Town Social

by Simmons, Trana Mae

  The problem was, he couldn't swallow the new information — the information Goodman conveniently failed to disclose until after Sandy arrived.

  "Let me get this straight," Sandy said. "I knew from your telegrams the position in your shipping company wouldn't open up until next spring, so I agreed to train your sled dogs over the winter. But you forgot to mention two things to me. One, your dogs aren't the Malamutes I'm used to — they're this new breed of Husky invading both Alaska and the States. And two — the 'musher' I'm supposed to train to run in an Alaskan race four months from now is your daughter?"

  Goodman pursed his lips and nodded, a twinkle fleeting through his eyes and a corner of his lips quirking. "That appears to be about it. We've already discussed everything else as to the arrangements. You'll have living quarters at our home, Ladyslipper Landing, which is just a little northwest of town." His voice grew sterner. "And make no mistake, Sandy, the kennels are for the most part my daughter Laura's responsibility, but I keep a sharp eye on what she's doing. She's my only child."

  Sandy leaned back in his chair, a disbelieving whoosh of breath escaping. If the man was so damned protective of his daughter, what the hell was he doing agreeing to the ridiculous idea of her competing in an Alaskan race?

  "Mr. Goodman . . . ."

  "Tom, please," the older man broke in. "After all, we'll be in contact quite a bit down through the coming months. This is a very small town, with only a population of a little over three hundred people, and most of us are on a first-name basis. Besides, when you call me 'mister,' I think of my father."

  "Fine," Sandy conceded. "But listen, Tom. Do you have any idea how dangerous it could be for a woman to run in one of these Alaskan races? Good lord, man! We're talking a week on the trail, solely accountable for yourself and your dogs!"

  "I understand they have checkpoints and overnight accommodations set up at periodic spots. Besides, you'll be running with her, with me paying all your expenses. Laura has her heart set on this. In fact, she won't agree to set a wedding date with her fiancé, David, until she makes an attempt at this race."

  Sandy stared at the man, incredulous. Tom Goodman didn't look like a fool. At somewhere around his mid-forties, he was still fit and could probably handle a team himself for an entire week. Gray had infiltrated his hair, liberally in his sideburns and enough in the rest of it to lighten what must have been a dark auburn color in his youth. Yet along with his confident demeanor, the signs of aging seemed to bespeak experience and knowledge, not a weakening or physical laxity.

  Knowing from his friend, Ted, in Alaska that Tom Goodman was filthy rich — had even more money than Sandy's former father-in-law — Sandy had expected to find a man in an expensive suit and with condescending manners. Instead Tom Goodman wore a pair of wool trousers and a red plaid shirt similar to what lumberjacks favored. A heavy parka hung on the coat rack in the corner of the office. As in Alaska, the fall evenings in Minnesota could be extremely chilly, with nights of biting cold.

  Sandy started to speak, but thought better of it when he realized he was on the verge of calling the man an utter idiot. He couldn't afford to antagonize Goodman. Blowing out a breath instead of the ill-advised words, he gazed around the office, playing for a little time. Instinct told him that Goodman saw through his ploy when the other man pursed his lips and nodded his head slightly, yet Tom allowed Sandy time to think over his decision.

  Unlike Tom's practical appearance, the office reflected wealth. Sandy had passed at least a dozen various smaller offices built from logs or weathered clapboard on his journey to the huge log complex housing Tom's place of business. In this room, which he used for his office, floor to ceiling windows opened the view to the grandeur of the Lake Superior Harbor and the rugged shoreline north of them. Sandy had also seen the Goodman name on several of the gray-planked, weathered warehouses beside the docks when they arrived by ship that morning.

  According to Ted, Tom owned a shipping company, a logging and lumber company, and even employed some commercial fishermen. He had his finger in every successful pie in Grand Marais. Now he seemed to want to spend some of his excess money on his daughter and her sled dogs, since it was a fairly expensive undertaking to ship an entire team clear across the States, then north to Alaska and back here — two teams, with Sandy accompanying her. He should have an idea of the cost, since he'd just completed a one-way journey of that type with his dogs himself.

