by Teri Wilson
He wasn’t wearing a name tag or anything, but it had to be him. Palmer. The reindeer she’d heard so much about who had a penchant for escaping the confines of the neighboring reindeer farm. The reindeer that Ethan had been so worried about becoming snack food for her wolves. Well, the wolves were all exactly where they were supposed to be at the moment, weren’t they? It was Palmer’s behavior that bordered on assault.
Oh, the irony.
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re rather forward?”
Palmer grunted in response. He was awfully cute for a criminal—with long, fluttering eyelashes and a cute white ring around one of his dark eyes. But goodness, he was big. If he managed to force his way completely inside the cabin, she’d have an enormous mess on her hands.
She stood her ground, less than a foot away from his colossal caribou face, and prayed he would just stay there until help arrived.
Zoey had been the first person that Piper called. Palmer belonged to her, after all. Apparently, she was accustomed to getting these sorts of calls. When her number rolled straight to voice mail, Piper remembered that Zoey was scheduled to fly up to Anchorage on a mail run in her plane today. In addition to running the reindeer farm with her husband, she was also Aurora’s chief charter pilot.
With Zoey unavailable, Piper wasn’t quite sure what to do. So she’d called 911. Because she was pretty sure being pinned inside your home by a reindeer was an actual emergency, albeit a uniquely Alaskan one.
At least she’d managed to get her information rattled off to the police dispatcher before her cell phone had died. She wasn’t about to turn her back on Palmer long enough to carry her phone to its charger in the kitchen. By the time she got it plugged in, he probably would have stomped all the way to her bedroom and tucked himself into her feather bed.
“The police are on their way, so now’s the time to make a break for it if you don’t want another infraction on your already notorious arrest record.”
Palmer lowered his head and let out a throaty rattling noise. Piper had no idea whether or not such reindeer behavior was normal, or what it meant. She’d been a little too busy communing with wolves for the past ten years to brush up on reindeer vocalizations.
She glanced at the bucket at her feet. Maybe she should offer him one of the chicken-broth ice cubes. Or were reindeer vegetarian? She was pretty sure they were.
She sighed. Again.
When would the police arrive, and what was she supposed to do in the meantime with a reindeer halfway in her living room?
* * *
It took Ethan a minute to make sense of what he saw when the cruiser barreled onto Piper’s property. Through the blinding snow, all he could make out was something dark in the doorway to the cabin. Much to Tate’s annoyance, Ethan jumped out of the car before it came to a complete stop. Once outside, he recognized that the bulky thing obstructing Piper’s door was an animal. His heart stopped beating as a series of horrific pictures flashed in his head. Wolves. Blood. Piper’s lifeless body.
Then he got closer and realized he wasn’t gazing at a wolf at all.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Tate muttered as he reached his side. “Palmer.”
“Looks that way.” Ethan allowed himself to breathe again. He inhaled a shaky breath and tried to still the tremble in his hands.
It took a minute for his body to catch up with his mind. Piper wasn’t being held captive by a dangerous criminal, after all. Nor was she being torn limb from limb by one of her precious wolves. The source of her trouble was just a silly reindeer. This kind of thing happened all the time. It did in Palmer’s stomping ground, anyway.
Everything was okay.
Tate gave him a nudge. “You all right, man? You’re white as a sheet.”
“Fine.” Ethan’s throat closed like a fist. “I’m fine.”
“I need to radio this in, so Dispatch can cancel the call for backup. And I’ll go grab the carrots out of my trunk. See if you can check on Piper, okay?”
“You keep carrots in the trunk of your squad car?” This struck Ethan as particularly absurd. He probably would have laughed if he wasn’t still shaking off the physical effects of panic.
“They’re regulation now for every officer in Aurora, thanks to the town wanderer over there.” Tate nodded toward Palmer’s massive backside protruding from the entrance to Piper’s cabin. “I’ve got a whole bag of them. Be right back.”
Ethan shook his head and gave in to the smile working its way to his mouth. Hostage-taking reindeer. Carrot-wielding law enforcement officers.
