Spooning Daisy (20 page)

“You’re sleeping on me.”

“Yes . . . but eventually I’ll be sleeping in these sheets.”

“You’ve been in these sheets for the last two hours.”

“Yes . . . but I was distracted.”

“I suppose I should take that as a compliment.”

They lay together a few more minutes, Daisy really wanting to move, but Max’s embrace keeping her from it.

“Max . . . ?”

“Oh Lord.” He took back his arm and flung away the sheets. With a groan, he dragged his leg over the side of the bed and sat up.

A momentary fear gripped Daisy. “Where’re you going?” She sat on her haunches and immediately felt the ghost of his erection.

“I’m taking drugs. I need something to dull the pain of this ridiculous conversation.”

“I’m sure you mean that in the kindest of ways.”

Max grabbed a pillow and playfully heaved it toward her. “Just put your damn sheets on the damn bed.”

Daisy clutched the pillow to her bare breasts as Max hopped toward the bathroom and his shaving kit within.

Maybe now was a good time to try—yet again—to rid herself of this aversion she had to community sheets. After all, they’d probably been washed in very, very, very,
very
hot water, and bleached on top of that.

“They’re clean,” Daisy quietly insisted. She placed the pillow against her cheek. “They’re clean,” she told herself again. She breathed. Again. Her brows collided into a knot. She breathed more deeply.

“What’re you doing?”

Daisy spun her head toward Max, who stood in the bathroom doorway.

“I thought you were changing the sheets,” he said.

“I am.”

He shook his head. “Do you really think
now
is the time to work on your sheet phobia?”

“It’s not a phobia.” Daisy watched Max grab his jeans from the vanity stool. “It’s an aversion. If it were an actual phobia, I wouldn’t be able to be in these sheets at all. Why are you getting dressed?”

“I’m going for ice.” He grabbed the plastic bag he had used earlier to ice his knee.

“I can—”

“No!
You
change the sheets.”

“Are you coming back?” She instantly cringed at how needy she sounded.

His hand on the door handle, Max turned toward her. “We’re on a ship, Daisy. Where the hell would I go?”

It wasn’t exactly the reassurance she’d hoped for. But what bugged her more was that she needed reassurance. And yet . . .

When the door closed behind him, her nose went back to the soft cotton, sniffing like a bloodhound. Was she worrying over nothing? But the gnawing in her gut—and the perfume on the pillow—told her otherwise.

Chapter Nineteen

W
hile the sunrise fought rain clouds, Daisy made her way through a ship beginning to awaken; she was surprised, but nonetheless relieved, to find the purser’s office already open for business.

“Twenty-four seven,” the young man said. “In case of emergency.”

Daisy stopped rolling her suitcase and set it on end. She put Elizabeth’s carrier on the cropped-pile carpet. “I’m Daisy Moon.” She addressed the man she didn’t know—
Dobbs
, according to his lapel pin. “I should have a thousand dollars in cash and a credit card in your safe, please.”

Dobbs thumbed through his clipboard of notes and papers. “Here it is.” He looked up. “Could I see some ID? Driver’s license, passport?”

“My driver’s license was stolen, but I do have my passport.” Daisy retrieved the thin leather-look book from her purse.

Dobbs compared the photograph with the flesh-and-blood woman before him, then he closed the document and smiled, returning the passport to Daisy. “Are you leaving the
Columbia
in Wrangell, Miss Moon?”

“Yes. I have a job waiting for me in Otter Bite, but I need to get to Anchorage first.”

“You can certainly get to Anchorage from Wrangell, but it will take a few planes to do it.”

Daisy had figured as much, and the thought didn’t thrill her, but it was better than wondering who Max Kendall would next have between her sheets. And they were
her
sheets—technically, if not morally—because it was
her
bed in
her
cabin. Bought and paid for by
her
. She still couldn’t believe that Max had actually invited another woman into that bed after he and she—

“It will take me a few minutes to get this for you,” Dobbs told her. “I have to locate the officer on duty.”

“No problem.” She took a seat as he left.

Daisy glanced around the neat and orderly office, remembering the first time she’d come here in a panic. “Some trip, huh, Elizabeth?” she said to the turtle, who was buried beneath a mound of moss in her carrier. “Well, pretty soon we’ll be on our way and this will all seem like a bad dream.”

