I do, I do, I do (23 page)

"Are you telling me that you didn't care about those people looking at you like you were a worthless piece of trash?"

"I'm telling you that I don't accept their opinion, if that's what their opinion is. I know the people at home. Those swells in the parade don't know anyone in Newcastle except the mine owner. When it comes to my friends and neighbors, I trust my own opinion more than anyone else's."

"Since you're so enamored of the place, maybe that's where you should buy a house and business when the Yukon boom goes bust and you return to the outside." Her voice snapped and crackled in the cold air. "But I'm never going back to Newcastle."

Tom laughed. "I'll always have ties to home, but Newcastle is strictly a company town, and I don't aim to buck the company again." They finished their lunch in silence, then he said, "So, Zoe Wilder. Why are you in Alaska?"

She wished he hadn't said that a person who was honest in Newcastle would be honest in Alaska. The best she could offer was a half-truth. "I'm looking for a man," she said after a pause.

"Ah, I see," he said in an offhand tone. But she knew he didn't see. "Would that be a specific man? Or do you mean you're looking for a man in the sense of seeking a husband?"

"A specific man," she said reluctantly, knowing she couldn't reveal much more without betraying her promise to Juliette and Clara. And she didn't want Tom to know that she had lied about not being married or that she was hunting a runaway husband.

"What's the man's name? Maybe I know him."

For Tom to know Jean Jacques, Jean Jacques would have had to go to Dyea instead of Skagway. He would have had to hire packers to get him over Chilkoot, and he would have had to choose Tom's company from the dozen or more packing companies in Dyea. Finally, he would have had to speak to Tom instead of one of Tom's employees. Certainly, such a chain of events could have happened, but Zoe thought it unlikely. She hoped it was.

"I doubt you know him," she said, wishing she had evaded his question in the first place.

"Zoe? Look at me." When she glanced up, his green eyes were clear and steady. "You can trust me."

"It isn't that I don't trust you," she said, rising from the rock she sat on. "I don't care to discuss this subject with anyone, not just you."

"You're saying it's none of my business." A grin widened his mouth, and then he laughed. "Now there's a reason I understand."

"I'm getting cold, and I'm concerned that my traveling companions are worried that I didn't turn up for lunch."

Rising, he picked up their plates and utensils. "We don't see things quite the same, do we? It's funny. I felt certain that we would."

Oddly, she had also assumed they would agree on everything. She felt let down. Disappointed. Tom's expression told her he felt the same way.

They scattered the wood ash in front of the glacier, almost like an offering before they packed away the plates and mugs. Zoe waited beside the gelding while Tom buried a handful of food scraps.

When he returned, he walked toward her with a purposeful stride, his gaze on her face. Before she understood what he intended, Tom had placed his cold hands on either side of her face and tipped her mouth up to his.

"For years I've promised myself if I ever had a chance to kiss Zoe Wilder, I'd do it or kick myself forever after. I never thought that chance would come."

He gave her a moment to understand, a moment to pull away. But surprise and—curiosity, perhaps?—rooted her to the frozen ground. Her gaze locked to his, and her eyes widened—her lips parted.

He didn't hurry. When he realized she wouldn't step free, he stroked the back of his hand across her cheek, traced his thumb along the curve of her lower lip.

Gently he pulled her past the edges of his duster and into his body, reached beneath her cape to circle his hands around her waist.

Zoe drew a quick sharp breath. This was wrong. She knew it, knew she should pull away before they crossed a line they could not uncross. But his green gaze trapped hers and held her powerless to resist.

His hands on her waist pressed her tighter against the hard length of his body, slowly, deliberately. There was no awkwardness, no need for adjustment. They fit together easily, magically. Tom held her close until they began to feel each other's heat along their hips and stomachs, and he gazed into her eyes while nerves ignited and two mouths dried.

Finally, when Zoe feared the tremble building inside would erupt into outer shaking, when she thought her heart might pound through her chest, he lowered his mouth to hers.

The hot thrill of his lips shot through her body, and she forgot that they stood in the shade of an ice wall. The heat of his mouth and body enveloped her, set her skin aflame. And an unexpected jolt of yearning brought her arms up around his neck.

What began as a gentle, tender kiss deepened into something Zoe could not have predicted. Sudden, overwhelming desire rocked her body. Tom's hands tightened on her waist, then he cupped the back of her head in his palm, kissed her hard, and moved against her as if he needed to be closer, closer. And heaven help her, that's what she wanted, too.

