Lloyd shouted an obscenity, and Joe pushed off his barstool, his fists coming up. Axel moved toward the offending pair, grabbing both of them by the scruff and marching them, still shouting, toward the doors.
The rest of the bar didn’t bat an eyelid, going on with their drinking and talking, the familiar click of the balls on the ramshackle pool table down on one end not missing a beat.
Hope gave a small, soundless sigh, the noises of the bar comforting.
She’d been managing the Happy Moose ever since her grandfather, who used to own it, had died, and she’d virtually grown up in the place. It was her home, its low heavy-beamed ceiling and rough-hewn wooden bar opposite the door and the few rickety tables as familiar to her as her own bedroom upstairs. The drunken singing and noisy conversation of the bar patrons had been her lullabies, the walls covered with the taxidermied heads of animals watching over her as she played. They were mostly old trophies from back in the seventies, when hunting and trapping still paid big bucks and Bill, her grandfather, had given out free beer to anyone who brought in a head.
No one brought in heads anymore, but some of the older hunters still paid for their beer in skins and furs, or whatever they’d managed to hunt that day. Old Bill had been okay with that, since bartering for goods and services in lieu of cash was an old Deep River tradition, and now that Bill was gone, Hope saw no reason to change it.
She might once have dreamed of leaving town, of heading on to college and a bigger, larger life somewhere else, but after her grandfather had drowned in the Deep River trying to save Joshua Quinn, her dreams had suddenly seemed not so very important.
Her mother, always emotionally fragile, had been even more fragile after her father’s death, and Hope couldn’t bear leaving her. Couldn’t bear leaving the Moose to someone else to manage either.
So she’d stayed and taken on the bar. And now she ran it just like her grandfather had, with a combination of toughness, acceptance, and a little bit of mean to keep ’em in line.
It wasn’t a decision she’d ever regretted, no matter that her two best friends in all the world had up and left without her.
A stab of grief hit at the thought, a reminder that at least one of those friends was no more.
Caleb. The news of his death had hit the town hard. If Deep River had been a country, Caleb West would have been its king, and no one knew quite where his death had left them, since the Wests owned the land that the town sat on. Most people had ninety-year leases for which they paid the Wests nominal rent, but with Caleb gone, uncertainty had gripped the town.
Not that Hope was thinking about rents quite yet. She was simply mourning the loss of a man she’d grown up with. A man she’d once thought she might have had a future with—or at least hoped for it.
Until he’d left, taking Silas, her other partner in crime, with him.
She turned away from the ruckus still going on near the exit, reflexively checking on the contents of the small fridge behind the bar that contained a few bottles of white wine and sodas that nobody but tourists drank.
Grief sat like a sharp stone in the center of her chest, but she swallowed it down. Get on with it—that’s what you did in Deep River. Life went on. You couldn’t sit around feeling sorry for yourself and wishing things were different because they weren’t.
She’d had to do that after her grandfather had died too. Had to after the night of the bonfire, when Caleb had told her that he and Silas were going to leave, that they couldn’t stay. And that she should come with them.
Leaving had always been what she’d wanted, but after Bill had died, things had changed. The bar needed someone to manage it, but more than that, her mom had needed someone to look after her, and the only person who could do that was Hope.
How ironic in the end that it was Caleb who’d gone, taking Silas, who’d always been the one who’d wanted to stay, with him.
Something twisted in Hope’s chest, something that wasn’t grief, but she ignored it. Shoved it back down with all the rest of the icky emotions she didn’t have time to deal with, not with a bar to run.
“I don’t care.” Axel’s voice was hard, cutting through Joe’s protests. “Go and cool off somewhere else.”
Lloyd was still arguing, but then Lloyd never knew when to shut up.
Hope ignored them, focusing on the contents of the fridge and not on the ache in her chest. It had been a couple of weeks since the news of Caleb’s death had filtered through the community. The funeral itself had been in Juneau, but Hope hadn’t gone. The financial implications of closing the Moose for the necessary couple of days it would take to get up there and back had been too dire, so she’d attended the memorial service that Pastor Dan had given.
Morgan had been the only person who’d gone to Juneau. People had differing opinions on Caleb and the way he’d left town, and even though he’d visited a couple of times in the intervening years, some of them had viewed his leaving as abandonment. There had been a rowdy town meeting only a couple of days earlier about what was going to happen now, where Astrid, the town’s reluctant mayor, had called for calm. That nothing was certain until Caleb’s will was read. If Caleb even had a will…
It wasn’t only the town he abandoned. It was you as well.
The feeling in Hope’s chest coiled tighter, but she ignored that too, settling for rearranging the bottles aggressively, the glass making rattling noises.
Being emotional didn’t help, and displays of grief weren’t really done. It was very much a pick-yourself-up-and-carry-on kind of place here, which was how she’d gotten through her childhood and the pain of Caleb’s leaving.
No doubt it was how she’d get through his death as well.
She straightened up and as she did so, became conscious that the bar had fallen silent.
