Northern Renegade

by Jennifer Labrecque

  “Not a lot on going on,” Tansy said. “I just grabbed a bite to eat with Jenna. How about you?”

  “Can’t complain.” Alberta issued a gap-toothed grin. “Me and Dwight are still in that honeymoon stage.”

  The thought that she, Tansy, wouldn’t have a honeymoon because Bradley was a liar and a cheater, crossed her mind. She brushed it aside, focusing on Alberta and the conversation.

  That was the remarkable thing about Good Riddance. Tansy had only been here a week, but between Jenna’s weekly emails and being here, she felt fully tuned-in to the town and its people.

  Alberta, a traveling Gypsy matchmaker, had shown up in Good Riddance back in May. She’d wound up marrying the man who’d commissioned her to find him a wife.

  Dwight Simmons had spent most of his life prospecting and his latter years playing chess and checkers with his prospecting partner, Jeb Taylor. When Jeb died, Dwight decided he was ready for a wife and sought Alberta’s expertise. She’d found him one all right—her.

  At eighty-one, it was his first marriage. Dwight was Alberta’s sixth husband. It was all rather mind-boggling in a charming way.

  Actually, Alberta had proven comforting. Within two days of Tansy’s arrival, Alberta had corralled her and told Tansy not to worry about Bradley. According to the psychic/matchmaker, Bradley wasn’t the one for Tansy and his infidelity was a reflection of him, not her. It was all standard comfort-your-dumped-friend

  verbiage. Tansy had found some solace in being told she hadn’t fallen short as a woman because it was all too easy to feel inadequate when you’d expected to spend your life with a man while he was busy seeking the next best thing.

  It was sweet to hear Alberta talk about her new marriage. “A honeymoon stage is good.”

  “You’d better believe it.” A sly wink and an elbow nudge accompanied her words. “I’m on my way to check in on my stud muffins. Why don’t you walk over and say hi with me?”

  Dwight and Lord Byron, Alberta’s three-legged tomcat, both hung out at the airstrip center office. Tansy couldn’t exactly see either Dwight or Lord Byron as stud-muffin material, but, as with beauty, reality was in the eye of the beholder.

  It sounded good to Tansy. She wasn’t ready to get back to work and perhaps if she knew who the stranger was, she could shake off the impact of those few seconds when his eyes had pierced hers. And the surest source of information was Merilee.

  Tansy trailed along with Alberta to the door halfway down the front of the building.

  They stepped into the airstrip office, the scent of cookies and coffee in the air. Merilee and one of the bush pilots, a pretty, newly married brunette named Juliette, had their heads together over paperwork at Merilee’s desk. Juliette and her husband, Sven, were her neighbors out at Shadow Lake. Juliette’s husky puppy, Baby, sat waiting patiently between the two women. Baby actually flew in the plane with Juliette on trips. It was cute.

  The object of Alberta’s affections sat across the room, staring at the chess table before him. Dwight not only had a new wife, but a new chess partner had materialized in Jefferson Walker Monroe.

  According to Jenna, Jefferson had simply walked into town one day and sat down in the rocking chair on the other side of the chess set and that had been that. It turned out that the only relative Jefferson had left was Curl, the town’s taxidermist, mortician and barber.

  Curl hadn’t actually known he had a long-lost relative, particularly a man of color who recounted stories of playing the saxophone with greats such as Count Basie and Louis Armstrong and playing studio sessions with Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. However, Curl had embraced Jefferson, as had the rest of the town’s people.

  Tansy had looked him up on Google. Jefferson Walker Monroe was the real deal.

  In so many ways, Good Riddance was like the collection of Santa’s misfit toys from the Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer TV classic. Maybe that’s why Tansy felt right at home.

  Dwight and Jefferson sat on opposite sides of the chessboard. They were a study in juxtaposition, their only commonalities white hair and lined faces. Both men had witnessed the change of seasons for more than eight decades.

  Dwight’s long white beard and fringe of white hair rested against the collar of his checked flannel shirt. Long summer days and harsh winters had weathered his skin to a permanent ruddiness. Tall and thin, his carriage bore a permanent stoop. His overalls, while clean, were as worn and weathered as his face.

