“Thanks,” Silas said.
Troy Corbett was the chief of police, the only paid police officer in Paradise. If the bears grew much bolder, they might have to consider calling in federal wildlife officers to trap them for relocation.
Silas hoped the animals would move off on their own. Relocation was stressful for them, and they often came back anyway, sometimes covering hundreds of miles to return to their own territory. For now, he twisted his neck to watch out the back window as the trio picked up their pace. They crossed Blue Crescent at a trot and loped off into the bush. By the time Troy arrived, there’d likely be no sign of them.
Mia was watching out the back window as well. “I almost forgot about them.”
“There are always a few around, but these ones might turn into a problem.”
She turned and settled into her seat, looking impressively calm and composed given their brief scare. “I’m guessing we’re going to the WSA office?”
“There’ll be a lull in traffic for the next few hours. Shannon will head home and come back later.”
“Thanks for doing this,” she said.
His chest grew warm. Clearly, he was a sucker for her gratitude. “Have you been studying?”
“Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo.” She recited the opening of the phonetic alphabet.
He smiled and nodded his approval as he started the truck. “Q?”
“Quebec.”
“T”
“Tango.”
He backed onto the street and turned north. “H?”
“Hotel.”
“Z?”
“Zulu.”
“You memorized the whole thing.”
“I did.”
“That was fast.” He was impressed.
“Plus, I’ve downloaded the meteorology documents.”
“I’ll show you the aviation weather screen. We can’t give official briefings, but it helps to be able to interpret what’s coming.”
He wanted to ask her about Zeke and Breena and the laptop again, but he didn’t want to break the mood. And they were none of his business anyway. So, he focused on the drive, grateful for clear weather and calm winds, hoping they’d hold for a few days to come.
As Silas had hoped, the only trucks in the parking lot belonged to the pilots who were out flying and Cobra who would be working in the hangar. The office would be deserted now, and he could give Mia an initial tour of the radio room.
He parked close to the front door and they headed inside, straight to the radio room in the back. It was small and cramped with overloaded shelving along two of the walls. A wheeled chair sat at a small desk with two side tables, each at an angle to form a console.
“Have a seat.” Silas pulled out the chair and got out of her way.
“Cozy,” she said as she sat down.
“True. But it does stay warm in here through the winter.” He rested his hands on the back of the chair and leaned down. “Radio is in the middle. This is the microphone; push to talk. You can set the radio frequency to anything with the dial. For example, Fairbanks approach and departure is 118.3. But you’ll only need to use 120.1. That’s WSA’s private frequency. All the pilots will be on it.”
As he rattled off the information, he could smell her shampoo. It was incredibly distracting. The scent took him back to their night together, and he had to fight the urge to close his hands over her shoulders. The lace on her shirt was sexy where it decorated her chest. It wasn’t at all revealing, but he could imagine cleavage . . . and a whole lot more.
“What information do they need from me?” she asked, interrupting his fantasy.
“Let’s start with the tracking screen.” He pointed to the biggest computer screen on the left-hand table. “You can monitor the whole fleet from here, everyone who’s out with their locator on. Each of those little plane shapes has a corresponding alphanumeric locator. It’s their registration and call sign. For private company calls on the radio, you can abbreviate it, but it shows in full on the tracking screen.”
“So, there’s a plane here now?” She pointed to Viking Mine.
“Yes. That’s T and T-Two in one of the otters. These dots and the line show their path while they were flying out. When they come back, you can watch where they are along the way.”
“So, if anything bad happens?” She turned, and they were face to face. “Like when Hailey crashed.”
“Landed,” he corrected.
“Landed. This is how you knew where she was?”
“That’s right. Shannon had her on the screen and talked to her on the radio until we lost the signal behind the mountains. It gave us as much information as possible to find her.”
Concern crossed through Mia’s eyes, making her look sexier still. “That must have been scary for her, for all of you.”
“It was.” Silas hoped it was a long time before they had an incident like that again.
The emotion he felt that night came back for a moment, then it somehow blended with his attraction to Mia. An urgency surged inside him, a swell of desire had him wanting to hold her all over again, kiss her and—
“I can see where you’d have to keep your cool,” she said.
He sure wasn’t keeping his cool right now. His hands moved to her shoulders, feeling the heat of her skin through the thin fabric.
She closed her eyes, her head canting ever so slightly to one side.
Danger flashed in his mind, but the image of Mia was clearer: her eyes, her neck, her lips.
The outer door banged shut.
“Silas?” Cobra called.
Mia’s eyes popped open in alarm.
“You here?” Cobra asked.
Silas let go of Mia’s shoulders and moved swiftly through to the lunchroom. “Here in back.”
Luckily, she didn’t follow. Silas didn’t know how he would have explained her if she had. He didn’t want to advertise the fact that he was showing her the radio, but he didn’t want Cobra to get the wrong idea about the two of them—or what was the right idea, if Silas was being honest with himself.
