by T. S. Joyce
Something heavy was in the air, pressing against her shoulders, lifting the fine hairs on her body. There was another moment of silence before Dalton dropped his gaze and nodded slightly. He ghosted her a glance, but his eyes looked strange. They looked lighter, more caramel than dark chocolate, and she blinked hard to clear her vision. But when she opened her eyes again, he was already striding toward the hallway.
“Night,” he called behind him. And then his door shut a little too soundly.
She opened her mouth to ask what had just happened, but Jenner beat her to it. “You hungry?” he asked gruffly. “I’m making a grilled cheese. I can make one for you while I’m at it.”
“And me,” Chance said, turning the page of his magazine and leaning back into the couch with his feet propped up on the table, like Jenner and Dalton having dominance battles was a daily occurrence.
“Uh, sure. I’ll take one, too.” Hell no, she wasn’t going to turn down a sexy-as-hell man cooking for her. Even if he was just being polite.
Lena set her half-finished fly on the table and trotted into the kitchen, slipping and sliding across the polished floors in her warm socks. “Where’s Lennard?” she asked as Jenner shoved a loaf of bread toward her.
“Cut us some slices, will you? Lennard’s out with the horses. He’s a freak about getting everything just right with the packing the day before a tour. In the hunting season, he’s even worse. I keep thinking one of these years he’ll trust us to handle everything, but he goes over and over the packing three times at least.”
“Does he ever find anything wrong with the way you pack?”
“No,” Chance called from the great room. Another magazine page sounded. “He’s just a control freak.”
“Yeah, but his diligence is why this place thrived for so long,” Jenner murmured distractedly.
She pulled a knife from a block on the countertop and smiled privately. Lennard had told her about Jenner turning down offers from other outfitters just to invest his money here and dig his heels in. She respected him more for giving Lennard the credit instead of bragging about his own importance. Jenner was a loyal man, and when his elbow bumped hers as he worked beside her, a strange fluttering feeling filled her middle.
When she’d imagined a grilled cheese dinner, she hadn’t thought it would be so grand. Jenner cooked lemon pepper asparagus in a pan while she chopped a colorful fruit salad, and the grilled cheeses he made were the fanciest she’d ever seen. Three types of cheeses were melted right into the middle of butter-toasted French bread with the perfect amount of squish and crunch. Jenner left a trio of filled plates on the counter, and as they were sitting down at the giant twelve-seater dining table with the wagon wheel chandelier above them lighting the room, Dalton appeared to tuck into their meal with them.
“Sorry,” he murmured to Jenner as he sat across the table from her.
Jenner jerked his chin dismissively from the seat right next to Lena. “Don’t worry about it.”
The tension in the air dissipated almost immediately, and Chance passed out cold beers. And bless that man, he didn’t even joke about a fruity cocktail for her as he popped the cap off and handed one over.
“To a successful trip,” Dalton toasted, holding his beer up. He’d said it to everyone, but his eyes were steady on Jenner.
Lennard walked in right as they tinked the glass bottles, then joined them with his own plate and frothy drink. Conversation was easy after that, and the joking and teasing commenced, much to Lena’s relief. She hated worrying that any of the earlier tension had been because of her. Beside her, Jenner ate four sandwiches to her one, but she supposed a man his size needed a lot of calories to sustain himself. And when she finished her last bite and pushed her plate away by inches, Jenner leaned back in his chair, his arm hooked on the ladder back of her seat.
She wanted to think he was being possessive, but from his little duck-and-run this morning, he likely was relaxed and had accepted her as one of the guys. This is how it happened with any man she had found interesting since Adam. The friend-zone swallowed her up quickly out in the field. Something about her made her great surrogate sister material, but little more. And for some reason, watching Jenner smile at something Chance had said, that thought made her really sad this time. She was attracted to him, but it was more than that. The more she got to know about the quiet giant of a man, the more she wanted to know, and the more she respected him. But he saw her as a little buddy at most, and there was tragedy in that.
