Primal Calling (8 page)

 

M
AX SHOVED
his shaking hands in his pockets and stepped back to lean against the counter. He wasn't sure his knees would have held much longer.
The Searching One.
Serena? No way.

But his grandmother was not usually wrong.

Still, there had to be some mistake.

“What does that mean?” Serena switched her inquiring gaze from him to his grandmother, and back to him. “Is it because I search for the truth?”

“Ha.” Max bit off a mocking laugh. “You wouldn't know the truth if—”

“Max!” his grandmother admonished him.

“I'm sorry,
Aanaga,
but you have to be mistaken. And you,” he said as he glared at Serena, “need to leave.”

“No,” his grandmother protested. “She is my guest.”

“He's right, Evelyn.” Yanking her purse off the back of the chair, Serena slung it over her shoulder and bustled toward the front door. When she got to the entryway, she spun back and held her hand out to his grandmother. “Thank you for inviting me.”

But his grandmother shook her head. “You have no way home except for Max. And I need him to fix my
chimney before he leaves. You will stay for lunch. Max, too.”

Max bit back a groan and clenched his fists. Now he had to give the meddling busybody a ride? True, he hadn't seen Serena's rental out front. How had she gotten here? Whoever drove her was going to hear about it. Probably Chris. The kid was barely legal to drink and he'd tried to give Max advice on women before.

“I don't want to be any trouble.” Serena hesitated by the door, staring at him.

Max scoffed. “Lady, you've been trouble since the moment I laid eyes on you.”

Her lips tightened and she raised her arrogant little chin.

“Be ready to leave in half an hour.” He wouldn't disrespect his grandmother by refusing her guest a ride home. But that didn't mean he had to join them for lunch. “In the meantime, I'll be on the roof.” He strode to the front door and then turned back. “Come on, Mick. You can keep me company.”

Mickey raised his head and thumped his tail, but he stayed by Serena's side.

“Mick. Let's go.”

The malamute whined, but he still didn't move.

“Fine. Stay there.” He slammed out the front door.

 

M
AX SANK
ankle deep into the snow on the roof. That woman had some nerve being here.

Of course, he'd been the one to seek her out this morning. What a mistake that had been. What had he
been thinking, pushing his way into her hotel room with a bed not three feet away? Not that they'd needed a bed. Damn, all he had to do was get near her and he wanted her.

Nah, that wasn't true. He wanted her even when he wasn't near her. Even when he was frustrated with her he wanted to strip her and take her.

The chimney pipe was fine, but once the snow melted he'd probably need to replace some shingles on the roof. He made a note to bring his hammer, some nails and a few new shingles next time he came. His stomach growled and his nose was frozen. Still, he wouldn't give that woman the—damn. Realizing his tactical error, he climbed down the ladder, brushed the ice off his parka and hurried into the cabin. He shouldn't have left her alone with his grandmother. No telling what she would reveal to Serena.

At the entry to the kitchen, he slowed, hearing his grandmother tell an old Iñupiat story—the one she used to tell him as a child about the crow that brought daylight to the Inuit people. He leaned against the door frame, closed his eyes and listened to his grandmother's voice.

“The crow shook his beak and said, ‘I could only carry one small ball of daylight, and it will need to regain its strength every so often. So you'll only have daylight for half the year.'

“The people said, ‘But we are happy to have daylight for half the year! Before you brought the ball to us it was dark all the time!' And so, that is why, in the land
of the Inuit in the far north, it is dark for one-half of the year and light the other. The people never forgot it was Crow who brought them the gift of daylight and they take care never to hurt him—in case he decides to take it back.”

Max peeked around the corner. Serena had her head resting in one hand, enthralled with his grandmother's story. “I love that.” Gone was the sophisticated television personality he'd met in Anchorage. The woman sitting with his grandmother wearing an oversize cable-knit sweater and sealskin snow boots looked as if she'd lived in Barrow all her life.

His grandmother smiled so wide that her whole face beamed.

“Did she tell you the one about the woman who carried the lamp?” Max strode in, grabbed a bowl from the cabinet, filled it with soup and sat at the table.

Serena met his gaze. “And about Sedna, the goddess of the sea.”

“Did you find the problem, grandson?”

“It's smoking just fine,
Aanaga.
I'll bring in more firewood before I go.” He took a bite of the soup, barely registering that it was his favorite, moose stew.

His grandmother turned the page on an old photo album on the table before her. One he'd never seen. “This is my wedding picture.” She smiled fondly down at the old black-and-white photo, and then turned the book so he could see. The couple standing in front of a small wood-and-mud shelter looked barely old enough to date, much less marry. They were just kids.