  Across the table, Jefferson bespoke a sophistication of a bygone era of well-dressed couples, two-olive martinis and a husky-voiced chanteuse in evening wear. With his close-cropped white hair, wire-rimmed spectacles and well-pressed suit he should’ve appeared ridiculous in a town ruled by work boots and flannel. However, he simply looked like a man comfortable in his own skin, waiting to be called onstage to play the next set.

  Lord Byron, who was possibly the ugliest cat Tansy had ever seen, but had survivor written all over him, lay curled on top of the empty potbellied stove.

  “Hey, sweet thing,” Alberta said loudly to Dwight, whose hearing wasn’t so good these days.

  The cat’s ears pricked but he didn’t open his eyes.

  Before Dwight could respond, Jefferson smiled, mischief glinting in his eyes. “I’ve told you not to talk to me that way in front of your old man.”

  “Hey, beautiful,” Dwight said to his wife. Most assuredly a case of beauty in the eye of the beholder. He turned back to his chess partner. “Don’t make me call you out, talking to my wife that way.”

  “Won’t make any difference if you’re not any better at fighting than you are at chess. And if you don’t have better moves behind closed doors than you do on the chessboard....”

  Dwight grumbled beneath his breath and moved a chess piece.

  Tansy laughed at the byplay as Merilee looked over her shoulder. “Afternoon, ladies.”

  Tansy waved. Alberta spoke up. “What’s shaking, Merilee? Juliette?”

  Juliette opened the back door. “I’m off to Wolf Pass for a pickup. See you guys later.” Baby trotted out behind her.

  Merilee stood, stretching. “Bull’s nephew Liam just got into town. We haven’t seen him in years. We knew he was coming but we just didn’t know when.” Merilee looked at Tansy, a question in her eyes. “He was just over at Gus’s.”

  Liam. Tansy turned the name over in her head. It fit. It was unusual, and the man himself, in that brief moment of eye contact, had struck her as just that—unusual.

  “I saw someone with Bull, but there are still people in town that I don’t know. Or rather who live out of town.” There were a number of people, men mostly, who lived out in the wilderness surrounding Good Riddance.

  “Liam’s a nice name,” Alberta said.

  Merilee nodded. “He’s a nice guy. We don’t know the whole story but he just got out of the Marines. He was a sharpshooter. I’m surprised he’s out—don’t know why—but I’m glad he’s here.”

  Something slid over Tansy. A sharpshooter. The man’s sole purpose had been to kill people. Hard. Dangerous.

  “When did he get out of the military?” Alberta said.

  Merilee shrugged. “All we know is Bull got an email from his sister saying he left in May setting out for here. His sister’s not the most reliable source. We thought for years Liam and Lars had joined the Army. Where he’s been in between or what happened, I have no idea.”

  “So, I guess he’s not married or he wouldn’t have left his wife behind?” Alberta pursed her lips in consideration.

  “He’s divorced. His cousin Dirk told us when he was here. Liam’s got a twin, Lars, who’s also a Marine and a younger brother, Jack, who’s a Navy SEAL, but beyond that—” another shrug from Merilee “—is a mystery. Bull and his sister have been estranged for several years now. She’s an odd bird and doesn’t seem to play well with others.”

  None of it should matter to Tansy any more than any of the other people she’d encountered here, but strangely it
did. There was something about the man that attracted her, drew her, from the moment she exchanged that glance. She felt unsettled inside...well, even more so than before. And it wasn’t just a curiosity. It was a sexual attraction, a wanting that had been instant, and it was a feeling that she simply wasn’t accustomed to. She’d felt desire with Bradley, but that had been a culmination of getting to know him, of wooing and bonding that grew as she got to know who Bradley was inside. Although she’d obviously been way off the mark with what was inside Bradley. How could she have been so wrong about him? She wanted to just wake up and have things the way they used to be. However, she kept those thoughts to herself, not even sharing them with Jenna.

