Alaskan Fire (21 page)

* * *

Jack winced as Blaze ran back to
the house and disappeared in the basement.  He cut the power to the chainsaw
and lowered the blade to rest on the half-chopped log, his heart pounding.  It
had taken every ounce of willpower he had to look up into her eyes and tell her
he didn’t go for the tall chicks.

Fuck,
every
girl he’d ever
fallen for had been taller than him.  Hell, Mae Lae had almost matched Blaze
for height.  He
liked
‘em tall.  More chimney to crawl up, damn it.

But she had
pushed
him and
if she had
noticed
, that meant he was a hell of a lot more turned on
than he had thought, and he
refused
to do that to a woman again.  He
couldn’t let his damned hormones get another girl killed.  He’d rather go dig
his own grave.

An apology was necessary for sure
this time, he knew.  He’d stuck his foot so far in his mouth he was choking on
calf.  Desperate for some way to remedy the situation, he started trying to
think of what he could say to patch up this particular cluster.  He didn’t want
to hurt her, just keep her from sealing that claim by accident, because he
knew
she wouldn’t trust him again after that, and with something as permanent as a
mating link, he wasn’t about to take chances.  He racked his brain for
something to say. 
Hey, babe, you might be tall, but you’re still sexy as
hell, I’m just not interested.

But he
was
interested. 
Way
too interested.  He was so interested it had gotten painful to listen to her
sleeping through a
wall
because he wanted to be
in
there,
watching over her as she dreamed.

Yeah, this was getting way,
way
too outta hand, and it was a damned good thing he’d warned her off.  He needed
to just step back and take a breather and cool his nuts on a goddamn block of
ice and think about Life for awhile.  A Fourth Lander like that was
not
interested in a hairy little Third Lander.

But
, that startled little
death-wishy part of his brain thought,
she
is
interested.
  He’d
smelled it on her, multiple times, and in a stupid, ballsy maneuver that still
had his heart pounding, he’d just gotten confirmation.

…and then he’d utterly fucked it
up and told her she was a Yeti.

“Fuck,” Jack muttered, slumping
to the half-cut birch log.  The woman of his dreams and she was probably off
bawling in her room, thinking he was about the worst asshole on the—

Then Jack flinched. 
Bawling?
 
He dropped the chainsaw and hurriedly jogged over to the closest basement
window, listening.

He couldn’t
hear
her
crying.  But then again, would he be able to hear
tears
?  He carefully
eased himself inside of the house and snuck up to the edge of her brand-new
door, listening.

“He’s just an asshole,” Blaze was
patiently explaining to herself.  “He doesn’t think you’re a Yeti.”  Then she
paused and Jack heard a huge, wrenching breath.  “Okay, so maybe he thinks
you’re a Yeti.  Big deal.  You’ve had what, like
two
guys in your life? 
Babe, you
know
you’re a Yeti.  So what?  It’s not
news
.  The only
news
here,
tootz
, is that he’s completely not interested.”

But I
am
interested,
Jack wanted to yell.  So damn interested he was having trouble controlling
himself around her.  The
beast
in him wanted to dispense with the
bullshit, claim her, and rut all over her like a dog in heat.  The
man
in him was desperately trying not to be totally turned on by the way she seemed
utterly unafraid of him, by the sexy way she kept pissing him off on purpose,
by the delicate clockwork brain that was always in motion behind those pretty
blue eyes. 
I am interested,
he thought again, in misery. 
I just
don’t want you to end up a goddamned bloody corpse, okay?
 

Listening to her rant to herself,
Jack glanced down at his big, rough, greasy mechanic’s hands and bit his lip. 
By running her off, he was protecting her.  …wasn’t he?  Living with him was
dangerous.  He was doing her a favor.  Keeping her out of the limelight. 
Keeping her safe from being swept away by the alluring whirlwind of death that
was Jack.

And yet,
he
had insisted
on moving in with
her
, a completely knee-jerk, Oh My Fuck I’m Not
Letting This Thing Outta My Sight moment, the second he fully realized just
what kind of beastie he had on his hands.  So that argument kinda lost its
merit, now that he thought about it.

Which meant he either needed to
run her off for good, pack up and leave town, or dispense with the bullshit.

Jack glanced down at the little
pile of papers that he had dutifully filled with letters for her and felt a
wave of humiliation at his own failings.  He might as well, he knew, take those
papers and try to use them to get himself into Harvard.  He didn’t have a
chance with her.  He was a pauper that had found the Hope Diamond after it
tumbled off somebody’s crown, and he was doing his best to snatch it up and build
a castle for it.

