Alaskan Sanctuary (17 page)

He swallowed. “Wouldn’t you rather talk about that after we get the hostage situation taken care of?”

“We? Who else is out there? I can’t see a thing past Rudolph.”

Tate reappeared gripping a fistful of carrots. “Hello, Piper. It’s Tate Hudson. Are you okay?”

“Yes. Absolutely.” She didn’t sound quite as concerned as one might expect under the circumstances. Leave it to Piper to take a home invasion by a reindeer in stride. “How do we get him out of here, though? It’s been twenty minutes and he hasn’t budged. I think he might have even fallen asleep standing up for a minute or two.”

A second set of tires rumbled through the snow. Ethan turned to see Zoey Wynn hop out of her little car and come barreling toward them. “Oh, no! Not again. Palmer, you naughty, naughty boy.”

Ethan grinned. “Zoey, nice to see you.”

Her gaze flitted back and forth between him and Tate. “Great. The cavalry has already arrived. I suppose this means I’m racking up another citation for animal at large.”

Tate shrugged. “That depends. Piper hasn’t indicated whether or not she’d like to press charges.”

“Of course I don’t,” she called from inside. “But it would be really nice if you could get this beast out of my house.”

“Deal.” Zoey shot Tate a triumphant grin. “I’m so sorry I didn’t pick up when you phoned, Piper. I had my mail run to Anchorage, and then at the last minute I got a call to pick up a businessman in Juneau. Some government official. I got your voice mail and headed straight over here. Just let me go grab some treats. I think I’ve got some in the car.”

Tate waved a carrot at her. “No need.”

“Super. I’ll let you coax him out of there, since Palmer knows you as well as anyone by now.” Zoey took a backward step out of the way.

Ethan followed.

“I suppose you’re going to write about this in the newspaper.” Zoey lifted a brow.
“Again.”

Ethan pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and snapped a few photos. “Come on, Zoey. No hard feelings. You know it’s my solemn duty to report the news. And this—” he nodded toward Palmer’s woolly backside “—is certainly news.”

Zoey sighed. “I don’t suppose you could try to put a positive spin on it?”

On a reindeer barging into someone’s home? “That wouldn’t be very impartial of me, now, would it?”

Zoey snort-laughed right in his face. “I didn’t realize you were still pretending to be impartial.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I think you know.” She pinned him with a knowing glare. “You should ease up on Piper, Ethan. I’ve been getting to know her through our work on the recital planning committee. She seems like a very caring person. She’s not out to hurt anyone, and neither are her wolves...in case you haven’t noticed.”

She gave him a parting wave and joined Tate, who’d thus far managed to lure Palmer about three feet away from Piper’s door. Zoey looped her arm around the reindeer’s thick neck and cooed soothing words to him as Tate guided him in the direction of the reindeer farm.

Ethan stood watching them for a moment, thoughts whirling in his mind like snowflakes. Had he really been blatantly unfair to Piper in his column? Granted, he’d made his opinion on the presence of a wolf sanctuary in Aurora more than clear. But his points had been perfectly valid. Wolves were predators, and therefore presented a threat. Everything he’d written rang true.

It no longer mattered now, anyway. He’d had enough. Piper could live all alone with a bunch of wolves, and he wouldn’t have anything else to say about it. Because he was quitting.

Definitely.

Probably.

“Ethan.” Piper stepped outside, and the sight of her filled him with such immediate, overwhelming relief that he forgot about his column.

He forgot about Seattle and hotels and all the reasons he had for leaving Alaska. He even forgot about the wolves.

He’d thought he’d lost her. She’d been perfectly fine all along, but for nearly twenty endless minutes, Ethan had envisioned the worst. For the entire drive up the mountain, he’d bargained with God. He’d begged. He’d pleaded. But even as he’d prayed, even as he’d cast those desperate pleas up above, he’d never expected God to listen. To care. Why would He?

But He did.

Thank You, God. Thank You.

“Piper.” He swept the waves of windblown curls from her eyes, and something moved in his chest, taking the ache that had formed there to a new and foreign place. Where pain blurred with pleasure.

She was beautiful. So beautiful that it hurt to gaze into her radiant eyes. Eyes like the auroras. She was beautiful. She was alive. And she was here.

