Match Made In Paradise

by Barbara Dunlop

  With no luck in the yard, she walked the long driveway to the road. But couldn’t get a signal there either.

  By the middle of the afternoon, boredom set in. Since she hadn’t had any exercise in two days, she decided a run into town would kill two birds. She’d get in some cardio and find herself a cell signal. Maybe she’d stop at the Bear and Bar and see about a data package too. It would be good to check her email—her private email, not the corporate account the spammers had found and filled with hate mail. And she wasn’t going anywhere near her social media accounts until she got the all-clear. Marnie had arranged for a security firm to monitor those and forward anything that seemed personal.

  Mind made up, Mia twisted her hair into a quick French braid and pulled out her running shoes. She’d already discovered Raven’s cabin door didn’t have a lock. She supposed there wasn’t anything here worth stealing, although Raven seemed to think the entire town was trustworthy anyway. Mia supposed if everybody knew everybody else, you couldn’t exactly fence your stolen goods.

  She started at an easy pace down the driveway, avoiding the tire ruts, potholes and tree roots but appreciating the shade from the overhanging limbs. When she got to the road, she discovered the packed dirt at the edge made a nice spongy running surface. She still had to watch her footing, but her idea was turning out rather well.

  Fifteen minutes in, after crossing the Paradise River bridge, she checked her phone and found a single bar. She was ridiculously thrilled by the first sign of civilization. By the time she got to town, she’d probably have two bars, maybe three. She could call Marnie and check in. It had only been a day, but Marnie was trying to nail down a court date. The date would tell Mia how long she’d be stuck in Alaska.

  Not that she hated Alaska so far. Mostly, it seemed peculiarly idiosyncratic, and so slow-paced it was like beaming back in time. She’d been running for nearly half an hour and not a single vehicle had passed.

  No sooner had the thought surfaced than she heard an engine. She smiled to herself. Speak of the devil. She hoped the vehicle didn’t kick up too much dust. She’d been enjoying the sensation of drawing the pure air into her lungs. If she could package that and take it back to LA, she’d make a fortune.

  The truck slowed as it approached; very considerate. It was a blue pickup, and she wondered if anyone drove anything besides pickup trucks around here. She hadn’t seen much of the town yesterday, but she didn’t recall any cars, just trucks and a couple of older SUVs.

  The truck rolled to a stop and she recognized Silas in the driver’s seat.

  He unrolled his window. “You headed for town?”

  She nodded.

  “You need a ride?”

  Mia began jogging in place to stay warm. “No, thanks.”

  “You’re exercising?”

  “A run into town.”

  He looked up and down the road. “Raven know you’re doing this?”

  Mia shook her head. Why would Raven care if she went for a run?

  He looked her over. “You have bear spray on you?”

  Raven had a shelf full of various bug repellants but nothing that mentioned bears. Was Silas messing with her?

  “Is that a joke?” Mia asked.

  He put the truck in park and opened the door.

  “Are you mocking me again?” she asked.

  “I’m not mocking you.” He got out and reached into the truck box, pulling out a black utility belt. “You can borrow mine.” He marched toward her.

  “What are you doing?” She took a step backward as he advanced. She wasn’t afraid of him this time, but he sure had a way of acting suspicious.

  “Lending you some bear spray.”

  Looking closer, she could see a canister dangling from the belt.

  “That’s really a thing?” she asked.

  He stopped in front of her. “It’s really a thing.”

  “I don’t . . . what?” She stiffened as he reached around her waist to loop the belt.

  He was tall.

  She was nearly as tall as most men, a few inches taller than Alastair, but she wasn’t anywhere near Silas’s height.

  He was broad too, big shoulders, sinewy arms, wide chest, woodsy scent, and oh, what a handsome face.

  She thought again that he’d make a good outdoors model.

  He snugged the belt with a tug, one hand bracing her hip while the other fastened the catch. Her exercise pants and top were thin, and his hands were warm where they touched her.

  His breath puffed her forehead, calling attention to his lips. They were full, balanced, soft-looking, slightly parted.

  She thought about kissing him and felt dormant emotions surge up inside. She hadn’t kissed a man since Alastair, had barely kissed Alastair in many, many months. His heart condition had made lovemaking impossible, so it had been years since they’d been intimate, years where she was more a caretaker than a wife. Years where she’d repressed her sexuality in favor of work and caregiving.

  And now it was back, all at once, all in a rush.

  “I’ll show you how,” Silas said.

  Her passion surged, ready for anything.

  But he pulled a flap on the belt, and the sound of the Velcro strip cut through the air. Then he tugged the canister free. “You pull back the orange tab,” he said, demonstrating the motion with his thumb.

  Mia blinked, bringing herself sharply back to reality, struggling to suppress her embarrassing hormonal reaction to a healthy male standing way too close.

  “That’s the trigger guard. The nozzle is this little white square here. Point it away from you. Are you looking?”

  She wasn’t. “Yes.” She focused her attention.

  “You have to wait until the bear gets really close. I mean really close, like under ten feet.”

  “Do they”—she swallowed, thinking about it—“get that close?”

