by Lucy Monroe
“What do you want in exchange?” she asked in a tone he’d never heard from Kitty Grant, her voice flat and wary at the same time.
“Go on a hike with me. You should see what we do if you’re going to take reservations and liaise with the cruise ships.”
She bit her lip. “I don’t have any boots.”
Kitty was wearing boots right now, but he knew what she meant. Something suitable for hiking. “I imagine Miz Moya has a pair of your old ones stored somewhere in that big house.”
Kitty gave a barely-there nod. “I’ll do it.”
“Would you feel better if Egan came with us?” Tack asked, not liking that idea one bit.
He wasn’t the one who had proven himself untrustworthy. Not in their relationship and not in Kitty’s life.
Her blue eyes widened and she shook her head vehemently. “No. I…it’s just…it’s been a while. I probably can’t keep up with you.”
“We’ll see, wildcat.”
“Don’t go feeling bad about it if you can’t,” Egan offered. “No one can keep up with Tack. I’ve had more than one tourist come back from his excursions asking if he’s even human.”
“I’m not that bad.”
“You’ve got about as much stamina as the bear you’re named for, Taqukaq.” Egan shook his head. “And the tourists still request you because their friends tell them how amazing your excursions are.”
Tack frowned at his brother. “I’m not a grizzly bear.”
“You’re about as big as one,” Kitty teased.
He was too happy she was showing some spunk to take umbrage at her words. “Bears have a few hundred pounds on me.”
“You sure about that, brother?” Egan smacked Tack’s tight abs with the back of his hand.
“That was muscle you hit, little boy.” At six-foot-four, his brother might be taller than average, but he was still two inches shorter than Tack.
And he never let Egan forget it.
Egan glared, looking like he was getting ready to deliver something harder than an easy backhand.
“Are you saying he has the muscles of a grizzly bear?” Kitty asked, smoothing things between the brothers just that fast.
Just like she used to when they were kids.
“No way.” Egan looked properly horrified. “That might be a compliment.”
Kitty looked Tack over like a musher buying a new dog for her sled. “But not too far off the mark. You’ve grown into an impressive man, Tack.”
She wasn’t trying to be sexy—her tone was too matter-of-fact—but damn if having her eyes on him wasn’t making his jeans too tight at the fly again.
“Aana can’t get him married off, so I’m not sure the women around here agree with you,” Egan suggested. The little shit.
Kitty brushed past Tack, heading back to his office. “Marriage isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
Egan gave Tack a look.
Tack didn’t bother to answer it. He was too busy trying to mask his reaction to that very brief, very casual touch.
Kitty came out of his office with her purse. “I need to get back to the Knit and Pearl.”
Tack nodded, his throat dry.
“Do I have the job?” she asked.
“Yes, but I don’t want you wearing yourself out. You work the hours out with Miz Alma.”
“Of course I will.” The words were right, but somehow Tack didn’t think Kitty meant them the way he wanted her to.
She wasn’t going to give herself a break. It wasn’t her way. Miz Moya had raised her granddaughter to be independent and strong. Those traits were still there inside of Kitty, even if she didn’t realize it.
He would just have to watch for signs of fatigue. He’d call Miz Alma himself if he needed to.
* * *
“She needs a friend,” Egan said quietly from beside Tack after Kitty left, carrying a now empty cake plate.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Tack turned to face his brother. “What do you mean?”
“You loved her, when you went down to college together in the Lower Forty-Eight.”
“Do you have a point?” He wouldn’t deny the truth, but he’d never said it out loud and sure wasn’t going to do it today.
“She broke your heart once; don’t give her a chance to do it again.” Egan’s dark eyes were shadowed with concern, his mouth set in a serious line.
“I’ve got no plans to let her at my heart.” Again.
“Hey, guys, why so serious?” Bobby came out of the room with a copy machine and the table he and Egan used for doing paperwork.
