“Yeah, but you missed out on so much.”
“I can’t be sad when I barely remember them. I look at pictures, and it brings up this vague feeling of tenderness, but they don’t seem like real people. More like a movie I’ve seen a long time ago, one I’m sure I liked although I don’t really remember the story.”
Mitchell shook his head. “I can’t imagine. My parents were always there. They’re still there, living in Arlington Heights. A fixture. A huge part of my life, my memories.”
She thought that explained why he was such a conservative guy. “Sometimes I envy people like you, who have that continuity. But even though my parents died when I was very young, it’s okay, because I feel connected in a weird sort of way. I’m like them, Mitchell. I plan to live that kind of life, taking risks, going to exotic places. I’m carrying on the legacy.”
He held her gaze for a long time. “Ally, I have to tell you, sometimes you scare the shit out of me.”
* * *
They’d dressed Mitch’s nude and given her a name worthy of a town called Porcupine. Quillamina Sharp stood on the bar wearing a bar-towel sarong and a tiara made of toothpicks and straws. He should have known that leaving the sculpture at the Top Hat posed certain risks.
The bar was crowded. Glancing around, Mitch was relieved to see Ernie over in a corner with another beer at his elbow. At least the little guy wasn’t out scooping snow and ramming into parked cars along the way, which meant the tractor operator was most definitely Dave.
Mitch and Ally joined Betsy and Serena at a table near the bar. The two women were finishing their sandwiches, along with a beer for Betsy and a glass of wine for Serena.
“So Dave’s out plowing?” Mitch asked Betsy.
She nodded. “After a couple of beers, Ernie calmed right down. Invited Dave to be his guest and plow the entire county if he wanted.”
“That’s amazing.” Ally glanced toward the corner where Ernie sat. “I thought they were going to kill each other.”
Mitch didn’t trust the supposed truce, either, and he wanted to avoid dealing with Ernie again. Too much of that macho stuff and people would start to suspect he had some law-enforcement training.
Besides, he had a ton of other things to worry about, like Ally carrying on her parents’ legacy. “So what happens when he sobers up?” he asked. “Won’t he start raving about his stolen tractor all over again?”
Serena smiled. “Clyde has that covered. As a public service, he’ll supply Ernie with beer until David finishes, which should be before it gets dark. In fact, I think Clyde plans to keep Ernie well oiled into the evening. That gives David plenty of time to return the tractor. Someone will take Ernie home tonight, and when he wakes up in the morning, the tractor will be in the shed right where he expects to find it.”
“Until the next snowstorm and the game starts over,” Mitch said. “I realize I’m an outsider, but I think the town needs to buy its own snowplow.” He glanced up as Clyde appeared at the table, order pad in hand. “Don’t you think the town needs its own plow?”
Clyde grinned. “Nah.”
“But you know this will happen again.”
“Exactly. We gotta have something to see us through the winter besides my tap routines on the bar. We get a lot of entertainment out of betting on whether Ernie’s going to be sober enough to plow the streets and then coming up with a plan if he’s not.”
“Poopsie’s right.” Betsy put a hand on Mitch’s arm. “Sometimes the logical solution isn’t the best solution for Porcupinians. You won’t understand that until you’ve spent a few winters here.”
Her implication that he would spend more winters here made him shudder. If he believed that, he’d slit his wrists. “I’ll take your word for it, Betsy.”
“You’d be wise to do that,” Clyde said. “Now, what’ll you folks be having?”
Mitch ordered a sandwich after Clyde’s assurance that it contained actual commercial chicken and not some animal that had suffered a highway accident. Ally ordered the special, which Mitch figured could be anything. But that was Ally, ready for adventure.
Anyone who knew his choice of profession would think he had a taste for adventure, too, but they’d be wrong. He had chosen to become a PI and bodyguard not because he wanted adventure, but because he wanted control over the outcome of situations. He wished to hell he had more control over this one.
