Northern Exposure

by Debra Lee Brown

  “How much experience do you have?”

  “What?” She looked up at him.

  “With wildlife photography. What other animals have you photographed?”

  Besides the menagerie of pets she’d had growing up and her college’s mascot, a Clydesdale, the answer was none. Well, except for some small animals she’d seen earlier today. But she wasn’t about to tell him that. His smug expression and arched brow told her he couldn’t wait to point out her shortcomings.

  Blake had been like that. Always making sure she knew she wasn’t good enough, wasn’t experienced enough. At every opportunity, hammering it home that she was nothing without him.

  Well, here’s a news flash: Blake was wrong.

  It had taken her a long time to see it. Weeks of getting over the shock of what had happened in New York, lying in the dark on the twin bed in her old room in her parents’ house, thinking about her life—what she wanted, what she was, what she could be.

  Her new life started now. And she wasn’t going to let any man, particularly one who didn’t even know her, tell her she wasn’t capable of handling it.

  “Moose,” she said. The lie came easy. “Deer, wolves, humpback whales, penguins. You name it, I’ve photographed it.”

  “Really?” He perked right up, seeming to believe her. She felt good all of a sudden. Better than she had all evening. “Where’d you shoot the penguins? Antarctica?”

  She supposed she shouldn’t make up anything that seemed too farfetched. If you’re going to lie, stick as close to the truth as possible. She’d read that once in a detective novel.

  “No,” she said. “Right here in Alaska. In the, uh, arctic.”

  “No kidding?” Joe smiled, his eyes glittering appreciatively in the last of the light. It was the first smile she’d seen from him, and a little shiver raced through her. Things were back on track.

  “Anyway, about that bull…” She pushed the map toward him again.

  “You must be pretty famous, then.”

  “Who, me? No, not at all. I’m just another photographer.” She pointed to the spot on the map where they’d last seen the bull, but Joe Peterson wasn’t looking at the map. He was looking at her.

  “I’ll have to disagree with you, Wendy.” He said her name as if it were a foreign word. “It would take one hell of a photographer, wildlife or otherwise, to shoot pictures of penguins in Alaska.”

  Why was he so antagonistic? What did he care if she had or hadn’t photographed—

  “Because, Wendy—” there it was again “—there aren’t any penguins in Alaska.”

  “There…aren’t?”

  “They’re a southern hemisphere species. Any wildlife photographer would know that.” He pushed away from the deck and started back inside.

  She followed him. “All right, I lied. So what? I still need to get those photos for the magazine, and to do that I’ll need to find that buck or bull or whatever it is again, or another one like it.”

  He marched into the kitchen and started washing their supper dishes as if she wasn’t even there, banging plates around, sloshing water out of the sink.

  She muscled in beside him and spread the map out on the dish drainer. “You’re right. I don’t know anything about penguins, okay? But I do know that there are only a handful of woodland caribou in Alaska. They’re rare, elusive, completely unlike the native species that roams the tundra. No one has ever photographed them before.”

  “There’s a reason for that,” he said, and plopped the dish he was working on back in the water. “It’s dangerous. The males are rogues. They’re skittish as hell and thrive in cliff settings just like the one you nearly got us both killed on.”

  She couldn’t think about that. “I need those pictures. It’s important. I’m not asking you to help me, I’m simply asking you to show me on this map where I might find more caribou, bulls especially.”

  He snorted and went back to his dishwashing. She noticed how strong his hands were, how tanned they looked against the white plastic plates. For a millisecond she recalled them on her body that afternoon. In a blood-heating thought that had nothing to do with photography, she wondered what the contrast would be like of his bronze hands against her bare white skin.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said, and grabbed a towel. “That bull we saw today, along with any others in the area, will have bolted to the other side of the reserve. You can’t drive there. You’d have to go on foot.” He gave her a once-over, his eyes lingering for a second on her mouth. “A woman like you would never make it.”

