Deep River Promise

by Jackie Ashenden

  “I could ask you the same thing,” he said, choosing to ignore the question for the moment. He’d tell her why he was here eventually, but in his own time. He didn’t like to rush important things.

  Anyway, he hadn’t minded the two hours he’d spent sitting on her front porch waiting for her to come home. He could have gone searching for her, but he hadn’t wanted anyone else to know he was here—at least not yet.

  He was a man used to waiting, though, and he’d liked the peaceful quiet as the afternoon had lengthened into a long summer twilight. The house was surrounded by spruce and a few firs, and he’d spent a good bit of time observing a couple of squirrels arguing in the branches, their loud complaining broken only by the rush of the river nearby.

  Still, he’d hoped she’d have come back earlier from wherever it was she’d been because he had a feeling she wasn’t going to like what he was here to say and generally people handled unpleasant things better in the middle of the day rather than at the tail end of it.

  Couldn’t be helped, though, and he wasn’t going to go away and come back later to have this discussion.

  Already he’d waited too long.

  Morgan frowned, apparently unbothered by the unexpected appearance of a man she’d only met once and in very trying circumstances.

  “What do you mean you could ask me the same thing?” she said. “I’ve been at work. What do you think I’ve been doing?”

  Not a woman who was easily ruffled, obviously.

  But then Cal had mentioned to him on more than one occasion that she was competent, professional, and tough. Not to mention that she was also a Village Safety Protection Officer, the rural equivalent of an Alaskan State Trooper, so she wasn’t likely to be a pushover.

  All of which could prove problematic considering the reason he was here.

  Zeke eyed her. “You remembered my name,” he said.

  “Kind of hard to forget when some big, bearded mountain man approaches you out of the blue at your brother’s funeral and tells you to call him if you need anything.” Morgan’s bright blue gaze did not even so much as flicker. “And then forgets to leave you his number.”

  She’d leaned the bike she’d ridden down the driveway against the porch, and the late-afternoon sunlight crept across the green lawn that surrounded the Wests’ sturdy, two-story house. It was mostly in good repair, but he hadn’t only been watching squirrels. He’d also used part of the waiting time to have a look around the place, and there were a number of things that needed doing.

  Take care of Morgan, the letter he’d received after the reading of Cal’s will had said. Once I’m gone, she’ll have no one.

  It wasn’t exactly what Zeke had wanted to hear, but since he felt partly responsible for Cal’s death, he owed the guy big-time.

  Stupid of him to forget giving her his number at the funeral, but he hadn’t been thinking straight. He wasn’t the best at dealing with people on a good day, let alone a bad one.

  “So I did,” he said. “Well, you don’t need it now. I’m right here.”

  “Uh-huh.” Morgan’s stare narrowed. “So, are you going to tell me why you’re on my front porch? When your two friends, who’ve been looking for you for weeks, are back in the Happy Moose?”

  Zeke had arrived in Deep River, the tiny, quirky, little Alaskan town he and his two best friends had inherited after Caleb’s death, a couple of nights earlier. He’d made a camp for himself in a clearing in the bush just out of town—he’d preferred a bedroll to staying in a hotel since he always slept better on the ground. And yeah, he should have announced himself to Silas and Damon, the ex-army buddies that Morgan was talking about, but he wasn’t a man who charged into a situation without doing a bit of reconnaissance first.

  Which was what he’d been doing. Reconnaissance. Of Deep River itself. Again, he was a man who took his time and didn’t like to rush into things. Especially given that oil reserves had been discovered underneath the town and he knew for a fact that those oil reserves were of interest to…certain people.

  People connected with him.

  Luckily, though, he’d handled that issue, so now the only things he had left to do were finish up his mission for Cal and then go see his friends.

  He’d figured that finishing up his mission for Cal and taking care of Cal’s little sister was more pressing than seeing his friends, so here he was.

