by Teri Wilson
“Gee, thanks.” Ethan stared into his empty coffee cup.
“Seriously, though. What gives with the socks?”
Ethan sighed. “I had a run-in with a wolf.”
Tate’s grin faded. “A wolf? Are you okay?”
Ethan pretended not to notice when his friend’s gaze flitted briefly to the stuffed grizzly bear in the corner. Tate was one of the few people in Aurora who knew about what had happened in Denali. Since his work as a state trooper sometimes took him to other parts of Alaska, he’d known Ethan back then. Before. He was the only person Ethan still communicated with who’d been part of that world. He was a trusted friend. But that didn’t mean Ethan wanted to have another heart-to-heart about his past.
He didn’t want Tate’s sympathy. He didn’t want sympathy from anyone. He just wanted to write his piece and move on to something else. Another assignment. Something involving politics or sports. Or anything else he could write about without feeling as if he’d been emotionally eviscerated.
He gritted his teeth. “It wasn’t like that.”
The wolf had put an untimely end to his hiking boots, and Ethan had been a little rattled. That’s all. Once his article was written, he’d forget all about Piper and her wolves and get on with his life.
Unless something happens to her.
“I’m doing a story on the new wolf sanctuary. Have you heard about it?”
Tate nodded. “A little. They just opened, right?”
“She just opened.” They wasn’t exactly accurate considering Piper’s rescue center was essentially a one-woman show.
“She?” Tate’s eyebrows rose. “Interesting.”
“Anyhow, I’m fine.” Ethan swallowed. “For the most part.”
“If you say so.” Tate studied him for a moment. Then, apparently convinced that Ethan wasn’t on the verge of some kind of breakdown, he blew out a breath. “Try not to break any more laws, though.”
Ethan slid him a sideways glance. “So going without shoes is, in fact, illegal?”
“Could be.” Tate shrugged. “Should be, seeing as it’s twenty degrees outside. Either way, just don’t give me a reason to arrest you. I wouldn’t want to have to take back the stellar job recommendation I gave you.”
Ethan paused. Job recommendation? “The Seattle Tribune? You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Not kidding. They called me yesterday afternoon.”
The Seattle Tribune. Finally. For almost a year now, Ethan had been applying for jobs at bigger newspapers. It was time to leave Alaska. Past time. But finding a newspaper job when print journalists were somewhat of a dying breed wasn’t easy, especially given the fact that Ethan’s only work experience was for a small regional paper.
His entire higher education had been designed to get him out of Manhattan and into the Land of the Midnight Sun. While his prep school friends had gone on to earn business or law degrees, Ethan had studied forestry and ecology, despite the overwhelming disapproval of his father. Ethan couldn’t have cared less what his dad thought. Every move he’d made since he’d been old enough to formulate a plan had been designed to get him out of New York and into the wilds of Alaska. And he’d actually managed to do it.
For a time, life had been perfect. But then those wilds had gotten the better of him.
Of course, if he’d wanted to leave badly enough, he could have gone back to Manhattan. It’s what his ex-wife had wanted. She’d begged him to leave Alaska and take the job his father had waiting for him in New York. Alaska had never been Susan’s dream. She’d wanted to be a Madison Avenue wife and believed that once he’d gotten his Alaskan folly out of his system, they’d pack up and move back home.
Home.
New York had never felt like home. Not even when he was a kid. Growing up in his father’s luxury hotel in the heart of Midtown, Ethan had had everything any boy could ever want. Except a backyard. Or a tree house. He’d spent the majority of his childhood indoors under the watchful eyes of the Pinnacle Hotel staff. He lived for outings to the park and rare weekends at the beach. He’d craved a place where he could see shooting stars at night and feel damp grass on his bare feet. Wide-open spaces where snow fell with a whisper of silence instead of the incessant cacophony of sirens and car horns.
In Alaska, he’d found the place of his dreams. Then in one tragic moment that dream had become a nightmare. The bear mauling changed Ethan. Or so Susan said when she’d packed her bags and gone back to Manhattan without him. Ethan didn’t know what to believe. Not anymore.