  And Sandy having to return to Alaska as part of the job he so sorely needed had been the other thing Tom forgot to mention. That couldn't happen, but if he admitted that to Goodman right now, he might as well give up any chance of landing the position.

  "Why me?" Sandy asked.

  "You came highly recommended by Ted Erickson," Tom replied without hesitation. "Ted did a fine job for me as my right hand man in my shipping company, before he got itchy feet and headed up to Alaska. He said he wanted to sow his wild oats before he started looking for a wife. I sent him an inquiry, and it was a real stroke of luck when Ted told me that you had the qualifications for both the dog trainer and shipping management positions I need to fill."

  "I can handle your shipping position," Sandy agreed. "It's the same type of job I had in Alaska, and I kept things organized enough to give me time to train and race my dogs. But my dogs were beaten in the last race I ran — by a team of Huskies."

  "Ah, those Huskies," Tom said with a chuckle. "I've heard there's some resentment directed at the breed, mostly from established mushers — the ones who've used Malamutes and Eskimo dogs from the beginning."

  "Some?" Sandy muttered. "I'd call that an understatement."

  "Laura's been working with her Huskies for several years now. She was one of the first breeders to import a couple pair after they were discovered in Siberia, and we saw some skepticism here, too, when her dogs first arrived. But I think you'll find she's put together a hell of a team."

  Sandy stood, prepared to leave. "I'll have to consider this turn of events. Can I get back with you tomorrow?"

  "Of course." Rounding the desk, Tom walked beside him to the door, where he extended his hand for a leave-taking. "I'll be in my office here in the morning by eight."

  Briefly, Sandy shook Tom's hand, then left the office, closing the door behind him carefully rather than with the sharp thud his emotions dictated. No sense burning any bridges by flagrant discourteousness to Goodman. He'd sort all this information out overnight and be sure he made the best decision by tomorrow.

  What sort of woman could Tom's daughter be? He visualized a somewhat homely tomboy, who's fiancé was probably content to postpone their wedding. Money had bought more than one less-than-comely female a husband. But women like his dead wife, Colleen, drew men with their beauty as well as their trust funds.

  Colleen had been lovely with her auburn hair and sparkling green eyes. Despite her snooty parents, she had also been one of the most loving and giving women Sandy had ever met. It still hurt him almost beyond bearing whenever he remembered Colleen's dim, pain-filled eyes and ravaged body as she slipped away from him. She'd left him their wonderful six-year-old daughter, Tracie, however, and Tracie was already showing signs of the same beauty her as mother — both in her face and in her bubbly personality.

  He looked for Tracie now, scanning the snow-covered street filled with dog paw and sled runner tracks, as well as deeper impressions of horses' hooves and wagon wheels. Up the street he saw a team of huge draft horses pulling a wagon of freshly cut logs. Virgin pine, some of the trees were too large for even four men standing in a circle to reach around. As soon as a little more snow covered the ground, the wagons would be exchanged for lumber sleds in order to continue the work as long as possible into the winter months. Most of the other transportation waiting at the various storefronts was either dogsleds or smaller wagons. None of those horseless carriages had made it this far north — less than a hundred miles from Canada — although he'd seen a few of them in Duluth.

  He didn't s
ee Tracie up that way. When she had asked permission to wait outside while he reported to Tom Goodman, his daughter had assured him that she would remain within seeing distance. An obedient child, she would keep her promise.

  His sister, Cristy, had remained down on the docks while Sandy and Tracie walked on into town, insisting she would verify that all of the dogs were unloaded and every piece of their baggage taken from the ship's hold. He assumed she was as much interested in making sure none of her art supplies were left on board as anything else. He smiled when he saw her still down on the shore, standing beside a wind-weathered warehouse. Staring out over the water, she was probably mentally setting up her easel, her artist's eye panning the distance and transferring the sights to the canvas square in her mind.