By the time they were halfway through their lunch, Serena had left to tend her store and Betsy had returned to the lodge. That left Ally and Mitch in a cozy twosome. He started thinking about the condoms he hadn’t bought yet, and whether her mood was softening toward him enough that he needed to find a way to quietly acquire that item.
He noticed she kept glancing at him, and each time her cheeks would get pink, but she didn’t say anything, just kept eating her sandwich.
“What?” he finally asked.
“I was just wondering something.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, you bought the nude while you were over at Serena’s.” She tipped her head toward the bar, where Quillamina was being toasted by a couple of burly guys who kept lifting up her sarong and then collapsing into fits of laughter.
“Yeah, I sure did buy a nude. And now I’d better get her out of here before Dave comes in. I think he’d be insulted that the guys felt compelled to give her an outfit and a name.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “You care if he’s insulted? I didn’t think you liked him!”
Mitch sighed. “It’s not like I’m ready to be his best friend or anything, but you should have seen the expression on his face when I bought it. You’d think I’d handed him the moon.”
“Mitchell, you’re quite the softie, you know that?”
“I’m a sucker, is what I am.” But he enjoyed the way she was looking at him, as if she wanted another kiss like the one they’d had back in the snow. And her knee had come to rest against his knee. She didn’t move it. He started getting warm all over.
She fiddled with the toothpick Clyde had stack through the center of her sandwich. “Did you… um… get the other thing?”
Hot damn. His body reacted instantly. Maybe she was changing her mind. And he was still minus what he needed to make something happen. “No, I didn’t. With everyone around here so chummy, I’m not sure how to buy them without the whole town being in on it.”
“But you don’t want to take Betsy up on her offer.”
“No. That’s almost as bad.” But if Ally really wanted to go through with this, he’d go back to Heavenly Provisions. Hell, he’d hitch a ride to Fairbanks to buy them, except that he couldn’t leave her for that long. “Ally, are you rethinking your original decision?” He crossed his fingers under the table.
She sighed. “Mitchell, I have this terrible problem. The more I’m around you, the more I think about having sex with you.”
“But you don’t want to.”
“It wouldn’t be fair to you.”
He couldn’t stop looking at her lips. “Maybe you should let me be the judge of that.” His heart thumped crazily as he remembered how those lips had felt on his.
“Look, I’m not saying that I’m changing my mind. I think giving in to this would show weakness on my part. But the chemistry between us is really strong.”
“Uh-huh.” He kept his fingers crossed tight.
“We could suddenly snap.”
“Uh-huh.” He was close to the snapping point right now.
“And I was thinking… I’ll bet they have a vending machine in the men’s room.”
“Oh.” He mentally slapped his forehead. This was a bar. A bar in Porcupine, where sex was the favorite winter sport. Of course they would have a vending machine in the men’s room. He should have realized that immediately.
Seeing the gleam in her eyes and knowing that she’d given it enough thought to come up with a solution pumped up his inclination even more. He’d better check out the men’s room while he could still
stand without embarrassing himself.
He pushed back his chair. “I’ll go find out,” he said.
“Okay.”
Oh, boy. She was talking his language now. They’d be upstairs at the Loose Moose all night, with only a bathroom between them. He wanted to be ready for the moment she snapped and came knocking at his door. He wished the day would end right now. At least night came early in Alaska in the wintertime. It couldn’t come soon enough for Mitch.
Chapter Sixteen
Alley couldn’t quite believe she’d told Mitchell where to pick up a condom or two. She’d never been so bold in her life. But the longer she hung around Mitchell, the more she thought of cool sheets and hot sex. She didn’t want to be caught in a situation where their hormones went crazy and they had no supplies. Maybe she’d maintain her self-control, but she wasn’t so sure about it.
While she was visualizing what tonight would be like, sleeping only a bathroom away from a man she wanted naked, Rudy walked into the Top Hat, all two hundred and eighty pounds of him.
“I was hoping I’d find you here!” He pulled up a chair and sat down. “Seein’ as how Mitchell said he’d help me find Lurleen, I wanted to do something for the both of you.”