Only in Alaska.
He’d miss things like these once he moved to Seattle, he realized. Alaska was like no place else on the planet. Peculiar. Wild. Free. Which was why he’d wanted to come here in the first place. Ultimately, though, Alaska’s adventuresome spirit was precisely why he wanted to leave. The police in the Lower 48 didn’t carry carrots. But grizzly bears didn’t walk down the sidewalks, either.
That mattered. Didn’t it?
Ethan trudged toward Piper’s cabin through the shin-deep snow. He was getting ahead of himself. Just because he was scheduled to fly down to Seattle the day after tomorrow didn’t mean he was moving there permanently. He didn’t even have the job at The Seattle Tribune. Yet.
“Hey there, you mischief maker.” Ethan didn’t want to startle the reindeer, so he rested a calming hand on the animal’s flank.
Palmer’s hide quivered under the touch. Beneath its fine dusting of snow, the reindeer’s body was warm, soft, pulsing with life. Ethan had a memory of feeding caribou apples from the palms of his hands back in Denali. Of the velvety softness of their antlers in springtime. Their soft footfalls in the snow.
“Hello? Is someone there?” Piper called from inside the cabin.
She sounded perfectly fine. Unharmed. Safe. But for some odd reason, hearing her voice caused Ethan’s chest to tighten into a raw, aching knot. “It’s me.”
“Ethan!” The relief in her tone did nothing to lessen the ache. “You’re okay. Good.”
“I’m okay?” He couldn’t help but laugh. “You called 911, yet you were worried about my safety? Might I remind you that there’s a reindeer protruding from your house?”
“Ha. Ha.” He could practically hear her eyes rolling. “Wait a minute. Why are you here? Now? I expected you hours ago.”
He swallowed. “Wouldn’t you rather talk about that after we get the hostage situation taken care of?”
“We? Who else is out there? I can’t see a thing past Rudolph.”
Tate reappeared gripping a fistful of carrots. “Hello, Piper. It’s Tate Hudson. Are you okay?”
“Yes. Absolutely.” She didn’t sound quite as concerned as one might expect under the circumstances. Leave it to Piper to take a home invasion by a reindeer in stride. “How do we get him out of here, though? It’s been twenty minutes and he hasn’t budged. I think he might have even fallen asleep standing up for a minute or two.”
A second set of tires rumbled through the snow. Ethan turned to see Zoey Wynn hop out of her little car and come barreling toward them. “Oh, no! Not again. Palmer, you naughty, naughty boy.”
Ethan grinned. “Zoey, nice to see you.”
Her gaze flitted back and forth between him and Tate. “Great. The cavalry has already arrived. I suppose this means I’m racking up another citation for animal at large.”
Tate shrugged. “That depends. Piper hasn’t indicated whether or not she’d like to press charges.”
“Of course I don’t,” she called from inside. “But it would be really nice if you could get this beast out of my house.”
“Deal.” Zoey shot Tate a triumphant grin. “I’m so sorry I didn’t pick up when you phoned, Piper. I had my mail run to Anchorage, and then at the last minute I got a call to pick up a businessman in Juneau. Some government official. I got your voice mail and headed straight over here. Just let me go grab some treats. I think I’ve got some in the car.”
Tate waved a carrot at her. “No need.”
“Super. I’ll let you coax him out of there, since Palmer knows you as well as anyone by now.” Zoey took a backward step out of the way.
Ethan followed.
“I suppose you’re going to write about this in the newspaper.” Zoey lifted a brow. “Again.”
Ethan pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and snapped a few photos. “Come on, Zoey. No hard feelings. You know it’s my solemn duty to report the news. And this—” he nodded toward Palmer’s woolly backside “—is certainly news.”
Zoey sighed. “I don’t suppose you could try to put a positive spin on it?”
On a reindeer barging into someone’s home? “That wouldn’t be very impartial of me, now, would it?”
