by Edie Claire
The second sentence hadn’t left his mouth before the idea came to him. It was a terrible idea, or at least a terribly self-serving idea. He had nothing of value to offer in return. Did he?
She was answering his question. But his thoughts were elsewhere. When he tuned back in, she seemed to be finishing a paragraph. “…not worth it. Just take the bus.”
Wolf sat up straight. “Ri,” he said earnestly, “I have a business proposition for you.”
She stared at him a second, then sat up herself. She said nothing. She just seemed surprised.
He held up his splinted hand. “I can’t work my equipment with this. It’s not physically possible. And if I can’t finish up the data collection in the next couple weeks, I’ll have to make a separate trip back here later, which my current budget won’t cover. I could finish now if I had an assistant, but my budget won’t cover that either, not even at minimum wage.” He paused a minute and swallowed. Damn, this sounded insulting. Ri was a professional, not some kid, and not a geologist either — even the experience on a resume would be useless to her.
He studied her face. She blinked back at him, her expression unreadable. He should stop while he was ahead.
But it would be so much fun.
“You know you can say no. I’m just throwing this out there.” He took a breath, having a sudden, uncomfortable flashback to the time he’d asked Mary Lynne Proust to the homecoming dance when she was a senior and he was only a sophomore. “But if you could work as my assistant, even for just this week, I might be able to finish up this job, which would be huge for me. And although I can’t pay you any money, I can loan you the truck — if that’s what you want — anytime you’re not working between now and the minute I have to leave.”
Seconds passed. He watched, breath held, as little lights began to twinkle in her eyes. Her lips curved slowly up into a smile.
Yes!
“I can drive the truck?” she asked cautiously. “By myself?”
“Of course!”
“And I can take it on the road to Hana, or wherever else I want to go?”
“Yes. Anywhere. Just don’t total it, please.”
She frowned. “Oh, now you’re adding conditions?”
She cracked up laughing before he could reply. Her liquid brown eyes held his like a magnet and the joy he saw shining in them mirrored his own. This was going a hell of a lot better than it had with Mary Lynne Proust.
“Well?” Wolf asked hopefully.
Ri held out her right hand, glanced at his splint, then switched and held out her left instead. “I accept,” she replied.
Chapter 17
Ri looked out to the east to see the sun shining down on top of the clouds. Off to her right, a mountain peak poked through the cottony tufts to claim its own share of the morning light. It was the Big Island of Hawaii, eighty miles away. She smiled to herself, and an inner warmth began to counteract the chill of the frosty morning air. “It must be amazing to watch the sunrise from here,” she mused.
“It is,” Wolf said, his own voice full of reverence as he paused a moment to admire the view from beside her. “You should check it out sometime when we’re not lugging all this gear. I would have started out earlier today, but if you drive up to the summit before dawn, it’s impossible to get a parking spot.”
Ri laughed. Indeed, as they had started their drive from the field station up toward the summit of Haleakala at just after seven this morning, she had been amazed at the number of cars and busses streaming down in the opposite direction. Now, she could understand. Watching the sun set over the ocean was fabulous, but watching the golden orb rise from a viewpoint above the clouds must be magical. Even now, with the sun already up in the sky, she had trouble believing that what she was seeing was real. Her feet were planted firmly in the soil at around nine thousand feet above sea level, and she was surrounded by an arid landscape of red earth and black rocks and clumpy green plants. Spread out below and beyond her was an endless horizon of the topside of clouds.
“It’s a breathtaking view, any time of day,” she praised. She indulged herself a moment longer, inhaling deeply of the thin, crisp air. She could hardly believe that anything she was seeing or feeling was real anymore. It was all entirely too amazing.
She had wanted to call her sister or her mother again last night, but she was afraid they would see too much. Her elation at solving the mystery of her biological heritage, at meeting a relative who had already become a good friend, and simply at basking in the natural splendor of the island was enough to make her giddy with happiness, never mind all the strife with the internship. But Wolf’s asking her to work with him was really over the top.
The feelings she was experiencing for the man were infatuation, pure and simple, and she knew that. She didn’t know him well enough for it to be anything else. Still, her playful impulses would not be reined in. She was having way too much fun.
She was playing with fire, of course, and she knew that, too. Wolf’s time in her company was limited, and that alone should give her pause. Her analytical mind realized that if she wasn’t content with a mere hookup, she should set the “just friends” boundary now and make sure that both their expectations were clear. Unfortunately, her creative mind was having none of that.
Creative mind wanted it all.
Why not?
She wasn’t sure why she should feel so optimistic. But when she had seen Wolf cuddling that scraggly mutt — his seemingly aloof appearance so at odds with his obviously tender heart — the sight had unleashed a feeling of connectedness that was all out of proportion to the situation. And along with it, a yearning of such maddening ferocity she couldn’t easily call it to heel again.