“Lena,” Dalton said, looking troubled. “Did you hear me?”
“Huh?” she said, blinking rapidly and ripping her gaze away from Jenner.
“I asked how you got into wildlife photography.”
“Oh, right. Sorry. Uh, I studied for it in college. I’ve been obsessed with photography since I was little and my mom got me this—” She laughed as heat flooded her cheeks. “Too much information.”
“No, tell us,” Lennard said, leaning forward on his elbows on the other side of Dalton.
“Okay. My mom bought me this Polaroid camera when I was a kid, and I fell in love with taking pictures of things I thought people missed in the everyday.”
“Like what?” Chance asked.
She puffed air out of her cheeks and frowned, trying to recall some of her early photographs. “Like my mom’s face when my dad brought her flowers. My sisters when they were actually getting along, playing in a sandbox.” She swallowed hard and admitted low, “How beautiful and heartbroken my mom looked at my dad’s funeral. That’s weird, I know. But for me, it helped me deal with what was happening. I could see someone else’s grief, and it was real and moving, and I didn’t feel alone with my own heartache when I captured those moments that weren’t the brave-face kind. I almost ran us broke with the refills for that old Polaroid camera, so when I was able, I saved up and bought a film camera. I love animals, so I volunteered at a local zoo every summer, mostly running the youth programs, but I would bring my camera along and take pictures of the animals in their cages. But that made me sad, seeing them all cooped up, and every picture had some kind of fencing in it, no matter what angle I shot, so when I started taking my college classes for photography, I took animal sciences, behavior, and husbandry for electives so that I could work toward…well…this. I got lucky and landed an internship at Bucks and Backwoods right when they started up, and now I’m here, shooting Alaskan brown bears.”
“Lucky you,” Chance said with a snort.
“I am. I beat out some of the best photographers in the company to come here. This is my shot at having one of those careers I only dreamed of. All of my hard work has led me to this trip. Alaska has been a dream of mine since I was a kid.”
“Is this your first time here?” Dalton asked.
“My very first time.”
“Alaska virgin,” Dalton said through an obnoxious grin.
Lena rolled her eyes and sighed. If he knew how accurate his name calling was, he wouldn’t ever let up on teasing her, so she just laughed it off and stood, empty plate in hand. “Storytime’s over, boys. I’m beat.”
Jenner pulled the chair back to allow her out, and she whispered, “Thank you,” at his unexpected gentlemanly gesture.
Stomach churning with emotion—nostalgia for her journey here, sadness remembering Dad’s funeral, and the strange tickling sensation in her middle that Jenner conjured—she rinsed her dish and waved goodnight to the men all sitting quietly around the dining table.
It wasn’t until after she’d showered and was laying in bed, sketching in her notebook, that a soft knock sounded at her door. Only when she opened it, the man standing there wasn’t the one she’d hoped for. It was Dalton, looking uncomfortable and unsure of himself.
“I wanted to say something, but I’ll sound like a total dick, and you’ll tell me it’s none of my business, but I don’t want to spend the next week thinking about you out there without warning you.”
“Okay,” she murmured, baffled.<
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He jerked his head toward Jenner’s room and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Be careful with that one, Lena. He’s a good man. The best. But he’s not right for any woman. He can’t keep one, you understand?”
Pissed that he was warning her off Jenner, she asked, “And you are the right kind of man for a woman, right?”
“No, I didn’t say that. None of us are. We’d be worthless as mates—” Jenner dropped his gaze to the hem of her flannel pajama pants. “What I’m saying is, don’t give your heart to someone who can’t keep it safe.”
Dalton gave her a sad smile, then without another word, turned and strode off toward his room at the entrance of the hallway.
His door clicked closed as she stood halfway in the hall, baffled on what had just happened. She frowned at Jenner’s door and wondered just what she’d gotten herself into, choosing him as a guide.
Dalton’s words hadn’t sounded like the whispered deception of a jealous man.
They’d sounded like an honest warning.
