Seduced by Snowfall

by Jennifer Bernard

  Then the alders rustled and someone jumped into view. A woman with wet hair and a towel wrapped around her body picked her way barefoot across the grass. She shivered in the late August night air. In one hand she held a plunger and in the other a cell phone.

  “Hi. This is extremely embarrassing, but I happened to be in the shower when the squirrel came in and…”

  He held up his hand. “No explanation needed.” His gaze strayed to the toilet plunger. “Although that…”

  “I was in the bathroom, it was the only thing on hand.” She waved it at him. “It worked on the squirrel.”

  He glanced at her other hand. “And you just happened to have your cell phone with you?”

  “That’s the only lucky part. While I was chasing the squirrel, I saw a moose right outside the window.” She gestured toward the bushes along one side of her house. “I’ve been wanting to get a good moose photo ever since I got here, so I grabbed my phone. The plunger is in case he attacked me.”

  “Word of advice, never try to fight a moose with a plunger,” he said gravely.

  Even with just the light from the front porch, he could see her flush. “Yes, I…can you just…maybe just get my door open?”

  He showed her the tool he’d brought, which might or might not work on the front door. “I may have to pry open a window if this doesn’t work. Do you want to sit in the car while I work on it? Heater’s going.”

  “That’s okay. I’ve never been in a police car before.”

  “It’s not technically a police car, it just looks like one. I’m a firefighter. One of only three staff firefighters in town. Mostly we’re a volunteer department.”

  She gestured with the plunger again. “Can you just…”

  “Of course.” He strode to the door and inserted the pick. “I can tell you’re new around here because a lot of people in Lost Harbor don’t even lock their doors. Some don’t even have locks to start with.”

  “That’s crazy. I could never live like that.” She shivered again.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to wait in the car? I promise not to arrest you unless you use that plunger inappropriately.”

  She finally let go of the plunger and propped it against the front steps. “I’m a doctor.”

  “Okay.” He wasn’t sure why she felt compelled to mention that.

  “I got straight A’s all the way through college. I don’t usually make boneheaded mistakes like locking myself out of my house.”

  “Well, pobody’s nerfect.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Things happen. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

  “That advice sounds good, but is it really? That’s how I got through med school, by beating myself up.”

  “Suit yourself, then.” He wiggled the pick in the lock. “Hey, I left my jacket in the backseat if you want to grab that.”

  She padded across the lawn to the car and used one hand to hold her towel together while she opened the door with the other. When she returned, she wore his navy blue Lost Harbor Fire Department jacket over the towel, which made for an interesting—and surprisingly sexy—look.

  He ignored that fact and focused on the lock.

  “Where’s the squirrel? In the house or out?” he asked as he felt the tumblers give way.

  “I’m not actually sure,” she admitted. “I thought I chased him out, but it was all a blur.”

  “Understandable. All right, you might want to step back.”

  She didn’t budge. “Why?”

  He shrugged and opened the door.

  A ball of fur streaked between her legs. She shrieked and lost her balance. He reached out to grab her before she hit the ground, and her towel fell away. Luckily, she still wore his jacket, which covered her all the way to her upper thighs.

  Windmilling her arms in the air, she crashed into him and the next thing he knew, he was tumbling backwards. She was falling too, and by instinct, he grabbed her so he’d land first, with her on top.

  Which was how he found himself sprawled on the grass with a naked stranger on top of him.

  Just as stunned as he was, she stared into his eyes. Pretty eyes, he noticed. A clear light brown, like the polyurethane he’d just put on his new floor.

  He laughed at the lameness of that comparison. But the woman on top of him must have thought he was laughing at her, because she scrambled off him.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She snatched up the towel and turned her back to him. Even though he knew he shouldn’t look, he caught a glimpse of slim legs under his jacket before she wrapped the towel around herself again.

  “I’m fine. Are you?”