  “They can. If they’re mad, or if you startle them. That’s when they’re a problem. Some of the spray might blow back. It usually does, and it’ll sting your eyes, so don’t let that rattle you.”

  “You’re serious,” she said.

  He looked and sounded deadly serious, the same way he had giving the safety briefing on the airplane yesterday.

  “You think pepper spray is a joke?” He was clearly aggravated by her question.

  “No. I mean, I’d never heard of it before. I thought you might be messing with me. You know, new kid in town and all that.”

  “I’m not going to joke about bear safety, Mia.”

  “Clearly.”

  He heaved a sigh of obvious frustration. “Point it away from you.” He demonstrated. “With the orange trigger guard removed, hold it at arm’s length, wait until the last possible second and only if you’re being seriously charged, then spray it in the bear’s face. Got it?”

  “Got it.” She understood the concept, but it was hard to imagine a bear out here on the road; harder still to imagine one charging her.

  “Good.” He wiggled the canister back into the holder and refastened the Velcro strap.

  “You can keep this. I’ve got others.” He was still close, still handsome, still powerful and sexy.

  “Thanks.” She wanted him to kiss her . . . or something. She wanted him to at least look like he wanted to kiss her.

  “Catch you later,” he said instead, turning away.

  His truck was still running. He took one step, then two, then three and four.

  She glanced around at the thick bush, realizing that when he drove away it was going to be completely silent and completely empty all around her. She hadn’t been nervous until now, because she’d thought of the forest as a great big park.

  It didn’t look like a park anymore.

  He put his hand on the driver’s door, and she took a couple of quick steps his way. “Uh,
Silas?”

  He looked over his shoulder.

  She paced quickly toward him. “I was wondering . . .”

  “You want to catch a lift into town?”

  She gave a rapid nod.

  To his credit he didn’t grin or roll his eyes or otherwise mock her fear. Instead, he came her way and reached for the belt at her waist.

  A vivid kiss fantasy bloomed in her mind again, and she tipped her chin ever so slightly his way.

  “Can’t take this inside a cab,” he said, unfastening the black belt. “If the spray accidentally deploys, it’ll blind the driver. We’d crash.”

  She pressed her lips together, struggling once again with the embarrassing rush of longing that heated every corner of her body.

  Silas was all business, while she was melting into a pool of sexual desire.

  * * *

  * * *

  Mia was hot with a capital H. She was also big-eyed, charming and disarmingly vulnerable.

  Vulnerable women irritated Silas.

  Oh, it might be sexy in a midnight fantasy kind of way. But in the real world, vulnerable women were usually weak women and often manipulative women, all sweet, simpering helplessness that cut a man to the core.

  He’d known some of them well, met others in passing. He knew the drill.

  It didn’t mean he wanted Mia to get mauled by a bear. Odds were, she’d have been fine jogging her way into town. But Paradise was bear country, grizzly country and at a high enough altitude to be part of the bears’ summer range.

  “Where do you want me to drop you?” he asked as they entered the north end of Paradise. He was due to take off on a flight to Viking Mine in thirty minutes. He could still make it on time, if barely.

  “I don’t know,” she peered around at the buildings on Main Street: businesses like Bill’s Hardware, the Butterfly Boutique, Caldwell Corner Gas and Repair Shop, and the Co-op Grocery Store. There were private homes at the north end of town and more at the south end of Main near the river. It was prettier over there, with the white water rushing past and a clear view out everyone’s door of the glacier peaks.

  West down Red Avenue was Silas’s place in WSA staff housing, which was made up of modular units with the basics: single beds, desks and compact bathrooms. On the opposite side of Red Avenue, Galina Expediting had taken over an old army bunkhouse. It was dormitory-style accommodations, with bathroom facilities at the end of the hall. The guys living there shared the WSA cafeteria and lounge. On the east side of town was Blue Crescent leading to the WSA warehouse and depot. Besides the medical clinic, the Baptist Church and the school, that was about it for Paradise.

  “Raven mentioned the Bear and Bar,” Mia said. “You could drop me there.”

  “How are you planning to get home?” Silas couldn’t help her with that. He’d be at the Viking Mine until later in the evening.

  Mia pulled out her phone. “I’ll call Raven and see when she’s ready. I’ve got three bars now.”

  “Raven’s cabin is in a dead spot.” Silas brought the truck to a stop beside a section of raised wooden sidewalk. If it were him, he’d have put in a signal booster by now. Then again, if it were him, he wouldn’t be fixing his leaking roof with a bucket either.

  Maybe once he and Brodie fixed the roof, they could talk to Raven about upgrading her Wi-Fi. For safety alone it would be a good idea.

  “She said something about the cache,” Mia said. “That she could get one bar up in the cache if she needed to make a call. I tried before I left, but I couldn’t get a signal anywhere.”

  “You climbed the cottonwood tree?”

  “Climbed?” Clearly, she hadn’t.

  “It’s the old food cache from when Hugh Oberg first built the place. It’s up in a tree to keep the bears away. There are wooden rungs nailed to the trunk. If you ever need to get up there, a trapdoor pushes open from underneath the floor.”

  She was staring at him like he was explaining cutting edge theoretical propulsion systems. “A tree?”