“Glad somebody’s here,” Cobra said. “Can you give me a hand with a cowling? I can’t keep it in place without someone to balance the other end.”
“Sure,” Silas said, since there was nothing else he could say. He abandoned Mia and followed Cobra into the hangar.
* * *
* * *
After Silas left, Mia had found an instruction booklet for the MX-2000 radio and read it through. She was afraid to touch the tracking station, but the aviation weather application on the opposite table seemed to be running on a standard computer. So she entered the make and model of the tracking station and found a wealth of information from online sources.
The printer was easy to find, and by the time Silas came back, she had a stack of papers stuffed in her tote bag and a thousand questions for him.
“Sorry I had to leave.” He seemed to expect her to be annoyed.
She wasn’t annoyed. She was jazzed. “So, the signals use twenty-four satellites?”
“The . . . what?” He looked confused.
“I’ve been reading up on the GPS system.” She patted her tote bag. “There’s lots more to study, but I was wondering if you ever used the three-dimensional view. I couldn’t think of a practical application in this case, but it would be exciting if you did.”
“Mia?” Silas glanced around the room, suddenly looking wary. “What have you been doing?”
“I didn’t touch anything.” She held up her palms to show her innocence. “I wouldn’t touch anything. Well, the printer, but that wasn’t going to screw up any of WSA’s systems. So, you can tell lat and long, altitude, speed and direction all at the same time?”
“Yes.”
“Wow.”
“We should probably get going.�
�
“Sure. Yeah.” Shannon would probably be back soon since she clearly had important work to do here. Mia had read a paper list on the desktop. It showed the planned departure and arrival times for the aircraft that were out in the field. Some would be flying in soon.
She stood up and hiked her bag over her shoulder. “Can you pick up other air traffic?” she asked as they walked through the break room. “It was clear to me that you were set up to see all the WSA flights, but there seemed to be a process for interfacing with general aviation traffic. In bigger centers, it would just clutter up your screen. But up here, I have to think there’s not too many people flying by.”
“Commercial jetliners over the polar route,” Silas said, giving her an odd look. He opened the front door and looked around the parking lot before walking outside.
“I guess there would be some of that.” She hadn’t thought of the polar route. “But they’d be at a way higher altitude.”
“They would. Exactly how much did you read while I was gone?”
“The radio manual. I found it on the shelf.” That was another thing that she’d found interesting. Talking and listening were straightforward, but she had no idea what kinds of information Shannon would share with the pilots or what they shared with her.
“The whole thing?” he asked.
“You were gone for an entire hour.”
“Did you miss me?” His cajoling tone and the twinkle in his eye made her smile.
“I didn’t have time to miss you.”
“Ouch.” He nudged her with his shoulder, pressing against her.
Her mood shifted, her tone going soft and intimate, unable to pretend. “I didn’t think I was allowed to miss you.”
He paused at the door to the parking lot, turning to face her.
She looked at him, desire blooming anew inside her chest. She’d missed him every minute since Wildflower Lake. She’d been holding down her emotions these past days through sheer force of will.
“Tell me you felt it too.” His tone was husky.
She tried to stall, tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. “Felt what?”
He touched the bottom of her chin, his eyes softening. “You know what.”
“Do you want me to say I’m attracted to you? Do I really have to say that after everything we did?” If she could have what she wanted, they’d be together. But reality was still reality.
She didn’t want to sneak around on Raven or compromise Silas’s relationship with Brodie.
“Nothing’s changed,” she forced herself to say.
He slowly dropped his hand to his side. “And here we are.”
“Here we are.”
They gazed at each other for another drawn-out moment.
He wrapped his hand around the back of his neck. “This is tougher than I expected.”
It was tougher than Mia had expected too.
* * *
* * *
Breena showed up at Raven’s that evening, excited to talk about the Paradise matchmaking project.
“It’s too hot to make a big dinner,” Raven said as Mia set three wineglasses out on the counter. “Let’s do some loaded nachos.”
The wine box was all but empty, giving Mia an excuse to open one of the more expensive bottles she’d picked up at the Co-op Grocery. She happily pulled a couple of her purchases out of a lower cupboard.
“Are we going with the good stuff?” Breena asked, coming over to take a look at the labels.
“Best I could find,” Mia said. One was from a vineyard she recognized, although the bottle wasn’t one of their premium labels. With the other, she’d based her decision on region, vintage and price, hoping for the best.
“She’s a culinary princess,” Raven said good-naturedly as she dumped a layer of tortilla chips onto a pan.
“I love drinking wine with culinary princesses,” Breena said. “In fact, I prefer it. What can I do?” she asked Raven.
“Grate the cheese. It’s in the bin in the fridge door.”
Mia twisted the corkscrew. At home, the chef had usually opened the wine. Alastair did it on occasion if it was just the two of them. Mia had tried on her own a few times and broken the corks, but she was mastering new things every day here in Alaska.
She twisted the corkscrew in, and the cork popped out cleanly.