“I thought...” He shook his head. He didn’t want to say it. Didn’t want to give voice to the fears that had so consumed him, lest they become real.

But he’d moved beyond the ability to choose his words or his actions. His hands had somehow found their way into her hair, and the pad of his thumb was brushing across the tender swell of her bottom lip, where he wanted most to kiss her. He didn’t think he’d ever wanted anything more in his entire, messed-up life.

“You thought what?” Her voice had dropped to a tremulous whisper, and Ethan could see a thousand questions shining in her eyes. Questions that he wasn’t sure how to answer.

Because he didn’t know what was happening between them. He didn’t know why he couldn’t walk away from this place, or from her. He just knew he couldn’t. He couldn’t quit his column. He’d stay here for the remainder of the two weeks, as promised. He would still go to Seattle for his interview, but when it was over, he’d turn around and come right back.

He wasn’t finished here. Not now. Not yet. Not until...

“Never mind what I thought,” he growled.

Then he lifted her chin with a tender touch of his fingertips and lowered his mouth to hers.

She let out a tiny gasp of surprise, but in the span of a heartbeat, she melted into him. Her arms wrapped around his neck, and her fingertips played at the back of his hair. And she was so impossibly soft and warm that Ethan could only compare holding her to the feeling he got when he watched the early morning fog wrap itself around the mountains in a diaphanous caress.

He deepened the kiss, wanting more, needing more. And found that somehow she tasted of sweet sorrow, shadowy forests and meandering paths to places Ethan had long forgotten. Of nights dreaming under frozen diamond stars and the wild wolf moon. Of Arctic kaleidoscope skies, winter wind on his face and untouched snowfields at dawn. Of nature. Of Alaska.

Of life.

And for one wondrous moment, Ethan’s brutal, meandering heart came to a place of healing.

Chapter Eleven

P
iper didn’t want to open her eyes. She feared if she did, she would find herself in a dream. Because Ethan Hale couldn’t possibly be kissing her like this. As if she were a priceless treasure. As if he’d seen every part of her—the best, the worst and all myriad of shades in between—and he still wanted her. He still cared.

She’d never even told Stephen about her childhood. He’d thought her parents had died. And for all she knew, that was true. She’d never trusted him with the entirety of her truth, though. Nor anyone else. She didn’t want sympathy or to be seen as some pathetic orphan. Announcing that she’d been abandoned as a child and grown up in foster care almost felt like waving a red flag.

Approach with caution.

Broken.

Unlovable.

She wasn’t sure why she’d shared so much with Ethan. At the time she’d told herself that it was simply a matter of reciprocation. He’d opened up to her about his childhood, so she’d done the same. He’d even told her about what had happened to him in Denali, and clearly, that wasn’t something he shared with just anyone.

So why had he chosen to expose such a secret part of himself to her? She wished she knew. Because she had a feeling that whatever the reason, it was the same one that had prompted her to reveal herself to him.

Now here they stood, souls and childhoods bared, kissing one another’s pasts as surely as their cold, soft lips. It was a kiss that felt as though it could close old wounds, and leave tenderness in place of scars. Dreamlike. Wondrous. And overwhelming, because mended hearts were fragile and all too easily broken.

Her eyelashes fluttered open at last, and he was still there, standing against the backdrop of the rugged Chugach range. And he looked so perfect, so at home among those craggy rocks and the cool blue spruce trees that she could have cried. She wasn’t dreaming. Ethan was real. She wanted to touch the chiseled planes of his face, just to be sure. She wanted him to whisper secrets in her ear and tell her all the things he’d never told anyone else. Most of all, she wanted him to kiss her again.

But somewhere beneath the dreamy haze of first-kiss euphoria, something felt out of place. Wrong. Like a wisp of black smoke in a clear blue sky.

Ethan. Here. Now.

It didn’t make sense. None of this did.

He smiled down at her, and she asked the question she could no longer ignore. “Where were you? What happened to not letting me out of your sight? I thought something had happened to you.”

Could she sound any more pathetic? Or, heaven forbid, lovesick? Why would she sound lovesick? She didn’t love him. Of course she didn’t.