  She knew it was Joe Peterson, game warden, standing before her, saying the words, but it was Blake Barrett’s voice she heard in her head.

  “Oh, really?” She stormed out of the kitchen, slapped the map on the coffee table—which, earlier, she’d moved out of the way—and proceeded to make up the sofa bed with the sheets he’d delivered.

  Joe leaned in the door frame and watched her. The longer he looked at her, the angrier she got. What was it about men that they assumed—assumed without even knowing her—that she wasn’t up to the task at hand, no matter what that task happened to be?

  From something as simple as carting out the garbage to something as complex as managing a runway shoot, or as challenging as finding a couple of caribou in the mountains—guys like Blake Barrett, and now Joe Peterson, thought she was helpless.

  Well, hide and watch, boys.

  She snapped the crisp white sheet over the foam mattress.

  Hide and watch.

  Joe thrashed around in bed until the top sheet was twisted around his legs like a rope. He ripped it from his body and tossed it aside, then punched up the pillows, ramming his head into them like a Dall sheep in full rut.

  It was no good.

  He’d been lying there for the past hour and a half, wide awake. The bright-green numbers on the digital clock by the bed read just past two in the morning. After their conversation on the deck, which had turned into an argument in the kitchen, he’d left his overnight guest to fend for herself and had retreated to the bedroom to sleep.

  Only sleep hadn’t come. He’d reread the tabloid article he’d found in the back bedroom, paying particular attention to the reporter’s assessment of Willa Walters—the woman who was sleeping on his sofa bed. He knew these kinds of newspapers twisted the facts to suit their story and sensationalized every tidbit. All the same, he couldn’t get the sordid details out of his mind. He couldn’t shrug it off and let it go.

  The other thing he couldn’t let go of was the idea that the two of them weren’t alone out here. He’d definitely seen a man in the woods that afternoon. On the hike back to the station earlier that evening, he could have sworn that someone was following them. It could be a poacher, as he’d first suspected, or maybe a lost tourist. Hell, for all he knew it could be a tabloid reporter following the Walters story all the way to Alaska, though he didn’t think it very likely.

  He rolled onto his stomach into a sprawl, working to get comfortable, forcing all thoughts of mystery men and lying photographers from his mind. He willed himself to sleep. A few minutes later, relaxed at last, he was almost there, hovering on the edge.

  Then he heard it, the faint creak of board outside on the deck.

  A second later he was up, pulling on jeans and a shirt in the dark, scrambling for his boots, taking care to be as quiet as possible. He realized his heart was beating fast, much faster than normal, but it wasn’t because he feared what was out there.

  He’d run into all kinds of things in the night out here—hikers, department personnel on reconnaissance, even wildlife photographers. Most of the time it was animals: a disoriented grizzly, groggy from hibernation, ambling onto the deck, raccoons digging in his trash bin, the odd moose or mountain lion. None of them were dangerous if you respected their space.

  No, the reason for his accelerated heart rate wasn’t that he feared for his own safety. He did, however, fear for the safety of the woman sleeping in his front
room. More accurately, he feared she’d wake up and do something stupid that would land her in trouble.

  That creaking board wasn’t a figment of his imagination.

  Joe stepped lightly down the darkened hallway, peering into the bathroom and kitchen, and out the kitchen windows before slipping silently into the front room.

  His house guest was asleep, the covers pulled over her head. Everything was quiet except for the nighttime sounds of crickets and a light wind breezing through the trees. Joe moved to the window and looked out.

  He stood, frozen in place, for a full minute, his gaze sweeping the deck, the steps leading up to it, and the forest beyond. A sliver of moon poked through the clouds, casting an eerie light on the trees, painting every surface ghostly gray.

  Light exploded from the room’s overhead fixture.

  Joe whirled toward the switch.

  “What’s up?” Wendy leaned sleepily against the wall flanking him, squinting against the light, her hand still on the switch.

  In a lightning-fast move, he flicked it off, grabbed her around the waist and backed them away from the window.

