Well, he was waiting to see what she would do. They lay side by side in the dark, each trying not to roll into the depression created by the other’s body in the knobby old mattress, each thinking silently about, Sam would wager, the same thing. Last night.
God, she’d felt so good. So soft, warm and giving. It had been a long time since he’d been with a woman who knew how to do anything but take. And the giving had made him more willing to give to her, had made him want to. He’d thought less about his own pleasure than hers. Which meant that he really cared about her.
He turned over on his side, pretending to close his eyes, but studying her profile through his lowered lashes. She lay motionless, relaxed but not resting. He wished she’d go to sleep. That way he could sleep, too.
“Sam?” She spoke softly.
“Yes?”
“Do you think there’s any chance that plane will come back?”
“I don’t know.”
She didn’t say anything more. Sam waited, tense, wanting so much to touch her, but afraid that she didn’t want him to. He made himself close his eyes to shut her out of his sight, and even though he didn’t drowse off, he thought maybe she was already asleep. After a while—maybe fifteen minutes or so—he opened his eyes again. At first he stared up at the unfinished timber rafters, hardly daring to look at Kerry. When he did, he noticed a trickle of dampness sliding slowly down her cheek. Her eyes were wide open, staring at the ceiling.
He reached his hand over and touched the spot of wet. Tears. She was crying in silent anguish, all the more disturbing because he had been lying right beside her and hadn’t known what she was feeling.
“What’s wrong, Kerry?”
At first he thought she wasn’t going to answer him, but she said in a kind of choked whisper, “Sometimes I get so afraid.”
“Of bears? You don’t have to worry about them. We have the rifle.”
“Not bears. Of everything. Of death. And life.”
“Oh, Kerry,” he said helplessly. All he knew to do was to reach for her, take her in his arms, dry her tears with the corner of the sheet.
“I mean, now I’m responsible for the baby, not just me, and I’ve endangered it by being a stupid cheechako,” Kerry said against his chest.
“You didn’t mean to,” Sam said.
“Of course not, but now you’re in danger, too.”
“We’ll be all right. We’ll get out of here.” He amended this in his own mind, thinking I’d be fine if it were just me. But it’s harder when I have to look after Kerry. And the baby. He recalled belatedly that Kerry still thought that the reason for his visit to Silverthorne had been to check on her. Well, she’d have to go on thinking that. He thought about those papers in the pouch in his pack. They’d never see the light of day now.
“I thought everything would be all right when the plane flew over today. I thought we’d probably get rescued.” She nestled her head trustingly into the hollow of his shoulder, and he wanted to kiss her, but didn’t dare. She clearly didn’t want a sexual relationship with him; what had been started between them was not important to her.
Which gave him a bleak feeling.
Well, sometimes the things you couldn’t have were the things you wanted the most. He wanted Kerry Anderson. But she didn’t want him.
He distracted himself by thinking that once they got back to Anchorage he’d look up that little redhead, Jolie somebody, he couldn’t remember her last name. He tried to picture her in his mind and failed utterly. He’d met her at a party and asked for her number after Marcia left, but he’d never called her. He didn’t even really like her much.
Kerry had fallen asleep in his arms, and he tightened his arms around her. He wanted to tell her that he’d take care of her, that he’d do anything for her, that he wouldn’t let any harm come to her or their baby. Their baby, product of the union of his sperm and her egg, and she didn’t know and never would.
The thought brought tears to his eyes. He blinked them away in the dark and stroked her hair, thinking that this was all he would allow himself, this small intimacy, that he must deny both of them the greater intimacy. She sighed deeply and adjusted her curves to his.
He wondered if she would hear if he were to whisper that he was falling in love with her. He was sorely tempted; he wanted to say the words. But he didn’t say them. He didn’t dare.
IN THE MORNING, they dressed and left the cabin, leaving behind a note with their names and addresses for the owners. Sam didn’t like the way the air felt. He thought it carried hints of bad weather.
“I hope you’re wrong,” Kerry said fervently.
“Me, too,” he replied.
But they had only been on the trail for forty-five minutes when a dark gray bank of clouds swept across the mountains, soon obscuring their peaks and much of the lower range. Sam stopped and stood, hands balanced on hips, as he watched the weather front moving in.
“What’s happening?”
“Storm front,” he said.
“Maybe it’s only passing through,” Kerry said doubtfully.
“Well, it’s a humdinger.”
“Looks like it,” she said. She glanced at Sam, trying to read his thoughts.
“I’d planned for us to make it to the closest shelter, a forest service cabin.”
“We’d better get going.” Kerry adjusted the straps on her pack and dug her poles into the snow to move forward.
Sam spoke curtly. “No, Kerry, we’re not going anywhere.”
She stopped and halfway turned to face him.
“What do you mean?”
“We’re going back to the Stanchiks’. I’m not taking any chances that we could be caught outside in that.”
“Sam—”
“Don’t argue. You won’t change my mind.”
One look at his face showed her the truth of his statement, and it was with a sense of discouragement that she followed Sam back to the cabin. She was beginning to feel despair over their whole situation, and that may have contributed to the fact that later she couldn’t eat lunch, even though it was onion soup made from a dehydrated mix. And she usually loved onion soup.