She’s so totally out of your
league
, he thought, in misery,
and she doesn’t even know it yet.
 
The moment she
did
figure it out, she was gone.  She was gonna fly off
into the sunset, baby, because there were
much
better prospects out there
than a hairy little asshole.  She seemed rather infatuated with dragons, for
instance.  Or maybe she’d go head off north to check out Thunderbird.  She
didn’t
need
him.

And, in that moment, he felt a
growl start to rattle in his chest. 
Yes, she does
, that death-wishy
part of him retorted. 
And you sure as hell know that no dragon out there’s
gonna waste his precious time or hoard building her a
farm
. 
And the
idea of Thunderbird dirtying his hands changing out engines or getting sweaty
hammering up a barn was completely laughable.

You’ve got a chance at this,
he realized, stunned. 
All you gotta do is stop screwing things up…

Biting his lip, glancing back at
the little sheaf of papers she’d left for him, Jack snuck back outside to begin
unfucking his mistakes.

Blaze was still reading a book in
an attempt to keep herself from crying an hour later, when she heard Jack thump
up onto the porch and yank the door open.

She heard him stop outside her
door.

“I drew up some plans for the
barn and the first greenhouse,” he grumbled through the wall.  “Could use your
help on a couple things.”

Blaze, who was still in her towel
and bath gear, put the book down, tore the towel off of her head, and started
getting dressed.

“Hey Blaze?” he asked, his voice
sounding tentative.

Blaze grabbed her huge man-pants,
yanked them on her huge man-legs, jammed her huge man-toes into her huge
man-socks, then rammed her Yeti feet into her man-boots.  She laced them up in
silence.

She heard him get out of the
chair.  “You okay in there?” he asked softly, outside her door.

With hard, rough brush strokes,
she combed her hair, snapping off snarls rather than taking the time to comb
them out.

“Bruce is gonna be here with the next
load in an hour,” Jack said.

Blaze found her jacket and tugged
it on, then grabbed her boonie-cap off of the wall and cinched it down onto her
head.  She grabbed the bug-dope and sprayed it until her tongue was numb and
her nose stinging.

“Blaze?” Jack asked again.

Blaze went to the door and jerked
it open.

Jack looked up at her and took a
surprised step back.  Immediately, his nose scrunched in disgust.  “What, you
use half a can of DEET in there?”

Blaze gave him a smile filled
with teeth.  “In order to ensure that your
Yeti
doesn’t board the flight
back to town, your
Yeti
is going to go on a walk,” Blaze said.  “Take
care of the supplies when they get here.”  She made a dismissive, uncaring
gesture toward the lodge.  “Or don’t.  Let Bruce pile them on the beach for all
I care.  Right now, I don’t give a rat shit
what
you do.  You wanna go
get out the sandblaster and paint some buildings, that’s fine.  You wanna go
sit up in the prow and smoke pot and recount all the wonderful things you’ve
done with your really long life, that works.  You don’t wanna show up for work
tomorrow, that would be good, too.”

She brushed past him and slammed
the door of her room, leaving a stunned-looking wereverine standing in the
hallway as she yanked the outer door open.  “Oh,” Blaze said, looking back at
him, “And
don’t
follow me.  You do, and I’m on the next flight out with
Bruce.  I don’t care what I have to do, I’m gone.”  She gave him a bitter
smile.  “Not that you’d mind, seeing how you’ve gotta share living space with a
Yeti
.”  Then she pushed through the door.

At her back, she heard, “I don’t
think you’re—” before she slammed the outer door shut behind her, busting loose
the hasty repair job that Jack had given it.

Blaze knew that it would seem
rather suspicious if she didn’t show to help unload when Bruce arrived with her
first load of supplies, but she also knew that if she got anywhere near the
plane, she would find herself on it when it took off.

And she had put up with too much
of the wereverine’s horseshit to quit now.

I’m going to hire someone
else,
Blaze thought, striding down the path toward the lake. 
I can’t
work with him.

Though she had to admit he did a
rather good job.  Every worry she had, every unforeseen misfortune that had
befallen the lodge in four years of abandonment, he had methodically been
ironing out.  He was competent, more competent in more things than anyone she
had ever seen.

And he was a complete, heartless
asshole.