But the Iñupiat boy beamed at the camera as he held his bride tightly around the waist.

“How old were you there,
Aanaga?
”

“I was fifteen. Your grandfather seventeen.”

“So young!” Serena said. “Didn't you say you were fifteen when you—”

“
Ii
. For a long time I thought I could not have children.”

Max turned to his grandmother. “You've never told me that.”

“You never asked my story, boy.” His grandmother's tone didn't accuse. Only stated fact. There was love in her eyes as she looked at him, but something else also. As if she was urging him to…to ask?

He took her hand in both of his and kissed it gently. “I'm sorry, I've been so selfish,
Aanaga.
”

She smiled. “Already she helps your soul find its way home.”

Max blinked. Damn. Caught like a minnow in a net.

“Your grandfather found me when I could walk no farther. He cared for me. We were married a few months later.” She rubbed a wrinkled finger over his picture. “He was so handsome. Always my hero.”

“You miss him still,” Serena said quietly, awe in her voice.

“Ii.”
His grandmother drew in a shaky breath.

It was as if he were seeing his grandmother for the first time. Although he'd heard stories about his grand
father, Max had never known him. He had died hunting whale.

His grandmother turned the page and there was his mother as a baby and a toddler. She seemed a happy child, smiling, being thrown in the air by her father. “How old was my mother when grandfather died?”

His grandmother raised her gaze to him. “Fifteen.”

“And I was born when she was sixteen?”

“Ii.”
She nodded. “Holly grieved deeply for her father. And she loved to dance like her mother before her. She met your father when he was stationed here with the air force and ran off to Anchorage with him.”

“What happened to Holly?” Serena asked the question he used to ask often as a little boy.
Where is Mama?

A
STRAINED SILENCE
followed Serena's question. She'd put her foot in it again. Why couldn't she control her big mouth? “I'm sorry. That was thoughtless of me.”

“No.” Evelyn squeezed Max's hand and kept her sorrowful gaze on him. “She lives in Anchorage. Max—”

“I have to go.” Max shoved back in his chair and stood.

“Max.” Serena couldn't walk away from the plea in Evelyn's eyes. “Couldn't I—”

“Let's go.”

Serena sat a second longer, then got to her feet and impulsively hugged Evelyn goodbye. With Max eyeing her, she grabbed her purse and parka and headed out to his truck.

A couple minutes later, Max strode out the door, motioned for Mickey to jump into the truck bed and dropped behind the wheel, slamming his door. “If you
print or publish any of the information you just heard, I'll sue you.”

Serena felt her jaw drop. “Since nothing I learned here today is the tiniest bit newsworthy, I don't see why I would.”

Hands tight on the steering wheel, he swung around to glare at her. “Don't come here again.”

Could a body actually seethe? She clenched her fist around her purse strap. No one had ever made her so furious. “If I'm invited again, I'll come.” It was better than
You're not the boss of me
. Just barely.

His glare turned into a scowl. Then he faced forward, jammed the key in the ignition and started the engine.

Despite his temper he drove cautiously, slowing way ahead of stop signs and making turns at a snail's pace. It wasn't dusk yet, or foggy. Windy, as usual, but other than a little blowing snow, visibility seemed good.

“And you better not use anything you recorded yesterday either,” Max said.

“If I get permission, I will. I can always edit you out.”

His mouth tightened as he threw her a sidelong glance. “What would you want it for, anyway?”

“I'm thinking of making a documentary about Barrow.” Boy, talk about making stuff up off the top of one's head.

“Yeah, right. How does that fit in with your ‘save the world' crusade?”

“I've been doing some research.” She'd read as much as she could about Alaska before she'd left L.A. for
the Iditarod assignment. But did
when
really matter? “There's a climate change lab here.”

“Oh, here we go.”

“You've heard of the village of Shishmaref? Where houses are falling into the sea from the eroding coast line? And the thinner ice makes hunting walrus and seal more difficult.”

“You think if you film some cute kids racing sleds suddenly the politicians will fall all over themselves to pass new clean energy legislation?”

Serena gritted her teeth. “I'm not an idiot. But it can sometimes make a difference to juxtapose a personal story over a global problem.”
Just keep shoveling it on, Serena.

“And you'd have to appear on all the big talk shows to tout your humanitarianism, right? Maybe even win a Nobel, huh? Meanwhile the people in Shishmaref are still trying to move their houses long after you and your cameras have exploited them.”