  Zeke dismissed the question of said friends for the moment. “I’ll see them later. In the meantime, I’m here to make sure you’re looked after.”

  Surprise rippled over Morgan’s pretty face. “Make sure I’m looked after?” she echoed. “Why would I need looking after?”

  He shrugged. “Your brother asked me to.”

  Morgan’s arms dropped. “Oh. How wonderful.” She didn’t sound as if she thought it was wonderful. She sounded extremely irritated.

  “I appreciate it,” Morgan was saying, “but as you can see, I’m pretty good right now and I’ve been pretty good for a number of years, both with and without Caleb.”

  Her response did not surprise Zeke. Cal had mentioned in his letter that his relationship with Morgan was a fraught one and that she wouldn’t appreciate someone muscling in on her territory, especially if she knew that Cal had ordered Zeke to.

  Of course, Zeke could have just not told her that part of it, but he wasn’t a liar and he didn’t play games. He was straight up, and that’s the way he preferred everyone else to be too.

  He eyed her. She did look pretty good, he had to admit, and in more ways than one. And it was also clear that she was annoyed about her brother. Then again, it had been his experience that people said one thing while meaning something else, so he could never take anything at face value.

  “You are, huh?” he said.

  “Yes.” She eyed him right back. “So you can consider your job done.”

  At Cal’s funeral and afterward, at the crappy bar they’d gone to, she hadn’t seemed that great. She’d seemed small and vulnerable and folded in on herself with grief, which was why he’d offered to help her out.

  To be fair, though, that had been a couple of months ago. Now it seemed as if the worst of that grief was over, and he couldn’t imagine a woman more competent and able to handle herself.

  She was a West, like Cal, and the Wests had owned Deep River for over a century, so no wonder she didn’t need him. This was her town through and through.

  Then again, the Wests didn’t own Deep River now, and Cal’s letter had been clear. And even though he was a man who preferred being alone in the great outdoors to being around people in cities, when the proverbial shit hit the fan, he’d be there.

  Cal had been a good friend, and since Zeke could count the number of good friends he had on one hand, he wasn’t going to let him down.

  “Place looks like it could use some work,” he said, ignoring her assurance. “Roof needs some shingles. Got a few cracks in the boards here.” He nodded his head toward the wall of the house. “Some of the trees need a prune too. I’ll start with those.”

  “That’s very kind of you, but—”

  “I’ve got a camp nearby. I won’t need to stay here. Though if you feel safer if I do, I’m happy to.” He’d seen signs of bears around the Wests’ property, which he was sure Morgan probably knew about, but still. They weren’t grizzlies, but black bears could be dangerous if you weren’t careful.

  You always had to be on your guard in the bush. Complacency led to an early death if you underestimated Mother Nature.

  Zeke hadn’t been a Boy Scout for a very long time, but if there was one thing he was, it was prepared. Always.

  Turning, he scanned the trees that clustered around the house and then the bush beyond. “Should have brought my rifle. You never know what could be hanging around.”

  Morgan muttered something under her breath and came abruptly u
p the stairs, planting herself in front of him and tipping her head back to look up at him.

  Damn, she really was a pretty little thing. Wholesome as a pint of milk. Clear, pink skin, freckles, a soft rosebud of a mouth, and a button nose. Not a cop’s hard-bitten face. A long strand of that apricot-colored hair had come loose from her ponytail and now draped itself over her shoulder. It almost glowed.

  Not that he should be noticing her skin, or her hair, or her prettiness right now. She was Cal’s little sister for Christ’s sake. And a cop.

  “Zeke,” she said very firmly. “As much as I appreciate the thought of you helping out, I’m quite happy with the state of my house, no matter what Cal told you.” She crossed her arms over the curve of her—rather lovely now that he looked—breasts, giving a very good impression of a woman who would not be moved come hell or high water. “Have you let Si and Damon know you’re here? They’ve been worried about you.”