  “It gets you up high enough for the signal.”

  “I’m not climbing a tree.”

  He couldn’t stop himself from cracking a smile.

  “You’re laughing at me.”

  He was. “You’re funny.”

  She wrenched open the door. “And you’re a jerk.”

  “Yeah, I am.” He knew he was having fun at her expense.

  “Thanks for the ride,” she said tartly, sliding from the high seat onto the sidewalk.

  “You want to take the bear spray?” he asked.

  “I don’t expect to need it. If I do, I’ll buy my own.”

  “Over at Bill’s Hardware,” Silas said as she shut the door behind herself.

  He watched for a minute while she walked toward the front of the Bear and Bar. Two of the Galina warehouse guys were coming out the other way, and they held the door, their gazes glued to her as she smiled her thanks.

  Xavier came out behind them and hailed Silas.

  Silas rolled down the passenger window. “Hey, Xavier.”

  Xavier walked over. “You heading out to the strip?”

  Silas nodded. “Got a Viking run this afternoon.”

  Xavier opened the door and hopped in. “Great. I told Cobra I’d give him a hand.”

  “You planning to become an AME instead of a pilot?”

  Xavier stretched his arm along the back of the seat. “Any reason I can’t be both?”

  “Not a one,” Silas said as he pulled away.

  “She’s a hottie,” Xavier said.

  “She is,” Silas agreed.

  “She’s going to be trouble.”

  Silas thought that might be going too far. “We have women in town all the time.”

  Sure, Mia was more glamorous than most, but that would wear off. He couldn’t see her keeping up that fluffy hair, the perfect makeup and that fashion parade way out here.

  “Dude,” Xavier intoned.

  “What?” Silas upped his speed as they cleared town.

  “We don’t get women like that here.” There was an undercurrent of excitement in Xavier’s voice, and Silas realized he’d misunderstood what Xavier meant by trouble.

  “I’d give her a wide berth,” Silas advised.

  “Why? If she’ll give me the time of day, I’m taking it.”

  “She’s just visiting.” Xavier was a decent guy, but Silas couldn’t see Mia being interested in him—or in anyone else from Paradise, for that matter. The men here were ordinary, hard-working, two-feet-firmly-planted-on-the-ground types.

  Mia was a high-fashion model, and her late husband had been a millionaire industry mogul who probably jetted her off to New York, London and Milan to stay at five-star hotels and attend A-list parties. Paradise had nothing that could compete with that.

  “I’m not planning to marry her,” Xavier said. “Maybe a date.”

  Silas thought Xavier was dreaming in Technicolor. “To the Bear and Bar?”

  “I don’t know. A flight-seeing tour of the Pedestal Glacier? People pay big money for that.”

  “You think Brodie’s going to lend you a plane?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe not. We’re wall to wall.”

  “I suppose,” Xavier said. “I’ll think of something else.”

  It was far too easy for Silas to picture Mia on a flight-seeing tour of the Pedestal Glacier, her bright white smile in awe of the blue fissures at Right Ridge, her gasp of amazement at Briar Falls. The image warmed him, and he didn’t like that, especially since he was picturing himself as the pilot.

  He pressed harder on the accelerator, churning up a spray of gravel behind them.

  * * *

  * * *

  With a phone call from the Bear and Bar, Mia learned Marnie had nothing new to report. No
surprise there. It had barely been a day since Mia left LA. Still, she couldn’t help but be impatient. They hadn’t even set a court date to hear the appeal to the injunction, never mind a court date on the will itself.

  She’d also talked to Raven, who had estimated she’d be finished with work around seven o’clock.

  Mia was surprised by the long workday. She’d been told summer was the high season in Alaska, but thirteen hours? She hoped Raven made a lot of money as Galina Expediting’s operations manager. Although judging by her house, she couldn’t be doing all that well. Who didn’t have proper plumbing in their bathroom?

  Coming up on seven, Mia crossed the noisy crowded Galina parking lot, winding her way through pickups and alongside a red semi truck.

  “Hey, lady!” the driver called out his window, shouting above the rumble of the diesel engine.

  She stopped and looked up. “What?” She’d normally ignore a strange man’s shout, assuming it was a cat-call or a brash proposition. But this guy didn’t sound like he was trying to pick her up.

  “Blind spot,” the scruffy, portly fifty-ish man said with his arm raised in frustration.

  She looked behind herself.

  “You’re in my blind spot. Get out if you don’t want to get run over.”

  “No need to be rude,” she said, but she skittered ahead. She didn’t know what he was on about, but she’d get out of his way to keep him happy.

  He muttered a swear word, and the truck let out a booming hiss and belched some black smoke as a piercing intermittent alarm engaged. The big rig jerked a couple of times on its oversized tires and gradually eased backward.

  “Hard hat! High vis!” the driver called out his window for good measure.

  She wasn’t sure how that was an insult. But it sounded like an insult. She hurried through the big warehouse door and left him and his anger behind.

  “You’re looking for Raven?” A twenty-something man briskly approached her. He was fresh-faced, tall and lanky, and he sounded eagerly friendly.

  That was more like it. “Yes, I am. Thank you.”