Chapter Five
Great hairy balls, it was early. Jenner had knocked on her door at five in the morning and whispered for her to get ready. He was all ready to go, from his newly-shaven jaw to his forest green thermal sweater that clung to his sexy torso like a plastic bag with all the air sucked out. He had a backpack thrown over his shoulder and smelled of mint toothpaste.
She, on the other hand, took one look at herself in the mirror and laughed. How had he kept a straight face while he talked to her at the door? Her hair was naturally curly and had dried like she’d stuck a fork in a socket. In her haste to answer the door, she hadn’t put her bra on, and both nipples were drawn up like beads against her sleep shirt. Fantastic.
She dressed quickly, brushed her teeth, and tamed her beastly hair with a curling iron, then pulled it back into a ponytail. Then she shouldered her heavy pack and made her way quietly through the dim lodge to the kitchen where Jenner was currently working on something over the countertop. Buttered biscuits from the smell, and when she sidled around the kitchen island, she could make out the grape jelly he was smearing onto seven or eight of them in a row.
“Breakfast for days?” she joked, fully aware of his appetite. When she picked up a half and bit into it, he gave a teasing growl.
“Woman, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but these are all for me. Get your own.”
“No,” she said around the bite. “Lennard said my trail guide is in charge of all my meals.”
“On the trail.”
She picked up the other half and licked it before he could stop her, and now he was stifling that sexy smile. With a wicked grin, she set her pack down and hopped up on the counter beside where he was sweetening his plethora of carbohydrates.
He didn’t move over as she’d expected him to when she sat close enough that his arm bumped her leg as he worked. Instead, Jenner seemed content to stay right where he was, watching her occasionally with an odd look in his dancing eyes as she ate his biscuit.
“You have ridden horses before, right?” he asked.
“Oh, millions of them.”
“Be serious, woman. Your life depends on it.”
She licked a smear of jelly off her thumb and offered him a pointed look. “I used to take lessons.”
“Western or English.”
Sarcastically, she answered, “Sidesaddle, like dainty ladies did in the olden days.”
Jenner growled a low, humming sound, but he didn’t look mad. “Okay, I get it. You can ride a horse. Dalton just got me thinking last night.”
“That I was more helpless than I actually am?”
“I know you aren’t helpless.”
“How do you know, stranger?”
He made a ticking noise behind his teeth and twitched his head. “You don’t seem the type. You remind me of my sister-in-law. Brave as shit but headstrong, so I just want to make sure you can handle the horse I give you.”
“Gunner and I will be the best of friends.”
“Mmm,” he grunted noncommittally.
Dawn had brightened the horizon by the time Jenner carried her pack out toward the corral with her following directly. Even though it was July, nights were nippy, so she zipped her jacket up to her chin and jogged to catch up to Jenner’s ridiculously long strides, holding her camera that hung from her neck steady as she went. He nearly had her camera equipment tied to a bored-looking bay packhorse by the time she made it to where the lead horses were secured to a fence.
Gunner, as it turned out, was a dark chocolate-colored horse with no white markings at all, and a long, wavy mane the same color as the rest of his body. He was also a head-tosser as Jenner checked his saddle bags.
“What the hell is this?” Lena asked as she jammed her finger at a rifle secured against the saddle.
“Protection.”
“But I said—”
Jenner rounded on her. “There’s no room for that hippy dippy shit out here, Lena. We aren’t hunting bears. The rifles are for protection, and that’s all, but if you go out there without a defensive strategy, you’re as good as dead. It’s my job to protect you, and I’m not taking you out there unarmed. This,” he said, slapping the leather rifle sheath, “is non-negotiable. Please tell me you know how to fire one.”
Lena gritted her teeth and crossed her arms over her chest in rebellion.
“Answer me now, woman, or I swear we’ll put off your pictures another day to target practice and learn this weapon.”
With a pissed-off sigh, she said, “The gun is a thirty aught six and yes, I can handle the recoil.”
“Good. Safety?”
“It’s the small button on top of the rifle, over the trigger.”
“Stance?”