  He hadn’t told anyone that he was here, mainly because he’d wanted to scout out the lay of the land, so to speak, before he got into any difficult conversations with his friends. But Damon and Si knew that about him. They also knew he preferred the wilderness and often took off for weeks at a time on various expeditions, so would they really be worried about him?

  Perhaps they were. He found it difficult reading emotions in people and sometimes he got it wrong—at least, he had in the past. He thought he was better at it these days, but maybe not. Then again, he was getting Morgan West’s irritation loud and clear.

  “I’ll let ’em know,” he said, hoping that could close the subject. “Roof’s going to be a problem come winter, though.”

  More irritation flickered across Morgan’s pretty face like the wind ruffling the surface of a milky pond. “Did you somehow miss the fact that I said you’re not doing anything to my house?”

  She was right in front of him, making it very difficult to move past her without pushing her out of the way, and he didn’t want to do that since he was not a man who felt the need to prove himself physically.

  He looked down at her. There were little sparks, like fireflies, in her blue eyes.

  His sister, Izzy, had once said, crossly, he could out-stubborn a mule and that was no joke. He’d once insisted on sleeping in a tent instead of his bedroom for entire month back when he’d been a kid, which had annoyed the crap out of his mother.

  But that was one of the beauties of living in the bush; he never had to concern himself with other people’s feelings.

  “Why not?” he asked bluntly. “If it needs fixing?”

  She frowned. “Well, for a start I don’t know you from Adam.”

  “I’m not Adam. I’m Zeke. And besides, you already met me at the funeral.”

  “Sure, but that wasn’t exactly the perfect moment for chatting.”

  “You don’t need to know me in order for me to fix your house.”

  Her pretty eyes widened a little. “Seriously?”

  Zeke didn’t like having to explain himself constantly since it was a pain in the ass. He preferred his actions to speak for themselves. Then again, perhaps he was going to have to actually do some explanation here. Cal’s letter had been very clear after all: Be a brother to her now I’m gone.

  He hadn’t been a great brother to the one sibling he did have, so he wasn’t sure why Cal had chosen him for the task. Still, he seemed to recall that being a brother involved a lot of pissing siblings off, in which case he was obviously doing something right.

  “I know it’s your house,” he said. “But I’m only going to fix it, not knock it down.”

  Morgan looked him up and down, unimpressed. “I still don’t know you. What if you’re a serial killer?”

  Seemed an odd question to him. Wasn’t it obvious he wasn’t a serial killer? “I’m not.”

  “Of course since you’ve said you’re not one, you’re definitely not one.” A crease appeared between her red-gold brows. “Though, if you are, you’ll be kicking yourself because I can arrest you, you know. I am the law in Deep River.”

  Tough little thing, wasn’t she?

  Zeke looked down at her. “You might be the law, but there’s only one of you and sorry, but you’re not very big.”

  He’d only stated the truth, but she still looked affronted. “I’ve done a lot of physical training, and I can and have put cuffs on people bigger than you. And if the worst comes to the worst, I have backup from the detachment in Ketchikan.” She gave him a very stern stare. “So don’t cross me.”

  Okay, so he was blunt, but it seemed as if Morgan was one of those people who didn’t appreciate his bluntness. Which wasn’t good since if he was going to do what Cal had asked of him and take care of her, he needed her to not view him as a serial killer at the very least.

  Still, he was glad she’d let him know where her line was, because he hated game players. He also rather liked her tartness, like an almost-ripe peach.

  He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “People bigger than me, huh? What did you do? Bite them on the ankles?” He wasn’t sure what else she could do.

  She didn’t appear charmed by this response. “You’re assuming I’m not carrying a weapon.”

  “I’m not assuming you’re not carrying one. I’m assuming that you don’t use it on people who aren’t actually threatening you.”

  Her cheeks went pink and for some reason she looked very cross. “As it happens your very presence threatens me. Which means you have two choices. You can leave now and I won’t arrest you for trespassing. Or you can stay and I’ll shoot you with my Taser.” Her little chin came up, confrontational as hell. “Well? What’s it to be?”

