Wild At Heart: A Novel

by Tucker, K. A.

  I grab hold of his forearms for support, my hands tightening over them, reveling in their strength. I ache to feel his corded muscle and smooth skin and soft hair beneath my fingertips again, to feel the weight of his body sinking me into a mattress.

  Between us, the hard ridge of his erection presses against my stomach, taunting me.

  A throat clears, pulling us apart. A housekeeper smiles sheepishly as she edges past to get to her cart on the other side.

  I nod to my open hotel room door behind us. “Maybe we should take this inside?” Because I’m about five seconds away from unfastening his belt buckle, audience be damned.

  Jonah takes a step forward, but then stops, shaking his head firmly. “If we want to make it out of here today, we need to go now. That system is movin’ in slow, but it’s comin’.”

  I frown. “I thought you said you weren’t flying back today.”

  “We’re not, but we’re not staying here.”

  “Where are we going, then?”

  “To see Santa.”

  “What?”

  “Do you trust me?”

  “Yeah, of course, but—”

  “’Kay, then stop talkin’, get ready, and meet me in the lobby. I’ll check you out of your room.” He plants a last, chaste kiss on my lips and strolls away, whistling “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

  “But my suitcases—”

  “They’re at the front desk,” he hollers over his shoulder, adding in a booming voice, “but I told you already, Barbie, you’re not gonna be wearin’ any clothes for a few days.”

  My cheeks burn as I seek out the housekeeper, hovering by her cart with her head down, pretending she didn’t hear that.

  And then I rush inside to pack my things.

  Chapter Four

  “I don’t see Santa or his elves.” I eye the A-frame cabin nestled at the edge of the tree line as Jonah circles our plane over the frozen lake. A narrow trail cuts through the forest leading up to it, the far end connected to another trail that snakes through the sea of tall, thin evergreens. A road, though I don’t know how often it’s been used.

  “You just missed him.” Jonah smirks and jabs a thumb toward the last town we passed.

  It finally clicks. “The North Pole! Oh my God!” A wave of nostalgia washes over me. I can’t believe I hadn’t clued in already. “My dad always used to tell me he was flying there. I thought it was the coolest thing.” Back when I only knew his face thanks to a picture, when I’d prattle nonstop over the phone and he’d listen patiently.

  Jonah’s deep chuckle carries through the headset. “Yeah. Well, it’s not the North Pole, but it’s North Pole, Alaska. Christmas all year round. They’ve got giant candy canes along the main street. We can take the snow machine in tomorrow for somethin’ to do, if you want. It’s not that far.” He points to the expanse of buildings in the distance as a crop of lights ignite in the dusk, ahead of the coming nightfall. “That’s Fairbanks up ahead. It’s the second-largest city in Alaska.”

  Jonah wouldn’t divulge any more hints about where we were heading as we loaded my luggage into the passenger seats. I snooped though the cargo area, packed with his black duffel bag, a cooler, a box of dry food, and several jugs of water. I badgered him as we fled the incoming weather system, heading northeast past the frozen plains, over the snowy, sawtooth ridges of the imposing mountain range, far enough that the looming clouds broke apart to allow slivers of sunshine through. Still, he told me nothing, enjoying my frustration while the radio frequency buzzed with chatter from other pilots, citing their coordinates, weather patterns, the odd joke.

  Now, as the sun prepares to slip past the horizon at two thirty in the afternoon, I accept that Jonah has flown me farther north than I’ve ever been.

  This is now my life.

  Will the shock ever wear off?

  I huddle in my heavy parka and thick winter boots, my body tense as Veronica—the four-seater Cessna that I spent so much time in when Jonah shuttled my father and me around Alaska on daily excursions—jerks and shakes violently on our descent. While I’m nowhere near as anxious as I was flying in a small plane that first day back in July, the few months away have robbed me of some of my unearthed bravery. “Whose place is this?”