Except sometimes when he was around, she experienced a strange weightless sensation. Like falling, almost.

Oh, no.

You do
not
love him. You don’t love him, and you surely don’t need him. You have the wolves. You don’t need anyone, least of all
him
.

“You were worried about me.” The corner of his mouth twitched into a bemused half grin.

Okay, so she’d been worried. But only a little. “No, I wasn’t.”

“Yes, you were.” He narrowed his gaze, and the gray of his eyes rumbled through her like thunder over the Bering Sea. “You were worried about me. That’s not all. I dare say you also missed me.”

And she hated herself because he was right. She’d been worried. She’d even managed to convince herself that he’d driven off the side of the mountain. She’d been so concerned about him that she’d actually called the state trooper. Who did that? Husbands and wives, that’s who.

Piper felt sick all of a sudden.

Even worse than worrying about him, she’d also missed him. Not because Caleb was still sick and the chores around the sanctuary weren’t getting done. Not because Ethan had announced his plans to shadow her every move. Not even because of the silly chicken-broth ice cubes. She simply missed him. Ethan. Because she didn’t loathe him quite as much as she thought she did. She actually liked him. Quite a lot. And despite all the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, she felt as if he understood her. Somewhere beneath his rough and wounded exterior beat a heart that moved to the rhythm of mountain snowfalls and winding forest trails. To the tune of God’s creation.

But that was impossible.

And she didn’t want to feel that way. Not about anyone. Certainly not about Ethan.

He slid his hands around her waist and pulled her close until she was once again enveloped in his comforting scent of pine and wood smoke. His old life still clung to him in more ways than he knew. Piper felt herself yielding again. Her face tipped up toward his, and her lips parted, ever so slightly, ever so ready for him to kiss her again.

Snow drifted down from a sky the color of glaciers in springtime and surrounded them in a feathery embrace. The wind whispered through the lonely forest, and it sounded almost like a sigh. Ethan bowed his head, and it would have been so easy to let her eyes flutter shut and forget everything else but this breathtaking moment and this maddening man.

His lips were a murmur away, and she could feel the warm promise of his breath against her skin. She rose on yearning tiptoe...

Stop. Something isn’t right.

She opened her eyes. This time, to reality. “Wait.”

Ethan straightened. “Wait?”

“Yes. Wait.” Piper planted her hands on his chest and pushed him away. Or tried, anyway. His chest was remarkably solid, and try as she might, he didn’t budge. “You weren’t coming back, were you?”

He hesitated just long enough for her to know that she’d hit the nail right on its proverbial head.

“Don’t lie to me, Ethan.” If there was one thing she couldn’t tolerate, it was dishonesty. Not after Stephen. “You know how I hate that.”

“Okay. I wasn’t planning on coming back. I thought it was for the best.” His eyes grew dark, serious. Full of intention. “I was wrong.”

“I knew it.” She pushed him away again, and this time he let her.

“Piper.”

“Don’t. Don’t say my name like that, like you care.”

He reached for her, and she swatted his hand away. How could she have let him kiss her like that? How could she have kissed him back?

She’d been doing just fine here on her quiet mountain with her wolves before he’d come along. How could she have trusted him, even for a minute?

“I knew it.” She shook her head. “You were going to just walk away without a word. Not even a goodbye.”

“You know it’s more complicated than that, Piper.” He raked a desperate hand through his hair. “I have a past, and so do you. Those pasts matter. They shape the way we feel and think.”

This still didn’t explain why he’d planned to up and disappear, leaving her to wonder where he’d gone. “And?”

He planted his hands on his hips and looked away, toward the wolf pens. “And it didn’t seem right to keep trying to shut this place down. Not after what you told me this morning.”

A shiver coursed through her. She suddenly felt cold and very exposed. “Then don’t. Please don’t.”

“But that’s exactly what I’ll keep doing if I stay here. As much as I care about you...maybe
because
I care about you...I haven’t changed my mind about the wolves.” He turned his back on the enclosures.

Over his shoulder, Piper could see Koko’s dark form among the hemlocks, his copper eyes trained on her. As always. “But you’re wrong. Don’t you see? I even had a reindeer here for half the day, and the wolves were just fine. Nothing bad happened.”