“Why can’t you eat?” Sam demanded to know as he sat across from her and her untouched bowl at the table in the Stanchiks’ cabin.
“My stomach is upset.” Kerry didn’t even like to talk about how nauseated she felt. Talking about it made it worse.
“You need to replace all those calories you’ve used up walking. You have to eat,” Sam said patiently as if talking to a child.
All his cajoling did no good. At a loss, Sam sat down at the table and ate his soup as well as hers, glowering at her all the while. She finally retreated to the bed, huddling under a pair of blankets until Sam said he’d better go split some firewood outside before the storm hit.
She listened to the sharp rhythmic thwack of ax against wood, closing her eyes against the nausea that swept over her in waves. She wished she’d never heard of Alaska, that she’d never decided to open Silverthorne Lodge, that she’d stayed in Seattle. She had no business here, and as for Sam, they were thrown together in this situation, which was her fault. But it was so hard to maintain her distance when all she wanted was to snuggle up against him and make love.
She realized that the sounds of Sam splitting wood had stopped. He came back inside as the storm hit, snow blowing down off the mountaintops, wind sweeping through chinks in the little cabin. Despite the fires in the fireplace and cookstove, it grew colder and colder inside as the wind snorted and scuffed outside.
Sam tried to entice her to eat.
“I can’t eat,” she said truthfully as she burrowed deeper beneath the covers, and Sam retreated to a corner where he sat on a stool sharpening the ax without speaking. Once or twice she attempted conversation, but Sam was taciturn and uncommunicative.
It was storming so hard that if it hadn’t been for her wristwatch, Kerry wouldn’t have been able to tell night from day. She insisted on rousing h
erself from bed long enough to prepare moose meat for dinner. Sam ate enough, she ate very little, and, cold and discouraged by the day’s events, she slid back into the warm bed at eight o’clock.
Sam rearranged his pack, puttered around the cabin, set out his clothes for the next day and spared Kerry long covert looks when he thought she wouldn’t notice. Finally she was exasperated.
“For heaven’s sake, Sam, stop it! Come on to bed.”
“No need to shout,” he said with extreme patience.
“Who’s shouting?” she hollered. She immediately felt contrite.
“If you can yell, you’re obviously feeling better.”
“Maybe so. I don’t know. I wish things were different, that’s all.”
Sam came over to the side of the bed and stood staring down at her. “Different how?”
“In every way. Just get in bed. It hurts my neck to look up at you.”
Sam removed his boots, his socks, his heavy shirt, his turtleneck. His hands lingered on the snap to his jeans.
“Oh, go on. We know each other pretty well by this time,” Kerry said, wondering why she was lashing out at him and knowing why even as she drew the next breath.
“Yes, I suppose we do,” Sam said. He snapped open the fly of his jeans and unzipped them. Kerry averted her eyes, though it probably wasn’t necessary.
He climbed into bed beside her, immediately warming her with his presence. The storm still raged outside the cabin, a terrible ruckus.
“I hope this experience doesn’t make us hate each other,” she said in a small voice after he blew out the candle.
He considered this. “I don’t think I could ever hate you,” he said at last.
“That’s good,” she said.
She stayed on her side of the bed, and he stayed on his. After a while she shifted her position and her bare feet grazed his. Her feet were cold.
“Sorry,” she mumbled.
“Are your feet always that cold?” They’d felt like individual blocks of ice, each toe an icicle.
“No. I don’t think so. It’s just that I’m closest to the wall and the wind whistles through.”
“Let’s switch places,” he said.
“I’m fine.”
“Why don’t you put on some socks?”
“All the ones I brought are wet.” She sounded miserable.
In the dark Sam couldn’t see her. He knew how she looked, though, and he pictured her now. In his mind she wasn’t huddling as far away as possible on the edge of the bed trying to keep warm, she was walking on a beach, Malibu perhaps, wearing a bikini and laughing up at the man beside her, who happened to be him. He’d take her to Malibu when they were out of this and—
No, he wouldn’t. She had other priorities, one of which was his child.
He thought about that child and recast the image in his mind to include a baby. Kerry was walking on the beach, a small boy holding her hand, and he was holding the child’s other hand. They looked so happy together, a lovely family.
But they weren’t a family. This was as close as he would probably ever get to knowing what it was like to be a father.
Now he rolled over on his side to face her, wanting to drink her in, wanting to experience this feeling to the fullest. To his surprise he felt peaceful and fulfilled, and that was from only thinking about forming a family with this woman and her child. Their child.
“Are you asleep?” he asked quietly.
She waited a few seconds before answering. “No, my feet are too cold.”
He could either get up and find her a dry pair of socks in his own pack or warm her feet some other way. “We can fix that,” he said, and he wrapped his legs around hers so that her feet were tucked between them.
For a moment she stiffened, but then it was okay. She relaxed, and soon he heard her regular breathing and knew that she had fallen asleep.