“Yesterday? The Seattle Tribune called you yesterday, and you didn’t think to mention it?”
“I’m mentioning it now, aren’t I?” Tate drained his coffee cup and handed it to the barista for a refill. “Don’t worry. I said only nice things about you, despite the fact that I think it’s a mistake.”
“It’s not a mistake.” It was a way to leave Alaska on his terms. Not his father’s.
Of course, that was assuming Ethan got the job, which was an enormous assumption, considering he hadn’t even been able to land a face-to-face interview. Yet. But this time they’d actually called his references. That had to be a good sign.
Tate swiveled to face him. “You belong here, Ethan. You always did, and you still do. Give it time, man.”
Time.
Five years had already passed since the mauling in Denali, and it still felt as fresh as yesterday. He was beginning to give up on the notion that time healed all wounds.
“Can we not discuss this now?” Ethan ground out the words.
“Fine. But this isn’t over. I’m not letting you pack up and move to the Lower 48 without having an actual conversation about it.” Tate sighed, then mercifully changed the subject. “What’s she like?”
“Who?” Ethan asked.
“The wolf woman.”
Ethan paused. He’d been fully prepared to write the director of the Aurora Wolf and Wildlife Center off as hopelessly naive, or possibly even crazy. The drive from the Yukon Reporter offices to the thick forest of fir and aspen trees that covered the southern slope of the Chugach Mountains had been a long and winding one. There were moments when his SUV had hugged the edge of the cliff so closely that his speed didn’t crawl above a cautious thirty miles per hour. The experience had afforded him plenty of opportunity to think about what kind of woman moved to a secluded spot halfway up a mountain with a pack of wolves.
But all the time in the world couldn’t have prepared him for the reality of meeting Piper Quinn.
She was quite a bit younger than he’d expected. She couldn’t be more than twenty-five, yet somehow she’d found the funding and ambition to open a thirty-five acre wildlife rescue center. He couldn’t help but be impressed, despite the fact that he considered her project ill-advised at best, and at worst, just plain dangerous.
For starters, the sanctuary was too close to Aurora. The heart of the town was nestled right at the foot of the mountain. It might have been a slow crawl for an SUV, but an escaped wolf wouldn’t need to travel the paved roads. A wolf could charge straight down the slope.
And then, while melted marshmallows had been dripping down his arm, she’d talked to him about saving species on the endangered list, the ecological importance of wolves and the National Nature Conservatory. Once upon a time, words such as those had been Ethan’s vocabulary. He’d all but forgotten what it felt like to be passionate about nature, the bounty of the Alaskan wilderness and the beauty of creation. He’d forgotten pretty much everything, other than existing from day to day. And the things he would have given anything not to remember.
But he could see sparks of his former life in the fire that burned in Piper Quinn’s eyes. He got the feeling she’d done more living in her twenty-something years than most people did in a lifetime. She was smart. And she cared. Deeply.
What was she like? Brilliant. Brave. Lovely.
Something moved in Ethan. An ache. A different kind of ache than the hopeless regret that had become like a second
skin. Different, but just as dangerous. Maybe even more so.
He swallowed. “She’s interesting. Quite interesting, actually.”
Not that it mattered.
Come morning, the lovely Piper Quinn was sure to despise him.
* * *
Piper didn’t sleep a wink the night after Ethan Hale’s visit. Instead she stayed up until all hours worrying about what he might write in his article. He’d been forced to leave the sanctuary in his sock feet, for goodness’ sake. It was beyond mortifying. The man was probably suffering from frostbite now, and it was all her fault. She buried her head under her pillow, but it was no use. Not even a thick layer of goose down could keep the worry from finding its way into her thoughts.
Even the wolves seemed to sense that something was wrong. When Tundra let loose with a mournful howl right around midnight, the others didn’t even bother chiming in. They were quiet, too quiet. Like the calm before a storm. A typewritten typhoon penned by Ethan Hale.
