Northern Fires

by Jennifer Labrecque

  He shook his head. What the hell was wrong with him? It had to be that crazy conversation with Jenna. “Uh, yeah. It is a pretty awesome view, isn’t it?”

  For what could’ve been one second or minutes, their gazes locked, ensnared. Gold flecked her smoky-brown eyes. His gut tightened and he had the most incredible urge to bridge the space between them and test the smoothness of her skin with his fingertips. Her eyes darkened as if she’d read his desire and wanted the same. Juliette finally looked away.

  “So,” she prompted, a husky note flavoring her voice that held a Southern undertone. “You had some ideas about the set?” She speared a carrot with her fork, looking at her plate as if the contents fascinated her.

  Sven shifted on the hard chair and checked out his own plate rather than the wash of light over her. Meat and potatoes would curb at least one appetite.

  Over the meal, he outlined his suggestions and was pleased with her thoughtful comments and questions. Before he knew it, their plates were clean and they’d finished discussing the set.

  Juliette stood, her empty plate in hand, “Well, thanks so much for dinner. It was delicious.”

  The idea that he didn’t want her to go flashed through him and instinctively he said, “There’s a nice trail down by the lake that leads to a rise with an even better view if you’re up for an after-dinner walk.”

  Surprise registered on her face and she hesitated. Finally she nodded. “That’d be nice.”

  * * *

  THE BREEZE BLEW ACROSS the water, cooling Juliette’s heated skin and teasing her hair against her neck and temple. She’d been torn. Did she want to soak up more of the tranquillity of Shadow Lake, and the rush of heat and awareness brought on by Sven—feelings she hadn’t known in a long time, possibly ever? Or did she want to safely retreat to her own cabin in the woods? She wasn’t sure it was the smartest move on her part, but she’d opted to stay.

  The path skirted the shore, worn and obviously used by both man and wildlife. She focused on the nuances of the setting rather than the energy radiating from the man beside her—the soothing lapping of water against the shore, the sigh of the wind through the spruce boughs, the muted rhythm of their booted feet against the dirt trail. Mosquitoes, jokingly referred to as Alaska’s national bird, buzzed past, and a bald eagle’s distant chirping carried on the evening air.

  The mosquitoes always reminded her of childhood summers when she’d spent as much time as possible outside. Bug bites had been a small price to pay for a reprieve from the chaos inevitably found indoors.

  “So,” Sven said, breaking the silence and pulling her back from her brief foray into the past, “how’d you wind up flying a bush plane in Alaska?”

  Surely he knew the story. It was a standard question that came with her profession and she’d been asked numerous times. She gave him the same abbreviated, sanitized version everyone else got.

  “I’ve always loved flying, being up in the air.”

  She was eight years old and once again Mama and Daddy were shouting and throwing things. Juliette darted out the back door when they were distracted. Outside was better than inside, but they could always still find her. She dashed across the field to old man Haddricks’s place and scrambled into the cockpit of his crop-duster plane. Her folks never thought to look for her there and she liked to pretend she was flying up in the sky. They couldn’t get to her up in the sky.

  “All right, little missy,” old man Haddricks said, nearly startling the pee out of her. “I been watching you sit in my plane going on near a month. I’m about to dust the Oglesby soybean fields.” He hooked his thumbs in the straps of his overalls. His gray, bristling eyebrows nearly met one another over his nose and he never smiled, but his eyes were kind. You could see meanness in a person and it wasn’t in him. “You wanna tag along?”

  She nodded mutely. Her heart nearly thumping out of her chest, she climbed over into the second seat and buckled in. The next thing she knew, they were off the ground. And for the first time in her life she actually felt safe. It was just like she’d dreamed it would be. No one could find her and no one could harm her when she was in the sky.

  She shrugged. “I became a flight attendant, fell in love with Alaska on a long layover and decided to get my pilot’s license.”

