for her to identify. Possibly an eagle returning to its aerie for the night. A chill tickled her back—a sad sensation.

  “So you believe that because you’ve had all these experiences that you’re going to die young?”

  “You can only dodge it so many times.” He gave a jaunty shrug, making a joke out of it.

  Some joke.

  “We’re all going to die,” she pointed out.

  “True. But it’s generally a pretty abstract concept. It’s something out there,” he waved his hand at the forest that marched in dark stands toward the lake. “Something you don’t have to think about much. I’ve had to think about it a few times now. Death has its eye on me.”

  “Okay, but even if that’s true… Why don’t you think of it the opposite way? You’re hard to catch. You’re a champion when it comes to evading the Grim Reaper.”

  He chuckled and rested his elbows on his knees. “Maybe you’re right. I could think of it that way. But it doesn’t matter how I think of it. I don’t want someone else—a woman or a child—to suffer because of me. What if I don’t escape the next time? I decided early on that it wouldn’t be fair to have a family.”

  With her stick, Jessica traced a pattern in the cinders in the campfire. What a momentous decision to have to make at a young age. “It’s perfectly fine not to want a family. I know others who don’t.”

  “I know. But thank you,” he added.

  “How old were you when you decided that?”

  “I don’t really remember. I’ve always thought that way. I’ve never really questioned it—except when I proposed to Charley, and I was under the influence of who-knows-what when that happened.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “So was it a conscious decision or more of a life-just-keeps-happening decision?”

  “Excuse me?”

  She laughed at his confusion. “Since decisions are so hard for me, I’ve thought about this a lot. It seems to me that some decisions happen without really thinking. Like me and the bakery. I never chose to run it forever. But here I am. It’s the difference between conscious and unconscious decisions.”

  He gave her an arrested look. “Interesting. Very perceptive.”

  With a flush, she turned back to the fire. “Thanks. And thanks for telling me about all that.”

  “Moving on to you…would you still want to kiss me again? Knowing that?”

  She concentrated on the ashes she was stirring. Embers leaped into the air in bright arcs, then sputtered out.

  Probably exactly what was happening to this fragile thing between them.

  “You probably assume that I do want a family,” she said softly.

  “Do you?”

  “Do you want my honest complete answer?”

  “Yes.” He tilted his head toward her. She read genuine interest on his face, something she didn’t see very often on the dates she’d been on.

  “Out of all my friends, I’ve always been Team Romance. I assumed I’d find a good man and get married. I want that—I want someone to love me, someone to go through life with. Someone to snuggle with, laugh with, fight with. All of that. You know. A soul mate. But someone like that hasn’t appeared.”

  “Maybe that’s your problem.” He rubbed his right leg, which was stretched out nearly to the fire. She wondered if it was still paining him.

  “What is?”

  “Believing there’s such a thing as a soul mate.” His dry tone would have offended her if it wasn’t also gentle.

  “Maybe. My friends say that too,” she admitted. “They think I should just let it go and be more practical. But I’m an optimist so I keep hoping.”

  And hoping. And dating. And getting disappointed. But she didn’t have to detail all that to Ethan. He was just the newest non-soul mate to cross her path.

  “What is a soul mate?” he was asking. “How would you know if you met one?”

  “How would I know?” She stared at him in disbelief. How could he not understand such a simple concept? “We would just…fit. We’d understand each other. We’d want the same things. I’d sense it.”

  “Got it. Intuition.”

  “Don’t knock it, city boy. Especially out here.” She tugged her jacket around her and shivered. “Intuition could save your life.”

  “As could common sense,” he pointed out. Which left them right where they’d started—at opposite ends of everything.

  It was getting late; the sun was only visible in flashes behind the very tops of the trees on the slope to the west. It was probably about ten by now, judging by the degree of light remaining in the sky.

  “Well, now that we’ve confessed our deep dark secrets, should we hit the hay?” she said lightly.

  “Oh honey.” His voice rumbled across her nerve endings in the most delicious way. “I have more deep dark secrets where those came from.”