Sometime around one in the morning, she gave up the fight and made a batch of chocolate chip cookies. When that failed to make her drowsy enough to fall asleep, she whipped up a few dozen oatmeal raisin. Then molasses. By the time a misty violet dawn descended on the mountain, Piper couldn’t tell if she was running a wildlife center or a bakery.
After checking on the wolves, she packed up the cookies and headed for the church. She would never manage to consume the fruits of her anxiety-fueled baking spree on her own, and she figured teenagers might be the only creatures walking the planet who were more ravenous than wolves. Besides, she owed the youth group a culinary thank-you for helping put up the fencing last week.
She pushed through the door of Aurora Community Church’s fellowship hall with a nudge of her hip, her arms piled high with plastic bins.
“Piper, here. Let me help you.” Liam Blake, the youth pastor, grabbed two containers from the top of her teetering stack.
His wife, Posy, a willowy ballerina who ran Aurora’s one and only dance school and sometimes taught ballet at the church, snatched the rest. “Hi, Piper. What a surprise. What is all of this?”
“Cookies. Just a thank-you for the kids in the youth group.” Arms free at last, Piper loosened the scarf around her neck and stomped the snow from her feet. Then she followed Posy and Liam to the youth pastor’s office, where her Tupperware pretty much took up the entire surface of the desk.
So many cookies, so little sleep.
“This really wasn’t necessary, although I’m sure they’ll appreciate it.” Liam opened one of the containers and popped a chocolate chip cookie in his mouth.
“If there are any left once school gets out,” Posy teased.
“I couldn’t plow my way through all of these if I tried.” Liam laughed. “But I just might. They’re delicious.”
“Thanks. I’m glad you like them.” Piper smiled. It was nice to have new friends. Different, but nice.
She was consciously aware of the fact that she spent the majority of her time with wolves. For the most part, she preferred it that way. Wolves were easier to understand than most people. Wolves had an organized, predictable social structure. You knew where you stood with wolves. Wolves didn’t lie. And they didn’t keep secrets.
Not that they were particularly noble. Like other animals, they were simply incapable of deception. What you saw was what you got. Their emotions showed clearly in their body language. Piper could tell if Koko was happy, sad, fearful or angry just by the way he carried his tail.
She’d often thought life would be so much simpler if the same could be said for people. It sure would have saved her the pain and heartache of getting involved with a man who specialized in secrets.
Piper’s chest grew tight.
She didn’t miss Stephen. She knew this now. Letting him go had been easy once she’d discovered the truth. Giving up on the idea of a home and a family—a real family—had cut closer to the bone.
She’d never had a family. The succession of foster homes where she’d grown up didn’t count. Neither did the four brief years she’d lived with her birth mother. Was a mother really a mother when you could no longer remember her face, or her voice, or what it felt like to be held?
A child needed a mother. A home. Children needed structure. They needed to know where they fit in the world.
So did wolves. It was in their nature. That was one of the things Piper liked best about them. Every wolf had a place in the pack. Every wolf belonged. So eventually she’d become one of them, an honorary wolf. It was easier than trying to fit into the regular world. Most people thought wolves were dangerous, but those people hadn’t grown up the way Piper had. Humans could be far more dangerous than wolves. And the damage they could do to a child’s heart was immensely greater than bodily injury.
She should have known things would end badly with Stephen. She’d been so foolish to think she’d found a man who actually wanted to build a life with her and the wolves. She’d thought she had. He’d slipped an engagement ring on her finger, and she’d believed. She’d believed her pack would finally be complete. At last.
And then she’d found out that Stephen already belonged to a pack, complete with a wife and two children.
“How are things up in the mountains? Everything at the sanctuary running smoothly?” Liam asked, dragging Piper’s attention back to the present.
Thank You, Lord.
She didn’t like to dwell on the past, on Stephen’s deception nor on her family. Most of the time, it didn’t bother her that she lived a solitary life. Because she had the wolves, and they were like family. They were her world.
But her thoughts had begun to wander all over the place since yesterday. Since Ethan Hale.
“Great. Just great.” She pasted on a smile. “At least I hope so.”
