by Roxie Noir
Okay, good, she thought.
“Fjords is beautiful,” Nathan said.
Leah turned her head to look at him. Now he was on his elbows on the table, leaning in toward her. His eyes sparkled — no, blazed — with something she couldn’t name but that she found captivating.
“I mean, you’ve seen a lot of the town,” he said, looking down at the table almost shyly and then back up at her. “But in the summer, the bay is beautiful. Across it you can see all these glaciers that come down to the ocean, these gorgeous white ice cliffs.”
He rubbed his hands together and looked at them, thinking.
“You’ve probably seen the huge mountains to the south, right? You can drive across those and get to the national park, and it’s beautiful there, all these majestic fir trees and ice-capped rocks. It really feels like you’re in the middle of something spectacular. And there’s no one around, mostly, not for miles and miles.”
He looked up at her and smiled.
“It’s a wonderful place if you like that sort of thing,” he said.
“I love that sort of thing,” Leah said, nearly mesmerized.
Then Ian cleared his throat, loudly. The sound was nearly a growl, and right away, Leah’s heart skipped a beat.
What are you doing? She scolded herself.
“I can’t wait for us to make a life together here,” she said, and made herself smile up at Ian, putting one hand on his arm.
There was nothing. No sudden zap of electricity, nothing besides lukewarm flesh that barely responded to her touch.
I’ll learn to love him, she thought.
Then, at last, the food came, and everyone ate in silence.
13
Nathan
After the meal, the men both paid for their respective dates and, without much further ado, Ian began leaving.
“I’ll also be taking Emily home if you don’t mind,” he said solemnly to Nathan.
He’d almost forgotten about Leah’s shy younger sister, even though she’d been sitting next to him the entire night. He turned to look at her one more time and was struck yet again by how young she looked.
Almost as young as...
He shook his head quickly. Now wasn’t the time to think of that. He followed Ian and Leah out, Emily next to him, and he could feel his anxiety and desperation rising.
I have to see her again, he thought. I don’t care what I have to do. I have to see her again.
He knew he shouldn’t. He knew he didn’t deserve her and he knew that, come hell or high water, she was marrying Ian in a matter of days, and he was powerless to stop it.
The four walked back to the restaurant’s small lobby, which had two wooden benches, a few chairs, a bunch of ugly stuff on the walls, and both bathrooms.
Ian nodded at the men’s.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, and headed off.
Nathan watched his back as the other man walked away, and he had an idea. A way to see her again, an even riskier idea than this one.
The moment the men’s room door closed behind Ian, Nathan turned to Leah, not caring that Emily was also nearby.
“There’s a place not far outside of town called the Pinnacles,” he said, his voice low enough that the people waiting for a table couldn’t hear him. He took a step toward her, not touching her, but she went wide-eyed. “It’s this outcropping of granite, and it’s an easy hike. It sticks up above everything around it, and from there, you can see everything. The town, the mountains, the glaciers, and most nights it’s dark enough that you can see the Milky Way overhead, even in the summer.”
“The Pinnacles?” Leah said, seeming a little lost at this sudden onslaught.
“In the winter you can see the northern lights but it’s too warm right now,” he said.
He took a deep breath. The men’s room door opened, and for a moment his heart stopped.
A stranger walked out.
“What window is yours?” he asked. “In the house?”
“Top floor, north side,” Leah said, breathlessly. Her eyes darted around to the other people waiting in the Applebee’s lobby.
“Midnight tonight,” Nathan said. “Look out your window. I’ll be there. If you don’t want to come, don’t, but I’ll be there, okay?”
Leah had turned bright pink, and she just barely nodded.
“I know this is stupid and dangerous, but I can’t just let this be,” Nathan said, his voice barely above a whisper. His hands were jammed in his pockets out of fear of what they might do — he wanted to take her face in his hands, tilt it up and kiss her long and hard.
If he let himself, he might just take her right there in the middle of Applebee’s, make her scream his name over and over —
“Okay,” she whispered.
Then the bathroom door opened again and Ian walked out. Both Leah’s and Nathan’s heads snapped around, and Nathan instinctually took a step backward.
Ian frowned, as if he knew something had been going on. But they hadn’t been touching, thank god, and there was nothing he could really say. Even if she was his fiancée, she could talk to another man in public, with her little sister right there.
“Shall we go home?” Ian asked, his tone still oddly stiff and formal.
Leah nodded, her color quickly returning to her usual pale.
“It was nice to see you again,” she said, nodding her head forward.
“I had a very nice time tonight,” Emily said, her small hand reaching out and touching Nathan on the shoulder. “Thank you for dinner.”
“You’re welcome,” Nathan said.
Then he watched the three of them leave through the double doors, still standing in the lobby of Applebee’s. After a long moment, long enough for them to get to Ian’s car without feeling like he was following them, he strode out into the cool air of the parking lot and hopped onto his bike.