She could only hope she was hiding the worst of it. So far, she’d been able to behave herself. Last night, far from having a “second date,” she had insisted that Wolf teach her everything she needed to know to get started with his work first thing this morning. She’d spent the entire evening familiarizing herself with his equipment and practicing taking measurements, while Wolf had sketched out a plan of how much ground they would need to cover each day in order to collect all the data he needed. He seemed optimistic that they could finish in time for Ri to have the truck for the weekend. But Ri had higher goals. She planned to be so amazingly efficient that they finished in record time each day, knocked off by mid-afternoon, and spent the rest of the evening goofing off at sea level. The more time they had to get know each other outside of work, the better.
She grinned to herself as she recalled another moment in which she’d gotten a glimpse of his true character. Yesterday, when she’d mentioned her own revulsion at Bryant’s treatment of his absent wife and child, she had made a point of noting Wolf’s reaction. Men’s responses to other men’s bad behavior were usually telling, and the flare of righteous anger she had seen in Wolf’s eyes had not disappointed her. It had made her soul leap. In fact, it had seemed so pointed and so personal she wondered whether Bryant’s transgression had reminded him of something else.
Or she could be guilty of wishful thinking. She wanted to believe that Wolf possessed the kind of loyalty she most admired — not just in a prospective boyfriend, but in anyone.
Her grin slipped away as she was reminded of the end of her hopes for a real friendship with either of her fellow interns. She could continue to deal with Bryant just fine as a co-worker, but after what she’d seen yesterday she knew they could never be friends. And as much as she liked Will when he was sober, his willingness to waive all self-regulation for the sake of a particular draft was worrying. Ri prided herself on being able to get along with almost anyone, and she had no interest in making moral judgments about others. But when it came to forming close bonds, only the truly dependable made the cut. Her mother would say that had something to do with what Ri went through as a baby, and maybe it did. She couldn’t remember any of that. She only knew that being able to trust was important to her.
She turned to Wolf an
d picked up the equipment she’d helped to lug out from the truck. “All right,” she said, her tone all business. “Let’s get started!”
As the next hours passed, Ri spoke nothing but data. Her tasks were relatively simple, and her resolve to be efficient was firm. All she had to do was move the equipment along Wolf’s predetermined path, set it up, adjust the instruments as he’d shown her, and read out the results. He was able to record them well enough with his left hand and free right thumb, and after they’d fallen into a routine, the process went smoothly. The landscape wasn’t the easiest to navigate, but thanks to her hiking shoes and experience scrambling around in the White Mountains, she was reasonably sure-footed. Wolf, not too surprisingly, moved up and down the boulder-strewn slopes as nimbly as a mountain goat.
“Why don’t we take a break here and have lunch?” he suggested when their course took them within easy reach of the visitors’ overlook near the summit. “You haven’t seen the so-called crater yet.”
Ri made no argument. Having restrooms with running water available at midday was a definite perk. “Did you save the easiest sections of the volcano for last, or am I just lucky?” she asked as they hiked up into the parking lot and merged with the tourists.
Wolf grinned. “Both, I guess. I always do the least accessible areas first. It helps with time management, since you can’t predict your progress as well working off-road. Chris and I had to camp out in some of the remote sites. But don’t worry, those are all taken care of now.”
Ri fought back a smile, glad that her Filipino heritage helped hide the flush in her cheeks. Evidently, he thought that the idea of camping out at a remote site would seem either daunting or unpleasant to her. If he knew what ideas sprung into her mind when she envisioned the two of them crawling into a pup tent together on a foggy mountainside, he might very well be the one blushing.
A few minutes later she emerged from the restroom to find him waiting for her on the walkway outside. He had a twinkle of anticipation in his eye. “You’re going to love this,” he said confidently. “Follow me.”
Ri walked around the piled reddish-black rocks. Here near the summit, the landscape had changed yet again. There was very little vegetation, but the Haleakala silverswords were an exception, and they made their presence known. The rare plant was a shiny ball of curved spikes that shone a pale, metallic green in the sunlight. The disconnect between the plants’ striking appearance and the desolation around them was so jarring that they looked like leftover props from the filming of a space movie.
“Now,” Wolf said in warm, husky whisper that had way too much effect on Ri, “take a look at that.”
Ri looked. Yet again, a new angle brought a whole different element of the massive volcano to light. She was looking over a crater-like sunken valley in between several taller peaks of the mountain. Gone was any hint of grass, much less scrubby bushes or trees. There were not even any silverswords in view. Within the vast cauldron was nothing but rocks and dirt — a colorful plain filled with sweeping veins of dark gray, red, and black lava sands as far as the eye could see. Traversing the windswept surface were the pale lines of foot trails, and as Ri watched, she saw a group of intrepid hikers moving slowly along one of them. The people were ant-sized.
“I can’t believe all of this is hiding up here,” she gushed. The bottom of the valley was low enough in elevation that it fell below the cloud line, and as they stood and enjoyed the view, white wisps blew in and out of the crater, alternately obscuring and exposing its various reaches. “Did you have to do any measurements down there?” Ri asked.
Wolf shook his head. “It wasn’t necessary. But I’ve hiked down there anyway.”
Ri chuckled to herself. Of course he had. He was a volcanologist. “It’s beautiful,” she affirmed. “I have to say, I prefer lush green jungles and sparkling blue waters to dry stretches of lava that look like the surface of the moon. It looks so forbidding. So unwelcoming. But still, there’s a beauty to it. An awesomeness all its own.”