Ally couldn’t figure out how the heck Mitchell could help locate Rudy’s ex-girlfriend. He was no private investigator. “That was nice of him.”
“Yeah, it was. Here he comes, now. Hi, there, Mitchell! Say, does anybody ever call you Mitch?”
Mitchell shook Rudy’s outstretched hand before sitting down again. “It’s happened before. Why?”
“I just like Mitch better, is all. No offense, but when you say the whole thing like that, I picture some dorky guy, somebody in government, maybe.”
“Oh, I don’t,” Ally said. She actually did, but she wanted to protect Mitchell’s feelings. People could be very sensitive about their names. “I think of somebody who’s efficient, thorough, resourceful…” She glanced at Mitchell and tried to read from his expression whether he’d scored any condoms. She couldn’t tell.
“Well, sure,” Rudy said. “Efficient, but maybe too efficient, if you know what I mean. Now Mitch, that’s a guy who gets things done, but he’s sorta cool about it. So if it’s all the same to you, I thought I’d go with Mitch.”
“That’s fine,” Mitchell said.
But Ally was still concerned that his feelings were hurt. “Not me,” she said. “I like saying the whole thing. Mitchell. It has a nice lilt to it.”
She wondered what she’d call him if they ended up in the same bed. Mitch was a shorter name, and at moments like that, you didn’t want to waste your breath on extra syllables. Having sex with a guy named Mitch did seem a shade more exciting, come to think of it. And she was definitely thinking about it.
“So as I was telling Ally,” Rudy said. “I want to do something for you guys since you’re gonna help me locate Lurleen.”
“Yeah, how are you going to help Rudy locate Lurleen?”
“Through the Internet,” Mitchell said. “It’s amazing what you can do with the Internet these days.”
“I suppose so.” She laughed. “For a minute there, it sounded like you were getting into the PI business.”
“Me?”
“I know. Far-fetched. But it ran through my mind.”
Rudy looked at them expectantly. “So aren’t you gonna ask me what special thing I’m gonna do for you?”
“You could surprise us,” Ally said.
“No, he couldn’t,” Mitch said. “I like knowing what’s coming. What’s the plan, Rudy?”
Rudy beamed, showing off his gap-toothed smile. “Snowmobiles, that’s what!”
“Yeah?” Mitch sat up straighter. “You have snowmobiles?”
“Two of them. I rode one in and towed the other one.” He turned to Ally. “Wanna go for a ride?”
She hesitated, not really crazy about the idea. But Rudy seemed so eager, and even Mitchell looked interested. “It sounds like fun, but… doesn’t it scare the animals?”
Rudy blinked as if he’d never considered that. “I suppose you could, if you ran right into a herd of caribou, but I didn’t have that in mind.”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” Mitch said. “It’s all about operating them sensibly, right?”
“That’s what I do. Operate ‘em sensibly. Now once in a while, you might have to jump over a drift, but I know what I’m doing.”
“Right.” Mitch nodded. “It’s all in the technique.”
Ally wasn’t fooled for a minute. They both could hardly wait to get those machines up to top speed and try all sorts of fancy-dancy maneuvers. They didn’t care if they terrified whatever creatures might be in the vicinity.
Even stodgy Mitchell was salivating at the idea. Ally decided she’d better go just to keep those two in check. She’d take her camera along, on the rare chance they didn’t scatter all the animals as they charged over the snow.
“I never try to hurt nothin’,” Rudy said. “It’s just for fun. See, I have two snowmobiles, on account of I bought Lurleen her own, and she left it here in Porcupine.” He paused. “She left a lot of stuff. All she really took was…” He cleared his throat. “My heart.”
“Oh, Rudy.” Ally put her hand on his arm and gave it a little squeeze. “I have a strong feeling that Mitchell will locate her for you. I’m sure this story will have a happy ending.”
“I’ll do my best, buddy,” Mitchell said.
“I hope when you find her she still has that heart,” Rudy said. “I paid Serena a pretty penny for it.”
Ally did a double take. “Excuse me?” She glanced over at Mitchell, who shrugged as if he had no clue what was going on.