Zoey snort-laughed right in his face. “I didn’t realize you were still pretending to be impartial.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I think you know.” She pinned him with a knowing glare. “You should ease up on Piper, Ethan. I’ve been getting to know her through our work on the recital planning committee. She seems like a very caring person. She’s not out to hurt anyone, and neither are her wolves...in case you haven’t noticed.”
She gave him a parting wave and joined Tate, who’d thus far managed to lure Palmer about three feet away from Piper’s door. Zoey looped her arm around the reindeer’s thick neck and cooed soothing words to him as Tate guided him in the direction of the reindeer farm.
Ethan stood watching them for a moment, thoughts whirling in his mind like snowflakes. Had he really been blatantly unfair to Piper in his column? Granted, he’d made his opinion on the presence of a wolf sanctuary in Aurora more than clear. But his points had been perfectly valid. Wolves were predators, and therefore presented a threat. Everything he’d written rang true.
It no longer mattered now, anyway. He’d had enough. Piper could live all alone with a bunch of wolves, and he wouldn’t have anything else to say about it. Because he was quitting.
Definitely.
Probably.
“Ethan.” Piper stepped outside, and the sight of her filled him with such immediate, overwhelming relief that he forgot about his column.
He forgot about Seattle and hotels and all the reasons he had for leaving Alaska. He even forgot about the wolves.
He’d thought he’d lost her. She’d been perfectly fine all along, but for nearly twenty endless minutes, Ethan had envisioned the worst. For the entire drive up the mountain, he’d bargained with God. He’d begged. He’d pleaded. But even as he’d prayed, even as he’d cast those desperate pleas up above, he’d never expected God to listen. To care. Why would He?
But He did.
Thank You, God. Thank You.
“Piper.” He swept the waves of windblown curls from her eyes, and something moved in his chest, taking the ache that had formed there to a new and foreign place. Where pain blurred with pleasure.
She was beautiful. So beautiful that it hurt to gaze into her radiant eyes. Eyes like the auroras. She was beautiful. She was alive. And she was here.
“I thought...” He shook his head. He didn’t want to say it. Didn’t want to give voice to the fears that had so consumed him, lest they become real.
But he’d moved beyond the ability to choose his words or his actions. His hands had somehow found their way into her hair, and the pad of his thumb was brushing across the tender swell of her bottom lip, where he wanted most to kiss her. He didn’t think he’d ever wanted anything more in his entire, messed-up life.
“You thought what?” Her voice had dropped to a tremulous whisper, and Ethan could see a thousand questions shining in her eyes. Questions that he wasn’t sure how to answer.
Because he didn’t know what was happening between them. He didn’t know why he couldn’t walk away from this place, or from her. He just knew he couldn’t. He couldn’t quit his column. He’d stay here for the remainder of the two weeks, as promised. He would still go to Seattle for his interview, but when it was over, he’d turn around and come right back.
He wasn’t finished here. Not now. Not yet. Not until...
“Never mind what I thought,” he growled.
Then he lifted her chin with a tender touch of his fingertips and lowered his mouth to hers.
She let out a tiny gasp of surprise, but in the span of a heartbeat, she melted into him. Her arms wrapped around his neck, and her fingertips played at the back of his hair. And she was so impossibly soft and warm that Ethan could only compare holding her to the feeling he got when he watched the early morning fog wrap itself around the mountains in a diaphanous caress.
He deepened the kiss, wanting more, needing more. And found that somehow she tasted of sweet sorrow, shadowy forests and meandering paths to places Ethan had long forgotten. Of nights dreaming under frozen diamond stars and the wild wolf moon. Of Arctic kaleidoscope skies, winter wind on his face and untouched snowfields at dawn. Of nature. Of Alaska.
Of life.
And for one wondrous moment, Ethan’s brutal, meandering heart came to a place of healing.
Chapter Eleven
Piper didn’t want to open her eyes. She feared if she did, she would find herself in a dream. Because Ethan Hale couldn’t possibly be kissing her like this. As if she were a priceless treasure. As if he’d seen every part of her—the best, the worst and all myriad of shades in between—and he still wanted her. He still cared.