Daisy yawned and stretched her neck this way and that, trying to purge a bad night’s sleep. Of course she’d put her sheets on the bed—no way she was getting back into those other sheets after she knew what had happened. It creeped her out. Even now. Just thinking about it caused unhappy goose bumps.

Which was why, when Max was safely in a three-pill drug-induced slumber, she left the bed and took a shower.

She’d considered confronting him about the breakfast blonde—and surely the source of the perfume—but then she decided on another tactic. A tactic that Max himself had undoubtedly employed a time or two. That meant, of course, that she’d have to forego her righteous indignation along with the satisfaction of nailing that bastard—

Daisy breathed, trying to release her anger.

Instead, Max would always remember Daisy Moon and wonder why . . .

So early this morning, after several hours of restless dozing, Daisy got dressed and packed. She wrestled with keeping Max’s passport just to make things
really
difficult for him, but then relented in her fantasy for revenge, and used the envelope she’d gotten in Ketchikan to hide her prior snooping.

With Max’s documents tucked safely back into his duffel and Elizabeth in her carrier, there was only one thing left to do.

She had to sacrifice her sheets, of course, what with Max still asleep in them. But they would only remind her of Max, whom she never wanted to waste another thought on. Plus, she could buy sheets in Anchorage. A new, clean, fresh, never-used set that didn’t remind her of anyone.

She’d eased first Elizabeth and then her suitcase out of the dark cabin and into the bright hallway. She had lingered in the doorway, a block of light spilling into the cabin, to look at Max one final time, almost wishing he’d wake up just so he could see her walking out, but in the next instant she felt ambivalent. Before she could talk herself out of it, she turned and shut the door on Max Kendall.

“Sorry for the delay,” Dobbs said, returning. He handed Daisy a small manila envelope and asked that she verify the contents. She smiled at the valuable piece of plastic that would take her away from all her recent mistakes and to a new beginning in Otter Bite. The crisp $100 bills were just icing on her cupcake.

“I guess you’ve had a tough time,” Dobbs commented, as if he wasn’t quite sure of the details.

“Mistakes were made,” Daisy said, figuring he could get his answers elsewhere.

“If you could just sign this receipt . . .”

Daisy happily scribbled her name and then asked for two envelopes, which Dobbs obligingly gave her. Digging into her purse, she found near the bottom her small notebook and pen. Pulling them free, she quickly tallied the numbers. The total came to $122. Back to her purse, to the inside pocket where she kept her lip gloss and emery board, and where she now kept her money—or rather the money from Max—since she no longer had a wallet. She pulled out all the bills and began sorting on her lap.

She would return the $200 he’d given her for Ketchikan, less what she paid for his last night’s dinner, of course, although technically the money had been a gift, so she could rightly keep it.
And
Max was getting her cabin.

“Let’s see,” she mumbled to herself. “Two nights without me . . . two nights with me is half that . . .” She scribbled on the paper:
Less the $200.
Taking the high road, but counting the $100 she’d taken from his wallet as payment for her sheets.

And minus the $122 for meals comes to . . .
Daisy perked up. Max Kendall
owed her
$53!

With her bills and receipts, Daisy placed all the cash back into its envelope and stuck it in her purse. After jotting a quick note at the bottom on the small page, Daisy ripped the paper from her notebook, neatly folded and placed the page in one envelope provided by Dobbs, sealed the flap, addressed the front, and set the envelope aside.

On a separate piece of paper, Daisy carefully penned a note to Steve Keller, folded the sheet and placed it in the second envelope, sealed and addressed it.

“Could you see that the man in my cabin gets this . . .
after
the
Columbia
has left Wrangell?”

His expression reflecting unspoken questions, Dobbs took the envelope from Daisy.

“And could you see that Security Officer Keller gets this?” She handed the remaining envelope to Dobbs.

“After we’ve sailed?”

“Any time is fine.”

As the
Columbia
proclaimed its impending arrival in Wrangell, Daisy collected herself and Elizabeth. “Thank you very much, Mr. Dobbs.”

“My pleasure,” Dobbs answered with equal politeness. “And Miss Moon?”