Thinking about his last quip
still made her guts roil in humiliation.  Blaze looked down at herself as she walked. 
Freakishly tall, flat-chested, feet the size of Bigfoot…  Tears once again tried
to sting at her eyes.  She had to look away, had to focus on the trees along
the edges of her path to keep them down.  She would
not
cry.  The
last
thing she wanted was to end up unconscious and helpless in the middle of
bear-territory. 

Shuddering, however, her mind
kept getting dragged back to the same horrible thought.  Jack thought she was a
Yeti.  Maybe her father’s money would have been better spent on a boob-job and
a height-reduction.  She heard they were making girls taller, in Russia. 
Breaking the legs, stretching them out, letting them regrow.  Rinse and
repeat.  Why not shorter?  Hell, that seemed easier, anyway.  Just cut out a
bit of bone here, another bit there…

One of the few men whom she had
actually allowed herself to long for, a man who was so perfectly sculpted even
a ninety-year-old
nun
would take notice, and he had looked her in the
eye and called her an undesirable Yeti.

She sucked in a breath and fought
down a sob.  The bastard.  The callous, heartless bastard.

Without any real goal in mind,
Blaze reached the edge of the lake and started following the water’s edge, just
walking.

If she hadn’t already sunk all of
her inheritance into this place—and indebted herself for another two hundred
and fifty thousand—she would have walked away already.  She would have happily
gone back to the city, plugged herself back into the Grid, and forgotten about
her farm.

But the bastard had everything
she owned sitting right there on ‘his’ land, and she’d already spent a good
fifty thousand in lumber, barging, fuel, and supplies.  The animals were gonna
drive that to seventy-five, easy.  That left a hundred and seventy-five to keep
herself and her employee—whoever that ended up being—alive while they bought
more lumber, built cabins, sank septic systems, drilled wells, secured
advertising, and hired guides.

She should have waited.

Blaze bit her lip against another
threat of tears.  She would
not
cry, damn it.  Jack could go fuck
himself.

Still, she knew she should have gained
a few years of experience working in someone else’s business, managing someone
else’s staff, squirreling away someone else’s salary, getting ready.  Seeing
her father’s check, she’d gotten excited and jumped in too soon, and she was
going to lose everything because of it.

No,
her mind growled. 
You
haven’t lost anything.  Just tell the arrogant fucker to leave.  It’s
your
property.  You paid for it.  He doesn’t like it, you can call the State Troopers
and clue them in on this cranky little asshole that’s squatting on state land.

That made her feel minimally
better, but not by much.  At most, she could make the wereverine pack up and
leave.  She certainly doubted that the Alaska State Troopers had the means
necessary to put him in a cell, if he didn’t want to be there.  And, further,
she was pretty sure that if she ousted him, he would make his displeasure known
by doing something horrible before he left.

Like, say, running the dozer
through the basement, or leaving the chainsaw buried in the generator.

Or he could simply kill you,
a disgusted portion of her brain thought. 
Twist your head off and shove it
in the woodstove.  Bury the body with the dozer, go back to being an asshole in
the woods.

Blaze trudged along the lakebed,
then continued out the same channel she had seen Bruce and Lance putter out to
on floats.  Here, the water lightened to a greenish hue and moved at a couple
feet a minute.  Blaze ducked under a fallen spruce and kept going.

The time had come, Blaze decided,
to start taking control of the situation.  She’d poured everything she had into
this place, and the fact that her handyman had turned out to have special…attributes…shouldn’t
stop her from living her dream.

Thinking about it, she doubted
she could make him leave.  And, when she considered that option, she was pretty
sure she didn’t
want
him to leave, at least not until he’d taught her
what he knew about the operation of a fishing lodge.  She wasn’t however, going
to entertain any more stupid fantasies.  They had a business arrangement, and
that was all.  She was going to take up residence in the top floor owner’s
apartment.  He was going to stay in the basement.  She wouldn’t eat meals with
him, wouldn’t talk with him any more than necessary to get the lodge up and
running, and would only continue her rudimentary reading lessons if it meant he
would continue to make himself obsolete by teaching her how to take care of the
place herself.

Something like an hour and a half
later, she was standing on the banks of the Yentna River, watching as Bruce
Rogers idled out through the mouth of Ebony Creek and into the swift gray
waters of the Yentna.

