Stop that. You can’t think about that now. This is a new life. That old Lana is long gone.
Lana made herself smile as Mack tipped his hat to Mrs. Smithton and held out an elbow. “If you don’t mind, Mrs. Smithton, we’ve an appointment to keep.”
Lana’s stomach tumbled like a windstorm as they walked down the street. The Good Lord had never seen a wedding day like this, she was sure. It didn’t really matter, she supposed, what the Good Lord thought of this whole business. He’d pretty much left her on her own, as far as she was concerned.
Mack wouldn’t take to such thinking. It was easy to see the strength of that man’s faith. Even in the darkest of times, faith was like a constant compass for him. The man had built the town’s church before his own dwelling had solid walls. He preached on Sundays, doing an admirable job filling in, until someone took the pulpit permanently. Jed had admired that, too.
She’d lost any sense of that “true north” compass needle of faith, her inner compass spinning aimlessly since the day the avalanche took Jed. Her husband’s spirituality had been mostly sputtering sparks of faith fed by Mack’s constant flame. Intense but inconsistent. Jed aspired to, but never quite achieved, a lot of Mack’s traits. Stop comparing them. Stop it.
“You all right?” Mack’s voice was saying. He’d stilled and she hadn’t even noticed. “You look a bit—”
“Well, so do you!” she shot back, not wanting him to finish that sentence, then bit her lip. The man was simply trying to be nice, and here she was, biting his head off.
Mack gave out a nervous laugh. “Well, good to see you’ve still got some fight in you. And here I thought maybe I’d left the old Lana back on the dock at Treasure Creek.” He pushed out a breath, closing his eyes for a second or two. “It’ll be all right,” he said quietly when he opened them again. “It’ll be…just fine.”
“Of course it will,” she lied emphatically. He knew it, too. Without a word of retort, Mack merely crinkled up the corner of his eyes and tucked her hand deeper into the crook of his arm, and they walked on.
“That’s a fine dress. Look at the way folks are staring at us,” he said, keeping a tight grip on her arm. Whether the gesture was meant to be reassuring or constraining, she couldn’t say. “You always did like to be the center of attention. I’d say you’ve got it here, surely.”
“I like being the center of attention? This from the man who makes himself the center of Treasure Creek? We are a pair, you and I.” She could almost chuckle about that, and it made her feel just a bit better.
“’Course, I will be insisting on the ‘obey’ part in our vows, you know,” he said, a laugh now tickling the edges of his deep voice. “Just to be clear on things.”
“If you’re fixing to get obeyed, then I’m fixing to get honored. You know, just to be clear on things.”
He looked at her with that. “Well then, I guess we really are a pair.”
It wasn’t much of a ceremony. The pastor’s wife stood in as witness, and despite the Bible and the prayers, the whole thing had an efficient, stamp of approval feel. Treasure Creek’s makeshift dockmaster, Caleb Johnson, might have been signing off on a daily shipment, for all the ceremony’s sentiment. Still, her heart did a funny jump when Mack looked her square in the eye as he pledged to honor and cherish her. It wasn’t a romantic or smitten look, but the strong sense of honor struck her hard. She knew, as he looked at her, held her hand with a steady grip and slipped a new and different ring on the fourth finger of her left hand, that he would honor her.
Lana wasn’t prepared for what that would do to her. She hadn’t realized, until his vow, how deeply alone she’d felt. The crushing black knot in her chest loosened with his words. Even if she had nothing else, she now had protection. The yawning gap of her own vulnerability—the dark force she’d fought so fiercely every moment since Jed’s death, swallowed her and stole her voice, so that her own vows were barely above a tearful whisper. She hadn’t cried at her first wedding, but now tears slipped down one cheek as the minister smiled and pronounced them man and wife.
It was done. And somehow, it had not been the earth-shattering moment she feared. It was a passage. A quiet, gigantic leap from one life into another.
Chapter Four
All through the fancy dinner following the wedding, Mack stared at Lana. Lana Tanner. His wife. He’d arranged for them to spend tonight in Skaguay for her sake, he thought. Now he began to think it was he who needed the extra time away from Treasure Creek to get used to his new marital status. The thought still stunned him.