  “Hey, what the—”

  “Quiet!” Setting her on her feet, he looked at her hard, his eyes readjusting to the dark, and made a sign for her to be still.

  “What’s wrong?” she whispered.

  He didn’t answer. Pushing her back into the shadow of the door frame, he moved to the corner of the room by the fireplace and plucked his rifle from where it stood upright next to a jumble of snowshoes and skis.

  He knew it was loaded, but checked it anyway, then listened hard for a moment to the ordinary sounds of the night. Wendy stood stock-still in the door frame, listening, too, moonlight bathing her face in a soft pearl wash. Her hair shone silver and swished lightly against her neck as she turned toward him.

  It suddenly struck him how beautiful she was, standing there in nothing more than the old T-shirt he’d loaned her to sleep in. His T-shirt. It looked entirely different on her than it did on him.

  Of course it did, doofus.

  The fire in the hearth had died, and the room was cold. Her nipples stood out against the fabric of the thin shirt. She pushed off suddenly, from bare foot to bare foot, as if the floor were icy. His gaze was drawn to her small feet, upward along lithe, toned legs to the hem of the T-shirt. For a long moment he thought about what was under that T-shirt.

  “Is something out there?” She looked pointedly at the rifle in his hands.

  “I don’t know.” He moved up beside her, then in front of her, and, when the moon disappeared behind a cloud, strode quickly across the room to the front door.

  Wendy followed.

  He turned, ready to tell her to go back, but it was too late. She was right there with him, her face lighting up in anticipation, as she waited for him to open the door. No fear. Not even a hint of it. Just wide-eyed curiosity. It genuinely surprised him. She was a New York fashion photographer for God’s sake. He knew native Alaskans, women born and bred to the life here, who would have been fearful, at least cautious, in the same situation.

  But not Ms. Wendy, Willa, whatever-her-name-was Walters. Caution was not a part of her makeup. That had been apparent yesterday on the cliff face.

  “Are you going out there?”

  “Yeah. Stay here, and lock the door after I leave.”

  She placed a warm hand on his arm as he turned the lock, and the shock of it sent an odd shiver through him. “Be careful,” she said.

  The whole idea of her saying that to him made him smile. It was a slow smile that rolled over his features. He felt it inside, too. It was the damnedest thing, her telling him to be careful.

  Their gazes met, and for a few seconds he allowed himself to look at her. It had been a long time since he’d slept with a woman, even longer since he’d had one in his life on a regular basis. He missed it more than he’d let on to himself. He missed it a lot, he realized, his gaze slipping to her mouth, her breasts, those tiny bare feet.

  He told himself he wasn’t attracted to her, just her body, her looks. She was a woman, and he was a man in need of a good—

  She removed her hand from his arm.

  The sordid facts of the incident involving her in New York, described in raunchy detail in the tabloid article, crash landed in his mind. It was all too close to home, and made him remember things he’d tried for the past year to forget.

  “Go back to bed,” he said stiffly. Redoubling his grip on the rifle, he eased the front door open and stepped into the night.

  Wendy came awake with a start, sitting bolt upright on the sofa bed’s lumpy foam mattress. Bad dream, she realized, and forced herself to draw a calming breath. Nightmare, really—the same one she had over and over about her and Blake and what had happened that night in a Manhattan loft.

  Swiveling out of bed, she banished the memory from her mind and wondered if Joe was still outside. The luminous dial of her watch read 3:00 a.m., about an hour from the time he’d left the cabin. She’d waited up for him awhile, curled on the sofa bed, but had fallen asleep. Walking to the window, she looked out. It would be dawn soon. The cloud cover had dissipated, revealing a cobalt blanket of sky peppered with stars.

  When she turned toward the hall, pausing in the doorway, she glanced at the stack of skis and snowshoes in the corner of the room by the fireplace and noticed Joe’s rifle wasn’t there. Maybe he was still outside. Maybe he’d found something.