One step from the door, Daisy turned.

“Good luck.”

Max woke to a hammer inside his head. Eyelids heavy, and groggy from his drug-induced slumber, he checked the empty space beside him. He looked for the time, but the nightstand clock was gone. Rainy daylight spilled into the cabin from the window, casting the room in a gloomy, one-dimensional pallor.

“Daisy?” The hammer pounded, only this time he recognized the source. Groaning, he freed himself from the sheets and shuffled to the door. He turned the knob. “Did you forget your—”

The uniformed man on the other side of the door lifted his brows at Max’s nudity.

“—key?” Max finished, realizing too late that it wasn’t Daisy doing the knocking.

“Mr. Kendall?”

“Yes,” Max said, oblivious to his own immodesty until an elderly couple walked by and chuckled.

“Hang on a second.” Retreating to the bathroom, he grabbed a towel and flung it across his offending appendage, very much awake, and tucked the terry around his waist.

“What’s the problem?” he asked, returning to the open door.

Dobbs presented the envelope. “This is for you.”

“What is it?”

“Miss Moon asked me to deliver it. Have a nice day, Mr. Kendall.”

Frowning at his handwritten name, Max stepped back and closed the door.

Chapter Twenty

M
ud splattered the belly of the Cessna 206 as it touched down on the rudimentary airstrip. With earth solidly beneath her, Daisy Moon sighed relief.

It had been a fifteen-minute flight from Homer to Otter Bite, but crammed into that short flight was some of the most spectacular scenery of her long journey, like traveling back in time—not hundreds of years, but thousands—to a world before man.

Epic mountains, white-capped against a royal-blue sky, plummeted into lush green valleys spotted with snow, then rose into furry forests of centenarian spruce, in turn giving way to icy, meandering streams pooling into shallow, mirrored lakes reflecting their mountain sentinels. And that was just the east coast of Kachemak Bay.

To the west, frothing and foaming in rolling waves, Kachemak Bay metamorphosed into a deceptive turquoise sheet before it reached the far shore fifty miles away and disappeared into a mist. Rising from that ether, the Alaska Range stretched north and south like jagged shark teeth, enameled neon-white with snow. Taking center stage, hulking Mount Iliamna loomed at over 10,000 feet; its plume of volcanic gas lingered ominously above its cone against a pale blue sky. A little farther north, dwarfed by distance but nonetheless magnificent, Mount Redoubt hovered like an apparition.

To the north, from where Daisy had come that morning, Kachemak Bay flowed into the relaxed, silty waters of Cook Inlet and Turnagain Arm, which corralled Alaska’s largest city to the west and south.

Surprisingly sophisticated, Anchorage had been exactly the respite Daisy needed. Rather than arriving early in Otter Bite, she had spent a week in Anchorage shopping for replacements of her stolen items, making frequent calls to Charity, and just plain collecting herself for her next challenge at Wild Man Lodge. She’d even shopped for locally made wine at the Alaska Denali Winery, picking up a novelty bottle of Lime Margarita. To that purchase she added a lovely imported Pinot Gris found at a small wine shop called—she smiled—Grape Expectations.

At the Moose’s Tooth she’d eaten the best wild mushroom gourmet pizza ever and bought a souvenir T-shirt for Charity. Two days later, she went back for their Hungarian mushroom soup. From the display in the entry, Daisy learned that the restaurant owed its name to a rock peak in the Alaska Range that looked like—no surprise—a moose’s tooth.

From her hotel room window at the Captain Cook, Daisy had a view—on clear days—of North America’s tallest peak, the mountain with two names: McKinley for those in the Lower 48 and Denali, as Alaskans called it. Googling the name, she discovered the mountain actually had several names, depending on who was talking. The Anchorage-area Athabaskans called it Dghelay Ka’a, or High One
.
The Alaskan Aleuts, who had numbered close to thirty thousand before the Russians decimated them, called it Traleika. Even the Russians had a name for it—Bol’shaya. In 1975, the Alaska legislature scrapped “McKinley” and officially named the mountain “Denali.” Forty years later, the Federal government followed suit, making the name nationally recognized. But whatever the name is, was, or had been, the Great One rose 20,000 feet; in summer, climbers from all over the world attempted to reach its summit.