It wasn’t even eight in the evening. He had to find something to do for four hours.
He ended up going home and watching stupid television for most of that time. He’d tried driving around some, but out of habit he kept steering himself toward Seward and the women fresh off the cruise ships, only to remember that there was nothing for him down there anymore.
Television, at least, provided some measure of distraction. There was a game show and then news before a long, tedious police procedural. They caught the bad guy and then, at last, it was eleven, late enough to head to Leah’s.
Anticipation hummed through Nathan’s veins as he walked to his motorcycle, bringing along an extra helmet. All at once he was excited and terrified: he’d get to see her again, alone for the first time, just the two of them.
On the other hand, he might get caught by her father or one of her brothers. Someone might see them.
Worst of all, she might not come out. She was promised to someone else, and he knew that the Whitehorses were very very traditional.
Maybe Leah was really, truly in love with Ian and just thought Nathan was funny. Maybe she didn’t want to get involved with someone she wasn’t promised to. Maybe that moment in her front yard he’d just been imagining — after all, what had she really said when Nathan spilled his guts to her?
A half mile from her house, he dismounted his motorcycle and left it by the road, in some bushes. Much too late he realized he should have brought the car, since at least that wasn’t loud enough to wake the dead.
Oh well, he thought.
Besides, she’d asked about the bike. He thought he sensed something wild deep down inside Leah. She’d had a circumspect upbringing, it was true, but he had the feeling that once she was out of her father’s house she’d be a real wildcat. The kind of woman who couldn’t be held back from anything.
He didn’t know how he knew that, but he did.
At last, he could see her house from the road. He didn’t want to walk up her driveway, just in case someone else was still awake, so he fought his way through some bushes and vines to get to the field where the big farmhous
e was.
For the first time, he didn’t think about the family he’d frightened out of there, all those years ago.
All he could think of was Leah.
He crept around to the north side of the house, his heart beating nearly out of his chest with excitement. The house was dark, but he couldn’t see the window that Leah had said was hers just yet.
Then, as he rounded the corner, there it was.
Her light was on, though there was a curtain over the window.
Nathan checked his phone to see what time it was. 11:53.
He crouched in the tall grass, just at the edge of the field surrounding the house, and waited.
14
Leah
Leah spent the ride back to the farmhouse feeling awful. Everything felt right and good when Nathan was around, but the moment he left, she felt terrible about him.
Mostly, she felt terrible about how she felt around him. When he was there, nothing else at all mattered, but in his absence, reality came crashing back down around her ears.
She was marrying Ian, not Nathan.
Leah sneaked a quick glance at him. He sat up perfectly straight in the driver’s seat, his hands at nine and three, and he stared straight out the car’s front window without wavering at all. He never even looked over at her, and everyone was silent for the entire ride home.
Even though she didn’t have a very good sense of who Ian was — nothing like the sudden, bone-deep understanding of Nathan — she got the feeling that he preferred to speak rather than be spoken to.
At last, they pulled up in front of the farmhouse, the sky just barely starting to turn a light blue-purple at nine in the evening. They were far enough north that it only got truly dark for an hour or two every night, and even then, the edges of the sky would be light.
Not that Leah had ever been any further south.
Ian got out of the car, and Leah and Emily followed suit.
“Go on inside,” Ian said to Emily. “I’d like to have a word with my future wife.”
Emily nodded once, her big eyes looking over at Leah, who nodded at her.
As she watched her sister go back in the house, Leah felt a twinge of something like fear. Ian was on the small side for a shifter, but that meant he was still six-foot-three, easily, and Leah was nervous about that. She got a strange energy off of him.
Something about him made her nervous, as much as she didn’t like to admit that to herself about her future husband, but she pushed the feeling away and turned to face him.
She even managed to plaster a smile on her face, even though Ian was glowering and serious.
“I won’t have you embarrassing me in public like that,” he said. His voice was low and threatening, and despite herself, Leah shrank away, suddenly afraid that he might get physically violent.
“What do you mean?” she said, trying desperately to play the part of the innocent country girl.
“Letting that man stand up for you like that,” he said. “Throwing yourself at him like you’re some kind of harlot, practically spreading your legs right there at the dinner table and giving him a good, long sniff.”
Leah’s mouth dropped open in shock and rage, and she could feel the heat rush to her face.
“I was not—”
“Let me make myself perfectly clear,” he said, simply talking over her like she didn’t matter. “I will not have that. My wife is to be above reproach. When you speak to other men, you do it demurely. If I say you’ll have a salad, you’ll have a salad. You could stand to lose a couple of pounds.”
Tears of rage sprang to Leah’s eyes, and she turned her head away from Ian.
He put one strong hand on her jaw, grasping it and forcing her to look at him again.
“I am the man of our household,” he told her, his face a hideous snarl. “And you’re to be by my side at all times, not off making a spectacle of yourself. Is that understood?”