  Yesterday, from the moment she’d discovered the caribou and had started tracking it, she could have sworn she wasn’t alone. Someone, not Joe, had been out there with her. She knew it wasn’t Joe because he’d shown her on the map yesterday afternoon the route he’d taken from the station. He’d only intercepted her by chance. She’d covered territory he hadn’t even been in that day, and she’d had company.

  The thought of it gave her the creeps.

  Shaking it off, she padded down the hallway toward the bathroom and noticed that the door to the bedroom was open. On impulse she moved toward it.

  Joe Peterson was a strange animal. He reminded her a little of the rogue bull whose photo she’d been so desperate to shoot yesterday on the rock. He lived out here alone, miles from anywhere and anyone, in a world where he was master. At least, he thought he was. That made everyone else a mere minion, a position with which Wendy was overly familiar and was determined never to assume again.

  She’d spent years working with all kinds of people. Except for her bad judgment where Blake was concerned, she considered herself a pretty good judge of character. Something told her there was a good reason for Joe Peterson’s less than friendly behavior toward her. By the end of the evening his cool indifference had turned to outright irritation, and it bothered her that she couldn’t fathom a reason.

  Intuition told her he was a man in pain. That alone should have set off a loud warning bell in her thick head. Men in pain were a problem for her. The problem was she couldn’t not help them. Her natural instinct was to nurture, be a helpmate. That’s what had gotten her into trouble with Blake. Over the years being a helpmate had turned into being a doormat.

  Never again.

  At the door of Joe’s bedroom she stopped, remembering the fleeting moment before he’d gone outside, rifle in hand, recalling the way he’d looked at her mouth, her body, and had made her heartbeat quicken. There was no doubt she was attracted to him, and he to her. She hadn’t bothered fighting it because in the morning someone would take her back to her car and she’d never see him again.

  The thought of that wasn’t as soothing as it should have been.

  The bed in Joe’s room was empty, pillows askew, sheets twisted into a pile on the floor. Moonlight flooded the airy space. The room smelled like him, cool and green and unstable. Those were the impressions that had taken hold of her when she’d touched his arm, when she’d stood so close to him she’d felt his breath on her face.

  With a start she realized the rifle he’d taken outside with him
was propped against the wall by the bed. Without thinking, she took a step into the room, then swallowed a gasp.

  Joe sat in a big Adirondack chair by a row of old-fashioned windows overlooking the deck. Clad only in jeans, his chest was bare, the muscles in his arms tight. There were no drapes on the windows. His face, reflecting some terrible pain, was bathed in the bright light of an August moon.

  Her gaze followed his to the framed photo he’d moved to the antique nightstand. Wendy hadn’t even noticed it was missing from the mantel.

  All at once she knew.

  “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

  Slowly, as if he’d known all along she was standing there, Joe turned to look at her. “Yes.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Why?”

  She felt awkward all of a sudden, her tongue thick in her mouth. “I…”

  “Go back to sleep, Ms. Walters.”

  “I wish you’d call me Wendy.”

  He rose from the chair and placed the photo facedown into a drawer. “How about Willa?”

  Chapter 3

  It was hard to pretend she hadn’t gotten under his skin, but he forced himself.

  Joe poured Willa Walters a cup of black coffee, and while she sat at the kitchen table and drank it, he fixed them a quick breakfast.

  “It’s not my real name,” she said after the silence between them stretched to a breaking point.

  “Wendy?”

  “No, Willa.” She shot him an irritated look. “It was made up for me.”

  “By who?”

  She shrugged. “A man I used to know.”

  “One of the guys in that picture?”

  The shock that registered on her face turned instantly to annoyance. “I didn’t know game wardens read those kinds of newspapers.”

  He flashed her a look, but didn’t respond. He divided a panful of scrambled eggs between two plates, topped them with buttered toast and handed her one.

  He expected her to refuse it, but she didn’t. Silently she accepted the food and began to eat. That was another thing that surprised him about her—she had one hell of an appetite for someone so petite.