  Her life sounded so nice and neat and compartmentalized when in fact it had been one big mess and even that CliffsNotes version dredged it all up for her again. Marrying Boyd Feldman, her high school boyfriend, when she was seventeen just to get out of her parents’ house. Foolishly believing Boyd would stand between her and her parents. Realizing she’d jumped from the frying pan into the fire. Divorced by nineteen. Lucking into the flight attendant job. Falling into a second marriage where once again she thought he’d have her back, only to discover the only thing they had in common was burying their respective troubles in a bottle. A second divorce. Waking up in a hotel room one morning after a flight and an evening spent in the hotel bar, not remembering where she was or how she’d gotten there, knowing if she didn’t make some changes she’d surely ruin her life and die young. Alcoholism was suicide by installment plan.

  She’d climbed out of bed, bleary-eyed, hungover and generally mad at the world and gone online and found an AA meeting. She wasn’t sure what had been harder, showing up or admitting she was, in fact, the very thing she’d always despised about her parents. An alcoholic.

  With sobriety had come the acknowledgment that while being a flight attendant put her in the sky, what she really longed to do was fly a plane.

  She’d had a small nest egg set aside, but she’d still busted her butt waiting tables in an all-night diner in Anchorage. It had taken her twice as long to save up the money for flight school because her tips were easily half of what they would’ve been in a bar. But getting sober and staying sober had been as important as earning her wings.

  She certainly didn’t lay all that out on the table for Sven, who probably couldn’t handle it even if she wanted to tell him…and she didn’t. Instead, she simply smiled and said, “And the rest, as they say, is history.”

  A twig snapped underfoot, underscoring her story.

  Sven looked at her as if he could see through all she’d said to the pieces she’d left out, which was unexpected and caught her off guard. And there was something in his look that said he’d ask. “So, you’ve been flying how long?”

  She breathed a sigh of relief, but sooner or later he’d probe. She sensed his curiosity. Most of the time her wall of reserve kept people at bay, but with him…

  “Two years now.”

  Three years and forty-four days of sobriety, and she never, ever took it for granted. She looked up at the ribbons of orange and pink streaking the sky as the sun began its nightly journey toward the horizon. A sense of contentment wove through her.

  “I’m never as happy as when I’m up there.” The moment those words slipped past her lips she caught herself. Sven was easy to be around in a way she hadn’t experienced with anyone before.

  “What is it about being up there that you like so much?”

  Once again she lowered her guard as if lulled by the place and the man and the moment. “It’s freedom and open space and safety.”

  They climbed the last of a small rise where a stone outcropping formed a natural bench at the top. Without stopping to discuss it, they settled on the sun-warmed rock overlooking the vista of lake, mountain and sinking sun. Fireweed, her favorite Alaskan wildflower, filled a meadow on the far side of the lake. In the distance Dalton and Skye’s house sat in the clearing at the edge of the spruce forest. It was all singularly spectacular. She liked the solidness of the stone beneath her.

  The wind shifted and Sven’s scent wafted around her. He radiated energy, but it wasn’t the frenetic mix some people gave off. There was simply a heat and power to him that drew her.

  “Open space and safety,” he echoed her words. “That’s a different take.” Sven grinned and pushed his blond hair behind on
e ear. Juliette noticed a small hole in his earlobe, as if once upon a time he’d sported an earring. Somehow it seemed to fit. He struck her as free-spirited and a little unconventional with his long hair and outgoing personality. She was finding, however, that one-on-one he was quieter than she’d expected.

  “Lots of people would find being up in a small plane in a small cockpit in the air confining and somewhat dangerous,” he continued.

  Dangerous? Danger came in all shapes, forms, sizes and situations. In his own way, Sven was dangerous. Good Lord but he was a sexy, good-looking hunk of man. And how had she been around him for months and not noticed he had a dimple when he smiled? Probably because she’d always been careful to never look directly at him. A general nod in his direction and a vague hello and she’d kept moving. She’d never been in his direct line of fire.