Weird. It could only mean one of two things. Either Joe or Lloyd had managed to get a punch in on Axel, or a stranger had walked in.
Dear Lord, it had better be someone punching Axel. That was a whole lot easier to deal with than having a stranger turn up to disturb the already-disturbed populace.
Slowly, Hope turned around.
But Axel was standing there uninjured, and it wasn’t a stranger.
It was much, much worse than that.
There was a man standing in the doorway. Massively tall, with wide shoulders, coal-black hair still long enough to curl at his collar…and those incredible eyes, the color caught between gold and green, like the glint of sunlight in the depths of the Deep River.
Her heartbeat caught, like an engine misfiring, her brain flailing around in shock.
Because it was Silas Quinn standing there. Silas, the inventive, imaginative kid who’d turned into a silent, brooding teenager after his mother had died. Who was the darkness to Caleb’s light and who had half the female population of their high school swooning over his quiet intensity.
Silas, whom she hadn’t seen since that night beside the bonfire, when she’d begged them not to go.
Silas, who’d offered to stay.
And whom you refused, because you wanted Caleb to be the one to offer. And he didn’t.
The burst of instinctive joy that caught her in the chest faded at the memory, a wash of an old, half-forgotten shame following hard on its heels.
Yeah, she’d refused and hadn’t been kind about it because she’d been grieving and lost, and it had been Caleb she’d wanted. Caleb, who’d left anyway.
The bar was silent, everyone staring at the man in the doorway, and after a second the atmosphere changed, recognition setting in.
“Silas?” someone said. “Silas Quinn?”
And the man shifted, and suddenly, like a blurry picture coming into focus, it became clear to her that the Silas standing there wasn’t the Silas that she remembered after all. And in fact, he had changed. He’d changed a lot.
His soak
ing wet clothing clung to shoulders wider than she’d remembered and a chest that was far more muscular and defined than it had been at eighteen. His features—almost pretty as a teen—seemed harder, more masculine somehow, his tanned skin drawn tight to the strong bone structure beneath it. She could see the white lines of scars here and there, and there were lines around his eyes and mouth, a darkness in his green-gold eyes.
The Silas she’d known had always been a serious type of guy. But she’d always known how to get a smile out of him. And those smiles…
She’d lived for those smiles.
This man looked like he’d never smiled once in his entire life. Like he didn’t even know what a smile was.
He ignored the people staring at him, ignored the sounds of his name echoing around the bar. Instead, he looked straight at her. “Hello, Hope,” he said at last, his voice as deep and gritty as the bed of the river that flowed outside the bar, and just as full of undercurrents.
A part of her, the wild and joyful teenager she’d once been before age and responsibility had gotten the better of her, wanted to launch herself over the top of the bar and into his arms. Because above all else, Silas had been one of the closest friends she’d ever had.
But she didn’t.
She didn’t let herself get carried away by wild extremes of emotion anymore and certainly not with a bar to run and an emotionally fragile mother to look after.
And she certainly wasn’t going to hug the man who hadn’t visited her once in thirteen years.
Hope forced all the old emotions down and locked them securely away. Then she folded her arms. “Hello, Silas,” she said. “Long time no see.”
Chapter 2
Okay, so that was clear—Hope was officially unhappy to see him.
Did you really expect anything different?
Si adjusted the bag on his shoulder, trying to ignore the stares from everyone else in the bar, not to mention the sudden, hollow feeling in his gut.
Yeah, he had expected different. Or at least, a part of him had hoped for it, especially after thirteen years.
Thirteen years and not one visit. Come on, man.
The hollow feeling yawned wider, but he didn’t have a chance to examine it too closely, because questions were being shouted at him, and although nobody had moved, it was clear that everyone in the bar was demanding some kind of acknowledgment.
Deep River had never been an effusive place, but apparently people were pleased to see him, which was a little weird considering anyone who left the town was usually viewed with some suspicion.
But then being friends with a West usually had the effect of making people feel more charitable, and since he had a bombshell of his own to deliver at some point, he decided to be charitable back, even if he didn’t particularly feel like it.
He nodded to a few people, endured a handshake here, a backslap there, took the condolences offered on Caleb’s death, and answered a couple of questions in as brief a way as possible, all the while making his way slowly, but surely, toward the bar.
Hope was standing there with her arms crossed, watching him approach, her dark eyes revealing nothing at all.
Yeah, she was not happy to see him, and he supposed he couldn’t blame her. He hadn’t been back here, not once, not even to visit, and he’d given himself a lot of reasons over the years for why that was. But it wasn’t until now, until she was right in front of him, that he realized the real reason.
It was her. He hadn’t been back because if he’d set even one foot in this town, he’d have stayed. For her. And anything more than friends would never work with Hope; he had too much of his old man in him.
Also, she didn’t want you. She wanted Caleb.
Yeah, there was that.
Still, as he looked at her now, he was conscious that his heartbeat had gotten faster, a tightness coiling in his chest, a familiar, dark pulse in his blood.