  “Not sure yet.” Gingerly, he flexed his back muscles. He’d slammed pretty hard onto the ground, and even though he prided himself on his fitness, he could have easily tweaked something.

  “Well, the good news is that I’m a doctor, so let me know if you suspect an injury.” Covered up again with the towel, she turned to face him and watched as he pushed himself into a seated position.

  “I wasn’t laughing at you, you know,” he told her. He rolled his shoulders, then his neck. Everything seemed to be in working order.

  “I wouldn’t blame you if you were. This has not been my night. Just one thing after another. It wouldn’t surprise me if I left a burner on this whole time.” She reached out a hand to help him up, but he waved her off.

  “Thanks, but I’d better not risk it. I came here to rescue you. Seems like a long time ago, come to think of it.”

  She laughed. The clouds shifted and moonlight spangled her hair, which seemed to be a soft shade of blond but looked more like silver in this light. “You got the door open, so you accomplished your mission. Thank you for that.”

  “You’re welcome.” He made his way to his feet and brushed the grass off his pants. “Name’s Nate Prudhoe, by the way.”

  “I’m Bethany Morrison.”

  “Shouldn’t it be Doctor Bethany Morrison?”

  A faint flash of surprise crossed her face. “Yes. Doctor. But you don’t have to call me that when I’m standing in my front yard in a towel. Do you mind waiting here for a minute while I get dressed? I’ll bring your jacket right out.”

  “Sure thing, Doc.”

  With a wry smile, she disappeared inside the house, closing the door firmly behind her. He spent a moment thinking of all the women he’d known who would have invited him inside at that point. Bethany Morrison clearly was not one of them.

  A squirrel chittered from the treetops. Nate brandished a fist toward it. “Troublemaker.”

  From his rig, his radio crackled. He walked to his car and listened to the call coming in. Grease fire over at the Grant homestead. He scrawled a quick note on a pad of paper and pierced it onto the handle of the plunger, which he planted smack in the middle of the path where she couldn’t miss it.

  Got called to another emergency. Drop my jacket at the firehouse when you get a chance. Welcome to Lost Harbor, Dr. Morrison. Don’t let the squirrels freak you out, they’re nothing compared to the bears.

  The next day, he strolled into the firehouse to find his jacket carefully folded on the front reception desk.

  It had a note pinned to it, similar to the note he’d left on her plunger.

  Thanks for your help last night. I left a thank you gift in your pocket. Best wishes, Bethany.

  Curious, he unfolded his jacket and searched his pockets. From one of them, he drew out a large gold foil-wrapped chocolate in the shape of a moose.

  He laughed, both at her sneaky sense of humor and the surprising thoughtfulness of the gift. How did a busy doctor have time to hunt down a gift to give someone who’d merely been doing his job? Maybe it came from the gift shop at the hospital.

  Or maybe she was just raised that way—he got that impression, actually. There was something elusively upscale about her, as if she’d been raised with perfect manners and scolded whenever she stepped outside the lines. Maybe that was why she’d
been so mortified by locking herself out of her house.

  If so, she was in for a real culture shock here in Lost Harbor. People around here didn’t care about status or even money much—although everyone wanted a nice bank account. It was a down-to-earth, survive-the-winter kind of place. Quite a few people still used outhouses, at least outside the town limits. The standard Lost Harbor outfit involved rubber boots and a thick hoodie sporting a stray fish scale or two.

  What on earth would Ms. Rich-Girl Doctor make of the characters who called this place home? She was about to get a crash course on rugged Alaska living.

  He almost wished for a front row seat to the show, but the chances of that seemed low. Another woman might have left her phone number in his pocket—something that had happened to him before. She hadn’t invited him in. She hadn’t left him her number. By his count, that was two whiffs of the bat.

  Did this “date” make whiff number three? Had he struck out for good with Dr. Bethany Morrison? When Mrs. Bellini had first mentioned her name, he’d almost laughed at the serendipity of it. Of all the women to set him up with, why choose the new doctor who’d made it pretty clear she wasn’t in the market for anything Nate-related?