“Grater?” Breena asked.
“Bottom cupboard beside the oven,” Raven answered as she pulled peppers and onions from the crisper drawer.
“This has nice legs,” Mia said, swirling the first glass of wine before inhaling the aroma.
“Speaking of legs, we can’t focus on supermodels,” Breena said. “Most women with your . . . uh, refined lifestyle aren’t going to like Alaska very much.”
“My friends aren’t supermodels,” Mia said. “Okay, some of them are supermodels. But the models are only the public face of a fashion enterprise. Ninety percent of the people are behind the scenes, and they’re mostly the ones I’m friends with. They’re quite down-to-earth.” She took a sip of the Cabernet Sauvignon and was impressed. “Nice. Smooth tannins, robust and fruit forward. Plum, I’d say and cherry, a hint of licorice, low on pepper. This should be good with the nachos.”
Breena laughed at the grandiose description. “So, down-to-earth like you are?”
Raven laughed too. “Let’s hope they’re not all wine snobs.”
“Damn. I still come off as snooty, don’t I? I’ve been trying to work on that.” The wine description had been out of long habit with Alastair.
“You’re getting better,” Raven said. “Maybe don’t describe bottles of wine anymore.”
“I can do that. And I can chop something, maybe the peppers.” Mia stepped up to pitch in.
“I’ve only got one cutting board,” Raven said.
“We’re only teasing you,” Breena said. “And you’re doing great with the wine. Pouring it would be a good next step. I’m thirsty.”
“On it,” Mia said.
“I don’t want you to change too much,” Raven said as she chopped her way through the vegetables.
“We like you the way you are,” Breena said with a teasing grin. “You know, mini loader–driving mishaps aside.”
“I wish I had more useful skills.” Mia sighed as she poured.
“I’m sure you have loads of talents.”
“They don’t appreciate her at Lafayette Fashion, and she’s practically been running the place,” Raven said with a wave of her chopping knife.
“I wouldn’t go that far.” Mia didn’t want to take anything away from Alastair. He’d worked hard right up to the end. Then again, she could be fair to herself too.
She set a glass of wine in front of Raven and one in front of Breena. “I happen to have a good eye for predicting color palettes. You have to look nearly two years ahead to order the fabric, so if you guess wrong, you’re in big, expensive trouble. It’s super competitive, so the weaves and weights, color and patterns are closely guarded secrets. I talk to sources all over the world.”
“You said you travel a lot?” Breena asked.
Mia nodded. “Less so as Alastair’s health went downhill, but I’ve been to six out of seven continents.”
“I’ve only left Alaska six times,” Breena said as she finished grating a block of cheddar.
“Can you do some of the Havarti?” Raven asked Breena. “I never thought about it, but I haven’t left Alaska in years. I haven’t even left Paradise in months. But I might be going to Anchorage soon.”
“You are?” That was news to Mia. “What for?”
“Brodie wants me to fly down for a dinner to seal the road deal with the commissioner.”
Mia’s antenna went up. “With Brodie?”
“Hugh Oberg’s going to be there.”
“Who’s Hugh Ober
g?” Mia asked.
“The owner,” Breena said.
“Hugh owns Galina,” Raven added. “I work for him.”
“Really.” Mia hadn’t given any thought to who owned the company.
“They think I can help schmooze the transportation commissioner and get the road repairs moved up on the agenda.” She gave a wry frown. “I’m supposed to soften the dinner, make it less official and more personal.”
“You’re going to add some beauty and class,” Mia said.
Breena looked surprised by the statement.
Raven laughed as she sprinkled onions and peppers across the layer of chips. “Does that sound at all like me?”
“We’ll put an outfit together. Do a nice makeup job.” Mia moved a little closer to take a critical look. “This is my area of expertise . . . a little something with your hair. Oh, I have exactly the right shoes; not too frou-frou but not too utilitarian.” She glanced at Raven’s hands. “There’s a sign in Yolanda’s salon that says she does manicures.” In fact, Mia had been thinking of getting her own nails done. “I quite desperately need an indulgent girls’ day. We can go in together for a manicure and a trim.”
“Count me in,” Breena said. “Yolanda’s assistant just finished an online facial course. She got one-hundred percent on the final.”
“I don’t need a manicure,” Raven said, gazing at her nails.
“I’m looking at your hands right now,” Mia countered. “I might suck at driving a loader, but I know a bad manicure when I see it.”
“She’s right,” Breena said, bending forward to check out Raven’s nails.
“Fine,” Raven said with resignation. Then she switched on the oven. “Have we got enough cheese?”
“These are going to be awesome,” Breena said, holding up a platter heaped with shredded cheese.
Mia had to agree with that. “It’s been literally years since I had nachos.”
Raven took a sip from her glass of wine. “And I’ve never had wine like this.”
Breena grinned, giving Raven a mock toast before tasting her own wine. “Yum. So, what are you guys thinking for the dating app? How are we going to select our group?”
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