  Though he was supposedly now responsible for her, since their parents had died just a few days before Sandy left Alaska, he had no idea how he would have handled Tracie on the trip without his newly-matured younger sister's help. Even though he and Tracie had to make allowances for Cristy's daydreaming propensities when her muse visited, having to rebutton Tracie's dress bodice once in a while, for the most part he and his sister had bonded in a deep friendship in addition to their blood relationship.

  Ah, there was Tracie. Red braids bobbing on her back and green muffler dragging, she skipped down the walkway on the other side of the street. One mitten dropped out of her coat pocket as Sandy watched, kept from being lost because Cristy had sewn a sturdy ribbon between the pair. She reached the end of the walkway, and he started to call to her before she went down the steps. A wagon pulled by draft horses rumbled up the street just then, and he waited for it to pass before he called out.

  As soon as he could see Tracie again, he caught sight of the snow-white sled dog not twenty feet from her. One of those damned Huskies, it bounded to its feet in a confrontational stance, which Sandy recognized all too well from his years of dealing with dogs. The sled it was hitched to, tilted on its side and anchored with a snow anchor, kept it in place, but Tracie wandered on down the steps. A gull flying overhead snared his daughter's attention, and she lifted an arm, probably chirping to the bird though he couldn't hear her from this distance. Her meandering steps led her closer to the dog.

  "Little girl, stop!"

  Sandy barely noticed the woman who emerged from a store near the other end of the street. Her shout blended with his own yell at Tracie as he pounded across the rutted ground to rescue his daughter, and from the corner of his eye he saw the woman drop her armload of packages and race in the same direction. At his charging approach, the white sled dog growled viciously, jumping and straining against its harness. Any other time Sandy would have dominated the dog into submission, but not when it was his daughter and not himself in danger.

  Tracie froze, her teal blue eyes wide in trepidation as she stared back and forth between the two people racing toward her. The woman, closer from the beginning, reached her first and scooped Tracie into her arms. Sandy's booted feet slid on the frozen earth, and he barely kept from sending all three of them crashing to the ground when he gathered his daughter — along with the woman who held her — into his arms and swung them around to place himself between them and the snarling dog.

  "Heavens," the woman said as she gazed up at him, her mouth right in line for him to kiss if he would have bent his head, "I do apologize for Blancheur."

  "That's your damned dog?" Sandy snarled.

  She nodded, a touch of fear in her green eyes. Damn, she looked more than a little bit like his dead wife with that auburn hair and sea-green eyes. He hoped Tracie didn't notice that. It was bad enough that Tracie had found him discussing the fact of today being the one-year anniversary of Colleen's death with Cristy on the trip up from Duluth this morning.

  When she tried to step away from him, he realized he still had his arm around her in a firm grip. A stab of consternation went through him when he felt a reluctance to remove it, and he counteracted that by jerking it free and almost snatching Tracie from the woman's arms. Then she spoke a sharp word to the Husky, which quieted immediately.

  Politeness demanded he introduce himself, but Sandy didn't give a damn about that at the moment. His heartbeat needed to calm and his senses stabilize while his brain took a moment to translate the fact that his daughter hadn't been mauled. He clutched Tracie tight, and against his will, studied the woman without apology for his examination, since she didn't appear to be in a hurry to move away.

  He could see calling her a woman might be stretching it. She appeared to be barely out of her teens, if that. Possibly it could be her slight stature detracting from her true age, because she couldn't be over five foot two, a couple inches shorter than his wife had been.

  The greenish color of her eyes reminded him of the summer sea off the Alaskan coast, and she met his gaze expectantly now, her fear of him evidently gone and replaced by an anticipation of him introducing himself. When a cloud overhead uncovered the sun, he finally realized her hair was a much darker red than he'd thought at first — darker than Colleen's and Tracie's.

  She'd opened her blue-gray, full-length cloak, although she still wore her mittens. The dark emerald gown beneath the cloak appeared to be made of wool, the hem of her skirt caught on the top of one of her boots, which were of a rather mannish style. What curves she had were less than voluptuous, and she didn't appear to have any false padding on her figure, such as extra petticoats.