  But then he’d decided, why not? Why pass up a chance to see what she looked like in something other than a towel? And as a side benefit, tease her a little about their first meeting?

  Well, the joke was on him, because it turned out that she was beautiful in her own subtle way. She probably thought of her hair as a kind of dishwater blond, but he would always see it as “moonlight” blond, since he’d first seen her in the moonlight. Her eyes—okay, polyurethane wasn’t the best description—had a soft, light-filled quality that appealed to him.

  His overall impression of Bethany Morrison? Intelligent, kind, dedicated…and serious. The kind of serious that made him want to play the jokester to make her smile.

  Good thing that was his specialty. Making people laugh? Easy-peasy. Being serious—a whole different story.

  Chapter Three

  At Misty Bay Regional Hospital, Bethany went straight to the locker room to change into her scrubs. She’d recently gotten board-certified in family medicine, but positions had been in big demand. It had taken several interviews at various hospitals before she’d been offered the position here. Misty Bay Regional definitely hadn’t been her first choice, but it had turned out to have hidden benefits.

  One: It couldn’t be farther from Connecticut and still be part of the United States. Every day, she blessed the four-hour time difference between Alaska and the Greenwich home of her father and third stepmother.

  Two: The hospital was small enough so that she got the opportunity to treat a wide variety of injuries and illnesses. Her specialty of family medicine didn’t limit her the way it might at a bigger hospital.

  Three: A remote community like this really valued anyone who came from so far away to provide medical assistance. She’d already been gifted with smoked salmon, a can of bear spray, and a pendant carved from a narwhal tusk.

  Four. Dr. Ian Finnegan. The perfect man. Visiting neurosurgeon, single, good-looking—basically pure perfection in human form.

  She sighed deeply as she draped her stethoscope around her neck. If she and Ian began dating, her father might finally stop being disappointed in her. He hadn’t wanted her to become a doctor at all. Only three types of professions earned his respect—the legal, the financial, and the political. “That’s where the power is,” he’d tried to explain to her. “Those three. Nowhere else.”

  “What about the power to save someone’s life, or to heal them?”

  He’d gestured impatiently with his glass of Scotch. “How many times are you going to have a patient with any kind of power or status in the world?”

  “But—that’s not—”

  He’d raised a finger, remembering something. “For women, there’s also beauty. Bonus secret weapon. Your sister’s got the advantage there. It’s all in who you can attract. Maybe some tips from your stepmother would help.”

  After that demoralizing conversation, she’d simply put her head down and focused on finishing her degree before she lost all motivation.

  Now that she had her medical degree, Daddy claimed to be proud of her. But deep in her heart, she knew that he felt more comfortable with Gretel, her gorgeous man-magnet half-sister.

  In the A wing, she checked in with the nurse coordinator, a longtime Lost Harbor resident named Kara Lee. “Let the night shift commence. What do we have tonight?”

  “Nothing new to speak of, but the night is young.” Kara Lee rattled off updates on the patients waiting for attention. A sixteen-year-old kid had skateboarded into a car and broken his right femur. An eighty-two-year-old farmer had accidentally shot himself in the toe when he’d heard a sound outside his woodshed and gone to investigate. A pregnant mother of twin toddlers had been hospitalized for exhaustion and dehydration. There were also two opioid overdoses and one burn victim—a young woman who lived off the grid and had overdone it with the candles.

  Bethany decided to check on the mother first. Not only did she have a soft spot for anyone raising children, but something about the case was bothering her. She’d presented with symptoms consistent with simple pregnancy-related exhaustion—fatigue, depression, dizziness—and certainly her life had to be exhausting. Her husband worked on the North Slope on a two-week-on, two-week-off schedule. When he was gone, Abby Noonan took care of a seven-year-old and her two toddlers alone.

  Bethany had put her on IV fluids right away and they had helped. Abby claimed that she was already feeling better and was more than ready to go back to her family.