  His blue eyes crinkled at the corners and that dimple came into play. It made her glad she was supported by a solid surface because neither her pulse nor her legs felt particularly steady.

  Cough up an answer, Juliette. Oh, yeah, small plane and dangerous… “Different perspectives, I guess.” And she was done talking about herself. “How did you get into building?” It wasn’t just a change of subject. She wanted to know.

  “I always liked doing things with my hands.” He held his hands up. They were the hands of a working man—broad with calluses across the palms. “I like making things. I enjoy physical labor. Pops has an accounting business and my brother works with him. I know he wanted me to join the company, but I could never sit behind a desk and push a pen, it’s just not my thing.”

  “Your family’s okay with that?”

  “They’d have been disappointed if it was Eric, but me…nah.”

  She didn’t know him well—in fact, she didn’t know him at all, she simply knew of him and that was in passing—but without a doubt he wasn’t cut out to be a pen pusher behind a desk.

  “The summer I was fourteen I worked with this guy down the street who was a builder. After that I worked with him every summer. When I graduated high school I went with him full-time. It was really a lot like having an apprenticeship. It’s the same mechanics but no two jobs are the same. I get to travel where the work takes me, meet new people—” he offered a carefree shrug “—it’s all good.”

  A smile curved his sensuous mouth, lit his blue eyes and Juliette wondered if there was a woman alive who could resist this man if he set his mind to truly charming her.

  She’d never quite figured out why he and Jenna hadn’t wound up together. Jenna had married an old high school crush who’d turned up in Good Riddance, but what about before that? In fact, almost all happenings were public knowledge and she’d never heard of any “happenings” between Sven and anyone.

  It was the public-knowledge bit that had kept her uninvolved in the time she’d been here—plus, she’d been busy building her flying business and getting her life in order. And there’d been the little matter that she didn’t want to get involved with a man. She simply wasn’t interested, or even remotely tempted. Until now. Now she was sitting right next to temptation.

  He slid his hand across the stone and traced the path of a blue vein in the back of her hand with his fingertip. One simple, innocuous touch from him and Juliette felt as if a dam had burst inside her. Want, need, desire tore through her.

  “Juliette, would you like to go to dinner with me one evening or maybe hiking one afternoon?”

  She felt as if she couldn’t breathe. Panic rushed in, chasing the other torrent. “We just had dinner and went for a hike.”

  “I mean, like a date.” And still he tortured her senses with the drag of his fingertip against her skin.

  She snatched her hand away. Coming here had been a mistake. Opening herself up had been a mistake. What had she been thinking? She hadn’t—that was the problem. But she was fully thinking now.

  She stood. “Thanks, but I don’t think so. I can find my way back.”

  4

  SVEN SAT AND WATCHED Juliette’s trim, khaki-clad derriere disappear down the trail. What the hell had just happened? Part of him wanted to just let her sashay off into the sunset—literally. However, Marge Sorenson had reared him strictly. His mother would maintain that since Sven had invited Juliette out here as his guest, it was his duty to see her off. Plus, he wanted to know what he had done. He hadn’t planned to ask her out, but they were having a good time and he was enjoying her company and so he’d rolled with it.

  He started down the trail. She had a head start, but his legs were longer. The loon’s call across the water seemed to mock him and he shook his head. Damn it all to hell. Was he right or was he right?

  She was definitely, decidedly, without a doubt too much trouble. One minute he touched the back of her hand with his finger and asked her on an official date. The next second she was vamoosing down the bunny trail, all freaked out. It wasn’t as if he’d made a pass at her or been lewd or any of the other sins men committed against women. He’d touched her hand and asked her out. Jeez Louise.

  He caught a glimpse of her ahead of him. “Wait up, Juliette,” he called out. He might walk fast, but he drew the line at running after her.

  She stopped and waited. When he’d almost caught up to her, she resumed walking. “I told you I could find my way back.” Her tone was neutral.

  He strove for an equally bland tone. “You’re here as my guest. I’ll see you back.”