  Tracie shifted in his hold, hugging one arm around his neck and settling her tiny rump on his bent arm.

  "I'm sorry I got too close to your doggie," Tracie said to the woman. "Daddy's told me not to go close to strange doggies, but I was watchin' the birdie and didn't see him."

  "I'm just glad you weren't hurt," the woman replied with a relieved smile. "I'm Laura Goodman, but please, call me Laura, not Miss Goodman. And you are?"

  "Tracie." She patted Sandy on the cheek. "And my last name's same as my daddy's — Montdulac. This is my daddy, Sandy Montdulac."

  "Oh!" Laura pulled a mitten off and held out her hand. "You're my new trainer. I'm very glad to meet you. We have your quarters all ready for you out at Ladyslipper Landing."

  Sandy reluctantly shook her hand, taking note of the fragile bones and diminutive size. But his most prominent thought was that this woman had never had the word "homely" connected to her in her life. Frowning, he pushed that thought aside and concentrated on wondering at the incongruity of her wearing her mittens when she evidently didn't think it chilly enough to keep her cloak buttoned. His face must have given away his second thought, or maybe he stared a second too long at her hands. She dropped her grasp, laughing gaily and pulling off her other mitten.

  "If you're wondering about the mittens on this pretty day, it's because my hands chill very easily, as do my feet," she said. "I've found that as long as I keep those four things warm, the rest of my body is fine. From late fall, like this, until ice out in the late spring, I seldom bare my hands outside."

  Glancing down, she noticed her skirt hem and tugged it free. Sandy's eyes widened when he caught a glimpse of trousers beneath the hem. She giggled once again, tilting her head coquettishly as she waited for his reaction.

  "I can't very well travel behind a dog sled in a skirt now, can I?" she asked airily.

  Ignoring her levity, Sandy very abruptly stated his case. "There were a few things your father kept from me when he telegraphed me about this position. For one thing, he didn't tell me that I'd be training dogs for a woman to drive in an Alaskan race."

  In a quicksilver change of expression, Laura gazed at him arrogantly from those sea-green eyes, lifting a feathery auburn brow. "I assure you, Mr. Montdulac, I can handle a team. I've been driving sled dogs since I could walk. And if your rather denigrating reference to my gender means what I think it does, I can also assure you that I'm definitely a woman. In fact, I attained the age of majority — twenty-one — last January. I'll be twenty-two by the time I participate in the race."

  San
dy clenched his throat muscles, stemming the retort fighting for freedom from his beleaguered mind. Hell, he could do the job. That was the least of his worries. Not wanting to was the problem.

  Not wanting to do the job, though, wasn't a valid reason to allow his sister and daughter to starve to death while he looked for another position — something more suited to his damned excess of pride. Being responsible for a family was about the most humbling situation he could imagine. And if it meant teaching this slip of femininity some of the tricks of racing, he could gulp down a huge dash of pride with the best of men. She didn't need to know that his focus would be on showing her how totally ridiculous her idea of competing in that race was, should he accept the position her father offered.

  Besides the weather, which could in itself be a death threat, her other dangerous rivals would be a throng of cutthroat men. They would all be determined to win the race not only for the huge purse, but also to prove the superiority of their teams. A beautiful woman in their midst would further complicate matters, he thought, even while he chastised himself for admitting he'd noticed her beauty himself.

  He forced his thoughts away from that train. She damned sure didn't need the money. She probably only wanted to have a high old time talking to her grandchildren some day about how she'd been the first woman in history to run in an Alaskan race.

  "When I take on a position as a trainer," he said in a rough voice, "I'm the boss. My word is law. The first time a driver I'm training defies my orders, I'm gone."

  "Agreed," Laura responded immediately.

  "I told your father I'd let him know in a day or two."

  "Just what is it you have to think over, Mr. Montdulac? Both my father and my fiancé support me in this venture, and they're the only men in my life whom I have to opt to please. You'll be paid more than adequately for your services, you know."