  She shivered lightly. “How do you know I don’t too?”

  “With that angelic face of yours? I assume you do. It’s always the innocent-looking ones who turn out to be trouble.”

  She laughed at that. “You should talk to my friends. They would tell you how right you are.” She got to her feet and collected their sandwich wrappers and the instant soup package, then dropped them in the fire. “Common sense says that we should rinse our mugs out in the lake. Any little scrap of food smell could draw a bear.”

  He rose instantly to his feet. “I’ll do that.”

  “Aw, you’re offering to wash dishes? What a man.” She meant that with all sincerity.

  “Somehow it feels more manly when it involves bears.”

  “Hopefully it won’t involve bears. That’s kind of the whole point.”

  He gathered up their two stainless steel travel mugs and trekked them down to the shoreline.

  As soon as he was gone, she gave in to the sadness that had gathered in her heart while he’d told her his “thing.” Just as she’d suspected, Ethan wasn’t for her. She couldn’t be with someone who didn’t want to think about a future. That sounded terrible. It was guaranteed to end in a broken heart. Hers, specifically. She didn’t have the ability to be involved without putting her whole self into it. That was why she was Team Romance.

  Toni always told her she should stop looking for someone who fit her perfectly because no one like that existed. Kate maintained she should just have fun and not worry about things like soul mates. Easy for her to say, now that she was in love with the Hottie Fire Chief.

  Maya was the only one who didn’t lecture her about holding out for a soul mate; probably because she knew it was pointless. Maya knew she was a hopeless romantic and didn’t judge her for it. All she said was, “Honestly, I don’t think you have it in you to hook up. That’s not how you’re built. Why lie to yourself?”

  But how would she know if she didn’t try it?

  Maybe Kate and Toni—who were both Team Sex—were right. Maybe she was going about this the wrong way.

  Maybe being with someone like Ethan would be a good way to step out of her comfort zone. She wouldn’t be tempted to figure out if he was her soul mate because he couldn’t possibly be, despite their sparks.

  As she kicked cinders into the fire, she surreptitiously watched Ethan down by the shore. He squatted next to the rippling water, all lean lines and wide shoulders. It must have taken so much work and dedication to come back from
his surgeries. That was impressive. She’d done physical therapy once for a sprained ankle; after two weeks she’d been bored out her mind. But Ethan had kept at it and now you’d hardly know there was anything different about that leg.

  And if you thought about it, his decision not to have a family could be seen as thoughtful. He didn’t want to bring anyone else into his doomed circle.

  Under his jaded surface, he had deeper layers than she would have expected.

  But that didn’t mean she should get involved with him. In fact, she was almost a hundred percent sure she shouldn’t. Even if it was just for a few days, he had the ability to throw her heart into chaos. If that one kiss had such an impact on her, what would sex do?

  Don’t think about sex with Ethan.

  Too late. Images were already flipping through her head. Bare skin, straining muscles, thrusting hips, hazel eyes drilling into hers.

  She shook it off. They were sharing a tent tonight—though in separate sleeping bags—and she didn’t need to be teasing herself with something that would never happen. Team Sex, she was not and never wanted to be. She never had sex with anyone unless she thought they had a chance at forever.

  And how has that worked so far?

  Not well, okay? I’ve been wrong every single time. Get off my back.

  Too bad there wasn’t a bird nearby with whom she could talk this over. Never a goose around when you needed one. The flies weren’t at all a good substitute; they simply didn’t know how to listen.

  By the time she and Ethan had finished cleaning up the campsite and tucked themselves into their ten-below-zero sleeping bags, her decision was made.

  “I can’t, Ethan,” she whispered as they both stared up at the roof of her little tent. “We’re just too different. I’m not built for hook-ups. I wish I could. But I can’t.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was for the best. Ethan knew that. Literally two days after his engagement had ended, he had no business getting involved with someone else.

  And he and Jessica had no business being together anyway.

  Well, they had business. Investigative business. Best to keep it that way.