“You hope so?” Posy glanced quickly at Liam and then back at Piper.
“I had a visitor yesterday—a journalist from the Yukon Reporter. He’s doing a story on the sanctuary.” She sank into one of the chairs beside Posy, opposite Liam’s desk. Just thinking about the newspaper again hit her with a wave of exhaustion that made it difficult to stand up straight.
“Things didn’t go well,” Liam said. It was a statement, not a question. Piper was so preoccupied that she hardly noticed.
“It was a disaster. I just don’t understand what happened. It was almost as though he’d made his mind up about the sanctuary before he’d even seen it.” Yet there’d been a moment or two when she thought she’d spied a glimpse of a different Ethan Hale, a man who understood why she loved the wolves the way she did. Elusive, fleeting glances of a man with pine needles in his hair and the scent of wild things on his shoes instead of the gloomy journalist with storms in his eyes.
She swallowed around the lump that was quickly forming in her throat. “I’m worried about nothing. Maybe. Probably. I mean, surely things didn’t go as badly as I think they did.” She thought about mentioning Ethan’s shoes, or lack thereof, but it was too mortifying to talk about.
Posy and Liam exchanged another glance.
The lump in Piper’s throat grew three times larger. “Then again, perhaps I do have a reason to be worried.”
She prayed with every fiber of her being that either Posy or Liam would say something reassuring.
Neither of them did.
“Actually, the article came out in this morning’s paper. I have a copy of it right here.” Posy bent to unzip the large black dance bag at her feet.
Piper felt sick as the woman extracted a copy of the Yukon Reporter and unfolded it to the proper page.
“Here.” She handed it over.
Piper had to force herself to look at it.
Just rip it off. Like a Band-Aid.
She took a deep breath and started reading.
At first, things didn’t seem so bad. Ethan wrote that her wolves had seemed obviously well cared for and that her dedication to their plight was admirable.
So far, so good. Piper a
llowed herself to breathe. Maybe this wasn’t going to be as bad as she’d expected.
But then she read the next sentence, in which Ethan called wolves predatory and carnivorous. Which was technically true. But he’d gone on to include an entire paragraph on wolf maulings without mentioning that such attacks were rare. So rare that Alaskans were infinitely more likely to be attacked by their family dog than a wolf.
Worse, he then pointed out that the sanctuary was inadequately staffed. The staff that she did have were legal minors who lacked the proper training to interact with wild animals.
Also technically true. But he’d made things sound so much worse than they actually were. The kids didn’t interact with the wolves. They helped with things like fencing, preparing meat, landscaping and cleaning pens. Empty pens. She’d never allow one of the teens from the youth group to enter an enclosure without her close, personal supervision. She’d told Ethan as much.
This was bad. Really bad. Her panicked gaze flitted around the page, snagging on words like clear and present danger. Awful words. And apparently her wolves weren’t just a threat to the people of Aurora. He mentioned the neighboring reindeer farm, as well.
That was the final straw. Piper sniffed, and the black newsprint swam before her eyes. She stopped reading, and an awkward, uncomfortable silence fell over the youth pastor’s small office.
Not that Piper blamed the couple for going quiet. What were they supposed to say to the woman who’d apparently brought wolves to the area in order to ravage the townspeople and all of Santa’s reindeer?
She hoped barefoot Ethan Hale did have frostbite. She hoped all ten of his toes fell off.
“We’re so sorry, Piper,” Posy said. “We were there. We saw the work that the kids did. We know they weren’t any more in harm’s way than if they’d been anywhere else outdoors in Alaska.”
Liam leaned across his desk, his face so full of concern that it made Piper feel even worse. “What can we do to help?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head. It was too late for help. The damage had been done. People all over Alaska were reading Ethan’s damning words right this very minute. “I just can’t believe it. This isn’t even a news article. It’s an attack on the sanctuary. It’s full of opinions. Biased, inflammatory opinions with no basis in fact. I thought journalists were supposed to be impartial. He can’t do this, can he? He just can’t.”