She wasn’t the eighteen-year-old girl he’d last seen beside the bonfire that night, the auburn glints in her long dark hair gleaming in the firelight. That girl had always worn her heart on her sleeve, her pretty face open, and that night there had been nothing but hurt written all over it. And anger. The firelight had picked up the tears in her black-coffee eyes too, and he’d known he’d said the wrong thing. Offering to stay had been a mistake. Caleb was who she wanted, not him.
He’d always been able to read her, but that night he’d gotten it wrong. And even now, as he stared at her, he couldn’t tell what was going on in her head. Those eyes were still coffee-black, but there were walls behind them, and while that pretty, open face was still pretty, it wasn’t open anymore. She was guarded. Giving him the face most people in Deep River gave strangers—the impassive “I don’t know you from a bar of soap and I’m not interested in getting to know you either” face.
Her hair, though, that was the same. It wasn’t wild around her head the way it had been when she’d been a kid, but worn in a long, practical plait. Yet the same auburn lights gleamed in it, like fire in the dark heart of a stone.
She had on a red plaid flannel shirt—which on some level made him want to smile, since old Bill had always worn red plaid flannel—and practical jeans, and on the surface she didn’t look much like the old Hope Dawson from years ago.
But he’d seen the leap of anger in her eyes as she’d first met his gaze—and grief and something else he didn’t recognize. And it made him think that the old Hope was still there somewhere inside her.
You better pray she’s not. You don’t want to go there again, buddy.
No fear of that. He’d learned his lesson. But what he did need was someone he trusted to talk with about the news he was bringing. Someone who wouldn’t blab it instantly to the town at large and who could give him an unbiased opinion about where the town was at now and whether what he was going to tell them would cause trouble—and if so, what kind.
He’d learned a lot of things in the military and in the years afterward, getting Wild Alaska off the ground, not the least being that reconnaissance, preparation, and planning were key to the success of any mission, and he had a feeling he was going to need all of those now.
All of those things and Hope.
“Hey, Hope,” he said, since there was no point beating about the bush. “I need to talk to you.”
“No kidding.” She crossed her arms, drawing his gaze to the soft curves beneath the flannel of her shirt. Which wasn’t what he should have been thinking about, dammit. “Thirteen years, Silas. Thirteen years without any contact whatsoever and now you appear unannounced, in my bar, demanding to talk to me?” Her gaze roved over him in a long, leisurely, and very pointed survey, ending back at his face again. “Sorry, but that’s a big no from me.”
“I get it.” He held that stare because he’d always been a man who owned his mistakes. “And you have every right to be angry with me about it. But I need to talk to you right now, and it’s important. It’s about Caleb.”
Hope’s guarded stare didn’t so much as flicker, and from the way his back was prickling, everyone else in the bar was treating him to the same kind of attention.
He cursed silently. Arriving unannounced was always going to cause a commotion, but he hadn’t wanted too big a fuss made about it. People would talk, and before you knew it, all kinds of rumors would be circulating, from the government coming to grab all the land and make people homeless, to aliens landing and the world ending.
Sadly, in this case, all those rumors might end up being true. Though it wouldn’t be the government coming, it would be big oil. And the aliens could be seen to be his buddies—at least Damon was very alien to Alaska, that was for sure. And definitely the world as the people of Deep River knew it was going to end.
No one could stop it. All they could do was take the information and decide for themselves how they were going to deal with it.
S
ome of that must have communicated itself to Hope because she glanced over his shoulder at the suspiciously quiet bar, then let out a breath. “Okay, fine.” Her arms dropped, and she turned toward the door that led to the little office out back. “You have five minutes.”
He wouldn’t need five minutes. Two would be enough.
But he didn’t tell her that, rounding the bar and following her into the Moose’s office area.
It was small, full of cluttered shelves and one broken-down old filing cabinet. There was a desk shoved underneath the sole window that looked out over the main street, though the window was a stark black square now, night pressing in against the glass.
He had memories of this office back from when he, Caleb, and Hope had used the bar like their own personal playhouse and Bill had let them. Si had been fascinated by the animal heads stuck on the walls, in particular one of a stag that everyone called Steve for reasons that were never explained to him. Caleb had thought the heads creepy and had been afraid of them, but Si hadn’t. He was sure the spirit of the wild still lived in those glassy eyes, and he’d spent hours looking into them, imagining the lives of the animals they’d once been.
Seriously, he’d been an idiot kid.
Steve, he noted, was still in the office and still attached to the wall near the desk. But there was no spirit of the wild in his glassy eyes. Not now.
The magic was gone.
Hope pulled out the lone chair sitting under the desk and sat down, swiveling it till she was facing him. She’d kept her arms folded and there was an “impress me” look on her face. “Minutes are ticking, Silas. You’ve now got four and a half.”
Si dropped his duffel bag with a thud and stared back at her. “I get it. You’re angry. But trust me, this is too important to indulge in personal grievances right now, okay? You can talk about how mad you are at me later. This is about Caleb, and it affects the entire town.”
The look on her face flickered, and she shifted in her chair. “Okay, fine,” she said grudgingly. “What’s this all about, then?”
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