Tentatively he reached out and slid his arm around the curve of her waist. She sighed, and he fully expected her to wake up and object, but then she leaned in closer to him, and soon they were molded together like spoons in a drawer. He fell asleep then, too, and his last thought was that with any luck, maybe they wouldn’t be able to leave here for a couple more days.
Kerry woke once during the night and when she first realized that she was sleeping so close to Sam, she instinctively tried to insert space between them. She didn’t want to wake him, though, and he murmured something in his sleep, something Kerry didn’t quite catch, but in her half-waking state she at first thought he’d said, “I love you.”
But, of course, he hadn’t. It was only her imagination.
IN THE MORNING, it was still snowing lightly, though the blizzard seemed to have blown itself out. A new soft blanket of snow covered everything, blunting angles and falsely rendering the reality of their situation much less harsh than it was. Kerry was sick to her stomach with the worst morning sickness so far.
Sam felt helpless against such a miserable symptom, but it also left him in awe of what expectant mothers had to endure. He brought her wet cloths for her forehead, seethed because she had run out of the saltines she used to quell morning sickness and silently cursed himself for his part in the whole thing.
“I apologize,” Kerry said over and over, but he wished she wouldn’t. He should be the one apologizing and he was heartsick at the thought.
He insisted that she lie in the bed, but after a while she curled up there and said, “Talk to me, Sam. It makes the time pass faster.”
“Talk to you about what?” he said.
“I don’t know. Oh, I take that back—how about Sybilla?”
Sam had to laugh. Kerry wouldn’t give up on Sybilla.
“You wouldn’t be interested. It was nothing much,” he told her.
She considered this. “I’d be interested in anything that would take my mind off things.”
He thought about this. “How about a joke?”
“I always like to hear a good joke.”
“I didn’t say anything about a good joke. We’re better off with the stupidest jokes I can think of at this point.”
“All right. I’m game.”
“What do you get when you cross a frog and a dog?”
“I don’t know. Sybilla?”
“Nope, not Sybilla. I told you I’m not talking about her. What you get when you cross a frog and a dog is a croaker spaniel.”
“That is stupid. I know a stupider one.”
“Shoot.”
“How do you stop a bull from charging?”
“No idea.”
She grinned as close to a malevolent grin as she knew how to grin. “Take away his Visa card. You’re next.”
He had to think a minute. “What’s black and yellow and goes zzub zzub?”
“A bee flying backward! I’ve heard it before.”
“I’m out of stupid jokes.”
“So am I,” she said.
“It’s probably just as well.”
“I don’t feel so sick anymore, Sam. Maybe the jokes worked.” She sat up and smiled at him, swinging her feet over the side of the bed.
He smiled back. “I wouldn’t count on it, and besides—” He stopped talking and listened intently. They exchanged astonished looks as they heard an alien sound, one that they weren’t accustomed to hearing.
“Damned if that doesn’t sound like an iron dog,” Sam said on a note of incredulity.
Kerry jumped up, ran to the door and looked out into the flat light of midmorning. The sky was lambswool gray, too overcast to lend shadows to the trees, and the landscape undulated toward the mountains, white and spare. As she watched, a snow machine roared around a copse of firs, breaking a groove in the fresh-fallen snow of the trail, and it was followed by a dog-sled team running full tilt.
Sam was right behind her, and she tried to ignore his hands gripping her shoulders.
“It’s Ollie Parker from Athinopa! My old friend!”
“How can it be?”
“I
don’t know, but that’s who it is, all right. Ollie!”
Sam released her and opened the door, walking out and waving his hands. Soon he was lost in a sea of wagging tails and embracing his friend enthusiastically. Kerry didn’t join them. Suddenly she understood that Ollie’s arrival signaled something she hadn’t been willing to think about. True, her long trek with Sam was over, and they would soon be safe. This was good for her and good for the baby, and presumably it was good for Sam, too.
She should have been able to summon a feeling of joy or even relief. But all she felt was a sinking feeling and a dull pain somewhere in the region of her heart because she knew that for her and Sam Harbeck, this was the end of the trail.
CHAPTER TEN
A month later
Kerry faced into a cutting wind on the street where Emma lived, a pleasant residential neighborhood in Anchorage. With her head down, she didn’t see Mr. Lagunoff on the sidewalk until she ran right into him.
“Oof,” he said, but his small plump figure was well padded by his down coat, and he regained his balance immediately. His grocery bag, however, went flying, and cans and bundles landed in the mound of snow piled at the edge of the sidewalk.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Kerry said, horrified at the damage she’d caused. She scrambled to pick everything up.
“No problem, no problem,” Mr. Lagunoff told her. “I’m glad I ran into you.” He indulged in a hearty laugh at his own attempt at humor while Kerry dropped the retrieved items into his bag.
Kerry wrapped her scarf tighter around her neck. “Well, I’ll be on my way. If you’re sure you’re not hurt.”
“I’m fine, but a man was asking about you this morning.”
“A man? What man?” Sam, she thought to herself. She’d thought he’d put her out of his life.
“Oh, he was tall and nice-looking. A prosperous kind of fellow. Drove a black Mercedes.”
Sam. Her heart lightened at the thought of him.
“Was there a message?”
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