“It was a thing of beauty,” Rudy said. “Polished so nice, made out of rose quartz. It was supposed to be a paperweight, but I don’t have any papers. I just liked holding it, you know? It felt good in my hand. I miss that heart.”
Okay, so Mitchell needed to find Lurleen and see if she still had Rudy’s paperweight. The job seemed a little less urgent than it had a moment ago.
“Anyway,” Rudy continued, “I can take Ally up behind me and let Mitchell handle his own if he thinks he can do that. Want to try them out?”
“Definitely, but I should do something about Quillamina Sharp,” Mitchell said. “I don’t want Dave to come in and discover his interpretive art has been compromised.”
“Go on over and settle your bill, and while you’re at it, ask Clyde to take her up to his room over the bar,” Rudy suggested. “You can get her later.”
“I’ll do that.” He stood and walked over to the bar where Clyde was polishing glasses. In no time, Quillamina was undressed and whisked upstairs.
“Mitch seems excited about the snowmobiles,” Rudy said.
“Yes, he does.”
“But you’re not so excited, are you? Lurleen wasn’t, either.”
“Maybe it’s a guy thing.”
Rudy looked worried. “But you’ll go, right?”
“Of course. I wouldn’t miss it.”
He grinned. “You’ll like it better’n you think, Ally.”
Moments later, they were headed out the door with Rudy. But Ally still didn’t know if Mitchell had found an operational vending machine during his visit to the men’s room.
Letting Rudy go ahead, she paused and turned back to Mitchell. “By the way, any luck with that other matter?”
“I managed to get one, and then the machine jammed.”
So he had one. That was enough to affect her pulse rate. “It’s only insurance, anyway. One’s plenty.”
He gave her a long look. “Ally, if we end up using that insurance, one won’t be nearly enough.”
Her pulse rate shot off the charts.
* * *
“So here we are, and this backwater town hasn’t even plowed the road!” Vivian sat staring out through the windshield at the drifts across the country lane leading to Porcupine. “Now what?”
Kurt hadn’t
counted on this. An unplowed road into a. populated area didn’t make sense. “I can’t understand why it’s not plowed,” he said. “They must need to get in and out. They must want their mail, for God’s sake.”
“Maybe everybody died.”
“That’s gruesome, Viv. I’m sure they didn’t all die. They just have a problem with this road, for some reason.”
“And we have a little problem, too, don’t we? Once again, we’re sitting on the shoulder of the road. You’re lucky that cop gave up following you, or she’d be sitting behind us, twirling her cute little lights and wondering whether or not we operated our vibrator while our vehicle was moving.”
Kurt groaned. “Don’t remind me.” He’d driven for twenty long miles with the cop behind him matching his speed and Vivian beside him moaning and writhing on the seat. Twenty miles with a hard-on and no place to put it. Finally the cop had passed them with a wave. Vivian had waved the vibrator. Kurt could only hope the cop hadn’t noticed.
“It’s too late to go back,” Vivian said. “I’ve had enough traveling for one day. I want French cuisine, a hot bath, and a rundown.”
Kurt decided not to mention that even if they made it to Porcupine she wouldn’t be getting any of those things. He’d been deliberately vague about the amenities at the Loose Moose Lodge. Vivian wouldn’t be happy that there were no tubs, only shower stalls in each bathroom.
In tourist season she might have had to share the bathroom, something she’d never do. But at this time of year Kurt was sure she’d get her own, especially after he introduced her as Tanya Mandell.
“Well, Kurt? Any bright ideas? We can’t just sit here. I need to relax.”
He studied the drifts. His truck had snow tires, and on TV they’d shown this very model charging right through drifts, spraying snow everywhere. There had been that disclaimer about it being a closed course, but still, the snow hadn’t stopped the truck.
If he barreled through the snow and made it to Porcupine because he’d been smart enough to buy this badass truck that could take on anything, that would impress Vivian. He needed to get on her good side before he checked her into the Loose Moose. If she went into this situation convinced that he had his shit together, that would be a good thing.
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