  * * *

  Zeke Montgomery was turning out to be the most stubborn-ass man Morgan had ever met, and as she lived in Deep River, a town noted for being full of stubborn-ass men, that was saying something.

  He towered over her, solid and immovable as a rock wall, all black hair, unshaven black stubble, and the fathomless black eyes that she remembered from the bar back in Juneau, the night of Cal’s funeral.

  He had his hands in his pockets and he looked just as wild and uncivilized as he had a couple of months back. Perhaps even more so. He wore a worn-looking, long-sleeved black Henley, a pair of dark jeans with holes in the knees, a battered parka, and hiking boots, and he had the unkempt, rumpled air of a man who’d spent considerable time camping out in the bush.

  She had no idea what he was doing on her porch, and to be honest, his appearance was a bit of a shock. But given how her brother’s pal Silas had arrived in Deep River, and then his other pal Damon a couple of weeks after that, it had only been a matter of time before Zeke turned up.

  Since he’d basically told her that night he’d failed to give her his number in the bar that anything she needed she only had to call, it made a weird kind of sense that when he had turned up, it was to stand on her porch like a large, rumpled black bear.

  Her reaction to him, though, did not make sense.

  The night in Juneau, when she’d first met him, she’d only been aware of a vague kind of…unsteadiness in his presence. But that she’d put down to grief.

  Yet even though grief had lost its sharp edge now, she still felt unsteady and had no idea what to make that—or of how she’d blushed under his steady, dark stare.

  She never blushed. She was a village public safety officer (VPSO), and she was the law in Deep River, and not only that, she was a West—the family that had once literally owned the town—and no one tended to tangle with her.

  Which was just the way she liked it.

  Men, though. They were far too much trouble.

  Exhibit A standing on her porch, for example. Who’d inexplicably made her blush like a teenage girl and who also wasn’t taking no for an answer. He also didn’t appear to be leaving.

  What had her stupid big brother
been thinking? Why had Cal thought she needed “looking after”?

  Ridiculous, not to mention ironic coming from the man who’d ceased being her protective big brother the moment he’d left Deep River for Juneau. Certainly, him getting all worried about her from beyond the grave was a little late in the piece.

  Especially when she was a grown woman of twenty-six, who’d been taking care of herself for years already, not the thirteen-year-old girl she’d been when he’d taken off.

  Zeke still hadn’t said anything, midnight eyes giving her a thousand-yard stare. Another woman might have been intimidated by his massive height and his heavily muscled torso, not to mention the whole beard thing he had going on, but Morgan had never been that woman.

  Plus, although Cal had left Deep River years ago, he’d kept in intermittent contact and had told her a little about his friends. Zeke, he’d said, was very stubborn, a man of few words, and didn’t much like people. However, he was also protective, generous, and very honest. A good guy to have in a tight spot.

  All well and good if you were in a tight spot, but she wasn’t. She was home and what she wanted was to go inside, make herself some dinner and relax after a busy day, not make a tour of all the things wrong with the house purely to entertain Cal’s annoying, taciturn, and erstwhile missing friend.

  The missing friend who didn’t seem to be all that bothered that his other friends, Silas Quinn and Damon Fitzgerald, had been getting worried about him, though they tried to pretend they weren’t.

  Morgan let out a silent breath while Zeke simply stood there. Silently. Like a granite statue of a man. Making curiosity tug lightly inside her about why he’d decided to turn up now, at least a couple of months after Cal’s death, and what he’d been doing in the interim since Cal had left Deep River to him, Silas, and Damon.

  The other two now lived here, Silas with his fiancée, Hope, who owned the Happy Moose bar, and Damon with his soon-to-be wife, Astrid, Deep River’s mayor.

  Morgan had been going to ask them if they wanted her to open a missing person’s investigation, but it hadn’t quite gotten to that point.