When they pulled back to look at each other, their breathing was quick and ragged.

"My God," Tom said softly.

Zoe couldn't speak. She sagged in his arms and lowered her forehead to his shoulder. Tears choked her.

Everything about this moment was wrong. Tom was a Newcastle boy who prided himself that he would always be a Newcastle boy. Zoe was a married woman. She had lied to him about her status, could not confide the truth about coming to the Yukon to find and kill the man she had married.

"Please," she whispered, stepping out of his arms. "Please don't do that again."

It seemed that a lifetime passed during the time he stared at her. Then his expression stiffened, and he apologized.

Quickly, she placed a finger across his lips. "No, don't. I'm as much to blame as you. I could have stepped away. I could have said no. I should have."

"Why?"

Right now it didn't matter that she had agreed with the others not to tell anyone they were all married to the same man. Right now, pride stopped her tongue. Her battered self-esteem wanted Tom to believe she was desirable. She didn't want him to know how blind or deluded she had been, or that her husband had abandoned her without a backward glance.

"I'd like us to remain friends," she said, turning from him.

"We'll always be friends."

"Friends don't kiss like that. It's better to pretend it didn't happen."

For a full minute he remained silent. Then he touched her shoulder. "Something happened, Zoe. I didn't imagine it, and neither did you. Pretending isn't going to change what I felt."

"I think we should leave now," she insisted, blinking hard as she walked toward the gelding. He wanted her to admit that she'd felt something, too. But she couldn't.

Maybe she still felt a minuscule dollop of loyalty toward the man she had married. Maybe it felt indecent to press her body and her lips to one man while she wore another man's wedding ring. Maybe she simply did not want to admit she could desire a man from Newcastle.

Silently Tom mounted the gelding, then extended his hand to swing her up behind him. After a tiny hesitation, Zoe wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned her cheek against his back.

Tears burned her eyes. If Jean Jacques Villette had appeared right now, she could have killed the bastard without a pang of remorse.

Chapter 11

The trail bent sharply upward from Sheep Camp toward an area known as the scales. Clara made the three-mile ascent in a thick snowfall that didn't thin out until she reached the scales, where she had agreed to meet Juliette and Zoe.

Once she caught her breath, she raised her eyes to Chilkoot Pass and her heart sank. A single file of men struggled up one thousand feet at a forty-five-degree angle. The barren treeless snow-covered slope looked a straight perpendicular from Clara's vantage point.

Here and there a spent form dropped out of the line, and the man giving up came tumbling down the snowy incline in a dangerous uncontrolled fall. The controlled descent lay on the far right of the climbing men. A trough called the grease trail had been worn into the snow by those who had reached the summit and were now sliding down on the seat of their pants to fetch another load of goods before they made the nearly impossible climb again.

"It takes from three to six hours to reach the top," a growly voice said at her side. "Unfortunately, the pace is set by the slowest climber."

Clara pulled a heavy scarf away from her mouth and nose and refused to notice that her pulse accelerated when she heard his voice. "How do the men keep their footing?" she asked, holding her gaze on the climbers. They made her think of a line of dark ants steadily advancing up a steep and snowy anthill.

"See those sourdoughs standing at the bottom? They cut steps in the ice. Fifteen hundred steps. If you want to use their staircase—and everyone does—you have to pay atoll."

She nodded. Opportunists abounded in this wild inhospitable land, most of them seeking to profit from the prospectors' desperate push to reach the gold fields. Governments profited, too. At the top of Chilkoot, Canadian Mounties would collect customs duty on all supplies before the cheechakos were permitted to enter Canada. One needed a fat purse to survive this journey.

The ragged mountain peaks that surrounded them were as craggy and intimidating as Bear Barrett's face, Clara decided without looking up at him. She edged away, but he stepped forward, moving closer this time.

"All right," he said after a minute. A long breath expelled vapor from his lips. "I apologize for saying aloud that it would be easier if you were a woman of loose virtue, or whatever it was I said. I didn't intend to offend you, and that's the truth."

She stood in unmoving silence so long that her feet started to chill despite thick stockings and heavy boots. "I accept your apology," she said finally, as they had both known she would.

"Just once I would like to get through a single damned conversation without one of us getting mad."

She shifted to look at him through the diminishing fall of snowflakes and sucked in a breath. "What in heaven's name have you rubbed all over your face?"