She was a stunning woman. She’d always been beautiful—“a looker” was Jed’s favorite term—one best showed off by finery and elegance. The kind of woman a man could dress up and take out on the town with pride. Jed had admitted to him once how astonished he’d been that Lana chose him over Mack. Jed was such a romantic charmer, however, that it hadn’t surprised Mack at all that his best friend “got the girl.” There’d never been any question in Mack’s mind. Lana wasn’t his type.
Now Lana was his wife. They were both skittish through every course of the elegant meal, and it had to do with much more than the shadow of their pasts.
He’d already told her—twice—that this was a marriage of arrangement, that there were no expectations of this being anything other than two people living under the same roof. Still, for appearances sake, there could be no question behind which door he slept tonight. Jed was always so much better with women. Mack grimaced at his bumbling awkwardness. He tried to put Jed from his mind and reassure Lana again as he took his bride by the elbow after dinner and led her up the stairs to their honeymoon suite, but it made the moment no less awkward as he slid the lock shut behind them and turned to face the room.
Mrs. Smithton had been regrettably busy. All of Mack’s things had been moved into the room. The place was thick with flowers and candles, and a ridiculous amount of petals had been strewn about.
“Oh my,” Lana said, her voice nearly a gulp.
“Mrs. Smithton reads too many novels,” Mack said, then wished he’d hadn’t. Just when he thought this couldn’t get more difficult. Lana looked pale. “Lana,” he began, moving toward her to catch her if she fainted.
“You haven’t changed your mind…have you?”
“Lana…I am not the kind of man to…” Land sakes, how to say this? “To take what…what ought only to be…freely given.”
She stilled, her defiance melting into a frailty that took some corner of his heart and ran off with it. “I was afraid once you could…you’d want to…”
Now that was just plain cruel. Of course some part of him wanted. Any man with blood still running in his veins wanted, and she was a beautiful woman.
The irritating, obstinate, distractingly rose-scented widow of his lost friend. He’d better think of something to do, and fast. Out of somewhere in the mists of his jumbled thoughts, he remembered a game his father would play with him when he was sick or in pain. Surely, this was the most absurd use of such a distraction. “How about we talk?”
“Talk?”
“Think of three questions you’ve always wanted to ask me. The hardest ones you can think of. I promise to give you a truthful answer.”
She began pulling off her gloves, eyes scrunched up in thought. Another minute of excruciating silence went by, both of them fidgeting like youngsters. As traces of her usual demeanor returned, she straightened, looked him in the eye and asked, “Are you sorry?”
That was Lana. Always needing to know where she stood, always making sure you knew where you stood with her. Absolutely no mystery with this woman. He gave the question a respectful moment of thought, wanting to word his answer carefully. “No,” he said, sure he meant it. Still, he couldn’t resist adding, “not yet.”
She managed a small laugh at that, and he was glad to see it. Much of the tension had left the room, and he was glad of that, too. It was late—past ten—and the sun was finally starting its descent behind the mount
ains. He watched her walk to the window, the fading orb attracting her attention the way it had caught his.
“Mack,” she said, her voice soft, “why here? Why in this…”
He knew the term she’d bitten back. She’d used it too many times since Jed’s death. “You were going to say ‘God-forsaken place,’ weren’t you?”
She leaned against the window frame, looking like an oil painting in that fancy dress up against the sunset and curtains. “As a matter of fact, I was.” She sighed. She tilted her face back to him and added, “Mrs. Mack Turner had better not say such things, hmm?”
Mack leaned against the bedpost, suddenly exhausted. “I’ve heard worse. But it isn’t the talk that bothers me so much as the idea. This place is anything but God-forsaken.”
“All those lives. All those people and things lost and broken up on the trail. Jed. Your own brothers, both of them. ‘God-forsaken’ fits, harsh as it is. I just don’t see what you see.”