He turned his head toward hers, and those enticing lips of his curved into a smile.
Ri felt her body flush with warmth. They were standing quite close together, and for a moment, she was certain he would make a move. He was attracted to her. He had to know she was attracted to him.
He took a step back. “So where do you want to eat?” he asked, pointing to two areas beside the parking lot. “We should stick to the public areas for picnicking. I don’t want to set a bad example. Too often tourists see me traipsing around with my equipment and think it must be okay for them to wander off the trails, too, even though it should be obvious I’m working.”
Ri pointed without paying much attention. She was disappointed. Did Wolf have a thing about not dating co-workers? If he did, she had made a serious miscalculation.
Not that the week still wouldn’t be fun.
On second thought, no, it would not be fun. It would drive her frickin’ bonkers.
“So when you do this kind of work in Alaska, do you take your dogs with you?” she asked matter-of-factly as they settled onto a rock pile and opened their lunches. She didn’t have to think about the question. It was one of a list of nonthreatening conversation starters she’d worked out while trying to fall asleep last night.
His face brightened with a smile, as she had noticed it always did when he was reminded of his canine companions. “Whenever I can,” he answered. “Unfortunately, a lot of the places I survey are only accessible by plane, and Suka and Tog aren’t what you’d call easily portable. Although I do know plenty of bush pilots who cart their own dogs around.”
He looked back at her thoughtfully, and Ri decided that his eyes were aquamarine… the color of clear, shallow ocean on a white sand beach in the Caribbean.
“I hope you don’t mind me asking,” he said gently, tentatively. “But I’m curious. Maddie said you were related to Kai, but you grew up in Maine? Have you spent time on the islands before?”
Ri felt a beaming smile spread slowly across her face. Oh, he had so stepped in it, now. Her answering this was good for all kinds of personal questions in return!
“I don’t know exactly how Kai and I are related,” she answered. “I only know the odds are good that we share a Filipino ancestor back in the family tree somewhere. You see, I was adopted. From an orphanage in Russia…”
Ri gave him the short version of her story. The shortest version that still made sense, anyway, which was not too terribly short. She explained her background without suffering a moment’s angst or embarrassment, and without feeling the slightest bit like either a fraud or a freak. Instead she used strong words that came from her newfound confidence and pride in her dual heritage, and as she took a step back and listened to herself, she recognized the change. It was the first time since the DNA results had arrived two years ago that she once again felt comfortably at peace with her own identity.
It felt good.
Really good.
She looked over at Wolf — whose presence she had momentarily forgotten — and found him studying her thoughtfully. He had been attracted to her appearance without having any idea of the specifics of her heritage, which was a point in his favor. The fact that he showed more than a polite interest now was earning him another point. She felt as though he wanted to ask her more questions, but was refraining, and she gave him credit for that, too.
“So how about you?” she asked cheerfully, knowing she was entitled. “I would make a guess about your family background, but I’m at a disadvantage, since I don’t even know your last name.”
His expression told her that he accepted his fate. He had brought up the subject. “It’s Markov,” he answered with a begrudging hint of a smile. “The name is Russian, and yes, I’m mostly Russian, too. So it appears we have something in common.”
Ri felt a flush of goose pimples. An orphanage in twentieth-century Moscow was pretty far removed — in every way — from the historic fur-trading scene in which his ancestors probabl
y participated, but still, it was something. She grinned. “Well, what do you know? And I suppose in Alaska there’s still some cultural influence remaining. Still… I bet you never experienced a Russian heritage camp, did you?”
He raised an eyebrow. “A what?”
Ri chuckled to herself. “Can you do a round dance in a sarafan while eating babka?”
He stared at her.
She laughed out loud. “Clearly you’ve never experienced a heritage camp,” she teased. “Boys don’t wear sarafans. And it would be pretty hard to eat anything while you were doing a round dance. Not that I haven’t tried.” She smiled at him. “Have you always lived in Alaska?”
He nodded. “Born and bred. And I do know what babka is,” he defended. “But I can’t say I’ve ever made much of a study of Russian culture.” His eyes met hers for a moment, and she had the unsettling feeling that he could see more than she wanted to show. “I can see how important the whole idea of heritage is to you. Listening to you makes me feel like I should care more about my own.”
Ri gave a small shrug. “It doesn’t have to matter to everyone. It mattered to me because strangers would ask me about it — for the obvious reason.” She smiled to let him know she was comfortable with her appearance.
He smiled back. “I’ve got native blood as well as Russian. Tlingit from my mother and Yup'ik from my dad. But I don’t know much about my family’s background otherwise.”
“What are Tlingit and Yup'ik?” Ri asked with interest.
“Indigenous people. There are a lot of Yup'ik tribes scattered across the western part of Alaska. Two of my dad’s grandparents were full-blooded, but I never knew either of them. The Tlingits are just in the southeast.” He broke off and looked away.
Ri wanted to keep him talking. “Does your mother know who her Tlingit ancestors were?”