Alaskan Fire (7 page)

Blaze hadn’t even gotten the
courage to pull the damn thing out of its custom-fitted case.  She’d just
gotten all excited at the thick metal box, inserted the little metal key the
lawyer had given her, all expectant and hopeful, lifted the lid, seen her
father had given her a
feather
and willed the rest of his millions to
charity, and then shut the lid to go contemplate Life.  She hadn’t opened it
again after that, though it had certainly occupied a nagging corner of her mind
ever since.  Almost like the damn thing had
wanted
her to pick it up.

But that was stupid.

“Anything…strange…about you?”
Jack prodded gently.  The nosy little shit.  “Somethin you haven’t told anyone
else, maybe?”

For a breathtaking moment,
meeting his sincere green eyes, Blaze almost told him.  Then that refreshing
wave of self-preservation snapped back into place and she scrambled to come up
with something that would throw him off of the scent.  “You mean
beyond
the obvious?” Blaze growled.  “Sorry, let me think.  Oh, okay.  Here’s one. 
‘Cause I’m so damn huge, I need to use extra-large maxi pads.  Don’t believe
me?  I brought a half a dozen boxes with me.  They’re tucked away in my stuff,
but if you want, help yourself.  I’m sure there’s enough to share.”

Jack narrowed his eyes at her. 
“All right, sugar,” Jack said, “You said you’re a businesswoman.  So let’s talk
business.”

She lifted her head to glare at
him.  “It would be easier for me to talk business if I wasn’t sitting on the
floor, bound at the wrists and ankles, being intimidated by a hairy little man
with an attitude problem.”

“Sarcasm,” Jack growled, “is not
going to make this go any smoother, sweetling.”

“You have me
tied up
in
the basement of my
own house
!” Blaze cried.  “
Please
tell me how
that’s supposed to make things go ‘smoothly’ you asshole!”

“You ran away,” Jack snapped.

“You tried to
eat
me!”
Blaze retorted. 

“You kicked me in the
jewels
!”
Jack growled.

“You
slobbered
on my
neck
!”

That actually seemed to make the
grumpy little man look somewhat abashed.  “I was just getting a little taste,”
Jack muttered, picking at the floorboards between his feet.  “Tryin ta figure
out…”  He jerked his head up and peered at her again, then shook it.  “Never
mind.  Frankly, tootz, I need your assurance you’re not gonna run off and blow
this thing way outta proportion if I let you go.”

“And the alternative?” Blaze
gritted.

Jack’s green eyes narrowed.  “I
don’t let you go.”

“Then gee,” Blaze said, “Give me
a few months to think about that.”

Jack shrugged.  “You figure it
out, I’ll be upstairs sweeping up squirrel shit.”

And, good as his word, he stood
up, wandered over to a dusty closet, pulled out a
broom
, and proceeded
to climb the stairs.  Blaze heard his heavy footsteps creaking around on the
floorboards above her.  Blaze waited until she was pretty sure he was well into
the groove of things, then lifted her butt, hunched over, and pushed her long, gangly
arms over her ass.  Drawing her legs through her arms, she pulled her wrists
out in front of her.

Listening to the bastard start to
whistle upstairs, she began yanking knots loose with her teeth.  Hands free,
she reached out, quickly unbound the cloth strips from her ankles, and
carefully got to her feet.

Above her, the footsteps paused. 
Blaze froze, her heart afire as she crouched there, listening to the silence
that seemed to pound in her ears like a blacksmith’s hammer. 

“You figure it out yet, sister?”
the wereverine bellowed through the flooring.

“Go suck on an exhaust system!”
Blaze screamed up at him.

She heard the wereverine chuckle
and go back to sweeping.

With the utter surety that her
mechanic probably had the ears of a German Shepherd, Blaze began to make the
agonizingly slow creep across the basement to the back door.  The
only
door, she knew, that wasn’t boarded up from the outside.

“I told ya I got all week!” the
wereverine shouted, in between whistling.  “The moon-kissed live a
long
time, honey.  You decide to stop being unreasonable, you just let me know.”

After what seemed like an
eternity, Blaze reached the back door, but stood beside it, frozen in terror,
staring at the latch.  Some deep, inborn prey-instinct was telling her the
moment she made the latch click open, the wereverine was gonna come barreling
down the stairs in a bundle of saliva, talon, and fang, ready to rip her into
little, bite-sized pieces.  She stared at it for long, heart-pounding minutes,
considering her alternatives.

She heard Jack continue his
progress through the house, then heard big feet on a creaky staircase and
guessed he had moved to the third story.  Holding her breath, Blaze touched the
door and carefully twisted the knob.

Upstairs, Jack resumed his
whistling, much more muted, now.