  “George and Bobbie’s. They were gonna come for Christmas, but George got one of his funny feelings.” Jonah gives me a flat, knowing look. The burly pilot from the Midwest is well known for bowing out of flights due to his superstitious tendencies. “So, they decided to wait out the snow. Offered their place to us for the next three days. It’s fully stocked already.”

  “That was generous of them.” A giddiness sparks inside me at the thought of three days alone with Jonah. The most time we’ve ever spent entirely alone was that trip into the mountains to pick up two hikers this past summer. We ended up grounded for the night because of heavy fog and wind and sought refuge in a rustic safety cabin. There was no running water or electricity, and nothing but a sleeping bag and muskrat jerky. And an insurmountable tension between us that rose to a boiling point, impossible to ignore. It was the night everything changed.

  It was also the last night I was under the illusion that my father would survive his cancer.

  Jonah releases the yoke long enough to give my knee a squeeze. “They’re happy you came to your senses.”

  “That remains to be seen,” I tease before my smile fades. “But what about Agnes and Mabel? I know you wanted to be there for them. Are they going to be upset?” My father spent every Christmas morning sitting on Agnes’s couch with a mug of coffee in hand and a checkerboard in play.

  “Aggie’s the one who was watchin’ the weather radar at four this morning, hopin’ for enough of a break to let me fly. She didn’t want you stuck in Anchorage alone. Besides, they’re headin’ to George and Bobbie’s for dinner. A bunch of the Wild folks are gonna be there.”

  “That sounds … nice.” For too many years, I blamed my dad’s charter plane company for our estrangement. I hated everything about it. It took me coming to Alaska to see that it wasn’t just some business, some job to make money. My father and Alaska Wild were improving lives. In some cases, saving them. And the employees were family to him. It still feels wrong that I’m about to inherit all that money from the sale of a place I used to despise.

  I hesitate. “So, is my dad’s house up for sale yet?” He owned all three modular homes on that stretch of road—his, Agnes’s, and Jonah’s. Properties passed down to him from my grandparents. My father was not known for acting swiftly or decisively, but in the last weeks before his death, he was busy adding names to deeds to allow immediate transfer when the time came. “To avoid all that messy probate stuff,” he had said. It made it easy for Jonah to claim the house he was renting, and for Agnes and Mabel to take ownership of the other two houses to do with what they want.

  “Not yet. She figures spring. She wants to give us a chance to sell first, and that’s gonna take a while. We’ve only had one person come through so far.”

  I note how he says us and we, as if that house is somehow partly mine, and my heart warms. “I can help her take down the wallpaper in the kitchen, if she wants me to,” I say, even as I grimace at the thought of scraping off all those mallards. I remember Simon’s house being plastered with wallpaper when we moved in. It had been his English parents’ house before he bought it. Primrose in the bathroom, apple blossoms in the kitchen, lilacs in the dining room.

  I don’t think my mother’s suitcases were even unpacked before she attacked the powder room with a metal spatula. They ended up hiring someone to tackle the rest because it was too much for any one person, and I doubt Simon appreciated the disparaging remarks my mother muttered under her breath about his parents’ decorating taste as she toiled away in anger.

  But, of course I’ll help Agnes. I’d do anything for that tiny, soft-spoken woman, the catalyst for me reuniting with my father, and the reason I’m here with Jonah. Besides, what else do I have to do whi
le Jonah finishes up his last month at Aro?

  How strange will it be for me to be in that house again, dismantling everything that made it my father’s? A shiver of unease slides down my back with the thought.

  “I’ll help too,” Jonah murmurs absently, his keen focus on the snowy stretch of lake ahead of us.

  “It’s frozen, right?” I ask.

  “Should be.”

  “Should be?”

  “I hope so.”

  I give him a high-browed stare. “This is you being funny?”

  “No.” He smirks. “But that’s why we’re gonna do a touch-and-go first, mainly to check the snow, but also for overflow.”

  I have no clue what overflow is, but Jonah’s tight brow of concentration convinces me I don’t want to be asking him questions right now. I stay quiet as he brings us down. I sense the plane’s skis slide across the lake’s surface for a moment, without slowing, before we’re lifting off again. We circle around and, with Jonah eying the tracks and grunting “we’re good,” we descend once again.