Choosing not to comment on Bobby’s question, Tack asked, “Do we need to get a desk or something in here for Kitty?”
“Wait. What?” Bobby asked. “Why would Miss Grant need a desk?”
“We’re hiring her as a part-time receptionist. Lucky you, she’ll be helping with phones and paperwork.”
“That’s great,” Bobby said with all the enthusiasm of a teenager who just found out he didn’t have homework.
“So, a desk?” Tack asked again.
Egan shrugged. “Maybe. Probably.”
Bobby nodded his agreement. “Women like their own space. Just ask Jenna.”
Bobby’s older sister was a force to be reckoned with. If she said women liked their own space, then Tack was inclined to believe it.
“Think we can get a desk in Kenai?” He had commissioned the one in his office from his father. They didn’t have the six months minimum it would take to commission another one.
“I think so, if we’re not worried about getting real wood. There’s that office supply store by the airport,” Egan said. “They’ve got some desks.”
Bobby whistled. “Granddad is going to have a fit if you two bring prefab furniture in here.”
“We can’t wait until next year for it.” But Tack was pretty sure his cousin was right.
Egan frowned. “We should at least tell him what we need.”
“So, call him.” Granddad would know if someone in the family had an extra desk they’d be willing to get rid of too.
“Why can’t you call him?” Egan whined.
“Man up. You’re a MacKinnon.”
“Yeah, and according to Granddad, that means I should be married and providing the next generation to Cailkirn because of it.”
“Sucks turning twenty-four, doesn’t it?”
“What is up with that anyway?” Bobby asked. “It’s not some magic number. I could understand twenty-one, but what’s so special about twenty-four?”
Tack headed to his office. “That’s how old Granddad was when he married Gran MacKinnon.”
“So? Your dad was only twenty and mine was twenty-two.”
“Yeah, and Da reminds me of that if I complain about Granddad haranguing me about my responsibilities to the town,” Egan muttered.
Tack didn’t have any sympathy for his brother. He’d been getting the lecture from Granddad for four solid years. Frankly, he appreciated having someone take a little of the heat off.
He wanted Cailkirn to thrive and planned to marry one day, but right now Tack was focused on building his business.
And controlling his physical reaction to Kitty Grant, who had nothing to do with his continued single state. No matter what both of his grandmothers thought.
* * *
Caitlin heard the low masculine tones of Tack’s voice float up from downstairs.
Anxiety that she’d dithered too long over what to wear on the hike warred with an inexplicable impatience to see him. She hadn’t even had time to eat breakfast, which was so not good.
She should definitely be feeling more anxious about that than the idea of seeing the gorgeous Alaskan man again.
Neither reaction was helping her decide what to wear.
He’d been right that her gran had an old pair of Caitlin’s hiking boots in storage. However, after he called what she had considered a casual outfit too fancy for Cailkirn yesterday, C
aitlin hadn’t known what to wear with them.
She only had two pairs of jeans, both designer. Her sweaters were all lightweight, appropriate for Southern California winters, which was to say no real winter at all. Even in the coldest part of the year, the temperatures rarely dropped to spring temperatures in Cailkirn.
It might be the sunniest city in Alaska, but it wasn’t the warmest. This far north, the sun didn’t usually mean hot. Not by the definition of anyone living south of the fifty-fourth parallel.
Certainly not like the smog-hazed sunny days in Los Angeles.
Which meant if Caitlin didn’t want to spend the day shivering until she cracked a tooth clacking them together, she had to layer. Like yesterday. Too bad her layers weren’t any more small-town Alaska than what she’d worn yesterday.
Caitlin had thought that with all the tourists off the cruise ships, her California style wouldn’t stand out so much. She’d been more concerned about how few clothes she had than how they were going to look. She’d sold most of her wardrobe through consignment shops to help pay for her schooling, keeping only the ones two years old or older.
They were also the only ones that still fit now that she’d brought her weight up to non-dangerous levels. Her doctor had suggested she gain another ten pounds minimum, fifteen ideally.