  She nodded without breaking stride. “Okay.”

  He didn’t know how else to handle the situation so he just threw it out there. “I’m not sure what happened back there, but I didn’t mean to offend you or overstep boundaries.”

  She slowed her steps. “You didn’t offend me. I simply think it’s best if we keep things on a strictly business level.”

  “Why?” If she wasn’t attracted to him, he could certainly handle that, but that wasn’t at all what he’d felt, what he’d seen in her eyes. “What are you afraid of?”

  “I’m not…” She petered out, looking away from him once again but not before he’d seen a flicker of trepidation cross her face. “It’s just less complicated that way.”

  Really, it wasn’t. The situation itself was pretty straightforward. She was attracted to him. He was attracted to her. Nope, she was the complicated factor. And yeah, it’d be easy to just let it and her go and roll on along his merry way. However, for the first time ever, he found he didn’t want to go the easy route. He found he couldn’t let her walk away. “You know what I think?”

  “I’m not interested in what you think,” she said without hostility.

  He was running on gut instinct and he didn’t believe her. “Yes, you are.” He caught her arm in his hand and they both stopped. He turned her to face him. He wasn’t so egotistical that he couldn’t accept that a woman wasn’t attracted to him. However, he’d been around the block enough to know when a woman was, and she might not be happy about it, but she was as attracted to him as he was to her. She could easily shake off his hand and walk away. She didn’t.

  Wariness marked her expression in the gloaming light. He drew her to him. “I think you’re afraid of this.”

  As he lowered his head, she parted her lips. They were soft, her breath sweet, as she met his kiss.

  * * *

  JULIETTE’S EYES FLUTTERED closed. She’d been kissed, but she’d never been kissed like this. His mouth was firm and giving, his kiss tender.

  She wound her arms around his neck, his hair brushing against the backs of her hands, his nape warm beneath her palms. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closer. Instinctively, she leaned into him, heat rushing through her. He tasted good; he felt better.

  She wasn’t sure if it was her or him, although she thought it was both of them, who deepened the kiss. Scorching heat and searing want arced between them. His body pressing into hers, she tangled her tongue with his, drawn to him despite all sound reasoning. Her breasts ached against his chest. Her thighs dampened, a
roused by the press of his burgeoning hardness against her. The press of his broad hands against her back…the heat of his skin…his scent…

  Slowly, sanity crept back into her brain. She pulled away and stepped back, running her hands through her hair, trying desperately to find her composure. He’d stripped away her defenses with one, not-so-simple kiss.

  A loon cried in the distance, mosquitoes hummed and their ragged breathing hung on the evening air.

  Finally, Juliette found her voice. “Yes,” she said. She sounded rusty. Swallowing, she continued, “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”

  It had been everything she’d feared kissing him might be. It had rocked through her and left her wanting more.

  Sven smoothed his hair back with a slightly unsteady hand. “I thought it was pretty awesome.”

  Somewhere inside she was glad she hadn’t been the only one. “It was.”

  “And that’s problematic?”

  Problematic? How about it scared the hell out of her? She’d made two major man mistakes in the past. She’d been doing good since she’d quit drinking, her life was on an even keel. Rocking the boat was a frightening prospect—and she knew, perhaps she’d known from the first time she’d seen him, that there was something about Sven Sorenson that could rock her boat. That kiss just proved it. Her boat was definitely feeling the impact of that kiss.

  She wrapped her arms around her middle, looking past him to the stand of trees visible over his shoulder. “I don’t want to get involved with anyone.”

  “I asked you on a date. I kissed you.” She could practically feel his perplexity. “I didn’t say I wanted to be involved.”

  Part of getting sober had been a commitment to living her life honestly—being honest with herself and others, but it didn’t mean she had to lay out every aspect of her life for scrutiny. On the other hand, he struck her as one of the few genuinely nice guys and she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. “Look, it’s not personal.” And in a weird way, it wasn’t. It was about her, not him. “I just can’t do this.”