Mack walked to the window, still keeping a safe distance from her. In the deepening sunset, the mountains fit the “majestic” description so often employed in the pamphlets enticing men up here. He’d used the word himself when convincing Jed, hadn’t he? “They look grand now, from here.”
She made a small grunt. “From here you can’t see all the trash and abandoned equipment and dead horses. Those mountains are still only hungry beasts to me, eager to swallow men up whole.”
Mack took a step closer to her, pointed to the peak he knew was closest to Treasure Creek. Its permanent veil of snow gleamed rose-gold in the sunset. “Not all of it. Parts are still clean. Untouched. A fresh start. That’s what Treasure Creek was—is—for me. A chance to get a fresh start, to build something solid from the ground up. In a place where there isn’t much of that. Remind folks that God didn’t forsake one inch of a place like this.”
She turned away from the window, looking at him with her head cocked analytically to one side. “Why does a man like you need a fresh start? Seems you’ve done…fine so far.”
“Comes a point in a man’s life where he’s made money, he’s made a name for himself, but he wants to know he’s made a difference. Left something better than how he found it.”
Lana’s laugh had a dark edge. “And you couldn’t leave someplace farther south better than how you found it?”
“Sometimes you don’t choose your challenges. Sometimes your challenges choose you.” He suspected he was talking about more than Treasure Creek at the moment.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she said quietly.
“It’s rather easy,” he lied, thinking it would be anything but. “You get the bed, I get the floor and we both smile a lot in the morning.”
Chapter Five
Mack winced as the ornate clock on his mantel struck eleven the next evening. Georgie, as he had done every hour since arriving at his new home, offered eleven loud “bong!”s in reply.
Lana watched Mack clamp his hand over the little gold chimes and roll his eyes. He was doing his level best to be civil when he inquired, “Does he ever sleep?”
Mack’s exasperation made her laugh. She’d had that very thought so many times over the past two months, she’d almost come to believe Georgie was incapable of it. Teena Crow, the Tlingit healing woman, had offered her teas to help, but Lana didn’t trust those strange native concoctions. As if aware the conversation had turned to him, Georgie walked over and poked Mack in the knee. This brought Mack to squat down to the boy’s height and consider Georgie with the narrow-eyed impatience of someone who had their last nerve stomped upon half an hour ago. “It’s bedtime, George,” Mack commanded, pointing up at the clock for emphasis.
“No.”
Mack caught Lana’s eyes over Georgie’s head. Do something about this, his expression silently shouted. “Ah, but it is. Your mama knows it is, too.”
The great Mack Tanner, flummoxed by a toddler. Were she not so bone-tired herself, she’d have found it amusing. Wound up by all the excitement and the new surroundings of Mack’s large cabin, Georgie was about as compliant as a mule. A very cranky, very curious, very irritating little mule. “I do indeed,” Lana said, dropping the socks she’d just managed to wrestle off Georgie’s feet and dragging herself to the chair by the small fire. Sinking into it, she patted her lap several times. “Come up here and…” She’d meant to ask Mack to bring her one of the children’s readers from the stack of books they’d purchased, but the question suddenly raised the issue of what to call Mack now.
“Ugle Ack,” Georgie barked pointing in Mack’s direction.
“Uncle Mack,” Mack replied, sensing not only her unspoken question, but Georgie’s unsolicited pronouncement. Mack was Georgie’s godfather, and Jed had referred to Mack always as “Uncle Mack” to the boy. For months Georgie could only manage “Ack,” which was amusing enough in itself, but over the Christmas holidays he’d graduated to “Ugle Ack.” Perhaps their new marital status was no reason to change that.
“Uncle Mack can bring us one of those pretty books with the pictures in them. Mama will read to you.”
Mack instantly delivered the book in question. “And Uncle Mack will take a walk,” he declared, “to let things settle down.”