Don’t you dare cry, Leah thought to herself, tears wobbling dangerously under her eyelids. Don’t give him that satisfaction.
She nodded once, his fingers still clamped around her jaw.
“Very good,” he said, letting her go and turning toward his car. “I’ll pick you up for the clan barbecue tomorrow at six.”
Leah barely dared to move or breathe for fear that she might do something terrible.
He’s your husband, she told herself, over and over again. He’s your husband and your soulmate and you’re going to learn to love him.
When he had driven down their long driveway and Leah felt like she might have herself under control again at last, she carefully took a deep breath and turned toward the house.
Quickly, the curtains in the living room moved back across the window, but not quite quickly enough.
Her father had just watched the whole thing. Leah steeled herself to walk through the front door, but when she got inside, he was gone.
I’m alone here, she thought to herself, the thought coming as a shock.
My father won’t do anything to defend me. I’m Ian’s now.
She was almost in a daze as she mounted the stairs to her room, telling her sister something about how she was tired from her long day.
Leah didn’t leave her room again that night. She tried to read a book, but kept reading the same paragraph over and over, totally unable to concentrate.
Nathan was coming at midnight.
She didn’t even know what the punishment would be if she was caught sneaking out to see him. It would be bad, that was for sure. Whitehorse women weren’t allowed, under any circumstances, to be alone with adult men who they weren’t related to. Leah had never done that before, but she knew of one or two girls who had. Both had basically been shunned and considered unmarriageable afterwards, forced to either leave everything and everyone they knew to start a new life, or be spinsters.
Leah didn’t want that. She wanted to be married to her soulmate. She wanted kids, a family life.
She just didn’t think that she wanted it with Ian, but that was her only real option. It was Ian or nothing, and she knew it. At thirty-two, there weren’t many people who’d be willing to marry her. They all wanted younger brides, brides who could bear six or eight cubs still.
And yet, Nathan would be there at midnight.
If she got caught, she knew she’d never see him again. It was that simple.
She looked over at a round clock on the wall in the corner of the tiny attic room.
11:55.
Time to decide.
Leah paced back and forth, trying to be as quiet as possible. Emily was sleeping in the room right below, and she didn’t want to wake her little sister.
She knew what she should do. She should turn out the light and get in bed and not even lift the curtain. That way she’d never know whether Nathan was really out there, or what she’d missed. She should behave herself properly, marry Ian, follow his rules, and make herself learn to love him in time.
That was the reasonable, safe plan.
It wasn’t what she wanted though, not even a little.
11:59.
She stood at the window, behind the curtain, her hands shaking.
If anyone catches you, it’s over, she told herself. You’ll be gone so fast that there won’t be anything anyone can do.
But then she thought about the way he looked at her, the way she felt magnetized around him. The way his eyes lit up when he talked about the stars at the Pinnacles.
Leah opened the curtain just a crack, peeking out. She was terrified that he wouldn’t be there, that she’d betrayed her family and her fiancé for nothing.
For a moment she didn’t see anything.
Then, her eyes adjusting to the dark, she saw someone down below wearing a black leather jacket and waving.
Leah’s face broke into a huge grin and she clapped a hand over her mouth to keep herself from laughing
Come down, he mouthed, still waving at her from the ground.
What’s done is
done, Leah thought. She felt free and almost giddy, and she grabbed shoes and a jacket, then padded down the stairs and out the back door as quietly as she could.
The grass was cold and wet under her feet, but nothing had ever felt better or freer.
This is stupid, part of her brain thought as she broke into a run toward Nathan.
I don’t care, the rest of her answered.
15
Nathan
The time between Leah’s face appearing in the window and her coming through the back door was the longest thirty seconds of Nathan’s life, he thought. Even after that smile, he wasn’t totally sure she’d come down — maybe it was a goodbye smile.
Maybe her father would catch her sneaking out. His heart squeezed in his chest.
But then she came out, carefully shutting the screen door behind her as quietly as she could, and she walked and then ran across the field toward him.
Moments later she was in his arms as he scooped her up and spun her around, finally touching her, an electric thrill singing through every nerve. She laughed as he did, her bright red hair flying out behind her.
“Shh,” he said as he put her back on her feet, leaning down toward her.
“We’re far enough away,” she whispered.
Nathan didn’t respond, but he cupped her face gently with one hand, the other still at her waist, and ran the pad of his thumb over her full bottom lip. It was perfectly soft and yielding, and the way she looked at him made his breathing go ragged.
“Now can I kiss you?” he asked.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Nathan bent down and touched his lips to hers, just barely, half afraid of himself. His bear was roaring, wild to rip her dress off and make her his right there, in the wet grass, and damn the consequences, but he resisted.
Leah’s lips were soft and lush and at first Nathan barely brushed them with his own, not wanting to hurt her or rush things. She was perfectly firm, but yielding at the same time, a combination of soft and hard that made him wild inside.