Wild Heat (Northern Fire)
Page 27
He rolled onto his side so they were looking right into each other’s eyes. “My gran always told me she believed every soul has its mate, but not everyone is blessed enough to meet theirs.”
“She and your granddad fit like two parts of one whole,” Kitty agreed.
“So do we.”
Kitty’s eyes misted and he didn’t think he’d ever get used to her showing this vulnerability to him. “We do. We always have.”
“Since we were six years old.”
“The first time I thought of being your wife, I think I was eight and someone had just gotten married in town. You were the only person I could imagine sharing my room with.” She laughed. “My concept of sharing was very different back then.”
“You never said.”
She nodded. “If you’ll remember, talking about the future wasn’t something I did a lot of, not as a child, not as a teenager, not as a young woman.”
He’d noticed back then, but he’d just chalked that up to being Kitty. Now he understood that she hadn’t trusted the future enough to talk about it.
“We’re going to be doing a lot of planning for the future.”
“Yes, we are.”
“Starting with this.” He lifted the diamond ring he’d bought ten years ago and never shown another soul. Until this moment. “Will you marry me, Caitlin Elizabeth?”
She gasped, her eyes rounded and watered, and then she was hugging him so hard he could barely breathe. “Of course I will. You’re the other half of my soul, Taqukaq. Always and forever.”
“I love you, Kitty.”
“I love you too. So much,” she choked out with a happy laugh as he put the engagement ring on her finger.
They kissed until making love became an inevitability.
Still breathing harshly, he rubbed his hand up and down her back. “Four.”
“On a scale of what? Because I’d give it a twelve and a half at least.”
He laughed, thrilled he would be sharing his life with a woman who was going to fill his days with emotion and humor and incendiary love. “Four children.”
“Are you kidding?” she asked with wide eyes, her voice going into that high register that warned him his emotional wildcat was a second from showing herself.
“Not even a little. Da and Aana raised three all right.”
“But four? We don’t live with your parents like they lived with your grandparents.”
“Technically you don’t live here yet at all.”
“And I won’t officially move in until after the wedding. Gran would have a fit.” Kitty snuggled closer as if that would take away the sting of her words.
He didn’t want to upset her gran, but he wasn’t waiting any longer for Kitty to move into the house he’d built for her. “If we fax the application to Anchorage today, we can pick up the marriage license on Monday.”
“You have tours on Monday,” she said without a word for how fast he wanted to move.
“I’ll get someone to cover for me.” He had a network of friends in the guide community, and as much as he hated putting his business in someone else’s hands, this was worth it.
“I take it you don’t want a big wedding?” she asked in a tone that said she didn’t mind that one bit.
“If you mean big production?” He shuddered in revulsion. “No. If you mean a lot of guests, I figure we can say our vows on the back porch of the Homestead. The clearing will hold a good five hundred easy.”
She gasped, her face paling. “Five hundred?”
“Sure. We don’t have to invite the whole town.”
“Just most of it.”
“Don’t exaggerate.”
She jerked away from him and sat up. “Now, you listen here, Taqukaq MacKinnon. One, we are not having four children until I’m sure I can do a good job parenting the first two. Then we’ll talk. Second, we are not inviting five hundred people to a last-minute wedding!”
“Deal on the kids.” His wildcat would be an amazing mom, but if she wanted to stop at two, hell if she wanted to stop at one, he wasn’t going to be a bastard about it.
That wasn’t Tack’s way, but he was pretty sure they’d end up with four like he wanted. Kitty Grant-almost-MacKinnon had a helluva lot of love to give.
“And the wedding?” she asked suspiciously.
“We’ll ask your aunts and my mom and grandmothers.”
“That’s as good as guaranteeing a thousand guests show up, not just five hundred.”
“It’ll be fine.”
“We won’t be able to get married until the end of the season.” She didn’t sound very happy about that.
Good. Because he wasn’t waiting for her to move in for another five months. “No. If it means waiting, we’ll elope to Anchorage and come home with the deed done. Our families can throw a reception after the season is over.”
“Gran and my aunts would be hurt. So would your family. Every one of the MacKinnons expects to watch you say your vows.”
“So, they come with us to Anchorage.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Not.”
She huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re stubborn.”
“Yeah, I’m the stubborn one.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“I think you’ve forgotten how good our Knit and Pearl Club and the Northern Lights Service Club are at putting on a party. They have social gatherings every month in the fall and winter. They’ve got this thing down.”
“They’re not wedding planners.”
“They might as well be. Everyone knows their primary function is to see the younger generation married off.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Trust me.” He pushed her back on the bed and hovered over her. “Please, wildcat.”
“Okay,” she agreed breathlessly.
He didn’t expect it always to be this easy, but then if it were, life would be boring.
In love with the most beautiful woman in Alaska, not to mention the most stubborn, Tack was damn sure his never would be.
* * *
There were seven hundred and fifty guests at the Grant-MacKinnon wedding exactly one week after Tack’s wildcat agreed to be his wife. Kitty and Tack spoke their vows on the back porch of the MacKinnon Homestead and the Northern Lights Service Club hosted a potluck reception afterward at their hall with the help of the Knit & Pearl Club.
Kitty wore white with her red curls in a mass over her shoulders. Tack wore an Inuit ceremonial necklace and a kilt in the MacKinnon tartan with his nicest hiking boots.
The bride wasn’t the only one with tears in her eyes when they spoke their vows, and Tack wasn’t the only man wearing a grin that rivaled the brightness of fresh snow under the winter sun.
At the reception, the matchmakers turned their attention to another town son.
Oh, Rock Jepsom’s parents might not have originally been from Cailkirn, but the man had the right heart for the town. When he was around that lady movie director, they generated enough electricity to heat the town in the dead of winter too.
The Grant sisters pulled Malina MacKinnon aside and started plotting.
It would only be a matter of time before there was another wedding in Cailkirn, if they had anything to say about it.
And then the babies would come.
When a Hollywood movie crew arrives in
Cailkirn, Alaska, property owner Rock
Jepsom refuses to cooperate—until he meets
the film’s star, a hometown beauty
named Deborah Banes…
Look for Hot Night,
Book 2 of the Northern Lights
series, in January 2016.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Fall in Love with Forever Romance
Newsletters
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Lucy Monroe
Cover design by Elizabeth Turner
Cover image by Michael Heath
Cover copyright © 2015 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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ISBN 978-1-4555-7549-7
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