She lifted her hands as if she cradled an imaginary rifle and splayed her legs to the side, still glaring at him.
“Okay.” Jenner turned toward his own horse, a dapple gray whose attention was already on the woods, and who was currently stomping impatiently. Jenner spun around just before he hoisted himself into the saddle. “One last question. Where did you learn to shoot?”
“My dad.” She hadn’t meant for the words to sound like heartbreak on her lips, but there it was.
Some deep emotion slashed across Jenner’s eyes for just a moment before it was gone and he looked stoic once again. “Very good.”
She swung herself over Gunner’s back and twisted to look at the packhorse that was tied to the saddle.
“If you need to run and drop weight quick,” Jenner explained, pointing to the rope, “you drop that.”
“What about the packhorse?”
“He’ll stand a better chance of getting away if he isn’t trailing you.”
“Right.”
“Come on,” Jenner said low, kicking his skittering horse and pulling on the rope of his own following packhorse.
Gunner pranced under her, tossing his head as he blasted a snort in the early morning air, but he followed Jenner’s packhorse without too much prompting, and the patient bay behind her didn’t need any encouragement. He followed Gunner easily.
The hours directly following sunrise and directly preceding sunset were what Lena called the magic hours. Bar cloudy days, the lighting was always best during those times, and as the sun rose, she was stunned at how beautiful the woods here were. She’d been to some of the most breathtaking places in the world on her quest for photographs for Bucks and Backwoods, but this moment right here had to be one of the most profound. Gray and yellow streaked sky, snow-capped mountains, air so crisp and fresh it nearly burned her lungs, and vegetation so lush, the vibrant green was almost hard to look at for too long. Birds called back and forth, and insects buzzed a constant song. The quiet clomping of the horses’ hooves and swishing of their tails lulled her into a comfortable calm.
And all the while, she was adjusting her aperture and shutter speed, clicking away to capture these witching hours with her camera.
Jenner had sai
d he didn’t want her taking pictures of him, but she couldn’t help herself. He was too beautiful not to photograph. The way he sat straight in the saddle, ear toward every forest noise. The way he cast a glance behind him at his packhorse as he urged it faster. The way his eyes looked when he scanned the woods. A haunted hunter ready for anything and missing nothing.
She shouldn’t feel safe riding ever closer to the brown bears, but with Jenner, unexplainably, she did.
The trail they road thinned to nothing in the middle of a meadow, waving like an ocean current with tall wild grasses and occasional blue flowers. Here, Jenner stopped. His attention was to their left, and she could see his nostrils flare, as if he was scenting the air. Wild thing, indeed. She sniffed but didn’t smell anything other than rich earth, pine sap, and horse crap, thanks to Jenner’s upwind packhorse taking advantage of their stop to squeeze out a pile of meadow muffins.
Jenner turned in his saddle. “Are you only here to photograph brown bears?” he asked quietly.
“Brown bears top the list, but I wouldn’t mind caribou, porcupine, ptarmigan, moose, waterfowl, wolves, black bears—”
“Okay, I got it. All animals.”
She smiled brightly. “Yep.”
He shook his head as he turned back around, but not before she saw the amusement on his face. And God, his distracted smile was beautiful. She wished she could’ve gotten a picture so she could look at it later when he wasn’t around.
Jenner kicked his horse toward a grove of young trees and dismounted without a word, so she followed suit. He tied their lead horses to a low hanging branch and pulled her to him, so close she had to rest her hands on his chest to fight the urge to hug his waist. In her ear, he whispered, “Get your equipment. Long range shit if you have it.”
“Okay,” she said on a breath. His smooth jaw brushed her cheek as he pulled away. And while she clicked her long-range lens to her camera and pulled out a tripod, Jenner busied himself with loading a rifle. Bears? Her hands started shaking. This was it. She would finally see an Alaskan brown bear. Her middle became a warzone of excitement and terror while adrenaline dumped into her veins, making it feel like she was floating as she hiked after Jenner through the thick brush.