There was a tiny, insignificant
click that almost left Blaze in a seizure, then the door swung ever-so-slightly
inward.  Biting her lip, Blaze glanced up the stairs, then slowly inched the
door open until she could fit her unwieldy body through it.  Pulling it shut
until it latched again behind her, she hesitated to look at her latest
obstacle.  The rough-hewn lumber of the back porch was like something straight
out of an 1800’s saloon, and it had creaked and groaned with their every step,
an hour ago.  Heart shooting blasts of fire through her chest, Blaze took five
agonizing minutes crossing the back porch to a place where she could step off
onto solid ground.

Once she was on the grass,
though, she bolted, as softly and quietly as she could go.

Jack puttered around aimlessly, heart
still hammering from sheer
proximity
to the sleek, fire-haired beauty he
had trussed up in the basement.  Like some long-legged Aphrodite clipped straight
out of the pages of a damn swimsuit magazine, except she came with a
complimentary wave of goosebumps that crawled up his limbs whenever he made
contact.  Goosebumps that gave his heart tremors…and made the predator in him
start panting.

Touching her hand in that first
handshake, Jack had felt that insane rebel side of him—that usually-hibernating
side with a built-in death-wish that got turned-on by near and imminent danger—start
awake and take
notice
.  It had only gotten that revved-up a grand total
of four times in the past, and each time, it had been the start of a long,
tumultuous, utterly breathtaking, sizzlingly exciting love-affair…

…that had ended in four deaths. 
Four horrible, pain-ridden murders at the hands of strangers.  Alone, and
afraid, when he should have protected them.

He was
not
letting it
happen again.  Especially not with a completely clueless, nerve-wrackingly
smart, absolutely
gorgeous
redhead.  He’d rather
die
than see
that happen to another woman.

Hell, Jack realized, idly
dragging the broom across the floor, at this point, he really did just want to
rewind the last three hours and start over.  If she decided not to cooperate,
maybe the fey could concoct something for him that would erase a couple days
for her. 
Just tilt your head back and drink this, sweetie, and all your
problems will go away…

He didn’t want trouble.  And the
way she made his hair stand on end and his heart thunder in his chest, hell,
he’d be happy to wash his hands of the whole mess and head back to his house
and forget she even existed.  But how do you explain that to a girl whose
biggest concern was that you’d just sprouted fangs and slitty eyes?  She was
probably going to sing to the tabloids the first chance she got.

Dammit
.  Fighting the
lingering tingles in his chest, Jack paced with the broom in his hand, trying
desperately to think of what he was gonna do if his new neighbor decided not to
cooperate.  He hated using fey-magics on people.  It felt…dirty.  Besides, the
buggering little bastards always exacted an exorbitant price for their
services, and he could just
see
himself losing another sword over the
matter.  Jack sighed.  He wasn’t gonna kill her, much as that would simplify
his life, but if she went singing to the authorities, he was gonna have to pack
up and find some other territory to call home.

And, after living in the same
place since 1893, the longest he’d managed to live in one place since he’d been
created, he was rather reluctant to just pack up his stuff and leave.

Damn
it.  He once again
cursed himself for being a rash, impatient fool.  He could’ve gone weeks, hell,
years
watching the elegant little bird from a distance, trying to scope
out the situation, before revealing himself to her.  If he had to at all.

To all appearances, she had
absolutely no idea what she’d been getting into when she stepped onto his land.

And here I thought she was
trying to pick a fight.
  Jack cursed himself again, then, pausing to listen
to the basement, sighed again at the ringing silence of the lodge.  “Look,
Boss,” he called, “this ain’t really gonna change nothin’ between us.  I mean,
hell, I’ll still work for ya and all that.  I just want you to promise you’re
not gonna run off and tell the world you got a wereverine living in your
backyard, that’s all.”

Her silence that followed made
Jack’s eyes narrow.  He started sweeping again.  Just about any other
moon-kissed out there would have ripped her head off and got it over with, but
Jack kinda felt sorry for the girl.  He figured he at least oughtta give her a
chance.  Maybe they could come to some sort of understanding…

Another hour passed without
another peep from down below, and Jack bent to sweep up another pile of
squirrel droppings, then dumped them into the cardboard box he was using as a
trash bin.  Straightening out a crick in his back, he raised his voice in a
peace offering.  “All right, say I come down there and let ya loose.  All I
really
want, right now, is to make sure you aren’t gonna run off and get us both in
trouble.”

Absolute silence answered him.

Jack sighed.  “All right, sugar,
look.  I’m
sorry
I ran you down in the woods, okay?  I really didn’t
want to, but you didn’t give me a damn choice!”

He heard a rafter creak as the
house settled.