  Exhaustion made perfect sense, but what if something else was going on? She’d also talked about dropping things more than normal and experiencing “brain glitches.” That kind of thing could be hormone-related…or it could be a danger sign.

  Bethany knocked lightly on the door to her room, then pushed it open. Abby was sitting up in bed, cuddling with one of her twins. The other snuggled into the arms of Abby’s husband, a brawny, bald-headed man whose arms showed more ink than bare skin. It made her smile to see such an enormous man holding a baby so gently.

  Both the Noonans smiled at her as she approached. “How are you feeling, Abby?”

  “So much better. I wish I could take this lil buddy home with me.” She patted the IV stand next to the bed.

  Bethany smiled as she examined the monitors. Oxygen saturation was good, pulse aux slightly elevated but within normal range. She checked the latest bloodwork results. Potassium, iron and B12 levels were within range. The IV fluids were definitely helping to rehydrate her and restore her system.

  But still…

  “Abby, everything here is looking good. But I wanted to ask if you’d be willing to undergo a CT scan. It’s a scan of your brain—”

  “I know what that is. I’ve seen Grey’s Anatomy. But why?”

  Right. These days, everyone knew all the medical tools and tricks. “I just want to rule out the possibility that something else is causing the dizziness and other symptoms. If there’s any chance of a neurological cause, it would be best if we caught it early.”

  “Like what?” Earl Noonan spoke up in a voice as deep and gravelly as an oil field.

  “There are a few possibilities.” She didn’t want to be more specific because that might freak them out even more. The phrase “brain tumor” was terrifying, and also a bit simplistic. “This is more a case of ruling things out.”

  They exchanged one of those long glances that sometimes made her wistful. These two were in a solid, tightly bonded partnership, raising their family and putting their all into making a life together. With her history—three stepmothers was a lot—couples like that made her feel like a kid with her face pressed against a store window. What must it be like in there?

  “If you think it’s a good idea, okay,” Abby finally said. “We trust you.”

  “Thank you. I’m honored. And
I promise it won’t hurt a bit. We have an excellent neurosurgeon who happens to be here at the moment, which is why I want to do this now. He’ll be leaving next week.” Bethany entered the order into the hospital’s computerized system, along with a request for a consult with Dr. Finnegan.

  And no, she scolded her conscience, this wasn’t an excuse to work with Ian. She didn’t need an excuse. The hospital was so small that whenever he was here, she ran into him frequently. They’d gotten into the habit of sharing lunches and coffee runs. He was based in Anchorage but had contracts with many rural hospitals throughout Alaska.

  Highly skilled specialists like him weren’t easy to find in this state, so he was very sought after.

  She said goodbye to the Noonans and headed for her next patient. And there in the corridor—as gorgeous as a mirage at sunset—was Dr. Finnegan himself, randomly standing in the middle of the hallway, completely oblivious to everything around him as he studied a readout of lab results.

  She paused for a moment to appreciate the sight. With his geeky black-rimmed glasses and hair always in need of a trim, Ian had no clue how attractive he was. She knew this because he’d told her that he’d spent his entire youth as a studious high-achiever who didn’t have a girlfriend until college. He’d broken his nose in a third-grade dodgeball accident. He hadn’t bothered with the surgery to fix it until his senior year—a complete “ugly duckling turned swan” moment. Suddenly he was considered attractive. But he’d still felt like a geek inside.

  From what she knew of him, none of that had changed. He was just as serious and focused as she was, which made them…soul mates, right?

  “Hi, Ian,” she said softly, not wanting to startle him out of his trance.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Ian.” She tried again, more loudly. Finally he looked up and blinked at her.

  “Oh, hey there, Bethany. I didn’t hear you. Or see you. Sorry.”

  She smothered a sigh. Did he actually know she existed? Sometimes she wondered.

  “You might want to move out of the corridor,” she suggested. “Sometimes the paramedics come flying through here.”