As she watched, he gunned the big
engine and got the large plane up to speed.  It was a DeHavilland Beaver, he
had informed her on one of his many previous trips, able to carry six times the
load than the Cessna 206 his brother had used to drop her off—and almost twice
as expensive at six hundred dollars an hour.  As she watched, Bruce lifted the blocky
nose and sailed into the air.  Blaze felt a twinge of regret, seeing him go.

She glanced at the shore back the
way she had come.   She had scheduled two or three more such Beaver trips to
the lake that day, depending on how much they could fit in each load.  Either
way, if she hurried, Blaze was pretty sure she could make it back to the lake before
Bruce used up the four grand she had allotted him for the deliveries.  She
could still get out of here.

She turned her back on the urge,
and instead started down the Yentna.  The river was abnormally low, she had
been told, which was why she wasn’t having the barge run
now
, with an
eighteen thousand pound cargo capacity at twenty-five cents a pound, and was
instead hiring a six-hundred-dollar-an-hour airplane with a max load of a
couple thousand pounds, about half of which would be used up on lighter things
like towels and toilet paper, to deliver three loads of construction supplies,
food, and other necessities. 

Among the many disturbing
revelations that Blaze had stumbled upon since May was the fact that Jack ate a
lot
.  He’d worked his way through what
should
have lasted her all
summer in the space of two weeks.  And she was pretty sure that he was still
hunting on the side.

Blaze had been walking for another
hour and a half before she heard the second flight take off, far upriver and
around the bend.  She watched as Bruce Rogers glided overhead, gaining
altitude, and again felt that pang of regret.

I’m not giving up,
Blaze
thought stubbornly. 
That short, crass little jackass isn’t going to make me
give up my lodge.  I just need to cool off.

Now and again in the patches of
silty gray sand interspersed throughout the gravelly riverbed beneath her feet,
Blaze saw signs of life.  Usually tiny, like bird or squirrel or even mouse,
she nonetheless found a couple large moose tracks here and there, often with
smaller prints accompanying them.  That made Blaze smile.  At one time, there
had been only two hundred moose along the entire Yentna River.  The moose population
of the area had almost been driven to extinction by a black bear boom twenty
years ago, and for ten years, Fish and Game had allowed subsistence moose hunts
only and had instigated a heavy predator-control program to try and reverse the
decline. 

For the first time in twenty
years, there were about two thousand moose feeding in the lakes and swamps along
the river system between the Brooks Range and the Cook Inlet, and that number
was climbing slowly.  Fish and Game was still well below the six to eight
thousand they required before they cancelled the predator control measures—measures
that they had originally planned to only keep in effect for three or four years—and
now Alaska was facing an upheaval in the political scene as to who was to
blame, and why.  Prey numbers all over the state had been dropping
precipitously, especially the caribou herds north of the Brooks Range, and no
one could seem to pinpoint the cause.  The current head of the Department of
Fish and Game had quietly resigned over the predator control controversy, and
until today, Blaze had looked at the whole hoopla as a ploy by the media to
sell more papers.

Now Blaze looked at the situation
in a new light.  Werewolves, werebears, dragons, and an ornery little
wereverine…  She wondered just how much food those creatures had to eat, and
where they were getting it.  She couldn’t imagine that Jack was upkeeping his
chiseled body on eggs and sandwiches alone, and the energy to transform into
that slitty-eyed beast had to come from somewhere.  And, judging by the way
he’d decimated her food stores, requiring several more deliveries of groceries
than she had been anticipating, he was more than a little desperate for
sustenance.  She actually wondered several times if he had been starving before
she showed up.  Of course, she couldn’t mention it, not without getting that
furry hackles-up scowl and,
“I don’t need your money, sister…”
  Right. 
He was only eating her out of house and home to make her
feel
better.

Then she remembered what Jack had
said about killing new weres, and how there were too many of them already.

Suddenly, her farm began to take
on a whole new potential.  For years, she had been worried about the red tape
involved with raising and selling livestock and dairy products in the United
States.  The equipment and processes involved for legal sale of a farm’s goods
were prohibitive, to say the least.  Between the inspections, the fees, the
codes, the structures, the facilities, and the fines for non-compliance, Blaze
hadn’t really considered large-scale production an option.  But if she could
quietly establish contact with her nearby neighbors and set up a system of
trade for a cow here, a few pigs there, then she could bypass the need to clean
and butcher entirely, thereby foregoing the need for a USDA-inspected
slaughterhouse.  She even wondered if she could make a contact to the north,
and maybe shuttle cattle north of the Brooks Range…