From the moment Caleb Johnson had loudly heralded their arrival on Treasure Creek’s dock, Mack, Lana and eventually Georgie been surrounded by an endless stream of well-wishers. Little wonder Georgie was too wound up to sleep, while she could barely hold her eyes open. Lana nodded her approval as she took the book from Mack’s outstretched hand. “Bye-bye, Uncle Mack.” She used the reader to wave at Mack, fighting a twinge of jealousy at his escape into the quiet night. Georgie babbled a chattering farewell, too, wiggling his fingers while he grabbed at the new diversion.
Mack grumbled something Lana suspected she’d be glad not to have heard, and plucked his hat from its peg by the door. She felt her whole body collapse as the door clicked shut. Alone. She’d been on pins and needles all day, plastering a happy look on her face despite the terrible night’s sleep she’d gotten. Mack Tanner snored. Loudly. Still, by the endless sets of shifting she’d heard from his corner of the floor, Lana gathered he’d slept no better, if indeed more loudly. Add one exuberant toddler and everyone was on edge.
“Let’s see.” She sighed, returning her attention to the fidgety boy in her lap, “what have we got here? McGuffey’s Eclectic Primer. Uncle Mack knows you need to learn your letters first of all, and look at the pretty pictures!” Georgie, finding this suitable entertainment, settled in against Lana’s chest and began sucking on his thumb. Turning to the first page, Lana read, “A is for…ax? Good gracious, who starts off the alphabet with axes? I daresay Mr. McGuffey wasn’t a papa, if you ask me.” She yawned. “A is also for apple, too. You like apples.” She’d have a thing or two to say to the esteemed Mr. McGuffey about his opening page if she ever met him. Still, the alphabet continued on with kinder images. Box, cat, dog, elk and so on.
How many nights had Mack walked the town, praying his way though the streets of Treasure Creek, asking God’s protection over the people who lived there? It had become his evensong, his nightly ritual, his way of laying to bed the troubles of the day and asking God to send enough wisdom to make it through tomorrow.
It felt different tonight. He could walk through town all he wished, but it would not change the fact that he would go home to a wife and child. Mack had never in his life felt more sure he’d done the right thing, but less certain how to handle the consequences. It might help if his patience weren’t strained to the limit by Georgie’s boundless energy. The rascal had found six things to break in the first half an hour in his new home.
“Says who?” an angry voice sounded from the side of town where stampeders camped. The constantly shifting tent village housed those waiting their turn up the Chilkoot Trail. Or those limping down off it, thin and hungry. Mack broke up a fight nearly every night. He’d pressed nearly a dozen barely skilled people into stitching up the
wounded lately. Even Teena Crow, the healing woman from the local Tlingit tribe, had been forced to double her efforts. Mack wondered how many punches had been thrown—and bones broken—in his time away. These days the medical needs of Treasure Creek threatened to surpass its spiritual needs.
“I’da been rich by now if it ain’t for you!” another voice called back. He’d heard every version of this argument under the sun, it seemed. Everyone had someone handy to blame for their failure. Even with Treasure Creek’s God-fearing reputation, there were two dozen fools to every successful man. How do I show them, Lord? Mack prayed.
God had given Moses a few good tricks up his sleeve, divine wonders to back up his authority when folks wouldn’t listen. All Mack had was a good brain, a fine church, a well-stocked provision post that would soon be the region’s best general store and the sheer determination to keep another man from climbing to his death. A loud crash assailed Mack’s ears, and he wondered how much longer he could hold out without help soon.
Ignoring the shouts, Mack turned his steps toward home. Please, Lord, he prayed, ashamed to be driven to such a plea, let him be asleep. I’m worn out and nothing good’ll happen if I snap at the little feller. For all the nights Mack had walked the village praying protection over its residents, for all the dangers he’d faced in countless adventures, it struck him odd that he’d been reduced to praying for protection against the ravages of a two-year-old.
Mack looked awful when he walked out of his bedroom door the next morning. He rubbed his neck and winced, hair sticking up in all directions and a thick stubble covering his chin. He resembled not so much as man as a foul-mooded bear.
“You made coffee.” He said it with a foggy awe that made Lana hide a smile behind the plate she was holding.
“Much needed, don’t you think?”
ALASKAN BRIDES 01: Yukon Wedding Page 3