She’d never even told Stephen about her childhood. He’d thought her parents had died. And for all she knew, that was true. She’d never trusted him with the entirety of her truth, though. Nor anyone else. She didn’t want sympathy or to be seen as some pathetic orphan. Announcing that she’d been abandoned as a child and grown up in foster care almost felt like waving a red flag.
Approach with caution.
Broken.
Unlovable.
She wasn’t sure why she’d shared so much with Ethan. At the time she’d told herself that it was simply a matter of reciprocation. He’d opened up to her about his childhood, so she’d done the same. He’d even told her about what had happened to him in Denali, and clearly, that wasn’t something he shared with just anyone.
So why had he chosen to expose such a secret part of himself to her? She wished she knew. Because she had a feeling that whatever the reason, it was the same one that had prompted her to reveal herself to him.
Now here they stood, souls and childhoods bared, kissing one another’s pasts as surely as their cold, soft lips. It was a kiss that felt as though it could close old wounds, and leave tenderness in place of scars. Dreamlike. Wondrous. And overwhelming, because mended hearts were fragile and all too easily broken.
Her eyelashes fluttered open at last, and he was still there, standing against the backdrop of the rugged Chugach range. And he looked so perfect, so at home among those craggy rocks and the cool blue spruce trees that she could have cried. She wasn’t dreaming. Ethan was real. She wanted to touch the chiseled planes of his face, just to be sure. She wanted him to whisper secrets in her ear and tell her all the things he’d never told anyone else. Most of all, she wanted him to kiss her again.
But somewhere beneath the dreamy haze of first-kiss euphoria, something felt out of place. Wrong. Like a wisp of black smoke in a clear blue sky.
Ethan. Here. Now.
It didn’t make sense. None of this did.
He smiled down at her, and she asked the question she could no longer ignore. “Where were you? What happened to not letting me out of your sight? I thought something had happened to you.”
Could she sound any more pathetic? Or, heaven forbid, lovesick? Why would she sound lovesick? She didn’t love him. Of course she didn’t.
Except sometimes when he was around, she experienced a strange weightless sensation. Like falling, almost.
Oh, no.
You do not love him. You don’t love him, and you surely don’t need him. You have the wolves. You don’t need an
yone, least of all him.
“You were worried about me.” The corner of his mouth twitched into a bemused half grin.
Okay, so she’d been worried. But only a little. “No, I wasn’t.”
“Yes, you were.” He narrowed his gaze, and the gray of his eyes rumbled through her like thunder over the Bering Sea. “You were worried about me. That’s not all. I dare say you also missed me.”
And she hated herself because he was right. She’d been worried. She’d even managed to convince herself that he’d driven off the side of the mountain. She’d been so concerned about him that she’d actually called the state trooper. Who did that? Husbands and wives, that’s who.
Piper felt sick all of a sudden.
Even worse than worrying about him, she’d also missed him. Not because Caleb was still sick and the chores around the sanctuary weren’t getting done. Not because Ethan had announced his plans to shadow her every move. Not even because of the silly chicken-broth ice cubes. She simply missed him. Ethan. Because she didn’t loathe him quite as much as she thought she did. She actually liked him. Quite a lot. And despite all the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, she felt as if he understood her. Somewhere beneath his rough and wounded exterior beat a heart that moved to the rhythm of mountain snowfalls and winding forest trails. To the tune of God’s creation.
But that was impossible.
And she didn’t want to feel that way. Not about anyone. Certainly not about Ethan.
He slid his hands around her waist and pulled her close until she was once again enveloped in his comforting scent of pine and wood smoke. His old life still clung to him in more ways than he knew. Piper felt herself yielding again. Her face tipped up toward his, and her lips parted, ever so slightly, ever so ready for him to kiss her again.
Snow drifted down from a sky the color of glaciers in springtime and surrounded them in a feathery embrace. The wind whispered through the lonely forest, and it sounded almost like a sigh. Ethan bowed his head, and it would have been so easy to let her eyes flutter shut and forget everything else but this breathtaking moment and this maddening man.