Caitlin was trying, but then she wasn’t sure what she’d do about clothes. None of the ones she’d brought with her would fit her then. At least she had a job and personal income to look forward to now.
But the ships weren’t in port yet and Caitlin wasn’t sure which of her clothes would garner Tack’s approval.
That thought pulled her up short.
She was falling back on old behaviors, worrying about what someone else would think of her appearance to the point of paralysis. Seriously, so what if Tack thought her clothes “too fancy”? If she was comfortable and warm, that was all that mattered, right?
She’d been working very hard for more than a year to convince herself of this.
Caitlin liked to dress fashionably; she always had. She didn’t like being told she’d fallen short in some way. That was too reminiscent of Nevin.
No way was she putting Tack in that role, though. He wasn’t Nevin, wasn’t even remotely like her ex-husband in any of the ways that counted.
If he was still anything like the boy she’d grown up with, Taqukaq MacKinnon would be appalled to think Caitlin was using his opinion as the yardstick to measure her clothing choices by. He might well make another comment today, but he wouldn’t expect it to result in Caitlin modifying the way she dressed.
Frustrated with herself, especially allowing her morning routine to suffer, Caitlin pulled on a snug white T-shirt for an added layer of warmth. Her body didn’t hold heat as well as it had when she’d lived in Cailkirn before.
Hopefully that would get better with time. Mindful of the time, she slipped into a form-fitting white button-down top with long sleeves and then pulled her favorite Carolina Herrera sweater over it.
The shade of the thin blue cotton was almost an exact match for her eyes. She left the shirt untucked so the tails hung below the hem of the sweater.
She donned the same quilted silk Chanel vest she’d been wearing the day before and grabbed the old ski jacket Gran had put away with Caitlin’s hiking boots.
Tack wouldn’t accuse her of being too stylish in the nearly ten-year-old jacket, but chances were she wouldn’t need the coat today.
It was best to be prepared, though. Weather was unpredictable on the Kenai Peninsula.
She found Tack drinking coffee and eating one of Aunt Elspeth’s cinnamon rolls in the kitchen. Thankful that it looked like she’d get a chance to eat, Caitlin pulled cereal from the cupboard.
She’d discovered that skipping meals wreaked havoc with her hard-won healthier eating habits. It was too easy to just keep on skipping until she’d gone a couple of days without actually eating anything.
Never again.
Her therapist said relapses happened, but Caitlin had promised herself one thing: she wasn’t ever going to reach the point where she fainted from lack of nutrition again.
“You’re not going to eat that for breakfast are you, Kitty-love?” Aunt Elspeth asked in that gentle way she had. “I’ve made fresh cinnamon rolls. So much nicer than dry cereal.”
Caitlin eyed the gooey pastries, oozing with melted butter, cinnamon, and caramelized sugar and tried not to let the nausea building inside her show. “My stomach doesn’t do well with heavy food first thing in the morning.”
Or ever really, but she wasn’t going to mention that. Like a lot of anorexics, Caitlin had spiraled into bulimia as well. And not always by choice. A stomach that didn’t get fed very often had a hard time digesting rich foods, no matter her intentions when she ate it.
She was much better about fueling her body at regular intervals now, but she still struggled with high-fat foods, and too much sugar might as well be tequila shots.
“But—” Aunt Elspeth started.
“I packed snacks and a lunch. She’ll be fine,” Tack interrupted.
Which sort of shocked Caitlin. He was far too polite to interrupt her aunt, but it was almost as if he realized how difficult the simple conversation was for Caitlin.
Aunt Elspeth looked as gobsmacked as Caitlin felt, but after a look between them that Caitlin couldn’t decipher, her great-aunt subsided.
“Eat your cereal,” Tack told her.
Caitlin nodded and set about measuring an exact portion of the cereal and adding a level half cup of unsweetened almond milk and exactly twelve berries.