  But how could she be attracted to a stranger when she still felt that way about Bradley?

  “Interesting,” Alberta said, and for one disconcerting moment Tansy thought the other woman was commenting on what had been rolling through Tansy’s head. But then she realized Alberta was merely commenting on Merilee’s rundown on Liam. “Where’s he gonna stay?” Alberta said.

  “Bull and I have talked about it and discussed it with Skye and Dalton. We knew he was coming, just not when. He’s going to stay in the other cabin out at Shadow Lake.” Merilee smiled at Tansy. “Liam’s your new neighbor.”

  * * *

  MALLORY KINCAID GNAWED on the end of her pen—a bad habit, that—as she stared at the blinking cursor on her computer screen. The air conditioner hummed in the background, working overtime in the humid heat of Louisiana’s Indian summer. She could close the blind on the hot sun slanting through the window but she liked the feel of it against her skin.

  Good Riddance, Alaska. The satellite image showed a small town, with one main street running through its center and surrounded by trees. Lots and lots of trees.

  That’s where Liam Reinhardt was now. She quit gnawing on the pen and placed it on top of one of the piles on her desk. He obviously wasn’t trying to hide. It’d been easy to follow him via his credit card usage.

  He’d left Minnesota and headed southwest, rolling through South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, back north into Montana, west again to Washington and finally Alaska via Canada. He hadn’t been in any hurry. He’d spent four months traveling, alternating between motels and campgrounds.

  He might pick up and move on tomorrow, but Mallory had a feeling he’d finally arrived at his destination. His uncle lived in Good Riddance. Bull Swenson owned a hardware store/sawmill and the deed to several parcels of land in addition to an interest in the airstrip and the local eatery—public records were a beautiful thing.

  The remoteness of the Alaskan wilderness seemed to fit Liam Reinhardt perfectly. She just couldn’t imagine a man like him settling down in the suburbs.

  It’d been a crapshoot when he was discharged. She figured he’d either land at Quantico as a civilian adviser or he’d go to ground. Apparently he was going to ground.

  She opened another tab and typed in flight information. She winced at the results. She hadn’t thought it would be cheap, but it was going to be damn expensive to get herself there. However, she had to do what she had to do. A couple of keystrokes later and she was printing her boarding pass for a flight tomorrow.

  And that was the easy part. Adrenaline surged through her. The challenge lay in getting Liam Reinhardt to actually talk to her. And part of that adrenaline surge was due to the fact that she was admittedly infatuated with and fascinated by the man.

  She came from a military family and had pursued a career as a military historian. She’d grown up surrounded by men in uniform and had always considered them a cut above the rest, but there were always a handful of men who stood out even above them. Liam Reinhardt was one of those men.

  He’d performed brilliantly in what was his final mission. It hadn’t gotten a lot of coverage in the media, which was the way the corps had wanted it, but those with military knowledge knew the importance of what had gone down, and that Reinhardt had been the one to deliver the goods. She had seen him a year ago in a video conference when she’d been in a Marine general’s

  office on a documenting assignment and had been smitten from the moment she’d seen him and heard his voice—online, that is. Since then she’d followed his career, researched him and come to realize he was the man meant for her.

  She glanced at his framed picture sitting on her desk. Those eyes, the hard glint of his stare, the line of his jaw. She smiled and reached over and traced her finger against the glass that separated her from his image. She’d found it of him in military files and had the photo printed. There was also one sitting on her nightstand.

  He was only one of the best sharpshooters in military history, right up there with legendary sharpshooter Carlos Hathcock of Vietnam-era fame. He was precisely what she’d always dreamed of in a man. Handsome yet rugged, highly accomplished and self-contained—how could a woman not be in love with a man like that?

  While getting him to share the story of his last mission with her might be a challenge, she knew that once they met he’d recognize her as his fate, as surely as she knew he was hers.

  As mere mortals neither of them could deny a force stronger than them—destiny.

  They were meant to be together.

  3

  “GOT ANY PLANS?” Bull asked as they stepped outside. A truck with more rust than actual body parts passed and Bull automatically waved. It was that kind of town.