She opened her mouth to deny it, but she couldn't. She'd never considered shining a light on a problem as exploitation. But was motivation a factor? If she were truthful, she'd admit part of her goal was to have something tangible to show her father. Max saw through her right down to the self-serving core.

She studied her fingernails. They'd gone from manicured, fake-tipped and polished, to broken and unvarnished, with a bit of dirt underneath. A metaphor for her life.

“You're right,” she admitted quietly. “My motives are somewhat selfish.”

His mouth fell open. She couldn't quite believe she was admitting it either. Not to him, at least.

“When I was a little girl I used to crawl up in my daddy's lap while he sat in his study pecking away at his typewriter. He'd tell me stories about the corruption and lies he was exposing, and I wanted to be just like him. The great Simon Sandstone. I'd see his Pulitzer gleaming on the shelf behind his desk and I'd think, ‘Someday, I'm going to have one of those. I'm going to make a difference too.'”

“Your dad won a Pulitzer?”

“He single-handedly stopped a chemical company from dumping toxic waste into a nearby river. He was almost killed breaking that story. Even his editor wanted him to stop. We had police living with us after Dad received death threats. But he never revealed his informant's identity.”

Max gave a low whistle. “Not easy to live up to.”

“You know what he said to me once?”

Max glanced at her. “What?”

“After I landed the
Travel in Style
show, he said if my only contribution to the world was going to be travel tips, he'd wasted his money sending me to Berkeley.”

She pushed down the knot in her throat and squeezed her eyes closed. Dang it, why was she crying now? She hadn't cried when he first said it. She'd felt ambushed and shocked, and then pissed as hell. But she hadn't let herself feel how much it had hurt.

She turned her face away and concentrated on staring out the window at the snow and ice. A tear slid down her cheek. She swiped at it and wiped it on her jeans. Risking a glance at Max, she was glad to see he was still watching the road, bouncing along in his truck, turning onto Main Street.

“You mentioned volunteering in New Orleans after Katrina?” Max murmured.

She sniffed. “Yeah.”

“Well, it's not always about the Pulitzer, then, is it?” he asked.

Serena's heart swelled. Just when she thought maybe she should give up and go home. “Thank you for saying that.”

He shrugged and there was companionable silence for a moment.

“So, what did you and my grandmother talk about?”

She tightened her lips to keep from smiling. “She told me about her people—your people, the Iñupiat.”

“Did she talk about me?”

Serena hesitated. “She said that you were brilliant at math in school and that, to this day, your favorite meal is her moose stew.”

He glanced at her again and she grinned. “I told her I wanted the recipe. I like to collect recipes from every place I visit.”

He pulled to a stop in front of the hotel, turned to her with raised eyebrows and laid his arm along the back of the bench seat. “You cook?”

“Well.” She thought of the five-star restaurants she'd eaten in all over the world. “I love to eat.”

“That's what I thought.” His expression changed from dubious to serious, his stare intense. Desire glittered in his dark brown eyes. What would he look like without the long hair and beard?

She yearned to scoot over the couple of feet between them and kiss him senseless. To feel his hands and mouth on her aching flesh again, to hear his breath shudder and his low moan.

“You better go.” His voice had turned raspy.

He was right. She'd had enough insults from the man, and a rejection would ruin whatever meager truce they'd gained just now. “Thanks for the ride.” She shoved open the rusty door, jumped out and raced into the North Slope Inn before she changed her mind.

 

T
HE WIND PICKED UP
as Max drove home, loosening snowdrifts into flurries across his path and whistling eerily through the doors of his battered pickup. The clouds thickened and by the time he pulled under his carport, it might as well have been sundown, it was so dark.

Mickey jumped out and whined at the cabin door.

The half of him that believed in such things would say the earth was angry. But what did the earth have to complain about? He'd only been trying to protect his grandmother from a predatory would-be journalist.

Yeah, she'd looked real dangerous, sitting there sipping tea and listening to
Aanaga
tell old stories.

He slammed into his cabin and pitched his keys onto the kitchen table. Mickey barked by his food bowl.

“All right, I'm coming.” He fed Mick and then grabbed a beer from the fridge and dropped onto the sofa. There was probably a game on. He sipped his beer, contemplating turning on the TV.

Instead of cold glass touching his lips he could have a soft, fiery female beneath them. Damn, she'd looked good sitting beside him in his truck. With her Iñupiat parka and sealskin boots, she'd looked as if she belonged there more than he did.

Between that and the sob story she'd given him about her dad. Okay, so it had gotten to him. And she'd deployed the ultimate weapon. What man could resist that lone tear she'd wiped off her cheek?