  Within minutes, Veronica’s skis are gliding over the snow-covered lake. We ease to a stop some thirty feet from the cabin. With anyone else, I might have worried about crashing into it. According to my dad, Jonah is one of the best bush pilots out there and, if there’s anyone who would know, it would have been Wren Fletcher.

  Jonah leans forward to peer out at the place through the windshield. “Nice, right?”

  “It’s like a holiday postcard.” A steep roof caps the two stories of the stained-ash cabin, with a deep overhang to shelter the wooden door from the elements. A tall chimney juts out from the left side. The space beneath the platform deck is jam-packed with chopped wood for a fire that I can’t wait to curl up beside tonight.

  It’s certainly giving off cozy Christmas vibes, with traditional evergreen-and-red-ribbon wreaths marking each of the five windows and the door. On the deck sit two poinsettia-red Adirondack chairs, peeking out from beneath a layer of undisturbed snow and angled to overlook the lake. Above them dangle strings of patio lights, stretching the width of the cabin.

  I’m about to say it’s perfect until I spy a small wooden shed tucked into the thicket of trees behind, the telltale moon carving in the door. I groan at the unpleasant surprise.

  “Come on … You’re tougher than that,” Jonah goads, which only irritates me more. He knows how much I despise outhouses.

  “No, I’m not. Get used to it.” I throw his favorite line back at him. “It’s freezing out here! And dark for, what, fifteen hours?”

  “More like nineteen to twenty right now.”

  “Oh! Even better.”

  He chuckles. “It’s no big deal.”

  “Says the guy who gets to open the door and whip it out. Meanwhile I have to walk through ten feet of snow in the dark—probably with wolves and shit around—and freeze my bare ass every time I need to pee!”

  “There’s a heat lamp in there.”

  I shoot him a flat look, earning his laughter.

  “What if I help thaw your ass after?”

  “Yeah, you will,” I mutter.

  “God, I missed your bad attitude.” His fingers curl around the back of my neck to give me a soft, playful squeeze. “Come on … Let’s get this place up and running.”

  * * *

  “You can lose the coat and boots. I think it’s finally warm enough.” Jonah shoves another log into the woodstove. The orange glow from within flares.

  I test his claim by blowing into the air. When we first stepped inside this quaint cabin of knotty pine, our hot breath billowed in the cold. Now, though, with a roaring fire and a heater pumping out warmth, only a mild chill lingers.

  I kick off my boots and shrug out of my parka, swapping it for my red-and-black-checkered flannel jacket and wool socks that I dug out of my suitcase. With the glass of red wine I poured after unloading our food—mostly snacks and premade meals from Agnes’s freezer, but also a turkey breast ready to go into the small propane stove—I settle onto the futon, careful not to knock the oil lamp that casts a dim but warm light. “How often do Bobbie and George come here?”

  “A week or two in the summer, and a lot of weekends once the busy season dies down. They’re usually here from Christmas till after New Year’s.” He prods the burning logs with a poker one last time before shutting and latching the little door. “They’re gonna retire here. Get the place set up to live in comfortably year-round.”

  “Year-round? I think I’d get bored.” My curious gaze drifts around the interior, with Bobbie’s cute little touches—an embroidered cushion, a pastel watercolor of a bush plane floating on a lake, a kitschy sign about hearth and home—that feel very much like the bubbly grocery store cashier with a faded Alabama accent.

  Above us is a tiny loft, with just enough room for a double bed and two narrow side tables. I’m struggling to picture George, a sizeable man with a handlebar mustache, ambling up that ladder at night. “How’d they get all that furniture up there?”

  “Painfully, on ropes. I was here for that.” Jonah sinks into the futon next to me with a groan. He hasn’t stopped since his boots hit the snowy ground hours ago: emptying and securing the plane, bringing in firewood, loading and mounting his gun on the wall, setting up the various propane, oil, battery, and solar-panel power sources that keep this cabin operational. He’s already talking about chopping more logs and taking the ATV to get water from the town well tomorrow.