  “Thought I’d just chill for a while.” The words almost stuck in his throat. He had no purpose. He was rudderless. He was well acquainted with stillness and quietness of being—it had been vital to his job. This was different. He’d be damned if he knew what to do with himself.

  Bull nodded. “Think you might be interested in some seasonal construction work? Sven Sorenson can always use an extra set of hands, and he’s up to his eyeballs in work these days.”

  “Is it hard labor?”

  “It can be.”

  “Then count me in.” He needed to work himself into exhaustion. Maybe then he could actually sleep at night.

  The airstrip/bed-and-breakfast door opened and the woman from the booth, the woman who’d seemed to sink into him—Tansy—stepped out onto the sidewalk.

  “See you later,” she called over her shoulder, closing the door behind her.

  Both Bull and Liam stopped, but the sun must have been in her eyes, because she walked right into Liam. Instinctively he grabbed her to deflect the impact.

  Every sense inside him went on high alert, which translated to everything slowing down to utter awareness. The wind from the northeast carried her scent of woman—vanilla and a hint of spice. Her skin was soft and warm beneath his hands, her flesh firm to his touch. Her eyes, somewhere between blue and almost purple, widened behind her glasses in surprise and a flash of recognition.

  Something wild and hot sprang between them. Liam wasn’t used to wild and hot. It wasn’t his modus operandi.

  He did only a controlled heat. Her eyes widened even more and he felt a tremor chase through her. She recognized it as well, and he fully suspected it was outside her normal range, too.

  He released her.

  She dropped her gaze.

  “Thank you.”

  Her voice, low, husky and damned sexy resonated through him. What the hell was wrong with him? What was it with this woman?

  “Steady there,” Bull said from his side, ending his loss of composure. He’d totally forgotten Bull was even there. Crap. “Tansy, meet Liam Reinhardt, my nephew. Liam, this is Tansy Wellington.”

  “Nice to meet you,” he said automatically. He didn’t offer his hand and neither did she. It seemed unnecessary, considering they’d already touched. And because he wanted so badly to touch her again, he wouldn’t.

  “It’s nice to meet you, too.” There was a softness to her that made him want to taste her. The thought crossed his mind that her honeyed sweetness might mitigate some of the bitterness and anger inside him. He pushed aside the notion. “I hear you just got into t
own,” he said.

  She smiled and it knocked him for yet another loop, lighting her face and transforming her from ordinary to extraordinary in the blink of an eye. “I just arrived last week. I’m not one of the regulars.”

  “So I hear.”

  “You’ll both find,” Bull said, “that news travels faster than the speed of light here.”

  Her laugh held the same husky sexiness that made him think of lying in bed with her, both of them naked. That and the way her T-shirt clung to the roundness of her breasts and followed the curve of her waist to her full hips.

  “I understand we’re going to be neighbors,” she said.

  What the hell? “We are?” Liam looked to Bull.

  “Janie—” God, his mother hated that name, preferring the more formal Jane “—gave us the heads-up you were heading this way. Me and Merilee figured you’d want a little privacy, so we made arrangements for you to stay in one of the cabins at Shadow Lake, outside of town. Tansy’s staying in the other cabin.” Bull looked at Tansy. “Nice place, isn’t it?”

  She nodded. “It’s beautiful. The cabins overlook a lake surrounded by mountains.”

  He could almost feel her encroaching on him. She painted a scene of tranquillity at odds with the seething inside him. He wanted solitude to embrace his anger, not dispel it. He didn’t want to be seduced by her dulcet tones, her ripeness, her sweetness. He wanted distance from her. “How many cabins are there?” he said to Bull, knowing damn well he was bordering on rude.

  “Only the two. They belonged to two old maids who built them next to one another. They’re within spitting distance. There’s even a crude intercom system that was left in place. Sven just overhauled them a couple of months ago. They’re nice enough, but not fussy. It should suit your needs.”

  How the hell would Bull know what his needs were when he wasn’t even sure of them? All he knew was that he needed to be alone and he needed time. But how could he be alone, with this woman right next door?