She joined Tack at the table and began to eat, jealous of his cup of coffee.
It had been years since she’d been able to have the true Colombian gold with impunity.
Tack smiled, one eyebrow quirked. “No coffee?”
Caitlin gave a negative jerk of her head, not wanting to explain how at twenty-eight, she couldn’t handle the high acid content in her favorite beverage.
Aunt Elspeth put a mug of steaming yellow-tinted liquid in front of Caitlin. “I’ve made you some chamomile tea, dear.”
“Thank you, Aunt Elspeth. You’re so thoughtful.”
“Think nothing of it.” The older woman patted Caitlin’s arm.
Guilt that her aunt had to make special efforts on her behalf washed over Caitlin. Just as quickly, she tried to let it go.
Her therapist would have reminded Caitlin that she hadn’t asked for the tea. Aunt Elspeth had offered.
“Where are you two off today, then?” Gran asked, coming into the kitchen, her bright blue eyes lit with curiosity.
Aunt Alma never joined them for breakfast. She’d come down early for coffee and toast, which she’d take back to her bedroom for what she called her quiet time.
“We’re going hiking,” Tack offered.
“Yes, so our Kitty said.”
Tack didn’t take the silent invitation to expand on his plans and Caitlin didn’t know them.
Gran nodded, seemingly unperturbed by Tack’s reticence to share. “Well, I’m sure you’ll have a lovely time.”
“Don’t forget a warm coat,” Aunt Elspeth admonished.
“She’s a grown woman, Elspeth,” Gran said with a shake of her head. “She isn’t going to forget her coat.”
Aunt Elspeth didn’t look convinced of Caitlin’s skills at self-preservation.
Considering she was spending the day with the first man to flip her switch of sexual desire in years, Caitlin had to wonder if the older woman wasn’t right to doubt her.
CHAPTER SIX
They been heading north on Sterling Highway for about twenty minutes when Caitlin said, “Thank you for running interference for me in the kitchen.”
She’d spent the drive thinking about the exchange and decided that was exactly what Tack had done.
“No problem. Miss Elspeth wants to help.”
“Her intentions are the best.” Which made it that much harder t
o tell the elder woman no.
“They are, but she doesn’t understand just how delicate your digestive system has become.”
“And you do?”
“I read up on it.”
“On…” She still had a difficult time saying the word aloud.
He said it for her. “Anorexia.”
“How did you know?”
“Your aunt told me you’d dropped down to just over ninety pounds. I couldn’t figure another reason for that.” He sighed, his expression reflecting something she didn’t understand. Guilt? “You always stopped eating when you were stressed.”
“That was how it started.”
“But it turned into something else.”
“I couldn’t always control what food was placed before me, but I controlled how much of it I took into my body.”
“Or kept there,” he guessed.
“Yes.”
“How is that now?”
She decided he meant the bulimia. “Better.”
“Good.”
“You’re not disgusted by me, by my weakness?”
His brows drew together as he flicked her a quick glance before putting his full attention back onto the road. “Why would you ask that?”
“I spent enough time repulsed by myself,” she admitted. Some days she still was, but she fought the feelings now. “I wouldn’t blame you if you were too.”
Tack swore and then yanked the steering wheel to the right and pulled the truck to the side of the highway. He turned off the engine and took several breaths in silence, not looking at her.
“Are we here?” She looked around but didn’t see the start of a trail anywhere nearby.
She knew he liked to explore on his own but didn’t think he’d take her on that kind of hike first thing back. Tack wasn’t like Nevin. He didn’t revel in showing up other people.
Finally, Tack shook his head and unbuckled his seat belt so he could slide his body toward her on the bench seat, shifting so he faced her. “Listen very carefully to me, Kitty. I want you to really hear what I’m saying, okay?”
She nodded slowly, not understanding what was happening but knowing it was important to him from the expression on the face she’d missed more than any other in the last eight years.