“I know I probably scared you,”
he offered to the floorboards beneath him, “but I said I wasn’t gonna hurt you
and I meant it.  Give me the word and I’ll come down there, untie you, and we
can talk about this like civilized adults.”

Several more minutes left him
listening to his own heartbeat.

He needed to come up with
something to ease her mind, he knew.  She was probably terrified, thinking he
was some creepy-crawly asshole in the woods.

Well, some
other
creepy-crawly asshole in the woods.  He was not gonna hurt her, damn it.  But
how to
say
that?  He’d always been
horrible
with words.  He
struggled to think of the samurai and the other warrior-poets he had rubbed
elbows with in the past. 
They
wouldn’t be having this problem. 
They
would have her clinging to him in gratitude for saving her from the big bad
world and giving her a safe place to live.

Jack wrinkled his nose, trying to
think.  What would a samurai say?

What happened was unfortunate,
but it has enriched us both.  Never before have I met a woman so utterly
breathtaking in every way, whose body is art in motion, whose mere smile is
like the rising of the sun.  That I made your fears a reality is only a
necessary evil for me to introduce you to a great new world, the magnificence of
which you could never dream.  My sword to protect you, if you will only
continue to grace my worldly domain…

Yeah, that was good.  Jack
listened for a moment, collecting his thoughts.  Then he awkwardly cleared his
throat  “Uh,” he started.  “What happened was…”

What happened was but the
first step in a long path towards surrender, our souls to become one, our
worlds mingled to face this new day…

“What happened was…”  Jack
grimaced as it all vanished on him again.

What happened was a turning of
the wheel of Fate, a great dune in the sands of Time…

“Stop being a damned unreasonable
little broad and
agree
already!” Jack blurted.  “I don’t like this any
more than you do!”

She taunted him with her silence.

Jack bristled.  “Fine!  You just
stay down there.  Maybe I’ll go home and drink a couple beers while I decide
what I’m gonna do with you!”

She said nothing.  The uppity
city snot.

Growling, Jack started dragging
the broom across the floor again.  The whole building smelled of squirrel piss,
and the little tree-rats had done a damn good job of ripping through every bag
of flour, oats, sugar, and every other non-perishable box of food that the
Olsons had left behind.  It was probably going to take a week just to get the
place smelling like something other than rat shit.  His spoiled, primpy, rich,
pampered new boss might not mind, but he had a
very
sensitive nose, and
he’d always found the smell of rodent particularly unattractive.

Then a part of him demanded,
Why
do you care?  It’s not like you’re gonna be living here.

He wrinkled his nose.  He
supposed he could be doing more productive things with his time than cleaning
up his new neighbor’s squirrel-shit. 

He
really
didn’t want to
go back downstairs, though.  Hell, if she didn’t answer him, he was probably
gonna curl up on one of the dusty mattresses and spend the night staring at the
ceiling, wondering just how he was going to unfuck this particular disaster. 

“It ain’t gettin any lighter outside,
sweet-cheeks,” Jack called, dumping another load of droppings into the
cardboard box.  “You might as well stop wasting both our time and start
listening to reason, ‘cause you ain’t goin
nowhere
‘til I’ve said my piece.”

She didn’t reply.

Growling, Jack finished sweeping
the kitchen pantry and, slapping the broom down against the wall, went off down
the side-hall to start checking the plumbing situation.

Thankfully after a quick
inspection, he found that the Olsons had apparently drained their system rather
efficiently before taking off for town.  None of the porcelain had been
cracked, and all the faucets had been run dry.  After he’d checked every
bathroom in all twelve rooms, Jack went to the big, windowed prow on the top
floor of the lodge and started yanking dust-covers off of the furniture and
wadding them into a big pile in his frustration.

He knew he was avoiding the
basement and the gigantic problem that it contained, but he was too old to
really give a crap. 

Finally, once Jack couldn’t think
of anything else to do without a toolbelt, and he was well and truly tired of
sweeping up squirrel shit, he marched back down to the top of the stairs and
shouted into the basement, “What the hell are you trying to accomplish with the
damn silent treatment, you ham-fisted
hippo
?”  That seemed to have
worked rather well to get her attention last time, so he thought he could
expect a similar response.

Instead, the lodge all but hummed
with silence.

Narrowing his eyes, Jack decided
it was time to go make sure his new neighbor hadn’t asphyxiated herself on that
pretty orange hair of hers.  He got to the bottom of the stairs, turned the
corner, and said, “All right, tootz, you’ve just about pissed me—”

Aside from a few strips of cloth
laying abandoned on the spark-guard beside the woodstove, the basement was
empty.

Cursing, Jack was sprouting fur
and fang before he even reached the back door.