  I lean in to rest my jet-lagged head against his shoulder, inhaling the scent of burning wood as I absorb the silence, save for the sound of the crackling fire. I can’t recall the last time I was so content. “It’d be nice to have a place like this to escape to.”

  His eyebrow arches. “Even with the outhouse?”

  “I’d only come in summer.” I discovered the three-piece bathroom in the back of the cabin, operational in warmer months when the water can’t freeze in the pipes.

  “There’s my little princess,” he teases, his hand sliding over my thigh affectionately. But then his voice turns softer, more serious. “We can have this, too, once we figure things out. Give us a few years to get settled somewhere and then we can look at buying a patch of land somewhere up here and building our own place.”

  “Like this?”

  “Maybe a bit bigger.” He pauses a beat. “Big enough for us and twelve kids.”

  “Only twelve?” I mock as flutters stir in my stomach. “How about we try for one and see how it goes?” Of all the things I appreciate about Jonah, his directness is near the top of the list. It forces conversations to happen that otherwise might not, if I’m left to my own devices. He first brought up the topic of kids back in Toronto. Almost as a checkpoint, I suspect, because his relief when I confirmed that, yes, I do want kids eventually, was palpable.

  “Sounds good to me.” Jonah seizes my waist and hoists me onto his lap to face him, guiding my thighs around his. A deep sound rumbles in his chest as his hands grip and outline my curves, working from my hips to my waist, to the swell of my breasts in one smooth motion.

  I toy with strands of his ash-blond hair as my body responds with raw need. Meanwhile, my chest surges with a new level of appreciation for this man. I have no intention of becoming a mother anytime soon, but that Jonah is so resolute, so confident, so unafraid of the idea is unexpectedly sexy. And here, I didn’t think he could become more so.

  With dexterous fingers, he slides my flannel coat down my arms, letting it fall to the floor behind me. My sweater goes next, leaving me in a thin cotton shirt. I shudder, though I’m no longer feeling the cold.

  “What did you think about that place?” I ask, smoothing my hands over his broad shoulders, across his hard chest, over the ridges of his defined stomach. Jonah credits his Norwegian genes for his physique. I haven’t seen him venture out to a gym since I met him, so maybe it’s true.

  “Which place?” His calloused fingers slip beneath my shirt, skimming over my back to find the clasp
of my bra. With a flick, the tension in the material gives way. An eager shiver runs through my body as he pushes the lace aside and cups my breasts within his palms, his touch far gentler than I ever expected from him.

  “The one I sent you on Saturday?”

  “You sent me a listing for a 3000-square-foot house in Anchorage, near a Walmart.” He guides my arms up and then hikes my shirt over my head. He discards my bra as if it’s a scrap, exposing my upper body to the cool night air. He leans back for a long moment, as if to admire my naked flesh and decide what he wants to do with it first. It’s such a simple move, and yet my breasts grow heavy and my nipples harden and blood rushes to my core.

  “It was a big lot. And the rent isn’t too bad.”

  His gaze flickers to mine. “I’m gonna be thirty-two in April, Calla. I don’t wanna rent anymore if I don’t have to. Let’s look for somethin’ to buy. Somethin’ that’s a hundred percent ours. A smaller house with more land. No Walmart in our backyard.” His hands splay across my back, pulling my body closer. He leans in to lick one peaked nipple before taking it into his mouth and sucking hard.

  I revel in the conflicting feel of his bristly facial hair—it’ll be another month before I can call that a beard again—and his wet tongue, but my mind is spinning with thoughts. Jonah has mentioned buying instead of renting once before. My mother has been pushing hard for the latter. It’s far less permanent, she insisted. Less complicated to sort out should things not work between us. Easier for me to pick up and come home.

  Like she did.

  She insists she’s only doing her job as a mother, warning me of pitfalls before I tumble into them.

  But I am not her, and Jonah is certainly nothing like my father. He wants to settle down and have kids, with me. There are no accidental pregnancies guiding our decisions.