But he didn't want to soften toward her. And he sure as hell didn't intend to let her go near his grandmother again.

The phone rang and he snatched it off the base. His phone seldom rang unless Chris or his grandmother needed something. “Taggert.”

“Max, you forgot to bring in more firewood before you left.”

“Aanaga?”
He leaned forward and set his beer on the table. “I'm sorry for storming out today. I'll be right over.”

“No, I have enough for tonight. But if you come in the morning, I'll make you breakfast like I used to when you were a boy.”

“I'll be there at first light. But you don't have to cook.”

“Yes, I do. I have a guest coming. By the way, could
you pick up Serena on the way? That woman is no good with directions.”

Max leaned back on the sofa, closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “No,
Aanaga
. I don't want her there. She only wants to use you for a story about me.”

“Max, do you trust me?”

“I trust that you mean well. But—”

“I know what I've seen. I know what is right. In my heart. In my soul.”

“But,
Aanaga,
you don't understand.”

“And besides. I have already called to invite her. I'll ask Chris to bring her.”

“No,
Aanaga.
” But she'd already hung up. Punching the off button, he tossed the phone onto the cushion beside him.

Dammit.

He sat up, snatched his beer off the table and took a long swig. As much as he did not want to see Serena again, he couldn't stop thinking of her, the way she'd looked in her hotel room this morning, her silky top torn and bunched around her waist, stubborn as hell and defying him one minute and then admitting he was right the next. And baring those full, rose-tipped breasts, her long hair tousled from being taken against the wall—he'd never had a woman that way before. So wild and abandoned. He groaned and finished his beer.

It was going to be a long night.

 

M
AX WAS UP
before dawn, restless, agitated. He almost called Chris to ask him not to drive Serena, but Max
wouldn't put the poor guy in the middle of this mess. Best to take care of this himself.

After updating his business accounts and paying a few bills, he headed to his grandmother's to bring in firewood and intercept Serena.

When he pulled his truck into the driveway, Mickey barked and scratched to get out as Serena got out of Chris's SUV and waved him off. She was dressed in her traditional parka and snow boots. The hood was pulled up and her purse hung off one shoulder.

Max climbed out of the truck as she walked by, and Mickey almost knocked him over to jump on her. She stooped to scratch behind his ears and comb her fingers through his thick fur, talking to him in a high, sweet voice. It was disgusting how Mickey lolled his tongue out and drank in the attention.

Max watched her fingers massaging Mick and wanted them tangling through his hair, dammit. Awareness of her was a constant irritant, like fleas biting at him. Breathing in her tantalizing scent didn't help. He'd already spent most of the night in this tortured condition.

“I told you to stay away from my grandmother.”

She glanced up. “And I told you if she invited me, I'd come.” Her eyes were narrowed and her lips tightened in defiance.

“We'll see about that.” He headed for the door, opened it without knocking and stepped in, slamming it shut behind him just as she reached it. He heard her huff of anger and smiled to himself.

A loud knock sounded on the door along with Mickey's bark. Let the traitor dog stay out there with Ms. Stubborn. He strode into the kitchen, where the aroma of sizzling bacon made his stomach growl.
“Aanaga?”

His grandmother spun from the stove just as another knock sounded at the door. “You break my heart, grandson.” She pressed a hand to her chest.

“
Aanaga,
you are too trusting.”

“And you are not trusting enough.” She shuffled close to him and cupped his face in her gnarled hands. “Tell me I did not raise a man to be so rude.”

Max closed his eyes against the pleading in hers. But it was no use. He could never withstand her censure.

With an aggravated growl, he went to open the front door. Serena had her hand raised to knock again. She glared at him. “In case you hadn't noticed, it's freezing out here.”

He stepped back and gestured for her to come in. “I'll be here the whole time, in case you try to trick her into giving you information again.”

Sparks of fury lit her eyes as her glare turned fiercer still. Her cheeks flushed pink, her lips compressed.

Feigning indifference, he folded his arms and raised an eyebrow.

She crossed her arms too. “Since you hate me being here so much, you want to fly me to Shishmaref tomorrow?”

“No.”

“I'd pay you, of course.”

“I told you before. I don't fly passengers.”

“Then I guess I'll be spending a lot of time with your grandmother.” She sailed past him and turned into the kitchen with a smile. “Evelyn.” She took his grandmother's hand. “Mmm, it smells wonderful in here. Once you get past the stench by the door,” she threw over her shoulder at him.